Modern WisdomThe Wisdom Of Naval Ravikant | Eric Jorgenson | Modern Wisdom Podcast 225
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,319 words- 0:00 – 15:00
Whoever is listening to…
- EJEric Jorgenson
Whoever is listening to this, you are more unique and valuable than you think you are. And everyone is kind of an incredible combination of their genetics and their experience and their perspectives and their beliefs. And everyone is unique and everyone has some sort of skill or insight that they can bring to other people if you can learn it and package it the right way, and just see what people respond to that, that you wanna bring to them. That's probably even before the kind of logistical stumbling blocks, is just the belief that there's something there for you to do and for you to add value. (airplane whooshing)
- CWChris Williamson
Eric, welcome to the show.
- EJEric Jorgenson
Thanks for having me. I've been excited about this ever since I listened to you and George Mack fucking around on here. I was like, "This is gonna be a good time. I'm gonna like this."
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, it's, uh, it's all the boys club up in here, isn't it? So today is Naval Fest 2020. Welcome to Naval Fest 2020. This, there's big dick energy. We're just marinading in it today, and we're gonna see how much we can jerk off over Naval over the next 60 minutes.
- EJEric Jorgenson
A, a couple hundred pages, probably, worth, um, and then, and then edited material. So we got a lot to go on.
- CWChris Williamson
DVD extras, pay-per-view, OnlyFans, like, additional content.
- EJEric Jorgenson
D- DVD commentary, bonus scenes, director's cut. We got it all.
- CWChris Williamson
I love it. So why are you writing a book about Naval? Why did you... L- Like, what makes him worthy of a book? Who is he?
- EJEric Jorgenson
Uh, I've been following Naval for 10 years now, maybe. Uh, he was the first person I kind of got introduced to in the Valley. Not personally, but when I was, you know, just a wet-behind-the-eears kid from Michigan who had never left Michigan and was, like, trying to get into the startup world, somebody was like, "Go read all of Venture Hacks, follow Naval, do everything he says." Um, uh, him and Paul Graham were kind of like, those are the lighthouses of the Valley. Like, go listen and follow. Um, so that, I, I've been kind of following for a long time, and I learned a ton from him. And as he's kind of evolved over the years and started sharing more and more stuff, I've learned more and more, and I found myself recommending, you know, his podcast, his tweets, and for, to more and more people, for more and more reasons. And I realized, uh, kind of how hard it is for people outside of, like, the Twitterverse and the podcast world to kind of pick up that and run with it and learn from it. But the stuff that he talks about, um, is, can be so life-changing for so many people at, at many different stages, I think. And there's just so much value there that I really wanted, like, an easy on-ramp, and I wanted a, a tight package. And I'm watching these, like, high-value, you know, h- p- huge pieces of wisdom, um, just kind of slide into the, like, Twitter nothingness. Um, and it broke my heart, and I'm like, "I, I need to turn this into something more evergreen, something more permanent." And, you know, there's no better package than a book. Everybody knows what to do with a book. Everybody, um, you know, that's, it's easy to gift. It's easy to read through. Um, it's, people know kind of what to do with it, and it'll, hopefully it'll live on, you know, and it'll stay relevant for a really long time.
- CWChris Williamson
What's unique about Naval?
- EJEric Jorgenson
Naval, uh, he, like, came to the US as a poor immigrant at nine years old, uh, I think Brooklyn, and just kind of had to start from nothing and build his way up. Um, you know, he, he got into a good high school, uh, which was, which was a huge turning point for him early in his life. And he's undeniably just a brilliant guy. So, um, you know, he, he didn't scrap it together from nothing. You know, he's definitely got some, like, horsepower. Um, but got into this great high school, got into Dartmouth, started at the bottom in the tech world, uh, you know, studied computer science, and eventually kind of, through a bunch of different missteps and adventures and companies and failures and lawsuits, um, and investments, kind of found his way into breaking out in the tech world and starting AngelList. And he, he's incredibly widely followed kind of in that tech world for what he's built there and the investments that he's made in Twitter and Uber. And he's in this kind of interesting chapter of life that you see kind of a lot of people go through, where they have achieved all of the successes that they hoped to achieve when they were younger, and they're now kind of both giving back those lessons of how they achieved what they did and kind of turning to philosophy and family and legacy, and just looking at how they can, how they can give back and how they can learn, um, a little bit more about, you know, life r- uh, instead of the rat race. And so it's kind of an interesting turning point, where he knows a lot about wealth from his past, and, you know, he continues to work and invest. But he's learning a lot about happiness, um, in the, in the very recent present, and is practicing it currently and continuing to kind of develop that and share it.
- CWChris Williamson
The particular, uh, interesting insight that I have about Naval, or the reason I think I'm drawn to him, is the fact that his wisdom is so practical. There's part of me... Uh, Ryan Holiday was recently on here. Massimo Pigliucci has been on here. We've talked a lot about Stoicism, and it's like the hot new girl in school for 2020. But there's part of me when I read it that doesn't like how abstract it is. I'm like-
- EJEric Jorgenson
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... "All right, man. Yeah, virtue and integrity, and you overcome the obstacle." I'm like, "Okay, I get it." But there's, there's just a part of it that feels too, like, bourgeois and artsy, you know? Like, let's not forget that the vast majority of the Stoics came from wealth. Like, there was some.
- EJEric Jorgenson
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
There was some that was th- born as slaves and ended up in good situations, but, or bad situations. But the vast majority of them came from wealth. And I think that even 2,500 years later, that still kind of reflects and shows on. Whereas someone whose wisdom has really, really been not just designed for practicality but forged in reality, like Naval's, is, is something that, um, attracts me to it particularly. And I think, as well, the vast majority of us are, you know, like, middle class, working class, or aspiring underclass. And with that in mind, you feel a sense of affinity to someone who's got that n- like, zero to hero journey, you know, as opposed to it just being someone armchair philosophizing in his, like, baroque fucking mansion somewhere that their dad has. You know, d- you get me?
- EJEric Jorgenson
Yeah. It's, it is very practical, and it is definitely...... I find it easier to listen to philosophies from somebody who has passed the test of reality, who is an operator, who has founded companies, who has made investments. And stoicism, uh, I totally agree with you, like, it's, i- i- it's easy to, like, kind of read it and be like, "Yeah, sure, I agree," and then passing the test of reality, like, there's a lot of times where it is- does- is not practical. Like, it is almost incompatible with having, like, close, intimate relationships or friendships. And, uh, like, I really wanna hear people talk about, like, how they act, how they react stoically when, like, their partner is upset or when their child is upset, and things like that that are... It, it's not like a guru on a mountain. Like, it's easy to be stoic when you're by yourself, like, under a tree, a- and that's just not how we live and not, I- I don't, I think, how we want to live. Um, and so finding the kind of, like, where do you put the dial between stoicism as an operating philosophy and maybe a business practice and, you know, how you act with your family when you need to be empathetic and, and build deep relationships and deep friendships. Um, I, I think that's something that's, like, really kind of interesting to dig into and a, uh, a piece of curiosity that I'm left with, even after this book, is kind of like, where do you, where do you go, um, to kind of find that balance between the ideal and the practical?
- CWChris Williamson
I think that's a, a really important point, the fact that you can write something which is 100% artsy and sounds beautiful in these abstract terms, but there's a lot of work left to be done by the reader to then deploy that to their own lives. And I think that, again, uh, you know, this is just a full-on jerk-off around Naval, but I think the reason that he has managed to resonate with people, saying things that really should be s- far too highbrow for the, i- m- everyone to listen to, um, is that he's sacrificed maybe sort of 10 to 20% of the artsiness for an additional 80% of practical, um, a- a- ability to apply almost immediately. You know?
- EJEric Jorgenson
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
It reads like it's somewhere in between stoic maxims and a how to put your life together guide if it was done, like, by an IKEA, uh, instruction manual. (laughs)
- EJEric Jorgenson
(laughs) Yeah. Yeah, you get into the principles. Uh...
- CWChris Williamson
Precisely. So, look, the book is split into two parts, wealth and happiness. Are there any sections that you could've added but you didn't?
- EJEric Jorgenson
Oh, many. Yeah. Um, I, I... The first manuscript of this, the thing was, like, hundreds more pages, um, and it included, you know, his thoughts on blockchain and education and the future. It, there was kind of this whole futurism section and investing and how to operate startups. Um, I did one section that was just the story of AngelList, you know, how, you know, the, the trials that he went through kind of as an early founder led to his views on venture capital, which led to, you know, Venture Hacks, the blog, which led to AngelList, the platform. It's a really, really incredible story. Um, all of that is on the website, so it, like, broke my heart to cut it from the book, and I was like, "E- duh, just put it on the website. People who want it can, after they read the book, can go kind of get into that stuff." Um, early readers, like, everybody kind of loved one or two of those sections, but not all of them, and I didn't wanna publish, like, a giant textbook of everything Naval had ever said, even though it's interesting to me. Um, so that's kind of self-serve on the website. But the, but the main two sections, um, of the book are, are wealth and happiness, and I really think it's... You know, there's a lot of books out there on wealth and there's a lot of books out there on happiness, and Naval is, is maybe really interesting in the fact that he sits at the corner of those two and kind of very practically, to your point, like, looks at the trade-offs between the two. Um, something that I didn't know until reading this was that Buddha was a prince. Like, he was very wealthy. And so when he, you know, he was able to kind of just leave his family and go off in the woods and meditate and study and just kind of learn and become peaceful and practice this philosophy, um, and, and so Naval is very practical about, like, there's actually, like, a lot of ways in which happiness is dependent on wealth. Building wealth isn't gonna make you happy, but it will certainly give you the space to study and explore philosophy and to kind of not spend your whole life with your head down in the rat race. So he's like, "By all means, like, getting rich is a perfectly practical, reasonable goal on the way to becoming happy." Like, you don't have to be happy to be rich, but also, it definitely helps. Like, your money solves your money problems, and those are problems, so if you can solve that, it gives you time and it gives you space to kind of explore some of these other things. Um, and that, to your point about the stoics, like, many of the philosophers that we look to were either very, very wealthy or they had so little and had absolutely nothing and no responsibilities and, you know, they had so little that they could choose to, you know, bas- basically become a monk, renounce everything, and find happiness. And so if you're only gonna go one of those two directions, like, you can go all the way to having nothing and wanting nothing and eliminate all your desires, or you can try to get really rich, store up a bunch of that goodwill, and give yourself the space to kind of lower your desires below your means. But, but just, uh, know that, you know, you gotta build that gap in or you're just always gonna be unhappy.
- CWChris Williamson
It's like when you're on a diet. Anyone who's had to do a hard cut before a holiday knows if you're on low cals, everything, every single experience in your life, is flavored with the fact that you're still a bit hungry.
- EJEric Jorgenson
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
And it's like the same as being skint. If you've not got enough money, if you don't know where the next paycheck or the next bills are gonna come from, you can be having the best time of your life, but there's this tarnish that's layered, this veneer that's sort of layered over the top of things that says, "Yeah, but, but money. Yeah, but, but I don't know where the next paycheck's coming from." And it's, um, being rich might not make you happy, but being poor can make you miserable. And Diogenes the Cynic, who lived out of a, a pot and was sort of the first of the minimalist movement, which we're now seeing a resurgence in, and, like, asceticism and minimalism, I guess, in the 20th century, 21st century. Um, yeah, Diogenes was, like, the, the, um, grandfather of that.... but I don't want to be Diogenes, you know. Like I wanna have nice things. I want to... And again, another Navalism which everyone will be familiar with, one of my favorites is, it is far easier to achieve your, uh, material desires than it is to renounce them. So I would much sooner say I don't need a Ferrari when my last car was a Ferrari than try and battle through all of the different bizarre attachments that I've got to work out. Yeah, but I never wanted it in any case. And you get into so much sort of self-deception there in any case. So okay, wealth.
- EJEric Jorgenson
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
How is wealth created?
- EJEric Jorgenson
You know, wealth is created, um... There's a whole kind of set of formulas in the book that kind of break this down. Almo- al- almost, uh, principal formulas. And so your income is determined by your accountability, plus your specific knowledge, plus the degree of leverage that you're using. And then your income is gonna determine your wealth based on your savings rate and your return on income. But Naval really prioritizes building wealth as, uh, looking for assets that can earn money while you sleep, so building media, buying equity in a business. Um, you have to get sort of, you know, whether you're building software, whether you're building a podcast or a blog or a book or whatever it is, do something that can work that is not a linear input and output. You know, if you're working, even if you're a very high paid doctor, you're working an hour, you're getting paid even $1,000, $10,000 an hour. It's gonna be really, really tough to outwork the amount of time that you have, and so you have to start using tools of leverage, so labor, capital, um, or product in order to kind of build in that leverage and get that compounding going, 'cause it's gonna take you a long time, and you're gonna need the compounding relationship with a- a long period of time probably in order to actually get the space to build that wealth.
- CWChris Williamson
That particular insight, which comes from The E-Myth Revisited as well, that if you have any business where if you were to leave for more than six weeks and the whole thing was to fall apart, that's not a business. That's just a highly leveraged job.
- 15:00 – 30:00
What are some examples…
- EJEric Jorgenson
a fit between what society needs, what the world is willing to pay for, and what you are uniquely capable of and happy to deliver as a work product, right? So you love talking about modern wisdom, philosophers, stoicism, talking with people on the internet and pulling out their lessons and sharing it with people. You're really good at it, you're passionate about it, you love to do it, and that is gonna let you outwork and outpace and outperform a lot of other people that might try to do it but not be as... not have it be in quite as good of alignment with who they are as a person and what they've spent their whole lives studying and becoming. And so that specific knowledge is really, um, there's kind of two parts, and one is understanding yourself well enough to know what your talents are and what you really want to be doing, and that is, that is not to be overlooked. Like, that is a hard thing to do, um, and it's something that we are all kind of, you know, we're always changing and our understanding of ourselves are always changing and growing. And so, uh, you know, relying on the people around you, um, they actually may be better at showing you kind of who you are and what your specific knowledge and skills are. One of the tests that, uh, questions that Naval asked is like, what are the things that other people ask you to do? You know, what- what are things that people come to you for help with, um, or what are the things that you found yourself doing at a very young age? Like, your- your parents and those around you, like, you know, the things that you've been doing since you were... if you were a gossip, you know, in third grade and, you know, running around tattling on people, like, maybe you're a journalist now or something, you know. Um, so that's one piece. The other piece of that specific knowledge is getting to understand what you can deliver to society that they are, that society is not yet able to get for itself, um, or that you might be able to do better than anyone has ever done it before, and hopefully at scale. Back to what we were talking about, I'm like, you don't want inputs and outputs on an hourly basis. You want to be able to do something that is going to be, you know, replicable 10 times or 100 times or 1,000 times, whether that's through media or code or, you know, labor or capital.
- CWChris Williamson
What are some examples of those four types of leverage just in real world?
- EJEric Jorgenson
Yeah. So capital, um, is, is maybe the easiest place to start, um, because if you place a bet for $10, you buy a stock with $10 and you're right and it doubles, it goes to 20. But if you do it with a million and it goes to two million, and the rewards for that are... the leverage comes from capital. It's this exact same decision, but if you made the decision leveraged by capital, that is a huge outcome differential. Um, and so you can use your own capital, certainly. Like, there's a lot of leverage that comes from that. But there is also capital from others, and for that you need to be able to kind of build your reputation. And to do that, you're taking accountability in public. So you... that accountability for your bets and making publicly kind of, um, observable things so that you can build that track record of having good judgment so that other people are willing to kind of lend you their leverage in the form of capital or in the form of labor. So labor is another piece where, um, you know, there's a, there's an amazing design for, you know, an automobile at Tesla, but it takes hundreds, thousands of people to build that car to that spec. And that is, uh, you know, every person who's working under that plan is a piece of that, um-... leveraged outcome. Like labor is a, is a form of leverage. There's, you know, someone can perform a task for $100 an hour, and that company is going to pay them $50 an hour to do it, but it's worth 100 to the market. So there's leverage in that. Um, and you want to be, you know, by owning the equity of that business, you are on the, the profiting side of that leverage instead of the, like, slightly less profiting side of that leverage. Not that it's not a, you know, a positive trade for both, because people need jobs and employment and pick up skills and everything like that. You know, everybody starts there at some point, but hopefully by buying equity in that business. Um, so that's a, that's a piece that he talks about as well. There's a lot of ways to get equity, um, but the people who get truly wealthy almost always do it through equity ownership.
- CWChris Williamson
So those are the first... I guess those are kind of the traditional two.
- EJEric Jorgenson
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And then we've got media and is it programming or code or product?
- EJEric Jorgenson
He, he says, uh, it's a little bit of a mouthful, but the full kind of definition is products with no marginal cost of replication. Um-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, code. Code. (laughs)
- EJEric Jorgenson
Yeah, code. Code and media. Uh, Jim O'Shaughnessy actually, he refers to it as symbol manipulation, which I think is kind of interesting, um, like broad classification, uh, but, like, includes podcasts. Like what we're doing right now is we record it once, you know, we spend two hours on it, but it lives on forever. You know, whether 100 people listen to it or 100,000 people listen to it, like, that value is still there and it can be available and served up even when we are not there to, you know, talk to people.
- CWChris Williamson
It's not like we have to have this conversation over and over again on demand every time that someone decides to do it.
- EJEric Jorgenson
Yeah, they pull open their podcast app and say, "I want to listen to Chris and Eric," and we-
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, Eric, mate, someone's done it again. We're gonna have to wake up. (laughs)
- EJEric Jorgenson
(laughs) what did I say? I can't remember how we started. Um-
- CWChris Williamson
So it's, it's that and then it's them talking about the code. So how would code work? What would be an example of that?
- EJEric Jorgenson
Yeah, that's, you know, someone writes a software program, um, that one person could buy or 100 people could buy or 1,000 people could buy. And there's, you know, server farms all over the world that can dish it out to people. And that program may need to be updated and kept relevant, but once it runs, um, 1,000 people can buy in. That's why we're seeing, like, enormous margins in, in software and SaaS, um, which is really a thing that, you know, didn't exist in the industrial era. Um, so the, the marginal cost of replicating some of these solutions is just lower than it has ever been, and it completely changes the economics of some of these businesses in ways that are really, really interesting. Um, and I think we're still kind of seeing what the impact of that is. And, uh, it's going to be really interesting, um, how this... It's still evolving. It's gonna be really interesting, I think, how it looks in a historical context and how we're going to feel about it, but it, it accounts for this abundance of, of media and software and things that we see around us. Um, and the other thing I would say about the productized piece that is important is that they are permissionless, right? So the internet is this giant meritocracy where anyone can record a podcast and push it out into the world, and only the best ones are going to get listened to and surfaced, and the audience is going to kind of let that continue to snowball. But no one can stop you from recording a podcast. There's no editor. There's no... There's not a huge capital requirement. Um, no one can stop you from, you know, submitting open source code on GitHub and getting it out there. No one can stop you from getting a Gumroad account and, you know, starting to kind of sell things on the internet. So there's, there's a key element here where the cost of starting something or getting something out and putting your entry into this meritocracy has never been lower, and the rewards for doing it are basically uncapped if you do it well enough.
- CWChris Williamson
That particular section there is something that everyone listening probably should go back and listen to, especially if you're new to this concept. I appreciate that for guys like yourself who's sort of just bathing in Silicon Valley and the sort of wisdom of the, um, highly leveraged that it might just now be taken as for granted. But the vast, vast, vast majority of people, even in the Western world, don't see work or finances or the route to wealth in that sort of a way. It's a lot more linear than exponential like that. It's, "I work at a business, I become better at a business, I get paid more per hour." You know, if you were to say to someone, "Hey man, you can have a job that pays you 500 pounds an hour, 1,000 dollars an hour or whatever." Like, unbelievable. Unbeli- but then if you were to say, "You can create a course that teaches everyone on the planet how to do that thing, that can earn them 500 pounds or 1,000 pounds an hour, you could make 10 grand every, like, every couple of hours." That, they'd be like, "Well, I don't understand. Like, I'm just doing the same job." No, no, no. It's about abstraction. It's about being able to do stuff at scale. It's about being able to leverage yourself. Um, and that's something that Naval says. He says, is it productize yourself?
- EJEric Jorgenson
Yeah, that's like the summary of the entire tweet storm is productize yourself and it, for me, it took a few passes through to kind of understand and be able to unpack or repack all of those concepts back into just the two words, productize yourself. Um, but I think there's a few people that kind of, um, are living this in a way that is even teaching... You know, I've spent a lot of time with this material, like I like to think I get the concepts. Um, but watching guys like Jack Butcher, I don't know if you, you follow him at all. He's a brilliant dude.
- CWChris Williamson
The British are coming.
- EJEric Jorgenson
Yes. Yes, they are. Um, and he, uh... So he contributed the illustrations for the book. Uh, so if you love the illustrations, you love Jack Butcher, whether you know it or not. And he's done an absolutely masterful job of productizing himself and creating assets and courses and products and teaching people how to visualize ideas. This, this incredible skill that he's developed over, you know, years of working with Fortune 500 companies and top tier agencies and things like that. He's, he's incredibly skilled at it, and he is turning that into an incredible business and an incredible kind of, um, way to give back to the audience and help other people, like, accumulate this skill that has been so valuable. I mean-... for me, to, to just help kind of inculcate these ideas into my head. Like, be- being able to visualize them simply really carries a lot of weight when you're working with things that are like a little bit abstract like this.
- CWChris Williamson
Can you use Jack just briefly as an example between what he was doing as the agency with the one problem, one solution, to what he's doing now? I think that would be a really wonderful way to sort of just bookend and illustrate what we've gone through so far.
- EJEric Jorgenson
Yeah. I'll, I'll do my best. Um, I, I don't know the story incredibly well, um, and if you haven't had him on again, I'm sure he'd be e- an amazing guest at some point, um, to tell his own story. But I'll, I'll butcher the Butcher story the best I can.
- CWChris Williamson
Nice.
- EJEric Jorgenson
Um, so he, he was working for, uh, you know, some- a high- some high class agency that was billing him out at, you know, thousands of dollars an hour, and he's a, a very talented designer. And so, he was working, you know, building logos and websites and things for, you know, Fortune 500 companies and f- high-end fancy car companies and stuff like that. And was just getting his ass kicked, I think, regularly at work and looking around is like, "Man, I'm creating a ton of value and a ton of people are kind of taking their scrape along the way." And so, he started his own agency, um, to kind of try to recapture some of that. And that was like going well, but he was in that kind of linear trap we were talking about where he was billing out, but he was working his face off and he was just like, "Man, I don't know how I'm gonna, like, get ahead with this." Um, and so he started to kind of stealing time away from himself to kind of start working on products. And so, he started with, um, the Visualize Value, I think the Daily Digest or the Daily Manifest was the first product that he came out with. It was really this, um, kind of set of questions and, um, resources for you to kind of go over your goals and work, work through this little worksheet every morning to kind of keep you focused and keep you focused on the high leverage things. And did well with that and kind of layered that up into selling a li- bit more, um, of a community kind of product to get people together. And that now, I think his kind of flagship piece is, um, build twice... Build Once, Sell Twice, um, which is this like productization playbook. And so, he sold, uh, courses on how to visualize your ideas and courses on how to productize yourself, basically. Um, and it... The business is going gangbusters, you know. Follow him on Twitter, and he's, he's very open about his numbers. Um, it's really been an incredible thing to watch just in the time of, you know, the last two years. While I was writing this book, he was busy applying the lessons from it. And he, he made a better use-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) Why? (laughs)
- EJEric Jorgenson
... of the last two years than I did. Uh, ****** from a financial perspective, but, um... Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- EJEric Jorgenson
So give him a follow. Check it out.
- CWChris Williamson
He's a great guy. So that, that little story that hopefully really drills home the point that we're talking about here, that you have even someone who's highly talented and highly remunerated already working within a business, but there's a, a glass ceiling on firstly how much you can earn plus the freedom that you have, et cetera, et cetera, um, and that is because as you said that scraping off the top that happens. You get billed out at five grand for a day, but your bosses take 50% of that, and then there's VAT and da-da-da-da-da-da-da, and then you walk away with a grand and a half, which is still a lot, but it's nowhere near as much as you could've got. Plus you're still constrained by working for someone and not being able to take time off whenever you want. And then there's a kind of a diagonal upward and sideways move, which is to owning your own company. Then you could start to leverage a little bit with regards to the labor. You could get... You could perhaps be the face of it. You could be the ambassador, the one who has the gravitas and is well-known, and then put designers in underneath you so you don't necessarily have to do as much grunt work. But even that, you can only onboard as many clients as you have time to fly to meet them, to the Fortune 500, the f- Tesla Company, whatever it might be, "Here's what we're gonna do for your design right now. I pass it back down." Endless meetings back and forth. As opposed to saying, "Right, okay, I can conceptualize and wrap up into a course all of the stuff that I know on how to be the person who can do all of the things that are up to this point and even this point. Uh, of... I will teach you how to make a course that's exactly like this course using whatever specific knowledge you have, and that will continue to sell." And once you've written that, that is exactly his Build Once, Sell Twice or Build Once, Sell fucking 200,000 times or whatever is going on-
- EJEric Jorgenson
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... at the moment. If I could buy stocks in Jack Butcher, I would do it. Um, so that's, uh, I think a really, really interesting insight into wealth, and there'll be a lot of people who hopefully will go and read the book and it'll make a little bit more sense. But that's such a huge red pill to swallow, like to actually be able to understand exactly how you, um, start to move away from just time for money at that one for one, and then start-
- 30:00 – 45:00
I agree. And I…
- EJEric Jorgenson
need to like enlist some help from somebody to get this, but I'm... there is probably... In the same way that you can, like, look at a compounding chart and be like, "That is fucking mind-blowing. Like, there's no way that should work." But it's how it works when you just give it the time. I, I think there's something similar with leverage that is just so difficult to intuit that you have to kind of see it in action. And it, it... The same way, it takes time to, to work and build, and these things build on each other. Um, it- it's a thing... It's probably the thing I'm most interested in digging into more after having finished this book. It's, it's a thing that o- once it got labeled as leverage and they've all categorized it into those kind of three broad classes of leverage, I started to think about it completely differently, and I think it's a huge...... um, it's a hugely improved label on whatever, like, now that I know that there's a thing there, I want to go dig into it and I want to study it. And there's probably books and, like, courses and things to do, like a leverage checklist on, like, how are you being leveraged and how are you not and where are you doing $5 an hour tasks, where you should be outsourcing that and doing $10,000 an hour tasks. Um, I think there's a lot to explore there, and I'm kind of excited to kind of go down that rabbit hole.
- CWChris Williamson
I agree. And I think that having as many practical examples as we can, guys like Jack Butcher. I've taken inspiration from him myself, and I've been quite transparent with the, uh, reach and the place of this show. It's not often that you have an objective measure of anything, you know, like success or impact or happiness or... You know, money's, like, one of the few things and body weight. Like, that's it. Like money and body, (laughs) you know how fat you are and how rich you are, and that's it. But, um, yeah, i- i- it's, it's good to have that. Thinking ab-
- EJEric Jorgenson
I was j- I was just gonna say that. I feel like y- your, your former athlete responds to, like, "Give me a scoreboard and I'm, I'm gonna fucking win."
- CWChris Williamson
Yes. Yes.
- EJEric Jorgenson
Like, "Sh- show me how (overlapping dialogue)
- CWChris Williamson
Well, I mean, gamifying, gamifying stuff is such a hack as well.
- EJEric Jorgenson
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
The fact that we, we struggle with these abstractions. We're not very good at tracking things. Now, anyone that's tried to lose weight without using MyFitnessPal, like, you know the, you know the pain of, like, "How many cals was that? Ah, it was probably this." And you get, you gain... You're supposed to be on a hard cut. You feel like you've been on a hard cut, and you've l- you've gained weight. Like, what the, what-
- EJEric Jorgenson
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... what happened, like you need to track.
- EJEric Jorgenson
'Cause you didn't measure-
- CWChris Williamson
Yes.
- EJEric Jorgenson
... absolutely everything.
- CWChris Williamson
Exactly, exactly, exactly. Um, how can we prioritize and focus?
- EJEric Jorgenson
Hmm. Prioritize and focus is, is kind of the, um, capstone on the building wealth section, and it really, i- it does its best to kind of push aside all the things that are not specifically about building wealth. Um, and so one of the things he, he kind of looks at is that there's a lot of people who are out there trying to kind of build status. Um, and they are... They build status by attacking people playing wealth games, and there's, like, this social hierarchy game that we are all kind of playing and this how we're perceived game that we're all kind of playing. Um, but that is not e- for most people how wealth is created. You know, maybe if you're a media person or, like, an actor, there's an exception to that. But for the most part, like, getting rid of all of the things that are distractions from that and understanding, like, where wealth truly comes from, leverage, accountability, specific knowledge, building or buying equity in a business, and just letting that compound, you know, getting, getting the... you know, you're making sure that you are making incremental progress and making sure that it's being reinvested appropriately, and then just giving it time and patience to compound, like, focusing on the right stuff. Um, you know, th- there's, there's always a kind of debate about hard work, and hard work is important. But the thing that comes before hard work is making sure you are prioritizing the high leverage work that's gonna give you results over the long term and focusing on it. And if you're working hard on the wrong thing, you're not gonna get anywhere. And so getting that, getting your priorities straight, which is really, you know, by the time you're 50 pages into the book, you should understand what your priorities are, you know. For you today, maybe it's recording this podcast, maybe it's, you know, publishing something that you did a week ago. There's probably, if you write your whole to-do list, there's probably two things that are the most critical, you know. You're either building leverage or pushing it out and, and kind of pulling money in so that you can reinvest that.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- EJEric Jorgenson
Um, and everything else is kind of, like, either a low value task, or if it got pushed to tomorrow, it's fine, or somebody else can pick it up for you. You know, one of the things that, um, Naval uses as a test for this is putting a really, really high hourly value on your time. So I think he, he said today on Twitter that... somebody asked him, like, "So how do you value your time?" He said, "$100 a minute. Six grand an hour. If I can outsource it or not do it and it cost me less than $100 a minute, I don't do it." And the, the pushback for that is people are like, "Yeah, sure, but like, you're already rich." And he's like, "No, no, no. I started that well before... I started that when people would say I should have taken a $20 an hour job or something," right? Um, but having that mindset that, like, your time is really valuable and you have to invest it in those high leverage tasks, those, those key priorities, and you've got to focus on those. That's, um, kind of a mental tool that you can use to keep focused on that and be sure you're working on the right stuff that's gonna, gonna keep that compounding engine going.
- CWChris Williamson
That's another thing as well. People, e- especially if you're working class, working class background like myself, you know, mom and dad always cleaning the house consistently or, or, uh, washing the cars, mowing the, the grass outside, all that sort of stuff. It took, um... My first ever boss, actually the first ever franchise that I got for Nightlife, um, was (laughs) the guy who owned Carnage, and he was a megalomaniac, but had some really great insights and one of them was precisely this, that if you can outsource something for less than you charge your time out, it wasn't quite as insightful as Naval's setting yourself this very, very high, um, m- price. But if you can, at the very least, pay someone to do a thing for less than you charge your time out for, what are you doing? Like, just go, go to work. Unless you particularly have, like, one of these guys who absolutely adores washing the car, which I am... I don't get. I just... For some people, maybe, but not for me. Not for me. And w- g- w- like, cutting the grass is the same thing. What are the other stumbling blocks that you think people fall over on the way to this, um, end goal of, of achieving wealth? So we've talked about the fact that people get kind of tied up doing low value tasks, they trip over that, and if you do sufficient low value tasks... Today is a... To... I've just been absolutely submerged in low value tasks today, but I haven't made the pivot to get a VA or a PA, so, uh, it was either, like, don't do them or that everything comes crumbling down because it's little bits, admin tasks that are necessary but could be done by someone else. What are some of the other places that people stumble over?
- EJEric Jorgenson
Yeah, I, I mean, I think that, like, death by a thousand cuts of, like, you feel like it's one decision at a time of, like, "I'll just do this. It'll be easier to just do this than get somebody else to do it." 'Cause it i- is an intimidating thing to go hire somebody, even, like, uh, you know, a VA or PA for relatively low amount of money. Um, it's still, like, a big gnarly task when, like, a clear, simple task is in front of you, you can just do it and be done. Um, I, I think, um, I think people underestimate maybe how valuable their specific knowledge is, uh, or how unique they are. Um, that's something that is kind of... we all have s- you know, self-doubts and insecurities, and we are like, you know, uh, we're used to walking down the street and feeling not too dissimilar from 10,000 other people, that we saw these success stories and it feels so f- maybe far away, and like those people were so different than us. Um, but it's not, like I, I think everyone has something really valuable to bring and can productize themselves in an interesting way, and everyone's story can be valuable to someone. Um, and, and people really-
- CWChris Williamson
Imposter syndrome is a hell of a drug, though.
- EJEric Jorgenson
Yeah. It's a hell of a drug, and I would say, like, y- no matter how small you start, like Jack, Jack, again, has a, an amazing cure for this. His, his goal is just, like, make $1 on the internet. Just go sell one thing to one person for $1 and you will feel different. It will start that snowball, and you kind of slowly build up the confidence. You know, you got to start at the tutorial level maybe, um, but you're gonna keep building that confidence, and you're gonna slowly kind of grow your way into finding your audience and find your way through that maze. Uh, and just taking that first step will give you the confidence to take the second, to take the third. Um, but, but you, you know, whoever is listening to this, uh, you are more unique and valuable than you think you are, and everyone is kind of an incredible combination of their genetics and their experience and their perspectives and their beliefs. And everyone is unique, and everyone has some sort of skill or insight that they can bring to other people if you can learn it and package it the right way and just see what people respond to th- that you want to bring to them. Um, so that's, you know, that's probably even before the kind of logistical stumbling blocks, is just the belief that there's something there for you to do and for you to add value.
- CWChris Williamson
We're all an expert in something, man. Like-
- EJEric Jorgenson
Absolutely.
- CWChris Williamson
... l- l- let's say that you're a mother of... uh, you've been a full-time mother since you were 23, and you've had, you've got this huge family. Maybe you've even adopted a couple of children as well, and you've got now taken eight infants, either your genetics or someone else's, and got them to adulthood without anything catastrophic happening. You are an absolute expert in rearing children. This is how you can manage getting them ready for school. This is how you can manage doing food prep on a morning. Like, I know that these, especially the unsexy things, like the domestic side, the, um, relationship side of stuff that's more to do with, um, not just finding a new partner, but actually further entrenching and, um, improving your existing relationship, then that's not that sexy. You know, no one, no one thinks that I'm gonna get rich on dealing with the practicalities of having a big family and making a, a SaaS course about it. But there is a huge, huge, huge market for it. And what you're seeing now, here's something that I'm, uh, I've got a little bit of a fear about, which is that the disparity in work required to produce an online course versus to produce a book, and the remuneration that you get from producing an online course versus producing a book, are now bifurcating so aggressively that we are going to be swimming in courses. Th- the fact that James Clear didn't just do Atomic Habits on Teachable is, you know, beyond me, but he decided, "Oh, let's use this archaic, old, like, stupid form of communicating something, and print it on paper, and maybe you can get it on Kindle, and, uh, I'll speak in it." But I'm, you know, I, I hope that something happens to at least even the balance out, because I know for a fact that I have tons and tons of people that I've seen on the internet who couldn't write a book if their life depended on it, but are killing it in, in making online courses, or e- you're teaching people to do stuff. And everyone knows the same with the Instagram influencer who managed to get clout online and is now monetizing-
- EJEric Jorgenson
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... off the back of $1,000 a post per day. But if you ask them to sit down and try and string four words together, they wouldn't be able to do it. So, I, I, I think that, um, there is a little bit of a... we're vacillating between different extremes at the moment, um, and perhaps we're seeing this counter to the sort of enlightenment period where you had people whe- uh, um, intellect and academics were very, very tightly confined, and now it's been completely emancipated and everyone can get access to it. And, uh, right, okay, now everyone that's, that's, like, remotely clever can be super rich, right? Okay, now let's find somewhere that's, that's a happy medium between the two.
- EJEric Jorgenson
Yeah, I wonder how much, looking back, this will look like a, a gold rush. Um, and I actually have the same... so I, I have huge admiration for online courses. And I think, um... I have definitely spent some days thinking about exactly how you f- feel and how, what you just articulated. Uh, and I also think that it is... at the same time, there is so much value in them, and they can be so much more transformative for people because they kind of, they layer in accountability and social mechanisms, and they add some kind of visual and audio learning that, you know, people who, um, don't get as much, like, out of a book might resonate with. And the time that it takes, um, it actually, like, makes you more invested. The money you invest makes you more invested. And so, if you wanna change who you are as a person, unless you really have the discipline to bring your full self to take a book and transform it into your reality, then I absolutely believe an online course can be incredibly value-add and worth every penny that you're paying for it.
- CWChris Williamson
I think the, the, the, the-
- EJEric Jorgenson
Um, it, it... there is definitely-
- CWChris Williamson
... the key insight there is the fact that people are paying for the end result.... they're-
- 45:00 – 1:00:00
(laughs) …
- CWChris Williamson
number of an infinite product and genuinely considering yourself to be a, a, a legitimate businessman. Like, fuck off.
- EJEric Jorgenson
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
And the only people that make money from those courses, the only people who he's ever found who've made money from Grant Cardone's courses are resellers. So the only people-
- EJEric Jorgenson
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... who make money from the course are people reselling the course, which is a fucking pyramid scheme. That is a pyramid scheme. I'm aware that it's not, it's managed to subvert the expectations of it being a pyramid scheme because it delivers something, but when that something is so shit that the only thing you can make money on is reselling more shit, like, that, that is what it is. So yeah, I think, you know, to kind of bookend the, um, I have concerns over the online course world. Like, don't get me wrong, um, the plan, my main plan to assist monetization for the podcast is to create a partner academy, which is-
- EJEric Jorgenson
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... um, the guys from Podcast Notes doing summaries of every episode, uh, communities similar to Jack's where we can discuss about stuff. It's basically like a, a Patreon on steroids with-
- EJEric Jorgenson
Yeah, cool.
- CWChris Williamson
... a ton of stuff that will really help people. But I'm like, right, what's the lowest entry ticket? Can I do it for nine pounds a month? Can I, can I give all of this value for that much and will it, will it work? Right, okay, yeah, great. As opposed to it being something that costs, that literally doesn't add any value and costs $10,000 or, you know, 5,997 or whatever it might be. So I think-
- EJEric Jorgenson
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... yeah, hopefully we will see the resurgence in, um, uh, uh, people becoming more savvy to the, the dick funnels approach, which is being used. (laughs)
- EJEric Jorgenson
(laughs) I don't know if you've found that, but I like it a lot. Uh-
- CWChris Williamson
That's another, that's another Mike Winnitt-ism. Yeah, he, uh-
- EJEric Jorgenson
Okay.
- CWChris Williamson
His next, his next episode is on, uh... He's the guy behind ClickFunnels. Anyway, the guy that created ClickFunnels. There'll be people screaming down their, their AirPods to me at the moment.
- EJEric Jorgenson
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Um, the guy that made dick funnels. Uh-
- EJEric Jorgenson
Uh, that's, that's actually... So this is... I really want to do, um... I- I've... It's only a toddler right now, it's like a baby, baby business, um, but I, I want to get it going and we're, I think, um... There's so much to... I think there's a wave of courses coming and especially as, like, actual real school is now pretty much online now, that, that this, like the meritocracy that we talked about is going to move into online courses. Um, and something that I'm getting going is basically Wirecutter for online courses. Um, it's called-
- CWChris Williamson
What's that?
- EJEric Jorgenson
... Course Correctly. Oh, Wirecutter's like this very high end, um, review site. It's for electronics mostly. Um, it got acquired by the New York Times, I think, a year or so ago.
- CWChris Williamson
So like Trust, Trustpilot or Tripadvisor or whatever.
- EJEric Jorgenson
Y- yeah. More, um, more, like, staff written, highly curated reviews.
- CWChris Williamson
Okay, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- EJEric Jorgenson
Um, but I'm working out ways for people to basically, like, get the course for free and then, uh, write a very, very detailed review of like, did it change your life? What kind of people is it good for? What is it not? What does the course promise but not deliver on? Um, I've got a few reviews up on there already, but if anybody wants to, like, write a review of a course that they have been on, like, I'm gonna start hosting independent, unbiased, like, verified reviews for online courses, because I think it's so hard to find anything written about things that is not pushed out by the course creator themselves. And so separating some of this stuff and being like... You know, can you imagine being a 24-year-old kid and you're sitting there with your life savings about to buy, like, one course or the other and you're like, I don't know, Grant Cardone or like there's o-
- CWChris Williamson
Not Grant Cardone.
- EJEric Jorgenson
... one, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Here's my advice, 24-year-olds.
- EJEric Jorgenson
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Do not spend your money on Grant Cardone's course. Yeah, Eric, man, you need to... I'll link you in with Mike because what he's doing in this space specifically, he's doing it in a very British way, which is very kind of dour and, and quite satirical, um, and, and sort of dulcet, but really vicious as well and, and incredibly effective. Um, uh, yeah, I, I'll link you two guys in because you would, you would absolutely love him.
- EJEric Jorgenson
Cool.
- 1:00:00 – 1:13:39
The problem that we…
- EJEric Jorgenson
you don't wanna make a contract with yourself to be unhappy until you get something, especially if it is a wildly fucking unrealistic thing to ever, (laughs) to ever get. Um, so, knowing that- that you really should have a limited number of desires. Like Naval says, just one at a time. You know, if you're gonna... If you really focus on building your company, focus on building your company and- and like allow yourself that desire, but- but be contented with everything else that you have and really work hard to accept every other circumstance and not pile on, you know, y- your incredible, you know, fitness goals, or goals to travel, and goals to... Like, just take one desire at a time, um, and work to minimize the rest. You know, it's- it's so much easier... It should be easier. It is definitely cheaper to eliminate a desire than it is to, you know, overspend, to go into debt, to- to try to, like, run in too many directions at once. And those other desires are likely to kind of cost you more of your- your energy, your mojo, your focus on that one thing that you actually most desire, and prioritizing those is- is really hard.... yeah, and I think, um, y- you know, the younger you are, the easier it is to take on more desires. You have more possibilities in front of you. You, you have a little less, um, direction and track record of, like, what you know you want for sure, and so you're interested in all these different things and you pursue all these different things at once, and you have this huge multitude of desire. And, and I think, um, one, one of my hypotheses for this interesting fact that, like, 70-year-olds are usually the most happy cohort of people. A- and I wonder how much of that is, like, they really have learned to appreciate what they have. They really feel comfortable with, with who they are, and they don't have a ton of desires, you know? They, they are, are... have learned the skill of contentedness and appreciation for the, for the things that they have, and they're not constantly looking forward to the next thing, the next thing, the next thing. They're just living in the moment and, and enjoying, you know, w- what, who they're with and what they're doing.
- CWChris Williamson
The problem that we come up against here is what I brought up earlier on. It is easier to achieve your material desires than it is to renounce them. And I've been thinking about this for ages, that the trajectory of your particular modus operandi within life has already been laid out by your elders.
- EJEric Jorgenson
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Look to your granddad. Look to the things that your granddad enjoys doing. You know, a, a, a, a nice glass of wine while he watches the football on a Saturday afternoon, and going to the pub with his friends, and a walk with your grandma with the dog and stuff like that, the simple pleasures. And we, we, I think, can over-romanticize that, but it is impossible to pass those away from. Is that only able to be achieved when you've already gone and done the things? It's significantly easier for your next car to be something that... some banged-up family mobile after five Ferraris because you're like, "Do you know what it is? I've already done the Ferrari thing. That doesn't really matter." And this also, unfortunately, ties into one of the reasons that I think Naval is so seductive to a lot of us, that his real-world success is something that we all want to try and emulate and achieve. And the problem with that is that a unsuccessful version of Naval who would be able to use the desire contract aphorism more accurately, because we couldn't call him out for only saying that's easy because you've achieved all the things you want to achieve materially, we wouldn't respect because he hadn't actually managed to make stuff manifest in the real world. Does that make sense?
- EJEric Jorgenson
It does. Um, I don't know. I'm, I'm interested. I, I wanna push back on it a little bit, because I think, I think the, like, it's easier to achieve your material successes than to eliminate them is, is maybe... It's probably true for some things, but it also kind of... It doesn't take into account the trap of the, like, hedonic treadmill. And so, you know, it may be it's easier to achieve, you know, getting a really nice... getting a BMW, but then if I have a BMW, I'm going to want a Ferrari. And if I have a Ferrari, I'm gonna want a private jet. And if I have a private jet, I'll want a sports team. If I have a sports team, I'll want a fucking country. Like, uh, there's no reason for that to stop, and if you just let it keep snowballing, like, at some point, it is easier to learn how to, especially if you realize that the path that you are on and that you are happy with is not going to lead to enormous, incredible wealth, like, for plenty of people. I'm sure... You know, I'm a teacher. I love being a teacher. I'm gonna make maybe at best couple hundred, uh, you know, tens of thousands of dollars a year. Like, even if I start a business on the side, I- I'm just never gonna buy a sports team, and that's perfectly okay. And so now, I have to learn to control my desires. And, and I think that's what's so important about this book is that it has d- the two halves of happiness are, are how much you have and how much you want and combining those. I think, like, uh, Morgan Housel on your podcast actually did an incredible job with this. He's like, "It's not about how much you make. It's not about how much you want. It's about the relationship between the two and understanding that those levers are connected." I don't care what your means are as long as you're living below them. Like, you're, you're gonna be happy as long as your desires are in line with, with your lifestyle. And so controlling those two things and, and k- kind of moving them around so that you can find yourself in a state of happiness. Again, like, if you're not happy with a cup of coffee, you're not gonna be happy with a yacht. If you're not happy in a Toyota, you won't be happy in a Ferrari. You're just gonna want to add the Lambo. Like, I, I don't know what to tell you. And so, like, if you don't see that... if you don't see that desire as the source of an unhappiness, um, it's, it's gonna be tough to kind of get over that hump, uh, whether you get what you want or not 'cause you'll just leap to the next desire.
- CWChris Williamson
They say that true hell is when the person that you are meets the person that you could have been. But it seems like in this situation, it's more like true hell is when the person who you are imagines all of the stuff that the person who you could have been could have had.
- EJEric Jorgenson
Yeah, I, I think that's... you know, that's a good maybe motivational quote for you to, you know, be all you can be. Um, but it also is the sort of mental trap that can leave you, like, deeply unhappy if you imagine, you know, what would have gone... how your life would have been if everything would have worked out perfectly, and you had gotten lucky at every turn and worked your face off at every single thing. Like, that, that's a recipe for misery.
- CWChris Williamson
I agree.
- EJEric Jorgenson
Uh-huh.
- CWChris Williamson
But is that not just due to most people having a misaligned idea of what their full potential could be? If you were to fully imbibe the Naval philosophy, then your full potential would be someone who is as actualized and present and happy with as little as possible. So convert... Uh, in a bizarre way, you would almost be upset at your own level of materialism. So the materialism itself would be the thing that you say, "My potential is to have less materialism than this, not more stuff."
- EJEric Jorgenson
Yeah, I think that's... um, you know, separating materialism from your accomplishments and your, your contentedness, y- you know, your inner state from your outer state, um, 'cause it's, it's difficult to s- imagine a maximalist version of both of those kind of as, as coexisting, I think. Um, N- Naval's, like, nuance here, which I think is interesting, is, like, he, he doesn't want to be the most successful version of himself. He wants to be the one that is statistically likely to become the most successful. And so it- it's a little like if there's, you know-
- CWChris Williamson
What does that mean?
- EJEric Jorgenson
... i- if there's 1,000 Navalas in 1,000 different universes, he wants to live his life and, and build his businesses in such a way that 999 of those 1,000 eventually become successful. You know, if you, if you go to the casino and put it all on double zero over and over and over and over again and 10 million people are able to do it, one of those guys is gonna get incredibly successful, you know, uh, just to use a very simplified metaphor. Um, but most of those people, and those people on average, are gonna get decimated and be unhappy. And so his kind of, um, MO around how he makes his decisions and how he kind of architects his life is like, "I don't wanna work as hard as possible. I don't wanna be as successful, the most successful version of myself. I wanna do the things that allow me to get kind of the most successful with the least risk, the least variance, and the least, um, actually, the least input. Like I wa- I want the highest ratio of, of input to output that I can get. I don't wanna spend my life working," is what he would say. Like, he loves what he does now, he loves starting businesses and investing and does it, continues to do it as an art form. He said, "I, I don't want to, you know, spend 20 hours a day w- w- w- working, doing things that I don't necessarily want to do in order to achieve some outcome." Um, but finding the thing that he loves to do and doing it in a way that statistically, across a wide set of his lives, if you were to play them out, you know, on a Monte Carlo s- simulation, would very often or most often lead to some level, some outlier level of success, but not an extreme outlier. He's not willing to take huge, huge downside risk in order to get that extreme ex- extreme outcome.
- CWChris Williamson
I think that's a lovely antithesis to the hustle and grind mentality that I think a lot of people can fall down the trap of, and we all do as well. It's sad and unfortunate that the thing which often sets us apart in our 20s and 30s is the thing that we need to try and cast away and lose as an attachment in our 40s and 50s. Like, you, there's, there's a period where you've got to get your nose and stick it on the grindstone for a long time. You need to grind away on your craft, whether that be learning the skills that you can leverage later in life, building up the authenticity and the amount of clout and notoriety that you have within an industry. Even if that's as fully and beautifully aligned and actualized as we've been talking about here with all of the requisite, um, a, uh, amounts of presentness, you can't get around the fact that it's a function of intensity times time, the Cal Newport work done, uh, equation. If you do more work, if you outwork everyone at a higher intensity, then you piss all over them. And that's the way (laughs) , that's the way that it works. Um, but yeah, I, I, I really do think that that antithesis to the hustle and grind mentality is super important. I think it's really, really nice for people to, to understand. And as well, this is coming from someone that we both believe is incredibly wise, that he enjoys, as does Buffet, as does Munger, a life that is driven by ridiculous amounts of freedom. And the only reason that they look like they're working all the time is that that's what they choose to do.
- EJEric Jorgenson
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Morgan Housel's definition of what wealth gets you is, "Wealth allows you to do what you want, when you want, with who you want, for as long as you want, and no one gets to tell you otherwise." That is what wealth allows you to do, and that level of freedom is something that I think, maximally, we can all aspire to. And you can get there in multiple different ways. You can get there by reducing down the material desire, because if you reduce down the threshold at which materially you will be happy, then you can afford to work less to get there, which means that you have more time to spend on stuff, not just stuff that you have to do, but stuff that you get to do. And then if you can use the leverage and all of the other, uh, tools to free yourself, liberate yourself from sort of the typical rat race, then you also get to be able to do what you want to do all the time, because work is the thing that you get to choose, 'cause you've defined it yourself.
- EJEric Jorgenson
Yeah. And I think this is, um, sort of a, a, kind of a, to take the side road here, I don't know if you have studied the kind of financial independent early retirement movement at all.
- CWChris Williamson
No.
- EJEric Jorgenson
Um...
- CWChris Williamson
No. I've seen it, I've seen it online.
- EJEric Jorgenson
It's a, it's a really interesting, um, you know, i- if people are asking the question now of kind of like, "Okay, how do you work on that skill of living below your means and understanding like getting a big gap between what you're earning and what you're spending and finding fulfillment in things that don't, that aren't hugely costly, um, reducing your material desires," that is kind of a, I don't know, there's, there's, uh, Reddits on it. There are... The book that's kind of the forefather of this is Early Retirement Extreme by Jacob Fisker. It's a, it's a nutcase book, um, but it is like so extreme that when you dial that back to like a normal person, you still end up way, way ahead of most people. Um, the blog that kind of pulled me down this is, um, Mr. Money Mustache. It's a great blog. He's a hilarious guy. And he was a software engineer for like 10 years. Got his personal savings rate I think to like 60 or 70%. A- and it's this idea that like you're living on, you know, if you're making $80,000 a year, you're living on $30,000 a year. You still have a family, you still, you know, taking walks, you just either only have one car and barely use it, you mostly ride bikes, you know, you play board games, brew your own beer if you want to, have picnics instead of going out to $100 dinners. You know, like there are ways to live a very happy and fulfilling life on not that much money that is not correlated at all with increased material possessions. And he worked for 10 years as a software engineer and built up enough net worth through his savings and his investments that he retired. So he retired at 30 or 31, and he's like, "I can live for the rest of my life very happily on what I have saved up." And, uh, he continues to work, he continues to kind of do things that he wants to do, but it is that perfect freedom. There's a lot of paths to that freedom, is kind of like the point of bringing up this other movement. You can try to work really hard and earn a ton of money so that like y- no matter what your desires are, you can never outspend them. You can go, you know, be a monk or, and, and that kind of like...... you know, middle ground for middle class with normal jobs is, is really well explored, I think, in this kind of financial independence, early retirement, um, movement. So, uh, I encourage people to go, like, check that out and go down that rabbit hole if that's something that they're interested in.
Episode duration: 1:28:47
Install uListen for AI-powered chat & search across the full episode — Get Full Transcript
Transcript of episode 2Y-uh8S_4Zc
Get more out of YouTube videos.
High quality summaries for YouTube videos. Accurate transcripts to search & find moments. Powered by ChatGPT & Claude AI.
Add to Chrome