The Daily Stoic - Gary Vaynerchuk, David Rubenstein, Ali Abdaal, Emily Oster, Brad Feld, and Randall Stutman on Business and Success | It’s Time To Snap Out Of It

Episode Date: December 22, 2021

Ryan reads today’s daily meditation and looks back at some of the best interviews on business from 2021. Featuring entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk on the best way to maintain long term business success, billionaire David Rubenstein on learning from past historical figures’ successes and from their mistakes, Ali Abdaal on staying productive and getting your life organized, economist Emily Oster on how to communicate positive messaging and weigh out risk vs rationality, venture capitalist Brad Feld on why entrepreneurs have to focus attention inward toward self-improvement, and Randall Stutman on making people better. → We hope you join us in the 2022 New Year New You Challenge. It’s 3 weeks of actionable challenges, presented in an email per day, built around the best, most timeless wisdom in Stoic philosophy. Just go to https://dailystoic.com/challenge to sign up before sign ups end on January 1st!GiveWell is the best site for figuring out how and where to donate your money to have the greatest impact. If you’ve never donated to GiveWell’s recommended charities before, you can have your donation matched up to $250 before the end of the year or as long as matching funds last. Just go to GiveWell.org and pick podcast and enter DAILY STOIC at checkout.Trade Coffee will match you to coffees you’ll love from 400+ craft coffees, and will send you a freshly roasted bag as often as you’d like. Trade is offering your first bag free and $5 off your bundle at checkout. And, this holiday season, give the coffee lover in your life the gift of better coffee too, with their own personalized gift coffee subscription from Trade. To get yours, go to drinktrade.com/DAILYSTOIC and use promo code DAILYSTOIC. Take the quiz to start your journey to the perfect cup.LMNT is the maker of electrolyte drink mixes that help you stay active at home, work, the gym, or anywhere else. Electrolytes are a key part of a happy, healthy body. As a listener of this show, you can receive a free LMNT Sample Pack for only $5 for shipping. To claim this exclusive deal you must go to drinkLMNT.com/dailystoic. If you don’t love it, they will refund your $5 no questions asked.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://DailyStoic.com/dailyemailCheck out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic Podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast where each weekday we bring you a Meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life. And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well-known and obscure, fascinating and powerful. With them, we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are, and also to find peace and wisdom in their actual lives. But first we've got a quick message from one of our sponsors.

Hi I'm David Brown, the host of Wunderree's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts. It's time to snap out of it. Look guys, there's just nine more days to sign up for the Daily Stoke, New Year, New Year Challenge. And if you need a last minute gift for a friend or family member, you want to do it as part of a team or a group together, you can gift the new year, new year challenge as well. But let's get into it. Over the last 21 months, you've asked these questions. What, what day is it?

Was that this morning or yesterday afternoon that I showered? It's already December? What even is time? And this collective disorientation dates back at least as early as April 2020, when Kate McKinnon opened the first SNL at home with live from Zoom at some time between March and August. And Tom Hanks put it in a way that remains relatable. He said, there's no such thing as Saturdays anymore. It's just every day is today. And on the one hand, this is funny. And it's funny that searches for what day is it, continue to spike. And it's funny that weekends feel like weekdays and weekdays feel like weekends. But on the other hand, it's alarming. It's alarming the rate at which 20, 21 flew by. All the things we said we were going to do, the goals we were going to accomplish, the books we were going to read, the projects we were going to accomplish, the books we were going to read,

the projects we were going to complete, the boxes we were going to check off, we didn't get to many of them, or any of them. And that should alarm us. Every day more of our life is used up unless and less of it is left, Mark Sirrelius wrote. And so quoting Heracles, he said, our words and actions should not be like those of sleepers.

But that's what so many of us have started to do. We've begun to sleepwalk through life, as life is walking, nay running away from us. Well, it's time to wake up. We must be deliberate. We must snap out of this endless trance. How? Well, we created the 20, 22 new year, new year challenge with an eye towards that. We chose challenges

that the Stoics themselves would do when they found themselves, as Musoneus Rufus put it, following wretched habit. Seneca wrote about the powers of a cold plunge. Marcus wrote about waking up earlier than his body preferred. Epictetus told his students to seek out a challenge. The way a boxer seeks out a stronger sparring partner when they need to shake things up. Kato, we know, would step outside himself and take a walk around Rome to help others.

And as Plutarch said, he made it his business to salute and address without help from others, those he met on his rounds. So we built this new year, new year challenge around time, tested practices and exercises. Because we've experienced it too, we've been saying, I've been saying, whoa, where did the year go? We didn't all get to the projects we wanted to get to. And so we made this challenge as much for us as for you. We made it so by this time next year, you might be saying, whoa, what a year instead of, whoa,

where did the time go? That's not only what you want. That's what you deserve. So I hope you join me because I do these challenges alongside you. In fact, I design them myself in part in mind. I hope you join me in the 2022 new year, new challenge kicks off in a little over a week and it's three weeks of actionable challenges presented in one email per day built around the best, most timeless wisdom in Stoke Philosophy. Three weeks that will hopefully reorient your relationship with time and space as much as possible in the middle of a pandemic. It should help you snap out of this trance we've all found ourselves in and help make

2022 your best year yet, no matter what's happening in the world around you. Go to dailystowoc.com slash challenge to join us. I'd love to have you. I'm challenging you to join me. I can't wait to see you. dailystowoc.com slash challenge. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to the Daily Stoic podcast. Stoicism was founded by an entrepreneur. Not entrepreneurly founded, but it was founded by Zeno. He's a merchant. He deals in Tyrion Purple,

suffers a shipwreck, crashes, loses everything, ends up in Athens, penniless, and turns to philosophy in a bookstore. As it happens, I named my bookstore, The Painting Porch, after the fact that not only was Stoicism founded in a bookstore, right? this is where Xeno is introduced to the works of Socrates, finds his philosophical mentor. But then where does Xeno go to set up his school of philosophy in the Agora at the Stoa, the Stoa Pocchile, the painted porch? Right in the center of town, you know, the idea of philosophy or any innovation being part in the center of town, where the idea of philosophy or any innovation

being part of the battle of ideas, like, or the marketplace of ideas, here, Stoicism is battling for attention amidst all the other ideas, all the other distractions and temptations of the Agura. And I think that's why historically, Stoicism has resonated with not just athletes and military leaders and politicians, but also merchants and business people. And that's been one of the most interesting parts of the Daily Stoke podcast, talking to people who were really successful at what they do in the business world. What lessons can Stoicism teach us in whatever pursuit,

whatever career, whatever field were happened, we happened to be in. And in today's episode, we have a bunch of interesting business leaders. And I'll bring that to you. Now, first, we're going to be talking with Gary Vaynerchuk, who I interviewed in person at the Painted porch. It was an awesome interview. We had a great time.

Gary and I talk about stoicism, soft skills, becoming your best self. His new book, 12 and a half is great. And we've got signed copies of some of his other books at the Painted porch and at thepaintedpourch.com. You can follow Gary on pretty much every platform at GaryVee, great guy. Maybe not what you would associate with stoicism,

but I think there's a lot we can learn from him. Then I talked with David Rubenstein on patriotic philanthropy, the value of history. I love a business person who understands the context in which they are operating under, understands more than just dollars and cents and David Rubenstein is a fantastic example of that founder of the Carlisle group,

one of the richest people in America. And yet, seems to be very focused on how to give back what our obligations are and how we can learn from history. I talked to Ali Abdul, the YouTuber. If you don't follow him on YouTube, he's got a whole bunch of great and awesome content on productivity. And that's what we bunch of great and awesome content on productivity. And that's what we talk about Ali and I talk about the keys to productivity and redefining success.

Talk really about what the stoic definition of success actually looks like, how to stay productive and get your life organized. Early in the pandemic, I talked to the economist Emily Oster on rationality in risk. I think this is one of my best conversations. I love her work. I love her sub-stack. If you don't subscribe to that, you should. And we talk about how to communicate positive messaging, how to weigh out risk, how to be rational in midst of craziness. And I also talked to the venture capital

as Brad Feld on his book, The Weekly Nietzsche. What Nietzsche can teach us, both Pro and Con, his connection to the Stoics, and of course the power of daily practice. And then finally, I talked to the guy behind the guy, one of the best business coaches in the world, seriously. He has been a business coach for Fortune 500 CEOs, Fortune 100 CEOs, hedge fund managers, billionaires, some of the best and biggest names in business. He's also a mentor of mine.

I've really enjoyed getting to know him and I talked to him also as part of the Daily Stoke Leadership Challenge. This is one of our best interviews of the year. So here I am talking with Randall about how to make people better, which is our job as leaders. And if you haven't checked out the Daily Stoke Leadership Challenge,

I'd love to have you do that. Sign up at dailystoke.com slash leadership challenge. I'm in this writers group, like James Clear, Mark Pinson. We get together once a year, we sit around, and everyone gets to talk, we all take turns, we get to talk about the person as if they're not in the room. And they can't say anything. All they can do is take notes.

And it's super powerful, because you get to see how people you actually care about, not just random people on the internet or whatever. And it's kind of like everyone's caught good candor. Yeah, yeah. And, but because they are in the room, you're still going to be kind. Correct. And you can go all the way there. Right, but because they are in the room, you're still going to be kind. It's a positive, right?

And so, and you can go all the way there. Right, but you can, you can plant the seed of what they can take back and go, you know what they're right? I am doing too much of this or not enough of this or why am I being held back here? And then you take that back and you work on it. It's ironic because we're talking about self-awareness,

but one of the best ways to get it is from other people. I would say a spouse being the primary way because they know you better than anyone and they can also speak to you the most directly. I think that it is just a big goddamn deal and all of this is, and it's really time that we actually talk about it as like the alternate title to this is the soft skills are hard. That'd be a good title. Thank you. And so that to me is what, right, because it's a double cut, right? Oh, fuck.

Anyway, I'm just ready for this, because I know it to be true. I know it to be true. Of course, you can build an empire by not being nice. A lot of them are that way. Of course. But if you're on the other side of reading it, wouldn't it be nice to enjoy it? Like, have you met the 70-year-old Titans that did it the other way? They're just like, they're just like that person's fucking life blows. Like, I love that you put these people on a pedestal. They're not happy. They're not as happy as you think. Like, for real.

Yeah. No, no, it's, you would, if you actually knew what it was like in their head, you would not trade places with them for all the money in the world. It's why I always get crazy about that. I'd rather cry in my Ferrari than, but like, how about not crying?

Yeah. How about smiling in your fucking whatever? Yeah. Ford. Well, your jealous of this person who's traveling on a private jet to some exotic, but what if you had a life that you didn't need to run away from? Right. Like, what are we talking about? Like, yeah.

All right, a couple more quick riffs. Mark Serelyas says, uh, strict with yourself, tolerant with others. How do you like that? A lot. Yeah? Yes. I would actually argue that that's where I need to find a little bit of balance.

My strictness with me is such a healthy one, and my tolerance with others may be too extreme back to lack of candor. I'm trying to get a little better. Coddling, entitlement. But my strictness with me is really cool. It's not like I eat a five or wake up. It's this ability to not compromise on a couple of things. And the biggest one is kindness. Yeah, or it's like if you're driven and ambitious, you work 15 hours a day, it can be really easy to just expect that from other people. One of my favorite videos you're

talking to someone, they're like, you're like, the other people, they're not owners of the business. You can't expect what you expect of yourself of them. It's absurd. I once said to somebody, I'm like, you're talking as if we're talking about slavery. Like the fuck are you talking about? Yeah, I have zero expectations of others if I'm being really honest. I take it. That way you're always pleasantly surprised.

Yeah. Like, and I'm accountable. It's like, look, I mean, yeah, I love that. And I'm a believer of it. Yeah, and look, it's called self-discipline. Right, not, not, you know, nothing else. It called self-discipline. Right? Not, not, you know, nothing else. It's self-discipline. I'm missing a lot about why people point fingers,

why people have fallen in love with judgment of others, and I've come to realize it's because they're practicing on themselves. You know, my inability to over-judge myself is exactly why I don't judge others. We're holding ourselves up to, we're the judge and jury, I don't know if I've ever judged myself, is exactly why I don't judge others. We're holding ourselves up to, we're the judge and jury, and we're putting ourselves into jails.

Right. Right, like it's nice to have aspir, I mean, I'm ambitious as fuck. Sure. It's nice to have standards. I'm not saying that. But like this notion of beating yourself up when you fall short on something

that is a standard or ambition is incredibly unhealthy. What's like you would never talk to someone else the way that you talk to yourself. But what's funny is mine is actually slightly twisted on that. I talk to everybody the way I talk to myself, which is why I talk so nicely to everybody. But that's how you want it, right? But a lot of people talk to themselves in a way that they would never tolerate species of course. Correct. Because most people try to prop themselves up by tearing everybody

else down. Right. Alright, so Mark's really, again, the best revenge, the best way to get even is to not be like them. My, I think there's something that I like that. My version on revenge is a little bit more like the inability to even care about their action. So, shrug it off. In a more audacious way. Okay. Not only shrug it off, recognize that you're about to actually stick it to them by not even acknowledging it happened.

It's an extreme version of cutting them out of your ecosystem. Sure. That's how I've dealt with people that have done really not nice things or trying to go like, it's almost as if it didn't happen. Yes. It goes on this nice little shelf. I'm like, that's nice. You can play with yourself in that cocoon

of whatever you feel about me. You've now become a energy that is just like, not a good use of time. And even giving it time. And to be frank, I've evolved a little bit from that. I'm now receiving that energy and kind of deploying really deep sympathy. The thought at this point in my life that you want to spend any of your time

hurting somebody else's feelings seems outrageously foreign and really just makes me feel compassionate. The ultimate person who suffers from it is then. A hundred, all that we're doing out here is somebody said something to me yesterday that's something kind of cool, giving away some stuff. And they were like kind of asking, I was like, late, I was getting home, I was just replying. Like, it's just because I have so much love to give. I don't know what to do with it all.

And I really think that that's, that a lot of people live the reverse. They have so much pain, they're trying to get it out. You know, for me, it's an abundance of love. I'm like, fuck it. Like, I don't want it. Like, what am I going to get? Like, this is like, I better do stuff. I think that's how hate works.

All right, so I think anyone who talks about stuff publicly, let alone puts out a book like this, and then mine, I think the tricky part is it's easy to talk about. It's hard to do, right? Epicetus says, don't talk about your philosophy, embody it, or don't talk about it, be about it. Sometimes I wonder like, if I'd never written about it, but I believed it, could I get convicted

of these things in court, right? Like if somebody didn't know who I was, they just bumped into me on the street, how close am I actually to the things I write and talk about? How's that journey for you? Uncomfortablely remarkable. Okay. Um, I would say that I understate me.

I understate the things I live. Okay. I really believe that. How do you get there? Well, I get there by doing it. Sure. I'm doing it. And I get there by understating it.

Like I, look, I have Andy and D Rock here behind the cameras. You know, they'll probably agree with me. I'm starting to actually, this book, and a lot of other, like the last two years, I would say that I'm still, they'll probably agree with me. I'm starting to actually, this book and a lot of other, like the last two years, I would say that I'm starting to peel away my current a little bit more and show this stuff more. Because it's hard to talk about this stuff.

It's like, hey, I'm humble. The fuck is that content? Sure. So you gotta find your balance, because that's not nice. But to answer your question, the thing that I've always loved is, I'm more about the things I talk about,

and I talk about them at scale. But earlier you were saying, kind of candor that you were a 10 before, now you're a 60, so you're still at a D, right? So you're still moving, right? But this book's also not called 13. No, that's a good point. So you feel like the book is like, I stink at this.

Yeah, like I don't want, listen, he worked for somebody that used to work for me. I don't want him to know one story from Sam that undermines Gary B. I have never wanted, I live very loose. I have admins that have access to everything. My team has, these guys have access to everything. I have no interest in letting any other human being

ever have leverage on me. The thought of saying one thing and doing another to then worry if I can control them to never say it is fucking assinine. Sure, but I don't know, kindness, it's easy to say and then someone does something cool. Like we have these instantaneous reactions to things. You find yourself to check yourself.

I, you know, we got to this a little bit in this talk and I'm starting to, like, this is starting to come top of mind for me. I would, do you know how many words I could have put in this book? This didn't have to be these 13 traits. There's a lot about their shit. These are ones that I live,

like this is like, you know, this is the ones I live and the ones that I notice and I can see them and, yeah, I mean, I don't feel vulnerable. It's good. No, no, no, that's great. I think I probably somewhere in hindsight realized 15 years ago, oh, I'm going for it.

Right? And when I realized that, I'm going for it. Right? And when I realized that, I probably, you know what I had a good read on, that the internet was gonna expose everything. Like a very good read. Like I talked about it back then. Like in Wine Library TV, like I would reference it. And I think by knowing that,

and by knowing I was gonna go for it, I must have become a much better version of myself on all these things because I was like, I must have become a much better version of myself on all these things because I was like, I don't want the vulnerability. But it's something you're, you, you worked on and are working on. These are the ideals and you're aspiring to get there day to day, right? It's not just. Yes, but I'd be not authentic if I didn't say that for the 12 of them, they come uncomfortably

easy to me, always have and are foundational in why I think have outsized results. I'm really proud of myself, because I don't think I could have made. This book would have been called 12, seven years ago. You wouldn't have admitted the half. I grew up in a family where complaining was the single worst thing anyone could do. Sure.

Because we came from the old country and mom and dad had to go outside for a toilet and didn't have bread. So the fuck are you upset that you're Nintendo's not working? anyone could do. Sure. Because we came from the old country, and mom and dad had to go outside for a toilet and didn't have bread. So the fuck are you upset that your Nintendo's not working? So we demonized complaining in my family. Somehow I feel like that led into not being, or talking about vulnerabilities.

Sure. And so I don't think seven years ago I could have talked about the vulnerability of candor, the way I did here, and I, to your point, I aspired to be more vulnerable over the next 40 years, which I think will push me into new places. Ah, the Bahamas. What if you could live in a penthouse above the crystal clear ocean working during the

day and partying at night with your best friends and have it be 100% paid for. FTX Founder's Sam Bankman Freed lived that dream life, but it was all funded, with other people's money, but he allegedly stole. Many thought Sam Bankman Freed was changing the game as he graced the pages of Forbes and Vanity Fair. Some involved in crypto saw him as a breath of fresh air, from the usual Wall Street buffs with his casual dress and ability to play League of Legends during boardroom meetings. But in less than a year, his exchange would collapse, and SPF would find himself in a jail cell, with tens of thousands of investors blaming him for their crypto losses.

From Bloomberg and Wondering comes Spellcaster, a new six-part docu-series about the meteoric rise and spectacular fall of FTX and its founder, Sam Beckman-Freed. Follow Spellcaster wherever you get your podcast. Hey prime members, you can listen to episodes ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Here's me talking to David Rubenstein. Yeah, it's, there's that Roosevelt line about how comparison is the thief of joy. Some of the, you know, extremely wealthy people I've met, as you said, objectively, you'd be like, oh, this person has a lot of money and you don't realize that they're there, of course,

comparing themselves to the person three spaces above them on the Forbes list. Well, look, many of the most tortured souls I know are the wealthiest people I know. Why is that? Well, because if you make five billion, you feel I should make 10 billion. If you make 10 billion, you say, how I don't know people telling me,

why shouldn't I win the Nobel Peace Prize? I want to do something more than just be known as a rich guy. So everybody wants something different, it seems. Nobody's ever happy with what they have. I'm pretty happy with where I am. But of course, I'd like to do more with my life. I wish I had accomplished more. But, you know, there are some people who feel that, unless they are recognized, where everybody

has been universally brilliant and talented and deserving all of what kinds of awards their life isn't going to be pleasurable. Do you think part of it is that also sort of tortured people who have some kind of thing they need fulfilled. It's also what draws them to, let's say, make a lot of money or try to be the best quarterback in the world or the most famous singer in the world. Yeah, to be successful with anything, as I was saying in my leadership book, you've really got to put in the time, you got to work hard, you have to drop other things, and that can make you a person that's so unidimensional that you're not attractive to a lot of other people. They don't want to deal with you.

And so, after you make all the success, people say, well, I don't really care that you're that successful. I don't really like you. You're not a very likable person. I know some very wealthy people that nobody likes. People don't like certain wealth of wealthy people. There are some wealthy people, people who really admire, but some wealthy people have made it in ways that people don't want to do do anything with them. Unless they just take their money as a philanthropic gift, otherwise they didn't want to socialize with them or see them at all.

Well, and if you were an easily satisfied person who was happy with little, you probably wouldn't have, like, if Michael Jordan was just happy with being pretty good, he wouldn't have been Michael Jordan, and thus that also makes it hard to enjoy being Michael Jordan. I agree. I mean, Michael Jordan, I don't know him, but I assume he's probably not as happy as one, everybody was waking up every day looking at his box scores. He's not as big a deal as he once was though. He's still a big deal.

But when you're not in the newspapers every day for what you're doing and you thrive off that, you may feel that you're not as big as you once were and therefore you're not as happy as you once were. There's a story I've told a couple times, you're probably familiar with it, but Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut are at a party of a billionaire and Vonnegut's teasing Heller and he says, you know, this guy made more money this week than your books will make in their lifetime. And Heller says, yeah, but I have something he'll never have. I have enough.

Do you find you meet sort of people that just nothing is ever enough, like no amount of success, no amount of fame, no amount of money will ever make them feel content? Well, what's the title of Mary Trump's book? Yeah, you're right, you're right. So, yes, there are certain people that are never going to get enough attention and praise that they are going to be satisfied. And there's no doubt that psychiatrists are very busy dealing with those people all the time. Yes, it's a challenge because if you're a driven person, you're just never going to be

completely satisfied unless the world tells you you win a Nobel Peace Prize every day and you're President of the United States or something. And that doesn't happen, of course. And for people who don't know the title of that book, it's too much and never enough, right? you win a Nobel Peace Prize every day and your president of the United States or something. And that doesn't happen, of course. And for people who don't know the title of that book, it's too much and never enough, right? Right. Is that something you've had to work on yourself? I imagine you were very driven, very ambitious,

very unsatisfied with just being good enough and that, because you wouldn't have created your company, had you had low standards. But then once you get to the top, have you had to work on that in yourself? Well, I'm not sure. I would say I got lucky and a lot of the things I did. So my business was luck and I had good partners and so forth. And I got involved in a lot of nonprofits,

and I became the chair of the number of the boards. And I was luck. Maybe other people didn't want to be the chair. I know I had a lot of luck. I would say chair of the number of the boards and I was luck, maybe other people didn't want to be the chair. I know I had a lot of luck. I would say I'm pretty happy with where I am. Nobody's ever completely happy with everything, but I'm pretty happy with where I am. If I died tomorrow, I would feel I've let a reasonably happy life. What can I do?

Let's say you are looking back, reflecting on your life, just because I think it's an interesting thought, exercise that might provide some clarity for other people. What accomplishments do you think would strike you as the ones you're most proud of? Is it business, family, philanthropy? How do you look at that? Well, I think everybody's legacy who has children is ultimately their children. That's probably the most important legacy. I have three children.

They're all in private equity, pursuing the highest calling of mankind as I'd like to say. But they're all well-educated, adjusted there on their own. They're not, you know, depending on me to die and get a trust fund or something. So I think, you know, they're in a reasonably good shape. Second is my mother and father lived to see what I was able to achieve. And so when I do interviews, you may or may not have noticed, but I always like to ask famous people that your

parents live to see your success. Because what can be more thrilling for a parent to see a successful child or a child to see the parent be happy with what they achieve. And my parents lived to be in their mid 80s and they were pretty happy with what I achieved. I didn't say to them, I should have done much more. I wish I had to keep accomplished more. I said, you know, I'm happy that you're happy. And so that was an accomplishment I was happy about. But I take them probably the most important thing that people talk to me about now is that I've given back to the country.

And it's an interesting thing. I've done this patriotic philanthropy and some other things and giving back to the country. And people seem to think that's a good thing to do. And I'm glad that people think that. How did that start for you? Like what was the first thing that you felt compelled to do in terms of patriotic philanthropy? Well, I, yes, I, I, I, I, I, I did work in the White House and I was very young for four years.

And I thought that was giving back to the country. But of course, we got inflation to 15 percent. So, I probably think that was such a great contribution. It was so sweet. But maybe we can beat that record now. It's a hard record to be leaning on. I would say that if you hire McKinsey or the equivalent of McKinsey and say, give me some ideas of how I can do something useful for society, you know, you'll get some good

proposals. But I didn't do that. I stumbled into it. As many good things in life happen, they happen by serendipity. I happened to go to a viewing of the Magna Carta and they told me it was going to be auction off the next night and was probably going to leave the country. It was the only one in the country, the only one in private hands. So I just said, I'm going to go buy it.

And so that led to my buying other historic documents. That led to me fixing the Washington Monument when I heard they had the problems and so I led to my buying other historic documents and that led to me fixing the Washington monument when I heard they had the problems and so I led the fixing of other buildings. So I kind of stumbled into it. And ultimately I coined this phrase patriotic philanthropy and it's kind of evolved into other things. But, you know, I can't say it was a fourth thought. I didn't sit down and think, how can I give back to the country?

It kind of happened by a happenstance. No, and look, I think the books are a big part of that legacy. There's something special about books in that they kind of punch above their weight, right? Like however much time and energy you spent, and money spent on the books, I've got to imagine, let's call it a million dollars, I imagine a million dollars into this fund or

that fund wouldn't have near the impact as for whatever reason a bunch of pages glued together between two covers. Well, first, when you write a book, assuming it's reasonably literate, people will think you're reasonably intelligent. So, you know, I think that's good. I like to have people think just because you're a rich businessman, you're not an idiot, just to happen to stumble into a good business situation. And two, I enjoy writing and I enjoy reading.

And so it's pleasure to put them together. Also, I guess it's a legacy for my children and grandchildren. They'll see that, hey, I actually did something that's still hanging around. I am a collector of rare books, particularly those relating to Americana. And I have a very, very large collection people tell me by my normal standards. And I'm thinking about, I'm buying these books

that people wrote 100, 200 years ago. And maybe, and nobody's not going to buy my books in the 100, 200 years. But the fact that there's something that's still around 100, 200 years after you're gone is, you know, interesting. And so I, I just enjoy writing books. My problem was I didn't think of doing it or I didn't have a time to do it to, you know, it was in my late 60s. So I wish, you know, I read about some people, I've written 30 books. I don't have a time to do it, but they actually started earlier. And if you have a routine, you can get that done. I think my former boss, Jimmy Carter, has written, I think, 28 or 29 books. He pumps them out and they're all very good. I've read probably four or five of them and it's almost like he missed his actual calling.

So, you know, and other people have written books, Richard Posner, one of my former law professors, the University of Chicago. He's written about 30 books and while he was also a judge and and a law professor, so a lot of people are much more productive. Teddy Roosevelt, I think wrote 30 books or so. I wish I had started earlier. I'm now trying to do one a year, and I have a formula, and they will be doing it. I have to give up other things. So I enjoy doing it, and I hope my brain will keep going for a while.

Here's me talking to Ali Abdahl. It's weird, because I'm both a systems person and not a systems person. Like, so I have my no card thing that I do, but which is very methodical. But then, you know, people often ask me, like, sort of, what tech tools do you use? Blah, blah, blah, blah.

And I'm sort of very rudimentary in that sense. Do you think, do you think there's, I've always wondered, or I guess been suspicious, if part of why people obsess about systems or tools is that it is a substitute for like actually sitting down and doing the hard part, like coming up with what it is that you have to say, or that it's just a way to get distracted with like all this sort of

setup and not sort of just putting your ass in the chair and doing the thing. Yeah, I think that is actually a big part of it. I see this in myself, probably a year ago, a year or so ago, when I was deep down the rabbit hole of researching productivity apps and not taking systems and the settle custom and all this fancy stuff. And realizing that as a nerd, I enjoy reading about systems. And I enjoy the feeling that, and probably why I watched your video was like, oh, what's a secret source?

Yeah, it's fine at writing secret source. Like what's the system that if I adopt the system, suddenly I'll become a magical bestselling author. And the system is just like a whole load of hard work that just happens to be on flashcards in your little boxes. I was like, okay, fine. There's no getting around the fact that this actually takes a large amount of work.

And so actually I've found myself gravitating more towards simplicity on the tech front as well. Like these days, the only real note taking up I use is Apple Notes. I had dabbled with Rome, dabbled with the Zethelacastan stuff. We use Notion for like team stuff because it works nicely for that. But I find that if I just want to open up something and start writing, even when it's like chapters of my book, I'll just start them off in Apple Notes

because I just know it works and notes are plus plus plus plus, notes easy. And I feel almost embarrassed to screenshot it and sharing it on YouTube because people, I'm supposed to be some kind of productivity note who has all these ridiculously elaborate systems. And actually, I pull notes all the way. But sort of like people set up these sort of rubric goldberg machines, instead of just like getting to the fastest thing, which is, yeah, just sitting down and doing the work. Like we don't, the writing sucks or whatever that making the video or coming up with

the idea, that's the hard part. So I think sometimes we, it's like, we add all this stuff on top. I don't know why, but we do. Oh, I have an example about this. So recently we put out a video on the YouTube channel that we had to delete because it was just like objectively bad clickbait title, bad, bad content, not authentic. And that led me on a whole thing of like figuring out, okay, how do we had to delete because it was just like objectively bad, clickbait title, bad, bad content, not authentic. And that led me on a whole thing of like figuring out, okay, how do we get to this point where we made a video that was just so bad that the comments were like 50% dislikes and had to be taken down?

And I realized that what my issue was is that ever since I discovered the power of like being able to hire people and delegate and outsource aspects of creation. I went too far in the direction of thinking, oh, let me build a system and hire people to fill the system such that I never have to think about a video idea ever again. And like, I imagined my dream scenario was one where I could sit down on my desk, speak to a teleprompter, and just show out content. Yeah. That was all right. Cool. Let's work towards that future. And so we hide writers and researchers and all this kind of stuff.

And I realized that, you know, we had like a, the team staged an intervention Zoom call a few weekends ago saying that, okay, Ali, maybe we've got a problem. The content is starting to lose its charm because you're not showing up, you're not setting down and doing the work

and coming up with ideas in sort of, kind of forming them into videos because that is the work of that is the hard part. I thought I could outsource and automate and systemise the hard part. I realised, oh my god, this is actually just what was so misguided. So now we've done a whole 180 on that and I'm now getting so actively involved back in the content. I'm leaving the management side of the team and stuff to other people in the team who

are better at that stuff. I can just focus on actually sitting down and doing the work of doing the content thing. So I think that really resonates that even researching systems, even building human systems hiring and delegating is often a substitute, at least for me, for actually sitting down and doing the work. Well, and it kind of goes back to like, you didn't leave medicine to have a YouTube channel that you don't work on. Like, like, you left medicine because you liked coming up with and making videos

more than doing the other thing. So what kind of life it is, is it where you've also outsourced that, right? I mean, it's, you could call it retirement, which might be, you know, something you do at some point, but like, it is a weird thing. I mean, with writing, you, you get successful at it, and then you can fill up your whole life with lucrative things that are not that thing, or you can even pay people to do that thing for you. But I just, I always try to remember like, but that's the, that's the thing I I like doing and by the way, that's the thing that I'm If not the best at I'm at least world class at or we wouldn't be here, right? Like we wouldn't I wouldn't be able to hire people to do it for me if I wasn't Like if I hadn't done something new or original and how I do it and what's yeah?

What's the point of succeeding at a thing if the reward for that thing is you don't do that thing anymore. Yeah, that's very true, especially in terms of the whole retirement thing. What that ended up looking like was back-to-back, because we were meetings every single day. Like, hey, this is not fun. Because you're still working. You're just not working on the thing you actually love doing. You're still working. You're just not working on the thing

you actually love doing. Yeah. Yeah. But hey, we've now blocked out large amounts of time in the calendar for deep work that no one has allowed to book meetings and having all the meetings on Mondays. Like it's trying to work towards the system.

Similar to what you've got, wake up in the morning, do a few hours of like four hours of whatever was writing, hang out at the farm, go for a walk. That seems like a good life. Well, yeah, I mean, I think about it as like, what do you want your life to look like, work being a part of that life?

The idea that you would have a really unhappy life for a large period of time and then go do this thing, you actually like seems to me to be a risky bet. Yeah, the third life plan. Very risky. Yeah, yeah. So speaking of productivity, I mean, obviously,

you do get a lot done. If you had to think about like, what are the biggest tools for you as far as being more productive? Like if someone's like, I'm just a mess. Like my life's just a mess. Where would you start? Oh, okay. So there's like one underlying theme

and then a few tools to help. The underlying theme is for me, I found that actually just optimizing for what's fun has been the single biggest hack for my productivity ever. And finding like that, a partly that's like choosing to do a thing which I happen to find fun, you know, whole follow your passion stuff. But it's only recently that I've had the freedom to be able to do that. For the rest of my life, it was doing things other people slash the schooling system was telling me to do.

But even in those, finding ways to make them fun. And so now my advice for most people, if they're struggling with productivity, is find a way to make it fun. That's all, you know, all easier, a lot easier said than done. In terms of specific tools for getting more done, single biggest step I found is something I came across in a book called Make Time by Jack Knapp and John Zoratsky. They call it the daily highlight.

I think similar to Gary Ketter's idea of the one thing, like what's the one thing I actually want to do today? And I ask myself this every morning, I was the one thing, all right, cool. Write that down. And honestly, if I could actually just do that one thing, that's most important to me, every single day for 365 days, that would completely move the needle on my productivity. So if I only could choose one thing, that would be what I would suggest.

If I could choose two things, it would be deciding what that one thing is and then putting it on the calendar, because when it's on the calendar, it's going to get done. And if it's not on the calendar, it's not going to get done. Do you think about, I guess this connects to the idea of the one thing, which I think about is like, and this also goes to the point about delegating, which is like, what is the thing that only you can do? Right? Like to me, a great organization exploits the law of comparative advantage, which is that everyone should do the thing that they are best at, right? And then we all come together and then we're the super-human or super-organization where you have a bunch of people doing the best thing. This is how a sports

team works, right? Not everyone plays whatever position they just assign people randomly. It's like, you have the best quarterback, you have the best linebackers, you have the best safety, you have the best the best players. So, but I think that's really important in especially if you're in charge of the team, which is like, what is your thing? The thing that only you can do. And then how do you, as you said, make time for that, block it out in the calendar,

and conversely, how do you hire people to support or take off your plate all the things that are not that thing? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I did one of those, those like Matrix exercises where it's like things I love to do and I'm great at things I like to do and I'm good at things I don't like to do and I'm good at and things I can't. What's that called? Can't remember.

It was within a book called Attraction by Dino Someone. Yeah, this is what I was reading. And I did that exercise. I was like, oh, okay. There's a lot of things in this, in the bottom two quadrants, i.e. things I don't like to do, that I am good at slash not good at. And I realized I actually could just write all of those down. And this was how I ended up finding a personal assistant.

And, genuinely, I feel like these days, anytime I speak to a sort of creator or entrepreneur, and they don't have a personal assistant, I try and sell them on the idea of just getting a part-time personal assistant. But I think if you can offload those bits that you don't like that someone else could do, it just gives more of your time to do the stuff you enjoy.

Here's me talking to the economist Emily Oster. I was fascinated by the Bloomberg profile of you and your family. It sounds like your mother and father had a very interesting way of raising you in your siblings. Really? I mean, I think that they, yeah, I guess everybody's family is kind of weird in their own way and so when you're in the family, you're like, oh, this is totally how everyone does it. And then, you know, when you meet your spouse and you go to their family, you're like, oh,

I guess not everybody does it like that. But like they were saying, like alternating which days they cooked to show that the role should be shared, even like how you're, how you got one last name and your other siblings got a different last name. Yeah, yeah, I think that for my mom, she was the kind of 1970s feminist. And for her, a lot of these, this mock, like there were a lot of aspects of modeling that were just

very in the concrete. So beyond staying men and women are equal, like literally trying to show us that, you know, you could kind of both do all the things. I think that was just, for her, that was a really important way to show that. No, but I love that because, I mean, isn't that what parenting is supposed to be? Like, it's easy to say, here's what I believe, here's what's true, and then as a parent, I think you struggle to, you know, like, actually live up to what you think is important. Yeah, it's so, it's interesting because there's a sort of there's a little bit of a problem from this from an economist standpoint because actually within

economics, it is not really that you should split the things exactly evenly, right? Like people should do the things that they are relatively better at. Comparative advantage. Comparative advantage. And so actually my father's a terrible cook, like legitimately terrible. And so like it was like, you know, every, it wasn't really that great and I did have him cook

every other day because you only go good like two things. Right. And so you had, you know, and my mom is a fantastic cook. So it would be like, every day you come home, you're like, who's cooking today? It was dad, it was like a sesame chicken. Please, that's it. And so there was this sort of tension about like efficiency versus equity.

No, it's funny how, I mean, obviously, I'm sure in other cases, it's not true, but it is interesting how much sort of like gender roles can be revealed in the interesting how much sort of like gender roles can be revealed in the course of these sort of ordinary parental virtue tasks. I remember my dad, so my mom worked a lot, so she would work at night sometimes, she was a school principal at a school that also had night classes, and when my dad would cook, my dad would cook us, he'd cook like ramen noodles, and then he would melt cheese in it. Like he would put cheese, you call it cheesy soup.

And in retrospect, it's so disgusting to even comprehend eating that. But you're also learning the lesson, the same one your parents are teaching, which is that like, the parents job is to cook dinner for the kids, not the mom's job or the dad's job. Yeah, no, I think that's, I think that's right. I mean, I will say in my family, I do all the cooking, but, but my husband is all of the dishwasher. So we've sort of split it in a slightly different way, but at least, you know, like kids see kind of both

people are and that both people are contributing to like making sure the house is functioning. Yes, right. And, and you kind of also have to choose your battles as far as like what lessons? Like, where do you really want to show? Like, here's what I mean, what I say. Is it to the point where we all have to eat inedible food or should we find, you know, bigger battles to fight? Yeah, exactly. There's like a sort of, there's like, we chill, do you want to die out? So going to this idea, some of the gender stuff I was curious about, because I feel like this is partly why your books have resonated and why I like them, but, but, uh, by so many of my wife's friends have liked them as well. Am I wrong in picking up that like, mom seems to be like a thousand times harder on themselves than fathers, and where is that coming from? Yeah, I don't, I mean, I think you're definitely right.

How much of that is like societal pressure as opposed to like, you know, like how much you put on yourself. I've never quite worked out. Like I think, you know, the sort of, there's this trope, which is of course a trope, but also not totally wrong, where people feel like, you know, if you like when I'm watching the kid for the day, like, everyone should leave thinking like,

wow, I learned a lot and it was like, and I mastered a new skill and also we had the 17th course bento meal, you know? And then when he's watching the kid for the day, it's like, oh, they're not dead. So I read, you know, it's And so somehow, the standards are really weird. And I do think that it's both society and it's probably partially pressure people put on themselves.

Yeah, there was a story. I liked one time where Stuart Scott, the late ESPN broadcaster, was having, like, it was, took his two daughters out to lunch, and they're sitting there with a friend and their kids, and someone who recognized them came up and said, oh, it's so great to see you babysitting. And he said, I'm not a fucking babysitter. Like, this is my job, you know, like, but there is an element where it's like, yeah, as a father, it's like, if the kids are alive, success, and the mother, you're judged against the greatest mother who ever lived. And, you know, the TV image of a mother and all these things.

Right. I think it's not even the greatest mother who ever lived. It's like what other people think that, I think, is the greatest mother. You know, like there's not like, there's one version of that that like you could aspire to. It's just like what they think that, you know, should be happening. Yeah, and there's a thing I think that the Stoics would sort of point out about that, that's interesting where it's like, there does seem to be this kind of contest women are in with other women about like sort of who can be the most

pure authentic, you know, natural mother and men. Obviously have tons of ridiculous contests that we get in with other men. But it's it's I think in both cases it's sort of this idea is like what is making your you feel like a piece of shit about it? How does it make you better at that thing? Right. No, I totally read. I mean, I think it's not, you know, making other people feel bad is something that we seem to think is a way that we can make ourselves feel good, which is not obvious. There's this thing where I think we, I guess what I'm saying is beating on yourself for not being good enough, for not doing it perfectly,

it not only doesn't help you, but it doesn't help your kids or anyone. So there's this kind of guilt that we add on top that is not additive really in any way. Yeah, no exactly. It's sort of like somehow by feeling bad about things, I am somehow positively contributing to the experience of my of my children. I think it comes up in pregnancy also around like sort of denying things, right? The idea that like, you know, well, if you are, like, you know, well, if you can go without coffee,

even if there's like no reason to do it, just the act of kind of making that sacrifice, that is what makes you a good parent. As opposed to like just, you know, that's just something that makes you miserable and doesn't help your people. Yeah. Right. And I know some of the studies of it have been sort of disproven or whatever, but I think personally, most people, it's like you only have so much willpower. I think we can kind of admit that we only have so much energy and we only have so much sort of self-discipline. What are you going to spend it on? Is it really an important question?

Yeah, yeah, I think you have to, and we only have so many like mental and physical resources, right? You just can't do all of these things. And, or then you tried to do all of them and you kind of lose it. And now you've, now you yelled at your kid. And but that's also bad. You know, now you did that thing. Right. Right. Yeah. No, you, you feeling like you're not good enough.

You feeling like, you know, you're, you you're crappy compared to other moms or dads, et cetera. It isn't making you better with this little person who needs you to be strong and confident in all these things that parenting the player. And happy, like, you're, I mean, your kids, why, like, if you are happy, that is a way for them to also be happy. So where does the premise of your work, which I think is interesting, I was just talking to Tom

Rex who wrote this book called First Principles, which is really about what did the founders believe as they were creating America, but the concept of First Principles seems to kind of be at the root of your work, which is in the sense that you're like, you know, instead of just assuming that all of these things are true, all of these sort of lessons or rules or guidelines, why don't we actually explore them and see if this is what we're doing, this is not what we're doing, is that sort of how you think about your work? Yeah, I mean, I think about my work as basically saying, you know, people told you a lot of different stuff. And, you know, especially actually in this world in which you kind of

can't do everything, where you're sort of you're limited in your capacity or both power, your time or whatever it is, that it actually is pretty valuable to have those things right. And, you know, rather than saying like every single, you know, it's very important that you breastfeed and not close sleep and that your kid is not in your bed, but they are in your room and that they do that for a year and also that you do all these other 50 things. Like actually identifying what does the data say

about which of these is most important and which of them are maybe, maybe even if they matter or that they matter less. And that lets you you make informed decisions in a world of constraints. I mean, economics is all about optimizing under constraints. And I think sometimes we just assume that parents have 75 hours in every day.

And so they don't raise constraints, but that turns out not to be true. Well, and even I think there's also probably some guilt slash fear of optimizing, which implies compromise as a parent, as opposed to just doing everything perfectly exactly how you'd want it to be. Yeah, I think people don't want to say, like, well, even though this thing was a little bit good, I kind of didn't have the capacity to do it, but I think we should be able to sit up because of course, if you

you may literally be impossible to do all that, I think the people tell you to do. Well, I feel like from what I've read of your stuff where it's like, look, if you know that the choice you're making is for the most part rooted in data, then you can feel good about it, even if other people think you're crazy or weird or you know, Marcus really says this great line, Ray says, we love ourselves more than other people, but we care about other people's opinion more than our own. There seems to be an element of parenting where it's like, even though we all have pretty good intuition and maybe we've have our own experiences, we really just want to make sure we're not doing something weird compared to what our kids

friends parents are doing. Yeah, I think the other piece of it is not so much, it's part of it is sort of knowing like what the data says. And in part of it is just knowing that you thought about it. So I think that some of what I'm sort of delivering in the books is like, look, here's like, here's a kind of opportunity for you to sit down and think about, you know, what are the choices I'm in a face? What is the evidence? Say, how should I think about my preferences? And then to kind of come out and say, okay, well, I decided to breastfeed. Why?

I decided not to breastfeed, and I decided it because I looked at the evidence, and I thought about it. I thought about what worked for me. And then when someone is like, oh, you're not breastfeeding, then it's a little bit easier to be like, I'm not breastfeeding and I thought about it and I'm not doing it because it's not the thing that works for me. As opposed to just being like, oh my god, that person is judging me. Like maybe I am doing wrong. Right.

And also, I'm not like knowing that you're not doing it because it's hard, right? You know what I mean? Like you're doing it, there's a logic to your actions. Exactly, but you made that decision for a reason, not just because you just like, like on a whim one day, you decided that that just wasn't going to be for you. Here's me talking to venture capitalist Brad Felt. If you're lucky enough to be successful, right? So you start some small tech company and,

you know, for the first several months or several small tech company and, you know, for the first several months or several years, you're, you know, you're maniacally focused on product, customer acquisition and all these things. But if you're lucky enough to be successful soon enough, you're bumping into the timeless questions of philosophy, which is dealing with other people, dealing with temptation, dealing with focus, trying to find balance, you know, human psychology, a purpose, meaning, you know, all those questions become, not just part of the purview of a leader,

but you could argue as the company becomes really successful, pretty much entirely what the founders should be thinking about because they shouldn't be micromanaging all these sort of day-to-day product things. They should be thinking about where does this company fit in the world? Where is the world going? How do I get the most out of the people who have decided to entrust me with their time and retirement savings and all these things? Let's play with an important word that you said for a moment,

which is meaning. Yeah. And it's so important because so much of entrepreneurship is filled with cliches about what to do and how to do it, or even why you should do it or what success and accomplishment is, but very rarely do any of those clichés land on real meaning. And often in some ways, they're really antithetical to the whole notion of meaning. And an example would be the number of entrepreneurs who say, I want to be an entrepreneur because

I want to change the world. Or, you know, the Steve Jobs cliche, I want to put a dent in the, you know, are you going to change the world in such a casual statement. My goal of creating this company is to change the world. What does that actually mean? That's only the first part of the sentence, right? What are you trying to, not just why are you changing the world, but what change? I mean, a lot of horrible people have changed the world too for the worst. And there's a lot of things, where you say,

why change the world? And it's like, yeah, except for for the last 2,000 years, that change happens every 20 years. For sure. 30 years. Like, you didn't really change the world. You just played a pattern that keeps playing out over and over again. And that's just at the functional level of the business.

Then you think about the behavior of the person. And the experience that you have and play with another word, which is, why are you doing this? What is the meaning of what you are doing? You know, what is your own why? Yeah. And as you have failure or success or some of both, does the why change? And interestingly, do you ever accomplish your why and then what?

And these are all real questions about being a human and being, you know, part of this species on this planet. And it doesn't have to do with 2021, it could. You can instantiate it in 2021, but in the context of long arc of meaning, what again does that matter? And I think entrepreneurs who don't spend any time going deep on that within themselves, and frankly, it's entrepreneurs or people are missing such a huge element of

the experience of existence. And at the core that's the essence of philosophy over a long period of our species. Yeah, to flash forward, you mentioned the idea of these trends happening every 20 or 30 years and that's a hint at Nietzsche's concept of eternal recurrence. But I am struck, for instance, and I remember being struck reading at 20 years old Marcus Relius, and you have this incredibly powerful, successful person who did change the world, meditating on how meaningless it was, but that it didn't mean what he thought it was going to mean or he was sort of, it's like he got to the top of the mountain and he wanted to tell people,

like, hey, don't give up your entire life to get up here because it's not exactly what you think. I am amazed, you know, the number of people who get into entrepreneurship because they want to be the richest or they want to do this thing that they've seen other people do, even though if you look closely at it, those people sort of also warn against trying to do that. So there is this weird tendency where we're all chasing this thing and then conveniently forgetting that people have gotten there before us and come back to say like, hey, make sure you're doing this for the right reasons. Well, the very powerful ending arc of that, I keep a copy of your

book, The Daily Stoic, in the bathroom. And each morning I read whatever that day is. And I particularly like December, because December is about mortality and death. And I'm reading a book right now called Quantum, I lost the last name of it. I'm reading a book right now called Quantum, oh, I lost the last name of it. It's by David Kaiser. And it's sort of about, he's a physicist in this story

and it's sort of about the different arcs of quantum thinking and all the different things that have happened along the way. And it's both the specifics and the sort of the philosophy of it. And this notion that there's this big struggle in quantum physics today around the big bang starting 14 billion years ago and the different philosophies of or the different thesis, I don't want to say theories, I guess they're theories, I was going to say thesis, but I guess they're really theories of what happened immediately before

the big bang. And if the universe is the universe really infin or is it finite, and then there's now the multiple parallel universe theory that is picking up some steam is that there's this continual instantiation of multiple parallel universes. And this whole notion that as a as a human being, right, you know, our lifespan is less than uh less than a hundred years or a hundred years would be a very long life for somebody and the idea that we're 14 billion years into the existing universe that we're in as current quantum philosophy has and then on top of all of that

The notion that if you sort of scale way back and look at it, it's kind of no different than in some ways a different flavor of religion, right? It's the creation myth of the universe and the role of humans in the context of the universe and Today we have such a deep understanding in just in the last hundred years of so much more of what's going on than, you know, 2000 years ago in terms of the mechanics of everything. But if you go back 2000 years and you think about this notion of meaning, those patterns play out over and over and over again.

Right? The Joseph Campbell hero arc, the incredibly successful person who dies unhappy or penniless, or some tragedy occurs along the way, and even though they had incredible success, you know, the loss of child, family, country, whatever. I mean, these things just play out over and over and over again. And we abuse so much meaning in them. Philosophy and studying philosophy and applying it to our lives gives us a moment to really step back and go deeper on the meaning to us. Forget about the meaning to everyone else. Forget about what we're told is important,

but that introspection and playing around with it is so powerful. Here's me talking to Randall Stuttman. We briefly touched on ego and managing up. Having written the ego is the enemy. It's ironic I get all the time people go, what do I do about my boss's ego? And I usually try to turn it around and go,

why don't you focus on yours? Right, you know, that you're asking me about someone else's ego first. But what do you do? How does one get better at managing up or leading up when, you know, they're not the ones that get final set, right? You can put together the most brilliant plan that you can assemble the most brilliant team, but how do you deal with the difficulty of somebody else also leading you as you

are leading others? Well, you're going to have to learn how to carry feedback upwards. And sometimes it's about getting curious and asking questions. Like, why do you do what you do? Like, why is this your stance? Like, tell me, like, it just doesn't occur to me. It's not my intuition to think in this particular way. You're the leader.

You're somebody that has more experience than I do. Explain that to me. And what you'll oftentimes is just by asking the question, you will shake people up. You will get them to rethink their premises or start thinking about. So for example, you were using the example of yelling in the organization.

That doesn't happen very much anymore, but occasionally it does. We'll see organizational cultures that are highly negative. We're the only thing positive in this direct test and things. But nonetheless, right? If you had somebody that would yell a little time and say, hey, like, you know, it's not my instinct to yell.

So tell me, what do you think it achieves? And tell me why you do it. Maybe I'm gonna double down. I don't know, but like explain it to me. And then what you're gonna wind up hearing is, I don't yell. Yeah, actually, I think you do, right? Well, so you tell me it's not intentional.

Well, what do you mean? I mean, I guess I raised my voice sometime. And that's all it takes. I mean, that's a big deal. Asking questions in a curious way and carrying feedback, the most negative feedback with questions is a very, very important way to leading up, right? But here's, here's, tell me, no, my favorite ego.

I don't think I've ever shared this. I mean, my favorite ego story is an Indian Johnson story. So Johnson's coming out of the White House. He's coming in this true story because it's written by a secret service person who wrote this and coming out of the White House, talking to reporters through the Rose Garden, walking to a helicopter. There's two helicopters on two different pads. They had just met with some dignitaries. And they were going to take those dignitaries someplace else within one helicopter.

And because he's talking to press with his back to think he's walking to the wrong helicopter. He's moving to the wrong helicopter. So the Secret Service guy taps him on the on the shoulders and says, President Johnson, you're moving to the wrong helicopter. That's not your helicopter. And Johnson gets a big smile on his face

and puts his arm around him and says, son, they're all my helicopters. You know, one more. Okay. This idea of ownership is the biggest problem that I face when we come to EGO in organizations. Rate leaders are stewards. They're stewards of their kids.

They're stewards of their marriages. They're stewards of their teams. They're stewards of their organizations. We don't own anything. Okay. And the moment you have that near mentality, it really is a problem. So here's my point. The reason I bring that up is not just tell you a fun story that I like.

It's that when you ask me, how do I influence the person upward? Part of it is to say, right? Okay. We don't own this. We're stewards of this. So tell me, show me, and you don't have to say it this way. How is this, how are we maintaining this over time? What's the long strategy here? How are we retaining people through these actions? What's the stewardship here? And explain to me how it is you and I are acting like stewards. And again, don't say it directly that way. But when you ask that question, again,

you will shake people up because you now remind them of what their true role is. And when you ask that question again, you will shake people up because you now remind them of what their true role is. And when you remind people that they're stewards instead of owners, they act entirely differently. I love that. I was just thinking about that as a business decision on something that I own. Like I was thinking about the profits that are coming in, the revenue that's coming in, and thinking about what is my obligation as the owner of the business, but as the steward of the business, what is my obligation to invest that? Is it advertising might grow it, but is that the best, most honorable use of the funds?

Might it be better to do X, Y, and Z instead? And so I just wrote this down. Am I being a good steward? I think as a question leader should ask themselves. Absolutely. And you can ask that of your leader without doing it directly. You can say, how is this? How is this?

Because almost all long-term, what's best for the business? Anything that isn't about you in the center of it is moving towards stewardship. But it's the idea intentionally, my goal and my job is to actually shepherd, right? Where this goes and to keep it alive and to maintain the highest effectiveness and efficiency and efficacy that we can.

That stewardship, when you start owning stuff, which people do so quickly, they own their kids, they own their marriage, they own their houses, they own everything, they're not stewards of things. And as a result, they operate very differently as leaders. So last question, because it pertains to that, and I saw some people mention it, and I know it's come up, I've seen you talk to different leaders about it. There's that expression, and excuse the gendered nature of it, but it only works that way if you rhyme, because it rhymes.

Happy wife, happy life, right? How do you think about leadership and their personal life, applying being a leader at home, applying having a balanced, happy home so that you're not bringing your garbage to the office and you're not bringing your garbage from the office home? So three things, there's three things in there that I'm gonna unpack.

So this is gonna be gonna be a long answer, but I think- I love it. Right? So, the first thing is, your job as a leader is to make really fast transitions. By that is, you play many different roles in many different places. Your job is not to carry the last conversation. So forget about, you know, how happy things are. Your job is not to carry the last conversation to this conversation.

If you're going to be entirely attentive to me, it's about our conversation. So even during the work day, you know, you just had a conversation, we just we just did this this conversation. You can't you can't let that influence what's going to happen next by mood, by by focus, by lack of focus, whatever else. Your job is to make fast transitions. And so you've got, if that means you need to settle yourself and sit out in your car for a couple of minutes before you walk in the house so you can now be dead, then that's what you need to do.

So your job is not to walk into that house and carry with you forward anything that came from before. And that's about conversation. It isn't about happy. It isn't about, you know, disappointment. It's about conversation. And because all of those things reside in conversation. So your job is to make transitions fast ones from conversation and conversation I carry them for.

Right? So that's my first piece. My second answer or kind of like, you know, engagement around that idea of happy is, listen, this happens a little time. I'll study somebody and they'll say, I'm really good at relationships. I go really tell me about that. I'm really good with my friends, have a great marriage, not so good with my colleagues, not good with my leader, okay with my clients. What I know is they suck everywhere they just don't know. Because you can't be good. I mean, really good in one spot. You've never met anyone that wakes up and you know, who's fast

and then wakes up slow. You never make it in anyone that's like really smart and then one day they just they're stupid, right? You know, excellence doesn't turn itself or turn itself on or off. It just doesn't. And so the question really is is when people tell me like, you know, they need, they need a certain context that I have to be happy here to be happy here. My response is like, okay, it sounds to me like you're not happy anywhere. So let's figure it all out because it isn't a segue between this and that. You're just not, you're not achieving. You're not hitting on all cylinders every place. So let's figure that out, right? Because this, you're overestimating yourself, which we all do, okay, that you're thinking

it's more about X than it is why it's both of those things, right? They're happening. You can't turn excellence on and on. Right? My third answer to that is this idea, this idea of work life balance has created such a horrible metaphor in 2021. It wasn't a hard and horrible metaphor in 1960 by the way, but because we asked for different commitments, there was different engagement, it was an entirely different way of organizing ourselves and alike. But in 2021, there is no work life balance. It's an integrated hole, right? It's work life, you know, Bezos calls it work life harming, and I don't like most of Bezos' stuff, but he's got that one right. It's a harmonious way of connecting all the dots. So that you integrate pieces,

people that aren't talking to their, the people that matter the most to them in life. You're not talking to your kids all day long. I don't mean little nanotexts or shard ever else. And you're saying, well, I'm gonna save that for the weekend. What I know is you're out of balance, okay? You have an integrated in your life, okay your life. I want all of those things integrated. What you're going to find is when you integrate and create a harmonious balance in your life

about everything you're doing, everything that's important happens all the time. What you're going to find is everything happy has an influence and shaping of everything else. Everything that's unhappy, you have the ability to put in context and keep it. And so happiness will spread itself, if you will, if you're fully integrated. Satisfaction will spread itself, pride will set, all the good virtues will spread themselves. And the other things will become moments of time

that you can get past. So to me, it's all about integrating and creating a whole rather than separating things out. When we subordinate and separate things out, we get ourselves in trouble as leaders. When I say, I'll worry about the relationship and how people see me later, I've got to get the task done. I'm going to subordinate that to later. Later is one of the biggest dangers that we all face. Everything can be done later. I can procrastinate and do it later. I can talk about my relationships later. I can push this off for the weekend. We're going to have really quality time this weekend, Ryan, by the way. Okay. And what I'm doing is I'm basically not

integrating the whole and as a result, I'm being less effective as I should be as a leader. And I'm making everybody around me less effective as a result. No, I love that. You said we didn't quite disagree, but maybe this is a minor point of disagreement. I would say that I have found that professional mastery, so work on your work does not translate into personal happiness, but personal work, personal development can translate into professional excellence so that it's

not quite a two-way street. So the work you do on your relationship with your kids at your home and how your health, all those things can have, can pay real dividends at the office. Green. You can work 50 hours a week, and that's not a lot. You can work all the time at the office and build a great workplace culture that doesn't immediately translate to home the same way that the you're right. We disagree because you used apples and oranges. You went from a place of saying, I've got this family and you use a couple of other descriptors. I've lost them already. And then you went to say 50 hours and,

what I want you to bring from that work is excitement and pride and satisfaction of result. And those things, so when your kids ask you, why are you going, why are you leaving every morning? Like why are you going away? And you don't say, because I need to work, what you say is I have this tremendous need to teach and engage other people.

And I hope to share that with you. And I can't wait to do it. And then I can't wait to come back with you because we're gonna have this, right? There's so many things that you should, should if you're doing it correctly that you should be bringing back from work that should instill in your family

and personal relationships in a way that betters them. We just don't think of them that way because we don't compare apples and apples. That's true. I guess I would just say there's lots of champions and billionaires and well-respected artists, etc., who are very good at what they do, but our shitty at home. I would argue there's a lot fewer people who have wonderful happy, you know, actualized home lives who are not good at the office. I agree with 100% of that, but here's what I'll tell you. Of those musicians and artists and everybody else you described, they're really good at what they do, but you know, but our shitty at home, I'm going to guess,

I'm going to bet, right, that if I went in there and you and I went and looked at them, they're shitty with the other people that they work with too. And they could be better at what they do. It's all about, and it would make them better. They're all about relationships, but their talents are so significant that they're able to succeed despite themselves. Yes. And that happens all the time. Yes. No, to me, that's the point about Ego too. It's not that people with Egos are never successful. It's that egotistical people could have been more successful if they could have gotten out of their own way.

Oh, 100%. Wow, we can see we ended on agreement. We ended on agreement. Randall, thank you so much. This was amazing. I appreciate everyone talking to you. Good luck with all of this and we'll talk soon. We will. Alright, talk soon. Bye. Bye.

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