The Most Valuable Skill For Any Founder

George Mack 0:00 I call it getting Ted Lasso'd now, which is when a Brit has twice the intelligence or knowledge, but, uh, the American has 10X the agency or confidence, and as a result, they achieve five times more.

Sam Parr 0:12 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 0:13 [laughs] That was brilliant. [upbeat music] George, you had an interesting career because you were at Social Chain early on, so if people know-

George Mack 0:26 Correct

Shaan Puri 0:26 ... Steve Bartlett from Diary of a CEO, he was there early.

Sam Parr 0:29 And then, uh, a couple weeks ago, you came out with this thing. It was called highagency.com.

Shaan Puri 0:36 Let, let, let me give the background here. George got obsessed with... The way, the way that Nikola Tesla fell in love with a pigeon, George fell in love with this idea of high agency. He started tweeting about it, started blogging about it. He's like, "I'm gonna write a, a handbook on this thing." He started making it, like, his sole focus for at least, what, six months, George?

George Mack 0:54 Well, I'd say five years.

Shaan Puri 0:55 [laughs]

George Mack 0:56 Five years is when I first started thinking about the idea, when, uh, Eric Weinstein mentioned it. And then I started writing about it. I got advice that it would never take off as an idea. Interestingly, since we did our podcast last time and we discussed it, the idea or the meme as a whole has become bigger and bigger and bigger. I think just the-

Sam Parr 1:13 By the way, it, it's not five years. When I Googled your name, I Googled George Mack high agency, you were tweeting about this in November of 2018.

George Mack 1:21 Oh. Seven.

Shaan Puri 1:23 So l- let's explain it in, in... The, the easy way to explain it, and we can put this visual up on, on YouTube. So high agency, like, the, the, the meme that stands out to me is there's a dude s- deserted on an island and person... And there's two people. Person A takes, like, the wood, uh, from the island, and they try to spell the world, word help, and they're just sitting there hoping to, waiting to be helped. They're hoping somebody comes and saves them. And then person B takes those letters and builds a b- a little raft and starts paddling themselves. They start helping themselves. And, you know, one is a higher agency version than another, right? The, the guy who builds the boat and starts paddling is the higher agency version. And so what's cool about this is you got obsessed with... You got interested in the idea, then you got obsessed with the idea, then you committed to the idea and you started writing this thing, and you told... You were giving me updates saying you're writing this for a while. And, um, Sam, do you know the story of how he got highagency.com?

Sam Parr 2:15 No.

Shaan Puri 2:16 [laughs] 'Cause he did not own that domain.

Sam Parr 2:18 So-

Shaan Puri 2:18 It's actually a very high agency story.

George Mack 2:20 Yeah, so one of the things I, I have, uh, in the piece is an exercise that I do, and I recommend it. It's called turning bullshit into reality. So the way most people kind of live in the 21st century is, like, this to-do list model where they empty short-term memory, like what's caching in their memory, and then they do that thing that day, versus the turning bullshit to reality model is you think of a value that you want to hold or live up to, and then you come up with ideas based off that. So it's a much more creative way of living the to-do list. So when I was actually writing the piece, it's kind of like, well, you wanna be the personal trainer who's in shape, so I'd try and do some high agency stuff of, like, how could I potentially promote this? So one of the things I was listing down as I do the turning bullshit to reality exercise was, what about if I just get highagency.com? And I kind of look, and it's, like, likely to be tens of thousands of dollars. But I then started reaching out to a few different brokers, a few little hackie people, and we realized that highagency.com, the person had owned it for, like, 20 years, I think it was an old agency, and it was about to expire when we looked at the domain. So we kind of sat there, waited for the moment that it would expire, and then it went into a little mini auction and nobody else online was aware of it. It was me and a marijuana, a cannabis marketing agency-

Shaan Puri 3:31 [laughs]

George Mack 3:32 ... which makes sense, high agency. I hadn't thought of that. Um, and yeah, managed to get it at, like, essentially for near, near as free a- as a result. So that's an example of the turning bullshit into reality. And then when it came to actually promoting the piece, I was like, "Okay, let's write down high agency, and then what are ways that I can display that value for promoting it?" And I always go with my kind of facial muscles, or if I start giggling at something, I go, "That's probably a good idea." And the one idea I had for promoting it was, like, what if I take over Times Square for a blog post? So I was like, "Okay," then I started giggling at that. That sounded like my gut's telling me that's the right direction to go. Started cold emailing, blasting people. With obviously my background in advertising, how could I set up favors and move things around? And then for the day of the launch, I took over One Times Square with High Agency Got Me This Billboard, highagency.com, with my little Twitter icon taking over Times Square that day.

Sam Parr 4:27 Dude, that is awesome. How many views did this article get so far, or that day?

George Mack 4:31 I... So I actually... I think... I, I don't track, I don't track any of that. The one thing I do track is DMs and emails, because I think... Again, I've been in media for a while, and I think one of the biggest, uh, issues that we face with modern media is people go off width metrics, because what gets measured gets managed, and it's so easy to see view count. But it's s- So for example, if an episode gets a million views of yours, that's great, but if 10,000 people listen to it five times, I would argue the latter is much better than the former. But right now, we don't have that many ways of measuring depth metrics. So I prefer going off depth metrics, which are quality of people that DM me, um, quality of people that email me. And then one side effect that I did get is, like, once every two days, somebody will say it made them cry, uh, which was not the intention at all. So I, I-

Sam Parr 5:18 [laughs]

George Mack 5:18 ... haven't paid attention to that. I just look at the depth metrics. [upbeat music]

Sam Parr 5:22 All right. A few episodes ago, I talked about something, and I got thousands of messages asking me to go deeper and to explain, and that's what I'm about to do. So I told you guys how I use ChatGPT as a life coach or a thought partner, and what I did was I uploaded all types of amazing information. So I uploaded my personal finances, my net worth, my goals, different books that I like, issues going on in my personal life and businesses. I uploaded so much information. And so the output is that I have this GPT that I can ask questions that I'm having issues with in my life, like, "How should I respond to this email?" "What's the right decision knowing that you know my goals for the future?" Things like that. And so I worked with HubSpot to put together a step-by-step process showing the audience, showing you the software that I used to make this, the information that I had ChatGPT ask me, all this stuff. So it's super easy for you to use, and, like I said, I use this, like, 10 or 20 times a day. It's literally changed my life. And so if you want that, it's free. There's a link below. Just click it, enter your email, and we will send you everything you need to know to set this up in just about 20 minutes, and I'll show you how I use it, again, 10 to 20 times a day. Um, all right, so check it out. The link is below in the description. Back to the episode. [upbeat music]

Shaan Puri 6:37 So I wanted to do a little thing which was like, uh, what are examples of extreme high agency that we've personally experienced? Either something you did, something you didn't do, a friend, uh, somebody you admire, anything like that. I just wanted to kind of like quickly spitball what comes to mind. So you weren't there on this podcast, but I did a podcast with this guy, Nick Mowbray. And Nick Mowbray's episode, I don't know if it has the most views. It is the most hardcore episode I've ever done on this podcast. The guy-- I think the guy is the most impressive entrepreneur that's ever been on the podcast, and we've done-

Sam Parr 7:11 Hmm

Shaan Puri 7:11 ... seven hundred episodes, something like that. And he's a guy nobody's ever even heard of. I think this is like a Elon-level entrepreneur, um, in terms of his level of agency. And agency is like the perfect word to describe him. So he, he talks about basically like just the s-- I'll give you the simple examples, and I'll ramp to the, to his most insane example. So he's like, uh, him, him and his brother want to start a toy company straight out of like high school, basically. And so he's seventeen, eighteen years old, and he's first-- he goes door to door selling his, his brother's like science fair project. So door-to-door sale, sales already like, let's say, level one agency, right? That takes agency to go do that every single day. And he sells like thousands of units door to door. Then he's like, "Okay, great. How are we gonna produce thousands of units? We got to like ramp production." So they, they said, "Well, where do other toys get made? They get made in China." So they just pick up, and they move to China with no money. They literally sleep on a sidewalk outside the airport on the first night. And the funniest part is he's describing to me that they moved to China to set up their factory, and what I thought he meant was how everybody does it. You go to Chi-China, and you find a factory that already does this. That's the point of going to China. He didn't even understand that. He's like, "Dude, to say I was naive is an understatement." He's like, "We went to China, and then we just built a factory with wood by, like by a river. We built a shed, and that became our factory. And we found Chinese people, and we employed them in, [chuckles] in the factory. We created our own factory," which is like besides the point of like why you would even do that.

Sam Parr 8:36 Factory is, is glamorizing it. It's like hut.

Shaan Puri 8:38 E-exactly. And then as they're pro-- He's like, "And by the way, worst product." You know, everybody says, "Oh, you know, product is everything." He's like, "We had the worst product. We just couldn't even make it good. We were so bad at it." We just kept-- slept in the thing for like years, lived off a dollar a day budget, uh, like, you know, eating like the cheapest ch-- you know, like food. They basically employed this Chinese woman from the village to make them rice every day. He's like... I was like, "So how did you get like distribution?" Because they're everywhere. They're in Walmart. They're in every store. And he goes, "I would email every buyer of every retail store in every geography every day. [laughs] That was my day."

Sam Parr 9:11 Hmm. Hmm.

Shaan Puri 9:11 He's like, "And eventually they were like, 'Dude, we don't want it.'" He's like, "Ah, so you're here. You replied. Great. Would love to tell you about our latest product." [laughs] And, and finally, you know, they would-- someone would crack and be like, "All right, just send me the sample." Or like, "Look, I'm going to the show. Please stop emailing me. If you're there, I'll meet with you. I'll give you twenty minutes." And he used that to, to scrape and claw. So he just-- he's describing all of this, his journey for him and his brother to bootstrap a toy company that became the biggest toy company in the world. He made-- They make a billion dollars a year of profit, the two brothers with no outside investors. Then he's getting a, uh... He got his intestines removed or something like that. He basically like, he got, uh, Crohn's disease or something like that. I forget what it was. He had to go get like his, like half his intestine removed or something like that. While he's recovering on his like kind of sick bed, he decides to go into a new space, and he creates the world's most popular diaper brand. The fastest-selling diaper brand [chuckles] in the world right now is Rascals, so he created that. And then he also created like the fastest-growing h-hair care brand on TikTok. Like this guy's just prolific, right? And I j- I just couldn't believe it. Uh, and so it just blew my mind. It showed me like there's so many levels of agency above where I'm at. I couldn't believe it.

Sam Parr 10:18 George, do you think that crazy people like that are born, or do they learn it, or can you learn it?

George Mack 10:23 One thing, uh, like a model from cognitive behavioral therapy is black-or-white thinking. So people will go, "Is it nature or is it nurture?" And realistically, it's probably somewhere on a spectrum. Um, that's why I kind of call it the high agency spectrum. And I think there's definitely people who have genetic advantages. Balaji had a great, uh, line the other day of, uh, when communism ended, we could, uh, the Soviets could discuss profit for the first time. And he was talking about where with wokeness ending, maybe we can discuss genetics for the first time. And I feel that, yes, genetics definitely plays a component, but I would say that can then be quite a low agency for you to then just outsource it purely to your genetics. So I think, um, it definitely plays a component, but you can definitely have agency over your agency. And I think the way I would, uh, immediately explain that is that it's possible to... You could imagine, regardless of the genetic roll of the dice, it's possible to decrease somebody's agency. Therefore, it's possible to increase somebody's agency. And I just look at it like the easiest example I look at is the difference between my British friends and my American friends. Um, I kind of, I love the show Ted Lasso because it's like an example of, I call it getting Ted Lasso'd now, which is when a Brit has-

Sam Parr 11:37 [laughs]

George Mack 11:38 ... twice the intelligence or knowledge, um, but, uh, the American has 10X the agency or confidence, and as a result, they achieve five times more. So-

Sam Parr 11:48 Dude, by the way-

Shaan Puri 11:49 That was brilliant. [laughs]

Sam Parr 11:50 ... I think I said... That's, that's brilliant. And I think I've said on the podcast to my British friends, the difference in American culture and British culture is watching the British Office and the American Office. In the American Office-

George Mack 12:02 [laughs]

Sam Parr 12:02 ... the guy always gets the girl. Uh, there's a little bit of laughing at each other, but it's more like we're laughing together, and it always ends well. But in the British Office, it's kind of mean, and like the guy does not get the girl oftentimes, and it actually ends sad.

Shaan Puri 12:15 The British show is more realistic and was less successful [laughs] than, than-

Sam Parr 12:19 Yeah

Shaan Puri 12:20 ... the American version of The Office too.

Sam Parr 12:21 And, but the Ted Lasso example is way better because it's, it's so true that you like see this optimistic person, and he's in a room full of haters, and that's like, that, that kind of reminds me of [chuckles] my British versus American friends.

George Mack 12:34 There's a crazy stat around universities. So the top ten universities in the world, I believe three are British and three are American. So when you actually look at our intellect, I think you could argue we're at least as smart or at least the British sound smarter. We have that going for us.

Shaan Puri 12:48 [laughs]

George Mack 12:49 However, when it then comes to entrepreneurial output of those universities, America is like five times, five times higher. Um, even the example of, uh, deep-- Uh, a lot of the AI innovation came from the UK, but then at the actual execution happens in the US. So, uh, yeah, it's-- I... So to go back to your point, I think using the UK versus the US as an example goes to show you've got similar wide distribution of genetics going on, but a completely different output as a result.

Shaan Puri 13:15 You, you said something that, um, we passed over, but I thought it was actually a pretty good insight, which was you, you pay attention to the... You, you said, you said it in a very intellectual way, like I pay attention to the facial muscles. But really what you're saying was, if it makes me laugh, there's actually some merit in the idea, right? The idea that makes me giggle is the one I should double-click into, and I, I just thought, h-have you seen this email that basically kickstarted, uh, Airbnb? So Airbnb, which today, I don't know, hundred billion dollar company or so. The email that kicked it off is a public email you can read, and it's from Joe Gebbia, and he's, he's emailing Brian, and he goes, "Brian, I thought of a way to make a few bucks." Again, becomes a hundred billion dollar company. "Thought a way to make a few bucks turning our place into a designer's bed and breakfast. We could let young designers come into town and crash at our pl-place during the, the four-day event." There's like a conference. "And we'll give them Wi-Fi, a small desk, a sleeping mat and breakfast any, every morning. Ha!" And he puts "ha" with an exclamation point at the end, Joe. And he, he leaves it with that. And I-

Sam Parr 14:12 Dude, that's such a good email that it sounds fake.

Shaan Puri 14:14 And so I, I remember, like, pointing out that I think any idea that ends with... That, like, genuinely you would be like, "Ha." Like if that's your genuine feel at the end of it, there's a lot of potential in those types of ideas.

George Mack 14:27 Yes. I... My one that I was afraid for saying for a while 'cause I thought I might get canceled, but then when I explain it, I think it kind of makes sense. So this is obviously the TikTok clip that gets me canceled, but then I'll explain, so don't clip it.

Shaan Puri 14:43 [laughs]

George Mack 14:43 Essentially, I think child labor is underpriced.

Shaan Puri 14:48 [laughs]

George Mack 14:50 Let me explain. Obviously, the classic child labor that we see in the world now is truly atrocious, horrific, and anybody involved in that, I wish them, um, hell. However, we went through a, a model of, um, children working, for example, in the UK, uh, cleaning, uh, chimneys, and obviously then that got completely outlawed. It largely got outlawed across the world. But I think now there will be, thanks to AI and the teaching collapse, I think... I've always said for a while, and I think AI's now accelerated this, is that you'll see the first teenage, first self-made teenage billionaire by the end, by twenty thirty. And I think that, that makes me giggle when I say it, and I think it's true.

Sam Parr 15:34 I think that is a very bold prediction. It doesn't even seem crazy. Dude, we had a guy on the podcast the other day who was seventeen years old who had a business doing thirty million dollars a year in revenue.

George Mack 15:44 Yeah. So I, I have an idea, which is the next Y Combinator only invests between the age of eleven to eighteen years old. First off, nobody's funding them because they can't. Um, you've got the homeschooling boom right now. One of the criticisms beforehand would be they're in school, so they can't do it, but you're obviously seeing that decay away. As well as how would adults take them seriously? But now with smaller teams and the ability to hide behind a cartoon or whatever, um, I think now is the time that we will see it.

Sam Parr 16:14 When Shaan first told me about... I think it was on this podcast, Shaan, or b-- I forget when, but you or someone has told me about Peter Thiel's, uh-

Shaan Puri 16:22 Thiel Fellowship.

Sam Parr 16:23 Yeah. And he was like, "He's, he's con- he's gonna give you a hundred and fifty thousand dollars to drop out of college and start a company." That was one of those... It doesn't seem ridiculous now.

Shaan Puri 16:31 It's the opposite of stay in school, kids. He was like, "I'll pay you to leave school, kids." [laughs] That was his idea.

Sam Parr 16:37 And when he... A-and when that idea came out, I felt the same thing, where it was like, "That's insane. Wait, what? You can't do that." And then it, like everyone goes to like the same mental model. Although sometimes, some people it will take ten years 'cause they'll see the results nowadays. Uh, but like other people, like me, it took me like a few weeks where I'm like, "That's crazy." And then it's like, that's crazy, right? And it... Like, you like as... Like, is this crazy? Oh, this is-

Shaan Puri 16:57 Right

Sam Parr 16:57 ... actually kind of awesome.

Shaan Puri 16:59 And then, you know, Ethereum comes out of that, and Figma comes out of that, and a bunch of like, you know, kind of m-multibillion-dollar industry-changing companies come out of it.

George Mack 17:08 On the topic of high agency and how it relates to all of this that we're discussing right now. So one great question is, what would I do if I had 10XD agency? Another question I love, 'cause you guys obviously talk about ideas and opportunities that are coming up. But to like zoom out and then give people the agency to think about how to actually come up with the ideas and opportunities themselves. One of my favorite questions is, what is ignored or neglected by the media that will be studied by historians?

Sam Parr 17:36 What's a historical example?

George Mack 17:39 So I did a post two years ago on this topic that went really viral, and even if you look at some of the things in there. So a good example will be like microplastics. It's kind of, it's slowly bubbling up now. It's reaching the media. But if you discussed that two to three years ago, you was an absolute weirdo. Another example in there was around fentanyl that I put in the post, and at the time, it was seen as like absurd or crazy or there wasn't that many people discussing it, and now it's way bigger. So I think there's, there's countless examples of this media, uh, historian gap that exists. There's a great book, um, called The Sovereign Individual, and they have a line in that that always stuck with me, which is they're talking about the fall of the Roman Empire. And it's quite easy to point to the date of when the Roman Empire fell. But if you actually went at the time and asked people, "When did the Roman Empire fall or fell?" There was no big announcement. There was no, "Hey, guys, the empire has fallen." Um, it likely a lot of people didn't admit it till like a hundred years later. So i-they point to this case that if CNN existed during the fall of the Roman Empire- On the day it fell, they wouldn't have announced it would have fallen, but it just takes people a while. I think that's a big high agency trait is essentially just if you wait for the news, you'll be wrong or late.

Shaan Puri 18:53 [laughs] Yeah, that's a great point. That's a great point. Do you have suspicions of what an idea like that would be today? 'Cause it's a very hard question. It's a, it's an important question. It's a- it's worth pondering, but it's not one where, you know, 10 answers come to mind right away of what, what's largely ignored or, like, over, over, uh, underreported today that will be, you know, historically important to historians in the future.

George Mack 19:16 One funny one that if I was a historian, this is really absurd, but I've spent a lot of time in the Middle East coming from the UK and spent four to five years in Dubai, and one thing that's truly absurd about the West is [laughs] in the Middle East, whenever you go to the bathroom, there's, like, a ass spraying thing that you have. In the West-

Shaan Puri 19:42 A bidet?

George Mack 19:42 ... everybody... Yeah, b- it's like a... It's more like a shower head kind of thing. So, like, you get a bidet, which is a separate mechanism, but it's like a little shower head. I could go to the most remote, crazy location in the desert, and they will have one. I've yet to see one-

Shaan Puri 19:56 What's it called? There's, like, a... What, what is it called?

George Mack 19:58 I actually... I, I call it, like, an ass spray. I don't, I don't know what it's actually-

Shaan Puri 20:02 [laughs]

George Mack 20:02 ... the official terminology for that.

Shaan Puri 20:03 There's no one to talk to about it when you're there.

George Mack 20:04 Yeah. But thi- Yeah [laughs] ... this is the problem, right, is that there's, in the West, there's almost not really a good naming mechanism for it. Um, and the fact that Rory Sutherland has this great bit, which is imagine if s- a bird shat on your head. Um, and I go, "Oh, Sam, Shaan, uh, here's a dry piece of paper-"

Shaan Puri 20:21 [laughs]

George Mack 20:21 "... to wipe it off." You go, "What the fuck, man? I need to wash my hair."

Shaan Puri 20:23 [laughs]

George Mack 20:23 But meanwhile, this is going on in the West en masse, and I think as an entrepreneurial opportunity-

Shaan Puri 20:28 [laughs]

George Mack 20:28 ... change, changing the frame around that, um, I think it's a billion-dollar opportunity if you partnered with a plumbing company or something like that. Imagine, again, I think-

Shaan Puri 20:35 No doubt, dude

George Mack 20:36 ... from the ad first as well.

Shaan Puri 20:37 Have you seen TUSHY?

George Mack 20:39 No.

Shaan Puri 20:40 TUSHY's like an attachable bidet. It, like, turns any dumb toilet into a smart toilet type of thing. I think they do extremely well. I think they're, like, north of 100 million in revenue in, uh-

George Mack 20:50 Yeah

Shaan Puri 20:50 ... you know, targeting the American market. But I, I, I'm with you, dude. That's just the tip of the iceberg, all right? You're, you're right that it will seem crazy in hindsight.

George Mack 20:59 Another example of what's ignored or neglected by the media that will be studied by historians is I think we're going through a seismic shift now that's similar to when writing first came online. So there's a, a great sci-fi book, uh, by a guy called Ted Chiang, and it's one of his short stories, and he tells a scenario which is possible now, this technology already exists, where you have essentially always on recording technology. So some people, they record their whole life. So you can kind of see it now with Twitch streamers, right? And why this is fascinating is the impact this then has on memory. So it's, in the books of, spoiler alert, it tells the story of a, a f- a father, daughter, and mother. The mother leaves them j- just without saying goodbye, essentially, and the father and daughter one day have this huge argument where the f-, uh, the daughter says to the father, "I wish you'd just leave like mom. Um, I hate you." And it haunts the father to that very day. Um, and after about five years, they slowly build their relationship, and the father doesn't have access to one of these recording devices, but his daughter does, and one day he needs access to go through her memory logs, so he's, he's asked her for access. She shares it with him, and as he's going through it, that file pops up, and he goes, "Oh, shit, like, this is one of the biggest emotional moments of my life." Like, he presses play on it, and the recording shows that he completely misremembered the event. It was him that said it to her, and it's this idea that essentially all our memories are completely bollocks. It's completely made up. It's, like, pretty much all artificial. Um, and how does that change when we essentially have recordings of everything? I think that will be a big thing that historians will begin to, begin to look at of we completely then... Like, the shift that we had when we started writing for the first time, that's going to be a huge shift as a result as well.

Shaan Puri 22:52 Have you seen the Black Mirror episode about this? There's, they, they did a, uh, they did a version of this on Black Mirror as well.

George Mack 22:58 Oh, really? Well, th- there's a, there's a example of in the UK, there's a building called Grenfell Tower. It was a horrific accident that occurred where the whole building set on fire. It was in a council estate, and loads of people died. And on the day, there was this weird case of a baby getting dropped from the top floor all the way down and somebody catching it, and it went crazy viral at the time, and a load of eyewitness testimony came out saying that they saw it. And when it... The, like, classic physicists about six months later after the emotion had calmed down around the event was like, "Hold on. If you drop a baby from that high to there, like, the physics of this, uh, I've got a bit of doubt about it." And when they actually digged into the memories of it, a lot of it was just artificial memories that people had created. So I'm pretty fascinated by devices like that that come online, and I think part of society will go for it, and the other part of society will not go for it. But it just completely changes who you are when you no longer have a story of your memories. You actually have the full log.

Shaan Puri 23:57 Yeah. There's a famous experiment. I don't know if... Have you guys ever seen this? There's a 9/11 memory experiment.

George Mack 24:03 What's that? No.

Shaan Puri 24:04 So they basically, um, people feel like you really remember those important traumatic days. You know, there's the even phrases in the language, like, "I'll never forget where I was," or, "I'll never forget how I felt when I saw that." And there's actually a set of si- I, I don't have the studies in front of me, but there's a... I remember learning about this, that there was a, a set of studies where people, they went and they studied the memory accuracy of people remembering 9/11, and it was pretty shocking. It was, like, less than 50% of the details were accurate. It was a combination of they had extreme confidence that their memories were accurate. Their memories actually were not accurate, and then they don't... Not only do they not remember what happened, they actually didn't even remember how they felt. I think they had, like, logged at a cer- like, early on They logged how they had felt, and then they measured three years later, and then many years later, trying to remember how you felt, and you didn't even actually remember that properly, and that your memories basically converge towards, like, a shared narrative rather than what actually happened. And so there's... And all these terms for it. Flashbulb memories. There's all these, like, terms for-- that describe how poor human memory actually is, which is, like, kind of crazy when it comes to, like, the court system, for example. Like, a lot of it's based on, you know, eyewitness testimony or-

Sam Parr 25:17 Mm

Shaan Puri 25:17 ... somebody remembering certain details, but-

Sam Parr 25:19 And what's funny is, Shaan, is as you were describing that, I was thinking, "Where wa- where was I at 9/11? What was I doing?" And then I'm also saying the second most common thing, which is, "But I remember."

Shaan Puri 25:28 Yeah. [laughs] I'm, I'm the exception. Ads don't work on me.

Sam Parr 25:31 Yeah, like, that's what everyone's gonna say. They're, they're gonna say, "But I remember that." Oh, and by the way, I told this story, Shaan, on here, I think, how this one, uh, this, like, prestigious journalist, uh, I asked her to come and freelance for The Hustle, um, and she wrote a letter back to me and she says like, "That's cute. Thanks."

Shaan Puri 25:48 Right.

Sam Parr 25:48 And, like, it drove, like, eight years of, like, success for me because I was like, "I'm gonna prove this freaking jerk wrong." She was so dismissive of, uh, dismissive of me. I went back and reread the email. She was super nice.

Shaan Puri 26:01 [laughs]

Sam Parr 26:02 Like, she didn't say, "That's cute." She said like, "I'm honored. Thank you so much for thinking of me. I'm too busy right now but, uh, you know, good luck in your, with your new endeavor." Like, I, I went and reread it and I'm like, "That's insane." I told myself this story that... And I've said it publicly so many times. I even name-

Shaan Puri 26:19 Right

Sam Parr 26:19 ... dropped her once or twice. It was wrong. It was wrong. I d- I didn't remember it correctly, and I'm, I'm happy I didn't. But yeah, our memory's crap. What about, um, George, about y- you had stuff in here about, like, looking for business ideas through a high agency lens, but also building software that's high agency. What, what does that mean? Because w- what you're describing to me is, like, a philosophic, philosophic, like a, like a mental framework, but it, it actually seems like when you think about this, it's actually more tactical than that.

George Mack 26:47 Yeah. It's incredibly tactical. There was a post, I think, two days ago that went really viral on Pirate Wire about how agency is the most important thing thanks to, like, AI. I think agency has always been one of the most important things. So I said it's probably the most important idea of the 21st century, or it might be. And if a British person says probably or might be, it's almost like an American betting their house on it. And, uh, in this Pirate Wire post, they spoke about how now thanks to AI and large language models, the, uh, exponential or, like, the leverage that you get on agency as a result is, is so much bigger. And you just then begin to look at it. So, like, a small case of, like, high agency for me is I started getting bored of being bullied by algorithms. I feel like everybody is just a bitch to the algorithms these days. And I try and, like, find small ways to have agency over the algorithm. So, like, even... I was like, "Okay." I reflected on my YouTube history. I literally... I recommend everybody do it. It's one of the weirdest exercises. Talk about memory. Is you go on YouTube, and then you press History. And I just scrolled through the videos, and I was like, "Okay, which ones of these do I... Am I glad that I watched in hindsight? Which ones am I kind of neutral about? And then which ones would I say I regretted?" And I said I think it was about 80% of them I regretted, 10% I was neutral, and 10% I enjoyed watching. And then I looked at it and said, "Okay. What do the ones that I like have in common? And then what do the ones that I don't like also have in common?" And the single biggest thing of where I thought I wasted my time was content under 30 minutes long, 'cause it was just brain rot content, particularly under, like, five minutes long, like a Coffeezilla reaction of Logan Paul's done this crazy crypto pump and dump, and I just click on it, and then I'm in this, like, vortex. And going back to the memory thing, I've completely forgotten this. So I was like, "Okay, how about I just work with ChatGPT to solve this problem?" Built a script, and now I call it the CALE algorithm. My YouTube does not show me any videos under 30 minutes. So this ability to, to be able to manipulate your environment, particularly I think with AI now, has only got bigger and bigger. So there's agency everywhere. Everything is a s- I don't know if you heard that phrase of everything's a skill issue. It's kinda like that for agency. Like, everything is just a agency problem.

Sam Parr 29:04 Where else are you doing that in your life?

George Mack 29:06 So e- even small things. Just constantly each day do... Like, I recommend going back to the turning bullshit into reality, just going through that list and then operating from a creative model each day of how can I have agency, and then applying it rather than going off the to-do list model. So I mean, s- anything from, um, writing down, "I want to learn..." I have always wanted to play Baker Street on the saxophone. I was sat on the beach. I did turning bullshit into reality. I've wanted to learn Baker Street on the saxophone. My girlfriend says, "Why don't you do it?" There's nothing more embarrassing than a girl saying, "Why don't you do it?"

Sam Parr 29:37 [laughs]

George Mack 29:37 So I just then ordered a saxophone and taught myself Baker Street on the saxophone. So just coming at it from a very simple model of write down the value, then ways you can display it, then do the thing. There's an amazing article that went viral the other day. You know it's a good article when it's from like 2010 on like a really-

Sam Parr 29:53 [laughs]

George Mack 29:54 ... weird niche blog. So there's a guy called, um, Aaron Swartz who you probably heard of. He was the Reddit co-founder who tragically took his own life.

Sam Parr 30:03 Mm-hmm.

George Mack 30:03 And he has this amazing blog which goes to your point there, Sam, of like how do you actually turn this tactically. And it, it talks about a, having a theory of action versus a theory of change. So he uses the example of you want the United s- uh, States to decrease their military spending. So a theory of action would be, "I'm a blogger, therefore I'm going to write blog posts about this thing." Whereas a theory of change is essentially where you go, "Okay, um, I want to decrease the United States military. What is... How can I do that?" Or like why, why, why? How, how, how? All the way down until you get to a concrete action that you can do today. Um, I... The piece is absolutely, uh, incredible, and I'm, I think you mentioned too- Shaan on the podcast the other day around how hard it can be to actually think from first principles. But using Aaron's framework, the blog post I really recommend checking out, is absolutely incredible.

Sam Parr 31:00 Yeah, you, you said on here, uh, and, and when we asked what you wanted to talk about, you said something about how, uh, you think that language kinda controls people a, a lot. I think you s- you said, "Language shapes the world around us." And I was thinking about that, and I actually... I made a change recently where I was thinking, like, I, I have a problem where I, I will compare myself to other people a lot, and I would say like, "I should be doing this," or, "I should be at this place." And I m- remember I read something-

George Mack 31:28 Mm

Sam Parr 31:28 ... and I started changing the words to, "I choose to do this." I, I think, I think Shaan, did you actually say this? Or were you... I think we had so- I think we had someone on the podcast where it was like it changed my thinking where it's like I'm gonna say, instead of "I should," I'm gonna change that word to "choose." Uh, it's like what am, what am I going to choose to do? Uh, not I should be doing X, Y an- X, Y, and Z.

Shaan Puri 31:49 I was at a, a Tony Robbins event and he said it beautifully. He goes, "You sh-" Somebody was, had sa- raised their hand, they said something, "I should do this," you know, "I know I should do this, but blah, blah, blah. But I just think that they should do th-" And they were sh- saying it and he goes, he goes, "You're doing what a lot of people do. You're should-ing all over yourself." [laughs] I just couldn't unhear it.

George Mack 32:09 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 32:09 He's like, "People just should all over themselves." And I just, from that moment on, it, it literally viscerally felt gross to say the word should. I'm should-ing all over myself right now. And I just couldn't do it anymore.

George Mack 32:22 Language is a great example of low agency. So the amount of times that we'll wait for a word to find us rather than trying to create words ourselves. So that's why I felt high agency was quite a meta thing, where when I discovered that word, it actually changed the way I viewed reality. So one way of viewing reality is reality happens and you have words to describe it. Another way to view it is you use words and then that kind of edits, uh, reality. So it's a, a kind of a, a double-edged sword. Good examples of that would be fake news. So fake news, th- there was words beforehand that never really caught off. There was like yellow journalism, there was truthy news. But then when fake news came along, you have a clearer way of viewing reality. A great example right now is the term vibe coding. Vibe code, the only thing that's probably done more than LLMs for vibe coding is the actual meme itself of vibe coding. So high agency's another example of that.

Sam Parr 33:20 What, what is vibe coding, by the way? I, I, I, I still don't know what the difference between vibe coding and coding is.

George Mack 33:26 Just you, basically a non-technical person prompting an LLM and getting them to code it for them.

Sam Parr 33:32 That's vibe coding. All right, got it.

George Mack 33:33 Yeah.

Sam Parr 33:33 And you're saying what?

George Mack 33:35 The, the... When you actually have that language itself or you have that meme, those memes, it actually increases the output of things, and then you begin to see language, uh, can have such a impact everywhere. I'm actually fascinated by, on the topic of the show, the millionaire meme. So the concept of a millionaire is so impactful to society, and it hasn't been updated even as inflation's ate away at being a millionaire. So like I once watched a YouTube ad where they were talking in like a currency that's like one to 10, and he was talking about making his first million, but it still exists even as-

Sam Parr 34:10 [laughs]

George Mack 34:10 ... like the inflation's kicked in, and I'm fascinated to see what replaces that.

Shaan Puri 34:14 There's a, there's this great book from back in the day that I've never read because it's one of those books where the ti- the cover tells you the whole story. You can literally read the cover, you can have the epiphany, and you can move on. And it's called Your Word is Your Wand. It's by f- I think Florence Scovel. And it's like actually kind of a hard book to read because it's one of those books that's written like 80 years ago or something and it's just like too poetic to like actually grok nowadays. But the whole idea is like your word is your wand, is your magic wand, and it shapes your reality exactly as you're describing. And this applies to like, yes, it applies to high agency, but I'll give you another example. So I tore my, uh, knee ligament a couple months ago, so, uh, I've been recovering from it and I've been doing rehab. And my trainer who's like m- he's like the black belt in mindset that I get to work out with every, every day. And so he, he never uses the word rehab and, um, he always uses a different word. So he'd be like, he's like, "All right, let's get ready. Let's..." He, he'll be like, "We're, this is not rehab. We're gonna renew, we're gonna refresh, we're gonna recharge, we're gonna..." He's like, "We're gonna do something. We're gonna make that knee better than it was before." And rehab already like implies some version of it's broken, we're gonna try to fix it, versus he's like, "All right, we're gonna rejuvenate this thing. We're gonna make your knee 10 years younger than it w- than it, than it currently is. How are we gonna do that?" It's literally when you change the word, you change the method, right? Like the what you say changes the how you do it. And you just see this over and over and over again in small ways in business. And like another version of this that I've seen, uh, that I've done recently

Shaan Puri 35:44 is like intentionally breaking your speed bar. So we all have a certain clock speed, a certain speed with which we operate things, and a good exercise is to just break what, break the speed barrier of what you think is possible for any given task. So it could be very small. It could be you're doing the dishes and you have the, the silverware and you normally put it away at a certain rate, but try to break your speed bar. Like see how fast you could do that thing or this piano that I got here. I had this idea of like, I wanna have, uh, I've been practicing the piano for three months. I've n- I'm ready to upgrade from my keyboard to like a legit piano. It's more fun to play, feels better, et cetera. And my birthday's coming up, so the normal speed bar would be you kinda wait for your birthday. So you wait, not a v- not a very high agency thing to do, and then you get it, and then you maybe get it, but then you get it on backorder 'cause these are, you know, they don't have them in stock and then it's gonna take a few weeks to come and then it gets t- then you set a delivery date, then they show up. And I basically set myself a challenge. I, from the moment I had the idea- I said, "This inspiration is perishable," right? Ideas are avocados. I- I'm not gonna let this go brown. I'm gonna do this thing right now. And so I said, "I wanna see how fast I can do this. I think the normal person, this would be, like, a two or three-week project. I'm gonna see if I can do this in 24 hours." And sure enough, I, like, just mobilized my own army of, like, my resources, my focus, my intention towards making that one thing happen. And it was crazy. Like, the store was closed, but I found the owner. I called him and I said, "Would you come and open the store? I'm ready to buy a piano right now." The guy comes, and he opens the store for me. And then he, I, you know, I, instead of just playing the piano trying to figure out which, which of these pianos is better, I said, "I need to know first which pianos you have in stock in the warehouse that could get delivered tomorrow. And in fact, while I'm looking, I want you to call the delivery guys and schedule a delivery for tomorrow. I'm gonna pick, but you schedule it right now, 'cause it's Friday, and I want this delivered Saturday morning." And I made the whole thing happen, and by 11:00 AM Saturday morning, I had the piano in the room and I was playing it. And I just feel like there's so many instances where if you break your speed bar in one area, you realize that, like, in all areas, speed is negotiable, that you can change the rate at which something's gonna happen in your business or in your personal life.

Sam Parr 37:52 He, he just said his, his attention, his focus, and his energy is his army. How good is that?

George Mack 37:58 That's good.

Sam Parr 37:58 Is that what you just said? [laughs]

Shaan Puri 38:00 Yeah.

Sam Parr 38:00 Go ahead, George. [laughs]

George Mack 38:02 Well, you, you got a military and Air Force. You need a little one for each one. That's beautiful. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 38:06 Yeah, let's go March, right?

George Mack 38:08 Uh, [laughs]

Shaan Puri 38:09 Scott Galloway had a great version of this. He goes... What did he... How did he say it? He's like-

George Mack 38:13 Booked it

Shaan Puri 38:13 ... "I deployed an army of capital in my 40s from my family to go kill and grow while I was asleep." [laughs]

Sam Parr 38:19 Dude, that's so good.

George Mack 38:20 [laughs]

Sam Parr 38:20 That's so good.

George Mack 38:21 [laughs]

Sam Parr 38:22 George, who are examples that are not the Elon Musks of the world who you think represent high agency?

Shaan Puri 38:28 Can you give us a friend? 'Cause I think that the best way to get high agency is to just hang out with a high agency person because you'll realize how unacceptable your low agency thoughts are around them. You'll feel embarrassed by it. And so being around high agency people is the fastest way to become more high agency yourself.

George Mack 38:44 Hmm. Well, the question I always come back to is: Who would you call when you're stuck in a third world jail cell? That's how you identify the highest agency person that you know. Two that come to mind. There's one, Claude Shannon, who is probably one of the most underrated individuals that exists. He literally created information theory, which is he took the idea from philosophy, where you have ones and zeros in logic, and applied that to computing and created information theory, which literally creates everything that we're doing right now. Basically, the father, him and, um, Alan Turing, the father of modern computing, and he has this crazy thing. So one of the things in the essay, one of my favorite, like, high agency aphorisms is just does it defy the laws of physics? It's like a brain prompt whenever you're faced with a problem. Does it defy the laws of physics? And Claude Shannon and a guy called Ed Thorp wanted to hack roulette. So roulette is the example of the ultimate game of luck. And Claude Shannon and Ed Thorp, before the first ever mobile computer, they created the first ever mobile computer that they had in their shoe that would look at the, as the ball hit based off the probability, and they hacked roulette by managing to outcompete the house by about 33%. So I'd say Claude Shannon's awesome.

Sam Parr 39:58 Y- Shaan, you should read Ed Thorp's biography, one of the best biographies I've ever read.

Shaan Puri 40:02 Adding it to the list.

Sam Parr 40:03 A Man for Market. So this guy, Ed Thorp, he basically was a math guy. He was a math prodigy. He got sick of just making the wage that math teachers got, and so he said, "I'm gonna invent a way to count cards." He did, so he invented count, card counting. Uh, he made a lot of money, and then he was like, "You know, I don't really like being in casinos all the time. Like, it's not good for my family." And the mafia, or not the mafia, the, um, uh, the, the casinos started getting on his case and he, he was, he was like, "I, I don't want them to, like, break my hand in the back do- in the back room because I'm counting cards." And so he eventually got into finance, and he started the, uh, uh, one of the first ever hedge funds and, you know, became a billionaire that way. And he tells stories, and he's... I- it's sort of like a Forrest Gump story. Like, he tells a story about how he met this... He's like, "I met this young man who had these really good ideas, and I knew this guy was gonna be super rich, and so I just decided to become one of his first investors. And he went and started this thing called Berkshire Hathaway."

Shaan Puri 40:56 [laughs]

George Mack 40:57 [laughs]

Sam Parr 40:57 Uh, like, uh, like, you know, and there's, like, 10 or 20 stories like that where he was like, "You know, I was just, like, poking around, and I met this guy, and I thought he was really smart. We stayed in touch, and then he went and founded Apple." You know, like, he's got, like-

Shaan Puri 41:08 [laughs]

Sam Parr 41:08 ... a ton of stories like that. Um, but who's the second person on your list?

George Mack 41:13 The second person on my list is, uh, is, is a book b- by Claude, um, Don't Tell Me I Can't by Cole Summers. It's the most underrated business book in the world, in my opinion. It's an hour long, and it's written by a 13-year-old who tells the story-

Shaan Puri 41:32 Is this the s- the, uh, unschooling guy?

George Mack 41:35 The unschooling guy, yeah. So when he is, uh, I think four or five, him and his parents see these kids outside causing havoc and saying some nasty things. And he's from a very poor background, and they decide, "You know what? We're not gonna go to school. We're gonna homeschool you." And unfortunately, his father, who served in the military, who's supposed to be his teacher, ends up, uh, having to have multiple surgeries. And one day he goes to his dad, who you can just imagine is sat there post-surgery, kind of a, a little bit out of it, and he says, Cole says to his dad, "Dad, how do I get rich?" And his dad says, "I don't know, son. Like, maybe go watch Warren Buffett videos on YouTube." So this six-year-old starts watching Warren Buffett videos on YouTube, and you listen to the audiobook, and you're, like, taking notes of, "Oh, my God, this kid's so smart," like the lessons he's taken from Charlie Munger. And then at seven, I believe he starts his first business that gets to $1,000 profit per month. He acquires a vehicle using his parents' license when he's, like, nine or 10.

Sam Parr 42:37 What, what was the business? What was the seven-year-old's business?

George Mack 42:40 He... Ra- rabbit farming.

Sam Parr 42:42 So he would breed rabbits and sell them?

George Mack 42:45 And sell them to restaurants So he took that to $1,000 per month. He then flipped a house and made, I think, like $10,000 profit when he was, uh, 10 years old. And he tells this story-

Shaan Puri 42:53 And it was like an abandoned house, right? It was like somebody's house-

George Mack 42:56 Yeah

Shaan Puri 42:56 ... that was just dilapidated. They weren't doing anything with it. And he just says, "Hey, if I just like... If I do all the work, then can I, you know, share in the profit of, of flipping this," basically. He, he didn't even, like, buy a home to flip it. He, he just found a unused home and was like, "There's potential here."

George Mack 43:12 Yeah. He, he's incredible. He tells this story, um, when he's meeting other seven-year-olds for the first time or he's at, like, scouts with his friends, and they're talking about what they learned that day, and they're going, "Yeah, I was looking at Pluto. Is it a planet?" is what they were teaching us at school. I don't know whenever, like, I care about this. And he goes, "Oh, I was looking into how Amazon manages to pay 0% tax just using the internet."

Shaan Puri 43:37 [laughs]

George Mack 43:38 So I think his book... Again, just to be clear, not may- not every seven-year-old should have a P&L. Maybe 80% of them should, but not every seven-year-old should have a P&L. Um, but it's... He completely reframed my reality of what a child can do.

Sam Parr 43:53 What? And by the way, this is one of those stories where he's still, like, 15 or 16. This isn't like-

George Mack 43:59 No

Sam Parr 43:59 ... in, in the '80s.

George Mack 44:00 He unfortunately-

Sam Parr 44:00 Like, this is... He's a kid

George Mack 44:01 ... Yeah, he unfortunately passed away, which is really, really sad.

Sam Parr 44:04 Wow.

Shaan Puri 44:05 Like a, like a surfing accident or something, right?

George Mack 44:08 Yeah, I think it... I, I don't know the ins and outs of it. Um, tragic obviously, but absolutely incredible-

Sam Parr 44:14 Oh, no

George Mack 44:14 ... uh, that he managed to live the life that he lived.

Shaan Puri 44:17 You have this thing, uh, in your post. You said, "How to, how to spot high agency people," and number one, you wrote, was weird teenage hobbies. Teenage years are the hardest time to go against social pressures. True. If they can go against, against the crowd as a teenager, they can go against the crowd as an adult, and that... Is that... Y- Would that be yours, your weird teenage hobby was an obsession with juggling?

George Mack 44:39 Yes. Uh, it... I, I kind of wish my dad bet me I couldn't code. I would be probably on a yacht right now.

Shaan Puri 44:45 All right. [laughs]

George Mack 44:45 However-

Shaan Puri 44:46 Well-

George Mack 44:46 ... I, I think e- even with hiring, uh, my best hires that I've placed pretty much all line up in that criteria, that they are... have weird, interesting hobbies. I was listening to an interview with Palmer Luckey chatting about this, and he... I mean, it kind of hints to some kind of intrinsic motivation as well as the ability to go against, like, wider mimetic forces that kind of is a good indicator. So it's a very good interview question. Like, tell me about the weird shit you did growing up.

Shaan Puri 45:16 Yeah, I have a, I have a variation of that. We used to ask what were you, uh, uh... What's something you were degenerately obsessed with? So like basically you were obsessed with it to the point where it actually negatively affected the quality of your life. [laughs] Like you, you were too obsessed with something, but you did it anyways, and it's usually a video game or a hobby like this or a collecting, uh, you know, type of thing. And, um, and then there's a... I forgot who it was. Some famous investor, they had this, uh, other question they asked with it, which was what's something you could give a one-hour talk on right now unprepared? Like you just know it so well, you've spent so much time on it, that if I gave you, you know, 45 minutes to an hour, you could actually like give me a, a crash course in this thing because you have mastery over it. And in doing so, you also see how somebody communicates when they know something. So, uh, it, it does sort of two things. It gives you a relative bar. So if that's the thing you know best and then you compare it to the things they've been telling you about, you realize, oh, that resume was a little shaky. They don't really know how they d- how that, that, how, how that operated in their company compared to how they know this. And then secondly, it tells you how their communication skills are, right? Can they actually break something down simply for somebody and then build up from there intuitively? Like are they a good storyteller? Are they a good communicator or not? And that doesn't need... You're not... You don't need that for every job, but for a number of things, like, you know, for being a CEO or being a marketer. Like you wanna be able to do that well.

George Mack 46:36 Mm. Yeah, it's a phenomenal.

Sam Parr 46:39 Before we kinda wrap up, you had one thing here that really caught my eye. Did you s- so first of all, you called your... [laughs] We were like what, uh, what ideas do you wanna talk about? You said, "I'm the Laird Hamilton of surfing the internet." I thought that was actually hilarious. Um, and you said... You just put one line in here and you said, uh, "The number one under discussed antidepressant," um, which I'm curious about, and then you also said, "The next ADHD." What are you referring to for those two things?

George Mack 47:03 Yeah. So two, again, kind of what is ignored by the media that will be studied by historians. So there was a study that came out in terms of depression. Could... I don't know if you've seen it, meta-analysis to depression. Guess what ranked the highest in terms of, uh, alleviating the symptoms of depression.

Shaan Puri 47:21 Walking.

Sam Parr 47:23 Yeah, working out, mo- physical exercise.

George Mack 47:26 So as part of that, that was the big breakthrough that came out, which was that, uh, exercise ranked more according to this, this analysis than SSRIs. The number one however, significantly more than exercise and cognitive behavioral therapy, higher than yoga, higher than tai chi, was dancing. Dance therapy-

Sam Parr 47:44 What?

George Mack 47:44 ... outperformed exercise significantly. Dance, according to this meta-analysis, uh, had the greatest impact in alleviating depression. So I think there's potentially a Headspace or a Calm to be made that is dance therapy.

Shaan Puri 48:00 Dude, that's amazing. [laughs] Who knew? Sam, when's the-

Sam Parr 48:03 I'd rather be depressed

Shaan Puri 48:03 ... when's the last- [laughs]

Sam Parr 48:08 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 48:08 When's the last time you danced, Sam?

Sam Parr 48:10 Never. I... My wife-

Shaan Puri 48:11 If you-

Sam Parr 48:11 My wife... Oh, no, dude

Shaan Puri 48:13 ... no, no. When's the last time-

Sam Parr 48:15 Dude, I have-

Shaan Puri 48:15 Sam Parr boogied

Sam Parr 48:16 ... literally not once in my life have I been in a public place and I... In the Midwest, you don't cry and you don't dance. That's what men don't do, and you don't drink liquids out of a straw.

Shaan Puri 48:26 Hold on. Hold on, hold on, hold on.

Sam Parr 48:27 Those are the three rules of being men in, in the Midwest. Don't cry, don't dance, and don't drink liquid out of straws.

Shaan Puri 48:32 You're... Okay, let's, let's work backwards. You're in your 30s now. You're at a friend's wedding. You're just sitting down, just holding down the fort at the table, making sure the purses don't get stolen? What are, what are you doing?

Sam Parr 48:41 Yes. Yes.

Shaan Puri 48:42 [laughs]

Sam Parr 48:42 I am not dancing.

Shaan Puri 48:43 Okay.

Sam Parr 48:43 I... Wait, George, would you dance at a wedding? I mean, you're kinda suave. You probably would.

George Mack 48:49 Of course. So there's a barbell. So my girlfriend is an incredible dancer. She'd been a dancer since she was, like, five. It's what she does for a living. And I realize there's a barbell when it comes to dance. You either want to be the best dancer on the dance floor or the worst dancer on the dance floor, like, just letting loose and not caring, full-on David Brent style. It's the person in the middle who's either doesn't wanna get on the dance floor or is kind of half moving that is the cringiest. So yeah, I, uh, I'm a big dancer. I'm terrible, but I'm a dancer.

Shaan Puri 49:15 All right. Sam, prom? Did you dance at prom?

Sam Parr 49:19 No.

Shaan Puri 49:20 What'd you do? [laughs]

Sam Parr 49:22 Sat. I just sat. I, I tell you, I don't do it. I, I-

Shaan Puri 49:25 [laughs] What a date.

George Mack 49:26 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 49:27 Wow.

Sam Parr 49:27 It's horrible. That's, that's, like, you know how people say, like, public speaking's the biggest fear? Mine's dancing.

Shaan Puri 49:32 Public dancing. Yeah.

Sam Parr 49:33 Wow.

Shaan Puri 49:33 Public dancing's definitely a bigger fear than public speaking for me. [laughs]

Sam Parr 49:35 Yeah, public dancing's pretty tough. And plus, I don't drink, so, like, if I were, if I were drunk, then I could probably get away with it. But, like, sober dancing as a grown man is probably, like, the, the scariest thing one can do. I'd rather go to war.

George Mack 49:48 Antidepressants, Sam.

Shaan Puri 49:49 [laughs] Wow.

Sam Parr 49:51 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 49:51 Send me to Ukraine right now. [laughs]

Sam Parr 49:53 Yeah, I'd rather get deployed in Baghdad than have to dance at a wedding. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 49:57 Wow.

Sam Parr 49:57 Put that on a bumper sticker.

Shaan Puri 49:59 'Cause dude, think about this.

Sam Parr 49:59 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 50:00 We could do this together, man. We can overcome this. You can just-

Sam Parr 50:03 Wait, so you're fearful of this, too?

Shaan Puri 50:05 Uh, yeah, but not like you. Like, I, I, I... If I'm bad at a thing, I do it. But I hate it. But I do it. But I kinda like it. But I also kinda... I feel insecure about it. But then I do it anyways. Um, I've never just taken the stance of, like, "Nope. [laughs] I'm out"

Sam Parr 50:18 Um, so no. I, I don't think I'm gonna be dancing. What, what was the second thing? The, the next ADHD.

Shaan Puri 50:23 [laughs]

George Mack 50:25 The... We've-

Shaan Puri 50:27 Trying to change the subject

George Mack 50:28 ... we've seen this-

Shaan Puri 50:28 Can't even think about dancing. [laughs]

George Mack 50:31 The next ADHD, um, is, I think... So one great idea I heard for spotting trends, this comes from Chris Williamson, is when a new trend is coming, bet on a countertrend occurring. So one trend that you're seeing right now is a rise in, like, nationalism, like, people, America for America, um, Canada for Canada, China for China. And one [laughs] funny idea I have is, so Duolingo's obviously huge, where people go and understand languages. However, AI is almost making that irrelevant. I think learning a language is probably, the skill of it is gonna go down and down with time. A funny business idea that I think could work is, so when I'd speak to Chris, um, he would talk to me about his therapy sessions and all these revelations he's getting from therapy, and I said to him, I go, "I think 50% of this isn't anything to do with your childhood. It's just being British. Like, you're just overcoming what it means to be British." And I think there's something to be said around essentially creating a Duolingo that cures you of your nationality, 'cause I think you're gonna have a barbell-

Shaan Puri 51:38 [laughs]

George Mack 51:38 ... where you have everybody's, like, America for America, or it's, like, I'm a global citizen, Balaji Network state style. And you could then just localize everything, so, oh, like, imagine an advert campaign, I think, from the ad first. "Oh, you're British. Um, I bet you can't take compliments. Uh, I bet you have a lot of self-doubt." And it's like, "Yes, yes, yes. Help fix being British." Or if you're American, uh, you don't know anything in Europe. You, you don't... Like, you just call Africa one big blob. Like, let's remove that syndrome for you.

Shaan Puri 52:05 [laughs]

George Mack 52:05 'Cause you actually realize everybody is very self-conscious of their own country. So that's one of my ideas that I think will be the new kind of pathology that people have around themselves.

Shaan Puri 52:15 American one sounded awesome to me. [laughs]

George Mack 52:19 That's America for you.

Sam Parr 52:20 [laughs]

George Mack 52:20 That might be the market where it doesn't work.

Shaan Puri 52:22 [laughs]

Sam Parr 52:24 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 52:24 Okay, so this-

George Mack 52:24 It's like-

Shaan Puri 52:25 ... this works internationally. [laughs]

George Mack 52:27 Yes.

Shaan Puri 52:27 But you don't wanna cure Americans of the self-delusion that we have, that everything is great-

George Mack 52:31 No

Shaan Puri 52:31 ... and we're great, and it's all gonna work out great. That, that, uh, pronoia that we have is, is very, very helpful to us. If you just, if you rob us of that, we get worse.

George Mack 52:39 One of my big regrets against being British is I've been early to a lot of things, but then maybe didn't have the conviction. Maybe it goes back to what you mentioned earlier, Sam. And I came up with this idea ages ago, where I would, like, visualize, um, myself on my deathbed, and I'd be there. There's nobody there. I'm, like, the worst version of myself. Then I get a knock on the door, and it's the best version of myself, and it's that kind of this meditation, like, the deathbed regret meditation. And then at the end, it's like, "What action are you gonna take today?" And I thought this was the weirdest fucking shit I'd ever created. And now it's big on TikTok. It's, like, my friend was showing me, it's a viral trend of these girls doing this exercise that I, I originally came up with. And I think there's something in, like, hardship as a service, so bet on a trend going the other way, which is life is so good compared to modern, uh, compared to historical standards, that people want more hardship in their life. So I'd potentially create an app which would be a negative visualization. So every day, you plug it in, and you are in World War II about to go over the trenches. Your brother has died. Your mother's written letters, but you don't want to read them. You don't have no way of contacting your wife, and you're about to go over into the trenches. And then you wake up, and all of a sudden, my life now is incredible. So I think negative visualization is a tool from stoicism, but I think there's probably a, a billion-dollar idea in-

Shaan Puri 53:59 A product. A product you could build out of that.

George Mack 54:01 Yeah.

Sam Parr 54:02 Dude, have you guys seen this thing? Um, I'll, I'll have to send it to you. It's on Instagram, and it's a page, and the guy uses AI, and the headline will be, "You woke up as a slave who's going to be in, uh, who, who's being forced to be a, a gladiator in Rome," or, "You've woken up as a laborer in Egypt building the pyramids," or, "You've woken up in a slum in Mumbai in 1992." And it, like, sets up all these, like, crazy scenes, and then some of them are great. Like, "You woke up-

George Mack 54:32 Mm

Sam Parr 54:32 ... as an emperor, uh, in Rome." And it shows this, it shows from a POV, uh, your point of view of that person waking up in the morning and walking around. Have you guys seen this? Or, and it could be even, like-

George Mack 54:42 Yes

Sam Parr 54:42 ... "You woke up as a kid in the Midwest in 1982." Have you seen that, George?

George Mack 54:46 Yes. So this is the per- thinking from the ad first model. You can already picture the ads there. It then runs to a monthly subscription, and you do that as your morning meditation, and it replaces just observing your thoughts. It's more a negative contrasting tool to make people feel better about themselves.

Shaan Puri 54:59 George, thanks for coming on. Where should people follow? Twitter? Twitter's the best spot?

George Mack 55:04 Yeah, Twitter's the best spot, George Mack on Twitter. Um, highagency.com if you want to read the, the full piece. Um, anything ads, adprofessor.com as well. And yeah, that's, that's everything.

Shaan Puri 55:17 You're awesome, dude. Every, every conversation we have with you is, is amazing. You're a great thinker, and, um, you really have a gift for making ideas that are a little, let's say, outside of the, kind of the zone of conventional thinking, and then making them sticky and memorable and kind of worth considering. So I think there's very, it's very rare. There's not a lot of people who can do that, and you're one of them.

George Mack 55:39 Thank you.

Sam Parr 55:39 Thank you, George.

George Mack 55:39 Likewise.

Sam Parr 55:40 You're the man. Are you gonna become an American anytime soon, by the way?

George Mack 55:44 So I just landed yesterday. I just had my visa approved. I've moved from Dubai to the US purely because I find when I'm in the US is the luck raiser. You're way more likely to be lucky, serendipitous. I don't think the quality of life here is as better as, actually, as in the rest of the world now, but luck, uh, so much more significantly. So yes, I'm a proud Ted Lasso.

Sam Parr 56:05 Welcome to the tribe, brother.

George Mack 56:06 [laughs]

Sam Parr 56:07 You're in. Welcome to Texas. I'll get you some cowboy boots-

George Mack 56:10 Yes

Sam Parr 56:10 ... and a hat. And, uh-

George Mack 56:12 Let's go

Sam Parr 56:12 ... thanks for being here. Thanks for coming on the pod. God bless you. God bless America.

Shaan Puri 56:15 God- [laughs]

Sam Parr 56:16 Talk soon.

George Mack 56:17 Let's go.

Shaan Puri 56:17 [laughs]

George Mack 56:17 Yee-haw.

Shaan Puri 56:18 [laughs]

Sam Parr 56:37 [laughs] [upbeat music]