The Home Service Expert Podcast - Extraordinary People Waste Their Lives Waiting for Approval From People Who Never Notice Them

Episode Date: July 15, 2026

🚀 FREEDOM 2026 Get your Tickets Today! https://homeservicefreedom.com/ Sahil Bloom spent seven years "winning" in private equity — while living 3,000 miles from his parents, drinking seven nights a week, and 50 lbs heavier than today. Then one sentence from a friend changed everything: "You're going to see your parents 15 more times before they die." In this episode, Tommy Mello sits down with the author of The 5 Types of Wealth to break down the 85-year Harvard study that found the #1 predictor of your health at 80 isn't blood pressure, smoking, or cholesterol — it's how you feel about your relationships at 50. They cover the Life Razor, why "nobody cares" is the most freeing advice you'll ever get, the phone rule that reclaimed 68 days a year, delegation without dumping, and what AI means for the next decade of work. 🕐 TIMESTAMPS 00:00 The #1 Predictor of Health at 80 (Cold Open) 00:48 Who Is Sahil Bloom? The 5 Types of Wealth 02:22 Winning in Private Equity While Losing Everything Else 03:18 "You'll See Your Parents 15 More Times Before They Die" 04:26 The 5 Types of Wealth Explained 05:43 Sahil's Daily Routine & Business Ecosystem 08:29 How Success Gets Redefined After 30 12:57 Phones, Presence & the People You Love 17:19 Why Entrepreneurs Can't Enjoy the Journey 19:01 A Violent Bias for Action 19:45 What Is a Life Razor? (The Apollo 13 Story) 24:11 Game-Changing Advice You Wish You Knew in Your 20s 24:32 "Nobody Cares" & the Spotlight Effect 26:10 The Science of Slow, Steady Progress 27:59 Starting Over With $10 Million 28:56 The Goal: Positively Impact a Billion Lives 31:19 The 5 Types of Wealth in Your 20s vs Your 50s 34:21 What Makes Happy Couples Stay Happy 35:38 Keeping the Fire Alive After Kids 39:26 The Harvard Study: Health at 80, Predicted at 50 40:36 Counseling, Being Right & Changing Your Mind 44:28 Relationship Advice for Young People + The Phone Rule 49:31 Your Quest Has to Be Yours 50:51 Speed Round: Time Blocking & Work Smart vs Hard 53:38 How to Delegate Without Dumping 55:32 Design Your Perfect Day 56:12 Sahil's Viral Ideas: Proximity Is Wealth 58:03 Kids, Priorities & Adaptability 1:00:37 Be Unapologetically Yourself 1:02:49 AI, Jobs & the Next 10 Years 1:06:24 How They Actually Use AI 1:07:09 Robots, Blue Collar & What's Coming 1:14:38 The Book That Changed His Life 1:15:58 Final Advice: Invest in Your Relationships 🚀 FREEDOM 2026 Get your Tickets Today! https://homeservicefreedom.com/ Check Out My Social Media: Tiktok ⟶ https://www.tiktok.com/@officialtommymello Instagram ⟶ https://www.instagram.com/officialtommymello/ Facebook ⟶ https://www.facebook.com/thomasmello/

There is clear scientific evidence that the single greatest predictor of physical health at age 80 was relationship satisfaction at age 50. It wasn't your blood pressure, it wasn't your smoking, your drinking habits, your cholesterol levels. It was how you felt about your relationships. It is a form of compensation to live close to the people that you care about. If you are making a whole ton of money but you're lonely, what's the point? No one dreams of being on a yacht by themselves. Today I'm with Sehill Bloom.

I'll tell you, this is awesome, dude. I'm excited to be here. We are in New York with the best view of the city. It's an honor to have you on, and this is right up my alley because right now, I'm doing a lot of business, and someone would say I'm a workaholic, and I'm also engaged, and that needs to change.

You wrote the five types of wealth, and that's a framework that redefined success beyond money, which includes time, relationship, health, and purpose, and you studied happy marriages, and you're a PE guy. Tell us all about why you're here today in the new life that you created for yourself. Yeah, well, first off, appreciate you having me.

You know, the way that I would put it is that I spent really the first 30 years of my life marching down the most traditional path to what we all think of as, like, a successful life. I often reflect, I was a pretty insecure kid growing up. I grew up in this household. I have an Indian mother and then a Harvard professor father. So you can imagine, like, I was getting academic pressure from all sides of this equation.

And I have an older sister who's extremely high achieving academically. So from a young age, for whatever reason, I started convincing myself that, like, I wasn't very smart. I was like, she's the smart one. I have to be something else. And it started creating this insecurity, like this, you know, this little story that you start telling yourself in the back of your head. Like, you're not that capable. You're not that smart. And those little stories that you tell yourself, they start to shape your entire reality.

You start living the reality of that little thing that you started saying. And for me, what that meant and how that manifested was this desire for achievement, like things. It was, how do I get enough pats on the back that one day I wake up and feel good about myself? That I feel like I'm enough. And as a society, the one clear way that you can go out and get those paths on the back is through financial success, through achievement, right? I go take the job out of college. That's the job that sounds good on LinkedIn. in. Sounds good on the resume. I go take the job in finance. I'm working in private equity.

And I basically convinced myself for this seven-year window to start my career that my happiness and success and fulfillment as a person was just on the other side of like some bonus or some promotion or some title or something. And for me on that journey, while I was winning in that one very specific battle, I started to see myself losing the much bigger picture of war. I was falling apart in a lot of other areas of my life. I mean, I was living 3,000 miles away from my parents, never seeing them. My wife and I were in the middle of this struggle with infertility. It was like creating strain in our life. I was 50 pounds heavier than you see me today. It was like drinking seven nights a week. All these other areas of my life were falling apart. While on the surface,

you would have seen me and said, like, this guy's winning the game. Like, I'm doing the things you're supposed to want to do. And that whole journey like really came to a turning point in of 2021. I went out for a drink with this old friend and we sat down and he asked how I was doing and I told him it started to get difficult living so far away from my parents. They're getting old. It was the first time in my life I had noticed them slowing down. And he asked how old they were and I said in mid-60s. He asked how often I saw them and I admitted it was about once a year. And he just looked at me and said, okay, so you're going to see your parents 15 more times before they die. Wow. And that was the turning point of my whole life. I mean, it's funny to look

back and say that a single moment changed your life. It's like, you know, this cliche Hollywood idea. But that was the moment that I realized that my entire definition of success, you know, of what it meant to build a wealthy life, it had been incomplete. I was focusing on this one thing at the expense of everything else. So that was really the moment that set me on this journey to try to understand why are people falling victim to this trap of chasing one thing at the expense of everything else? And how can we change that? I love it. Let's just touch on the five types of wealth. And which one's your favorite, the most important? Yeah. The whole idea was basically to say, if the current scoreboard is kind of incomplete, just looking at money feels incomplete. There's clearly more to life than just winning on that one scoreboard. What is a better one? That is the five types of wealth. Time wealth is all about freedom, right? Like freedom to control your time. Social wealth is about your relationship.

up's mental wealth is about purpose and growth. Physical wealth is about your health and vitality. And then financial wealth is about money. And so the idea is if you create this broader scoreboard, you can look at your life in a bigger picture way. And now I can take action based on that bigger picture war rather than just the one thing because it's the only thing I can measure. You know, as I think about this, I think time would be my favorite on there because you can't have any of them without time. I was on a podcast this week and the guy said, the best advice he ever got, the day that changed his life, is if you can't make money four hours a day, five days a week, the first four hours are for you, the next four hours are for work, the next four hours are for your family. And then the given three could go either way you want. How much time today are you working?

It really depends on what I'm doing. I write from about 4.30 in the morning until about 7.30 every day. That is like my sacred sort of creative time. If I did nothing else other than that, I would still be able to have all of my businesses and all of the things that I do operate and run. I mean, like when I think about my business ecosystem today, I have my media business, which is my writing, book deals speaking, you know, any of the media partnership stuff that we do. I have a venture fund that I raised in 2022, $10 million dollar fund that I invest out of in early stage companies. That's just me. I run that. And then I have a holding company of a handful of businesses that I own anywhere from 50 to 100% of. Those all have full-time CEOs and people running them, which is an intentional mechanism so that I am not the bottleneck from a time perspective. It's creative leverage, right, where I'm able to do the things that I actually do well,

which is storytelling and brand and strategy, marketing, but I'm not getting caught up in the day-to-day on the operation side. But as long as I'm doing that morning creative flow time, the whole day can go to shit after that, frankly, and I can still be making progress. That doesn't mean that that's the only three hours that I'm working during the day, though, because I am like you, like, I want to take everything to the 100% level, which means, you know, like, getting it to a 90% level, you might be able to do it a couple of hours a day. But if you're wanting to take things to that final 100%, you know that, like, that is what takes the vast majority of the time.

for whatever reason. And so it's figuring out how to channel and harness that wiring in the context of the life you actually want to create, the balance that you want to create with your family, with the people that you love. That is where, like, the real secret sauce exists for anyone in their life. Like projection. Like, when you were a kid, you projected this idea of success as money. And then, so I'm trying to project myself at 45. I'm 43.

You said you've been on this past for 30 years. You look like you're 22. I'm 35 now, but I do. I mean, I look younger now than I did, you know, before I made these changes, for sure. When, when, how long ago did you make these changes? That was, I was 30. I had just turned 30. Yeah.

You know, you went to Stanford and they teach you about wealth and success. And it kind of tied together. Everyone's there. Everybody I know that they tell you now, join to pee, getting to pee. I'm with a guy yesterday, and these do live on planes. I mean, he's like, I get home once every two weeks. He doesn't have a family, though.

And I'm like, that sucks, dude. But he's successful. I mean, they are making moves. What is your definition of wealth and success evolved to today for yourself? I mean, my entire view now is that the wealthiest I feel is when I'm able to take my son in the pool at 1 p.m. on a Tuesday. day. It's kind of a silly thing to say, but it really does capture my entire definition of what it means to be wealthy. Because it means, look, I have enough money to have a house with a pool. So, like, there's a level of financial success associated with it. But it also

means that I have, most importantly, the freedom to decide that at 1 p.m. on a Tuesday, I'm going to walk outside and go in the pool. Like, I don't have someone telling me that I need to be in something that I can't do that. It means I have a relationship with my family that he wants me to be out there with him. And it means that I'm healthy enough to do this. that, right? That I'm like fit enough that I can throw them around in the pool for four hours without getting tired, which again, is a form of wealth. And so I think it captures really like that shift in my own mind from being so focused on the one thing at the expense of everything else to now viewing it as it's this big picture pie of the life that I'm actually trying

to build. You know, Dan Thurman wrote a book. It's called Off Purpose on Purpose or Off Balance on Purpose. And do you think, because, yeah, if you're 17 getting ready to decide to go to college, do you think that maybe you are off balance in a lot of ways when you're younger and you need to kind of drive to get that money going? Compound interest is a real thing. Like Einstein said it's the most powerful thing in the universe. Or can you just have all five right when you graduate or even early?

No. Look, I think the idea that money does. doesn't buy happiness is a lie. It's a lie, right? Like, I'm not here to tell people that money doesn't matter. Hey, like, go live up in the mountains with your, like, drink warm broth and, like, you know, live as an ascetic, right? Like, definitely don't do that. No, but like, it's just not true scientifically or anecdotally. Like, we've all experienced, especially early in our lives, this idea that, like, money directly buys happiness in the early days of your life. The struggle and the challenge is when you lose sight of everything else along that journey. You can, you

continue to think that those early in life gains and happiness that come from money are going to continue in perpetuity. They don't, scientifically or anecdotally. Money has to transition, in other words, from being an end, like the goal, to a tool to accumulate these other things. It needs to start being an asset that you use to create experiences and time with people you love, that freedom, your health, all of those other things that you can invest in. So what I say to young people is your 20s and 30s are an incredible time to turn up. up the dial when it comes to financial wealth. Because compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. If you start early and you grow in that way, those first seven years of my

career were incredibly important because when I went to go make this change in my life, I wasn't in an incredibly scary situation of having no financial basis to do that off of. I was able to be a little bit more free to make that change as a result. So the important point, I think, for people to get across is just to say, do not turn the other areas of your life off while you're turning one up. The sort of mindset shift here is like the traditional way of thinking about these things is to say they exist on light switches, on off switches. So you say, oh, I'm going to, you know, I'm in my 20s.

I'm going to flip the financial wealth switch on. And you say, too bad family and friends, you flip it off, too bad health, flip it off, too bad mental health, you flip it off. The reason that's so dangerous is because if you leave it, you leave it, you to, you flip it off. some of these areas of your life turned off for too long, you can never turn them back on, or it becomes very difficult to. I mean, you know, like, ask anyone who did not invest in their health and relationships in their 20s, 30s and 40s, how hard it is to refine those things in your 50s and 60s. The antidote is to realize compounding works for all of these areas of life. Anything

above zero compounds. Anything above zero compounds. So turn it, it's a dial, right? It's a dimmer switch. Just have it on low. Low is infinitely better than off. Low can be like 30 minutes of movement a day. Your health isn't going to go to shit, I promise. Yeah. Like, text your mom every single day. Your relationship with your parents aren't going to go to shit.

Anything above zero compounds in all of these areas of life. You know, I was going to ask you a selfish question, kind of about mom. When I go to my dad's house, we shoot pool every time. My mom and dad are separated. And I have a blast. And I love my mom more than anything on this planet. but the time is different than if I'm there. She's like, why are you on your phone again?

I'm like, what do you want to talk about? And sometimes you go through old pictures and stuff. How do you bring that in? Because you hang out with the parents a lot, I'm sure. And now you've got a kid so it's different. You're playing around and doing stuff. But how do you make that in the time you look forward to and it's quality time?

Yeah, I think it is, it's interesting. So, like, you know, I have, my parents are still together. But my relationship with my two parents is very different. Like my mom, my mom is Indian. and I often joke that like Indian moms only have one mode and it's harassment mode. And it's just like a matter of how high the dial is turned up at any point in time. Like my mom to this day, like if I go home, she's like, oh, you're not eating enough. You're not, why aren't you eating this?

Or aren't you doing this? Whatever. It's like all over me. And it's from a place of love. And I know that. But it feels that way versus my dad who's just like very stoic and laid back. You just relax, whatever. And, you know, what we've had to do is like build an adult relationship.

in a way that didn't exist from our whole childhood. It's sort of like this idea that not all relationships need to end. Some relationships need to just start over. Yeah. Just because you have a relationship with someone that isn't perfect in the current day and age, it doesn't mean you need to, like, cut ties with the person. It might just be that you need a reset button on that relationship to say, like, hey, mom, I'm not 14 years old anymore.

I don't live in your house. I'm a grown man. You don't need to, like, worry about me in all these ways. Let's have an adult relationship. What are the things that we can talk about that are just adult things relative to how you want to interact with me? Because in her mind, I'm still that 14-year-old kid living at home that needs that micromanaging in order to actually show up to school on time. Yeah. Yeah. Moms have that. All moms, but any moms are probably more.

So tell me a little bit about the arrival fallacy that plagues all of us. So everyone has experienced this. No matter who you are listening to this, I know you have. If you are someone who is ambitious, you have had this tendency your whole life to build up these things as being the destination, the point at which you are going to feel like you have arrived. It's like, you know, whatever the goal is at any point in time, you say, well, when I get X, then I'll be happy. Then I'll be fulfilled. Then I'll be content. Right.

When I sell my company, then everything's going to be different. then I'll have kids, then I'll go on that trip that I've wanted to go on, then I'll find my freedom and purpose. You're like, everything's going to change when I get this, when I do this. And the reason it's a fallacy is because scientifically, you get that thing, you feel this like momentary blip of dopamine-induced euphoria, and then you just reset. It's like you feel... The needle always moves.

It goes away. The needle moves. You feel that, like, dread of never doing enough. You need to do more. Are you a golf guy? Golf guy, so Scotty Schaeffler. He doesn't even get excited anymore. He said he doesn't get excited. I mean, a major is different than a regular tournament.

But it's the exact thing, the Open Championship, right? He's giving this press conference, and he talks about the fact that winning major championships is no longer fulfilling to him in any way. He said, he was like, I have this moment of like, wow, this is great. And then what's for dinner? That was what he said. And it blew everyone's mind. It went viral, right? But it is the human construct of the way that we build up these things as because, because,

the point where everything's going to change. And when you do that, you're setting yourself up for disappointment. Because the truth is that if you don't feel that fulfillment in the journey, you're not going to feel it at all. There's this movie from when I was a kid, Cool Runnings. I remember that. Come on Bob rule. Come to Bob, man. It was like Jamaican bobsled team going to the Olympics, right? And the coach is John Candy, late John Candy, great actor. And he's talking to one of the athletes, and he says, a gold medal is a wonderful thing. But if you're not enough without it, you're never going to be enough with it. It's that exact same idea. If you're not enough without it, if you don't feel like you're enough without this gold medal, you're not all of a

sudden going to get it and feel different about who you are. It's easy to say, and I say this, I feel like I'm talking in the mirror here. But I would say enjoy the journey and kind of be where your feet are and be all in. But, let's face it, entrepreneur is either. either are dyslexic, ADHD. There's something going on. And I'm ADHD, but self-diagnosed, really. I didn't get, I, I, I, anyways, see, there went again. When you're sitting down, when you're, like,

you're just thinking to yourself. Like, I could be at a movie, and I could be all in, but our brains just turn on and like, I'll be watching a movie. I'll be like, I need, and it just makes me go into this, to this, to this, to this. And sometimes it's like, I'm going to put this in my next book. Sometimes I'm like, I got this other business. I got to apply this to. I wish it was like, I wish I could do that in my relationship.

I wish I could pull that time management skill out. But how did you turn that piece down? I don't know that you turn that down as much as you just channel it into the right things. You know, I often say that like ambition without direction is a curse. It's sort of like it's like having a Ferrari and being stuck in. traffic. Stuck up first gear, yeah. You know, you're like, ambition with direction is the best thing in the world.

You're like, you know what you're supposed to be doing, you're working on it, you're feeling like in flow. That's like driving a Ferrari through the beautiful mountainside, right? But ambition without direction is like you're sitting in wall-to-wall traffic and you just want to let the thing rip, but you absolutely can't. That is painful for a lot of people. And so what I think for most people, if you are wired that way, it is to say you need to find your quest.

humans need a quest that is why i'm so anti like universal basic income and all of these things they're talking about for the future with ai because i just think that so much of human happiness comes from meaningful struggle you endure the quest you go through that and the way you find that is by taking action like i have found this consistently across everyone that i know all of the high performers i've spent time with the three years of research for this book it is just to say that you have to have a violent bias for action if you are going to find your request. You don't just chance upon it.

It's not like, oh, the quest just magically appears in front of you. You solve thousands of puzzles on a day-to-day basis, and the quest reveals itself. But it is through a violent bias for action. Yeah, that's gold right there. What is a life razor? I had this epiphany watching Apollo 13, that movie, you know, like Tom Hanks.

know, like Tom Hanks, return from space. Old movies, man. Old movie. I love it. Yeah, like Ron Howard, Academy Award winner for it, I think. But there's this scene at the very end of it, like climactic scene. They're, like, trying to enter back into the atmosphere. And basically, they find out that if they come in too steep, they're going to, like, blow up. And if they come in too shallow, they're going to, like, skip off, like, a rock on a pond and just be, like, floating in space until they die. And they have to come in at the perfect angle, and they're like, they have to do it without

computers. So there's no computers to like manage this whole thing. And Tom Hanks has this moment where he just says like, well, can't I just keep this earth in the window here in this triangular window? And if I do that, it's going to allow us to maintain the angle that we need to be at and get back into the atmosphere safely. And so there's this like amazing moment. He keeps the earth in the window and he does it. That idea is basically just to say there was a single point of focus that allowed him to navigate this in crazy chaos and uncertainty that was all around him. He was able to just focus on one thing that cut through the noise of everything else. The life razor is the idea of that earth in the window for your life. Life is going to throw a bunch of crazy chaotic shit at you

over the course of it. And all of that is going to try to derail you from showing up as your ideal self on a day-to-day basis. A life razor is basically a single statement that defines how you want to be showing up in the world, like who you really are in any given season of your life. So my life razor right now is that I will coach my son's sports teams. You know, he's a young kid. He's a toddler. I'm like, that is how my ideal self shows up in the world as the type of husband, father, community member, you know, colleague, etc., who shows up as a coach. Like, I prioritize my relationships. I prioritize being the type of person that those individuals want to have around.

For me, what that does is whenever there's any sort of opportunities or chaos or anything in my life, I can ask myself, what is the type of person who coaches his son's sports teams do in this situation? Like, if you offer me $100 million, but I have to be on a plane, 300 nights out of the year, for the rest of the year, I'm not saying yes to that opportunity. I truly mean that. I would not say yes to an opportunity that required me to be away that much because I wouldn't be able to do the thing that I want to do. the money's not worth it to me at that point. So having something like that in your life, like a trigger that you can use to flip the switch to show up as that ideal version of who you are, maybe it's, you know, I wake up and do hard things.

Like, okay, that's my ideal self. It's the person who wakes up and does hard things where I like, I swallow the frog every day. To start the day, I go and do the hardest thing that's right in front of me. Being able to turn that version of you on when you need to, that is how you progress towards the life that you actually want. Take some sitting down reflection and really figuring that out. I like that.

I got to come up with a statement. I was thinking about it where you were saying that. And maybe it's just do it like Nike. I mean, you got some statements on your wrist. I'm like, I feel like that can be aligned with it, right? It's like you're reminding yourself of the same thing. Number one is that said everything in life. My dad always said number two sucks.

We're not losers. You're not getting a participation trophy. And that's kind of the way I look at life, but that's a hard way to live. Because, you know, if I'm playing my niece in a volleyball, like, I'm going to kick. I was playing them in Candyland and kicking their ass. I was like, you're not winning. But when you do beat me, you'll appreciate it. It's funny, by the way, that, like, the wiring around that, I'm wired the same way.

And now I have a toddler. And he clearly has somehow just gotten this same wiring that, like, he just wants to win at everything he does. And I didn't teach him that. Like, there wasn't something where I was like, hey, we only win. Like, I haven't talked to him about that before. But the way that we get him to him. to do anything now is by me saying I'm going to do it and then I'm going to beat him at it. Like, hey, he's not drinking his milk. I'm like, I'm going to drink the milk faster.

And then he's sitting there chugging milk. Like literally anything. So the wiring, I don't think you can fight. I just think you're born with it. Yeah. You're born with it. You're born to say, you're going to get too strong of you eat that broccoli. And my sister would be like, he's using psychology on you. And I'm like, I don't care I'm eating this broccoli. I'm going to ask you three questions that I asked her in every podcast. And this one, So I'm with a buddy of mine, Zach, this morning, and he's like, I want you to ask him this question. But this is the exact question we ask every episode. What's one piece of game-changing advice that you wish you knew in your 20s?

And that wasn't that long ago. Maybe early 20s. Nobody cares. Oh, I like that. I often wonder how many extraordinary people waste their entire lives, waiting for the approval and fearing the judgment. of people who were never even thinking about or looking at them. The spotlight effect is the name of this psychological phenomenon that we overestimate the degree to which other people are noticing us,

staring at us. We think everyone is staring at us. The reality is nobody is thinking about you. Everyone's just thinking about themselves. Everyone's just worried about themselves. And so nobody cares to me was a piece of advice I did get when I was 30 that I wish I got when I was 20, because what it reminds you of is like,

whether you win or whether you lose, Nobody cares. So you might as well go do that thing that you've wanted to do. I think a lot of people don't know what they want to do. I think a lot of people are searching. You know how many people go to the four-year degree? And then they go, what am I going to do now? Am I even going to use this thing?

But I was told to get a four-year degree. We could hop into this conversation a little bit. But I just think a lot of people are like, I know I want to. One day I said to Cameron Harold, one of my buddies, I like, I like to work. He goes, that's bullshit. Never give me that answer again or out. He's like, what did you like to do when you were 12? He goes, did you love to work?

I'm like, well, I watched dishes. I didn't love that. He's like, did you like to golf? I'm like, I love golf and I love shooting pool. So you got to find that passion again that you love to do. And it's hard because I'm sure in the beginning of PE you fell in love with the winning. I like the grind. I like the learning.

Ultimately, what I think most people like, if you were to really deconstruct it, is a feeling that you are improving at something that you are getting better, that you are growing. And that growth can come in a variety of different ways. Like, golf is really fun when your handicap is getting a little bit lower every year. Yep. Like, it wouldn't be nearly as fun if you were getting worse every single year. I can almost promise you that. There is something about this slow, steady progression in life.

And if you were to look at it, the scientific way to be the happiest over the course of your life is to experience slow, very steady improvements in your quality of life over a long period of time. The worst way to be happy is to have an enormous spike and then have to come down from that. That is why you see such high rates of depression among former professional athletes, among military, among people who win the lottery, like people who have these spike financial successes, like entrepreneurial outcomes, because they no longer have a quest that makes them feel like they are getting better and that they matter and that they're significance. Their identity is so tied up in that one thing. And so I just constantly think about the fact that you are being convinced by this default mode

that we've created in society that your path to the happiness that you want is go get a four-year degree, go get some desk job, sit at a desk from nine to five for the next 40 years, get a gold watch and then retire. That model is going to be obliterated in the next 10 years. I personally think that the entire higher education model is going to get destroyed. All the studies. We're going to dive into this when we talk about me. I'm oh yeah. And it's scary. I'm cautiously optimistic because I think we'll go through this utopia. But it's definitely a scary thought. I want to spend some deep diving into that. But if you had $10 million to start over tomorrow with, what are you doing with it? You're doing the VC thing again? $10 million?

$10. I think I would take the vast majority of that and just bet on myself to go and build something. At the end of the day, putting money behind things that you have zero control over is always just a little bit boring. It's much more fun to feel like you're actually in control of your own destiny. I understand diversification as a means of protecting your downside, and I would certainly take a little bit of money and make sure I was set from a downside perspective. But, like, there is nothing better than feeling like you were in control of your own ship. I agree. What can you affect the outcome in? Yeah. What's your biggest professional dream? It sounds like it might be coaching your son, but what's your biggest professional

dream at the moment? I want to positively impact a billion lives. Billion. That's a lot. It's a big goal. It's a big goal, and it's much more of a direction goal than an endpoint goal. Like I, you know, the number itself, it's like, what does it matter? What, what it actually looks like? But the pursuit of achieving something that big means that I show up with energy every day to try to create an impact on one person. Which one did you struggle with the most out of the five over the last, call it 20 years?

Oh, time wealth by far. Time. Yeah. I mean, I think time wealth, you said this earlier. Like time wealth is where everything. ultimately starts because once you create time wealth, then you can invest that time into any of the other areas of your life of wealth. But for someone who is wired to want to do more and more and more and more and more and say yes, yes, yes, it is very hard to change that wiring to start saying

no to things that would pay you. Like I mean, I come from a very scarcity mindset orientation when it comes to money. Like, you know, my dad's a tenured professor, like the safest track. that you can possibly have. The idea of leaving a safe, stable job to go write things on the internet was like complete insanity. What are you doing to go and do that? It makes no sense. And so that rewiring has taken me a long time to do. Because truthfully, you do not unlock time wealth until you get comfortable saying no to things that are going to pay you money. It's hard to say no. It's probably the hardest thing for an entrepreneur is to say no when you know you can do it. But you're rob and Peter to pay Paul.

I when I work with Dan Martel on a regular basis he had me do a time study and he goes well dude let's just figure out your next exit let's figure out what you make per hour it was a big big big number and he said how much you drive a week I said 11 hour I did the math 11 hours

he goes I'll hire a driver I go dude I'm not gonna show up to work with a driver I show up to work with a driver now he goes do you like to cook this is one of your passions I'm like Uber eats buddy he's like you're gonna get a chef and I didn't realize at the time how much time I was able to buy back. And the problem is he goes, when you get this time back, you can't fill it all up with work. And that's been a hard one for me.

With the, you know, someone that's thinking about the five types of wealth in their 20s, how does it differ when you start hitting 40, 50 years old? I think that your consideration has just changed, right? Like you in your 20s and 30s, generally speaking, are going to be at the point in your life when you have the least number of responsibilities. You probably aren't married yet. you probably don't have kids yet. This is like the time when you can really lean into you. And like my wife and I have been together since high school, but we didn't live together

for the first three or four years of my career and through all of college. She was still on the East Coast. I was in California. We were doing long distance. And when I look back on it, it was like, it was painful at the time. I was like, oh, this is terrible. We live so far apart. We don't see each other that much. But I was able to work 100-hour weeks without having anyone complaining to me about how much I was working. I was literally go to bed at like 8 p.m. on a Friday night, wake up, show up at the office, be there the entire day. And so when I think about the learning curve and the impact and the acceleration and the compounding effect that that had, it was enormous. And so in your 20s and 30s, like when you are in those periods where you don't have a lot of

responsibilities, I think that the best way to set yourself up is to really lean into that. Like, I don't, you know, there's all these young people now, like you go like, oh, I'm going to just travel the world for the next five years and do that. I'm like, I think you're giving up a lot of the like time when you could set yourself up for the rest of your life if you really lean into this for a few years. Well, I will say there is a big difference between traveling in your 20s and 50s. So you've got to take advantage of some of those things, but yes, you're right, compound interest.

Yeah. I don't know. I like, I hear people when they say that. They're like, oh, yeah, it's much better to travel in your 20s and 30s than it is in your 40s and 50s. I'm like, if you treat yourself well, I feel way better now at 35. than I did in my early 20s. It's true. It's true if you're taking care of yourself, you're doing peptides. Yeah, I mean, like, but just like the boring basics of taking care of yourself, like, when you're 45, you can look better than you did at 25.

You can feel better than you did. And so why does, like, I think there are some of these things that we say and we just naturally assume, like, oh, well, I should travel now because I'm not going to feel as good at 45 or kids. I'm not going to be able to travel when I have kids. That's just because you're saying that. That's not true. Kids can go on planes.

Like, they'll love it. I traveled a ton when I was a lot. kid because my dad would bring me to work stuff all over the world. Like he's a professor who's giving talks. I would get to go with him the best experiences of my life. Like I went on a safari with my dad when I was seven years old. I'll never forget that till the day I die, that experience getting to go. It's true. You know, we do to our, we tell ourselves a lot of things that aren't true. Those self-limiting things that we do, like those, and it's not even the big ones. Like, we always talk about this in coaching things of like, oh, you know, those big self-limiting beliefs that

you're not capable. It's like, okay, I get it with those big ones. We need to address those. I think the most damning ones are these little things that we are like, they're almost just societal or cultural where you're like, oh, yeah, well, like, have fun. You know, now that you have kids, you're not going to have fun anymore. Like, the most fun moments of my entire life have been after I've had kids. How many kids? We've won so far, hopefully more.

So, you know, you talked about your wife. I just want to dive into that because you studied happy couples. And that's another question Zach wanted me to ask, actually. What are the traits? What makes a happy couple continue to be happy? And what are the best tips you got for that? I asked a 99-year-old couple. They've been married almost 80 years. What advice they would give to their younger selves. And the 99-year-old man with this big smile on his face said, I never stopped dating my wife. That's, ooh, I got goosebumps. That's great. I absolutely loved that one because it is, again,

one of these little cultural stories that you're like, oh, you have your honeymoon phase, and you date and you court the woman, and you're doing all these nice romantic things, that should never change. You should still be courting your wife. You should still be dating, still flirting, still. I guarantee when he walked by his wife at age 95,

he was still slapping her on the butt. I just guarantee it. Like, I see all these memes now about this on Twitter of like, oh, it actually boosts dopamine and it's this big happiness thing. But like, those things don't have to change just because, you're getting older. And those things only change because we allow them to. Well, what do you think keeps the fire alive? Because here's what I do see. This is probably the

hardest part. A lot of times it could be confusing when you work with them and you see, Bree and I work together, but I don't see her throughout the day. So we still got a lot to talk about. But my question would be if you were like a hygienist with a dentist and you're like, that's a lot. It's a lot for a couple. So how do you? keep the fire live. I think that like the idea that um you need to express appreciation for each other in genuine and authentic ways continuously. Like I remember before my son was born, there was this statistic that I came across that 80% of married couples say their relationship got worse in the year after their child was born. And my gosh, really. And I was trying to understand like, okay,

well, why is that? Well, it's sort of obvious, right? Like, for the first time in your life, you have a new entity that is both of your primary focus, and you're no longer focused on each other. And so what happens is you stop expressing things to each other. You stop expressing appreciation, gratitude, et cetera. And it's very easy to lose sight of each other because you now have a kid. And I just took that to say, well, how do I fight back against that? Like, what's the inversion of that, if you will? It was like, I'm just going to express appreciation for something to my wife every single day. Because lack of appreciation is where relationships go to die. And that has been an enormous and very, very simple little hack that has completely changed our relationship as our

son has gotten older. Like the tiny little things you notice someone doing, whether it's your romantic partner or anyone in your life, just let them know you appreciate them. Humans love appreciation. From a toddler on up, like if you express appreciation to a toddler, they light up. It's the exact same as you get older in life. I was watching this guy. do this little study on Instagram real. And he's like, hey, how are you doing today? Nobody said anything. And he goes, I love your hair.

It looks perfect in the sun. They just stop. And it changes the whole conversation of, hey, what's up? How are you? It's kind of like that's nonchalant. And I think that's totally true. I put a sticker on one of the gals in my office. And I said, hey, I missed you today.

I appreciate everything you do. And she said she started crying when she saw that. Because that's how unseen she felt. And that's just important to really. Those small little things, guess what? It makes me feel good when they feel good. And it's a ripple effect.

Yeah, it is. The other thing to say that came up across all of the couples, right? Like I asked, you know, at the end, hundreds of couples that have been married 50 plus years for their best relationship advice. And one of the most common themes that I found was that couples who thrived understood that there were seasons to your life

and there were seasons to your love and your relationship. It was not always going to be this honeymoon season of your teenage years and of your early 20s. You were going to have different phases. And life is going to slap you in the face sometimes. It's going to be struggles and challenges. Embracing those seasons rather than trying to force yourself to remain in a prior one is critical. If you are fighting against a season that's changing, you are not going to win. Life is going to beat you 100 times out of 100.

And so embracing these different waves that come in your life, like being a surfer that just sort of, embraces the different waves, that is the key to having one of these thriving relationships. I love it. Life's hard in a relationship. Life's hard without one. You got to choose your heart. You ever seen that video where the guy's like, he's at a fast food store and he's like, hey, I'm going to go ahead and pay for the guy behind me. And then he raced around to get behind. There's another car because they were like, pay it forward. If you guys haven't seen that video, you're going to check it out. This is probably one of the major things. Elena was like, Make sure you get this question.

You've said that the Harvard study of adult development is the most impactful study of the last 100 years. Can you dive into that? Break down the study and why it's so impactful. Yeah, there is clear scientific evidence that your relationships are the single most important factor in a life well-lived and in a healthy life. The Harvard study of adult development,

I think, is the most amazing study in the last 100 years. It is a longitudinal study. They followed about 2,000 people. over the course of 85 years. They found that the single greatest predictor of physical health at age 80 was relationship satisfaction at age 50. The single greatest predictor of your health at 80

was how you felt about your relationships at 50. Like it wasn't your blood pressure, it wasn't your smoking or drinking habits, your cholesterol levels. It was how you felt about your relationships. So what better reason do we all need to invest in our relationships on a daily basis? When it is the single greatest investment,

that you can make scientifically in living that long, healthy, happy life that we all want. You know, I got a question. There's a lot of people that seek counseling for their marriage, for their personal life. Whether you call it coaching, I'd rather call it coaching than counseling personally. But what I find is a lot of people, they're trying to prove to the counselor or to the psychologist or the psychiatrist, depending if you want meds or not. But they're trying to prove that they're right. And one of the things that I found is,

you know, this is the way that it makes me feel. Because nobody could be right. No one could argue that. But do you know what I'm talking about? That it's like, I'm going to prove to this person that's helping us out that I'm right and you're wrong. I think that's what went wrong with my parents is they seek this out and they try to get people to win on their side.

Is that just a selfish thing or how do you avoid doing that? Well, I think that most people have a bias for trying to be right. and not change their mind on things. I think the willingness to change your mind is the ultimate sign of intelligence. The willingness to embrace new information as sort of a software update to your brain, spending time with some of the most successful people

in the world professionally, that is one common trait that you see. They are willing to embrace new information and it changes their mind on things and they can go down a different path. You'd have to change your mind. Yeah. I was just reading about that.

most successful people is I never really thought about it that way. It's the emotional intelligence side of things that most people miss. Yeah, and you have new information come in, new evidence, and rather than burying your head in the sand to it, you embrace it and you have to adjust. As a business owner, you have to do that constantly. Being willing to embrace that mindset in your personal life is very difficult because you are so emotionally attached to the arguments and the things that are happening in your life. There's something called the Solomon Paradox. It's like, you know, King Solomon from the Bible, known for being the wisest man who ever lived, but very bad at taking his own advice, very good at giving advice, bad at taking his own.

And that idea has become this paradox that we are very good at giving advice to other people. Like, if you come to me with your marriage problem, I'm able to give you this clear-headed, rational advice, but when I have my own marriage problem, I can't take my own advice. Because you're so emotionally attached to that thing, and so sometimes what helps in those situations, When you find yourself, you know, like wanting to try to prove that you're right, wanting to try to, you know, push, push, push. It is to just say, like, what would I tell my best friend to do here? Like, I'd probably tell him to just listen, to slow down a little bit, to try to understand rather than to try to win. And look, I think across all relationships, the desire to try to win an argument, like no one wins an argument.

It's not a thing that happens. What you're trying to do is reframe a situation. from me versus you to us versus the problem. Like in a relationship, if you are, you know, partner with someone, it's like, it's not about you versus the other person. It's whatever problem you're facing, let's reframe this to try to address what that problem is. That's not about either one of us being right.

It's about collectively us coming together to solve this thing that's in front of us. I think the media, it's so hard in this digital age. I mean, they push you towards, especially politically or religiously. Two things you're not supposed to talk about. But it's like you need to be all right or all left. If you're left, it's an abortion thing. It's a migration thing. And if you're right, it's a gun.

There's all these things, right? And that's one thing is I wanted to ask you about media. For young people, I was just with Jordan Peterson recently. And he's crying about young men, about how hard it is. I mean, look, during COVID, a lot of the kids were locked in their basement on screens all day, playing, you know, whatever game they play. And it is tough. What's your best advice for young people on finding and nurturing meaningful relationships?

Spend time with people in person. Get off your damn phone. I, um... What's your phone rule? I just went through like a month-long thing of trying to break my phone addiction. And I am huge on gray scale mode 24-7. that was like an immediate 90% improvement in my overall life and connection to my phone. It just like immediately makes your phone less interesting to look at because it removes all the colors.

So you don't just like grab your phone to go look at things. That's smart. I like that advice. It's huge. It's super simple like shortcut that you can create on your phone too. The other big one for me was I created no phone zones in my life. So basically like there's certain places in my house where I just don't have my phone. And certain times of day where I just don't have my phone. And you follow that. I thought out.

Yeah. I mean, I put my phone in, I bought a lockbox, and I put my phone in a lock box during those windows and in those places. Because I knew, like, choice architecture, right? It's science. It's like, you actually are going to have a really tough time doing something if you're just relying on willpower. So let me actually make it really difficult to do the bad thing here.

I'm going to put it in a lockbox, and it's going to be locked. If I want to get it out of there, I have to literally email the company during this two hours to try to get the code to unlock the thing. So I'm not going to do it. And look, I, in a month, I took my screen time down by four hours a day, which is embarrassing that it was so high. But if you play that out over a year, that is 68 days of awake time that I just reclaimed, that I previously would have been spending on my phone, that I now am able to, like, be out in the world or do work or actually interact with people. And so if you're a young person, you want to build relationships or you want to just be happier in your life. It's like, go outside, spend time in person with people and stop following and reading the news so damn much.

Like, the news is just lying to you. It is creating a completely skewed perspective of what the world looks like. Full stop. Because the entire thing is driven by an economic incentive. And the economic incentive means that they only show negative and rage-inducing content. Because that's what generates clicks and shares, and that's what makes them money. So that's what you're going to see. That's what the algorithms are going to push.

And what it means is that your perspective on reality is going to be very dislocated from what real reality looks like. I don't do email, but I do text messaging. And the one problem I have, so I go on this fishing trip, it's been a couple years, but it's a three-day trip.

We go along the Pacific Ocean some days. Most of the time, my phone cuts out. And I love life. When I went to the Masters, it was really weird for the first hour, but then I'd end my phone, I had the best time of my life. The problem is when I get back,

and my phone's going, boom, boom, boop, it's the most anxiety. So the fear is if I don't keep up, that it's going to suck. And so I got to come up. But at least I know the problem. So now I just need to figure out how to solve it. My big thing was, I had this exact same fear. The big thing that helped me was realizing that, so, you know, you use your phone for work purposes, right? It's like, well, all of those apps, like that, you know, messaging in particular, you do that on your computer.

and I want to do work on my computer and my phone is only going to be for like real phone only use cases, which really for me is like emergency situations calling, you know, people if I need to, coordinating things with my family or like posting something on social media. Literally any other thing that I do can be done for my computer and that's when I'm at my desk. So it was effectively creating a separation to say like my phone is going to be almost like a dumb phone. Might as well be like a Nokia, you know, flip phone at this point. And my computer is going to be for work, like real work purposes. And in between those two, I don't need to have it.

Like it just, it's not there. It's only getting in the way of me showing up in the world the way I want to. You know, I think my solution is just going to be, I've had my phone number since I was just a little guy in my 20s. I'm just going to get a work number. Change it. And just, look, here's the deal. If you want anything work related, here's the number. I'm going to block you.

No offense. But if it's work-related, I think that's going to be the best step. You talked about a quote from an author, Susan Kane. Your purpose in life doesn't have to be related to what you do and work. It doesn't have to be grand or ambitious. It just has to be yours. Let's go ahead and dive into that. This is like rooted in a lot of ancient wisdom.

Like this, you know, I think it really, like you go back to like the Bhagavad Gita. It's like this ancient Hindu text. like this idea of Dharma, like your sacred duty of, you know, going off on your own hero's journey. And I think that we've created this world where and this culture where people think that they need to go on the journey that's been handed to them. It's like what we talked about earlier, this like four-year college degree, go get the office job. Like everyone thinks that that is what they're supposed to go and do because it's going to impress other people. Like, I often ask young people, wait, before you take a job, you should ask yourself, do I actually want this job?

Or do I want other people to see me having this job? Especially your folks. There's a big gap between those two things, right? And if you don't really want it, if you're not going to be energized by this thing and want to show up and do your best at this thing, you may want to wait and look at the other opportunities. I want to do a speed round, then go over a couple of quotes and finish with AI. So some entrepreneurial advice. What are some actionable habits for people trying to find balance in the five types? Time block your life out so that every single day you are actually spending real time on the things that matter to you.

If you define your priorities and the areas of the five types of wealth that you want to be focusing on and building around, make sure you actually structure them into your day. Because the truth is that if it's not on your calendar, it's not happening. Like if I want to spend time with my parents, and I've gone through this recently, I'm like, I want to spend more time with my parents just me with them. Because if it's with my son or with my wife or with my sister, like I don't get to talk to just my parents. And I was thinking about that. And I was like, it's never going to change unless I change. Nothing changes if nothing changes. So I sent them a text and I said, hey, let's get a dinner on the calendar once a month.

And it's just on the calendar. It's just the three of us. And we're going to put it on the calendar. Because if it's not on the calendar, we're not going to do it. There's always a reason to skip it. So time block out your life according to the things that you are saying are priorities, and you will actually make progress on them. Jesse Isser's big-ass calendar.

Oh, yeah, it's great. I love it. I have that too. Yeah, it's great. And pre-filled it out, I've got to be a little bit more. I got to put in a spot that I can see it every day. I got my commitments on the mirror, and it's hard, though. Some days I skip it.

Some days I don't do it right, but Ashley's helping me get my push-ups in at least. You look like you're doing hard. all right on push-ups. What's a common piece of life advice that you disagree with? Ooh, that's a good question. I hate this whole idea that you should work smart, not hard. I absolutely hate that advice, especially for young people. I think it's one of the worst pieces of advice that you can give. This new thing that's become trendy is to tell people to be strategically incompetent. Like, hey, when you're working in a job, like, you shouldn't show competence at things you don't want to do because then you'll just get more of them. I think it is

borderline dangerous advice to give young people because the truth is every single thing matters. Like, small things become big things. If you show that you are capable of taking on tiny things and taking them seriously, that is the person that is going to be given the big things, trusted with the big things, brought into the new meetings, given the new opportunities. That's the person who's going to get lucky with other opportunities in life. And so I just hate seeing people constantly espouse this idea that you should just work smart. You don't know what to work smart on until you work hard. You have to work hard for many, many years to actually even know where you can work smart.

It's great advice. I think most people that I see, at least in my own company, the flat out truth is I don't want to do most of the work. So I delegate even when I should do it. I mean, I delegate almost everything possible. But I find the people the biggest C-suite, the guys around me, they've got this tendency to say if I don't do it, it's not going to be done right. Like, I don't look at my emails. I told you that.

Ashley does a wonderful job at it. And do I look at emails? The ones that she says are important, yeah. I think delegation is a trusting thing. And it's going to set you backwards. But then it's going to make you go forward. What would you tell somebody that's like, if I don't do it, not going to get done right. I think that in general, you have to be willing to endure the step

back in order to have the two steps forward. And for most people, that's really painful. And I have found it to be the case when it comes to any level of delegation, whether it's with AI tools or whether it's with team and hiring, that, like, yes, the person is not going to be able to do the thing at the bar that you apply right now. But in a few weeks, if you really coach them and if you really work with them and you set expectations, they probably will. And because it'll be important to them and they'll put more attention towards it, they'll probably be able to do it better than you very quickly. And so being willing to embrace that step back for the two steps forward,

sort of like the paradox of progress, I mean, that's an essential rule for life. I think most people dump instead of delegate and they don't give instructions. And then they wonder, like, why would you book Southwest when you know I like American? You never told me you like American. I hate window seats. Like Ashley knows exactly what to do to book me. What hotel? Why the hotel?

Do they have a gym and a restaurant? That's the rule. Even if it's further out of the way. What's one question you think our listeners should ask themselves when it comes to wealth? What do you actually want your life to look like? And what I mean by that is if you were to wake up in five years, five years from today, you wake up and your entire life is in flow. Like from the time you wake up until the time you go to bed at night, everything just feels like it's in sync. It's flowing. What did that day look like? Where were you? Who were you with?

Where were you living? What were you spending time on? What were you thinking about? What were you working on? What did that day really look like? Because if you have that clear vision of the direction that you're trying to head, then you can reverse engineer the actions you need to take today to actually go and create that future. Very wise. I'm going to go over. some of your ideas you have just under a million followers on Instagram which is phenomenal and you've got certain quotes and different things you've kind of really got viral let's just do we've already talked about nobody cares can you talk about when you realize this in your own life number one nothing will improve your life more than the

proximity to the people you love it's worth more than any job you will ever that will ever pay you. Let me read that again. Nothing will improve your life more than the proximity to the people you love. It's worth more than any job that will ever pay you. Yeah, I think this is something people just lose sight of. It is a form of compensation to live close to the people that you care about.

That is a real form of wealth. And I think it's about embracing that idea, because if you are making a whole ton of money but you're lonely and you're not surrounded by the people that you care about, what's the point? No one dreams of being on a yacht by themselves. You want to be surrounded by the people you care about, doing things that you care about. And so prioritize it. Yeah. It's much harder to say that than do it, especially when you made prior obligations.

That's what I told you my number one thing that I'm working on is breaking my obligations, which, When I asked some of my mentors, they're like, what's something about you? And I said, my word is my bond. Like, dude, that's bad. It's going to get you in a lot of trouble. It's not that you need to become a liar, but you need to be able to break things. Because if you tell the private equity, you're going to go 10x this thing. What are you going to do to your fiancé?

What about when kids come? Which one becomes a priority? And finding that balance and winning is, it's tough. I will say that. Adaptability is the key to life. The ability to course correct, that is the single most important human trait, because life is going to throw different chaos at you, different storms. And the person who wins is the person who can tolerate whatever punches life throws at them

and actually just adapt and change course in whatever minor or major ways that you need to along the way. It is like adaptability is the highest form of intelligence in many ways. Yeah, it is. The worst decisions in life are made when you allow your head to talk to you. Shit. The worst decisions in life are made when you allow your head to talk you into something when your gut already said no. This is from my grandfather. He was a big believer in gut instinct.

And I think now the science is more and more clear that gut instinct actually has a real scientific basis, something in your gut that you are feeling. I have made so many bad decisions, especially in business, when I had the clear gut instinct that this didn't make sense, and then I talked myself into it on some surface level financial basis. It almost is never the case that those things work out. So if your gut is bad, whether it's on the people that you're doing it with or the opportunity or the size of it, just trust your gut. It's earned intuition. Are the founder of service telling is like, I've never been wrong. The gut, and I always feel great about it. It's hard to make this decision, like, to fire somebody. The problem is with me is I've got a lot of people with a lot of guts around me, like my

fiancee. And she's the type of gut that's like, she doesn't trust anybody. Same thing for my mom. Same thing for my dad. Same thing for my sister. Like, they're going to take advantage of you. And I'm like, man, I wouldn't have any employees left if I trusted your gut. You know, it's one of those things where I love my gut feeling, but I'm like, listen, I enjoy this.

The question that I have is am I going to enjoy this journey? Because if it's like every time this person calls myself cell phone, I'm like, oh, God, this is going to be so tough. It's a tough one. But I can tell you this. Every time there's a payroll issue, I do that. But I just delegated. I don't even know how to log into payroll. Let's do this one.

And then we'll talk about AI and then we'll get you out of here. Be unapologetically yourself. When you edit your personality, you attract relationships that you need. that need constant maintenance. I'm gonna read this again because I, be unapologetically yourself. When you edit your personality, you attract relationships that need constant maintenance.

Stop filtering yourself to be liked. Right ones will stick, wrong ones will walk. That's a blessing. And this is overriding this thing that you're taught your whole childhood, which is like the most important thing is to fit in and just have your place. You're like, oh, I just want to be liked. I just want to be popular. And it may be a good thing when you're in school, but it becomes a really bad thing in real life. Because if you're constantly changing who you are and showing up in different ways to try to impress other people or try to get them to like you or think you're cool, you're just going to attract relationships into your life that you have to constantly manage, like constant drama and chaos and volatility. And I think just as we all get older, there's nothing more valuable than.

stable, reliable people in your life, like boring relationships, people who just show up the way that you know they will always show up consistently over and over again. And that comes from you being authentic to who you actually are. Yeah, you know, we, we shape our ultra ego. And Kobe used to become the black mamba on the court. And so I think more people should start training their alter ego. Russell Brunson, a buddy, he said, when I drive into the garage, I change. changed by ultra ego from Russell Brunson ClickFunnels to Russell Brunson dad. And I would show up into that house differently. And I think that's important.

You got to figure out who does this ultra ego? You said, I show up like, I'm a dad. And that's who I'm a coach of my son's different leagues that he's in. And I think that if you could define your alter ego in the right way, and it changes. It changes from being a son of both your parents. You're a different son to both of them. And you're probably going to have a completely different conversation if they ask you the same thing. So defining what that looks like, I really, I'm obsessed about learning about AI.

I mean, literally, I watch so many things on Elon Musk. I read so many books on this stuff. And it's kind of scary. I want to just start with what is your outlook over the next 10 years about society in general? I think it will be highly, highly disruptive and damaging to a lot of particularly white color workers, but then I'm very optimistic on the back end of all of that. I think that with most technological change, what you see is there's this period of massive disruption and fear, and on the back of it, productivity expands, and as a result, demand goes

up because prices come down and new jobs get created and new things that we can't possibly envision today get created. And that would be my operating thesis, in part because I don't believe in the idea that this time is different. Everyone says that at all times in history. And the truth is that we've seen these changes at different times throughout history. Is this one broad-based and happening faster than ever before? Maybe. But I think that the truth is that humans have proven extraordinarily resilient

in our ability to manage and navigate enormously disruptive changes. Does that mean that I'm not really scared for what the future looks like for our kids? No, it terrifies me thinking about what the future looks like and what jobs look like in my son's future and what school looks like and all of these changes. And what the quest looks like. You know, like you talk about everyone's now talking about, well, we'll just have universal basic income for everyone because of this abundance. I'm like, it sounds like the worst idea in the world to me. Like you just remove anyone's motivation to show up and do anything. What do you think humans are going to do?

Especially when you have the technology to just sit around like a sloth all day. You know, it's like go watch that movie Wally and you'll get pretty scared about what the future looks like. like if we take away all human motivation to show up and work on and do hard things. The other thing that I think about with AI constantly is this idea of like the doorman fallacy. Like Rory Sutherland, this British advertising executive, had this thought experiment to say, imagine you own a five-star hotel and you hire a consultant to come in and look at efficiency opportunities. And the consultant looks around and he sees the doorman. And he's like, you pay that doorman $40,000 a year and you could just put in an automatic door and you'd save $40,000.

a year. So you fire the doorman and the consultant's all happy and you're all happy because you have this great efficiency. And two years go by and the hotel is just in disarray. Because it turns out that the doorman was doing a lot more than just opening a door. He was like providing security and prestige and making guests feel welcome and doing all these other things that didn't show up in the surface level job description of opening the door. When it comes to AI, this applies so directly to your life. Because at all points, whether you're a business owner, or in your own personal life. You're going to be faced with these opportunities to drive efficiency by just eliminating jobs or eliminating things in your own life. And at all steps along that path,

you need to make sure you understand the real value that's under the surface of that person or of that thing that you are doing before you strip it out. Because it's very easy to optimize something and not realize that you've just killed something underneath it that was much more important. example for me would be like writing. I could very easily try to outsource my writing to AI. But writing is how I think. And so if I were to eliminate my writing process, it wasn't about the output that it created. It was about the thinking that actually underlied it.

So I would all of a sudden optimize the life out of my life in a lot of ways. I think a lot of people are using AI wrong. I have it asked me hundreds of questions a week. And then it helps me organize my thoughts. But I don't tell it anything. I ask it, and then I tell the story. And it really could take all of them. And I always say, listen, Meta and Google are already listening.

Might as well let JetGBT or whatever, Cloud, learn a little bit and help me. But I don't necessarily agree with you that I do think it's a little different this time, because we're already starting this next year we're going to start training the robot. I mean, we're going to be wearing stuff for garage doors. We talk about blue collar being safe. It is for the next five years. I invested in some of those robot. I'm an investor in this company figure that's making these robots that are freaking crazy already.

I'd love to talk about that. I mean, Elon, the one thing that we have, if you read Sapiens, is what made human beings, is our ability to make the fingers. And that's going to be a tough one, but it'll happen in the next two years. And then super intelligence, the computer is smarter than all of human beings combined. And it's way different than the natural or the industrial revolution. But I'm not worried about myself, because I'm not. an entrepreneur but I'm worried about a lot of people you think about those AAA loans so what happens with the dentists the lawyers the practitioners of

different categories when the triple loans you've probably seen the Ginga start pulling these out so what happens I mean it's gonna happen I mean these big companies are laying off 40% of their workforce and yes you by the way I could hire a thousand people right now I'm gonna take a lot of these people but I'll tell you this, I'm cutting out a lot of different departments. Just one more analogy is when all the call centers, they went to India and they went to these different countries. And dude, it was a bad experience. It took them about five years. They brought it back. So I realized AI's happening too quick and there's data breaches and people are just making, they want to be the first early adopters

because they're afraid that someone's going to beat them. And they want to talk to their investors. Nobody understands this better than you. Like, we've got to be early adopters. We've got to get this. What if somebody beats us? And they're going to retract a little bit. So we've got some time. But what's your take when there's 10 to 1 robots that are able to walk the dog cook for you, fix your garage, anything you need, really? Yeah.

I mean, I think you're going to get massive pushback from people all along that journey is the thing. And so, you know, like I cannot see a world, the US, take the US, for example, if we start seeing real, real AI-driven layoffs. Like, I would argue that AI layoffs right now. now are in narrative, meaning I think the companies that are laying off a bunch of people are just below, they overloaded people, and they're realizing that most of their people are pretty useless and that they didn't need them. And it actually is not that they've adopted AI that's

dramatically changing their workflows. I think most companies that are using AI right now are, like, on the surface level, using it so that they can say to their shareholders that they are and they're not really meaningfully. That will change. But I would envision in the U.S., I think you're already seeing it, frankly, that there is going to be an enormous political-driven pushback against AI because as soon as you start seeing meaningful layoffs, both the left and the right are going to agree on one thing, which is, we need to regulate this to all hell because people are losing their jobs. Well, you lose to China then.

And I think that that is actually, like, the geopolitical risk of all of this is actually my much bigger fear than like the economic risk in the short term. My two biggest fears actually would be the geopolitical side of a race with China and the risk of like anarchy of 20% unemployment, but the S&P 500 at all-time highs. And I think like that is a recipe for, you know, guns in the street type thing. And I don't think that politicians are going to allow that to happen in the U.S. I just think you see and you already are seeing like the narratives around 2028 driven by most of the, you know, right now leading progressives, but it'll be on both sides, are going to be

anti-AI. It's like, you know, they took our jobs. It's just going to be the main thing that gets talked about. And so I think humans are going to have to wrestle with what are we willing to automate and outsource to non-humans. Like, I actually don't, I don't know how many people are going to be willing to embrace robots in their homes. I don't know how many people are going to be willing to embrace, you know, robots or machines doing work that they consider to be things that humans should do. Maybe we'll come around, but I think, I guess my bias would be that it will take much longer than we originally expect. Well, I think the main thing that these robotic companies are figuring out is I got to

give it a human face. I got to start working on some, like, it needs to look like a human eventually. I feel like that's more scary. I actually don't know. I'm like, I would I think my wife would be more open to having a just like robot that didn't look anything like a human in our house than a human. It's just weird. It's like creepy. Because you've seen movies about it. I robot, right? You're like, dude, they take over the world. And you could see a world where that happened. So are you building a safe spot, a bunker or of any sort of like... I wouldn't have to, I wouldn't talk about it if I was. What I was? Well, look, I'm building a place in Idaho and it's not like a secret spot, but that'll be self-efficient. Have you watched Paradise? The show on Hulu. It's like this, it's amazing show. It's like a post-apocalyptic world with this enormous bunker in Colorado. It's like this idea.

I did watch Greenland, which is similar when it was like, you've probably seen that with Gerard Butler. No, I haven't. Good. I like that kind of stuff. There's another show that the Tesla started driving themselves and just crashing. Yeah, I liked that one. I liked that one. Well, it's like, I was like, man, that's a...

How many people do you think wealthy people about bunkers? Like, what if I could make a movie that just changed the perception? Have you ever heard of Dan Kennedy? No. He's great, writes a lot of books, genius, and he wrote no BS about marketing to the affluent. And if you could solve the problems. Alex Ramosey talks a lot about this. You solve problems for wealthy people.

It doesn't matter what the economy does. You know, one other thing I wanted to touch on is a lot of the PE groups I know, the VC funds. They're investing, for example, I know a company that invested in the sales. Francisco 49ers because that's going to keep getting more expensive and people are going to want to be around humans. They're going to want that human touch. So I've got a group. We do a big event called the Home Service Freedom Group. And the people love seeing other people.

Like, we love that. But the scary thing is not every kid does now. Like the 20-year-olds would rather be at home than go out and have to mingle with people. And that's what I'm afraid of is we do agree that the baby boomers, they don't. They're still on their phones, but they love playing cribbage and going, like, the retirement homes. Like, they're still around each other. But there's a new level of kids growing up that don't. Yeah.

I mean, I think it's the biggest risk to society is, like, this loneliness epidemic that we've gone through, right? Teenagers in the U.S. are spending 70% less time in person with their friends than they were two decades ago. It's terrifying to think about the implications. We were the last generation. We'd go play outside. Yeah. I mean, like, my son, it is the number one thing that I just constantly. hammer on is like you have to just have to be active like I actually don't care if you use a screen

as long as you prefer to be outside and playing and how do you how do you regulate and enforce that i mean if we're ever having a choice we're always outside doing things i mean even like in the winter in massachusetts i built a climbing wall in our basement so that we could be like climbing and doing crazy things and wrestling and doing whatever rather than just sitting around on a phone I think that's the first when the wires start turning on. It's, I think, three to seven, although a lot of things happen before that. Yeah. So last thing, I want to give you the mic to close out.

First and foremost, how do people get a whole of you? You can find me at Saw Hill Bloom on any of the major platforms, and you can find my book on Amazon or anywhere books are sold. What's your favorite place for people to find you? LinkedIn, Instagram. Definitely not LinkedIn. No, I'm not on TikTok. I don't have it on my phone.

I'm terrified of the Chinese spying. I deleted it. Yeah, no. Easiest to get me on either X or on Instagram, send me a message. I'm around. Is there any book in your life that completely changed the way you look, other than the book you wrote that you spent lots of years doing? Yeah, I read a book called When Breath Becomes Air shortly after my son was born that had a dramatic impact. I mean, it's a Stanford neurosurgery resident who gets diagnosed with terminal cancer and is like writing the book in the last year of. his life. Really, really powerful. And then I'm going to have you close us out. We really appreciate all the listeners out there. If you like this and you want to see more, share it, like it, subscribe.

But maybe there's something we didn't talk about. And by the way, I really appreciate you doing this today. You came up to New York and beautiful view. I really love this. But you took the time out of your day and I really appreciate it. But close us out with whatever you think will be important for the listeners. Just invest in your relationships. I mean, the reason that I came and did this is because it's much more fun to meet someone in person than it is to do this over Zoom. And the truth is that, like, you've never built a meaningful relationship over the phone or on Zoom. Got to meet people in person. And so anytime there's an excuse to get in person with people, go out, get that old group of buddies together for the annual trip. Like, just go do that thing. It's something that you never regret.

That. Ah, amazing. Great work, brother. Thank you.