Today, there's going to be literally a thousand threads that are Charlie Munger was live till 99. Here's 99 lessons I learned and they're going to regurgitate the stupid quotes on Wikipedia. This is my first but we do things differently around here. We're not just getting give you the regurgitated quotes. I gotta give you that. So, you know little specials you that owes you that you can dip sandwiches. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to put my all in it like a days off.
Charlie Munger has died at age 99 and all around the world. People are remembering Charlie. This guy who's Warren Buffett's business partner, you know, Bill Gates called Charlie, you know, maybe the broadest thinker he knows he said that he has the best 30 second brain of anybody who's ever met and we wanted to dissect that brain. What's inside that what made Charlie so prolific? Why did Warren Buffett say that Berkshires shaped in the mold of Charlie Munger that he is one of the smartest and wisest men he's ever met.
And we pulled out seven of the Big Ideas. Charlie said I'm a lot of things over the years but we identified what we think are the seven big big bits of wisdom that Charlie has shared and what we wanted to do was instead of just making a listicle which you're going to see a lot today your see people on Twitter, you know, every thread boys get to be like Charlie Munger died at 99. Here's the 99 bits of wisdom. They're gonna copy paste Wikipedia we didn't want to do that. What we wanted to do was take the seven that we thought were really really impactful and specifically tell a story of how we learned that lesson in our
Business life or in our life it made for I think it pretty amazing episode. I told Sam I said dude this notes document
that we have for this episode
things. You got a handkerchief. This thing is dripping with wisdom and you're gonna that's how you're going to feel at the end of this podcast. You're going to need to take your shirt. You're gonna need to wipe the old podcast player because this episode is about to be dripping with wisdom. I hope you enjoy this episode on the seven bits of wisdom from Charlie Munger. Hey, let's take a quick second to talk about our sponsor HubSpot. You know what we
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Your queue for strong and gear up for the next year with HubSpot sales Hub. Learn more at HubSpot.com sales. All right, let's get back to the pot. All right, so let's jump into the wisdom. So what I think would be fun as we just sort of trade our favorites because this guy's got little
quips or
quotes about the way the world works by the way minds work about the way the markets
work. All right, you go first.
Okay, I'll start with a very easy one. So one of you know one of his big Ideas is to get what you want you need to do.
Deserve what you want and so he says, you know, the easiest way to get everything that you want is to deserve it. It is so simple that it's almost like obnoxiously simple this advice. If you want the partner you want you should be deserving of that level of partner right make yourself worthy of a partner like that same thing with investors. He kind of calls out a few things that money can't buy. So he's like trust in other people success and admiration. Those are things you cannot buy you can only earn
And so if you want somebody's admiration deserve it if you want somebody's trust deserve it if you want success deserve it and I'll share like a very simple more practical anecdote about this because again, like his big ideas are amazing, but they just sort of float in the clouds unless you bring it to earth when I real tactical example. So when we sold the milk Road, I've said this before but one of the reasons we we sold to the guys we did was I really really respected these guys. It was not the highest offer but these were the highest quality people that we could sell to.
To and we just had a hunch that like selling to the highest quality people will result in the best long-term outcome for every dollar we're taking less today. We might create three more dollars in the future just by being around high quality people and I'll tell you a story that came out of the due diligence that like was like a nugget of gold that stuck with me that was exactly this. So one of the guys that sold his businesses for about 90 to 100 million and the other guy had sold his business for over 200 million and both of them had built businesses that were SEO based and I know a lot of things about marketing and
But I know zero about SEO I am an absolute beginner novice. I never touch SEO I don't do businesses that are SEO based. I literally know nothing and so one of the ways I priced in the deal was oh, I'm Gonna Learn SEO from these guys who are frankly Masters at SEO and so we get to the point where we do the deal. I've we're not negotiating anymore and I'm like, oh good. I must start digging. I'm gonna start picking these guys brains for SEO shit. So I sat them down. I was like you're going to teach me about SEO now and they started to tell me something but I was like, okay, that's the general.
All stuff I've heard that stuff before like what's the like real like Master shit? What's the real like black belt shit that I don't know about that. You can't just Google and read and you know some blog that like help you guys create, you know one guy created the number one search result for if you say I want to buy gold online and that's the business owners, you know sold for a few hundred million dollars that he bootstrapped that never raised any money and he did it because he knew how to be the top result for buy gold online. So, how'd you do it bro? What you do? Was it the some?
Hack some technique and he's like, you know, we did all the normal things. He's like I tried some of these hacks are techniques. It didn't really work. He's like so then he's like, you know, what happened was one day I Googled how to buy gold online and we were the fifth result at the time. He's like, so then I printed out all five of the results us being number five and I printed one through four also and I sat down for an hour and I just looked at them and I read them and I was like, I had an honest conversation with myself of why why
Would I click on my page what is better about my page than these other pages and I was like wait till you didn't like do some like black hat SEO shit that was like this like Advanced trick and he was like, no. He's like we didn't deserve the click. We weren't better Pages. He's so he's like so all I did for the next year was every week. I printed out all the pages and then I made my page like 10% better why figured out one way that we could be better as objectively better, even if we weren't moving up in the ranks yet.
That I could look at it and say this is a better page. We deserve to be higher ranked and I literally never heard this. I was like on one hand in the moment. Honestly, I was kind of disappointed. I was like dude I came to you for this secret Juju about SEO like not trying to have this like you got to work hard and just actually make a better page but it was also kind of like refreshing it. So you go to the people who are masters of SEO and they're like, yeah, you can do all the tricks but at the end of the day you have to have the best result like you have to have the best page and you have to have an honest conversation.
As if of is your page better than these other Pages he's like if you really want to sustainably like climb the ranks of be a time one. That's it. And that was such a like tangible business example of like to get what you want. You have to deserve what you want and I'll never forget that was like one of the biggest takeaways ahead of the whole process.
That's beautiful. I like that one. He also had another line Monger did Breeze. Like I never tried to disagree with someone's opinion unless I understand their side better than they do right and and that's like a specific example.
Of like let's say debate of how he was like I need to I need to deserve
this right? So that's number two. I love that one. He says I'm not entitled to an opinion. Like I can't have conviction until I can argue the other side better than someone who believes the other side and he's like, he's good right think. He's like people think this is some like crazy high bar and those people haven't ever ask somebody who believes something why they believe it like it's actually quite a low bar to surpass their own like can their own understanding of something.
NG and you know, I think about this would like Bitcoin, for example, I'm a Bitcoin believer and my approach to this was always to say here's all the reasons why I believe in Bitcoin. It just makes sense for any reason a b c and d but actually the better way to do is to say smart people who don't believe in Bitcoin would say a b and c and I understand that and here's what I think about those and why I've landed on the side of conviction that I have. It's just a much better logical way to
Dentists just say here's what I believe and I'm going to come up with all the evidence. I'm even going to make up some of it to justify my opinion, which is I would say how
do people attend people manning.
Yes, a steel Manning is like argue the other side better than they would even argue
it. There's this cool story from I think it's called making of an American capitalist. And so they talked about how the here I'll read it just the this part from the book. They go physically Monger was unimpressive. He had an elf-like face pasty skin and glasses and inch thick the something of a snob.
And highly judgmental. He had a deep sense of ethics and his smarts for match by Churchill Ian self-assurance. Once he was asked if he could play the piano and Munger replied. I don't know. I've never tried and I thought like
what a telling line
like want to tell he lied. So most people you say no, I can't play the piano. This was I probably could it's a there's definitely a potential that I will be a great piano player. I just haven't tried.
A died when I read that line. I just thought this man's beautiful. This man is one of a kind and I love people like that because myself you most everyone we default to can you do this? Like of course not I don't have the capabilities. I cannot do that where that little mind shift of like, well not yet through
her noticing that props to you. I read that line in the research and even understand what was remarkable with the line. I just moved on I didn't even notice it until you just said it like you did.
Did so good on you for even observing it. That's a good one. Well, that's what
I'm saying. When I'm reading about these guys. It's like these little one off lines or these like like for example, they'll say he founded this law firm and then next he was bored their necks like whatever and I'm like, well, hold on. Let me look at this law firm. And then you start reading about this law firm in like do this is quirky. This is a weird super strange law firm. And so anyway, yeah this line it's a beautiful line about just showing what the day-to-day about how you can be different.
All right, if you're loving this episode, I'm glad I also want to tell you three things that we are doing as a podcast quick little news flash news announcement about MFM. I have three things to tell you here. They are number one. There's like this Meetup thing going on. So there's a woman she runs a company that basically helps eye contact are designed to spin up meet up. So basically what's happening is in in like a week or two around the world. There's MFM beat ups, which is kind of fun. We're not going to be there because it's like, you know, they're all happening on the same day in different locations, but forget us if you're one of these people
People that listen to the podcast you're probably going to get along with other people who listen to the podcast people who listen this podcast your business nerds with a sense of humor. And if you like business owners in the sense of humor, they're all getting together. Everybody's going to like a bar. They know like there's one in Toronto. There's one in California and one in Austin and they're going to hang out. It's
called The River. So if you go to get River dot IO, so get GE T and then River like a stream River dot IO you scroll all the way to the bottom and you'll see my first million meet up there happening in Austin and Houston, Denver.
Right. So yeah, they did this for all and I think that's kind of when one of the proof of Concepts I think there's going to be fun. So so do it will try to like I don't know call into a couple of these and say hi, but this is cool. So that's happening next week. That's fun. Go meet some other people who are part of neckbeard nation. Number two. We're doing the poker tournament. So a while back we talked about this business that we that found fascinating which was a cloud poker tournaments like is digital poker tournament, wherever these webcams on it can be private for our community.
The and 300 or 400 people signed up. We just have a schedule yet. But now we scheduled it's December 13th. It's happening. We will give away merch and some cool stuff as prizes will come up with some don't prizes thousand bucks or a call or free merch or whatever. So yeah that cloud pokernight.com. So Cloud pokernight.com MFM. So if you want to register for that, if you already registered will send out an email to people letting them know that that's happening at last thing is I do a thing every year, which is I
This month this month of December is the plan for you know other people think about Christmas. I'm thinking about end of your next year hit my goals. And so I basically use this time for planning for 2024. So I'm going to host a free session which basically is I am currently doing it for all my businesses. I make like a one page plan for what I'm trying to do next year and it's basically like the big goal and then the breakdown of like how I'm going to do it. I have a method of how I get to that answer and you walk away with kind of like a clear one pager for your business. Ben had the
Idea, he was like dude. I love when we do this. He's like we should just like do this together with other people that own businesses that want to do it. And so totally free. You'll walk away in an hour with like a bunch of clarity on what's what your next year. Looks like. I have a bunch of good questions that help people get clarity. So if you want to attend that plan for 2020 4.com, so go to plan for 2044.com Ben's going to spin up a website and we'll we'll invite people to that. If you're the type of person that wants to kind of like set the vision in the intention for next year if you
Our listen to the steps of right now and you're tired, you're just get overwhelmed with the amount of value that we're adding to your life. You're dehydrated have a sip of water and let me tell you about HubSpot because the HubSpot podcast network has a podcast that I want to tell you about. It's called success story. It's hosted by Scott Clary success story features Q&A sessions with successful Business Leaders keynote presentations and conversations on sales marketing and business startups and Entrepreneurship. There are a bunch of cool episodes. I'll tell you about one right now one is why you can't learn from your mistakes. That's your hindsight bias where Scott?
Takes down our tendency to believe that after event has occurred that we would have predicted or expected it and he unravels the facets behind hindsight bias so that you can avoid its pitfalls. So go ahead and listen to success story wherever you get your podcasts. All right, let's get back to the pot. Let me give you number four. So my number four Charlie is am I want to bring up is let me tell you a little story about where I felt this first and I will tell you the Charlie is mm. So let's rewind the clock 15 years. I was living
Indonesia and Indonesia, I lived in this building that had a ping-pong table. And so I used to go down and just hang out by the ping-pong table because I thought well that's maybe like, you know my equivalent of like going having a drink at the bar. Let's just go see if anybody's down here to play and maybe I can beat some people and so sure enough. I would go down me and my brother we would go down and we would play and my brother-in-law is better than me at ping-pong and he the way he plays is what you imagine somebody who's good at ping-pong. He's not just going to hit it fast. He's gonna jump
Jump, even though you don't need to jump. He's gonna be like whoa, but he's gonna just make you feel like he just smashed this shot and like I was so like I was trying to get better than him. He was trying to better the me and I thought okay, he's brilliant at this. I he could just hit these amazing shots and I got to be able to hit amazing shots. So I'm practicing hitting amazing shots and here and so whoever used to come down he would beat them. He was the best guy in the building until one day this 55 60 year old man came down name Poppy and
Like, you know, he's like, I'm poppy. All right. Okay. I don't know if he's out by flexing on us if there's a real name and he takes a paddle out of his of his like case and we're like, oh dude, he's got his own Zone paddled shit. It was like the guy who brings on bowling ball to the bowling alley, you know, this guy means business. So we already are on like a game basically and so I play him and Poppy beats me but he didn't do anything like he wasn't smashing the ball he was doing it and I just thought oh, man.
I was off today aren't like Aaron you play him. And so I my brother and I are in play. I'm on like all right, Aaron's never lost to anybody in this building. Let's see what happens a starts playing Poppy and he's trying to do what he always does. He's trying to hit brilliant shots on the corner down the line cross court, you know drop shot and none of it's working poppy is destroying him. And the way that Poppy plays is like this is for anybody who's like a real ping pong fan. I need like something to damage it. So use this pen Pretend This is the paddle normally when you play ping-pong your arm.
Back, you're doing a full stroke like a tennis thing Papi used to just he used to just hold it like this forward like the paddle just facing you and then he would just move left and right like a wall and he would just whatever you hit he would just hit back. And the thing about poppy is Poppy was never hitting brilliant shots, but he would also never hit it out and never hit the net and so inevitably he would just keep hitting it back and you one of your brilliant shots would go out of bounds. You would hit it too hard to soft. You hit the net like you would mess up.
Up, and he would always score based on your error and he crushed us and he crushed us that day and he crushed us every day and he would just chuckle and say good game and he would go upstairs and we'd be like can poppy man. I'm gonna get this guy and we never got him the whole summer. I was there. We never one time beat this guy and then one day he invited us up to his house after his apartment building. He lived in the penthouse beautiful. He was so successful in business for like Papi dude, you're Ballin Out of Control. He had like a secret poker room. He had a
All of just like super fancy Like Liquor. He liked people have a wine cellar. He had like a fancy liquor wall was crazy in a shower with like six shower heads and we were like to this guy Papi this and we're like What do you do and he's like, I sell soap. We're like, you're like you make soap. He's like no. No, I just Import and Export and we're like, is it better so he's like, no, it's just so he's like, it's good. So it's not the best and we were like, well, how do you sell he's like, well, I just go to people that need soap and we're like this fucking hobby like this is how he lives his life, too.
He's just making no brilliant shots, but no unforced errors. And so this is a Charlie Munger is MM which is avoiding stupidity is easier than seeking Brilliance. And he says other people spend their whole life trying to be so smart. All I'm trying to do is not be idiotic. It's harder than people think but this is more important than trying to be brilliant. And so Charlie was basically like, how do I just avoid the great errors in life? Let's say it's investing. How do I avoid the great errors of investing?
If it's Health, how do we avoid the great errors of health and that's basically what he oriented around. He wasn't perfect at it. But I thought what a totally different, you know, a different strategy than you'll ever hear which is about being the best and becoming more advanced and becoming, you know, being brilliant and talented and his thing was just just avoid stupidity and you'll outperform
everybody. Is there a category in the Oscars for like podcasters who can weave in a story it to Charlie Munger if if yes, I think
You might get I think you might get that nod that was a wonderful. We gotta give it up. That was a wonderful you you had be enthralled and I didn't know where you were going to go with this. I didn't know what I was gonna be able job. Sometimes you just open your mouth and start talking and see where it goes and you won that mr. Wonder you you totally won that one. That was a beautiful the beautiful way to tie that in copywriting. That's what you that's what that
was. Honestly the reason why today there's going to be literally a thousand threads that are Charlie Munger.
Live till 99 here's 99 lessons, I learned and they're going to regurgitate the stupid quotes on Wikipedia. This is my first met we do things differently around here. We're not just going to give you the regurgitated quotes. I gotta give you that. So, you know little specials you that owes you that you can do that
sandwiches you came with he that's going to be hard to compete with I limit. Let me ask you something. So right now it's it's November 29. So most people are doing their next year financial planning for their businesses.
Four years at the hustle. I made a very similar mistake that I bet you made and that is over optimism. Have you ever hit any of your projections in the first six years of your career
never I've never met a goal I've ever set
dude. If you ask people it's a hustle like one of my big weaknesses is it's looking at the numbers of the Excel sheet and you know, you see like 7 million here and you're like what if we took that
At seven and deleted it and put a
9. I'm like look how much more profit they gave us. Let's just do it a serious people would be driven
crazy because that's what I would do. I just look at the sheets. I'm like, yeah, that looks good. Hey, look if you just delete that number and put it to that number. Look how much better this look. So let's just do that and I've made that mistake so many times. I I bought a property recently or a few years back and I remember like think
Okay, this is only an okay price property. But yeah, you know, I'm gonna like take better pictures or I'm going to like do something when I sell it and I'm going to make that's how I want to make all this money is I'm just going to increase revenue and I'm G this this this and guess what just like years of failing at projecting. I totally effed it up. So now I try to be way more modest with my financial projections, but I completely have always messed it up and mongers got a bunch of good quotes. He's like it.
Dangerous to rely too much on models and formula. The reality is way more complex than that. We're very disciplined on our approach. We're not swayed by flimsy optimism, and then he goes on to say is like, it's pretty ridiculous that people are biased by both over Skeptics skepticism and over optimism in the business world if the micro reality is good good decisions a good systems or what I look for not predictions of macro environment changes. And so basically the point being is his whole philosophy was to buy businesses.
We're if I bought a good business at a good price. I'm golden and then if I ever want to sell it or if something crazy improves that's icing on the cake. Whereas what I do and I bet most people do and I try my hardest to avoid this nowadays is I say I default to know the optimism is actually the truth the truth is just that's just what they did because they don't know what the hell they're talking about. You know what I mean? And that's been one of my biggest mistakes in business is over optimism and what it does is it
Russia's team morale and it gets you in a losing state of mind and it just sucks. What Monger said was he goes you make a lot of money when you buy a good company at a good price, but you make all of the money by letting it ride for 20 years. So the patients is where the big money is and I struggle like crazy to do that. I have this this year. We're I'm trying to things a little bit differently, but I have never hit any of my projections because it's just too optimistic and that is
Basically just mental masturbation Is What It Is by making these projections and it's harmful, it's a liability.
Well, there's like a thing you want to hit so, you know, some people say you want to hit 70% of the goals that you set and that's like the right balance between ambition and you know practicality hitting zero percent of your goals is obviously means you're setting the wrong goals and hitting 100 percent of your goals means you're obviously being playing it too safe and conservatively and so there is some number between you can pick 70 50 60, whatever works for.
Are you and yeah, I think most entrepreneurs and investors for that matter are on the side of optimism because boy, doesn't it feel better in the moment
to you want to know something. I'm trying to do no goals. I'm trying to do no goals and I it's not working out with any of the partners who I'm involved with who are trying to fight in. This
looks not doing this working out. Yeah.
I'm trying no goals, and I'm getting no no buy it. So
Hey, I've been a grown to hate goals bad like it shouldn't change like do I mean it's like a it's like this is a wonderful
thing with money. Do you have like a we have like a weird relationship with money that you did like money therapy. You have probably like a weird relationship with goals that like you just need to work out like, you know, these extremes crazy goals that nobody can hit or no goals. I would just assume that the answer is actually somewhere in the middle, right? The Munger ism is probably somewhere somewhere in the middle. No, not either extreme. Let's go to one.
Of his other ones I think is kind of related which is one of mongers Big Ideas the 11 that he is. Well known for that. I have taken into my life is this idea of inversion? So he says invert always invert and so, you know the what does this mean? It's basically a way to Think Through problems backwards. So if you do it, let's say you wanted to solve a common thing that people ask which is you know, how do I be successful or how do I be happy in life? And there might be like a thousand different answers to that question.
And
but what Monger would do is in order to get to the answer faster, he would invert right? Why does Bill Gates say he goes from A to Z faster than anyone? He's the best 30 second brain of anyone. It's because mongers default way of problem solving is to invert and so he'll say instead of figuring out how to be happy. Let me just figure out what is the sherpa Surefire path to misery. He literally wrote it out. Like I can read you the answer what he said is the serve our path to misery or
what did he say?
Okay. So his his prescription he actually did a talk.
He calls his prescription for misery. So he says what a beautiful. What a
beautiful line. By the way, is that beautiful language or
what? It's wonderful and he says in gently do number one ingesting chemicals to alter your mood or perception. So if you rely on chemicals to change your mood eventually this leads to misery this is like, you know, alcoholism or like sort of like overstimulation whatnot. Number two is Envy he has this great quote which is the world is not people think the world is driven by greed is actually driven by Envy.
He goes, you know, I'm lucky that you know, I'm an old man now and I've conquered my Envy. I don't give a damn what anybody else has I don't want one anybody else has and I don't care what they have. But most people are not like that for most people it drives them up the walls if they see that the neighbor has a nicer car or that their friend has a higher paying job or that their co-worker gets promoted. They didn't even want it in the first place. But as soon as somebody else has it Envy kicks in and it drives them the drives, you know, so much of their behavior. And so number two of the prescription for misery is envy
Third related is resentment if your joy goes down on other people's Joy goes up. That is a Surefire way to have a miserable life. So those are three that he stole from somebody else and he says I'd like to add my for on top of that. He says number four be unreliable if you're unreal, but unreliable, you will be distrusted by all those who matter and that you might be a mighty fine Turtle, but your will be outrun by hordes of mediocre turtles if you are unreliable and even some turtles that are on crutches.
This is like this idea that if you are unreliable, it's sort of cancels out any talent that you have that one hit home for me because as you know, I'm a bit of an unreliable person and I've paid the price for that in many many times.
Yeah. Hey, by the way, should we bring up that MFM podcast meeting that you missed
yesterday? Yeah just was on a different colored forgot about it. And so these things happen. It is a penalty. I paid as part of my prescription for misery. Here's the next one. So he says another number five is learn only from your own experience and
Your own, you know trials. Basically, if you decide that your first hand experience is your only way to figure out good versus bad and you're not going to learn from other living and dead people that is a Surefire way to misery because you will you will learn much slower than in somebody who learns the other way next one. He goes when hit with adversity go down and stay down. That's another prescription for misery is that's not bounce back from adversity the inevitably the inevitable and unavoidable.
Of life and the last one he goes don't be objective stay stuck in your ways hold on to your initial ideas. Your most loved ideas. Hold them with a death grip and that is his final prescription for misery is to never change your mind in light of new facts
my of those that you mentioned my biggest weaknesses are Envy. So this pod is fun for you and I to do sometimes it creates a lot of Envy because we have all these amazing people on here or if
Just you and I like Sean just did great Sam didn't do as good or if we have all these amazing people on you start talking to them and you're like, huh? I'm just as smart as this guy but this guy
is how do you notice when you ask? How old are you? That's the yeah, that's the trigger of like a feeling terrible. Can you really just do the finishing blow? Tell me that you're two years younger than me. Yeah
and every once in a while, there are people who I'm like, yeah, you're just better. So I'm going to be as happiest
Zilla we go.
Both houses after you have to see them that's not real. It's nothing good happens on the end of a Zillow.
So I have a mob got I read I read a lot and I like reading biographies. And whenever I read a biography, I do sort of what I did up here where I write down. Like let's say it's a business biography. I'll write down the years and I'll make notes of interesting things that happened to that person in that year. And then if it involves a dollar amount, I'll write the dollar amount and then when one cell over I'll say what's that dollar amount in today's numbers?
And then I'll say how old were they and so I'm like reverse engineering different peoples lives, but you know what? I'm really doing
I'm comparing myself to them. Yeah, of course, I'm comparing
myself to them and I justify it by saying if I read someone and I am better off than they didn't they are I say great. I'm doing better than them and they ended up wonderfully. I'm gonna end up wonderfully or if they're kicking my ass at my age. I just
think motherfuck. Well socks. I gotta give you credit for your honesty and
Ability because if you're being honest and vulnerable admitting this but I do not advise anybody follow this gameplay. This is a recipe. I am not saying that this
is I'm not saying this is how fob just admitting and the last thing that I sort of suck at is being bendable. What was the last one? What did how to do this right
now? He's like, you know, don't be objective don't change your don't change your mind, you know, stay stuck in your way. So they stuck on hold on to those Initial Ideas you had before these new facts. I'm certain circumstances came out
I try to think of myself as bendable, but I could work on that for sure.
Sure,
the ones that I struggle with out of this are the unreliable one for sure and then maybe Envy a second one. I think that's probably like number two. I think I'm pretty good on all these other ones. I want to get I
said before I wouldn't have thought by the way of you as an envious person.
I think that's a hard one to kick. You know, I don't think I'm like, let's say terrible at it, but it's definitely there. It's not something that I could be like. Yeah. I've conquered that mountain and
no no, I'm still somewhere on that mountain. Hey, do you know what the what I think it's the
Tenth commandment is Thou shalt not Thou shalt not covet. Thy neighbor's wife. Right? Right. Don't be jealous. Don't be jealous my friend. So even if
it's a classic if I said this joke, it's gonna get me in trouble with at least five people at minimum in my life. So I'm just going to not make this joke. All right, so I want to give you some examples of the invert principle because I think this is one of the most important ones so when he was a military meteorologist its WWII, his job is to keep pilot safe and he's like, okay, whatever.
That's everything. I did not know about pilot safety and he's like, yeah, there's like seven textbooks about everything a pilot needs to know and then instead he's like no no, okay. Let's work backwards. What are the most likely causes of crashes her incidents pilots and he went studied that way simpler answer. He's like, okay. I just need to be able to predict snow ice and fog really well as a military meteorologist those three if I can avoid the if I can get my Pilot's out of the way of those three, I can ignore everything else because those three are the real killers and let me like he so he
Verted in order to like do his job. Let me tell you another example this when I was in college, I got picked as part of some like thing called Kairos. That was like, I love you. I Rose top college startups in the country. Honestly, it was like worse than Forbes 30 under 30 in terms of like credibility. Literally if you signed up you one and even better if you signed up you want and then you made friends with the person they would take you on this all-expenses-paid trip to China for a week to go meet Jack moth CEO.
Of Ali Baba the founder of Alibaba and so we go I get picked on this trip. I go fly to China. I don't even know what Ali Baba is we go to their headquarters. I'm like, holy shit. This is like eBay for China or something. That is crazy. And we get a sit-down meeting with the CEO. This guy's like one of the most powerful people in China and somebody at you know, we got to ask questions and one of the kids asked, you know, the solar simpleton question like, you know, what's your advice? You know, I want to be successful. What's your Vice? Like? What are the what are the keys to success from your experience? And
And he says, you know, I was obsessed with this question. Also, what are the keys to success? Well, what is the blueprint for success and I talked to 100 successful people and I got 100 different Blueprints and I thought well that doesn't really help and yes, this is actually a guy named David way. I think is his name. He was this current CEO at the time. He was the one answering this part and he goes see with every success is different its own little unique snowflake, but every failure is the same.
And we were like, you know, we leaned in and he do he had his answer and his answer. I don't think is actually the right answer but for this but like he goes like tied into the Alibaba store and he goes every every every big company that that eventually fails so his answer was like not how to be successful. But how do you not screw it up? Once you're a big company which was the problem. They were having he goes too much money too much technology and too many people and so he tells a story about like how they were going to compete with with Google and with eBay when they were coming to China.
Like we needed to invent our version of Google AdWords and he goes Jack ma said cool you get think it was like 12 15 people is a 1215 people. This is gonna be a huge part of the business. Google has two thousand people working on this he goes did I stutter you get 12 to 15 people you're going to work these like we need some office space, you know, we're give us like a couple floors at the office or whatever. He's like, you're going to work out of my old apartment. He's like your old apartment. We need a proper office. He goes I started Ali Baba in that apartment. I think it'll work.
And he goes Technologies. Like we're going to need this many servers. We should get the best stuff and you know, we need this much but let's have double that for redundancy in case you don't want the servers go down. We don't want to lose anything. He goes if I give you redundant servers you're going to design a system that goes down. I'm going to give you only the service you need and in fact your go get go get used servers so it can run on even shitty servers and you know, he'd sort of David Goggins them. That was I hit the story that he told about like and they eventually did it. They pulled it off, but I wonder
if that guy found that inspiring at first or like
What the fuck Jack like a fuck you man? Come on, but you know what are all works out then you can tell this great story Bezos has a simple inversion to they were like, you know, Jeff Tech your, you know, one of the like internet CEOs internet's evolving so fast technology is always changing what technology Innovations are you most excited for what's going to change about Amazon and 10 years and he goes, oh, I don't think about that instead I think about what's not going to change because customers are always going to want the most selection the lowest prices in the fastest delivery. And so everything else can
But that's not going to change and so we focus on what's not going to change because we have to change with the times in order to like constantly be consumed customers expectations on delivery speeds low prices and vast selection. And so, you know, this idea of inversion is so powerful even in my own like life. I was telling you like I'm having a bunch of progress right now with my diet, which is great because like, you know, the scoreboard is currently, you know, 34 years of no progress and you know, like
Month of great product change that's well. What changed? Well, I did a bunch of things but I also actually just inverted. So instead of trying to figure out what's the best diet program. What's the best workout program exactly how many grams of this how many milligrams of creatine how many grams of protein how much how much of this instead of trying to like go? Is it the paleo diet hito diet Mediterranean diet? What should I be doing? It was just the inversion. Like what's a Surefire way to be fat?
And that answer is quite simple. Yeah, there's like I need to eat way more calories and I'm going to burn eating shitty foods that are fried and ultra-processed. You know right now I eat late at night pretty sure that's a recipe to get fat sitting all day instead of walking for my meetings. Probably pretty good way to get fat as to sit all day and I just inverted and I was like, okay cool. I'm just gonna walk more. I'm gonna hit you eat less calories that I consume and I'm gonna not late night snack because I always eat crappy food when I do that.
Is literally all I changed and like boom like started here results finally after like, you know instead of like being like let me go download 19 hours of Andrew huberman and try to like follow this protocols. Like that wasn't a problem right like that. That was the complex solution rather than the the easy inversion.
That's great. So you may know this but my beginning in business was being a copyright on it just basically means figuring out what motivates someone and how to use the written word to take an action get them to take an action or to think a certain way and the way
That I learned how to copyright was I did this thing called copy work and copy work is this famous technique? That's not really popular anymore. But it used to be really really popular and you basically take writing that is great writing that you love and you write it out by hand and you copy it and you make notes of what particular thing that writers doing that makes it special. That's how I learned how to write I locked myself in a room for six months and I just did this for many hours a day. I created a program to make it easy. So you could do that. It's called copy that copy that.com. You can go there and you can check it out to 10-day exercise to make it really easy to learn how to write if you want. You can just go do this on your own you can find
Writing it is literally copy it by hand. I know it sounds crazy, but it works really effectively but I made something that makes a little bit easier. So check it out copy that.com and back to the Pod. Where do we want to go from here?
Let's do a couple more. Do you have any other ones that you like here? I have a story told that I thought was pretty cool.
Let's wrap up with that story.
All right, so he's he's teaching a class at some college. He goes to like an economics class. So he has this general idea of you need
To learn all the big ideas in a space so he's like, I don't know anything about psychology but I figure there's probably 20 Big Ideas in the world of psychology and I should just like read the books and try to figure out what are your total the 20 Big Ideas in your space. It's like if I know this 20 Big Ideas, I'm going to be better than like die. I'll do more than 98% of people who spend their whole life, you know, 90% of people including some people who spend their whole life doing this because they're so lost in the weeds. And so one of the big Ideas you had was like so he goes to the economic same thing. What are the Big Ideas in economics everybody knows?
Economics 101 is the supply demand curve and you know, basically the the idea is that you know as the you know, you know supply of something goes down the demand you'll go up or the price will go up similarly. If you drop the price of something that demand should go up. So like people know this generally about economics.
He's but Charlie has a things like you learned the big idea, but then you also how do you make this useful is you need to understand the exceptions to those rules? So what is the i before e except after C. So he's like, how do you understand that? Okay, generally when prices go down demand should go up for that. You know, the demand for TVs is let's say, you know X at five thousand dollars, but if you drop the price of a TV down to $5 a lot of people that will buy it and so he's like, but what are the exception so he goes in this economics class and he goes everybody understands.
When prices go down demand goes ever says up. He says okay fantastic. What are the cases where that's not true
an item that is supposed to Signal Prestige exactly. So
hands go up 50 hands go up and they say luxury goods any item where price is a signal for quality or status? And he's like, you know, this is luxury handbags and whatnot. You know, if a Louis Vuitton bag was two dollars tomorrow the demand would actually briefly go up at then in the long term go down.
And he's like so everybody gets that one. He goes what else and now you get crickets, right? Like what else and do knows he goes any industry where demand is based on bribing the purchaser because what he goes, yeah, there's like many Industries the defense industry many parts of the medical industry where actually it's a screwed-up kind of perverse incentives where companies take profits.
And they use those to you know shower, you know Goods or money or experiences on buying agents purchasers and whether that's through advertisement. So like I spend a ton of money advertising and that's how I create the demand and if I didn't have any advertising budget, I wouldn't be able to create the demand or it's things like the the military industrial complex where there's like some cronyism where it's like, yeah, you give me this contract today because in five years you're going to be on my board and your retirement package will be 10 times what you're making
making in the government and because we all know that that's true because I have so much excess profit. You want to reward me with big contracts and actually you want to pay more for these contracts so that we can be this really successful company because it rewards you in the end and he's like once you realize that that's an exception to this rule. You will understand how the world actually works. You'll understand where the laws of gravity actually break and it is love that story. I think it told like it's an interesting Little Nugget business-wise, but also in the way that capitalism
But it's also shows kind of the way this guy thinks which is this i before e except after C mentality where he goes into any space he tries to speedrun and figure out you know, what are the 10 to 20 Big Ideas of your space and then he looks at the exceptions and you know, I did this recently I was I went to Brian Johnson's house and afterwards I was like thinking about longevity and I was like, all right. Should I be one of these Tech guys that like really fucking cares about longevity like his longevity gonna be my shit.
Or am I gonna zag and be like hi. I'm Jamie's overrated and I was like, I need to have an opinion
and I decided what muggers say a monger lived to be 99 and he didn't look like a longevity
freak. Well, somebody said this was the mall said this egos Buffett and Munger. These guys are like in their 90's and you know, they famously like you eat McDonald's breakfast every day and you know, Eminem's and drink Diet Cokes maybe for show but at least you know, they least do it. They're not sitting there taking metformin and like cold plunging every
Morning, and he's like, you know just goes to show how how important like not being stressed is actually to your hell. Yeah, because these guys actually were quite low stress in the way that they live their life, you know to spend most of their days reading playing bridge Talking thinking very few meetings. They didn't sort of like, you know stress out about Investments. They were buying hold long term investor type of thing like low stress compared to a lot of successful people but on the longevity thing I was like, all right, let me go
Learn what are the ten Big Ideas in the longevity space and I literally carved out two days and me and Ben all we did was just deep-diving a longevity like I read but I really like power skim through some books. I read I was like who are the five like thought leaders and the what are their most popular TED talks and like let me go watch those. Let me go see what these. What is Peter at Esa. What is Brian Johnson? Say, what is it? What's your takeaway in evolve
it
my takeaway. Was that the big ideas and this is like somebody who's a big longevity person will argue with me because I'm going to do it the short version of this, but the
Idea is essentially everybody and Everybody's Health declines. We are probably past the age of like the live forever. So there's like one big idea, which is that if we ever figure out a way to reverse aging or like minimize cell damage, it's not just going to be this gradual thing. Like we used to live till 80 then 90 then 100 and 110 120 130. There's going to be a step fold jump once we figure out how to stop cell damage. But if you've already had too much damage, they're not going to be able
to like get you back into your 20s. You're going to be like past the point of no return and so like the big breakthrough is if you can figure out how to stop cell damage. We don't know how to do that yet when that happens. There's going to be a age sort of point a Tipping Point where people below that are going to live to like 300 and people above that are still going to live to like 110 and like there's gonna be this big like polarity between those two outcomes. That's interesting. The second interesting thing is like in terms of the Peter attia school of thought of longevity, which is not live forever, but it's like live a longer healthier.
Span so healthspan versus lifespan is one big idea. And the healthspan idea is at the end of your life. Everybody's going to have a marginal decade which is like your last 10 years of life. Your your health is going to decline pretty dramatically from like being immobile and pain and pain to like, you know, really, you know not being able to wipe your butt by the end, right? So it's like that's typically the like bad version of Aging what Peter T and these guys are trying to do is basically push that decade out. So if it was going to happen to you from 80 to 90, let's make it from 90 to 100.
If he's gonna have a 1900 let's 100 to 110 and the cost of your today lifestyle in order to effect that vinyl marginal decade. I personally was like not worth it. I'm going to find the 80/20 of like healthy things to do that are not so costly like not so painful or hard to follow or like regimented or whatever. Like I'm not going to forget to live today in order for my Aid 92/100 to be like better. I was like, you know, my takeaway was basically I don't care about the marginal decade.
I'm going to orient my life around that there's an 80/20 of like healthier stuff to do that's like I don't mind switching to that lifestyle. I'll do those and then that's good enough for me. And if like, you know Wonder drugs come out and some point in the future. Hopefully I'm in time for that cut off. That was my
conclusion. Do you think that Buffett is going to die like next week now, it's like when partner is this like, you know, like an old couple that they died together. Yeah, like is that is that like that very well might happen. He I think he Buffett announced recently that like, I think he's like, I finally found my
Successor at the age of 92 I found my guy.
Yeah, I think that will that will probably happen.
All right. Well, if you made it this far Shawn, I want to tell you the people in the YouTube comments have been making fun of you and I know what they are saying that I dress like a serial killer which I don't know what that means entirely or that I now that I'm a father. I'm starting to dress like a father or look like an accountant and they're making fun of your hair. I don't exactly know what they're making it.
About your hair that was here to that video may
be messy. I'm also looking exclusively at by hair in that. I had a bad a bad hair day in the sense that I wake up roll out of bed. I do this podcast right away. I don't even look in the mirror and dude. I'm like the hairiest guy on earth. Like I got hair on my fucking and Palms like I'm like, you know like a gorilla then somehow. I think I'm losing kind of some hair the from getting a little light and people were like, yeah, he's gotta start taking whatever the drug is called a fair what it is, but like Finn Finn,
let's try do do all
the commenters go f yourselves, right? We're
just doing out there what other people think of me unless it's related to my looks or my intelligence. And so I did go ahead and wet the hair a little bit today and you know tried to try to put Spruce it
up, but it does hurt my feelings to sometimes if I'm being honest.
Hey, but you know what's working?
Sean P. My little Gary Vee branding pivot is kind of working in the comments every day. They're like Sean P Chompy for president. And right now we're a small but loyal
Army. I don't think anyone said shot be for present.
There's a small but loyal Army there's as they said in Arrested Development, there's tens of us out there and but it but it but it is a from that small base that we shall grow Sean P it is and I feel like Sean P is such a good such a good brand.
Pivot I'm actually a little upset. It came to me in my 30s instead of in my 20s.
All right, that's the Pod. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be
what I want to travel never looking back.
