The Game with Alex Hormozi - Restructuring Education & Teaching Practical Life Skills (on The Iced Coffee Hour) Pt.1 - March ‘22 | Ep 509

Episode Date: March 11, 2023

Education is meant to create people who can add value to society. Today, join Alex (@AlexHormozi) as he guests on The Iced Coffee Hour to talk about the flaws in the education system and the need for more practical life skills to be taught. He also discusses alternative schooling systems and how to add value to someone's life, particularly someone who is out of reach for most people, and his opinion on passing riches to future generations. This is part 1 of the interview.Welcome to The Game w/Alex Hormozi, hosted by entrepreneur, founder, investor, author, public speaker, and content creator Alex Hormozi. On this podcast you’ll hear how to get more customers, make more profit per customer, how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons Alex has learned on his path from $100M to $1B in net worth.Timestamps:(1:07) - The current education system needs to teach people how to think more(9:53) - Practical life skills should also be taught in school(14:55) - Not focusing on news and reducing stress(27:19) - Time management & mentally switching off from work mode(34:38) - Alex on getting rid of all his money & thoughts on having kids(43:44) - Why helping others holds the most weight in making decisionsFollow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

The idea that we have of like, I want to like create a legacy, it's like, dude, you're not making a legacy. He was ruler of a country. I can't even remember his name when I'm related to him. And so if you do that enough times, it just becomes humans. Welcome to the game where we talk about how to get more customers, how to make more per customer, and how to keep them longer and the many failures and lessons we have learned along the way. I hope you enjoy and subscribe. Welcome back again to the ice coffee hour with Graham, Jack, and Alex, where we will talk about life, liberty, and the pursuit. of happiness in all things awesome. I love that. Thank you so much for making the time for us.

No, you bet. Thanks for having me back again. Well, education starts really early. Yeah. How would you change that right now with, let's say, the current schooling system, which seems to teach you kind of how to stay in line, how to think like everybody else, get your homework done on time. You got to show up at, you know, 8 a.m., school ends at 3. Do you think that's a good model? I mean, obviously, answer is no. Tell me your thoughts on that. I think, so I've, two broad statements is, I think the purpose of education is teach people how to think rather than how to memorize.

And especially now with technology that we have, if you can pass a test with having an iPhone with you, then in my opinion, the test was poorly designed because it's not going to, and then we have to rewind into like, what is the purpose of education, right? The education system overall, the product of that is people who can add value to society, right? That's the product of the education system. raw units or humans, the output of the system is people who can add value to society. Okay, cool. So if that's the, if that's the system, then there's a lot of leeway there in terms of how we

can get there. I think the system that we have set up is inherited from the factory worker, you know, when it was being designed versus now. Now I think we need a lot more problem solving skills than we did back then, a lot more divergent thinking processes. And if you're not familiar, this is a fun little exercise. What school teaches right now is convergent thinking. And so that means that there's multiple variables and one correct answer. And so it's like one plus one equals two. There's only one correct answer. And now they're even telling you there's only one way to find the answer. And if you don't find it the way they want you to find it, then it's also wrong, which is ridiculous. But anyways, divergent thinking is when you have multiple variables,

but multiple correct answers, which is like how many different ways can you use a brick? And what's interesting about that is that you can also have multiple right answers and some answers that are more right than others, which becomes very difficult to grade, but also how the real world works. And we're rewarded based on how right our YouTube video really is, right? Or how right our article is, or how right our product is, and how we can solve problems using more creative methods than trying to converge on a single answer. Because if it's a convergent thinking process, for the most part, it's already been kind of automated and everyone can do it, right? You get paid for what you can think of in the creative box of like, what are other people not thinking of? And so I think that more of the

education system to be around divergent thinking and divergent problem solving. You think that's ever going to happen? No. Mostly just because of the power dynamics that exist. And like, if you've ever saw the documentary Waiting for Superman, it was one of the only movies that I've cried during because it was just the education system. And it was just showing how there are so many impediments to it getting fixed. It's not just one party.

Like you've got the teachers unions. You've got the funding for the schools. You've got like there's all of these things that are almost all diametrically opposed to one another. and then the only people who really suffer are the kids, and then ultimately the country. So anyways, I do think the way that it'll have to get solved is that there is an alternative schooling system that gets developed that because of technology, Nvalrava Khan said this, but technology democratizes consumption and consolidates production, which means if you're the best

in the world, you get to do it for everyone, right? Which a lot of people don't like from a capitalist perspective, but that's also silly because I feel like that's just Pareto at work. But why would you not want the best math teacher teaching everyone math? Like, it makes sense. And because there's zero cost of duplication, and now everyone's kind of understands how Zoom works and how, like, we can continue to using life virtually.

Like, there's really no reason to have, now, it gets scary because teachers, unions and what are all these people going to do for work and all that stuff. But, like, just like the switchboards for when there used to be girls who would switch for telephones, they're like, what are we going to do when, you know, technology automates that. Like, Web 3 is just blowing up.

There would be jobs as we solve new problems. We'll create new ones. Yeah. Right. And so to say, like, we have to keep something that doesn't make sense, doesn't provide value to the system for the sake of it. It doesn't make sense to me. And so I think that it would probably have to be a new architecture

where the best people teach and then kids learn, probably at their own pace. And the testing would probably have to change in order for it to be more real world. And if we wanted it to be real world, then I think you need to match conditions, which is real world, you have your phone. Like, now take the test. Yeah, I would love that.

that like the schooling system would need to be somewhat localized though. Like you can't have one person teaching over too big of a like a, imagine one person controlling everyone's math. Like if you, if you have one math teacher, you know, that's teaching everyone in, in the country, don't you think that there's like an advantage to having like, because each little part in each country has different cultures and it doesn't have to be one person. It's more like, it could be one system. You know, like that's, that's more semantics. You know what I mean? And if the best person is more localized by the way they speak or whatever than sure. But I mean, we're sitting next to Graham who's got a massive personal finance channel. And so if you're the best of personal finance,

then more people will go to you. So like that makes sense. Yeah. It does, your schooling system does remind me. I completely forgot about Jack, I don't think you know about this. So in kindergarten, I had issues. And in fact, my parents, explains a lot. My parents pulled me out of the school because after recess, they wanted all the kids to line up in order on this yellow line that led up to the front door. And so all the kids were just to line up on that line. The bell was ring and we all had to walk in one by one. And I didn't want to stand on that line. And the teachers got really upset at me because I didn't stand on the line. Why didn't you want to stand on it? I don't remember. I think at the point, I just didn't see,

I thought it was stupid or like I just didn't get why I needed to stand in the line. I didn't like standing on the line. And my parents pulled me out mid-year kindergarten to go to an alternative school. And that's the school that didn't have any grades. They had no assigned seating. It was basically a big room. And this continued, by the way. So this school went until eighth grade. But no grades. It was either you got a check, a check plus, or a check minus on any assignments that may be. And the assignments were kind of like BS anyway. They're like, you know, draw something or like, tell us to share something that you're excited about. But I loved it. And that was, it's amazing.

That was that, but, but that's what, that's what it really helped me because I hated, like, I hated homework. I hated tests. I didn't like any of it. And I just wanted to do my thing. But even being in kindergarten, you were the same person as you are today. Yeah, I didn't want to. It's like, you only do what you want to do when you want to do it. And that's incredible that it's, like, phrased all the way back to when you're in kindergarten.

Might be great parenting, too. Because it would like, I would say that I was very different when I was younger because it was very much. because it was very much like, if I wasn't on the yellow line, my daughter would be like, why weren't you on the yellow line? Right, right. Right. And then that would be that. That would be the end of that conversation and I would be on the other line the next morning. And so I, you know, it's great parenting too that they were that's true. That's true. That is very true. But yeah, but I do think that really helps to

have something that's different. That's interesting to me because because you were an academic, right? And if you could go back in time, do you think you would have spent so much time trying to do so well in school? Yes. because I think if something's worth doing, it's worth doing well. And that's more of like a personal belief. What's school worth doing, though? I think that it depends on what age. Because if you're learning to work hard,

and if you're like learning what hard work is, then I think that is a valuable lesson. The actual subject matter, you know, more or less irrelevant. I think that once people understand math and reading, then that's pretty much what you need to go and learn the world. So that's, you know, if I were to like make recommendations to college students, I would say be a math in English double major because that's everything you need for life,

much more so than the other stuff. But even with math classes, shouldn't they be teaching you how to use the iPhone app on how to do math and like, here's an iPhone, we all get iPhones, let's add, subtract, here's how you could do this, here's a more complicated calculator. I think that there's an element to it

that should be there. Having a baseline of intelligence for math, I think, is useful. I used to be really bad at math, or at least I identified with being bad at math. And it was until my mid-20s where I decided I wasn't going to be bad at math anymore. And so I actually stopped using a calculator, which would make it seem like I'm contradicting my point,

and only did mental math for like a number of years and calculated a tip, you know, on the bill with mental math. And I would try and, you know, do all the marketing metrics and all the sales metrics just in my head. And then I would still use the calculator to check myself. And then you get better and better and better at it. And so I think there's like,

there's an essence of having like a semblance of like being directionally correct so that you can make kind of large quick decisions. But in terms of like exact calculations, the calculator does make more sense. Also just using Excel for most people's life is probably even better than learning a calculator. Like I bought a book in Excel when I was in college and I was like, why are we not learning this? Like every single job you need to learn how to use Excel. I agree. Like there's so many uses for it. And I had to learn how to do all the, it was just a book of the equations like, you know, equals some. And I was like, oh, that's how you do that. I had no idea. And so I think those would be the more useful things. But I mean, a lot of people know that there's problems with the education system. But you know, they say, I hear, I forget, I see, I remember, I do, and I understand. So that's Confucius. And so I think if there were more, like, if I were to create a school around a skill, the school would be doing the skill. So if I wanted to teach sales, like they'd be selling. They wouldn't be learning sales theory. And so I think that there needs to be more application of the stuff to what people are going to use it in the real world. It's just so difficult to change curriculum. So I think it's going to to have to be an alternative path that's really flexible. And they can't do the same thing the old one did, which is like, this is now the way things are because then it'll get outdated too. So there has to be a built-in kind of innovation wheel for not just adding, but also subtracting. Things are no longer useful because I think that's what people have more fear of. They just want to keep adding and adding and adding, but they don't also just like say, this isn't really

high utility. If we could start all over again, we include this course or we include this method, probably not. So let's just let it go. Yeah. It's too bad that you couldn't create some sort curriculum like that though like a practical just a two-year thing that uh you know might be 10 grand or something like that i i don't know how much you would charge for that but for two years just practical life skills selling excel i think Photoshop would be would be on that uh social media how to make a good ticot how to keep retention you know how to send an email yeah that's that's a big one to how to message people yeah it's because fundamentally this is just how to communicate how to human right right Right. That's what it is. And yeah, and we have to learn all these things on our own. And there is the alternative education industry, which, you know, you have a course. And, like, you depend on how you look at it. Like, a franchise is an education system. It's just packaged differently. And so, like, there's lots of different ways of skinning the education game. But I think alternative is the way that is going to, like, is the only way that I think it will emerge.

How would you reach out to somebody? Because that's an interesting topic. How do you get someone else's attention? Let's say Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk's. Like someone who's like typically out of reach for most people, how would you go about teaching somebody to have access to that person or even just get their attention? It would be hard. I mean, those are really extreme examples because those guys have everything, you know, and they probably have a lot of people who are reaching out to them.

So I think the way to get there would be to have to go through like from the heart. So it's just continued a network to try and find out information that are, that's not as public about the things that they like. because anything that is publicly known that other people have already gotten him his favorite jersey to his faith. You know, like those are those are the obvious ones, but it's the less obvious ones. It's just like, you're trying to get noticed. And they're like, huh. And to be fair, it would still be hard. Because, I mean, they are the richest men in the world. Like, the amount of money they have is, is hard to comprehend. And so, like, there's no monetary value that can be delivered to them, right?

And there's really no status value that can be delivered to them. So it's like, how do I add value to someone's life? And so I think that if I were, this is me just thinking out a lot, if I try to add value or gain access to somebody like that, it would have to be from the personal side. Like, those people have everything material they could possibly want. And so it would have to be something immaterial, like not intangible, that I think would hit their radar. Yeah, with Elon Musk, I think it's privacy. Reminds you of the Twitter, the Twitter guy. Yeah. Twitter who is, yeah, tracking his jets, got us attention, got him to DM him. But now he's tracking the yachts, right? Yeah. Well, I thought he was doing the Russia, making that. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. I have no idea. I try not to pay attention to the news. All right. Yeah, no, this is a kid. How old was he? 15, 16. He's young.

He was like in high school. Yeah, 16 years old. And he got Elon Musk's attention because he was tracking his private jet. Yeah. And he would post the coordinates on Twitter. He'd be like, his jet went from this location to this location. And then people could speculate from there,

well, why is he going to this part in Texas a lot? Is there maybe something there that they're building? Yeah. So then Elon Musk DMed him. and basically just said, like, hey, would you mind taking this down? Like, you know, privacy is important to me. Yeah.

And then the kid said no, and Elon Musk offered him $5,000. And then the kid counted back at $50,000. And then Elon Musk said, you know what, like I'd rather not pay for something like this or something like that or he just didn't respond. Which at that point sets up in the narrative that people could just track him

and he'll pay them off, which I think is probably better to not engage with that. Yeah, it's blackmail. It's a version of blackmail. Exactly. So, but now that same kid is tracking Russian yachts. Weird. Yeah, but he's getting a lot, but he's getting a lot of attention for it.

Well, I think it's important to mention that he's not just tracking them and posting tweets. I mean, he's developing software to do this automatically at 16 years old. He's a bright kid. Yeah. So he's getting a lot of attention from that. I see him every few days now on the headline of like CNBC, CNN, you know. What's the general idea of him? Did people like him or than not?

With the Elon Musk, it was 50-50. Some people were really for it and some people were really against it and they thought it was creepy and invasion of privacy. But when it kept to tracking Russian yachts, it seems like everyone is on, not everyone, but a lot of people are on his side on that one. Except for the Russians. And they think that he's doing a service.

Yeah. Huh. So you mentioned during that that you don't pay attention to news at all. No. Why not? I can't control anything. And so like there's no, to me, there's no added value. Like, my life does not improve as a result of news at all.

It does get worse, though. And so for me, like, eliminating news is just eliminating a negative. It's like, do I want to have cortisol today? Sure, let me check the news. Like, you know, I could go for more stress. Do you want some stress? Let's go check the news. Because, like, I think, I can't remember where I heard this quote, but it was,

the job of the news is to make everyone's problem, your problem. A journalist made this thing of, like, what makes something newsworthy? And so it was basically ways that they try and manipulate news in order to make it more interesting. So it's like, how do we make something odd or unusual or bizarre? How do we make something more local to people? How do we make it more recent? You know, like, recency is a component of newsworthiness. And there were four other ones. I can't remember. But it was just like, there's a formula for what creates news. And I don't want to be the product for news. Because a lot of people don't know is like news stations are private. So like, they're just like

HBO. They think like they're just like HBO. They have programming and people show up for their shows and they have commercials, which is how they make money. And so, like, their intention is to keep attention not to, you know, disseminate truth, right? That's not the goal. Because the thing is, is, like, the really true stuff is not interesting and is, and will fail compared to a sensationalized news. Like, it's just dollars, dollars and cents. So they have to make it. And that's just the nature of the business. And I understand that. I'm not pooping it, but I don't necessarily need to subscribe to it. You know what I mean? Like, people want to give their attention to it. So then there will be somebody who will sell those eyeballs to advertisers.

But their intention is not to educate me. Their intention is to make the world's problems my problem. And I have enough problems, and so I don't need to add more that are irrelevant to me to my list. Yeah. So on the scale of understanding what's going on in the world, would you say you're closer to like a one out of ten, like no nothing? Probably a two.

Okay. Probably a two. What would you say you are, Graham? Oh, gosh. Probably an eight and a half to a nine. Wow. Yeah. I'm probably a four.

You're four? Yeah. I'm super out of touch as well. Yeah. Really? Yeah. See, I spend all day reading the news and I see everything that, well, stock market or economy-related news. So I see everything that goes on.

But also worldwide events have a big impact on that. So I have to understand those events to be able to summarize that information if I need to. So, yeah. So news is something for years now. I've read everything. I need to be able to read that so you could sell the eyeballs because you, That's exactly what we do. That's exactly what you mentioned.

Totally. I get it. We try to make things relevant, you know, recent, stuff like that. I'm continuing to move in this direction of like an anti-information diet. But like when I work now, I realize that I can just, if I just remove my phone altogether from the room, my level of focus just goes, it feels like I'm on drugs. Because what's crazy, though, is that especially if you have, so now I just take my phone when I leave. But like when I'm at home, it's not with me.

because anything that's work-related, I have Slack. And unfortunately, I feel like the vast majority of, like, the text messages that I get are usually requests. There are things that people want from me. Want me to meet. Want me to talk. Want me to whatever. And so I end up just getting stressed from seeing all the messages.

So I may end up just changing my number again, but like, which I do every so often. But just putting it away, when I go to sit down to my computer, I still feel like that ghost itch of like, I want to reach for my phone. I like, there was a, oh, there's a pause point here for like, a, split second, let me grab my phone just for that dopamine. And so like I try to not do that. And media sources, you know, social media and news in general, I don't consume any formal news. The only news I get is as I'm posting stuff on social media so that I can get it out. But I'm currently trying to figure out a like a desktop version of that so I can just plan

it so I don't have to consume. It's just really hard. You know what I mean? At least for me. And like I notice if I start my day consuming some social media, like my, I'm just not as sharp. You know what I mean? I feel like I'm a little bit fogier. It's like you get overstimulated and then everything else seems less interesting, you know, by contrast. So just eliminating it overall has been very, very helpful for me.

When you start doing that? When my new executive assistant came in that I was telling about this night. Yeah, so this is crazy, Jack. Okay. So Alex is telling me if you want to coordinate to go to dinner, you just text this number. And I'm like, all right. So I text the number. And she's like, this time, this date.

Does that work with you? It's like, yeah, that works. she's like, all right, you're going to go to this place at this time. I was like, okay. And I asked Alice, I said, hey, do you know where you're going? He's like, no, she just tells me where to show up. It's great. And like, how did you pick this place?

She knows my preferences. Yeah. Yes, it's great. So he doesn't know where he's showing up. But do you know who you're meeting most of the time? Yeah, she'll give, she'll like briefly. So do you want to go to dinner with Graham? And you're like, no or yeah.

And then she's like, all right, well, the schedule is, yeah. How crazy. is that. He doesn't even know where he's going. I would want to know like this place or this place or what are the preferences. No, it's just trouble. Those are all these micro decisions that you have to make that are like big picture irrelevant. You know what I mean? Like,

what restaurant are we going to go to? Well, what time are you? Like she knows that on weeknights, I want to be done by X time so that I can get the sleep that I want. And so she just planned. Because like, if you think about all the micro decisions you have and you think about them ahead of time, you already have a decision making process. You just haven't like spoken it out loud. Like for Layla and I, if we're going on commercial

flights, here's a heck. If you go two aisle seats that are on either side. You both get aisle seats. You get to be next to each other, but rather than having that one person who gets the middle seat that has to trade off, two aisle seats. Works great. Right. And so she knows that that's our preference. And so she will always go and try and find two aisle seats that are close to each other. And if those aren't available, what's the backup? What's the decision-making process? So it's like you outline all of those things, but you do it for everything. So it's like, if we're at an event, what type of, you know, food are you going to request? I'm always going to probably at the chicken

dish. I want them to double the chicken and I probably want some extra carbs on the side. Cool. So she knows that. So when I go to events, there's like, here's your lunch. I'm like, great. I don't have to ask for it. She already knows the preferences are. And so, and it took me a really long time to understand this because I have, I have gone through. It's actually something that I was like really insecure about. I've gone through eight executive assistance. Wow. Yeah. Why? I mean, there's two to tango, right? Partially me, partially them, just being real. But I think that a lot of, I mean, fundamentally, it's my fault because I didn't know what I was looking for, right? And so if you don't know what you're looking for, it's very hard to find it.

And so that's why this time it's been so great for me because she came in and she was a, you know, 20 year veteran executive assistant. She's like, this is how this is going to go. I was like, yes, this is what I, like, I knew within a day. I was like, this is going to work. And every other one was like, maybe it'll get better, you know, like maybe they'll come around. Like I was like rooting for them, but like it wasn't, you know, great. But this one, day one, I knew. And so the difference is a true executive assistant is almost like a time coach. It's almost like a partner with you where you. you're both working to optimize you, right?

So it's not like an administrative assistant, which is different, which is just like, I will handle your scheduling and, you know, answer the phone and respond to emails and things like that. But like a true executive assistant is somebody who's almost like a partner at the executive level who understands business at a very high level, can make business decisions on your behalf, knows your like personal preferences, things like that. But for me, it's very much like a time coach. So when I wake up, every minute of my day is planned.

And if I, let's say I finish a time. task that's supposed to take me, you know, 40 minutes and it takes me 22. I'd be like, Melanie, I've got 18 minutes. What do I do? And she's like, oh, I'll pull this from tomorrow and I'll slide this in and I'll see if I can move this to that. And so that, and like I had a handful of preferences. I was like no white space. So for me on my calendar, I just don't want any white space because I just wanted like from the time I start to time I end, I just wanted to be going. And so by doing it that way, though, it's just like, I am just working on whatever's in front of me and she slides things in and I just, and I'm just in communication with her of like, and hey, this person wants to do

something, I just send it to her. And then she goes and talks and says, okay, do, you know, and I get a lot of podcast requests, things like that. And so, you know, rather than me having the awkward like, hey, like, I get 10 of these a day. Like, can you just give us some stats and what's your audience and things like that? It's like that entire process she can just handle. And I don't have to go, like, look at their profile, see what, like, she knows what my decision-making criteria is for all of those things and what's a yes and what's a no. And so it just allows me to outsource more and more and more of the decisions that are lower value add to portfolio company growth so that I can just purely focus on the things that have the highest

leverage. Has she ever scheduled something that you disagreed with? Like, let's say, let's say this podcast as an example, where she would schedule you on something like that, and you're like, you know, I don't want to do that, though. She probably will. She hasn't yet. But I mean, if she did, I would say, like, here, like, we have to update some decision criteria. like in this instance, this is why I wouldn't. And then, I mean, I wouldn't be upset. Because if I would only be not upset, but I would only be maybe disappointed or whatever

or frustrated or annoyed if the decision criteria that we had laid out was somehow not followed. But if someone, if I had it, I have to, if I have to add to it, then that's just like an opportunity to make the thing better. So like that's, I wouldn't be upset about something like that. Got it. How did you find her? Is there an agency?

We'd actually known each other for a long time. Yeah, we'd known each other for a long time. She was an executive system of a really good friend of mine for eight years. And then as their company grew and like, you know, organization shifted around, it made me more sense for her to pursue a different opportunity and whatnot. And so we'd known each other already. And so like, I was always like, I need, I need the her for me. And then it just so happened and ended up being her. I'm curious if you could say about how much. Yeah, you're going to ask. To me, that's what I was thinking. Yeah. That's what we're all

thinking. There's no way it's less than I'm, we should take a guess. I'm going to say probably 100 and you don't have to say exactly but yeah i'll say 70 no i'm 95 say 120 yeah you need to pay someone well yeah like if you want somebody who has business acumen right and who can say hey i want you to i want to make some t-shirts for us and like can you make some backpacks and by the way can you figure out why the book is not on amazon prime like why is it not why don't i have the little prime thing can you just figure that out you want somebody who can like go and just take that directive and just solve it. Like sometimes that's harder to find. And for me, I also want to pay for experience. So even if there was two people that were who might have equal ability, I will usually pay more

for the experience because I don't want to have to have this person who's less experienced, learn those lessons on my clock. I'd rather come with the solutions preloaded. So that's why I'm willing to pay more. Do you fly business or do you fly economy? We fly private mostly. It's just being real. Wow. Do you do the Uber black or Uber like the fancy one? Uber? Uber.

Oh, you mean like one job of cars? You take your answer. Yeah. Wow. I have two people who wait outside of my house. They carry me everywhere. Let's let's throne. Yeah.

It's one of those like I, it's, I almost am embarrassed to say it. But it's like it's, there's a handful of things that are really expensive and I feel like they are worth it. And I try and spend the money that we have because it's the only way that money has utility. for me rather than just making more money, which then, like, for what point? So if I have the opportunity to consume benefit for money, I try and use it. And so the speed and convenience that I get from private versus commercial is pretty significant. And like short flights are like five grand. So it's not like, you know what I mean? And if you're going with somebody else, it's not a huge deal.

You know, the longer flights. If you're going cross country, it's like a $50,000 flight. But, you know, it just depends on what you're looking for. So I would say shorter flights. We tend to fly private. longer flights. I'm also like more weary of small planes. So I also will just, you know, fly first class on the commercial. Mozy Nation, real quick, if you are a business owner that has a big old business and wants to get to a much bigger business, going to $50 million plus. We would love to talk to you. And if you like that, we would like to hear more about it. Go to acquisition.com. You can play anywhere on the page and talk to one of our team and see if we can help you get there. Let's talk a little bit more about time management. Because it seems like you can

get a lot of stuff done in a very small frame of time. So like let's let's walk us through your day. You mentioned on the last podcast, you wake up extremely early. Yeah. And just for the audience, like, it's not because I have like some like superhuman discipline. I just think I think I just fall, I get tired early. So like if you fall asleep at nine or 10, like you wake up at four or five. Like it's not it's not like a superhero thing. It's been seven hours. Like I can wake up now. So I'll tell you a couple things. So number one is I don't have a, uh, wake up alarm. I have a go-to-bed alarm, which is like, hey, you should be winding down by now. I don't even really need to do it anymore because I've just been doing it for such a long time.

But when I started it, I wanted to set myself a go-to-bed alarm. So we got to bed around the same time. I usually know what I'm going to do the next day before I go to bed. That's kind of how I clear my mental plate. And I do think, and I know it sounds kind of weird in woo-woo, but like I think that overnight my subconscious works on some of the problems. Because I, I feel like I always wake up with, like, really interesting solutions in the morning to some of the problems I went to bed with. And so it just gives me like great momentum to start my day. But when we, when we wake up, my wife and I wake up about the same time, we usually have coffee in the morning together. That's kind of like our 30 minutes to just like hang out, chill, watch the sunrise.

It's usually between four and five. Wow. So we hang out then, watch the sun in that time, right, you know, time rising. The sun is coming up. If it's not, then we don't watch it. But if we can, we do. And then from there, I go to my office and I start working. and she does her own thing.

And then we meet again for lunch. And then I go back to work. And then that's my day. And then you cut it off at a specific hour, right? Like four-ish. Four? It's not a specific hour. It's like, you know, if I've got a call, you know, usually my calls end around four-ish.

Do you work really hard at four to basically switch off like from work mode into like personal mode where it's just like a light switch or still open? And like if something comes up with work-wise, you're going to handle it. I'm just trying to say this the right way. I don't get the same level of stress that I used to from work. And I feel like I've worked a lot on that side of like not being stressed by work. And I think a big part of that was realizing like last year that I don't have to work, like at all at all. And so kind of confronting that and then realizing that I'm choosing to do this kind of relieved me of the stress that was surrounding. And I'm like, if you don't like this, like basically like stop complaining to yourself.

Like you're choosing to do this and you have no reason. Like there's no point of you doing this. And so not having the stress around it has decreased any kind of negative stuff associated with it. And so, you know, I'll stop taking calls at four. But if someone slacks me, I'll like, but I usually don't, I would say I delineate that from like, I'm not going to sit down at the computer. But I don't have like hardened fast rules. If there's something that I want to do, I'll do it.

Yeah. But how do you mentally switch off from work mode at that hour? Because for me, I find it very difficult if I'm focusing. I can't take a lunch, let's just say. Even when I wake up, I can't do just like a 30 minutes, just kind of do nothing. I have to immediately start. Once I start, I continue that all day. If I have a break, it throws me off.

But even when I stop sometimes, I can't. That switch is still on. So I'm always in my head. Just like thinking. You're like eating and you're like, don't talk to me too much. I really want to keep thinking. Yeah. And sometimes it's like, you know, I won't even have my phone.

I'll just be thinking. I'll just like that quiet space. Totally. So I split my day, so I should probably give more detail. So I split my day between high leverage work, which is like me doing stuff, and then me communicating with companies, which is usually the afternoon. So until noon, so basically, you know, four or five until noon is when I get all of my work done. So that's when I, if I want to build presentations or if I make content or if I want to write

the book or the things that I do that are like one of the companies wants to whatever, it doesn't matter. I'll write down my thoughts or review stuff in the morning. And then the afternoon is when I do like my communication with people. Because for me like some people function really well late at night. I don't. I'm much better like super early in the morning. And that's where I get my highest leverage on my time. And so in the afternoons when I don't need that creative juice, I can still be super effective on meetings. I just, I'm not thinking like, how do I say this framework differently? Like, which is a kind of abstract concept and more difficult. So I understand what we're saying. But my cut off, my cutoff for like when I stop quote working is at noon. It's actually when I

have lunch is usually what I'm done with my, what I would consider deep work for the day. And that's probably just because the difference in the nature of the work. Okay. And then after 4 or 5 p.m. once you shut everything off workwise or try to, like, how do you spend your time? Do you just like relax with a movie? So we actually do go out. Yeah, we do go out to dinner a lot, a lot, a lot every night actually. Every night?

Yeah. The guy at Maastro's like, welcome back. We see you all the time, like joking around. Yeah. Wow. What's your favorite restaurant? What are your favorite restaurants? And what's your food budget?

Like, I mean, maybe you have no idea. So we, I mean, it's, it's aggressive. Um,

it's a lot. It's a crap. What a word. It's a lot. Um, I never heard that. I like it. Yeah,

I mean, we, very often. It's aggressive. Just like, realistically, um, we probably spend between 12 and 15,000 a month on going out to eat.

Would you say that there's like a return on that? Because you can relax so much that you can like cycle that back into work. I'm like somewhat embarrassed by this. Um, but it's so it was, I think we talked about this last time is that like, again, like if you could pay a dollar to go out, would you go out? Right. So yeah, I would pay a dollar to go to Masters every night rather than staying in. And so for us, because we work all day at home, like going out to get dinner is like the only real time I leave besides going to the gym. And so like that's kind of why like going out to eat has serves multiple purposes, not just the food. It's much more so like we sit down. We get to

connect, we, you know, we're served, which is nice. It doesn't have to be five star. I would say like two-thirds of the time, it's five-star restaurants. And I think a big portion of that is because of the convenience of where I live. So currently I'm running a place that's literally on this trip. And so like I have 45-star restaurants like connected to the building. So it's just, it's like if there were a Chipotle downstairs, I'd probably eat more Chipotle, but it just so happens that it's Mastros is the closest restaurant to me. So I go there a lot. So like massive difference in price, but relative price, not so much. Pretty much since we got to Vegas, we've gone out to dinner. Not pretty much. We've gone out every single night. We've never cooked once.

So in terms of best places, I think Delilah is really good. I think they have the best dessert in Vegas. If anyone's curious, Delilah is exceptional. Man, so many of them are really good because they're just, they're all the best places in Vegas and Vegas is some of the best dining in the world. It's just, it's crazy. But I will tell you this, the marginal utility of five-star dining decreases very quickly. Like at the same, like you open the menu and it's the same stuff. It's like you've got a carpatia, you've got a steak tartar, you've got a tuna You've got, you know, some shrimp cocktail of some sort. There's some fancier bread selection that you can opt for for $5.

Then you've got a couple salads. And then, you know, they've got their really expensive steaks, their medium expensive steaks, and then they've got the seafood selection. They've had a Chile in sea bass. Like, they're all the same. But you don't look at prices at all. No. No.

I don't. And you seem like you'd be a big tipper. Damn. You're a big tipper? Yeah. Because it's interesting. After our podcast last time, unfortunately, we talked about this off camera. But you mentioned that you want to get rid of all of your money, like when you die.

You're not going to pass it on to your kids or anything. There's a pledge or something for that. Well, I mean, there's the giving pledge. But, you know, we already donated our, like, our states have already been set up to be given away. I haven't signed any pledges for it. But, yeah. And it's, I mean, well, I guess we're going to get into it. So I'll tell you a really interesting example that will drive this home.

This is like, and this was recent. So my great, great grandfather, he was a ruler in Iran prior to the Shah. And so we were like, I'm directly descendant from him. Now that sounds fancy. It doesn't mean anything, which is going to prove my point. He had 400 children. From those 400 children was my great-grandfather. He was one of 19.

Then there was my grandfather. Then there's my dad. And then there's me. Right. And so he was a ruler of a country. country. So you talk about like wealth and status and everything, right? I actually can't even remember his name. And so that's just five generations. And so the idea that we have of like, I want to like create a legacy, it's like, dude, you're not making a legacy. He was ruler of a country.

I can't even remember his name and related to him. Right. And so if you do that enough times, it just becomes humans, right? Like the difference and that becomes a very like humanitarian perspective too, because if you, if you mix bloodlines enough times, it's just people. Right. And you take your genes, split them, split them, split them, split them. You do it 10 times, you know, half to the 10th power is very, very small number, right? In terms of what percentage of it is still you, if you still have, like, pride in your biology being passed on, which also gets into, like, having children versus not having children, because then that's a whole other, like, interesting can of worms. But as a result of that kind of thought process, the point of leaving a legacy in, like, capital L legacy of like, this is going to last past me doesn't really make sense because, The people who I'm leaving it to will never know who I am, and it will get divided so many times as well between all of those people would have to be such an insane amount of money, which then would become a marginal amount of money once it's divided enough times. So for both of those reasons, it wouldn't work. But then on the close-knit basis of like, well, I want to pass it on to my direct descendants,

I just don't know many people who have been given lots of money who are better for it. And so for that reason, it doesn't seem very beneficial to anything to give it to anyone besides just giving it back to everybody else. And it's also kind of nice because it kind of relieves you of this pressure because then it's just realizing it for what it is, which is it's just a game, right? Like what we're playing right now is just a made up game to keep us occupied. And so these are just the, I mean, I gave the the casino analogy at the end of the last podcast, but that is how I see it. It's like we're just accumulating chips. They're fake and I can't take them with me. So I'm just pushing them back to the middle of the table, which is what

they're going to be done anyways. It's just whether you say like they're only going to these players, rather than all the players. But like, fast forward three more generations, it is all the players and you don't know the people anyways. Yeah. So, like, what does it really matter? Do you want kids?

You mentioned, you mentioned, you know, the time commitment of a dog. Yeah, yeah. Like, well, you know, it's too much. I can't imagine it, a child. Yeah, yeah. I think I would probably have different feelings about a child than I would about a dog.

And just so the audience can dislike me, so this is my gift for everybody. We had a dog, and it just went to the bathroom like eight or ten times a day. And it was too much. But couldn't you go source that? Couldn't you have? Did you care for the dog?

Oh, yeah. I mean, I actually really like animals. And actually, animals really like me. It's kind of weird. Bailey goes crazy when you get in the house. But like, it's like, Layla's like, you have calming energy or whatever. You know what I mean? I don't know.

But like animals do like me and I like them back. Like we're cool. Like we get along. Maybe it's because they know that I'm like, I don't need them. You know, like, I was like, you're an animal, I'm an animal, we're both just like doing our own thing. Like, I don't need to take care of you. You can take your yourself. You know what you need a cat, though.

I loved the cat I had. We had a cat and it died after two years. But cats were way easier. So dogs versus cats, like, I like the cat. Goldfish would work, you know, whatever. But anyways, back to the kid thing. It's something I give a ton of, I've given a ton of thought too. The pros for me of having a child are the human experience, which is just like, this is a

part of the human experience that is unique, and I think that would be interesting to go through. That being said, going to prison is also part of the human experience. It doesn't necessarily mean that I should do it. Sometimes people are like, I think you and Lela would make great parents. And I'll say this, and I say this not as a pejorative statement to parenting in general, but I'm using an extreme example to illustrate a point, which is like I could be, and this is not disrespectful to people who may have this job. Man, culture these days. I could also probably be a really good gas station attendant, right? I could probably be really exceptional with that. It doesn't mean that I should do it. And so just because I might be an exceptional parent doesn't

mean I should. And like in the cons column, there's a tremendous amount of risk personally that the person doesn't want to do what I want them to do. Right. And so the fact that I still have this desire that I'm projecting on an unborn child is something that I'm not very comfortable with. Because like if I had one, I would have a hard time saying that I want them to be their own person. I'd want them to be who I want them to be. And so maybe that is the learning of becoming a parent is that you unlearn the expectations of projections that you have on the child. But in terms of like my personal like fulfillment component, I mean, I'm very, obviously I'm very torn about it. But there's so many guys that I've, that I've like mentored that have taken steps toward me. And like, please help me

with business. Please help me in these ways. And I'm happy to. And, you know, if I had to trade off, I think we're talking about dinners last night, but like the amount of time that a child takes, right? Let's say it's, I don't know, four hours a day, roughly. in terms of like headspace and time spent with them. I was actually trying to be really aggressive with four. I'm being really honest. I was genuinely being really aggressive with four. I would imagine a child would be like,

well, I mean, I'm going to pay help. That's like, there's going to be help for sure. But even then, it's like helping to help. I would have. Let's say eight. Let's say eight hours. Okay. So eight hours a day.

So full-time job, right, for the next 20 years. If I had a full-time job in the next 20 years, I could help 100,000. or a million people more than I could just two that just so happened to share my genetics that eventually would get diluted out to nothing. Is that how you base your decisions off how many people you can help? Based on, yeah. Really?

Yeah. I mean, that's why, like, where, like, a lot of people want to have kids to give meaning to their lives, right? And as a corollary to this, whenever I see a lot of people doing something, I don't think, oh, that's a great idea. I think, oh, that's a great path to mediocrity. And again, that's going to insult most people because most people do it. So this again, it doesn't have to just apply to children.

You can think about it for everything, which is like if you're trying to not be in the majority because you don't want to be average, then it means that you have to, by definition, not do what everyone else is doing. And so when people are like, I'm taking this action to have children, I would assume that it's probably selfish because you can always count on people to be selfish. It's not like humans only in this one instance. They're selfless, right? They're selfish because they want to look at it and be like,

it looks just like me. That's why I love it. You're just like me. Right? I love you. I love me. Right? And like I'm aware of that.

Right? And so that's why I'm like, I try and audit. Do I want to have two? It's just because I want to look at a version of myself. You know what I mean? But then I'm also going to project on this kid's life when he might want to be a ballet dancer or whatever. And if there's anything wrong with being a ball dancer.

But if I'm going to spend eight hours, it's just like I don't feel like I'm providing a lot of value. You know what I mean? And like in terms of. But it sounds like you're thinking of it from an R. Totally. I'm going to invest all this and I might not get a good ROI compared to the guaranteed ROI I could get eight hours a day over here.

Of helping other people. Yeah. Yeah. And it's really ROI of like the world more so than me particularly. There was a brief moment where I like had an injury where I thought I wasn't able to have kids. Might not turn blacked and I was like, oh, it was fine. But I was like very worried. And so it was really interesting is that during that period of time, before I got it looked at,

I just was like, I'm not going to be able to have kids. Like that's it. Right. I'm screwed. And it was weird. Weird is that I ended up becoming almost, I became so humanitarian in general. Like during that, like, it was like the desire to progenerate went from being specific to a child to general to everyone.

Because like when you realize you can't have a child, then you want to still pass it on. And I think that's just like a human desire, right, of benefiting the tribe, whatever. But like, you still had this desire. And rather than being able to get my fulfillment out of one child doing that for me, it's like I was forced to just be like, well, I have to just give to everybody. And so I think that was actually a really transformative experience for me. And I think it's part of what has shaped a lot of like the thoughts around giving today in general. I'm a little confused and curious, not saying this is wrong or anything.

And in fact, I admire this. But why is like the thing that you hold to the most weight when you're making decisions, how many people you can help? That could be selfish in and of itself. Probably. Why? Boom. Wow. Do you think things selfish is bad?

I like to believe that most people generally want things that are good for everyone. So if they pander to what they want themselves, they're generally helping other people. I'd agree with that. But do you think being selfish is bad? Sometimes. I think if it hurts somebody else, then yes. I think if being selfish is at the detriment of somebody else, or if the net is bad for more people, if it hurts more people, then it serves you. You also have to define, you know, hurt.

Yeah, I know. Then you can't. You can't objectively. It also have to define bad. It becomes a circular argument of, of, it's not about being selfish. It's just hurting people is bad. Yes. Which is the thing, which is irrelevant from the selfish action.

Right. So then, sure. I think everyone, you know, many people would. And that's bad in the little B sense rather than the big B sense of like the universe. So anyways. But all that to say, I think people act in their own self-interest. And that is, and comma, that's fine. And we can expect them to do.

do that. And I act in my own self-interest as well. And you're just naturally interested in helping people? Um, I think I get some level of like fulfillment from it. I do. I mean, that's why like the books 99 cents. The courses are free. Like, you know, and I plan on writing a bunch more books. It's selfish. Like I just, I think I, I, I feel good when I do it. And so I do more of it.