The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish - #98 Sahil Lavingia: Observing the Present

Episode Date: December 8, 2020

Sahil Lavingia is the founder and CEO of Gumroad, an online marketplace for creators. In this conversation Sahil and Shane cover building a billion dollar business, the most critical skills for success, how he hires, his worst mistake, the patterns of success and failure and so much more. -- Want even more? Members get early access, hand-edited transcripts, member-only episodes, and so much more. Learn more here: https://fs.blog/membership/   Every Sunday our Brain Food newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/   Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I wish I knew earlier that, like, my company was still my responsibility. No one was going to fix my problems. They were investing because they believed in me and they believed in my potential. But it was up to me to still sort of take that potential energy and turn into kinetic energy. It wasn't a handout. It wasn't like, you know, you're going to get these people to come in to your office and help you solve problems day and day out. No one's going to make you rich. Like, you know, people are busy solving their own problems.

Welcome to the Knowledge Project podcast. This is Shane Parrish. This podcast in our website, fS. dot blog, help sharpen your mind by mastering the best of what other people have already figured out. If you're hearing this, you're not currently a supporting member. If you'd like early access to the podcast, ad-free episodes, transcripts, and other subscriber-only content, you can join at fs.blog slash podcast. Check out the show notes for an easy-to-click link. My guest today is Seahill Living Gear. Seahill was the second employee at Pinterest and left to start building Gumroad, a service that's helped creators earn more than $300 million.

We talk about the hardest skills to succeed in business, what he looks for when hiring, what it's like to try and build a billion-dollar business, his worst mistake, patterns of success, patterns of failure, and so much more. it's time to listen and learn you were born in new york but you grew up in singapore what was that like yeah it was interesting Singapore is a very unique place a lot of people who visit describe it like a city playground where it's just insanely safe it's super clean you know people

joke about the fact that you you know you get beat up for chewing gum or whatever which is not true but not inaccurate either kind of it's it's uh it is it is a good heuristic to describe singapore i think but yeah it was just i think living in a place that felt so different from everywhere else and singapore because it's such a young country it doesn't have the same sort of you know identity almost issues that a lot of other countries have in terms of like this is the way that we do things Singapore if you read about iquan you or any of the founding story of the country and things like they just pick and pull ideas from everything you know libertarians i know describe it as like a utopia because there's no minimum wage zero there's basically a flat tax i think it's around

15 percent flat no matter how much you make there's no capital gains tax uh and so libertarians love it uh but then you know there's sort of more progressive socialist kind of people that i know also love Singapore because it's sort of you know they 80 percent of the housing there is built by the government. It's a very sort of top-down, centrally planned country. It's a single city-state country. And so I just love it because people love to use it as an example of their viewpoint. Like, it's a really interesting kind of Roar Shark test for like the, for the things that people like. But, you know, it's young, it's small. And so in terms, you know, it's never been in a war. And so I think there are just things that allow it to do to do things.

quote unquote, better than other folks. And then I would say the other thing that I just, you know, took away from Singapore is just, it's pretty ruthless. It's like a very pragmatic as a country place. They're very strategic about how do we grow this thing, right? Like how do we structure this place in a way that if you look at the GDP of Singapore over the last, like, 50, 60 years, it's like the fastest growing startup you've ever seen, you know?

Well, that was the from third world to first, right? Lequan Yu and sort of like his unprecedented and taking a country in a generation and basically making it wealthy. Totally. And, you know, there's a lot of things you can't control. Like, just, you know, where it's located on the map is really important in terms of the trade routes. Singapore is sort of like the largest port in the Southeast Asia.

But it took a person, I think, just like George Washington, right? Like you need the ingredients, but then you need kind of the chef as well to kind of put them together. How long were you there? I was there from age five to 17. So most of my childhood. What was school like there? I don't know how to compare it because that's the only context I have.

I think it's relatively similar to schools here, though certainly doesn't have some of the same issues around, you know, what you've been reading about racism and anti-semitism and sexism and all these things. Like Singapore, it doesn't feel like it has much of the same bag. It has other issues for sure. I would say the emphasis there was so much on getting a secondary education it was like everyone knew without any doubt that they would go to college.

And it's a very sort of financially motivated place. And so typically people will pick the jobs that will make them the most money. It's sort of very very capitalistic in that way. It's interesting how those expectations shape outcomes to you, right? It's like you're expected to go to college there. You're expected to perform academically, I believe. I think expectations cannot be underrated. and I think your peer group also can't be underrated.

Like I think there's so much emphasis on sort of the system that you're a part of, your set of teachers, et cetera. But honestly, I think the biggest thing is just like you're kind of the average of your five friends, you know? And if you hang out with certain people, you're going to end up in a very, very, very different place based on that kind of like that osmosis that you'll go through and sort of like this sort of socialization. you know that that you'll have as a kid and i think that happens super early and certainly yeah singapore it's it's a pretty ruthless it's a pretty ruthless place like the idea that there's no fat people for example in singapore it just like doesn't really exist as a concept and i don't

mean that any sort of derogatory way but there's just people in general there aren't overweight uh and part of that is in in the local school system if you are overweight you go through a program Like, yes, part of, you skip lunch and you go through a program that you basically run around a track instead of eat lunch. I mean, it's like a sort of a regulatory system. And, you know, there's also a national service. Everyone who's Singaporean, if you stay in Singapore, I chose to leave and go to school in the U.S., you have to go through national service, right? So you spend two years becoming, you know, sort of like a perfect adult, quote unquote, right? Like you learn these things, like in general people who go through that are less likely to,

to get in a trouble and things like that. So there was a lot of, it's hard to unpack exactly. Like, oh, you know, if we took this and apply to here, you know, it would fix this problem. But there's just so much culturally around just holding the people to a very high bar. And then when you do that, like the next generation, you know, is brought up with these sort of values and is willing to do that for the sort of for the next generation, et cetera, et cetera. I want to explore something you said there about sort of the you are the product of the five closest people you hang around. How do you use that information to consciously choose the people that you're hanging around? I'm really mindful of that. You know, like in terms of the books that I read, the people that I listen to, the tweets that I follow, I think it's super important to really, you know, it's sort of like you are what you eat, right?

The companies that you work for, I think, like, I've never read a book and come out of it being less. convinced of the argument, even though I was not on the side of the argument, like when you spend that much time sort of looking at a subject from a specific perspective, you just end up becoming more empathetic to that point of view. And it's like doing that on mass, right? When you go on your phone, you're kind of seeing the way that a certain group of people see certain things. I think this has actually sort of been accelerated with COVID because you don't have maybe some of the back and forth, you're just, you can't, you know, it's sort of this very asynchronous medium. And so you end up just like absorbing all of this content and your perception is

your reality. So I think you just inevitably, inevitably kind of become closer to those sorts of people, which I think can be a great thing. If you want to be a great business person, for example, you can read books by great business people. And of course, they're selling things like you kind of have to be mindful of maybe what their incentive structure might be. But you'll get closer to figuring out, like, what are that sort of attributes that make someone like JZ JZ or someone like Steve Martin, Steve Martin, right? And I spend a huge amount of my time reading those sorts of those sorts of books as well. What about the people you physically hang around with? Like, do you call sort of friendships when you're like, this isn't serving me or how do you think

about that? Yeah, this is something I struggle with a lot. I think there is a lot. There is large expectation around friends and like what friends mean and you know Silicon Valley is kind of funny because there's this concept of we're friends and I like to joke that we're startup friends because it's such an overused word and what it means is like we met once in person for coffee and if they you know I need something from them I'll send them an email and they reply to my email it's not like we hang out at the bar you know like you know like all these sorts of things unless it's sort of some situational thing that arises typically from some sort of business reason. And that might just be a differentiator between friends in school and friends,

you know, in adult life. I'm not really sure because that's the only sort of career path that I've sort of taken. But yeah, it's, it's, I always struggle with, with that idea that we need to be friends with everybody. There are people that I talk to all of the time, but I wouldn't consider them even friends of mine. We just happen to be valuable for each other, very symbiotic relationship. And then there's other people that I'm friends with that I would consider close, close, close friends with that I haven't talked to in months. And so I really, I think those can be separated. But yeah, I spent a lot of my time thinking about how do I spend more time with certain

people, which I think can be a trap because you don't want to, you know, get into this place where you're just, like, how do I meet this person? I don't think that's the right approach. But it's more like, how can I figure out how to become closer to the type of person that this kind of person is. And in general, if you do that over time, I feel like opportunities to meet these kinds of folks will come up and show up in your life organically. Reading, playing, learning.

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i had a dribble account i had a few thousand followers this is 2011 and i just wanted to sell them this thing i kind of called it like a lemonade stand i just i don't need a whole storefront like i need didn't need all of this infrastructure i just needed like a little table and you know i wanted to sell this icon for a dollar and and, you know, these people who are already following me, you know, I can just share it with them and they can choose to buy it or not. And, you know, they, they enter in their credit card information. They get an email receipt with the download or they get the download maybe in line even. And just made it super easy. And so I thought that would exist and it just didn't exist. It felt like a very large disconnect where I was like, oh, I'm going to go sell this

icon to this audience. And then it wasn't possible. So, you know, that was Friday night. And then I ended up building gummer that weekend and then launched it Monday morning on hacker news and it did well I think and then you know a few months later I ended up starting starting to work on it full time raise some money from folks like Naval et cetera that's what I've been doing since what was the process of raising money like I mean this is a this is like I don't know a really good example I think of like figuring out how you get to spend you know time with certain folks like the way that I structured my life before, before even I wanted to fundraise or thought about it as an idea. I felt like I wanted to be a founder. And so I spent a lot of time hanging out

with founders, hanging out with early employees, working at an early stage startup. I think that's sort of the best thing that you could do. I left USC to go do that. And so I had a network just from building stuff, meeting with people, people wanting to recruit me for their companies. I'd started to build a relatively strong network of people like Naval and Seth Goldstein from Turntable and Samil Shah from Haystack VC now. And when I sort of had the opportunity to raise money, when one investor suggested, like, hey, this thing looks really cool, have you thought about doing this full time? I know you're at Pinterest, but, you know, this is certainly something you think, you know,

you'd probably be able to raise money for. And I was like, I literally had no idea that I could do that. It was not in my mind at all that I could be a founder that early, that quickly. And so I said yes. And then I just told all of these people that I had met out of the content. of raising money. I was like, hey, we met about this three months ago or six months ago or what have you. I have a startup like, you know, I'm just, and I'm going to raise money for. Are you interested? And it was honestly a relatively smooth transition because I built

up these relationships with people around just talking about product and talking about, there was no agenda. I wasn't selling them anything. So I'd sort of already effectively sold them on my abilities to build stuff and be really committed to that path. And so when I decided, to raise money. It's almost done all of the work, you know, accidentally. And then it was just sort of like going through like, okay, what are the terms, you know, what are the sort of the like the legal paperwork side of things. But it was a relatively smooth, smooth process. What do you wish you knew about raising money that you know now? I mean, I would say I, I think every founder thinks that raising money is going to change their life. Like you're going to get all of these phenomenal people on your

cap table and you're going to hang out with them all the time and they're going to help you, you know, recruit and build product and figure out go to market strategy. And the truth is, like, all of these folks are very busy. Some of them are running their own companies. Many of them are in many, many, many companies of which you are at least not in the beginning, one of their sort of top few. And the way venture returns work is it's sort of a power law. So if you're not, their Uber, you know, it's a different. The way they think about you might be a little bit different. So I wish I just knew that. I wish I knew earlier that like my company was still my responsibility. no one was going to fix my problems.

They were investing because they believed in me and they believed in my potential. But it was up to me to still sort of take that potential energy and turn it into kinetic energy. It wasn't a handout. It wasn't like, you know, you're going to get these people to come in to your office and help you solve problems day and day out.

And this is an experience I've talked to so many founder friends where they feel like because the sales process is so good. That's what they do, right? They're selling cash to get on your cap table. and they're really good at that but it's like the second they sell you the car they've sold you the car

I mean they you know they've done the 90% of the of the work if you know sort of precede investors it does change a little bit later on I think and so I just wish I knew not in any in any you know way that says

oh these people aren't helpful or whatever but just the incentives and it's just a model in which they operate and so I can understand okay this is as a founder what you expect from me, what I owe you, quote, unquote, and how I should sort of go about it. But you learn pretty quickly that that was the expectation and that you just need to, like anything, like no one's going to, no one's going to make you rich.

Like, you know, people, people are busy solving their own problems. Were the expectations on you that you would become sort of like this billion dollar business that you haven't accomplished yet? Yeah. And what's that been like? Yeah, it was. I think. I mean, Silicon Valley is a game of finding these crazy outsized returns. It's, you know, the sort of common adage is, you know, 30% of your companies die. 30% of your companies return less than 1x. And so you kind of need the last third and really the top 10% of the best that you make to return over 10x of the sort of initial principal capital. And often a lot more if you want to return any meaningful returns to your investors, because this is an illiquid liquid asset. class, right? You're giving money to a venture capitalist as an LP, and they're going to hold that

capital for 10 plus years, right? So you kind of expect more than market returns if you're if you're signing up for that. So yeah, that was totally the expectation. And that's not just the expectation. I think some people really focus on venture capitalists in the, in the zeit guys, but it's also the expectation for the early employees, because the early employees might only have half a percent of the company, one percent of the company, two percent of the company. And so they also are looking for it. I mean, they're turning down. offers, you know, from Facebook and Google and Uber, like, you know, for hundreds of thousands of dollars to work at your rinky-dank startup. There's a, there's a whole system, I think,

is modeled off of for this to be worth it for everybody that you need to get signed up to even get to the, to any end result that's interesting. You need the promise of or the potential of there needs to be a billion dollar plus outcome here. That's, it's kind of like when you look at the music industry, you know, or the NBA or anything. It's not, that everyone has the expectation that they're going to become LeBron or Kanye West or anything like that, but the idea that it's possible and that one person is going to win the Hunger Games is going to really kind of, it drives the level of competition and sort of work ethic that I think you frankly just don't get when you don't have those crazy outcomes as a

possibility, right? Like Jeff Bezos doesn't need $200 billion or whatever he has now, but for some reason and no one does i don't know what you do with that much money um but for some reason it's still like america i think it still has like this phenomenal culture of innovation that i think is largely driven by this weird relatively abstract number on the on the wall that everyone can see you know did you feel any sort of disappointment or did they make you feel disappointed in terms of not accomplishing that as quickly as maybe it was anticipated i mean Yeah, I mean, there definitely was some disappointment. I mean, I had so many wins so early.

I had dropped out of school, and then I was the second employee at Pinterest at 18, and then I started a company at 19 and raised a bunch of money from really great investors and raised like $10 million by the time I was 21 or something like that. So I just felt like if this was going to work, these are sort of the things that you need to see, right? But that's kind of a delusion. And it's like when your team gets to the semifinals. Like it doesn't, you still have to, you're still less than halfway there, right? Like, there's still work to do.

But you have so much evidence that you're like, oh, this might, you kind of start believing something that might not be true. But it was mostly internal disappointment. The nice thing about the portfolio theory that VCs have is they don't care that much about you if it doesn't work either, right? So they're all, they're sort of focused on, on other things. They're kind of content to let you figure it out. At least the good ones are.

They kind of understand that I think. But it was certainly, I mean, it was certainly disappointing. I think to admit when we did the layoffs, that was like the big moment that, you know, there's really no going back from that, right? Like you're sort of saying, hey, this thing that we all signed up for, like, we literally cannot possibly keep going on this path. We need to, you know, we cut 75% of the staff from 20 down to five people in 2015. And then TechCrunch wrote about it.

And so, you know, it's just like, oh, wow, like the, you know, we really, we really fail. And even though failure is such a meme almost at this point, in something you read about when it happens to you, when it really, you know, even though you knew the odds coming into it, when you realize like, oh, you're part of history, like this is, you are the example that other people might be referring, you know, when it feels very, very different. Do you actually feel like you failed? I did for a long time. Yeah. I mean, you know, I was living in San Francisco. Everyone's raising money and everything. Everyone's talking about how many employees they have and how much revenue they're doing and how fast they're growing. So certainly in that cultural context, it feels like you show up and it's like, how's Gummer, you know, I mean, those are the questions. It's not malicious. These are the questions that people tend to ask when you go to these house parties.

Like, you know, like how much have, you know, what are you doing? Oh, where do you work? What do you do for them? Just sort of gauging your sort of like where you are. Where are you in the hierarchy? How useful are you going to be to me? Yeah, something, you know, this is, I assume it happens in any boomtown, right? Like, people are there for a specific reason, typically sort of accelerating their career.

It definitely, when you hear that question a lot, and you're kind of responding to it a lot. You kind of end up sort of conflating that with your whole identity. And it took me leaving San Francisco and moving to Provo, Utah. And there, the questions were very different. You know, it was like, hey, are you married? Where are you from? Do you go to church? Just different kind of questions.

Maybe it's similar things happening. They're also trying to figure out where you stand in their own journey. Where do you fit in their journey, right? And they're also trying to form a connection around the common topics that you both are probably interested in. But after a while of that, I kind of forget, oh, I am a CEO of a company. Like that all kind of like I almost forgot about. And really that I think distance was what got me to write that article in the first place

because I think if I hadn't I wouldn't I would not have been able to write that article like sitting at a coffee shop in San Francisco right like just the the ego the the self consciousness of it I think I needed that distance to be in the middle of people who didn't really like to be so outside of that to to really kind of look at it you know and feel like I'm it was almost like an out of body experience where I was kind of like analyzing the life like I was writing a biography of of somebody else you know it was so foreign at that point. There's people that sort of ascribe your value to your position and what you do and what you can do for them. And then there's people who want to know who you are and sort of have a relationship with you. And then I think if we hang out with people that ascribe value to our rank or position or some sort of authority or knowledge that we have, then we become wrapped up in that. We have to see ourselves as that. And that can be a very bad thing over the long term. I'm curious as to what your worst mistake was like what led to it how does you recover from it and how did you learn from it what happened yeah i mean i think i mean to your point just quickly like you know it kind

goes back to what we're talking about singapore and like the average of your five friends and stuff right sort of the same thing the questions that everyone in your group is asking of themselves ends up being the question that you're going to start asking yourself too in terms of the worst mistake definitely like one one that is very raw because it has like a very specific number tied to it is we we started raising the series B we started talking to investors about it and so for context like we raised a seed round of a million bucks we raised a series A of seven in 2012 from Kleiner Perkins and then in 2014 2015 we're growing 60% a year we thought we had it wasn't going to be easy but we thought we had a shot and we started talking to investors around

the Series B, we wanted to raise maybe 15, 20 or some million dollars to keep going and very quickly realized, like, this was going to be a pretty hard, a hard path if we were going to succeed at all. And concurrently, our office lease was expiring. And so we had this 33,000 square foot office. We were spending 10 grand a month for. And we had the, you know, and we were growing, you know, startups, like, you have to signal that you're growing. You can't say, hey, guys, we're going to take a break, figure this thing out. Because everyone's going to look at that and say, oh, as a venture capitalist, you don't want those people.

You don't want to back those people. So it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when you do that. So you have to kind of keep going, assuming that things are going to work out for at least a certain period of time. And so that's what we did. We signed a lease for a new office so we could scale from 20 people to 40, 50 people or so. It was $25,000 a month. We paid a big deposit, six-figure.

deposit on it and moved. And then, you know, a few months later, it was like, we're probably not going to raise money. We're not, we certainly are freezing hiring now. And what are we going to do? I mean, the office was just this overbearing thing. You'd like walk into a cavern, it felt like, you know, it was brutal. And then when we, we went down from 20 to 5, guess what? We're still in this office. This office could hold 40 plus people. And there's like four or five of us a day, it was painful. And so ultimately, I had to make the decision to kill the lease completely. And we lost, you know, a couple hundred thousand dollars. And luckily, we found a, we found a new tenant to come in, but we, you know, we still lost, we ended up still losing,

yeah, probably a hundred or so thousand dollars through that, through that process. And what I should have done in hindsight, of course, hindsight's 2020, but what I should have done is told the team, hey, we're not moving offices, we're just going to renew this lease. But then again, if I followed that on, you know, that advice, who knows what would have happened, feces might have pulled out even sooner and, you know, it could have been, it could have been worse. But that definitely very painful. And really that taught me this very deep lesson of like commitments and debt and like really

feeling like you owe someone something. Like I really don't like being in that place where I have to establish. This almost goes back to what we're talking about before too, where you have these friends and you kind of there's sort of an expectation that like you're going to be friends with someone for life or it's bad that you kind of go separate ways you know something must have gone wrong or something we still have you know in marriage divorce is still maybe that's fine maybe it's just what happens you know that might be the right thing I think we we definitely have a lot of attachment to these ideas and that's another one of them I think you know it's the same thing

it's like I really try to form build relationships with people that feel at will they feel like we're both re-upping to keep this thing going on a very frequent basis with my employees, with my investors, with other folks that I talk to. It should feel very, not transaction. It feels transactional. And maybe that, maybe it is transactional. But it doesn't, I don't know, it feels just voluntary. It feels like something we're signing up for.

And that makes me feel a lot better about it. And you guys are profitable now, right? Yeah. So we, in 2015, we sort of January, we knew this was going to. be brutal. We spent nine months. We raised a small bridge round, $2 million at $4X liquidation preference from Kleiner and Mark Cuban and some other folks and spent nine or so months really trying to make it work, like sort of focusing almost completely on, what can we do to grow the business faster? And then we failed to do that. And so luckily, I told the team,

like, you know, they had full awareness that this was likely the path was going to lead to mass layoffs to save the company. And that's what we did in October and November. We We downsides from 25, got rid of the office, finally found a new tenant, and got profitable, made $10,000 one month. And it was like a dream. Because not only do you make $10,000, your runway goes from, you know, a certain finite number to infinity, right? And Excel starts erring out. And you're like, yes, like this. We can do this forever if we need to.

And that's roughly where we've been since, where we're going. kind of growing. We're doing it in a way that we think we can do sustainably without betting the company to do anything. Certainly means we have to, you know, we're constrained in many ways. We can't just say, hey, we're going to launch this totally new product, put a team of 20 on it. But so far, it's worked pretty well for us. Do you wish you would have done that sooner? Yeah, that is a decision that I think, yeah. I, and this is, as I sort of do more investing, It's something I communicate to founders a lot, too, is like, look, this is what you need to stay on this path. This is the venture back path.

It's actually relatively objective. You need to be growing in the article, I say 20% month over a month, but it can be 10%. It just needs to be sort of exponential or so, or polynomial or whatever the correct math term is. And if you're doing that, you can stay on this path. If you're not doing that, it's going to be tough. It really, you know, maybe it's pre-seed seed A a little bit different, but if, you know, at sort of at some point around series A, series B, that becomes sort of like the end all be all. It becomes the most important thing in which all of the other things can't outweigh that. And I knew that. I saw that in the numbers. Like that was evident to me, but I didn't make the connection with how important it was, how fundamental it was for this path. And I wish, you know, a year. before I did or so, you know, we said, hey, look, we're not growing as fast as we need to be growing. Like, let's pause. We don't have to do anything drastic because it's still early,

but let's pause. Let's recalibrate and, you know, and let's figure this out. And certainly, yeah, I certainly wish I would have done that. We would have avoided a lot of, a lot of pain, but it is what it is. I've spoken with a few entrepreneurs who've sort of been VC-backed, and then one way or another got off that train and then came to a path to, profitability that was sustainable and it's almost unanimous that everybody wishes they just would have done that from the get-go instead of and maybe that's just a you know an outcome bias right so you didn't hit the sort of like big massive unicorn you know 30x win and so you're left with profitability but lots of companies die trying to get to that stage too yeah totally i do think there is a level

of outcome bias. I think there is also a level of one of the reasons to raise money is a social one where it gives you a sort of credential that is very useful. I can still to this day go into a room and say, hey, I raise money from Naval, Max Lepton, Kleiner Perkins, Chris Saka, first round. And people will take me seriously for that, right? Just because of that, yeah, the signal value. And so there is like this kind of, I think people might sort of forget when you get through the whole thing that you're still taking advantage of some of those things and maybe you know it's kind of like maybe you should get into harvard and put this you know the acceptance letter on the wall but not actually attend especially now right it's sort of that like maybe you should like say that you

were going to give you the money and not take it or something i don't know how you would frame that in a way that doesn't make you sound bad but uh or maybe raise a small seed round or something um but again like being that strategic about it because it feels you know like venture is such a long-term game, you can't, you can't think like that, and I wouldn't recommend it. But there is an outcome bias. I mean, I do agree with you almost every single person I meet who runs a profitable business, especially one powered by software. They wouldn't trade it for the world. And frankly, like their cash flow looks better than most folks that I know who are on paper worth a lot of, a lot more money. I still haven't resolved that for myself because I still feel

that sort of aspirational quality, right? Like, I still feel there's something about Stripe. Like, there's something about Airbnb. There's something really cool about building something so meaningful. And I think part of that for me is it's a unique experience. There are a lot of these other businesses and they're great. And they give you like a phenomenal quality of life and tons of freedom and time. And certainly if you're, if you are running one of these other companies, you don't have a lot of those.

things you don't have a lot of freedom you don't have a lot of time like you're living in san francisco regardless of what happens with covid and remote work because you need to be there but yet there's still something about that i think it is that like you you have a certain set of experiences when you get to this place that people like me just frankly want like we want to hang out these sorts of people and have these interesting conversations and it makes it easier to do that but it is weird it it does feel like even even acknowledging it Like being aware of it doesn't make it go away, you know? What do you think is the hardest skill to transfer to other people that's necessary for success in business?

Yeah, the skill that's been really top of mind for me right now is the ability to save other people time. Basically what I mean is there are certain people that go about their lives. I try to be like this, but they just operate in a way that requires less of everything. everybody else for them for the equivalent amount of success in that relationship right so for example someone who sends calendar invites someone who's very diligent about taking notes and following up and you know people like you you put like the link to to have this conversation right into the the google calendar invites a lot of people like they'll just put in the email off go find the email like there's just a level of care it feels like you're you're almost like it's like a concierge service

for like getting to spend time with this person and then there are there are other folks they're just being responsive like there's just things that like lead to a less level of stress in everybody else around their lives and it's so rare it's so rare i found and i think it's because everyone else is also trying you know is very time sensitive too about their own time and so they end up sort of operating in a way to saving them time by sort of maybe pushing that burden onto other folks right you're sort of like playing hot potato with the task that no one really wants to do but it's the people who are like i'll do that i think that, I think people underrate, and you're that type of person, you know, as a, as a CEO,

as a founder, those employees that do that will win. Like, they will get whatever they want because those are the folks I really want to surround myself with because I care about, you know, my quality of life and my time. And as a, as an investor, even as a, I don't know, all of these other roles, I really, like, how can I save you clicks? How can I save you time? Like, when I send calendar invites, I put my name first instead of the other person. so that in their calendar, it shows up, you know, and otherwise you have all these calendar rights, just your name and you can't see who you're actually talking to.

It's just like small things where I'm like, how can I just really streamline everybody else's life? And the beauty of software is you can now use a lot of software, like Callenly and Zabier and these air table, et cetera, and these tools to like hook up these things so that everyone, I think, can operate, like as if you had a full-time EA running your life for you. You just now pay a couple hundred bucks to three or four different tools

is that give you that that's actually an even better experience because software is often a little bit more foolproof than a human being. Yeah, I like how you said that. That's something I've thought a lot about. And I find myself lacking in some areas, but definitely there's a lot of people who are more thoughtful about how they approach it

from the other person's point of view, which is how do I make this easy for them, especially if you're asking them to come on the podcast or you're asking them to do something for you. Like, you're doing me a favor. I don't want to send you 55 emails trying to schedule it. I definitely don't want to, you know, make it hard for you to hop on board and follow the instructions and like do all of that stuff.

And but there's a lot of people in life. Like I remember going through this before when people would be like, let's go for coffee. And, you know, it's like 35 emails to go for a 30 minute coffee. And, you know, at the end of the day, you're like, that's ridiculous. Like, I don't want to do that anymore. I just stop replying to those. Yeah, it's like when people ask you, even people who I know, they're like, like, hey, do you want to catch up next week? And I know that they have a reason for this,

but they won't tell me the reason. And I always, I just ask people now. I'm like, hey, what, you know, what do you want to talk about? I don't know. It's like a power information asymmetry thing. But I think it's mostly just time. It's mostly like, I want to, I need to do something, hey, Saha, can you talk about this next week? Not really maybe even thinking about the fact that like, you know exactly, you're going to show up and know exactly what we're talking about. And I'm going to show up and know nothing. And by the way, if you're tell me, I'm happy to do the work ahead of time. Like, I'll go read stuff.

I'll, like, I will get you the answers. So when I show up, I can, and then the other great thing is maybe we don't even have to have the meeting. Like, maybe everything that you need for me, I can just give you. But you don't give me that opportunity. And so there is this, like, interesting, like, people who view time as the thing that they're trading and then people who sort of like can transition to value. For example, there's a, if you're a founder, you want $100,000 from me or something

like that you know as you mentioned like you're doing me a favor and it's like how can i like how easy can you make it for me how easy can i make it for you and there's certain founders who make it so easy for me i just reply to the email and i just say i'm in for for that like ceasing you know angelus to to wire the money like i they made it so easy for me they gave me all of the things that i would want and then there are other folks who are like hey i have a great idea do you have time next week sign this very different yeah sign this nb yeah there's also a another level to this, which like outside of maybe professional relationships, but there's people who make it difficult.

And then there's people who actually like, it's not a conscious process, but they make it exceptionally difficult. It's like they want to go to dinner with you, but they want you to convince them to go to dinner with you. You know what I mean? Like there's another layer to this, which is like it's not easy and it's not middle of the road. It's actually quite complicated.

Like you're put on the now I have to convince you sort of side of this. that is weird um i want to talk to you what other skills do you look for when you're hiring communication is a huge one it's similar to that but people who over communicate people who are always thinking about you know the next day the next week the next two weeks the next month the next year and telling me what they need for me how they feel about a relationship people who are very good at doing that it's it's low stress it lets me solve their problems before they need them solved potentially it makes me feel confident that they're in a good place and that they have what they need it's it's like static electricity where like you you know you ever go too long

without touching something you hit something and you're just like your like skin fries for a second it's like but if you did that all the time it would never happen like that's how i think about communication especially within within sort of like a high stress high functioning organization where that's going to happen very quickly and you need to constantly be like tapping and like being like hey this is what's happening now this what's happening now this what's happening now and so I think people who are really good at sort of ambient signaling saying like I don't need to ever go to them and say what's going on like I just know I wake up I check slack I do whatever I just know what they're doing to me that's the dream that is just like a phenomenal phenomenal thing I think an ability to write really really well is key to that part of that is just the medium in which so much of this communication happens is via writing especially now with remote work etc but in general I just love when people when people do the work of You know, not just sending me the email, but writing the email, revising the email, revising the email, sending that email.

Like the brainwaves that they've sort of like spent on that with the context they were already in is going to save net net, save so much time for everybody involved. And then the level of conversation is so much higher because instead of going like, it's just like, I'm going to spend five minutes on this thing. But when you get it, it's already going to be at like level 10. Because it's already at level 10, I can get it to level 50. and I'll give you the time that you gave me. Like, I'll pay you back very, very quickly and we'll build a very high quality relationship.

I would also say, like, I like people who are very kind of transactional, frankly. Like, I like people who are like, I'm here to do this job. This is what I came here to do. I'm really excited about speeding up the site. That's all I care about. And like 99% of our conversations are around that. And I spend, you know, I might be working with these people on a daily basis. And so I think I like that too when people don't feel the need to package up or bundle a relationship and say, hey, we're co-workers. So we need this, this, this, this and this. We need, you need to come to my birthday party. You need like, I like, you know, and that's definitely a change for me sort of 10 years ago. But I like people who are like, this is the way that we interact. Like we talk every day, but it's about investing or it's about, you know, we talk every day, but it's about this other thing or, you know, and sometimes it's just like totally random stuff. Like there are people that I would never consider.

quote unquote friends of mine but like when I need to talk about like oil painting or something like this is the person that I talk to and we'll talk for hours about it and then it might be like six months until we talk again and it's it's fine like we might even forget that the other person exists and I actually think like a little life built of relationships like that it gives you way more relationships and it you know it's sort of like having a friend group of thousands of people or having a company of all these sorts of people and so I really like people who think like that where they're very sure about what they want they feel they feel very good about where they're at in life. And all they're looking for is this, like, is our relation to feel like one thing

that they need. They're trading X for Y. And I just, I really like knowing that that's what someone is expecting of me. And I can just offer that and feel, you know, and, and feel really good about that. And so, it's like when someone's like, how can I help? You get nowhere. But if you say, hey, I need help with this very specific thing. And intro to X, I can do that. Like that's, I'll do that, you know, forward me an email, you know, with the blurb and the deck and I'll forward it and ask for an opt-in. Like, that's purely automated. I mean, that's purely a process that I go through. I could at some point and will automate that completely. Agree. That's also making it easy for you, right? Through investing and through Gumroad, I mean, you've dealt with probably

thousands of entrepreneurs at this point. What are the common patterns of success and failure that you've seen? Yeah, I think one big one is, is they build stuff. They actually build stuff. In the early days, it was the only group of people that I hung out with. I wasn't just hanging out with start of people. I was hanging out with the people who went through some stuff to get there. It's like often the people, the best people in the industry are the ones that didn't go to school for that industry because it means that they had to cross all of these things to get into it, if that makes sense.

So people who build stuff, I think I was surrounded by those people when I started getting into it more and meeting thousands of people realize a lot of people don't actually build stuff. They don't know how to build stuff. They need help. This kind of goes back to what we're talking about again. Like, you know, there are people who need all of these things from other people. And I don't like those people. I like the people who are like, I want this for my life.

I want to build a company. I want to build an app. I want to be a musician. Like it could be, I want to write a book. I need all of these things from other people in order for me to do that. I mean, that is a very uncontrollable way to live your life. Right. Like to say, it would be the equivalent of saying, like, I want to make a movie.

I have a great idea right And the world is full of these kinds of people And so that's a big one It's like well make a movie You have an iPhone Like show me Show me like a cool thing that you've made There's TikTok now

I mean like there's things you can even put this stuff on Like show me what you've made There's a great book Rebel Without a Crew By Robert Rodriguez Who directed Alita Battle Angel A taxi driver and it's basically It talks about his journey And it's like the lean startup

Applied to filmmaking or something like that where he just he literally says okay i live in this town these are the things i have in my town i'm going to make a plot that involves these things because that's what i have right now and then i'll make another movie you know like we'll take it you know it won sundance or whatever like it that's what got him started and and that those are the people that i look for the people who want something so badly that they just figure out how to do it and they're okay with like not maybe sort of having their first thing be just like the dream project they just get started and then they they figure things out as they go. And so building stuff, people who don't ask for permission, people who have hard

skills, people who really try to save people time and are really feel grateful, you know, like they feel like, wow, I'm so lucky to be in this place. Like, how can I make it as easy as possible for everybody? People who don't think of it like a numbers game where I just need to send 100 emails and what three people are going to say yes. It's like, I'm going to send three emails. I'm going to spend three hours on each one and all of them are going to say yes. So I think that's possible. I think a lot of people underestimate how possible that is and people who read a lot. I would say this is the other thing.

It's people who, and it again, sounds, I don't know, like when I say these things, it makes it, I'm like, these are just basic expectations I have almost, but you might be surprised at like how few people deeply read about anything, let alone their subject. I mean, their own industry, their own, you know, the set of problems that they're interested in. Someone might say, hey, I'm really interested. Like I, from their tweets, it seems like they're really interested in health care. They think health care is fundamentally broken.

It's totally messed up in the U.S. We need to go. And by the way, this could be someone who's like, we need to go this way or that way. Like, I don't know exactly what, you know, this is an abstract example. But if you said, hey, okay, cool, what's the best book that you've read on health care in America

and like why it's gone to the way it is and what the right answer is, a lot of them will say, I haven't read a book. I haven't read a book about it. I've read a lot of tweets. I've read a ton of tweets. I've listened to a lot of podcasts with politicians about this and celebrities about this. I've read some Atlantic thought pieces or something like that.

I'm subscribed to a few substacks, but to have you deeply gone into the subject. And the filter that I use is if you remove the social incentive, so much of this you've done because of the social incentive, it's to comment, it's to go to work and talk about something. It's, you know, the reason I think people don't often read a lot of these old books is because that social incentive goes away. You know, you read this book and then you're smarter. But that's it, you know.

But I can't signal that easily to other people. Yeah, I can't. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's like, oh, man, like, I read this phenomenal book on, like, I'm reading a book right now on Wales. I don't know why. Like, someone I like tweeted about the book, and it seemed interesting. And it's quite, it's interesting.

It's a very interesting book. I don't know why I'm reading it. I haven't talked to anyone about it. It's full of really fascinating stuff. But, like, very, very few people, I think, do that, you know? And, but ironically, almost in the sort of paradox, when you do stuff like, that short term I think that's true but long term over time I really think that's clearly I'm doing it like there is still a reason I'm doing it just like a much larger longer time horizon and I this has happened

so many times or I'll randomly run into somebody someone who maybe is exactly the perfect person to like propel me in my career and they'll be like what you know what book you're reading I'll be like oh I'm reading like a face like class it's like young adult fantasy thing or whatever and they'll be like that is my favorite book that has happened to me so many times and guess what i'm now they're they want to hang out with me all day long and not to talk about this other stuff but just to talk about you know like they finally have someone else that they can talk about so i do think it's it's it's it's sort of that sort of impatient with you know impatient patients uh you know kind of sort of thing impatient you want to be impatient with results i guess but i definitely noticed that in people like

it's very rare to meet someone who's genuinely just like exploring things that are at the sort of limits of their interest to kind of figure out what's new and different. And it's selfish of me. I like those people because they can teach me about all of this new weird stuff that I can go explore myself. But I find that sort of innate curiosity that isn't tied to a social thing or a financial thing is is relatively rare. And maybe that's just quote unquote privilege, right, where it's like, oh, you've achieved XYZ thing is sort of the philosopher king thing. Like now that you're here, you can spend all this time messing around and figuring out these things. But regardless, I mean, that is something that I look for in the people that I hang out.

That's interesting. I want to dive a little bit into that. What's your ideal ratio of sort of exploring broadly to diving deep into a certain subject? Do you think for reading? I would say I spend almost all of my time exploring broadly. Like I go deep very, very, very rarely. Even with authors, like it's pretty rare where I find an author where I'm like, this person is so good. I need to read everything that they've written.

That's happened a couple times. like Matt Ridley recently was one of those people for me but even like when you read his books it's like every book is different ones about genomics one's about risk one's about virtue one's about evolution one's about innovation now and there's clearly a thread right like you can kind of see the rational opta you can see like what's what's where he's coming from and certain his sort of fingerprint is certainly on those books but even he is it seems to me is just exploring these things broadly because I think like it makes those connections when they happen, like just so much more satisfying.

When you find a connection between, I don't know, the way that mole rats like resemble like the way humans used to be and maybe like they're sort of, we figured out that there's this sort of like middle ground of social, you know, there's like packs, there's pack animals and then there's like you social animals, the collie animals that are like bees, ants, and mole rats for some reason. Mole rats are also part of this group. And then there's humans. It's just interesting.

I just think it's like, oh, maybe there's a way to apply, like, this is like a startup and this is a mid-size company. This is a large company. I don't know. But I think so, for me, so many of the insights, like the easy insights have already been solved. If I just go deep, it's going to take, like, literally, you have to go to the bottom of the ocean to get. Like, if you go deep in quantum theory, there's a lot of books you're going to have to read to get to really the frontier. But if you go broad, I feel like, I feel like there's just so much more avenue there. Like, there's just so much more freedom.

Like, it doesn't take that far to end up in, like, totally unknown territory. It's and even if there are other people there, there's like four of you, you know, there's like four people on Twitter that are talking about like the commonality between like, yeah, like animal relationships and like company organization dynamics. It's, yeah. So I always think that like that's a better, that's a better approach. I frankly very rarely go deep on on reading at least. What are some of the books that have had the biggest influence on you in terms of your thinking

around entrepreneurship or investing. How to Win Friends is my sort of top recommended book. It's almost kind of a cliche. I feel like at this point to recommend that book. But it is like the canonical example for me of this saving other people time. Like that whole book is about like how do I operate in a way that makes everyone else's life just really clean, really stress free, really easy. And so then everyone's going to want to work with you and be your friend.

And so I think that is a really great book. Thinking Fast and Slow is a really great one. All of the Matt Ridley books, I think, are really, really good. I think understanding your mental prison almost, like understanding the constraints of your brain physically and your body, like just where you came from, like what led to this moment, I think is just so helpful in terms of like feeling like, oh, these are the things you have control over,

these are the things you don't have control over. David Deutsch's books, I just read the beginning of infinity and the fabric of reality. Those books, it's actually currently the thing that I'm thinking the most about is the fabric of reality. It's like, you know, I don't know, you learn about, you know, parallel universes and sort of quantum mechanics and things in high school. You take, you know, an elective or what have you. And you kind of get it intellectually, but like really spending hundreds of words like or hundreds of pages. is like in this person's head and the way they think about it and how that relates to like free will and it's just like really been interesting for me because that's one you know one question I always

I think about a lot is like when you decide to do something like you know like when I decided to go and move to Provo was it the stuff in Provo that made me open minded was I open minded when I decided to move like where did I have the learning where is that like is it a discrete system is there a point is it you know and so I've just been thinking a lot about like you know like when I have an idea when I decide to respond to a question you have, where is that even coming from? Like, I just speak. I can't tell you, like, where, you know, it's very weird.

And so I've been, like, really interested in, like, in the sort of parallel universes and quantum mechanics. Because I really think, like, when you learn the answer, like, there is an answer. Like, you've got to believe that, I think, to keep pursuing this kind of stuff. But when you figure it out, like, when you realize, like, oh, the reason that, you know, like, I don't know,

like a hot water clean stuff faster than cold, water like when you know the physical reason behind that it feels good it feels like you have a grip on that your life you know like it you can actually apply it in a way you know wait what why does hot water clean stuff faster than cold water so i think it's because you know temperature and heat is just the particles are moving faster there's just more things moving around bouncing stuff so i think when you're cleaning stuff like you just like have more particles like hitting stuff off that you know, ends up dislodging these molecules or what have you from the,

from the material. And so I think it's literally just like, the collisions are happening at a faster rate, I think. That's interesting. But, you know, just like things like that where you're just like, I don't know,

it feels very satisfying for me to know. Life is weird. I mean, like life is very strange. And I think you go through this middle where you, you're born and you're like, the world is flat and like the sky's above us and, you know,

and gravity just makes sense. you can like obviously flying would be weird like what you know like you just kind of take these and then you learn all of this weird stuff like we're on a ball of fire just like shooting through like the void like right now we're like what um you know it's just crazy uh and luckily we have like some rock around the ball of fire the sun doesn't even have that you know just like just weird stuff and then and then i feel like just i'm just like floating like i have no grounding in reality I'm just like learning all these things my life is like what is death and this and they're like it's just crazy and then it you know once once you start to read that stuff i feel

like i'm going back to that first place where it's all actually incredibly simple it's just a bunch of dots moving around and you know bouncing off each other and at you know different levels of extraction you can use the phenomenon to explain different things just like the earth and the sun there's just two particles in space just like when you're cleaning something yeah just two particles in space or whatever and then adam you know there's like it kind of goes all the way up and down and it's like a fractal pattern, it just makes me feel like I understand and I can, like, move forward without, like, walking through a wall accidentally or something, you know, like, it just something like that. I don't know where I'm going with this, but I do enjoy, like, really

feeling like I understand. And that goes back to the entrepreneurship stuff, too, like, just figuring out, like, what I can, what I can deeply understand, like, reading the PayPal wars, reading into Plex. A lot of these books are just really important because you are building a company, you're hiring folks. It's like, why start from scratch? right when you have all of these resources from people who've done it before and and the lessons aren't that like the world hasn't changed that much in many ways you can sort of like straight up apply a lot of this stuff and copy paste it there's a lot of timeless lessons from that as you were you were talking I was saying I was thinking that maybe you can just appreciate the beauty of the

the world in a different level with that sort of understanding and I think that that's really important to be able to do in terms of quality of life maybe I want to come to happiness later Switching gears a little bit here, what do you most insecure about? I am definitely insecure about like wanting stuff. I mean, I still think I am driven by a level of ambition and want for something. Even though I have read all of these books and I feel like relatively good about what I understand about the world and how little it really matters, like there is something satisfying about it.

And so I'm definitely kind of like insecure about the fact that I have those wants. and desires, like I think, I don't know if they will go away. But I, you know, I always try to try to figure that out and unearth. Like, why? Similar, why, like, why am I like this? I don't have to solve the problem, but just understanding where this comes from, it just gives me a level of sort of like closure almost. Like, okay, that's just the way I am. That's because of this thing. I can't change it. I can't get taller. I can't do that. Right. Like, there's certain things. And that's, that's, that's, that's, that's probably a big one. And then just like figuring out I'm I'm sort of insecure with how much I work like how I work a lot I enjoy it a lot I

am insecure about the fact that I enjoy it so much even you know like I go on Twitter and I talk about maybe not working so much but I just genuinely really enjoy enjoy it and so yeah there's a lot of things like wanting a nice house or whatever too right like the basic things that people people seem to seem to want and then you know starting a family like that's a that's a scary prospect as well that I hope to make like the focus of my life in the next like 10 years or so why is it scary it just feels like it feels like I'm I've been so self-centered my whole life you know it's it's basically everything I've done was for me and you know I got married in last year in December and that was like the first time that I you know I was like okay this is like we're

signing up for you know something pretty big this is very different from the the the ideal relationships that I like with most people, for me. Just email me every six months. Yeah, exactly. We'll check in. See how the marriage is good. And, you know, like, I moved up to Portland, Oregon recently. That's the first time I'd ever moved to a place as a group decision.

It wasn't just me just saying, hey, I'm going to go do this, you know, because I want to. And so that was like, there's a set of learnings that I need to go through. I think having children, like, I think that would be really meaningful. But yeah, I think it's just like important for me to figure out, like, how do I live a life that sort of like the vision of what's important is, is slightly larger. Children are amazing, man. Yeah, it's just so incredible. I'm excited. I'm, people ask me, like, what are you excited about?

Like, gum road. And I'm always like having kids, like, honestly, like five years from now or so. Like, that's definitely, like, what I am aiming for. And I think everything else is sort of like a kind of a distraction almost, like just to keep. me busy until I get there. Well, I talk a little bit about your writing process. You're pretty prolific on Twitter. That changed about, I don't know, 18 months ago or something. It's just your style sort of changed a lot. And ever since then, you know, I think you've got a lot of traction on there. So I want to, I want to learn about your writing process a little bit, how you come up with

ideas, how you put them into pithy sort of like tweets and talk to me about that. I have a lot of conversations. I would say my life is sort of pretty distinct in two distinct buckets. I'm either like having an interesting conversation with someone or I'm spending time totally alone, especially with COVID. There's no kind of like in between or social events or other background noise. Like it's really just like we're talking or we're not talking. It sort of feels like that. So a lot of the tweets like when I started learning how to how to oil paint, I realized like the fundamental skill in painting was observation. It wasn't like paint application and like knowing color theory. It was like, can you even see what's in front of you well? And if you can do that,

then like copy pasting that onto a piece of paper with some dirt and oil, it's actually the easy part. And I think the same thing with writing. It's like living a life, like having a conversation with someone, it's almost meditative. You're like having the conversation, but you're also listening to yourself, have the conversation. And I think that's really important because you're sort of like your own editor where you can't change what you're doing and saying in the moment, but like maybe you can note it for like the future use and that's how you improve as a communicator and a conversationalist and i think writing is kind of similar where like i'm i'll be having a conversation with someone and i will somehow like subconsciously sort of pin that little moment like bookmark it

of like i set a sentence within a rant about a certain topic that's i should tweet i should just literally take that sentence and go tweet it uh and and that's a lot of my tweets um and then a lot of them are, you know, those sentences that I save and then I just like stare at for a long time. Or there are things that I just can't stop thinking about there. I often feel like it's like food poisoning or something where it's just like in my system and I can't get it out and I can't stop thinking about it. Every day I wake up and I like, for some reason this stupid, it's like a song suck in your head. It just comes up again.

And I found one of the best ways to, it's like resolving a problem in therapy or something like that. Like once you figure out like what it is, why it is, you pass. It's packaged it up in a way that gives you clarity. It's kind of like untying, you know, a certain, like a string with a bunch of knots in it. You finally can see this thing for what it is. And then I would, I often share it. And the sharing is is really cathartic for me because it sort of gives it to somebody else.

It's like, that's your food poisoning now. Like you go, you go, you go think about this for a while. I'm done. I did the work for myself. I, you know, I've digested this thing. Here you go. Have fun with it. And that's a lot of how I kind of, how I sort of.

of like to think. And I would say the other insight that I think has really worked for me is I always try to figure out like, does this apply to a lot of the things in my life? Like, I think if you take it from a very sort of entrepreneur business focus, you're going to end up with like a very kind of narrow set of thoughts. But if you, I often will, and that's a lot of the conversations that I'm having, but also as a writer, as a painter, as an investor, as a husband, as other things that I do now, if I can take the same lesson and apply it to the other things and it sort of feels like a universal truth then i often like those are those that's sort of a filter that i used to like go about the quality of of something that i that i would

share as well one of the things that you said there that struck me was observing and talk to me a little bit about how we can become a better observer of the present yeah i mean i think a lot of it is paying attention and taking notes. This was the, one of the first times I had this experience was I was painting a rock. I was in southern Utah with like an oil on canvas and I was painting a rock. And I spent three hours. It takes me roughly like two to three hours to do like plain air paint something. And I remember like for months I could, probably even today, I could draw, I could draw that rock out for you.

like the angles and the shape of the proportions, you know, roughly. If I asked you to draw a dollar bill, like you wouldn't, I wouldn't be able to do it. You wouldn't be able to do it. We've never spent that time, like genuinely staring and paying attention to a dollar bill. I know what you would draw. I know what I would draw. We draw this rough thing with like a one here and a one here and like a circle on this, something.

But like we have the silhouette almost, like that we have the shape and the, yeah. Yeah, it's like when you're a kid and you draw the sun and you. have the race, right? Like, there's a symbol that you're storing, you have the almond eyes, you have, you know, like the nose that's like three, kind of three semicircles. But you've never actually like studied what this thing actually is and looks like. And so I think a lot of it is just doing that. I think you can improve, like, the time that you're taking. And that's what being present is to me, is like just really focusing on the present moment and like noticing as many things as possible. which sounds easy right and it's almost paradoxical like you're obviously here like what does that

mean you're obviously looking out through your eyes you're smelling things through your nose but like if i said okay like how many times did you blink in the last three seconds you wouldn't even remember the last time you blinked clearly you blinked somewhere in the last like your eyes aren't drying out right but like this is something that you literally saw like you saw yourself do that but it's gone like your brain didn't even remember any of that stuff and so i think that's a big part of it is your brain unless you tell the brain you signal to it, hey, this is important, like make a note of this because I'm going to need this later to survive or, you know, like some of these very fundamental biological incentives, it's going to forget because guess what, like you have a finite number

of neurons, you have energy, you know, energy is being expended. Like, you know, there's the sort of the famous adage of the sort of like the chess players that burn like eight, nine thousand calories a day like doing this insanely intense exercise effectively and so I think that's a big part of it is like you need to figure out like what is the uncomfortable what is like the exercise version of what I'm doing right where I'm not just you know like I don't know drawing dragons out of my head but I'm actually like figuring out like okay what are what are the fundamental building blocks that lead to me being able to do a certain skill and then and then you know kind of a tree structure and then figuring out, okay, that means I need to learn perspective. That means I need to draw hundreds

of boxes in perspective. Once I can do that, then I can draw ants, because ants are a little bit more structural or something like that. Then I can draw maybe like looser, looser animals, like, you know, things with fur and things like that. And then I can do cars and blah, blah, blah. Like, you can scale that up. And then you, like, a dragon is sort of like a cat with wings that breathes fire. Like it has the body proportions roughly of a cat. And that's where the dragon, like, comes from. But, like, a dragon is sort of. But. Like some people, I think they just look at, they don't do the work of figuring out, like, what is the path that leads to this. they just say, oh, I want to do that, right?

So it's kind of the same thing. It's like the way you have to learn what you need in the moment, and you can't really, it's like, you know, you've got to learn addition to learn math, to learn multiplication, you got to learn multiplication, to learn division. You got to learn both of those things to learn algebra. You got to learn algebra to learn geometry, I think. You need those things to learn trigonometry. You need those things to learn precalculus, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

And if you miss one of those things, you can still get by in life, right? Like, you can still, like, ace the tests and draw the things when you, you need to you can memorize but you don't really have a deep understanding of that and it's kind of the same thing with with being present it's just like I think some people go really far and they just they feel like they need to do all of these things but the truth is you just need to be there and you need to stop thinking about other stuff and you just need to like really like it has to hurt almost like you have to be so focused like you're working out like I'm spending an hour trying to figure this problem out and I think most people they they might think about it like oh I just need to

meditate. But meditation is almost work. I think it is like a, you know, like exercise, physical activity. This has been awesome, man. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk today. You're welcome. Thanks so much for having me. Hey, one more thing before we say goodbye. The knowledge project is produced by the team at Fernham Street. I want to make this the best podcast you listen to and I'd love to get your feedback. of comments, ideas for future shows or topics, or just feedback in general, you can email me at Shane at FS.blog or follow me on Twitter at Shane A. Parrish. You can learn more about the show and find past episodes at fs.blog slash podcast. If you want a transcript of this episode,

go to fs.s.com slash tribe and join our learning community. If you found this episode valuable, share it online with the hashtag, The Knowledge Project, or leave a review. Until the next episode. Thank you.