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Understanding 'The 5 Types of Wealth' with Sahil Bloom · Masters in Business

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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news. This is Masters in
0:11
Speaker 1: Business with Barry Ritholts on Bloomberg Radio.
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Speaker 2: This week on the podcast strap Yourself In for another
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Speaker 2: extra special guest, saw Hill bloom is the author of
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Speaker 2: a new book, The Five Types of Wealth. He's also
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Speaker 2: worked in both private equity and finish capital, as well
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Speaker 2: as running his own firm. The book is kind of fascinating,
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Speaker 2: focusing on not just money as a source of wealth,
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Speaker 2: but time, your social life, your mental and psychological attitude,
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Speaker 2: your physical health, as well as your financial wellbeing. That
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Speaker 2: by focusing and only measuring money, we use a scoreboard
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Speaker 2: that really doesn't sum up everything that we should be
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Speaker 2: thinking about. I found a conversation to be really fascinating.
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Speaker 2: The book is really interesting, and saw Hill is really
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Speaker 2: knowledgeable person who's lived for a relatively young person, a
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Speaker 2: fascinating life. Came to a realization that he was wasting
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Speaker 2: his time, his physical health, and a lot of other
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Speaker 2: assets that he had, and kind of rejiggered his whole
1:24
Speaker 2: approach to what he was doing. I thought the discussion
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Speaker 2: was really fascinating, and I think you will also with
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Speaker 2: no further ado. My conversation with saw Hill Bloom, the
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Speaker 2: author of Five Types of Wealth.
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Speaker 3: Thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled to
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Speaker 3: be able to do this in person.
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Speaker 2: Yet a little unusual sort of building and fun sort
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Speaker 2: of place relative to what you were used to on
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Speaker 2: the West Coast. You relocated to the East coast, right,
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Speaker 2: I did. Yeah, we'll talk about that. Yeah, we'll talk
1:52
Speaker 2: about that because I was very touched by what you
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Speaker 2: wrote in the book about that. Let's start out with
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Speaker 2: your background Stanford bachelor's and economics and sociology and a
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Speaker 2: master's in public policy. What was the career plan?
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Speaker 3: To be honest, I don't think I knew. I've never
2:10
Speaker 3: been a very good planner my entire life. My dad's
2:15
Speaker 3: an economics professor, and so economics seemed like a good
2:18
Speaker 3: undergraduate plan. But frankly, at the time, my real plan
2:21
Speaker 3: was to go play professional baseball. My entire life had
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Speaker 3: been a baseball player. I got a scholarship to play
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Speaker 3: at Stanford, played there, and probably somewhat naively thought that
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Speaker 3: I could go make a career out of it playing
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Speaker 3: in the big leagues, and a shoulder injury my end
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Speaker 3: of my junior season sort of derailed those aspirations, and
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Speaker 3: I had to find my footing in something else.
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Speaker 2: So you're almost lucky it happened sooner than later, right.
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Speaker 3: I think so? I think, you know, in hindsight's twenty
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Speaker 3: twenty on these things, there's always a silver lining, as
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Speaker 3: they say, I think, what would have happened if I
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Speaker 3: had tried to play professionally was I would have ended
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Speaker 3: up spending you know, three, four or five years toiling
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Speaker 3: or in some like bus in the middle of nowhere
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Speaker 3: in the miners, and then ended up having to go
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Speaker 3: start at you know, twenty eight or twenty nine rather
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Speaker 3: than twenty two.
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Speaker 2: Huh. And you worked with Condoalieza Rice as your advisor
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Speaker 2: at Stanford. That sounds pretty fun. What sort of lessons
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Speaker 2: did you learn from her?
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Speaker 3: I mean, she's a remarkable woman politics aside. I mean,
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Speaker 3: a woman who grew up in the Deep South in
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Speaker 3: Alabama and rose to become Secretary of State of the
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Speaker 3: United States of America. I mean just.
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Speaker 2: Mind blowing, pretty impressive.
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Speaker 3: What she actually built and what she created in her life,
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Speaker 3: and the intelligence that she displays in the grace with
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Speaker 3: which she displays it has always wowed me. And I
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Speaker 3: you know, look, I cold emailed her when I was
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Speaker 3: at Stanford to try to ask her to be my
3:44
Speaker 3: master's advisor, and was fortunate that she at least gave
3:48
Speaker 3: me a chance to go speak to her in person
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Speaker 3: and convince her to do that. And I got to
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Speaker 3: take her course that she teaches at Stanford, which was
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Speaker 3: sort of a small group live basically live action seminar
4:01
Speaker 3: where you kind of do these simulations of real world
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Speaker 3: foreign policy events where each person's sort of taking on
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Speaker 3: a different role, and you go through these simulations like
4:10
Speaker 3: get woken up at two in the morning to go
4:11
Speaker 3: through some crisis event. And it was just fascinating to
4:14
Speaker 3: have someone in the room like her who had actually
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Speaker 3: been through those things and hear the stories she told
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Speaker 3: about her battles with Vladimir Putin and whatnot. It was
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Speaker 3: just incredible.
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Speaker 2: I can only imagine you spend all four years at
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Speaker 2: Stanford on a Division one baseball team that's very high level.
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Speaker 2: I always like to ask people to draw parallels. What
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Speaker 2: sort of skills and philosophies did you as a college
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Speaker 2: athlete find applicable to the rest of your life and
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Speaker 2: or wealth and finance.
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Speaker 3: Effectively, every single lesson that I feel I have benefited
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Speaker 3: from in my career was something that I learned in baseball.
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Speaker 3: I think, first off, teamwork and the ability to manage
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Speaker 3: multiple diverse personalities in a single environment is a meta
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Speaker 3: skill for life that rarely gets taught, and a team
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Speaker 3: forces you to learn that very early and very quickly,
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Speaker 3: and if you don't, you will not function as a team.
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Speaker 3: You know, like the understanding that not everyone is wired
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Speaker 3: the same, that not everyone is motivated by the same things.
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Speaker 3: That you need to meet people where they are and
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Speaker 3: then hopefully all rise to the level of the expectations
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Speaker 3: you have as a group. That is really an important
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Speaker 3: lesson to learn for life, you know. Look, the other one,
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Speaker 3: which people talk about often is just the alpha that
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Speaker 3: you can generate through resilience as a human being, and
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Speaker 3: it is very, very difficult to develop in a context
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Speaker 3: outside of sports. And I think that, you know, there's
5:44
Speaker 3: a reason that a lot of athletes and a lot
5:46
Speaker 3: of military former military end up being incredible employees and
5:50
Speaker 3: team members because they have had to battle. They understand
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Speaker 3: that failure is not final, that it's a learning lesson
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Speaker 3: that you can take the event, learn the lesson from it,
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Speaker 3: and move on to the next situation that you face.
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Speaker 2: Right, It's all about process, not outcome. If you have
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Speaker 2: an unlucky bounce and you lose, you still got to
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Speaker 2: get up, dush yourself off, and start all over tomorrow.
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Speaker 2: Very applicable to trading desks and other things involved in finance.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think it's the combination here that's important. So,
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Speaker 3: you know, we live in a world where, especially today,
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Speaker 3: a lot of people want to focus on the inputs.
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Speaker 3: And you have all these people like, oh, you know,
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Speaker 3: you should really care about the inputs and just focus
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Speaker 3: on feeling proud of the inputs. And I actually agree
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Speaker 3: with that, uh to some extent, because at the end
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Speaker 3: of the day, the world will judge you for your outputs.
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Speaker 3: It doesn't matter whether you feel great about the input
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Speaker 3: the deep work routine, the morning routine, all of the
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Speaker 3: rituals that you had, if your output is and athletes
6:47
Speaker 3: know that, right, we do. We focus on the inputs. Absolutely,
6:50
Speaker 3: you show up at practice every single day, but we
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Speaker 3: also know that no one gets an eighth place metal.
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Speaker 2: There are no participation.
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Speaker 3: No, they're not handing those out. And you have to
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Speaker 3: learn that in life, you know, Like I have a
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Speaker 3: two and a half year old son now and I
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Speaker 3: want him to know that. And it's sort of a
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Speaker 3: harsh truth of the world that like, yes, your inputs matter,
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Speaker 3: and I want you to focus on them and be
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Speaker 3: proud of them and continue to refine them. But at
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Speaker 3: the end of the day, you are going to be
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Speaker 3: judged for your outputs.
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Speaker 2: Huh. Really really interesting. So you end up at Altamont
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Speaker 2: Capital Partners, which at the time was running about three
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Speaker 2: and a half billion dollars. How'd you find your way there?
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Speaker 2: What were you doing?
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Speaker 3: So it's a private equity fund in the Bay Area.
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Speaker 3: It was a spin out from a now much larger
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Speaker 3: firm called Golden Gate Capital. Incredible group of people, small group.
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Speaker 3: They were just starting to hire at the analyst level
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Speaker 3: when I was getting done with school. So you know,
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Speaker 3: I was originally planning to go join you know, an
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Speaker 3: investment bank, or go join McKenzie and try to basically
7:44
Speaker 3: do the two years prior and then go to business
7:48
Speaker 3: school and then you know, go join a private equity
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Speaker 3: funder a hedge fund after you know, really with the
7:52
Speaker 3: thesis that like that's the path that I see successful
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Speaker 3: and rich people following, So let me do that. I'm
7:57
Speaker 3: gonna do the two years at Goldman Sachs or McKenzie,
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Speaker 3: I'll do the business school and then and I'll try
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Speaker 3: to find a fund. And I met the team at
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Speaker 3: Altamont and they were hiring at the analyst level, and
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Speaker 3: it just seemed like a screaming opportunity to go join
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Speaker 3: straight out of school and have the opportunity to, you know,
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Speaker 3: really drink from a fire hose, learn in an environment
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Speaker 3: where you are having to learn on the fly path
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Speaker 3: that you know nothing about.
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Speaker 2: So first you transition from sports to finance. Then you
8:24
Speaker 2: effectively transition from finance to content creation. We mentioned the
8:30
Speaker 2: Curiosity Chronicles and full disclosure, I've been subscriber for a
8:34
Speaker 2: long time. I love how you really pull a lot
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Speaker 2: of really interesting things from all sorts of disparate subjects
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Speaker 2: together in a very cohesive way. And now you have
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Speaker 2: this book. Tell us about that second transition.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, this was a more painful one in my own life.
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Speaker 3: I probably for the first four or five years in
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Speaker 3: my professional career working in private equity, had an incredible
9:01
Speaker 3: experience and was learning a ton and you know, working
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Speaker 3: with a great group of people making money, you know,
9:09
Speaker 3: doing the things that I thought a successful life looked like.
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Speaker 3: And along that path, my own priority set and the
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Speaker 3: things that I was focusing on grew more and more
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Speaker 3: narrow and entirely focused on making money as the means
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Speaker 3: to achieving the happy and fulfilling life that I was after.
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Speaker 2: Let me interrupt you a second just to ask, because
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Speaker 2: whenever I have this conversation, either on the air or
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Speaker 2: just talking to people and friends about it, how comfortable
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Speaker 2: or not so comfortable was your upbringing? It seems like
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Speaker 2: your father's a professor at a college, Like it wasn't
9:50
Speaker 2: that you really wanted for anything. I'm always curious what
9:53
Speaker 2: motivates people to what degree to chase the dollar.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, we were upper middle class, probably by national standards.
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Speaker 3: My dad's a professor at Harvard, so he wasn't a
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Speaker 3: hedge fund guy. We weren't rich. I lived in a town, actually,
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Speaker 3: I grew up in a town called Weston, Massachusetts, where
10:11
Speaker 3: a lot of my friend's parents were really successful in finance,
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Speaker 3: and so I was surrounded by people who had made
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Speaker 3: a lot of money. And it's always relative, right, And
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Speaker 3: then when I was a kid, I was like really jealous.
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Speaker 3: Like my best friend growing up had this incredible house,
10:26
Speaker 3: his family flew on private jets, they went to all
10:28
Speaker 3: these places, and you know, like I was very jealous
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Speaker 3: of all the things that he had that I didn't.
10:33
Speaker 3: And I never really questioned the fact that, like I
10:37
Speaker 3: would leave after hanging out with him and he would
10:39
Speaker 3: have like chef prepared meal by himself in front of
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Speaker 3: the TV, and I would get to go home and
10:44
Speaker 3: have dinner with my parents around the dinner table. And
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Speaker 3: I never questioned whether that actually made me quite rich.
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Speaker 2: And you mentioned that in the book, that anecdote and lots,
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Speaker 2: and we'll talk a lot about the book in a bit,
10:57
Speaker 2: but I found a lot of the personal anecdote and
11:00
Speaker 2: stories really compelling and very sincere because they you know,
11:06
Speaker 2: we all have different lived experiences, but there's an overlap.
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Speaker 2: We all share certain types of things. And I very
11:13
Speaker 2: much related to a lot of the things you were
11:15
Speaker 2: talking about. That story was like you don't know what
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Speaker 2: happens behind closed doors, and you don't know what burdens
11:22
Speaker 2: people are carrying.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, I mean it's definitely right. I'm glad they
11:26
Speaker 3: resonated I. But look, all of this to me was
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Speaker 3: about my own priorities had grown so narrow to the
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Speaker 3: point where I was focusing on the one thing money
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Speaker 3: at the expense of everything else, and nothing in this
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Speaker 3: book is to say that money doesn't matter. And I
11:44
Speaker 3: really want to be clear about that because I think
11:46
Speaker 3: there's this common trope of saying, like, you know, you
11:48
Speaker 3: come out and you say, oh, money doesn't matter. All
11:50
Speaker 3: these other things are more important, and look, money matters,
11:54
Speaker 3: and actually the science is pretty clear on this. You know,
11:56
Speaker 3: money does directly buy happiness up to a point. It
11:59
Speaker 3: reduces fun mental stresses and burdens, It allows you to
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Speaker 3: take care of people, create experiences, there's a lot of good.
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Speaker 3: Money isn't nothing. It simply can't be the only thing.
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Speaker 3: And in my own path, and I think on a
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Speaker 3: lot of people's paths, we grow so narrowly focused on
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Speaker 3: money as the way to this happy, good life and
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Speaker 3: we lose sight of the other things. And the reason
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Speaker 3: that I propose for that is because money is the
12:23
Speaker 3: thing that we can measure. And as Peter Drucker, the
12:25
Speaker 3: management theorist, said, what gets measured gets managed means you
12:29
Speaker 3: optimize around the one thing that you can measure. And
12:31
Speaker 3: so because money is so measurable, it becomes the thing
12:34
Speaker 3: that you focus all of your energy and attention around
12:37
Speaker 3: and often to the detriment of these other things. Money
12:40
Speaker 3: is your life scoreboard, if you will, and so you know,
12:42
Speaker 3: you might be winning on that scoreboard, but if that
12:44
Speaker 3: scoreboard doesn't capture the bigger picture of your life, you
12:48
Speaker 3: may win the battle but lose the much broader war.
12:52
Speaker 3: And that was really where I found myself when COVID
12:55
Speaker 3: hit in March of twenty twenty. COVID hit, we were
12:58
Speaker 3: stuck at home, and it was the first time that
13:00
Speaker 3: I had really zoomed out and been able to kind
13:03
Speaker 3: of see and assess my own life. I was making money,
13:06
Speaker 3: I was getting promoted, you know, I had some of
13:08
Speaker 3: the things that you would say or like the trappings
13:10
Speaker 3: of success, but I was pretty miserable. My relationships, like
13:14
Speaker 3: with my parents, I was never seeing them. We lived
13:17
Speaker 3: three thousand miles away. They're getting older and super close
13:21
Speaker 3: to them my whole life, and I just wasn't seeing them.
13:23
Speaker 3: My relationship with my sister had ground to a halt.
13:25
Speaker 3: My wife and I were struggling to conceive at the time, unfortunately,
13:28
Speaker 3: and that was creating strain in our relationship. My health,
13:31
Speaker 3: I mean I was drinking six or seven nights a week,
13:34
Speaker 3: not you know, raging, but like it had crept up
13:37
Speaker 3: on me and that was impacting my sleep, my stress levels.
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Speaker 3: All of these areas of my life had started to
13:42
Speaker 3: suffer because my priorities had gotten so focused in on
13:46
Speaker 3: like money being the exclusive thing that was going to
13:49
Speaker 3: lead me to the good life. And it all came
13:51
Speaker 3: to a head for me. May of twenty twenty one,
13:55
Speaker 3: I went out for a drink with an old friend
13:57
Speaker 3: and we sat down. He asked how I was doing,
13:59
Speaker 3: and I said that it had started to get tough
14:01
Speaker 3: being as far away from my parents as we were.
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Speaker 3: They'd started to get older and I started to notice
14:07
Speaker 3: their own mortality. And he asked how old they were
14:11
Speaker 3: and I said mid sixties. And he asked how often
14:14
Speaker 3: I saw them. I said about once a year, and
14:17
Speaker 3: he just looked at me and said, okay, so you're
14:20
Speaker 3: going to see your parents fifteen more times before they die.
14:24
Speaker 3: And I just remember feeling like I had been punched
14:26
Speaker 3: in the gut. I mean, the idea that the amount
14:29
Speaker 3: of time you have left with the people you love
14:32
Speaker 3: most in the world is so finite, so countable, that
14:36
Speaker 3: you can put it onto a few hands shook me
14:38
Speaker 3: to the core, and I realized in that moment that
14:42
Speaker 3: we needed to make a change or we were going
14:44
Speaker 3: to end up in a place where we didn't want
14:46
Speaker 3: to be. And so I told my wife the next
14:48
Speaker 3: day that I thought we needed to make a move.
14:50
Speaker 3: And within forty five days, I had stepped away from
14:54
Speaker 3: my full time position at the firm, we had sold
14:57
Speaker 3: our house in California and moved three thousand miles to
15:00
Speaker 3: be closer to both of our sets of parents.
15:02
Speaker 2: That's an amazing story. As I was reading it in
15:05
Speaker 2: the book, my only reaction was what a devastating realization
15:10
Speaker 2: to recognize not just your own mortality, but hey, your
15:15
Speaker 2: parents are a generation or two older than you. They're
15:18
Speaker 2: not here forever. The thought of only seeing them once
15:22
Speaker 2: a year and then they're gone pretty powerful stuff.
15:26
Speaker 3: It's powerful and devastating, but also empowering and inspiring. And
15:31
Speaker 3: the reason I say it's empowering and inspiring is because
15:33
Speaker 3: it reminds you that time is your most precious asset.
15:37
Speaker 3: It is quite literally the only thing that matters in
15:39
Speaker 3: the end. And you know, I go ask young people,
15:43
Speaker 3: would you trade lives with Warren Buffett? He's worth one
15:45
Speaker 3: hundred and thirty billion dollars. He has everything that you want,
15:48
Speaker 3: one hundred thirty billion dollars, access to anyone in the world,
15:51
Speaker 3: flies around on private jets, you know, mansions all over
15:53
Speaker 3: the place. He reads and learns for a living. But
15:56
Speaker 3: you wouldn't trade lives with him simply because he's ninety.
15:59
Speaker 2: Five years old.
16:00
Speaker 3: There's no way you would agree to trade the amount
16:02
Speaker 3: of time you have left for all of the billions
16:05
Speaker 3: that he has. And similarly, he would give anything to
16:08
Speaker 3: be in your shoes today and have the amount of
16:10
Speaker 3: time you do. He would give up all of his money.
16:12
Speaker 3: And so you know in the back of your mind
16:14
Speaker 3: that time has this incalculable value, and yet on a
16:18
Speaker 3: daily basis, we sit around wasting it. We scroll around
16:20
Speaker 3: on our phones, you know, scrolling on TikTok, looking at
16:23
Speaker 3: social media, comparing ourselves to other people, low value, low
16:27
Speaker 3: energy tasks. We don't spend time with the people we
16:29
Speaker 3: care about. We do all these things that are spitting
16:32
Speaker 3: on the value of our most precious asset. And that
16:36
Speaker 3: really is the call to action around this idea. It
16:39
Speaker 3: is to recognize time as your most precious asset to
16:41
Speaker 3: make a change, because the empowering part of all of
16:44
Speaker 3: this is you are much more in control of your
16:47
Speaker 3: time wealth than you think. We took that number the
16:50
Speaker 3: fifteen times before we die. We made a change. It's
16:53
Speaker 3: in the hundreds. Now. I see my parents several times
16:55
Speaker 3: a month. They're a huge part of my son's their
16:58
Speaker 3: grandson's life. We took an action that created time.
17:03
Speaker 2: So we were talking earlier about something that was really fascinating.
17:08
Speaker 2: You said, money isn't nothing, but it can't be the
17:13
Speaker 2: only thing. And I think that really sums up a
17:16
Speaker 2: great amount of insight. So tell us how you win
17:20
Speaker 2: from kind of being unhappy in your West Coast life
17:25
Speaker 2: and not seeing your family to writing this book. What
17:28
Speaker 2: was the motivator here?
17:30
Speaker 3: It was a manifestation of my own journey, and that
17:33
Speaker 3: journey was really to try to understand what was a
17:36
Speaker 3: better way to measure our lives. What was a better scoreboard,
17:39
Speaker 3: if you will, that we could track and measure against.
17:44
Speaker 3: And the realization there is that when you measure the
17:47
Speaker 3: right thing, you take the right actions and you create
17:51
Speaker 3: the right outcomes. When you measure for the broader war
17:54
Speaker 3: of the life you're trying to live, you will take
17:56
Speaker 3: the right actions to win that war. And if all
17:59
Speaker 3: you're measuring for is the battle of money along the way,
18:02
Speaker 3: you may win that battle, but you will lose the war.
18:05
Speaker 3: And we've seen a lot of people, we all know
18:07
Speaker 3: a lot of people who have done that, who have
18:09
Speaker 3: won the money battle, but they end up with three
18:11
Speaker 3: ex wives, they end up with six kids who don't
18:14
Speaker 3: want to have anything to do with them, They end
18:16
Speaker 3: up overweight, in a really bad place mentally. All of
18:20
Speaker 3: those things are an example of winning the battle but
18:23
Speaker 3: losing the war. And I was determined to not live
18:25
Speaker 3: that same fate because it feels very avoidable if you
18:28
Speaker 3: are thoughtful about how you design your life along the way.
18:31
Speaker 3: And so this book is an outflow of that idea.
18:34
Speaker 3: It's an outflow of creating the right scoreboard to measure
18:37
Speaker 3: the things that matter in your life, to define what
18:41
Speaker 3: really matters to you so that you can take actions
18:44
Speaker 3: to go and build your life around those things.
18:46
Speaker 2: So one of the five types of wealth is time.
18:49
Speaker 2: And you spoke earlier about the value of time. How
18:53
Speaker 2: do you convince someone in their teens or twenties or
18:57
Speaker 2: even thirties, because back then we're all immortal. That's the
19:01
Speaker 2: advantage of being twenty something Hey, we're going to live forever.
19:04
Speaker 2: The elapsing of time is just so abstract. How do
19:07
Speaker 2: you get them to realize time is a finite asset
19:12
Speaker 2: and it's your most valuable asset.
19:15
Speaker 3: I love that question that I asked earlier about trading
19:17
Speaker 3: lives with Buffett, because it does bring to light the
19:20
Speaker 3: fact that you do place significant value on your time.
19:24
Speaker 3: You just don't know it. It's not in the front
19:26
Speaker 3: of your mind, you know. And look, I think that
19:28
Speaker 3: some of these tools that people have created, like there's
19:31
Speaker 3: this calendar, the Momento Mory calendar if you've seen it,
19:34
Speaker 3: which is you're filling in weeks of your life. So
19:36
Speaker 3: it's fifty two, you know, squares across and then it's
19:40
Speaker 3: about eighty or ninety squares going down, and so it's
19:42
Speaker 3: basically every week of the course of your life, and
19:44
Speaker 3: you fill it in so that you get this visual representation,
19:47
Speaker 3: very visceral, raw real of the amount of time that
19:50
Speaker 3: has passed and the amount of time you have left
19:52
Speaker 3: on average in your life. And that is again a
19:56
Speaker 3: little bit morbid, but also a call to action to
19:59
Speaker 3: take very seriously every single week because you think about
20:02
Speaker 3: if you zoom out and just think about how many
20:06
Speaker 3: weeks have you just kind of slept through, done like
20:09
Speaker 3: not much, not really remembered anything, not really been present
20:13
Speaker 3: in moments, You've just let them kind of slip by.
20:16
Speaker 3: They've just come and they've gone. And when you look
20:18
Speaker 3: at it in the in the perspective of that calendar
20:21
Speaker 3: and you say like, well, that's a black mark that
20:23
Speaker 3: I'm never going to get back because I was stressing
20:25
Speaker 3: about something sillier, I was worried about the future. Thinking
20:28
Speaker 3: about the past, it really does draw you into the present.
20:32
Speaker 3: And so I think that is a really effective way.
20:34
Speaker 2: You know, I'm fascinated by a book written by Oliver
20:37
Speaker 2: Berkman on your otherat. All you need to do is
20:41
Speaker 2: hear the title of the book, four thousand Weeks Time
20:46
Speaker 2: Management for Mortals. It's really so amazing in that, you know,
20:51
Speaker 2: he talks about human life is insultingly brief, and you're
20:57
Speaker 2: talking to the same thing.
20:58
Speaker 1: Yeah.
20:59
Speaker 3: Oliver is a wonderful modern day philosopher. He has a
21:02
Speaker 3: new book called Meditation for Mortals, which is also similarly fantastic,
21:06
Speaker 3: And I think it is exactly that. Look, I think
21:10
Speaker 3: that time wealth really what it's about is it is
21:15
Speaker 3: the freedom to choose who you spend your time with,
21:17
Speaker 3: where you spend it, how you spend it, when you
21:19
Speaker 3: trade it for other things. It is about freedom, it
21:21
Speaker 3: is about control. And people think that money buys freedom.
21:26
Speaker 3: You think that money buys you that time wealth, but
21:28
Speaker 3: it's not true. I know plenty of people who work
21:32
Speaker 3: eighty to one hundred hour weeks, making ten million dollars
21:33
Speaker 3: a year, all the money in the world, but have
21:36
Speaker 3: zero freedom, zero control over their calendar, because they've tied
21:39
Speaker 3: themselves into a life where they need to continue working
21:42
Speaker 3: that way, to continue making that money, to continue to
21:45
Speaker 3: feed the lifestyle that they have, and they have no
21:47
Speaker 3: ability if they don't want to work for a month.
21:50
Speaker 3: They can have all the money in the world, but
21:52
Speaker 3: they are stuck in this lifestyle, this treadmill that they're
21:54
Speaker 3: currently on. And so the insight there is that it's
21:58
Speaker 3: not money that buys you free them. It is thoughtfully
22:02
Speaker 3: designed and invested money that gets you the freedom. It
22:06
Speaker 3: is the actual way that you construct and create your
22:08
Speaker 3: life that has to be free.
22:11
Speaker 2: I love the phrase hedonic treadmill because the blind pursuit
22:15
Speaker 2: of more as opposed to what you describe, which is
22:19
Speaker 2: understanding what enough means really becomes very significant.
22:24
Speaker 3: Yeah. One of my favorite stories is that whole idea
22:28
Speaker 3: of the fisherman and the investment banker. You have a
22:32
Speaker 3: story of an investment banker goes down to a Mexican
22:35
Speaker 3: fishing village and he comes upon this fisherman who's on
22:38
Speaker 3: a boat and has caught a few fish, and he says,
22:40
Speaker 3: how long did it take you to catch those fish?
22:42
Speaker 3: The fisherman says, only a little while, and the banker
22:45
Speaker 3: is confused. He says, why didn't you fish for longer?
22:48
Speaker 3: The fisherman says, well, I have all I need. I
22:50
Speaker 3: fish for a little while in the morning, catch a
22:53
Speaker 3: few fish. Then I go home, have lunch with my wife,
22:56
Speaker 3: take a nap, and then in the evenings I go
22:58
Speaker 3: into town and drink water and play music and laugh
23:01
Speaker 3: with my friends. And the banker's like, you're doing this
23:03
Speaker 3: all wrong. Here's what you have to do. You have
23:06
Speaker 3: to fish for longer so you can catch more fish.
23:08
Speaker 3: Then you use the profits from that to buy a
23:10
Speaker 3: second boat. You hire people, then they catch fish. Then
23:12
Speaker 3: you buy a third boat, fourth boat. You create a
23:14
Speaker 3: huge fishing enterprise. You move to the big city, take
23:17
Speaker 3: the company public, and you'll make millions. And the fisherman
23:20
Speaker 3: looks at him and says, and then what, And the
23:22
Speaker 3: banker says, what do you mean? And then what? Then
23:24
Speaker 3: you can retire, and you can move to a small
23:26
Speaker 3: fishing village. You can fish for a few hours in
23:29
Speaker 3: the morning, and then you can have lunch with your wife,
23:30
Speaker 3: you take a nap, and then in the evenings you
23:32
Speaker 3: can go into town drink wine and play music and
23:34
Speaker 3: laugh with your friends.
23:35
Speaker 2: And look.
23:36
Speaker 3: The story is typically interpreted as saying that the banker
23:42
Speaker 3: is wrong and the fisherman is right, and I actually
23:45
Speaker 3: disagree with that, and I talk about this in the book.
23:48
Speaker 3: What I think the meaning of the story is is
23:50
Speaker 3: defining your version of a meaningful life and then going
23:54
Speaker 3: and building your life with actions around those things. For
23:57
Speaker 3: the banker, his definition of success version of a meaningful
24:00
Speaker 3: life might be creating something big, creating a bunch of jobs,
24:04
Speaker 3: creating something around his purpose, creating things of value. For
24:07
Speaker 3: the fishermen, he's already living his definition of his meaningful life.
24:11
Speaker 3: He's already in it, and so neither one of them
24:14
Speaker 3: is right or wrong. It's about really figuring out where
24:17
Speaker 3: you are on that spectrum from fishermen to investment banker
24:20
Speaker 3: and then going and taking action to actually create your
24:23
Speaker 3: life around that definition.
24:25
Speaker 2: So you described this as the scoreboard problem in the book.
24:29
Speaker 2: It seems that today, more than ever, the scoreboard problem
24:33
Speaker 2: has become very prevalent. Why do you think that is?
24:39
Speaker 3: We are obsessed with tracking and measuring ourselves, and I
24:44
Speaker 3: think in a world of you know, in a world
24:47
Speaker 3: where our ability to do that on a real time
24:49
Speaker 3: basis has become more and more readily available, we become
24:55
Speaker 3: more and more obsessed. Right Like when you were young,
24:57
Speaker 3: you could not track your net worth down to them.
25:00
Speaker 3: You probably just couldn't. I mean, at some point, you know,
25:02
Speaker 3: if you were buying stock in a company, like you
25:04
Speaker 3: had to check the daily thing that came up in
25:06
Speaker 3: the newspaper, like when my dad was a kid, versus
25:08
Speaker 3: now literally instantaneously you can see changes in your network
25:12
Speaker 3: on your phone, on your phone, on any of the things.
25:14
Speaker 3: And I have friends who are obsessed with just checking
25:16
Speaker 3: that over and over and over again and so again,
25:19
Speaker 3: when you were measuring that, you are going to focus
25:22
Speaker 3: on it. It's going to consume all of your energy.
25:24
Speaker 3: And we are we are wired to want to see
25:27
Speaker 3: the number go up, so we take actions to do that.
25:30
Speaker 3: But if the actions to do that are actually pulling
25:33
Speaker 3: you away from your longer term goal in other areas,
25:36
Speaker 3: then that's not positive. And that comes from the fact
25:39
Speaker 3: that the scoreboard is incomplete. It's not that the scoreboard
25:41
Speaker 3: is completely wrong, it is that it is incomplete. It
25:44
Speaker 3: is only around money. We need to measure these other
25:47
Speaker 3: areas of life, the other four types of wealth in the.
25:49
Speaker 2: Book, So let's talk about other ways of measuring things.
25:53
Speaker 2: For the book, you interviewed a lot of folks older
25:57
Speaker 2: in their life seventies, eighties, ninety years old, and a
26:01
Speaker 2: lot of the answers were kind of fascinating. What surprised
26:05
Speaker 2: you when in the answers you got I think.
26:09
Speaker 3: The most surprising thing or interesting thing was everyone sort
26:14
Speaker 3: of wants the same thing and it has very little
26:18
Speaker 3: to do with money. Money is sort of a tool,
26:20
Speaker 3: but not the goal, which is surprising as a young
26:23
Speaker 3: person to hear that, because when you're young, you're barraged
26:26
Speaker 3: and bombarded by information that's like, oh, you know, money, money, money, right,
26:30
Speaker 3: fast cars, watches, all these fancy things, that's how you're
26:33
Speaker 3: gonna be happy. But what you learn when you talk
26:35
Speaker 3: to people at the end, and the advice they would
26:37
Speaker 3: give to their younger selves is always basically around four things. Time, people, purpose,
26:42
Speaker 3: and health. Those are the four things that come up
26:44
Speaker 3: again and again. Money is an enabler to some of those,
26:47
Speaker 3: but it is not an end in and of itself.
26:50
Speaker 3: If you ask young people to define their ideal day
26:53
Speaker 3: at age eighty, no one talks about being on a
26:56
Speaker 3: private jet by themselves, right. You talk about being in
27:00
Speaker 3: a place surrounded by people you love, healthy of body
27:04
Speaker 3: and mind, feeling some sort of meaning or purpose in
27:07
Speaker 3: the things that you're doing. So it's really about that freedom,
27:10
Speaker 3: it's really about the people, it's really about your health,
27:13
Speaker 3: it's about your purpose. Those are the things that were
27:15
Speaker 3: actually after But then when you ask those people what
27:18
Speaker 3: they're doing on a daily basis to create that future,
27:20
Speaker 3: it couldn't be more disjointed. The actions actually aren't leading
27:24
Speaker 3: you to that future you're trying to create for yourself.
27:26
Speaker 2: You mentioned the private jet or the car, or the
27:29
Speaker 2: watch of the boat. I love the line in the
27:31
Speaker 2: book there's always going to be a bigger boat. Tell
27:34
Speaker 2: us about that.
27:35
Speaker 3: This is a story from a friend who had sold
27:39
Speaker 3: his company and made a whole lot of money, you know,
27:41
Speaker 3: tens maybe one hundred million dollars. And after the event,
27:44
Speaker 3: he had decided to take a bunch of his closest
27:47
Speaker 3: family and friends on this yacht trip. He was going
27:49
Speaker 3: to rent this yacht for a week and take everyone
27:51
Speaker 3: as a celebration, and he was so excited. It was
27:53
Speaker 3: so gratifying to him to be able to have created
27:56
Speaker 3: this moment for everyone. And everyone arrives to go get
27:58
Speaker 3: on this beautiful boat, and one of his friends as
28:01
Speaker 3: he walks up, looks over at the mooring next to
28:03
Speaker 3: it and sees this way bigger boat and says, wow,
28:08
Speaker 3: I wonder who's on that boat, pointing over at it,
28:11
Speaker 3: And in that moment, all of the joy of the
28:14
Speaker 3: experience that my friend had felt melted in the face
28:18
Speaker 3: of this comparison to this boat. At the next morning,
28:21
Speaker 3: and the lesson there is a very powerful one, which
28:23
Speaker 3: is there's always going to be a bigger boat. If
28:26
Speaker 3: you define all of your worth and success and meaning
28:30
Speaker 3: around money, there is always going to be a bigger boat.
28:34
Speaker 2: Let me give you a corollary to that. As a boater,
28:38
Speaker 2: there's an old joke. Every boater's favorite boat is his
28:43
Speaker 2: second to last boat. And what that means is like
28:47
Speaker 2: my first boat was a little dinghy a cost me nothing.
28:50
Speaker 2: I ended up buying it for a few hundred bucks.
28:53
Speaker 2: You save a couple of bucks, you get a little
28:54
Speaker 2: boat with an appboard. During the financial crisis, I bought
28:59
Speaker 2: a twenty five four foot bow Rider that was a
29:01
Speaker 2: short sale. In other words, you're buying it before the
29:04
Speaker 2: bank repossesses it, just paying off the balance. And you know,
29:08
Speaker 2: I've been looking at thirty foot boats. I've been looking
29:10
Speaker 2: at I know at friends we're looking at forty foot boats.
29:13
Speaker 2: And that line means if you're not happy with what
29:17
Speaker 2: you have, and you just keep going for bigger and
29:20
Speaker 2: bigger and bigger, eventually you just go right past the
29:24
Speaker 2: perfect thing that solves your desires, wants, needs and use case.
29:30
Speaker 2: But it's more expensive, it's more complicated, it's harder to
29:33
Speaker 2: handle some of these boats. They require a crew, and
29:37
Speaker 2: you forget, Hey, I just bought this boat to go out,
29:40
Speaker 2: have a couple of beers with friends, hang out on
29:42
Speaker 2: a Sunday afternoon on the Sound. Every boater's favorite boat
29:47
Speaker 2: is their second to last boat. It's I love that
29:50
Speaker 2: it's very much along the same lines.
29:52
Speaker 3: My wife and I talk about this a lot that
29:55
Speaker 3: all of these sort of quote unquote upgrades that we
29:59
Speaker 3: think were to make in life are running the risk
30:06
Speaker 3: of buying yourself a headache. I mean, the house you
30:09
Speaker 3: go buy, the second home you buy, ends up being
30:11
Speaker 3: the second home you complain about. I don't know a
30:13
Speaker 3: single person actually that has a second home that doesn't
30:17
Speaker 3: complain about some aspect of owning a second home. And so,
30:20
Speaker 3: like the thing that you bought thinking oh, it was
30:22
Speaker 3: going to be this amazing set of experiences, you have
30:25
Speaker 3: to be comfortable with the knowledge that it may just
30:27
Speaker 3: end up being that headache that you just bought for
30:29
Speaker 3: yourself in your life. And so I often think about
30:33
Speaker 3: the value that comes from just avoiding unforced errors in life,
30:37
Speaker 3: like you know that Charlie Monger, know where you're gonna die,
30:39
Speaker 3: so that you never go there. And I sometimes think
30:41
Speaker 3: that like these things that we stretch for thinking that
30:43
Speaker 3: they are going to materially improve our life or happiness
30:46
Speaker 3: end up actually being the thing that detracts from it.
30:49
Speaker 2: I love the story in the book about Joseph Heller
30:53
Speaker 2: and Kurt Vonnegut, two of my favorite authors. Catch twenty
30:56
Speaker 2: two and slaughter House five. Tell us a little bit
30:58
Speaker 2: about that story.
31:00
Speaker 3: That's one of my favorite stories, and it's very simple,
31:02
Speaker 3: which is that Vonnagut and Heller were at the home
31:05
Speaker 3: of this billionaire and Vonnaguet says to Heller, Joe, how
31:09
Speaker 3: does it feel that just yesterday the owner of this
31:13
Speaker 3: home made more money than your famous book Catch twenty
31:17
Speaker 3: two made in its entire lifetime. And Heller replies, yes,
31:21
Speaker 3: but I've got something he'll never have, And Vonnaguet says, yeah,
31:24
Speaker 3: what's that? And Joseph Heller just says, the knowledge that
31:28
Speaker 3: I've got enough, And that idea of enough is really
31:32
Speaker 3: at the heart of this entire book. Really defining what
31:37
Speaker 3: enough means to you and having that clear as a
31:40
Speaker 3: picture in your mind is so important, because in the
31:42
Speaker 3: absence of that knowledge, you just chase whatever more the
31:47
Speaker 3: world tells you you should want.
31:48
Speaker 2: Huh, really, really very fascinating. Let's talk a little bit
31:52
Speaker 2: about fomo. We talked about the bigger boat. You kind
31:57
Speaker 2: of went through your do I call it quarter life
31:59
Speaker 2: crist Is During the pandemic, seems like fomo was rampant.
32:04
Speaker 2: Between bitcoin and meme stocks and just all the other
32:09
Speaker 2: Mayhem that was going on. What advice would you give,
32:13
Speaker 2: especially to a younger person who seems to be experiencing Hey,
32:17
Speaker 2: everybody else has these great things and I don't have.
32:20
Speaker 3: Them disconnect more often. I think that a lot of
32:24
Speaker 3: FOMO in the modern day is driven by these things
32:29
Speaker 3: that we carry in our pockets and the fact that
32:32
Speaker 3: we're connected at all times to this constant dopamine drip
32:36
Speaker 3: of information, which frankly is designed to convince you that
32:40
Speaker 3: you are not doing enough, that you are not doing
32:42
Speaker 3: the right things that you should be with someone else
32:45
Speaker 3: doing something else, you know, thinking something else. That is
32:49
Speaker 3: what gets clicks and what gets shared on social media,
32:52
Speaker 3: and so that's what you were hit with. And that
32:54
Speaker 3: is really dangerous because you know, look, it convinces you
32:59
Speaker 3: to make bad short term decisions. We all know this
33:02
Speaker 3: that the most valuable things in life, the reason they
33:06
Speaker 3: are so valuable is because they are hard to earn.
33:09
Speaker 3: There's no such thing as a shortcut or a hack
33:12
Speaker 3: to achieve the most meaningful things in life. You cannot
33:15
Speaker 3: build a meaningful business overnight, you cannot build a meaningful relationship,
33:19
Speaker 3: you can't build a healthy body. These things have to
33:23
Speaker 3: be hard. That is why they are valuable. If they
33:25
Speaker 3: weren't so hard, you actually wouldn't value them as much.
33:28
Speaker 3: And yet you live in a world where everyone is
33:31
Speaker 3: seeking the shortcut or the cheat code or the hack
33:33
Speaker 3: or the quick way to make a million dollars or
33:36
Speaker 3: ten million dollars. And look, I just saw this incredible
33:39
Speaker 3: chart that showed that the amount of money that each
33:43
Speaker 3: generation thinks it requires to make it. And it was
33:46
Speaker 3: like a chart that basically showed that all the other
33:48
Speaker 3: generations like boomers, you know, on through millennials, it was
33:55
Speaker 3: like around two hundred thousand dollars or issh a year,
33:57
Speaker 3: and then gen Z said, like six hundred thousand is
33:59
Speaker 3: what you need to make. So there's this crazy thing
34:01
Speaker 3: that's happening in terms of our expectations of what we
34:05
Speaker 3: should be earning. And also, by the way, eighty percent
34:07
Speaker 3: of the gen Zers that were interviewed said that they
34:09
Speaker 3: thought they would do that. So you have this like
34:12
Speaker 3: insane expectation that has been created by social media of
34:16
Speaker 3: how easy it is to make money, and this loss
34:18
Speaker 3: of the understanding that the only way to make money
34:21
Speaker 3: is to create value. You create value and you receive value.
34:25
Speaker 3: The only way to make a lot of money is
34:26
Speaker 3: to create a lot of value and capture a little
34:28
Speaker 3: portion of that along the way. And so really the
34:30
Speaker 3: entire focus needs to just be identify a problem, create
34:34
Speaker 3: a solution, and then scale that solution. The more scalable,
34:37
Speaker 3: the more money you'll make.
34:39
Speaker 2: Huh. Really quite fascinating. So you and I both agree
34:43
Speaker 2: social media is fairly toxic. I'm curious how significant is
34:49
Speaker 2: the impact on our psychological wealth and on our social wealth.
34:55
Speaker 3: It can be a force for good. And look, you're
34:57
Speaker 3: talking to someone who has made a career out of
35:01
Speaker 3: being on social media in some way. And I think
35:04
Speaker 3: that the difference is whether the content that's being shared
35:07
Speaker 3: is designed to educate and create value versus make you
35:11
Speaker 3: feel like you're not enough, make you feel like you're
35:13
Speaker 3: not doing enough, or it's trying to, you know, sell
35:16
Speaker 3: some sort of course or community to convince you that
35:18
Speaker 3: you can get rich quickly, which are clearly bad things.
35:22
Speaker 2: I want to get rich trading, just take my course.
35:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally. And by the way, that's the whole meme
35:26
Speaker 3: of like the person that's standing in front of the
35:28
Speaker 3: private jet telling you that you can get rich trading.
35:31
Speaker 3: They got rich by selling you the course, not by
35:33
Speaker 3: actually trading. And look, there's an entire legacy of people
35:36
Speaker 3: that have done that very successfully, by the way, because
35:40
Speaker 3: it's a tried and true business model apparently, but it's
35:42
Speaker 3: it's sad. Jonathan Hate you know, Anxious Generation just published
35:46
Speaker 3: this incredible book, published a book on the exact thing
35:51
Speaker 3: of just how detrimental social media has been to our
35:54
Speaker 3: youngest generation. In particular, I recently saw a stat that
35:57
Speaker 3: teenagers in the United States are spending seventy percent less
36:01
Speaker 3: time in person with their friends than they were two
36:03
Speaker 3: decades ago. It's terrifying, amazing, I mean terrifying statistics. And look,
36:08
Speaker 3: we know scientifically that relationships are the key to a happy,
36:11
Speaker 3: healthy life. The Harvard Study of Adult Development, this amazing
36:14
Speaker 3: study done over the course of eighty five years. They
36:16
Speaker 3: followed the lives of thirteen hundred original participants in about
36:20
Speaker 3: seven hundred of their descendants. They found that the single
36:23
Speaker 3: greatest predictor of physical health at age eighty was relationship satisfaction.
36:27
Speaker 2: At age fifty, physical health, not even mental physical health.
36:31
Speaker 3: Your actual healthy aging was determined by your relationship satisfaction
36:36
Speaker 3: in your youth. And it wasn't your blood pressure. It
36:38
Speaker 3: wasn't your cholesterol, it wasn't your smoking or drinking habits.
36:40
Speaker 3: It was how you felt about the people in your life.
36:43
Speaker 3: And so not investing in your social wealth, as I
36:46
Speaker 3: talk about it in the book, is something that is
36:49
Speaker 3: going to come back and hurt you. And I say
36:51
Speaker 3: investing because that's a very important meta term for the
36:54
Speaker 3: entire book. We all know Bloomberg Radio. You know the
36:58
Speaker 3: power of investing in financial assets. You know that if
37:00
Speaker 3: you invest one hundred dollars today, it's going to compound
37:02
Speaker 3: in value in your life into the future. You know
37:05
Speaker 3: that investing one hundred dollars today is better than zero
37:07
Speaker 3: dollars today because of that compounding that applies to every
37:10
Speaker 3: single area of your life. Investing a little bit in
37:13
Speaker 3: your relationships today will compound in value in those relationships
37:18
Speaker 3: for the long term. And your relationships, I would argue,
37:20
Speaker 3: are the single greatest investment you can make. They will
37:23
Speaker 3: pay dividends in your health and in your happiness for
37:25
Speaker 3: your entire life.
37:27
Speaker 2: Last point on social media and the toxicity. Morgan Houselites
37:34
Speaker 2: likes to point out, you see the big house down
37:37
Speaker 2: the street and the really nice cars in the driveway,
37:41
Speaker 2: that's what's visible. What you don't see is the actual
37:44
Speaker 2: debt those people are carrying to pay for that. You
37:48
Speaker 2: don't know. Are they buying that with cash? Are they
37:50
Speaker 2: out over their skis. That doesn't show up on social media.
37:54
Speaker 2: You don't see that on Instagram or TikTok. All you
37:57
Speaker 2: see are the trappings of wealth and not what that's
38:01
Speaker 2: actually doing to those people.
38:02
Speaker 3: Absolutely, you also, you just have to know that you
38:06
Speaker 3: know when people are status signaling in those ways with
38:08
Speaker 3: bot status. I talk about in the book. The difference
38:11
Speaker 3: between bot status and earned status status is important. It's
38:15
Speaker 3: part of our social hierarchy, how we operate as human beings. Really,
38:19
Speaker 3: what we're seeking is to have respect and admiration from
38:23
Speaker 3: people that we care about. And people think they can
38:26
Speaker 3: buy that, but you cannot. No one is giving you
38:31
Speaker 3: the lasting, durable respect and admiration for buying a fancy thing.
38:35
Speaker 3: No one cares, because then we would respect and admire
38:38
Speaker 3: lottery winners more than anyone else in the world. Look,
38:40
Speaker 3: you made a billion dollars, Okay, Now I respect and
38:42
Speaker 3: admire you know. That's not how it works a CEO.
38:45
Speaker 3: If you want a CEO to respect you, you have
38:47
Speaker 3: to build something. You have to build something meaningful to
38:49
Speaker 3: earn the respect of that person. So that is earned status.
38:52
Speaker 3: It is working on things that you have to earn.
38:54
Speaker 3: That's why I say that a fit physique is a
38:58
Speaker 3: better flex than a rolex on your wrist. It's just
39:01
Speaker 3: the reality because you have to earn it. And so
39:03
Speaker 3: people that see you know certain things about you, about
39:07
Speaker 3: the way that you operate as a human being, that
39:09
Speaker 3: confers upon you the respect and admiration that you seek,
39:12
Speaker 3: much more than any fancy thing that you can buy.
39:14
Speaker 2: Huh, really really really fascinating. You know. One of the
39:17
Speaker 2: things that quote my eye in the book was the
39:21
Speaker 2: blurb by Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, who's called the
39:25
Speaker 2: book a quote powerful call to action. First of all,
39:29
Speaker 2: how did you get the book in his hands?
39:31
Speaker 3: The way that I know Tim might make you want
39:34
Speaker 3: to buy more Apple stock. I am not an investor
39:36
Speaker 3: in Apple. I don't own any Apple stock other than
39:39
Speaker 3: via like s and P five hundred index funds. But
39:41
Speaker 3: I am a huge, huge fan of Tim's as a
39:44
Speaker 3: human being. I met him originally in twenty fourteen when
39:47
Speaker 3: I first started took my first job. I was working
39:49
Speaker 3: out at the gym at four forty five in the
39:51
Speaker 3: morning every single day. He was one of five other
39:54
Speaker 3: people that was crazy enough to show up at the
39:56
Speaker 3: gym at four forty five every single day to this day,
39:58
Speaker 3: I know that he continues and maintains that habit. I'llbeit
40:01
Speaker 3: at private facility now because he's a big enough figure
40:04
Speaker 3: that he cannot go to a public gym in the
40:07
Speaker 3: way that he did then. But it ended up sparking
40:09
Speaker 3: a friendship and a mentorship that has lasted through these
40:13
Speaker 3: years he's been He was an incredible force in giving
40:16
Speaker 3: me the courage to leave the path that I was
40:18
Speaker 3: on and walk down this non traditional one, and was
40:22
Speaker 3: kind enough to read and provide that blurbo of support
40:26
Speaker 3: for the book.
40:27
Speaker 2: That's an amazing story. I like, I'm curious, how did
40:31
Speaker 2: other people treat Tim Cook then COO now CEO of
40:36
Speaker 2: Apple when he's in the gym he was I.
40:39
Speaker 3: Think in twenty fourteen, you'd have to fact check me
40:41
Speaker 3: on this. I think he was the new CEO. I
40:43
Speaker 3: think maybe the year before he'd become CEO. He was
40:47
Speaker 3: not treated any differently than anyone in the gym in
40:50
Speaker 3: that setting, and to the point where I didn't know
40:53
Speaker 3: who he was for six months. I was talking to
40:55
Speaker 3: him every day. I wasn't in tech, I wasn't like
40:59
Speaker 3: in that world. And he doesn't look the way he
41:01
Speaker 3: looks on stage when he's working out in the gym
41:02
Speaker 3: in the morning. And so I talk to him every
41:04
Speaker 3: day for about six months before I knew who he was.
41:07
Speaker 2: That's amazing. Yeah, And I you know, I have learned
41:11
Speaker 2: in this gig that when you speak to people like that,
41:15
Speaker 2: like the regular people, they really appreciate it. They don't
41:19
Speaker 2: want to be formed over most of them don't want
41:22
Speaker 2: to be formed over. A few of them do. So
41:25
Speaker 2: you're just chatting this guy up for six months.
41:28
Speaker 3: And yeah, I mean the thing you learn about people
41:32
Speaker 3: that have, you know, achieved on that level of success,
41:34
Speaker 3: is that their entire life is is actually quite lonely
41:38
Speaker 3: in the sense that everyone that they meet wants something.
41:41
Speaker 3: Every one that they meet is coming to them with
41:43
Speaker 3: a handout. And so I actually think it's rare that
41:45
Speaker 3: they can find environments where they can just feel like
41:48
Speaker 3: a normal person in that way. And Tim is a
41:50
Speaker 3: quite introverted person just as a human being. And so
41:53
Speaker 3: it's actually interesting having seen his journey now he wasn't
41:56
Speaker 3: as famous then as he is now. I you know,
41:59
Speaker 3: went to the Berkshire Hathaway Annual meeting last year with him,
42:02
Speaker 3: and when we walked into the arena to go take
42:05
Speaker 3: our seats, it was like walking in somewhere with Justin Bieber.
42:08
Speaker 3: I mean, like I've never experienced anything like that, say
42:11
Speaker 3: in terms of the people rushing circling the you know,
42:14
Speaker 3: like it is a very different life than at the
42:16
Speaker 3: time when he didn't even need security at the time,
42:19
Speaker 3: like there wasn't a fanfare around it. You know, it
42:22
Speaker 3: very quickly did start to change. By like twenty seventeen
42:25
Speaker 3: twenty eighteen, he had become more prominent. People were starting
42:28
Speaker 3: to like come up to him at the gym and
42:29
Speaker 3: pitch him on things, et cetera. And so, you know,
42:32
Speaker 3: I think then his life really started to change based
42:35
Speaker 3: on the growth that they had experienced.
42:36
Speaker 2: So six months later you figure out, oh, this guy
42:39
Speaker 2: in the gym turns out to be the CEO of
42:42
Speaker 2: the biggest company in the world. What's the next conversation,
42:46
Speaker 2: Like I just.
42:48
Speaker 3: I don't remember there being a next conversation that was
42:50
Speaker 3: particularly significant, but I did ask him if he'd be
42:52
Speaker 3: willing to grab breakfast and just chat about my career
42:56
Speaker 3: and things that I was trying to learn. I wasn't
42:58
Speaker 3: looking for a job, so I was very clear, You're like,
43:00
Speaker 3: I'm not pitching you on something. I would just love
43:02
Speaker 3: to learn from you. And I think that stands out,
43:05
Speaker 3: like in a world of people that are very short
43:07
Speaker 3: term focused and looking for the transaction the networking, right,
43:11
Speaker 3: I've just never been someone that believes in networking. I
43:14
Speaker 3: really build and I believe in building fifty year relationships
43:18
Speaker 3: with people. And I think in ten years of knowing Tim,
43:22
Speaker 3: the number of times we've talked about Apple, I can
43:24
Speaker 3: probably count on like one hand. I just don't I
43:27
Speaker 3: don't really care to be like I'm not. I said,
43:28
Speaker 3: I don't own stocks.
43:29
Speaker 2: Like you're wearing a garment watch, I shudn't.
43:32
Speaker 3: Tell He'll get mad at me. I'm wearing a Chorros Yeah,
43:34
Speaker 3: running watch. He'd probably get mad at me. I just
43:37
Speaker 3: don't really care. What I really care about is learning
43:39
Speaker 3: from people, and he has incredible access to people and
43:42
Speaker 3: stories and his understanding of geopolitics, which is an area
43:47
Speaker 3: I have extreme interest in given my public policy background.
43:50
Speaker 3: I just feel like I learned so much from being
43:52
Speaker 3: around him. Plus he's someone that has navigated some incredible
43:56
Speaker 3: different changes in his own life. In his path, he
43:58
Speaker 3: was on a traditional path at IB stepped off it
44:00
Speaker 3: to go to this computer startup Compac, then got picked
44:04
Speaker 3: up by Steve Jobs at Apple. And I can benefit
44:07
Speaker 3: so much from just learning and understanding from being around
44:10
Speaker 3: someone like that.
44:11
Speaker 2: And I could tell you firsthand, I have a number
44:14
Speaker 2: of friends who have kids who are gay or lesbians.
44:18
Speaker 2: And I recall the statement he released not long after
44:23
Speaker 2: that I remember was fifteen.
44:24
Speaker 3: Or twenty fifteen, sixteen.
44:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, that people when we subsequently discussed it, said hey,
44:30
Speaker 2: they have friends who were you know, depressed, suicidal and
44:35
Speaker 2: tim coming and saying what he said made a huge
44:39
Speaker 2: difference to a lot of young people's lives. It really,
44:43
Speaker 2: it really was. I don't know how often we all
44:46
Speaker 2: get to move the needle that much, but it was
44:50
Speaker 2: so impactful for so many families. All Right, So I
44:54
Speaker 2: know I only have you for a limited amount of
44:56
Speaker 2: time before I get to my favorite questions that I
45:00
Speaker 2: ask all of my guests. I have a couple of
45:03
Speaker 2: curveballs to throw to you. And if I could have
45:07
Speaker 2: thrown a carve ball, I would probably have been a
45:09
Speaker 2: pitcher on the varsity team, but didn't have that skill.
45:16
Speaker 2: I love this line in your Twitter bio. Gave up
45:20
Speaker 2: a grand Slam on ESPN and twenty twelve and still
45:24
Speaker 2: waiting for it to land.
45:26
Speaker 3: Discuss, Yeah, this is my last hurrah. Maybe it's me
45:30
Speaker 3: trying to relive the glory or anti glory days. I
45:35
Speaker 3: was a pitcher at Stanford and this was in the
45:38
Speaker 3: NCAA Superregionals, which is the final sixteen teams in the country.
45:41
Speaker 3: And I came into this game at Florida State on ESPN,
45:45
Speaker 3: my whole family watching all my friends from home, so
45:48
Speaker 3: excited that I'm pitching on national television, and I gave
45:51
Speaker 3: up a monster grand slam that ended the game effectively,
45:55
Speaker 3: and we lost and had to go home. And the
45:57
Speaker 3: funniest part about it was, like, you know, I was
45:58
Speaker 3: obviously destroyed, and I'm at the team hotel after I'm
46:02
Speaker 3: really upset, and I get a text from one of
46:04
Speaker 3: my best friends in the world just saying like, hey, man,
46:07
Speaker 3: say flight home. Hope the plane doesn't get hit by
46:10
Speaker 3: that home run you just gave up. So was the
46:13
Speaker 3: guy who hit the home I think his name was
46:15
Speaker 3: Seth Miller. If I were to recall and I don't
46:18
Speaker 3: think he ended up having a baseball career. He's probably
46:20
Speaker 3: somewhere out there, so if he hears this shout out
46:22
Speaker 3: Seth Miller.
46:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the other curveball. In the book, you explain
46:29
Speaker 2: you're half Jewish, half Indians, so no parental pressure there.
46:34
Speaker 2: But you tell this very poignant story about your father
46:38
Speaker 2: who's Jewish, telling his parents he's gonna date or marry
46:43
Speaker 2: a woman who's Indian and he never sees them again.
46:47
Speaker 2: Tell us about that. Yeah.
46:49
Speaker 3: My mom was born and raised in Bangalore, India. My
46:52
Speaker 3: dad from a Jewish family in the Bronx, New York.
46:55
Speaker 3: And when they crossed paths at Princeton University, basically a
47:00
Speaker 3: two week period that they crossed over there, my dad
47:02
Speaker 3: was finishing his PhD. My mom was just starting a
47:05
Speaker 3: master's there and they went on a date and my
47:10
Speaker 3: dad told my mom my parents will never accept us.
47:13
Speaker 3: And my mom was so blinded by the use of
47:16
Speaker 3: the word us that she completely missed the message. And
47:19
Speaker 3: unfortunately he was right. His father was not accepting and
47:24
Speaker 3: told him that he had to choose between my mom
47:26
Speaker 3: and his family, and he walked out the door. And
47:29
Speaker 3: to this day I never met my dad's parents. His
47:32
Speaker 3: father passed away many years ago. I believe his mother's
47:34
Speaker 3: still alive. He has three siblings I've never met, first
47:37
Speaker 3: cousins that I've never met, And you know, in the
47:41
Speaker 3: midst of something very sad, there was something very beautiful
47:44
Speaker 3: that came from it, which was this decision to reject
47:47
Speaker 3: common convention and choose love. Was a decision that had
47:52
Speaker 3: ripple effects through my entire life and really is ingrained
47:54
Speaker 3: in my DNA, and I am very grateful for that.
47:58
Speaker 2: To say nothing about your entire existence correct being ode
48:02
Speaker 2: to your dad's decision. But I found that part of
48:05
Speaker 2: the book to be very poignant, very touching, and that
48:09
Speaker 2: sort of tone and sincere recognition of the world just
48:17
Speaker 2: permeates the whole book, and I found it really very
48:21
Speaker 2: honest and very interesting throughout. Let's jump to our favorite
48:24
Speaker 2: questions that we ask all of our guests, starting with
48:28
Speaker 2: what are you streaming these days? What are you listening to?
48:31
Speaker 2: What's just keeping you entertained?
48:33
Speaker 3: My wife and I are really enjoying the new season
48:35
Speaker 3: of Dexter. Really, yeah, Dexter. I think it's like New
48:38
Speaker 3: Beginnings or something like that. Yeah, it's great. I loved
48:41
Speaker 3: Dexter back in the day. So this new new take
48:44
Speaker 3: on his childhood years is really good.
48:47
Speaker 2: Let's talk about mentors who helped shape your career.
48:51
Speaker 3: We talked about Tim Cook. He's been an incredible mentor
48:54
Speaker 3: on this journey and you know, felt a lot of
48:57
Speaker 3: courage to take this different and unique path through him.
49:02
Speaker 2: Really interesting. What about some books. What are your favorites?
49:06
Speaker 2: What are you reading right now?
49:07
Speaker 3: I would say When Breath Becomes Air is the most
49:11
Speaker 3: powerful book that I've read.
49:12
Speaker 2: Why do I know that? Who wrote that?
49:14
Speaker 3: Paul Kallanathy. He was a Stanford neurosurgeon who got diagnosed
49:17
Speaker 3: with terminal cancer and he wrote the book in the
49:19
Speaker 3: last year of his life. You know, everyone says man
49:22
Speaker 3: Search for Meeting. I think Man Search for Meeting is wonderful.
49:24
Speaker 3: I actually think When Breath Becomes Air is a more
49:26
Speaker 3: impactful book for the modern era.
49:28
Speaker 2: Anything else and any other things you're reading currently?
49:31
Speaker 3: Currently I read a lot of sci fi, to be honest,
49:36
Speaker 3: let's go to talking to you. Preach into the Choir project.
49:39
Speaker 3: Hail Mary was one of my favorites. Andy Weir, He's
49:42
Speaker 3: the author of The Martian, among other things. That's fantastic.
49:45
Speaker 3: If you're looking for a short story that you can
49:47
Speaker 3: read in five minutes, go read The Egg by Andy Weir.
49:50
Speaker 3: You can find it anywhere online. It's incredible.
49:52
Speaker 2: Huh, really really interesting. Our final two questions what sort
49:56
Speaker 2: of advice would you give to a recent college grad
49:59
Speaker 2: interesting in a career in either private equity, finance or
50:05
Speaker 2: content creation?
50:06
Speaker 3: Create value? Just focus on creating value. If you create
50:10
Speaker 3: value for the people around you, you will receive value
50:13
Speaker 3: in return. You will always find success. And if you
50:18
Speaker 3: can do that while just becoming a reliable person, I
50:22
Speaker 3: think that is the most important thing. My grandfather gave
50:24
Speaker 3: me a piece of advice when I was younger, and
50:26
Speaker 3: he said, you will achieve more by being consistently reliable
50:30
Speaker 3: than by being occasionally extraordinary. And I've never forgotten.
50:34
Speaker 2: Uh, that's a great line. And I'm trying to figure
50:38
Speaker 2: out how to make this final question applicable to you,
50:42
Speaker 2: because really the answer is this book, But I'll ask
50:46
Speaker 2: it anyway. What do you know about the world today
50:48
Speaker 2: You wish you knew twenty or so years ago when
50:50
Speaker 2: you were first getting started.
50:53
Speaker 3: That you don't need to accept the default definitions of
50:56
Speaker 3: success that are handed to you. That you can carve
50:58
Speaker 3: your own way. You can build a life around the
51:00
Speaker 3: things that truly matter to you, not what everyone tells
51:03
Speaker 3: you should matter.
51:05
Speaker 2: Thank you so Hill for being so generous with your time.
51:08
Speaker 2: We have been speaking with Sohill Bloom, author of The
51:11
Speaker 2: Five Types of Wealth of Transformative Guide to Design your
51:15
Speaker 2: Dream Life. If you enjoy this conversation, check out any
51:18
Speaker 2: of the five hundred previous podcasts we've done over the
51:22
Speaker 2: past ten years. You can find those at iTunes, Spotify, YouTube,
51:27
Speaker 2: wherever you find your favorite podcast, and be sure to
51:30
Speaker 2: check out my new book How Not to Invest The ideas, numbers,
51:34
Speaker 2: and behaviors that Destroy Wealth, coming March eighteenth. I would
51:40
Speaker 2: be remiss if I did not thank the Crack team
51:43
Speaker 2: that helps with these conversations together each week. Meredith Frank
51:46
Speaker 2: is my audio engineer. Sean Russo is my head of research.
51:51
Speaker 2: Anna Luke is my producer. Sage Bauman is the head
51:54
Speaker 2: of podcasts at Bloomberg. I'm Barrier Faultz. You've been listening
51:59
Speaker 2: to Master's Business on Bloomberg Radio.
52:08
Speaker 3: H