BigDeal - #49 Wealth Expert: The New Rich Do These Things Daily | Sahil Bloom

Episode Date: February 5, 2025

🚀 Main Street Over Wall Street is where the real deals get done. Join top investors, founders, and operators for three days of powerful connection, sharp strategy, and big opportunities — live in Austin, Nov 2–4. https://contrarianthinking.biz/msows-bigdeal In this episode, Sahil Bloom talks the importance of time management, the impact of technology on relationships, and the significance of hard conversations. He shares his personal journey of becoming more aware of time as a valuable asset and how it has influenced his life choices. The conversation also covers the importance of mentorship, habit formation, and the balance between ambition and family presence and quality time. Codie and Sahil discuss decision-making frameworks, particularly the concept of 'razors' that simplify choices, as well as the importance of life seasons, and strong partnerships. By the end of this episode, Sahil will redefine true wealth that transcends financial success. and the legacy of love and wisdom passed down through family. Want help scaling your business to $1M in monthly revenue? ⁠Click here⁠ to connect with my consulting team. Chapters 00:00- The Morning Routine of a Creative Mind 01:41- Understanding the Concept of Time Billionaire 05:20- The Life-Altering Conversation About Time 07:23- The Impact of Technology on Relationships 10:16- The Importance of Hard Conversations 12:53- Building Discipline Through Morning Routines 17:02- The ABC System for Habit Formation 18:57- Mentorship and Building Relationships with Influential Figures 26:59- The Human Experience Behind Wealth 32:02- Navigating the Tension Between Ambition and Family Presence 34:23- The Importance of Involving Family in Your Work 36:25- Quality Time: The Difference Between Time and Energy 39:56- Navigating Negative Thought Patterns 41:26- Decision-Making Frameworks: The Power of Razors 48:00- The Impact of Relationships on Wealth and Health 49:59- Redefining Wealth: Beyond Financial Success 55:56- Seasons of Life: Prioritizing What Matters 01:00:09- Building a Strong Partnership: Love and Support 01:05:06- Legacy of Love: Wisdom from Family 01:08:05- The Power of Focus: Changing Your Life in a Year MORE FROM BIGDEAL: 🎥 ⁠YouTube⁠ 📸 ⁠Instagram⁠ 📽️ ⁠TikTok⁠ MORE FROM CODIE SANCHEZ: 🎥 ⁠YouTube⁠ 📸 ⁠Instagram⁠ 📽️ ⁠TikTok⁠ OTHER THINGS WE DO: 🫂 ⁠Our community⁠ 📰 ⁠Free newsletter⁠ 🏦 ⁠Biz buying course⁠ 🏠 ⁠Resibrands⁠ 💰 ⁠CT Capital⁠ 🏙️ ⁠Main St Hold Co⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The things that I do in the morning now are really focused on creative work, writing. That's when I feel most creative. So, like, this book got basically written from, like, 5 a.m. to 8 a.m. over the course of three years. To me, in order to be able to write and be creative at 5, I needed to, like, get up at 4, and it was the ice bath. It was, like, the biggest thing for me. Welcome back to the Big Deal podcast.

This is Cody Sanchez, and this podcast is for those of you who want to change your life and make a dent on the world. Okay, today we have somebody on who is going to tell us how do we actually achieve the things we want out of life this year? How do we use research data and studies in order to create frameworks that make us able to live the life that we want by our actions every single day? We're going to steal habits from my friend Sahelblum, who is an author of the brand new book, Five Types of Wealth. He is also a former private equity investor. He has millions of followers online. And he's known for one thing really interesting in my mind, which is taking

frameworks from some of the best minds out there and applying them to everyday life. These frameworks led him to get mentors like Tim Cook, you know, famously of Apple running the joint. Also another friend of mine, Arthur Brooks, from Harvard, who famously wrote a book with Oprah. And so Sahel has this unique ability with his sort of private equity-like mind to go out into the world, pull together how high performers use data and frameworks in order to make our lives better. And When he talks about wealth, it's not just the same way we typically do on this podcast. We're not talking about just money, but we're talking about living an extensive life. So I think you guys will really enjoy this conversation.

This is so applicable and so tactical for hitting your goals in 2025. Let's get into it. Okay, I want to start out with a concept that you got in front of millions of people and kind of changed how I think about life, actually. And I think for a ton of people on Twitter, it was the same thing, which is your idea of time billionaire. You talk about that a little bit? Yeah.

The first time I came across this was, I think it was on the Tim Ferriss Show podcast, an investor named Graham Duncan, who is a very successful investor, talked about this idea of the time billionaire. And as I went through the whole book research process, I spoke to Graham. And he basically said that during his career as an investor, he would interview hundreds of young people that were coming and joining his firm. And they all had the same goal, which was to one day become billionaires, dollar billionaires to go make a billion dollars.

And what he said was that they were all billionaires in one very important way. They were time billionaires. They quite literally had billions of seconds left in their life. A billion seconds is roughly 30 years. So like when you're 20, you have maybe two billion seconds left. When you're 50, you have a billion seconds. And that idea is a really important one because what it implies is that time is your most precious asset. It is quite literally the only thing that you can't get back.

And yet, as young people in particular, we never think about our time. We basically live in this world where time is nothing to us. We think we're immortal. And then at the very end, it's the only thing that you think about, but it's too late. It's gone at that point. And so the call to action around that idea of the time billionaire is to recognize that time is your most precious asset, to become aware of it. And the question that I go and ask people, especially young people, is would you trade lives with Warren Buffett? He's worth $130 billion.

He has access to anyone in the world. He reads and learns for a living. He flies around on private jets, does all these fancy things. But you wouldn't trade lives with him. Because he's 95 years old, there's no way you would agree to trade the amount of time you have left for all of the money in the world. So you know in the back of your mind that time has incalculable value. And yet, on a daily basis, how much time are you wasting? sitting on your phone scrolling around, worrying about other people, stressing over dumb things, comparing yourself to others, all of these stupid things that we do, when time is the only thing that matters in the end.

That's so good. You had this visual, I remember from back in the day, where you basically have, you know, a father and a son, and you see the flip, right? So from the father taking care of the son to the son taking care of the father. And it was so poignant, which is what I like about a lot of your frameworks and the book, is you put these visuals to them, too. where it's kind of like a kick in the gut. You're like, all right, Sahil, copy. I got it. Like, no more scrolling.

Take it easy. But I really like that. You also said this quote that I loved, which was every single thing you do today is something that your 90-year-old self will wish they could go back and do. The good old days are happening right now. I was wondering for you, since most people never think about time, you think about it a lot. When did that flip and why? In 2021, I had a.

single conversation that changed my life. I was out for a drink with an old friend and we were just catching up and he was asking how I was doing. And I had spent the last seven years of my life rising through the ranks in the finance world. I was working 80 to 100 hours a week. I was making more and more money and thinking that that was how I was going to reach the land of success and happiness. And a lot of other areas of my life had started to suffer. Namely, I was living very very far away from my parents, 3,000 miles away, and they were getting older. And so my friend asked how I was doing in this moment, and I said that it had started to get tough being so far away from my parents. They had started to show chinks in their armor, if you will, they were mortal.

And he asked how old they were. And I said, mid-60s. And he said, how often do you see them? And I said, maybe once a year. And he looked me in the face and just said, okay, so you're going to see your parents 15 more times before they die. and I remember feeling like I had been punched in the gut. I mean, the idea that the amount of time you have left with the people that you love most in this world is so finite,

so countable that you can put it onto a few hands shook me to my core. And in that moment, I recognized that something had to change, that if we didn't make a change, I was going to wake up one day and wonder what the fuck I just did with my life. And that was the spark of this entire journey. of starting to recognize and appreciate time and starting to realize that you are actually much more in control of your time than you think. And the next day, we made a decision. My wife and I had a candid conversation.

And within 45 days, I had left my job. We'd sold her house in California and moved across the country to live closer to my parents. And so we took that number 15 and turned it into now it's in the hundreds. I see my parents multiple times a month. You are much more in control of these things than you think. but only if you develop an awareness of just how important they are. Yeah, you know, it's interesting, too, is like we talk a lot, obviously. And I think a lot of times people write books, and they talk about this stuff, and they're like,

but do you live it, you know? And one of the things you're really good about is when we go back and forth, you're like, you're kind of working a lot. Like, are you sure you want to do that? You're hanging out with Chris very much. And so I think it's also cool that you, you know, if somebody's listening to this, it's like, yes, you can internalize all this, but then also find yourself a couple buddies that'll keep you honest.

And it seems like you've done that really well. And you've surrounded yourself with these interesting people that kind of have this same perspective too. One thought I had about that was I saw this other video of yours that I had never seen before. And I don't know if we've talked about it. But you kind of have this theory on phones and how to not have them ruin your daily life. Do you know what I'm talking about and what video I'm talking about? Not having them in front of you when you're with people. Yeah.

Yeah. What is this? Is this database or is this a sawhill based? No, no. There is, so there is scientific evidence that if I have my phone out on the table, even face down while we're having a conversation, you and I experience less feelings of connection after that interaction than if I don't have my phone out in front of us. What about an iPad? I'm sure it's the exact same effect. I mean, the phone, because of the feeling that we know we get from it, which is it draws our attention, as we're interacting, if I have this out in front of. us, you are experiencing me as being less present in that conversation, which makes sense. Because as soon as it lights up, you see like my eyes jump to it.

Because that's what it's built to do. These things are literally designed to grab at your attention. They have entire teams of people that are dedicated to making them addicting. And so the phone has become this drug in our lives that we know it's pulling your attention away from the things that really matter, the people that are sitting in front of you. And so when we talk about these things, we talk about cultivating these relationships, the people that you have around you that keep you honest on this stuff. So much of it is things like that.

It's going back to the basics of how we operate as humans where we can have a face-to-face interaction and really importantly, where you have people in your circle who are willing to tell you the truth. I think about this all the time, that like friends are great, but a lot of friends will just pat you on the back and like cheer you on when things are going well, which don't get me wrong, great. We need some cheerleaders in our lives. But more than cheerleaders, I need some people that are willing to hold me to account when I'm not living up to the things that I say I want to live up to.

My wife is a huge truth teller in my life. I know that Chris is for you, willing to tell us the truth when we're not. But you need friends like that too. Like I need friends who are willing to tell me when I am working on things that really don't make sense for me to work on. When I'm getting involved in like opportunities that don't really have the upside or aren't really down in my zone of genius. You need those truth tellers in your life if you want to continue to grow. Yeah, it's true. Well, you and I kind of had that happen anyway because you were like, listen, this thing that we were working on, which was this company, you're like, it's just not going to, it's not going to be big enough for us.

And like we had to have a tough conversation, you know, but I think because we had that tough conversation, like we're better friends. Absolutely. And that's, by the way. And most people will never do that. Totally. They'll just shove it down inside and then they'll have resentment. And then at some point, you know, they kind of talk behind backs about other people because you never get it out. I learned this from you, actually.

It's become a core mental model in my own life, which is when you avoid a hard conversation, you are taking on a debt that you have to repay with interest at a date in the future. Time does not heal anything when it comes to relationships. So you have to make those minor repairs along the way. Otherwise, you're just going to have major repairs to make in the future. I've always thought that that metaphor for thinking about hard conversations works, it might just be that you and I have finance minds. So we think in like the debt terms, but it makes sense to me.

I'm like, it is literally a debt that you were going to have to repay one way or another and it's just going to get worse. So having the hard conversation now is the smartest move for the future. Yeah, it's so true. And I think a lot of times too, you know, when people today have difficult conversations that they want to have, a lot of times they'll just avoid it for, they'll lose a friendship over it. Like I remember I had one instance with a girlfriend of mine and she just didn't want to get

on the phone and didn't want to ever talk about it. And our relationship to this day has never been repaired because of it. And so I think that's really normal when we have a society where young people are not actually engaging face to face anymore. We're texting back and forth. You know, we're on social media. We're sending memes. That's the communication methods. We sort of lost the ability to do the crucial conversations thing. Like back when you were in finance, didn't they make you read crucial conversations? We didn't read it, but I know the principles. Yeah. Yeah. They made us read it at Vanguard because we're more touchy feeling. Although it is like, I mean, even in the world of finance now, I think that the art of hard conversations has been lost.

And I found it time and time again in my finance career that like every single time you avoided a hard conversation with a management team that you'd invest in it, it ended poorly. It was bad because you were just delaying something that needed to happen along the way. And so I also think that like there are hacks that make hard conversations easier. if you have a hard conversation with someone, going for a walk with them while you have the hard conversation is scientifically proven to improve that conversation. When you walk alongside someone and when your gate is matching with someone, you actually feel a closer level of connection with them scientifically. And so it makes the hard conversation easier. It makes you feel more connected to the person. They feel more open to you.

It also reduces the uncomfortable feeling of making direct eye contact during a hard conversation, which makes it easier to do. So if you have like if you need to have a hard conversation with your partner go for a walk if you need to have a hard conversation with a colleague or someone that works on your team go for a walk and do it It makes it significantly easier so you won't want to avoid it I love that my team is also now never going to want to go for a walk with it I fucking know what's up It's like being taken out back. It's like taking old yeller out back. Hey we got to go for a walk around the block Oh, that's funny You know it kind of like makes me think about

Something with you that I think's really interesting too you are probably one of the more disciplined humans I've met. You do crazy ice baths at like three in the morning nonstop when you have to like hammer the ice on the East Coast. It's wild. But if you had to pick like one habit that you do every morning, what is it and why? Okay. When I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice. I want to help my kids and I want to give back to the community. Then it's the vacation of a lifetime. I wonder if my head of office has a forever. Eversetter. An IG Private Wealth advisor

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BetMGEM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming, Ontario. I... Let's see. I am very... I've always been very disciplined and routine-oriented. I probably have some level of undiagnosed OCD that makes me that way. Like, I have always loved the show Dexter because I love... Not that he's a serial killer.

I should probably caveat that... I'm not a serial killer. I guess if I was, I wouldn't admit it. But I've always loved that character because he is so methodical about his routines. And there's something that, like, I have always found comfort in my routines. For me, my mornings have always been about priming myself for the day. I've always liked that idea of, like, how do you prime yourself for the things you're going to do? The things that I do in the morning now are really focused on creative work writing.

That's when I feel most creative. So, like, this book got basically written from, like, 5 a.m. to 8 a.m. over the course of three years. And to me, in order to be able to write and be creative at 5, I needed to, like, get up at 4. And it was the ice bath. It was, like, the biggest thing for me. And it was not about the trend and about the social media. You were doing it before it was cool, to be fair. I was doing it before it was cool. Give you some credit. And I have been, I've continued to do it now that it's not as cool anymore. By the way, like, that was a trend. 2021 and 2022, it was a great way to get likes on social media.

now like the people that are ice bathing now are like real oh geez i actually still like it i don't post it on social media because i don't need you know my my ladies all over the internet but like it's it does wake you up it definitely wakes you up and it makes you feel like a badass and nothing bad has ever come from feeling like a badass because when you feel like a badass when you feel like a savage when you feel like a winner that has ripple effects into everything that you do the way that you engage with the world is different which is why i always say there's no such thing as a loser who wakes up at 5 a.m. and works out. It has nothing to do with working out. It just has to do with the fact that when you do a hard thing to start the day, if you can convince yourself to do

that over and over and over again, you start to interact with the world differently. You rewire your brain to recognize that you are capable of taking an action and creating an outcome. And when you do that, you start to operate better in every area of your life. Yeah, that's a good point. You know, I'm pretty disciplined in some areas, but you and Chris are so disciplined physically. like it's just a different level probably because you were basically a pro athlete were you pro no you were college right uh baseball um you're selling yourself short well thanks this morning this morning uh this morning i woke so i wake up every day at 4 a m uh it's just my habit and by the way that's not me being a hard o saying i don't sleep i go to bed at like eight i literally live like an 80 or 90

year old man so when i say this like wisdom from old people i sort of am like yeah i'm kind of an old soul at heart um but i woke up at four and i had a text from you already uh that i replied to and you were like, why are you up? And I was like, why are you up? Don't ask me that question. Well, I think, you know, what I've struggled with sometimes that maybe people can relate to is physically, I have a different discipline indicator than I do professionally. Like, there's very little work-wise I'm not going to do if I say I'm going to do it.

I don't know why. I'm just geared that way. But do you have the tool you use to make habits stick for you? Do you have a rule? Yeah, I have something that I call my ABC system. when it comes to habits. And the idea here is that with any habit you are trying to build, you create an A goal, a B goal, and a C goal. The A goal is your best case. That is the like best version of the thing during any given day. The B goal is sort of a baseline case. And then

the C goal is the minimum viable version of it. So for an example, if you were going to try to create a like workout habit, your A goal might be to go to the gym for an hour on a given day. Your B goal might be 30 minutes, and your C goal might be to just like take a 15 minute walk. So the whole idea is on any given day, if you feel great, you go nail your A goal. If you feel just okay, do the B goal. And on days when you just feel like crap and you don't want to do it, you have to convince yourself to just do the C goal. And the whole idea there is that anything above zero compounds.

We know that financially, right? Like we know that if we put away $10, that's better than putting away zero. The exact same thing applies to all of these areas of your life. So if you can just convince yourself on those bad days to just do something, it's better than doing nothing. But the hard mindset shift there is for ambitious people in particular, they think that unless it's optimal, it's not going to be beneficial. And that's just not true. Doing a 15-minute walk is better than doing nothing. Doing the like 10 minutes of focus work is better than doing nothing.

So it doesn't have to be that you have the four-hour deep work routine or the like perfect, you know, morning routine or the perfect diet. Just do the little bit that actually stacks up in compounds. Yeah. You know, directionally, I think that's how I set most of my goals too. It's like every single day is their directional forward movement as opposed to do we hit, you know, do we hit our mile goal every single day in a marathon? Like, that doesn't really matter to me. It's like, am I moving in the right direction on the same path and is momentum forward? So I think that's, that's interesting. You know, I remember a billion years ago, I like, saw people. I, like, saw picture of you on Twitter. And I was like, oh, that's Sahel. And that's Tim Cook. Like, what? What? Like,

how does you know the CEO of Apple? And then I realize this is a thing about you. Like, you sort of have this ability, I think, to get really big, powerful people to, quote unquote, mentor you without being annoying, right? And I think a lot of people today are like, I want a big mentor. Or how could I get somebody like Tim Cook to care about me? How did that relationship start? Tell that story. Yeah. So I met Tim for the first time in 2014. When I first started working, I just graduated from Stanford, and I took a job working in private equity. I was going to work 80 to 100 hour weeks, and that was the job.

That's what it was going to be. And so I knew if I wanted to work out, I was going to have to go early in the morning. And that meant getting to the equinox in Palo Alto at 445 in the morning every single day. And that meant I had to get up at 3.45 and wake myself up and be at the gym at 445. It turns out that there aren't that many people that are willing to get to the gym at 445. So there was a group of like eight of us that would show up every single day at that time, like waiting for them to open the door. And you would talk to those people because you were with them every single day. So six months go by and I'm like talking to all these people early in the morning.

And I was having a conversation with one guy and I walk away and someone comes up to me and is like, do you know who that is? That guy you were just talking to. I was like, I don't know. That's the guy. Like one of the guys that's here. And he goes, that's Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple. And I was like, oh shit. Because I've probably been saying the dumbest stuff to this guy for the last six months.

And look, I wasn't in tech. So it wasn't close to the space. I didn't know who he was because he didn't look how he looks on stage. And he was the relatively new CEO at the time. He was not nearly the level of prominence that he is today. But for six months, I interacted with him on a daily basis and was just normal. Like I wasn't looking for something because, hey, I didn't know who he was. And I'm not like a big transaction guy.

So that's just not how I'm wired. After figuring out who he was, we happened to be having a conversation about something I'd seen related to Apple, and I decided I was going to send it to him as a follow-up. And so I guessed his email address and sent it to him. And he replied right away and was like, you know, made some funny comment about if I was as good at other things as I, you know, like investing as I am at guessing email addresses, then he's like he's excited to back me or whatever. Like he was just making a joke. And I sort of took that opportunity as a way to get. together with him try to like you know pick his brain whatever you want to call it and it ended up sparking what has been an incredible relationship and and mentorship he's been an unbelievable supporter

on my journey he was one of the big drivers of me deciding to leave the path i was on and go down this kind of crazy path you know a lot of people don't know his story is really one of like carving his own path he was on a very stable track in the you know executive management training program at IBM, long career there. People stay on those paths. They're great. And he decided to step off that and took this job at Compaq, which was a computer startup, like a weird little computer startup.

And Steve Jobs was looking for someone to hire and saw his resume and saw the IBM track and was like, oh, weird, big company guy, probably not a fit. Then saw that he had taken this job at this little startup and was like, hmm, maybe this guy is actually different than a big company guy because he made this weird decision, this pattern interrupt. And so decided to talk to him and then the rest was history. He's created trillions of dollars of value. And so I think his map of like doing the thing that he was pulled towards energy wise, even when it didn't really make sense, ended up informing him sort of like giving me some of the courage to go and do this. You know, he's the first blurb on the back of the

book now. So he's been an incredible supporter on the journey. But it was like truly engineered serendipity in the sense of it was very lucky that I met someone like that. But it was was luck that was engineered by the fact that I was waking up at 3.45 every single day for a long time. What if 2025 wasn't just a year of grind, but a year of ownership and flow? That's the idea behind my first ever three-day virtual event this February. It's not just a conference, it's a movement, and it starts with you. Over three information packed days, we're going to tackle everything you need to take control from finding the perfect business to negotiating killer deals to building the mindset of a true owner. This isn't just a theory. We're bringing in laser

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We've never done it before. And I think it's the first of its kind. So it's your shot to be part of something bigger when it comes to ownership. Visit the link in the description to save your seat. And let's make 2025 the year. own it together. Yeah, I also think I think a mixture of like competency and desire is really rare. And I think not a lot of people realize that. You know, the average person overestimates, I think, how intelligent a lot of people are at the top. And they underestimate how much consistent work over time is the actual

path to success. I mean, Tim Cook is probably an outlier, but most of us don't know how to code, you know, most of us don't know how to create something incredibly unique and differentiated, like an Apple. But if we show up at the gym, if we show up every day in private equity, that's actually super rare, which is fascinating to me. I also didn't want anything.

In this modern day and age, I have this perspective that networking is dead because it implies a transaction that is not conducive to building real relationships. The number of people over those years that I've known Tim that I saw come up to him the first time

and be like, hey, I want to pitch you on this startup or like, hey, a job at Apple, whatever the thing is, you have to recognize that people in high positions, their entire life is spent with people coming with their handout to them. That's their entire life. You are starting to experience that more as you achieve more and more success. You see it, but you can't imagine what that's like for someone like a Tim Cook. His entire life is someone coming with their handout.

So honestly, the fact that for six months we interacted when I truly didn't know who he was built up a base of interactions where he could tell, like, I didn't want anything. I've never, I don't, the number of times I've ever asked him about something about Apple

in my life, I don't even know if I ever have because I don't care. I'm not looking for a job. I don't want something from him. You know, like it is just a genuine desire to learn. I mean,

he has access to incredible people. He has incredible stories, insights, wisdom. That's what I want. I want to learn from being around these incredible people, understand what makes them tick. And frankly,

for someone like that, and I still think about this, he still does it. He is the CEO of of the largest companies in the world and he wakes up at 3.45 every single day and goes and works out. Baffling. It works harder than any employee that he has working under him. I can't imagine having to work for him and knowing that like no matter what I do, I'm not going to work as hard as my boss, not be as focused, not be as driven. It is remarkable. And so we have a lot to learn from people

like that, but it comes from being genuine. It comes from actually authentically wanting to create value with no expectation of return. Yeah, you know, but I think you've done that a few different times. And so I think it's an interesting thing for people to take away, which is like, how do you get a, you know, the book is amazing. It's right here. I don't know if we can see it on the screen, the five types of wealth. And I remember when you were showing me the different covers, I like the one you landed on. My wife was involved in the design process, which was great. I don't know that, actually. She's a designer, so it was great. Oh, right? A gap, right? Yeah, she was a You have Tim Cook, Andrew Huberman, Mel Robbins, Arthur Brooks, Gary Vaynerchuk, to name a few.

And, you know, as I was thinking about the book and going through it, there were a lot of ways I could go. And I want to talk about a lot of the frameworks because I think that's one of the things you're maybe most unique at in the world, which is like it does seem like you're obsessed with learning. You're like, how do I optimize my life to have this very wealthy life with a broad spectrum definition? but simultaneously do it in the most efficient and effective way possible. But I wanted to start before I got to some of your frameworks with, like, what is your favorite story of the book? Like, what's your favorite thing to talk about in there? I was surprised in the writing process by how much it ended up being a story about the human experience. When I set out, when I, frankly, when I signed the original book deal, I thought it was going to be a like rather standard sort of framework.

like simple framework self-improvement book where you just have the like one framework and then you basically like sort of just like build it out for 200 pages and it becomes one of those books that people say like well this could have been a 10 page blog and it ended up taking this right turn where the human stories were what called me and telling the stories of some of the people who have experienced wealth in all these different ways in their life the people that reached out to me the people I went and spent time with that ended up being the most powerful thing and And, you know, in particular, there's a woman named Alexis Lockhart who reached out to me basically right at the end of my book writing process to tell me her story of a tragic event that had happened in her life and the wisdom that it had inspired and instilled in her that I think ended up sort of like pulling together the whole heart of the book. And I feel like that is unique because as you read it, you will see yourself in one of the human stories. And that's what really makes ideas stick. And so even when I think about sharing frameworks now, I think that frameworks are made so much more powerful by a real human story to connect to around them, rather than just being a big idea. Yeah, that's a good point.

Yeah, like for instance, tell me about the bees and your son. I like that story. Oh, yeah. So I, this past, I guess this was like in May of this past year, we were outside and my wife was like we were playing I have a two year old at the time and we're playing and my wife was like there's a bunch of bees around like I'm going to take Roman inside makes me nervous and so we walk inside and I look out at this tree and I see like a bunch of movement around it and I'm like looking looking looking and then I kind of have this holy shit moment of like that that entire tree is bees

so I go out and look and it is this enormous hive and so I end up going down this rabbit hole And I sort of live tweeted this rabbit hole of trying to figure out what was going on and how to get rid of this enormous infestation of bees. Because I know nothing about bees. I'm not much of like a handyman either. And so like I'm definitely not going to try to like take this down myself. So I'm like Googling, you know, you know, exterminators trying to figure it out, realize it's honeybees. Then I'm like learning about honeybees. And the principle there was like sort of a combination of a lot of things I talk about.

One being curiosity and being able to sort of go down the rabbit hole. that as we're going I'm like trying to explain to my two-year-old the type of bees it is and all these things and then also just like a reminder that the most interesting content in the world is like journey-based content we often think that these kind of like engineered moments are the thing that really drives content but people want to hear about a human journey they want to hear about like a real experience something you're you're kind of engaged in in real time and so whenever anyone comes and it's like how can I start my content journey.

I really do think that the Gary Vaynerchuk, like old school model of like documenting is the way to do it. Yeah, it's also more fun because you're not engineering things. You're literally living your life and then reflecting on it, which is I think how most of us got started. Like I remember the first piece of content I went out that went viral. I was talking about a laundromat. And like I literally was like,

nobody's really going to be interested in this, but I think this is weird and we should talk about it. And then lo and behold, it becomes this sort of, it has a mind of its own. But I think what I took away from that story from you is, Like, if you're curious about something and can become obsessed about something, it takes on a life of its own. That mixture of curiosity and obsession can lead to just about anything you want in the world.

And the coolest thing about that story, which you love in particular, is so it turned out it was 50,000 honeybees that had formed this hive. And so we had to get a honeybee keeper to come take them away because you can't kill honeybees and you shouldn't. They're incredible for the environment. So anyone out there. and a guy comes, a local who makes local honey, and he takes the bees away. And I end up posting about him and his business. He sold out a year's worth of his honey on the back of this thread that had gone viral and has been like gifting us honeycomb and raw honey as a result ever since and has become a friend.

So Larry the beekeeper, shout out to Larry in Queens, New York. God, you know I love a boring business. I just, I had to get like one in, you know. You have also said, PSA, this is from a Reddit post that you reposted, PSA, 20 years from now, the only people who will remember that you worked late are your kids. Now you're a dad, you have a son. How do you mesh that belief with, I've also heard you say before, that you have to earn your seat at the table every day? How do you mesh achieving big things with actually being there for your kids and the people that you love? There are a few realities that need to be considered here.

And this tension that we're going to talk about, the tension between presence and ambition, is, I would argue, the fundamental tension of being an adult as a parent. Here's one truth. For 10 years, you are your child's favorite person in the entire world. And after that, they have new favorite people. They have friends, best friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, partners, spouses, children of their own. And you will never occupy that same place in their world.

But for those 10 years, you are literally everything to them. And unfortunately, that 10-year period also coincides with the time when you were told professionally that you should be chasing every single version of more that the world hands you to. It's when you are hustling the most. It's when you're traveling the most. It's when you're building the most. And so that creates a real tension between your desire to be present during that magic window of time with your kids and your ambition to go and create things, to go and build something.

How you navigate that tension is how you navigate your life with your kids. I have wrestled with it, and I share this in the book in the following way, which is your children need to understand the why. why you are doing the things you are doing. That is how you navigate this tension well. Because what kids do is if you do not tell them the why of why you are excited about the things you're doing, why you are passionate about them, why they matter to you, they fill it with the worst answer, which is that you don't care about them, that you don't want to be around, that dad's never around, that mom's never around.

When the reality is you are being driven by a purpose. You are called to something, whether that purpose is building a huge business or whether it's providing for the family or whether it's taking care of people, whether it's impacting the world, whatever that purpose is. That is the real why. And you need to make sure they understand that. And that answer is really informed by my own experience with my father. My dad is extraordinarily hardworking and driven. He's a professor, researcher, works extremely hard to this day. He's 70 years old. And my entire childhood, I remember very clearly him working very hard on things he cared about and me always knowing why he was working hard on those things.

Always knowing that when he was gone, I knew why he was gone, what he was doing, the talk he was giving, the research he was doing, and I knew why it mattered to him. So as a result, I felt like I was a part of that mission that he was on. I felt like I was on the journey with him. It wasn't that he was gone and I was here. It was that I was a part of it. And so I always say that to parents, young parents, make sure that your kids understand why you are doing things.

Embrace that tension, navigate it, in the way that you see fit, but make sure your children are on that journey with you so that it's not an us versus them so that it's all of you together. This episode is brought to you by FedEx. These days, the power move isn't having a big metallic credit card to drop on the check at a corporate lunch. The real power move is leveling up your business with FedEx intelligence and accessing one of the biggest data networks powered by one of the biggest deletlices.

delivery networks. Level up your business with FedEx, the new power move. There was some sort of societal shift where historically we used to work together with our families. We used to take over family businesses. We used to actually hire our family members. And that was the norm for most of human history, right? It would actually be bizarre if we did not in some way, shape, or form work with and alongside our family. And then, you know, maybe two generations ago, three max, that changed. And then it became nepotism to hire people in your family. And then it became actually bad for the next generation to pass things down for them. And I'm not sure we weren't told a lie about that. You know, I work with my father now. He actually works with my company in some ways. I was my brother's

first job at a college. My mom's worked with me before. And now my husband and I work together. And, you know, Elizabeth and you worked on the book cover design together as well. So I think there's something really beautiful about, I don't have kids, so I can't speak to that. But allowing your family to come along for the ride. It's like how can you expect them to be happy for you and your accomplishments if they don't know what they are, if they don't understand them, and if they can't touch them, see them and feel them. So when it comes to parenting, just to stick on this for one more minute, when it comes to parenting, what habits or rituals do you have with your son in order for you to have real quality time, even though you are traveling all the

time. Yeah, I really try to understand and very clearly establish an awareness of the difference between time and energy. And this is a really important mindset shift for all areas of life, but definitely for your relationships. And the difference here is I can spend an hour with you, but if I'm sitting there on my phone, worried about emails, responding to text, looking at Instagram, you are not going to feel my presence in any way. And we are not going to feel connected in any way. It's similar to what we were saying earlier about having the phone on the table. Kids are the exact same way. They're no different. If you have your phone out in front of them while you're supposedly spending time with them, that hour, they are not going to feel any connection.

But 10 minutes of truly present energy, when they are the only person in the world to you, can last for hours and hours in their mind. And so that is really what I try to focus on. It is, I may not. I may be in a season of my life where I am unbalanced, where I am like all hands on deck, charging, focused. Right now, I am in one of those trying to go out and spread the message of this book, which is very important to me. But when I'm there, I am going to be tuned off of everything else and it's going to be there. Like, I'm in my favorite thing in the world with my two and a half year old boy is like roughhousing. I can't be on my phone while I do that, right? Like he wants to wrestle. He wants to like get thrown around, get tossed up in the air, all of those things. And so, it's, It is the most beautiful thing because it forces you to turn off in a very real way. But that same principle applies to all of your relationships. I mean, if you're like, you know, supposedly having quality time with your partner and you're sitting there thinking about a million other things on your phone, the way to think about your phone is frankly just like it is allowing a million people to be there with you while

you're sitting with the one person. And you would know if they were actually sitting in the room that you weren't having quality time with this person, but it's the exact same thing. It's just in the form of a technology. And so finding a way to actually separate from it. For me, I actually have to have it in a different room. Like, I can't have my phone in front of me when my son's there if I want to be present. It needs to be in my office in another room so that I can be there. I had a, I haven't shared this, but I had a moment recently. I was in my office focusing on something and my son barges through the door and he's two and a half. So he starts just creating chaos in my office. I'm

trying to focus on something. He starts like throwing stuff. He's jumping up on the couch, like throwing books on the ground. And I started having this enormously negative thought pattern. I'm like, why is he doing this? So annoying. I'm trying to focus. Doesn't he realize I'm working? And I snapped myself back to four years ago when my wife and I were struggling to conceive. And we'd been struggling for a year or two. And I prayed every single night that we would one day have a healthy child. And then here I was in that moment complaining about the very thing that I had prayed for. And it was a reminder to me that sometimes the things you pray for become the things that you complain about if you let them. Sometimes you are literally living your

prayers, but you're not recognizing it in the moment. You're not allowing yourself to zoom out and appreciate that in the moment. So finding those moments to pause and just bask in grader. attitude and force yourself to zoom out when you catch yourself doing that, holding yourself to the fire. I just think it's so important in life. Yeah. It's beautiful. Hard too. Very hard.

What do you do when you get in those negative thought patterns? You know, when you start to get annoyed, if you want to zoom out, is there a mental exercise you use for that? I think it's the pause and breathe. It's, it's, um, it requires a level of self-awareness in my, moments to be able to hold yourself to the fire. Like, you need to be able to tell yourself the truth. We talked about having truth tellers that can say that to you. But in a lot of moments in life, you're not going to have that person there in your ear. You have to be that person in your own ear. And it means you have to be self-critical enough to do that. I do think that, like,

in the modern day on social media in particular, there's been this whole trend of give yourself some grace, give yourself a little bit of grace. And while I agree that occasionally we need to give ourselves a little bit of grace. I think for most people, we actually need to hold ourselves to the fire more often than not. I think we give ourselves too much grace. And look, like maybe that's a harsh take, but I just think it's true. I think most of the time you need to hold yourself to the fire a little bit and your life will improve. Yeah. I want to talk really quickly about some of the frameworks I've stolen from you to make my life better, easier, simpler, a little richer and wealthier. You kind of popularize this idea for me around razors, like a rule of thumb that simplifies decision-making, but you have quite a few of them.

Can you explain what it is and what are some of your favorites and how do you use them? Yeah. So the idea of a razor comes from philosophy originally. It's something that allows you to shave away possible explanations and get to the heart of something. So the best way to say it is what you said. It's a rule of thumb that simplifies decision-making. The most famous razor, which is probably my favorite one, is Occam's Razor, which is the idea that the simplest possible explanation is often the best one. So this is for all the conspiracy theorists out there.

I'm sorry. But Occam's Razor typically will say that if there is some crazy thing happening and we want to say that the government is doing some whole crazy back-end, you know, crazy thing, the simplest explanation is like, no, it's just the obvious thing that is happening. The government is not particularly competent. If you have ever flown, you have seen the government in action with the TSA. Or if you have ever gone to try to get a new license, you have seen it at the DMV. That's the government. But all jokes aside on that, Occam's razor is amazing because it's all about the idea that simple is beautiful. And so whenever you have a simple explanation for something or a very complex one that will require a lot of assumptions to be true, usually the simple one is correct.

Another one of my favorites for the world of the internet is Hanlon's razor, which says that you should never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity or ignorance. So the second you are in an argument with someone and you start saying like, oh, this person is malicious in their actions or they're in their intent, sometimes it is just ignorance or stupidity. And a lot of the time, it's just ignorance or stupidity. That will save you from a whole lot of heartaches and, and headaches in life. You know what the other one? It's not a razor, but you sometimes send it to me when I'm pissed off

about something on the internet is I think you should talk about the spotlight effect. There are two big mistakes in life, worrying about what other people think about you and believing that other people think about you in the first place. The reality is no one is thinking about you.

Everyone is just going through life worried about themselves. The spotlight effect is this behavioral phenomenon whereby we overestimate the degree to which other people are noticing or observing our actions and behaviors. Basically, we think everyone is looking at us when they're not. Everyone is just worried about themselves. Call it the Zoom phenomenon because when you're on a Zoom chat, you're so worried about how you look, and then you go look at the statistics, and 90% of the time, people are just looking at themselves.

So literally no one is looking at you. You are the only one looking at yourself. And that is true for life. And understanding the spotlight effect is the key to unlocking your own capabilities because you will be more willing to put yourself out there. There's so much hidden talent in the world that is not putting itself out there for fear of judgment from failure. You're not actually afraid of failure. You're afraid of what other people will think of you if you fail. But no one's thinking about you.

No. And at last, I mean, now that we have a bunch of people on the internet, what I have realized is that even when you only, you only have, are literally the talk of the internet, it lasts 24 hours a week max. I mean, most, a lot of our friends have been huge, you know, scandals, issues, whatever, and then they're gone. It's like a week later, nobody cares about it. And so, but I understand why people worry because I was talking to a friend of ours, Sri. And Sri, you know, was just getting ridiculed on the, on the internet for, for, I don't know, being Indian and pro-humans, basically. And Sri's about the nicest guy in the world, super competent.

And I remember when this started happening to him, I reached out to him. I'm like, hey man, how you doing? Like, I know how this goes because it's happened to me not to that degree because that was a whole different thing with politics involved. But you've had it happen to. The first time it happened to me, I felt like it felt like when you are scared about something physically happening to you. There's almost a visceral response that your body has that's like, oh my God, everybody's talking about me online. And it is this, you almost have to overcome it. and then realize, actually, nobody really cares.

It was a split second. It's really easy to engage, and then you're not worth it. But I understand why people worry, because you can hear about the spotlight effect, and then when the spotlight is even slightly upon you, everything goes out the window. It's very true. It's also just a reminder. I think it instills in you a sense of humility the first time that happens, because you realize one very sad thing about the world, which is a line for,

from billions. That's one of my favorite lines. Paul Giamatti's character says it to Ax in the first episode. He says, make no mistake, they might be cheering for you now, but they are dying to boo. And those things when they happen, people come out of the woodwork to boo and get really excited about booing. And it's a reminder that a harsh truth of life is that most people don't want to see you be successful. There are a lot of of people out there who say they want you to be successful until you get up to the point where you're more successful than them and then they're the first ones ready to try to tear you back down. And so to the point that we made at the very beginning on finding your people that will

truly support you and really genuinely want to see you win, they are few and far between. And you need to cherish those people and you need to be that to someone else. And so that's like when you send a text to the person when they're going through that, people never forget who was there for them when shit hit the fan when they were down. And it doesn't mean you flew there and you have to be there and give advice and do all sorts of things. It's literally just texting someone to say, hey, I'm with you. These fires are happening in L.A. right now. Sending a text to the person to say, like, I'm with you.

Goes so far and is so impactful in the way that you interact with the world. And all of this comes to this idea of social wealth, which is like there is clear scientific evidence that the people you surround yourself with determine your outcomes. The Pygmalion effect says that we rise to the level of expectations that others have for us in our circle. So if you are surrounded by people who think you are capable of more, who believe in you, who are telling you to think bigger, who are pushing you to grow, you will rise to the level of those expectations. So what better reason to choose wisely about the people that you have in your circle,

the people that you are surrounding yourself with, the people you are gifting your precious energy in your life. Yeah, it's a really important part you talk about in the book. And I love that study because it's wild. Do you want to talk about in the book? You want to break down the study? Yeah. The Harvard study of adult development is this incredible longitudinal study that was done

over the course of 85 plus years. They tracked the lives of 1,300 original participants and then all of their descendants. So like about 2,000 plus people. And they found that the single goal, greatest predictor of physical health at age 80 was relationship satisfaction at age 50, not your cholesterol, not your blood pressure, not your smoking or drinking habits, how you felt about your relationships determined your physical health outcomes, how you aged over your course of your life. And so we know, scientifically, we know that relationships are the key to living

a good life, a happy, healthy life. Every single person, you go and ask them, what do you want your ideal day to look like at age 80. No one says alone. Everyone says surrounded by love, right? You got your partner. Maybe you want kids, grandkids, your friends. That's what we all want. And yet, when you ask them what they're doing today, very few are investing in that future. You know to invest in financial wealth. You know that if you want to be rich when you're older, you have to invest every single day. But if you want to have rich relationships, you have to do the same. You have to send the text to the friend. You have to make sure that you are the reason that your group of friends is getting together. You have to spend time with your parents or your partner or

your children. These things don't just magically appear out of thin air. You have to invest in them the same way that you do in your financial wealth. Yeah, that's why I think it's interesting. I mean, you have a lot of, you have a lot of different reasons why you focused on the actual five levels to wealth here. But I think, I want people to read the actual book. But talk high level about you spend a ton of time researching. What are the things that matter? What? What creates a wealthy life? Why did you choose these five? What are they?

And how is that going to impact somebody's life? Yeah. When I went on this journey after that conversation that I had with the friend that we talked about earlier and made this big change in my life, I went on a multi-year journey to try to understand what were the things that contributed to a truly happy, healthy, fulfilling, wealthy life. And the realization there was that the scoreboard is fundamentally. broken. Peter Drucker, the famous management theorist, said what gets measured gets managed. So the thing that you can measure ends up being the thing that you focus on. It's the thing that you narrowly,

myopically hone in on and optimize around. Money is extremely measurable. So it becomes the thing that we narrowly focus on. And the truth is that money is a part of living a truly wealthy life, but it is just a part. There are all of these other things that we sort of know in the back of our mind matter, but we don't have a way to measure them. We don't have a way to think about them in the same way. And so as a result, we don't manage them. We don't actually think about investing in them in the same way. That is what I'm trying to change. And so as I came to this idea, this thesis, I went and talked to thousands of people and basically did two things. One, I went to much older people who had lived long lives and talked to them about the advice they would have

for their younger selves and how they felt about living a good life. And then I went and talked to younger people and asked what they wanted when they were 80. What did they want their life to look like? This question of what does your ideal day look like. And the thing that you find is that we all want the same thing. And it has very little to do with money. Money is kind of an enabler, but not an end in and of itself. And it was four things.

It was time, people, purpose, and health. We want time, freedom, freedom to choose. We want to feel free. People, we want to be surrounded by love. Purpose. We want to feel like we know what we are doing every day. that there is some reason that we are doing these things, and then health. We want to feel good of mind and body.

Money, again, was an enabler to those things, but not an end in and of itself. It was a tool, but not the goal, if you will. And that was how I really came to this idea and this construct of thinking about this new scoreboard, a new way to measure your life across the broader set of pillars that contribute to building a good life. And the thesis is that if you measure the right things, you will take the right actions and you will create the right outcomes. If you measure the wrong things, if you're just measuring for the battle of money, you may win that battle, but you will lose the war of the broader picture of your life. So we need to measure for the full war. We need to measure for the entire picture of what we're doing and then we'll make the right decisions and we'll create the right outcomes.

Do you think young Sawhill, young finance bro, Sawhill would struggle with talking about love? Do you talk about love back then too? Talk about love when I was young finance bro. I viewed a lot of things as a distraction to the important thing, which was making money. I was so narrowly focused on external affirmations. You know, and I have this thing in the book, this thing that I call the status. test, the bot status test, where you ask yourself when you're about to buy something, would I buy this if I couldn't tell anyone that I had it? If I couldn't post it on Instagram, if I couldn't

show anyone. Like, would I buy this watch? Would I buy this car? If no one knew about it except me? Usually the answer is no. And what you realize when you start to think about that question is you are living a lot of your life for the benefit and pleasure of other people, which is kind of a crazy thing to think about. Like how much of my life am I actually living for other people rather than for myself? And so I think that a lot of my life, my whole mental model for life, was like, I am going to wake up one day when I have X million dollars and feel happy. And every time I would get to that number and it would have disappeared and it would be some other number. And we have studies to say this. Michael Norton, this Harvard Business School professor,

went and interviewed high net worth individuals, people worth anywhere from a million on through 100 million plus. And he asked them, how happy are you on a scale of 1 to 10? So they answered. And then he said, how much more money would you need to be at a 10? Across the board, whether they were worth a million or 100 million, everyone said two to five X as much. It didn't matter what level they were at, which makes no sense. So we know it's not about some arbitrary number. It is about understanding your definition of enough. Where do you actually need to get to? What does your life look like where you are truly fulfilled. It's not going to be the money. It's going to be what that enables in your actual life in these other areas. I think I really would have struggled with that.

That being said, and I need to make this clear, I am by no means saying that money doesn't matter. I am not telling anyone that they should go and give up their worldly possessions and live in the Himalayas as a monk. If you want to do that, by all means, go do it. I just won't be joining you. I like money. I like, right? Like I like being able to afford things. I like having money. I am just saying that it can't be the only thing that you focus on that you need to invest in these other areas in some way, shape, or form across the entirety of your life. There may be seasons of your life when financial wealth is your primary focus. And one of the key concepts in the book is the idea of seasons, the idea that what you prioritize or focus on during any one

season can and should change, your 20s and 30s are a great time to prioritize building a financial foundation for the rest of your life. You talk about this all the time. The fact that you can invest money early and it will compound and grow for the rest of your life. Incredible. You should do that. That's a great season. But when your kids are five, it may be a great season for you to prioritize your relationship with your kids and sort of be in more maintenance mode from a financial wealth building standpoint if you make that decision.

But the point around all of this is it's up to you. You don't need to accept the default definition of success that the world hands you. you get to create your own. And the truth is you will never feel successful unless you create your own definition of success. You've got to do that. And, you know, other people aren't going to like it. I think that's the other part that's true. I mean, you know this.

I'm terrible at responding to text messages. Why? Because I try to not have my phone on me all the time. Otherwise, I get distracted. And I have a specific agenda and goal for the day. And so if I let even people I love and adore distract me from that goal, then that means I got to work longer. I got to stay later. I can't have dinner with my husband. My husband's and my dinner every night is a priority. And so, you know, I think for somebody listening, if they're like, all right, this makes sense, I've seen you personally sacrifice a bunch of career progression things that you could do. At one point, you were raising a big fund and you were going to build another asset management business, which we've both done before. And then you were like, no, actually, I'm not going to do that right now. I'm going to think and I'm going to be with my son. What do you have a cost. benefit analysis or a framework you use to decide, okay, this is a goal for me or this is an

anti-goal? Yeah, I think it's really important what you just said, which is like, there are tradeoffs that you have to make. There are sacrifices along the way. And I have explicitly said no to a number of opportunities where I could make more money because I know what they would require is me being pulled away from this time freedom that I have with my son primarily during this window of time when I'm playing such a special role in his life. That doesn't mean that I'm not going to go all out for those things when he's eight years old and spending more time in school or 12 or whenever. Maybe when he leaves the house, when he graduates from high school,

I lean into a bunch of these opportunities. What you decide in the current season does not preclude you from changing in the future season. And look, we made this decision in a very real way when it comes to my wife's path. My wife was on a high-powered designer track, rising through the ranks in a very competitive industry, doing great. And when our son was born, she made the decision that she wanted to truly prioritize being a mom during these early years of his life. Where we live in the Northeast and in a lot of coastal cities, that was a weird decision. She still gets comments from other moms in town saying, you're just a mom. Oh, gross.

And we hate it because I think it's the most important job in the world. I think it's remarkable the energy that she puts towards it and the impact it has on our relationship with our son and on his development. But her ability to say this is one season of life and I'm going to really be immersed in being a mom during this season. And that doesn't mean that I'm not going to go back and be a designer in the next season. When he's in school and I have more time and he's not home all the time, I can go do that. And I have the freedom to make that decision as I so choose. that is a really empowering way to think about your life because it's a reminder that there's no such thing as a one-way door.

All of these are two-way doors. You can walk back through them and you can go back and prioritize these other things again. And we need to recognize that more in life. Yeah, you also have some interesting takes on being married and how to treat your wife in a world where there's a lot of tension between men and women these days. There's tension with traditional, non-traditional roles.

There's tension with, God, I've been on Twitter too much lately, but with how people feel about women in relationships and should you have them. You know, when you think about your partnership, she's beautiful, you know, smart, very supportive of you. How did you decide that she was the one? And how do you also think husbands should up, should show up for wives these days? So before I got married, my mom asked me how I knew Elizabeth, my wife was the one. and I told her it was because I loved doing nothing with her. And the realization there is that most of life is just sitting around doing nothing.

It's sitting on the couch, hanging out, watching shows, really doing nothing. But you create this impression that life is all about these crazy honeymoon moments. It's about the fancy date nights out, the Instagram moments. It's the impression that social media creates for what you're going to be. your life looks like. But the reality is that life is those moments of nothing. So when you find someone that you just love doing nothing with, that is your person. That is the person that you want to go and build a life with. And I was very lucky in the fact that I met my wife when she was 14. I was 15 years old when we met. Good clarification also given Twitter these days. Same age range. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry.

Yes. I was 15. She was 14. And we met in a high school computer lab. And the strength that gets built in you when you have grown across different seasons of life, she has been very consistent throughout all of those seasons, actually, as a human. I have not. I was not a person that I am proud of for many of those years. But the fact that she has seen me through all of that, that she is... Were you dating that whole time? We were dating that whole time.

Wait, since you guys were 14 to 15? Yeah, yeah, yeah. She was, I guess when we started dating, she was technically 15. I was 16. Wow. I didn't know that. Yeah. You know Chris and I.

I met when we were 11 and 12. I did know that. But we had a break. Fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. She has seen me through some dark times in my life. And a lot of times when I was focusing on all the wrong things.

And she has really been like a ballast for my ship. And I just think today, as I think about our relationship, especially as I think about my son, one of the highest callings as a father to me, like one of the things I hope for is I want to know that if I drop dead tomorrow, that my son is going to have an amazing life. And I feel that so strongly, and it is the most amazing feeling in the world, to just know that, like, my son would have an incredible life

because his mom loves him more than anything in the entire world. And I want my son to know that. And so when I think about that, I always think, like, you can't teach your kids anything. You have to embody the things you want them to learn. So if I want my son to treat my wife like a queen, I better damn well treat my wife like a queen. If I want my son to embrace the idea of delayed gratification, he better see me doing hard things for the benefit of something in the future. Every single thing that you want your kids, that you want the people around you to learn, you have to embody the. those things. And so our relationship, I just think that all of this, like every single thing that I am

doing that I'm working on, it is us that we are doing it. She might not be on the cover of the book, but you go look at the dedication. It's on the first page. She's in there. And none of this would be possible without her and without my son and the clarifying force that he has been in my life. I love that. Yeah. And also I think, you know, today young people, I think, there's like a loss of hope or something, you know? They think that men like you don't exist. They think that women maybe like your wife don't exist. And they think that because they've had a lot of shallow interactions,

that that is the only thing that exists in marriage. And maybe because so many marriages end poorly, that that's all that exists. So I think it's really beautiful to share that because I find the same thing with my husband. Don't get me wrong. We definitely have fights. You know, we have our moments 100%.

But I don't. I truly believe that a happy marriage is better and more important than a big bank account. And I think your book is a really good representation of it doesn't have to be and or, it doesn't have to be or it can be and. But man, if you had to choose one, you probably choose the relationship. Yeah. And I personally think that having an incredible marriage is the biggest cheat code for making a lot of money in life. Yeah.

There is something incredible about feeling like you have a house full of love behind you as you pursue your ambitions and as you try to go and build something to make money. And look, I have no desire to be a rich guy by myself. The Forbes top 10 richest people in the world have 13 divorces among them. Last time I checked. I have zero desire to be really rich but have broken relationships with my children. Who knows how many there are out there like that. And so the whole point is we want to build this full comprehensively wealthy life. We want to make a lot of money. No doubt. I think it's great. You can afford incredible experiences with people. You can build incredible things. But you have to remember why you are doing that. It's not for the sake of the money. It's for the things that you're going to be able to create on the back of it. And that's really what this book is about. It's about defining what matters to you and then going and taking action to build your life around those things. So good. I want to end with two questions, but I love this quote from your grandfather. You're very close to your family. I'm too. That said the worst decisions in my life.

are made when you allow your head to talk you into something when your gut already said no. Is that something that you lived by today? I try to. I don't always. And a lot of the things I write, post, talk about videos are sort of reminders to self at times where I will post something on Twitter when I have experienced a time when I have not lived by it and am reminding myself. And I realize if I'm reminding myself, there's millions of people out there that need that same reminder as I do. My grandfather was an extraordinarily wise man. And I feel so much love for him because when my mom is Indian, my father is white from the Bronx, New York. And when my dad wanted to marry my mom, his father was not accepting of it.

And told him he had to choose between my mom and his family. And my dad walked out the door and never saw his family again. And to this day, I never met my dad's parents. He has three siblings I never met. I have first cousins out there somewhere that I never met. He truly rejected the common convention and walked his own path with everything in him. And I imagine it was one of the hardest decisions he's ever made, or maybe the easiest, because he knew that this amazing, now they've been married 42 years, they have an incredible loving relationship. I cannot imagine my parents not together. But the thing that instilled this love in me for my grandfather was when my mom brought my dad to meet her family, they were initially not super excited

about their daughter marrying American. And my grandfather asked my dad, well, how do your parents feel about it? And my dad said, well, interesting story there. And after that moment, my grandfather ended up taking my dad in as like another son. You know, if someone was willing to leave their entire family to be with his daughter, I think he realized that that person was okay in his book. And I just saw that love and that legacy of love trickle through my family and the way that my grandfather supported my dad, the way that my dad supported me throughout my whole life. And that has meant more than anything else in the world.

And my grandfather's wisdom continues to run through. me. I mean, I have a piece of paper on my desk that is one of his most important pieces of wisdom that says, you'll achieve more by being consistently reliable than by being occasionally extraordinary. And I think about that every single day. Just show up and do the work. It's hard to bet against the person who just keeps showing up. Do you think you can change your life in a year? Absolutely. I think most people, I think Bill, Bill Gates was the one who said, most people overestimate what they can do in a day and underestimate what they can do in 10 years.

I kind of disagree. Sorry, Bill. I think most people overestimate what they can do in a day and underestimate what they can do in one year. You are one year of focus away from people calling you lucky, from people saying, oh, she just got lucky or he just got lucky. One year of focus, one year of asking the right questions, one year of the questions, one year of clear intentions, one year of focused daily actions, you can change your entire life.

So good. Well, I hope everybody picks up this book. I don't say that very often, actually, as you know, because we're buddies. But I think it's really important, the five types of wealth that we talk so much about money, but damn, I'm doing you guys a disservice if at the end of the day you have a big bank account and that's all you got. And so I'm really glad you wrote the book, sawhillblum.com, sawhillblum on all the socials.

Anywhere else you want to send people? And it comes out February 4th. February 4th, available everywhere. And pick it up at your local bookstore. Let's go support some local businesses. That's right. Small business, baby. Although if you have to buy it on Amazon and still support,

Sahel, I'm okay with it too. But let's go with local first. Sahel, you're the man. Thanks so much for being there. Thank you.