Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Eric Jorgenson - Author & Angel Investor | How One Book About Naval Ravikant Changed Everything

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Eric Jorgenson - Author & Angel Investor | How One Book About Naval Ravikant Changed Everything · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  My first real writing project was Evergreen and my goal was like find these truly important Evergreen
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  resources. It gave me faith in sort of the internet as like a meritocratic place to create content
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  and if I just keep doing things I will become better as a result. The whole world becomes a little
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  brighter. Eric Jorgensen, the man who turned wisdom into a startup, author of The Viral Hit,
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  The Almanac of Naval Ravicon, Eric distills brilliance into blueprints. He curated a roadmap to
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  wealth, happiness and freedom that has impacted millions. What authors need is someone to help them
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  professionalize the ideas that they have, package it up in the right way and get it out into the
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  market. Nobody gives a shit what you want them to know. They want what serves them, deliver
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  things that the reader wants. You can't start with too specific of a final vision, you just start
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  with whatever raw material excites you and I think it's part of why my books are so unique. He sees
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  business not as hustle but as leverage into stills timeless insight into practical frameworks,
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  an entrepreneur, product builder and lifelong learner. Eric's obsession with compound thinking
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  and digital leverage has made him one of the clearest minds in modern business. If you're chasing
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  freedom he's already drawn the map. We forget how insanely unique we all are and from that point of
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  view nobody else in the world could write your book the way you're going to write it. You never know
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  who you're going to help with your unique story and how it gets shared.
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  Eric I'm excited to do this. It's going to be a lot of fun. I think to kick it off
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  very easy question, easy but difficult question. If you look back, if I had a lot of different
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  seasons to your life, your career, a lot of ups, a lot of downs, what would be a major inflection point?
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  When you were childhood, early adult, major inflection point that sort of pushed you on the path
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  that you're on today? Probably the single biggest one was they kind of build on each other
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  but joining my first startup. My plan was to do three degrees in five years at college and then
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  I got basically an internship after a year between years four and five that just suddenly turned
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  into a job. I was going to go do like three months with this guy that I really admired
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  both Fishback. I was going to intern for him at a nonprofit and he is like my first day of work.
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  He's like, welcome. I'm going to quit my job and go start a company. Do you want to stay here?
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  As I'll hire you here or do you want to come with me to the startup? I was like, Foggia,
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  let's go start a company. I just never went back to school for my last year and I just kind of
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  through a duffle bag in a car and started my life. What was the first startup?
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  It was called Zarlay. It was like before 2011, before Uber was doing rides. We were doing rides
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  the airport. It was like a marketplace for everything from the very beginning. Before Uber,
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  before Instacart, and then we just watched these kind of verticals get all picked off. It was an
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  incredible ride. Spent about 10 years there, moved out to San Francisco, got just like pulled into
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  the world. It was fantastic. When did you, I mean, we're going to, we can go through the whole
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  backstory and origin story and that could probably be an hour in and of itself. But when did you
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  actually start to get into the world of writing, of writing your own book, of authors, of publishing?
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  When was that point in your life? I've kind of always been a self-educator. I remember
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  getting in trouble for staying up late reading and never quite having the sense that the classroom
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  was teaching me everything that I wanted to know. And in college, I was listening to podcasts on
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  the way to, on the way to school and on the way to class and being like, this guy I'm listening
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  to on the podcast knows more than this professor. Like, what am I doing? Like, how am I allocating my
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  time here? And so just picking up biographies and starting to read and then getting into the,
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  the real world and realizing like a lot of what I'd learned in college was not necessarily what I
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  needed to know to succeed in the real world. And I, I did my first real writing project was,
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  I called it Evergreen. And my goal was like, find these truly important Evergreen resources.
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  And so I had a little tiny newsletter like 20 people who were friends and I would email a lot
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  of topic and I'd be like, all right, this week I'm trying to learn about network effects or
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  you know, cost-cutting or competitive advantages. And everybody would like send me a resource and
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  then I would spend the week like deep diving all that stuff and I'd write a little summary of
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  what I learned to link back to the original stuff. And it grew like crazy. Like, you know,
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  probably 10 or 20,000 subscribers within a year. That's not bad. That's actually not bad.
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  And I just learned so much doing it and that that really showed me, it gave me faith in sort of
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  the internet as like a meritocratic place to create content. And if I just keep doing things that
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  are good for me in sharing the results, then people will appreciate it. I will become better as a result.
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  And you know, that the whole world becomes a little brighter and that led to the book and everything
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  else. Do you find that there's some relation between writing as a hobby as a pastime and I mean
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  optimal performance, being able to problem solve things through complex ideas, any any correlation?
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  Sometimes for sure, but not always. I think there are people who's like superpowers that go with
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  or come along with writing. And there are some people who superpowers are just totally like on
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  a different axis. And you know, if you're not a writer, you can be successful without writing.
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  But if you're a person who either thinks by writing or whose advantages come from like very
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  methodical thought and sharing that, like Paul Graham, I think comes to mind. It's maybe the
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  most obvious example. There are, you know, Patrick Collison very famously has like a writing culture
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  inside stripe. But like, I don't think Elon's doing a lot of writing. I don't think Steve Jobs
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  probably did a lot of writing. And like does meetings ironically, like everybody's like talking
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  about meetings. He's like, he's just in meetings all the fucking time. So I think there's there's a lot
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  of ways to win. But I think for a certain kind of person, writing is part and parcel of thinking
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  clearly and communicating those thoughts clearly and building your coalition or scaling your culture
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  or reaching your customers. And there's a lot of good that comes with it into your point. Like
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  it's clarifying, you know, and helps you find out when you're when you're bullshitting yourself
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  basically or when you're about to and you catch yourself. When did you when did you so you have
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  gone through like sort of multiple versions of entrepreneurship? Where did scribe come into your
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  story? Scribe. Okay. Well, so scribe the company started maybe 10 years ago, like Tucker Maxson's
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  echo brought founded the company originally. And they built it up over, you know, eight or 10 years
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  or so. And then I became a customer of scribe in 2018, 2019. So I had written a draft of the
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  manuscript for the Almanac and of all. And I was like, I just had tweeted like, what do I do with
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  a manuscript? I think I got a manuscript like, what do I do with this thing? How do I turn it into a
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  book? And Tucker Max and I had been sort of, I don't know, Twitter friends. We've been reading
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  shows blogs for a while. And he was like, let me help. I know just what to do. Um, I was like, all
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  right. So we got on a call with Tucker. He sort of gave me the like the lay of the land of publishing.
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  And before this, you had like no idea. Like when you were so before this, you were just consuming
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  Navale's content. You just were like, anyone else on Twitter, he writes great threads. I love what
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  he's doing. Then you tweeted this. That was it? Like serious? Were you like serious about
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  turning this into a body of work or was this kind of just like an off the cuff late night tweet?
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  It was pretty, it was pretty off the cuff. It was pretty off the cuff. I had been following
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  Navale since 2010, maybe like he was presented to me. It was like, if you want to understand Silicon
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  Valley and the startup world, read everything from Navale and read everything from program. And like,
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  you will have a good sense of the tent poles of like the startup world and you'd be off the good
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  start. It was all right. Great. Done. So I read all of everything. Um, and that was when I started.
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  And so I'd been following him for 10 years. I'd learned a ton from him. And then, you know,
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  one night I just tweeted, you know, it was right after he did the, um, the podcast with Shane
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  Parrish on the knowledge project. I thought that was one of the most incredible podcasts episodes
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  I've ever listened to. I was doing it three times in a week. And I was just brokenhearted that
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  wisdom of this caliber that I think is like timeless, universal, applicable wisdom that can help
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  almost any planet person on the planet was like lost in this like unsearchable kind of niche media
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  subculture that was podcasting, especially, and still is podcasting, but especially in 2016,
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  maybe when that thing came out 2017. Um, and so I just the tweet, I think was, uh, you know,
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  if I collected some of Naval's most important ideas and the book of Navalage was my pun that I
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  was very proud of. Um, and like, clever. Would you, would you want it? And then, you know,
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  this is, that's my 30 p.m. brain. And then went to bed. And I woke up and Naval had retweeted it
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  and 5,000 people were like, oh my god, yes, please do this. And by the way, also 2,000 people were like
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  shut up. This is a bad idea, which just for posterity is important to say. Um, and I was surprised
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  that all had been like, yeah, sure, go ahead. Like, I'll give you whatever you need. And I was like,
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  oh, okay, this went from like, you know, off the cuff remark to like, I got a job to do. And
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  I just chose to take it seriously. And I, you know, what I thought was going to take three months,
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  ended up taking three years. Um, and I just went maximum effort. And I am not known as being a
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  perfectionist in most areas of my life, but I became a perfectionist about this.
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  I was trying to figure out the timeline. So that's how you got involved with scribe and Tucker
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  Mac. And so Tucker, my god, Tucker, I mean, I've actually been going back and forth with Tucker to
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  get him on the show. But the Tucker that I knew growing up was the guy that was writing, um, like
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  the most ridiculous stories, right? Like you wrote some ridiculous shit. And when I was in high
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  school, I think if my timeline's correct, whatever, like grade, maybe, maybe before high school,
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  I can't remember when his book, he was writing the most ridiculous stories of his like adventures
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  with his friends and like women and bars and dating and all this shit. And then he like went,
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  we went dark for a period of time. Like I heard nothing from him. And then scribe was the company
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  that he, but it's so interesting because, um, I would assume that even when he started scribe,
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  like the type of author that you became where you were amalgamating ideas, that's not even the
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  normal type of author he was serving. He was just serving people that were publishing books like
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  with their, their own quote unquote insight. Yeah. And Tucker is, um, Tucker's a brilliant writer,
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  like weird start to his career, but like an internet OG. I mean, before blogs existed,
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  he was basically writing blogs. He was one of the very first like blogger to book,
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  like transitions. And he, you know, he's one of, I think, I think only him and Malcolm Gladwell
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  have ever had four New York Times bestsellers on the list at the same time or some crazy stat
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  like that. He sold millions of copies. He's an absolute savant. Um, he's a brilliant writer.
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  He's brilliant and helping people find their voice. He's an incredibly, uh, he's an incredible
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  truth teller. And so he will, that's such a service as an author and so many people would,
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  I mean, the origin of scribe was just, I think his friends calling him and being like,
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  how do I write a book? What do I do at the book? How do I know who's bullshitting me? Is this a book
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  idea? Is this a real book? And, you know, the beautiful thing about Tucker is like,
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  he tells the truth so often and so clearly, even when it's hurtful that you know when he's like,
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  no, dude, this is good. That he truly thinks it's good. Um, and I think people really needed that
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  and he, it was an incredible vision that he had about the publishing industry, having come through
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  it as an author to be like, nobody needs these big traditional publishers. Like what authors need is
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  someone to help them professionalize the ideas that they have, package it up in the right way
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  and get it out into the market. And they need, they need to be able to own their rights and retain
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  full creative control and all the final decisions over their book and they need to own their royalties.
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  And it's a very simple, it's a very simple insight. It's a very simple model, but it's not the way
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  publishing has been done for the last 100 years. And he was, you know, one of the first to see that
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  10 years ago and really like turn this into an industry, um, this now served, you know,
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  thousands and thousands of authors. You know, he's an absolute visionary in that. It's just
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  democratizing. It's democratizing the industry. And I think that it like, I mean, if you,
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  if you look at your favorite authors that work with some big publisher names, um, and we all kind
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  of know the big names, um, unless you're a huge name, that first deal that you're going to get
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  is not a great deal for you. Like that, unless you are, I mean, like realists, I know people
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  that write their first time books and it doesn't matter which publishing house you get, they're not
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  putting the, the marketing and energy and resources towards you. You're trying to figure it out
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  yourself. They're helping you with maybe some distribution. That's, that's really it. But you
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  are selling that book yourself. Don't expect to go to insert big publisher name here and they're
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  going to sell a million copies because that's not the case. Yeah. You, you are ultimately the CEO of
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  your book, regardless, you know, and so you may as well capture the full upside. And actually,
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  it's even worse than, um, I think what you said is, is correct. But it's even worse than that,
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  which is that a lot of the entry level deals for traditional publishers include authors
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  guaranteeing the publisher X number of sales. So like, sure, you get a $10,000 advance, which
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  you're guaranteeing, you know, $50,000 worth of books being sold out of your own pocket.
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  They're like, that's crazy town. You're sort of ideating on the, the Almanac. You take it to
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  Tucker. He's like, did he say great idea? Because I think the, the 2000, for example, negative
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  comments would be along the lines of, um, who are you to summarize Neval's ideas into a book
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  and basically profit off of his intellect and his wisdom? I mean, Neval made it very, very clear,
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  publicly and privately. He's like, I do not want to earn money from this book. I want it to be
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  clear that I'm not earning money from this book. Um, and he says in the book, like if somebody wrote
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  something to make money, don't read it. Um, and we have given the book away for free to millions,
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  that we sold a million and a half copies, but we've given it away to millions and millions more.
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  Um, so I kind of came into this as like, I know this project will make me better.
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  I know that there's, you know, at least a thousand true Neval fans like me who will enjoy
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  something like this. I'm, I cannot overstate how shocked I am at how many different corners of
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  the world this book has found its way into. Like, my mind is blown, um, that like yoga teachers
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  and Bali are reading this book. I like, I'm just like truly thought it would be a really,
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  really niche audience. Um, but I'm glad to see it. No, I'm glad you put it together because like,
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  you know, I'm, I'm playing devil's advocate, but truthfully, like, I think that, I think that
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  finding ways to take, you know, very niche idea, very great ideas that are universally applicable,
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  but are only really consumed by a very niche audience and finding a way to, to sort of spread
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  that knowledge of the world as an incredible thing to do. Um, what was the, what do you think,
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  you know, when you look at all the different ideas that you brought into this book, what,
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  how did you select the universally universally applicable ones and maybe just some wisdom for
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  other authors that are trying to figure out what to put in their body of work versus what to leave
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  out so that it has the highest chance of like commercial success. Yeah, so I think, um,
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  when my process is weird because I'm starting with a huge body of work, but I started,
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  my napkin math is like, there were um, well over a million words of like source material
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  that I worked from. Everything that I've all had ever shared publicly, like, went into the pot
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  and I just tried to cook it all down and cook it all down and the final book is like 40,
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  maybe 50,000 words. Um, and that it just is like doing a giant jigsaw puzzle and so it's trying
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  to like pick up every idea, understand it, figure out which idea is it connects to you,
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  how to create a thread through them and, you know, ultimately my first draft, it's like funny
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  and retrospective. My first draft was like 150,000 words. It was like a massive thing and I sent
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  it to my friends and I was like, tell me what you think of the book and they're like, they're all
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  of them. We're like, I really liked what I read, but I did not shit. That was like, okay, thank you.
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  Which parts did you jump to? What did you skip? Like where, you know, where were you excited to
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  flip to? Um, and it was just a process of like cutting out anything that didn't really vibe
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  with people. Uh, and, and that was heartbreaking because there's a bunch of something that I thought
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  was really interesting that I love that I wanted people to know. And Tucker has got great lines
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  that I've now adopted on this, which is like, nobody gives a shit what you want them to know. Like,
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  they want what serves them. Like, who are you? You're not prescribing. You're not lecturing.
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  Like nobody wants to be on the receiving end of a lecture. Um, deliver things that the reader wants
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  and so much of, of so many of Naval's ideas really speak to like universal desires, as you said.
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  And so it was really a process of like getting rid of niche things, um, getting rid of anything
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  contemporary and making sure that it was, you know, I truly think we got this book to a point
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  where any human being on earth can pick it up and take away at least one useful idea from it
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  that can, that if applied can change their life. Truly like no matter what your circumstances are,
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  this book can do something for you. Did you have a process for testing which ideas resonated
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  with an audience that again, somebody, again, so someone like me, I have a huge body of work.
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  I don't know what to put into a book. I have my own thoughts. I have, you know, I could do some
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  tools of Titan type stuff like Tim Ferris did. Pretty easy to do that. But is there, uh, is there
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  a framework or a process or even like a focus group? I don't know if people still do those,
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  but maybe focus group or just hit up your friends and texted them and we're like, hey,
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  does this idea hit awesome? I'm going to include it. Yeah. I mean, I think this is the, the open secret
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  of like so many of the greatest authors of this sort of decade. Like James Clear was a blogger.
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  He spent years writing that book, tweeting, seeing the responses of different tweets,
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  putting things in newsletters, talking to people, doing talks, seeing what resonated in
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  different blog posts. And he was so methodical about that book itself. This is also Morgan
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  Housel story. This is also Tim Ferris' story. Um, in a way, this is Neville's, right? Like the
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  internet had already made Neville popular for these ideas. And I wasn't systematic in like,
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  I'm going to make sure all of the most liked tweets are in this book. That's not how I
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  approached it. It was much more curatorial of like what's the most useful thing? How do they all
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  fit together? Um, and then just removing things that people found boring. And so I think process-wise,
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  to your point, like you have a lot of data. You have a lot of information already just based on
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  historical behavior, what people have found interesting. Um, you could look at replays on the
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  YouTube, on your YouTube, like they, you could look at what clips are performing. You could look at
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  your open rates. You could look at, uh, on different subject lines. You could look at,
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  you can export your whole tweet history and look at the likes and retweets on those things.
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  There's so much data available to you as a creator who's like gone through this for years and
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  years and years. And then once you're in book form, I really, I've become a believer in the, like,
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  the, you know, beta readers. And so I get to some point in the manuscript where I'm like,
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  I don't know how I'm good. I'm reaching my crossroads of like, I'm not, I don't have high
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  conviction in the decisions I'm about to make, but I think this is getting good, but I feel like
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  I'm slowing down on it. So I'm going to take a snapshot version of this manuscript. I'm a stop
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  working on it. I'm going to send it to 25 people. They're all going to read the same version
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  manuscript. I'm going to have a call with each of them. I'm going to ask them all the same questions.
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  And I'm going to see what they recall. I'm going to see what they're excited to talk about. I'm
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  going to see what parts they skipped. I'm going to. And then, you know, you can't overweight on
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  any one person and you want them all to read the same thing. And then you just use your judgment
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  to process all of that and try to get a, you know, diverse group of people so that you got a
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  different set of opinions. And I found that to be a really, really good way. And then just
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  frankly, having the balls to edit and edit and edit and keep cutting and remember that nothing
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  is wasted. You know, maybe, maybe you're writing two books at once and your scrap goes into
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  the start of the next book. Maybe it goes into the blog. Maybe it goes into marketing.
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  But it really helps to know that you're not just, you know, lighting that work on fire when you
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  pull it out of the manuscript, but you're doing a favor to the core book and you're building something,
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  you're getting another asset out of the sawdust basically. How do you launch a book that's self-published?
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  Take it to market, sell it, all of that. It's pretty simple. I mean, it's the same things you do
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  if it's, if it's traditionally published. The difference is just that you own the whole upside.
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  You know, it is a process of like gathering your people around you, preparing them for this book
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  that's coming, asking for what you need, being organized. There's some things that you do that are
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  like, it depends a lot on the book and the goal. And now, you know, in my role at scrap, I've gotten
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  to take, you know, more and more authors through this. And it's always a process of trying to understand
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  what each individual author is trying to achieve with their book. And the tactics, the specific
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  tactics are changing sometimes like year to year or quarter to quarter, but it's a really,
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  you know, you get listed on a few distribution platforms. You sort of inventory your assets,
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  where your audience is, come up with compelling offers, come up with messaging, and you try to
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  orchestrate a big launch. But then the real game is like, do you just keep marching and keep driving
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  impressions on this book for weeks and months and years down the line? I think a lot of authors
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  main mistake is like over and next on the launch. And then you never talk about their book again
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  after, you know, a month after they launch it. It's like, how many times do you have to hear about
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  a book before you actually buy it? Let alone a lot. A lot. A lot. Yeah. A lot. And like, I mean, like,
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  atomic habits has been around for forever. But now like people after hearing about it on
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  10 podcasts, like, finally, they'll go and get it. So I mean, it takes a lot of events because
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  you're, you're, it's somebody's time and energy, right? And, and that's really what you're tapping
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  into. It's not the 25 bucks or the 30 bucks. It's like a week of somebody's life or a month of
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  somebody's life or, you know, the, the, the, the parameter I use for, for me, whether or not I want
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  to consume a book is like, okay, is it worth me downloading this unaudible for like my five hour
• 22:50
  flight? Is that worth it to me? Is this what I want to spend my flight doing? And there's a lot of
• 22:55
  options. There's a lot of options out there. So you again, it's going to take a lot to convince
• 22:59
  somebody to actually consume that content. Was there any, what, you're going to say something or
• 23:04
  no? Oh, I can't if you want me to. I think that goes back exactly exactly to go for it. Go for it. Go
• 23:10
  for it. Yeah. Dude, that comes back exactly to like, what is the reader's benefit? Like,
• 23:15
  nobody's going to sit down and spend six hours reading a book that you think they should read.
• 23:20
  They're going to send six hour. They're going to choose the book that they think makes their life
• 23:24
  the most better, the soonest, right? Like, what problem are you trying to solve? If this book is
• 23:29
  going to help me solve that problem, I'm going to pick that up right now and take it to my flight.
• 23:32
  And I'm going to listen to this thing. And hopefully I got new ideas for how to solve this problem
• 23:35
  and improve my life by the time I land. Like, if that's how your book feels to people and you've
• 23:40
  trimmed out all the other bullshit, like, it'll go. You know, I think, you know, you asked how to
• 23:46
  launch a book. And I ultimately like, I don't know how to sell books. Like, I only know how to
• 23:51
  write books that people sell to each other. Like, when you read a book, it's rarely because you
• 23:58
  saw an advertisement for the book or were just randomly scrolling and saw one impression on it.
• 24:04
  It's because your friend who read it said, this book is fucking awesome. It talks about solving
• 24:10
  exactly the problems that we were just talking about last week. I just read it. You should read it.
• 24:14
  Here it is. Like, so in that way, like being doing the work to start the flywheel of word of mouth
• 24:20
  and start people talking about your book, recommending it, you know, getting it as an author
• 24:25
  invited on a podcast or newsletters. And it just, that's the flywheel that has to get started.
• 24:30
  And you just have to keep pushing to get that thing started, no matter how hard it is.
• 24:34
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• 27:43
  Was there anything that did surprise you about the success of the book or the reach or the
• 27:50
  I think you said like over a million copies now. So was there anything that
• 27:55
  sort of threw you off in a good or bad way? I mean, I'm still blown away by the whole thing,
• 28:00
  like frankly. Fair. I feel like I feel like it's a fairytale like to some extent of like, you know,
• 28:10
  I just was trying to write a book for for some nerds like me. And you know, now we sold a million
• 28:16
  copies like that's and it's interesting how often that's the story actually, right? Like
• 28:23
  when you ask Tucker Maxx, his like origin story of writing, he's like, I was just writing emails
• 28:27
  to my friends to make them laugh. And Tim Ferrett when Tim Ferris said down to write his book,
• 28:32
  he struggled until he's like, he literally started writing in an email window. It's like talking to
• 28:38
  a friend. And it just you are very surprised how often really being really obsessed about
• 28:45
  targeting a small audience can turn into a big audience like with how connected everything is
• 28:50
  and how how universal the problems are that we are all thinking about and all trying to solve in
• 28:55
  our own lives. So yeah, I'm still I'm still shocked by the whole thing. But I'm just so appreciative
• 29:03
  for how far it's gone and everybody who's been so supportive and you know, those people who
• 29:09
  bought and gifted hundreds of copies of this book to like everybody they work with,
• 29:13
  everybody in their lives, their whole company, their whole client lists, like it's it's really
• 29:20
  it's unbelievable. And I think you know that did just speak so like more so than anything like
• 29:25
  what Naval has, how gifted of a distiller he is and how broadly and how thoughtfully he's
• 29:34
  figured out these little nuggets of wisdom to share. One thing that you you just said I thought
• 29:39
  was so prolific. And whether or not you're you're collecting these ideas from someone else and
• 29:45
  you're finding a new way to present them to the world or you're you're coming up with these ideas
• 29:49
  yourself and you're you're distilling them down into a podcast book, whatever. I think that
• 29:54
  the the hack of this strategy, like you said, to to great content. Well, first, the reason why
• 30:02
  content sucks is because we're writing, we're communicating or we're teaching in a way that we
• 30:09
  think the other person wants to receive it. But I think that we're too caught up in our process
• 30:14
  and we're overthinking how they want to receive the communication or they want to receive the
• 30:18
  the piece of content. I think that when we just get into flow state and create content for ourselves,
• 30:23
  we end up creating content for other people as opposed to almost like over architecting
• 30:29
  content for other people, which I think actually ends up creating a little bit too much distance
• 30:34
  from from what they want and what we're creating. I think we can get in our own heads about it
• 30:38
  quite a bit. I think that screws up content across the board. I think so. And it either like as
• 30:43
  soon as you try to do that, you either end up becoming patronizing or elitist almost immediately.
• 30:50
  And like whether you're writing, if you wrote a blog post for yourself a week ago,
• 30:56
  that would actually be a really interesting exercise. Like when I thought about writing this book,
• 30:59
  I thought about what 21 year old me would really, really want and need to hear. You know, like
• 31:09
  and that is just such a clarifying thing. Writing for one person is so liberating and so clarifying
• 31:17
  because we've all had the experience of sitting across from somebody at a table like a friend or
• 31:21
  family member and them asking us earnest questions about like things that we know and we're like,
• 31:27
  you know, you spend an hour sharing things and you're like, I think I helped that person.
• 31:31
  They did a lot of nodding and smiling. Like I think that was useful and I feel great about it.
• 31:35
  That is so much easier mentally than, you know, some authors really get stuck because they feel like
• 31:41
  they're, you may feel this way, especially with the audience size that you have, you feel like
• 31:45
  you're sitting on a stage every time you go to write and you're trying to write something that is
• 31:49
  going to like please this whole auditorium of faceless people that you're imagining the way that I,
• 31:55
  so the way that I look at an interview and I've never really spoken about this, but this is something
• 31:59
  that this is I think useful for some creators, hopefully. So when I'm talking to you and if I've
• 32:05
  over prepared and I know exactly how I'd like the podcast to go, when you are answering me,
• 32:11
  I see like one one question in my mind, I can only think of like one possible question and that's
• 32:16
  the only direction I can take the conversation. If I under prepare, not if I under prepare,
• 32:22
  if I, if I know directly where I want it to go and understand enough about the subject that we're
• 32:27
  going to be talking about, when you're answering me, I can see like three or four different ways
• 32:31
  that we can take the conversation, all very useful, but ultimately I'm going to lean into the one that
• 32:36
  is most natural. So it just feels like there's like this choose your own adventure. I have like five
• 32:41
  different options that have like one or two and I'm assuming when you're writing, it's very much,
• 32:45
  it's very similar. Like you, if you don't, if you don't start with this very rigid structure,
• 32:51
  if you're just like free, free like a flowing writing, then you will start to probably think through
• 32:58
  ideas that you originally did not even think we're going to be included in the book, but they're
• 33:01
  just going to present themselves the more you put words on paper. Yeah, I think that's right. In
• 33:05
  my experience, both as a writer and a podcaster, like it's, it has to be emergent. You, you,
• 33:12
  you can't start with two specific of a final vision. You just start with whatever raw material
• 33:16
  excites you and just be ready to sort of react and move. And that makes every episode that you do
• 33:23
  unique from a host perspective, it makes every episode I do unique from a guest perspective.
• 33:28
  And I think it's part of why my books are so unique. Like I gave it to an early, a friend
• 33:33
  who I respect very much in an early read. And I gave it to him and he's like, what is this?
• 33:38
  And I was like, what do you mean? It's a book. He's like, yeah, but like, what genre is it?
• 33:43
  It's like, I don't know. And he's like, he's like, I don't, I don't want to give you like this is not,
• 33:50
  this is not a good nor bad feedback. But I think you've invented a genre. And I was like,
• 33:55
  oh, that's very interesting. I had not considered that, but it's because I started like so blank,
• 34:02
  slate. I truly, I didn't even know if it was going to be a book. I just started with here's
• 34:06
  all of Naval's things he's ever shared. This is incredible raw material. Like, what can I do
• 34:12
  to help other people access these ideas? Talk to me, talk to me about this, this black swan event,
• 34:17
  this, this shit hitting the fan moment. All right. All right. So very quick, like, publish the
• 34:20
  Almanac in of all 2020 had an incredible experience, life changing. Like one of the biggest,
• 34:26
  probably the biggest inflection point in my professional life was publishing that book. And I was like,
• 34:31
  scribe was incredible. This model is the future of publishing. I became a huge fan of the company.
• 34:36
  I love everybody I worked with there. I'm super grateful to Tucker and Zach for like helping me get
• 34:40
  that thing out of the world. And I was like, all right. So I became a huge evangelist and I
• 34:44
  immediately started working on my next book. And so a few years later, I came around to publish
• 34:48
  the anthology of biology, which is similar kind of compilation about biology sharing of
• 34:52
  us on ideas. And I was about halfway through publishing that was scribe, obviously,
• 34:57
  when this used like rumors started swirling online that like scribe had
• 35:02
  collapsed and disappeared and gone bankrupt. And I was like, there's no way. Like I was there
• 35:08
  three weeks ago visiting them in the office. Like their sponsor in my podcast, I'm working on a book
• 35:13
  I would know if anything was wrong, right? And so I started making some phone calls and it turns out
• 35:19
  Tucker and Zach had they had sold their shares about a year and a half ago. It publicly had done
• 35:23
  this and stepped away. And the guy who took over the company, basically without getting too
• 35:29
  too deep into it, like did a bad job. And did a bad job. Very normal post exit. A lot of people screw
• 35:36
  up an acquisition. So yeah, that screwing up an acquisition is one thing. I think there was like,
• 35:43
  Tucker wrote a very, very thorough post about this that is like really, really incredible sort of
• 35:48
  business post-mortem that gets into some of the like, not just tactical mistakes, but
• 35:53
  psychological underpinnings of like how someone without really the right accountability structure
• 35:59
  can kind of go off the rails. And it seems like it turned into a very deceitful situation,
• 36:06
  which is why it was so surprising to everybody like employees, team vendors, everything. So
• 36:11
  scribe just like bankruptcy, like a brick wall in basically June of 2023.
• 36:17
  I was on through it. True, like chapter 11, like what was the or was it just close to it?
• 36:24
  Like zero dollars left in the bank by the time anybody knew what was going on.
• 36:28
  Oh shit. Okay. Nearly immediate bankruptcy because there had been like, this is all sort of a
• 36:34
  legit and there's like public records about the whole. Yeah, only what is public. I don't want to
• 36:37
  get anyone in trouble. Yeah, the public stuff. The alleged stuff is like fabricating financial
• 36:43
  statements, lying false and doing very serious shit. It's not just fucking up a business and not
• 36:47
  knowing what you're doing. It's like trying to cover it up too. Yeah, there's like, and again,
• 36:52
  these are allegations accusations like we haven't the trials are not all complete to know exactly
• 36:56
  all of what happened, but like be very, very careful who you sell your business to is like a good
• 37:02
  moral disorder. And truly like what Tucker wrote is an incredible, incredible post that does what
• 37:08
  I've never seen another business post-wardom do about like truly the psychology of the leaders
• 37:13
  and how different decisions get made at different points. It's an incredible piece of writing
• 37:17
  and it's very illuminating. But the bottom line is that this business went bankrupt like overnight
• 37:23
  to everyone's surprise and in catastrophic fashion. And I was one of the customers who lost
• 37:27
  money, got like caught up in this as an author. And I was like, man, this like this just sucks. This
• 37:34
  so tragic. Me and hundreds of other authors are screwed. The team is screwed, which is full of
• 37:40
  people that I worked with closely through both of these books. And I loved and I admired. I believe
• 37:45
  this business model is very important to the future of publishing. And I rely on them as an author.
• 37:50
  So like, is there anything I can do? And so I started making some phone calls. And I happen to
• 37:56
  know some people who have bought companies in the past and work in either, you know, holding companies
• 38:00
  or private equity or permanent equity. And so these guys see even Xavier of enduring ventures
• 38:07
  have a background in publishing and in sort of distressed asset situations. And they flew to Austin
• 38:12
  and they met the team and they're like, these people are incredible and they worked with the bank.
• 38:16
  And they figured out how to put all the pieces together. Like, I'm not a, I'm not a deals guy,
• 38:19
  so I don't know all the details of it. But like they bought the the brand and the some of the assets
• 38:24
  out of the bankruptcy hired over some of the veterans from the team. And to my surprise,
• 38:30
  then after that was done, called me and said, we need somebody to come lead this company. And we
• 38:35
  think that should be you. And I was like, oh, okay, let me let me think about it. So that was,
• 38:43
  it was a summer of 2023. And it was like, you know, some long dark nights and conversations
• 38:52
  with my wife to decide if this was like something that we wanted to take on. But I just
• 38:56
  was such a believer in the business and in this group of people and the business was in such a
• 39:02
  tough situation. And I felt sort of uniquely able to make a real difference to this group of people's
• 39:09
  lives. And it's a vision that I have believed in as a customer and now get to kind of show up as
• 39:17
  as a publisher and as a author now with at least a little bit of experience and help other people
• 39:22
  go through this portal that I went through to become an author in the same way that like talker
• 39:27
  helped me, you know, five, six years ago. So it's a really an crazy journey for the first year,
• 39:33
  but it's super rewarding already. And I think I think we've got a great road ahead.
• 39:37
  So just business strategy, how do you revive a debt company or or I mean bankrupt. I mean,
• 39:44
  it's pretty synonymous with debt. I mean, you can't get much more, you can't get in a
• 39:48
  shadier position than that. So what's the strategy to bring this back to life? By the way,
• 39:53
  did you bring talker back in? Did they have any interest in sort of helping like build this
• 39:58
  thing back up? Tucker and Zach, no official roles, but they've both been like very helpful
• 40:04
  privately. And you know, they just wanted to see see described brand and all this like value
• 40:10
  that they created. I think not end in a smoldering crater, which is kind of where it was headed.
• 40:15
  And you know, there are no perfect solutions or into any of the things when the disaster is
• 40:22
  this big. But I do think we made a lot of progress. I made it a lot of people's lives much
• 40:27
  better than they would have been otherwise. Through this, you know, we basically had to start in
• 40:32
  brand new company just bought the brand hired over some of the team. And so operationally,
• 40:39
  it's like starting a business from scratch. Emotionally, you have a lot of work to do because
• 40:45
  the whole team has just gone through this incredibly traumatic event where they were
• 40:50
  their whole the sky fell, you know, the world fell out from under them in a way that they
• 40:57
  had no idea was even possible. And so there's a lot of trust to rebuild inside the team with the
• 41:03
  community with authors. It's a mix of like you got to do something like your hair is on fire.
• 41:10
  And you've also got to be patient and allow that trust battery to kind of recharge and just do
• 41:16
  great work with the work that's on your desk until you know, you've got a reputation to reestablish.
• 41:23
  So that's just what we focused on for the first year and a half. Do you think there? I mean,
• 41:26
  there's obviously a ton you're doing. But just some think of some like industry agnostic
• 41:33
  transferable idea that you've deployed in the past year and a half when you've burnt trust with
• 41:40
  customers and with employees because that is a universal universally applicable problem that CEOs
• 41:47
  founders entrepreneurs deal with. What would be one idea that you think has worked particularly
• 41:52
  well, building that trust back. Well, you tactically or strategically or we can open into question
• 41:58
  and interpret it as you see fit. It doesn't matter to me. I think that just I think the goal is to
• 42:04
  think of an entrepreneur that maybe hopefully I didn't go bankrupt, but maybe they raised money from
• 42:10
  a bad investor or maybe they hired someone that burnt a customer. Maybe they hired a VP that
• 42:16
  let down their team and they're trying to build that trust back. I mean, that's that's a really
• 42:20
  difficult thing that they don't really teach you in an MBA program. Is there anything that you can
• 42:25
  point to theoretically or tactically that you think is like a useful insight for someone listening?
• 42:31
  I think the thing that has worked for me is the most human version of the conversation that you
• 42:38
  can possibly have as quickly and openly as you can have it. And a lot of times that means just
• 42:46
  a ton of private one-to-one conversations because that's the most trust-building thing you can,
• 42:52
  that's the most trust-building forum. It's the most personal forum. It's where you can be the most
• 42:56
  candid. And there's no substitute for for that. And if you're, you know, if the business is in a
• 43:04
  space where that's even remotely doable, I would encourage people to do that. I've been really shocked
• 43:13
  how often, you know, just a face-to-face or even a phone conversation has helped. You can't,
• 43:19
  you can't take it personally and you can't win over everybody, but a lot of the people who come
• 43:25
  in extremely, extremely hot on email or text as soon as you're talking to them live, as soon as
• 43:30
  you're actually like telling the full truth of the situation or pouring your heart out,
• 43:36
  you're just showing them that you're trying. People get very human and very understanding very quickly,
• 43:42
  which, you know, yeah, nobody, very few people truly like want to be angry and want to hold onto
• 43:51
  that anger. And so you just have to like, yeah, show them the truth of what happened and show them
• 43:58
  that you're doing your best to do earnest work to rebuild that trust and that you're patient
• 44:05
  in, you know, allowing them to come along at their own pace. And, and then you just have to
• 44:10
  over-deliver on whatever the thing is that you're actually promising them that you will do going
• 44:15
  forward. No, I think that, you know, you're living another, another Paul Graham idea, which is
• 44:21
  do things that don't scale and then finally scale them. But I think that that solves most business
• 44:25
  problems. I mean, like the high friction, most authentic radical candor, like all of that,
• 44:32
  they're buzzwords, but they work, they're buzzwords for a reason because they actually work. And when
• 44:36
  you're dealing with, I mean, again, not everyone has this like widespread systemic trust issue
• 44:43
  that a bankruptcy would lead to, but still on a, on a small scale, people deal with this every
• 44:48
  single day. And I think that in the age of internet and, and texting and asynchronous communication
• 44:54
  and voice notes and email, it's very easy to forget the human component of business, which solves
• 44:58
  most problems, in my opinion, at least from my experience. In the relationships that you get out of
• 45:03
  a tough coming through a tough situation together, like, man, think about the DNA of this company
• 45:09
  after, you know, 20 people just sat at their desk through an absolute forest fire, like doing work
• 45:16
  that they didn't even know if they would get paid for just to take care of authors and take
• 45:20
  care of each other, you know, that's the team that was there and then moved on to start this
• 45:25
  new company and that like those, that is so easy to root for and be excited to work with those
• 45:32
  people and be a part of that like rebirth and resurgence of this valuable, this valuable idea.
• 45:40
  And I've talked to a bunch of people who are, you know, founders of similar businesses in the
• 45:44
  industry and they're like, thank God you brought that company back. Like that was, it was like an
• 45:50
  industry leading company two years ago and nobody knows why the problems happened and so they
• 45:56
  just look at a company that didn't work out and they say, oh, that model can't work. Like that
• 46:01
  innovation is dead and they're like, you have no idea how much like you saving a competitor helped
• 46:07
  us continue to grow our business. Like that is, I did not do that math, but that is really interesting
• 46:12
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  freshbooks.com slash pricing dash offer. Transform your business with freshbooks today. That's
• 48:20
  freshbooks.com slash pricing dash offer for 60% off. When you when you look at you know all the
• 48:28
  you work with a whole bunch of people that have built brands and and they're trying to figure out
• 48:31
  how to write their first book, I want to pull out some some wisdom from some of the authors that
• 48:37
  you deal with. First of all, should everyone have a book? That's a super easy question, but I think
• 48:41
  more complicated. I think actually I don't think it's an easy question because I think people
• 48:45
  write books for the wrong reason and write books to make money and write books for another
• 48:49
  product associated with it and write books and think they're going to be instant bestseller and
• 48:53
  should everyone write a book? I think everyone could write a book at some point along their life
• 49:00
  if they find the right reason and they find the right time and they come into it excited.
• 49:07
  I don't think everybody should write a book right now. I don't think everybody who writes a book
• 49:12
  will necessarily write a great book, but I generally I believe very strongly like more podcasts in
• 49:21
  the world is better. More movies in the world is better. More books in the world is better.
• 49:26
  These people who like, it's a different version of the like zero, some efficient market disease
• 49:31
  that is like, why would you start a podcast? There's already too many podcasts. Who the fuck
• 49:35
  decided there's too many podcasts? You today? Yeah. Was it too too many more than last week?
• 49:41
  Should we have the right number of podcasts, but not the right number of episodes? What are you
• 49:45
  even talking about? The creation of new knowledge and the sharing of new stories is a permanent
• 49:53
  state of humanity. It's part of like what makes us us and it's part of what moves the frontier
• 49:57
  forward. And I think any human being like we are all so unique. It is so we forget how insanely
• 50:05
  unique we all are. And from that point of view, nobody else in the world could write your book the
• 50:12
  way you're going to write it. And you never know who you're going to help with your unique story
• 50:17
  and how it gets shared. Like I interviewed a guy a scribe author who
• 50:24
  committed fraud, white collar crime, went to prison, wife left him, rock bottom, started writing
• 50:31
  in prison just in a diary to like process process his thoughts and like stay sane. And he realized
• 50:40
  in doing this like his mission was to just help one person, just help one person. Like if I can
• 50:47
  keep one person from avoiding this disaster situation that I'm in, all this effort will be worth it.
• 50:53
  And that's what drove him to publish this book. And he ended up at his, he's like great
• 50:58
  ants book club with like a bunch of little old ladies. And he was talking to this woman
• 51:04
  who read 85 year old lady who just read his book and was like, you know, I lost my husband six
• 51:11
  months ago. And I had a stroke three months ago. And I feel like at 85 I met my rock bottom. And
• 51:20
  your book showed me through your experience how much more I have to live for and how much better
• 51:28
  things can be and how optimistic I can be and how I can help others and how I can still enjoy
• 51:33
  every day. You didn't get any point. This guy who committed a white collar crime and wrote a book
• 51:38
  in prison thought he was going to help an 85 year old woman who was a widow who had a stroke.
• 51:43
  Like it is, these stories every author has their own version of this story. And it's just
• 51:50
  no one is going to tell your story your way. No one's going to have your experience and be able
• 51:55
  to frame it in your exact way. And you know, the way I look at it is like you don't want to die
• 52:01
  with all of these things that you learned stuck in your head. And books are the way that we immortalize
• 52:08
  our lessons. It's, it's thousands of years old. It's the great conversation of humanity. It's
• 52:13
  this super Lindy format that so many of us aspire to write one day. And you don't have to wait
• 52:21
  until you're like, you know, 85, write a book and then keel over and not like it's, you know,
• 52:26
  you can write a book as you go. And so many times it creates these inflection points in people's
• 52:31
  careers. So many times it helps them, you know, transition careers or find their people or find a
• 52:38
  new community or build their business or find their spouse like or do like an audit of their own
• 52:46
  life. I think when I write, dude, when I write, sometimes I'm like, man, what the, like, I'm
• 52:52
  teaching myself, like I know this stuff already that I'm writing, obviously. But then when you put
• 52:58
  when you put your thoughts to paper and you are like teaching something or talking through a story
• 53:02
  and you're like, damn, like it's much easier to teach. And I'm not even living the life that I'm
• 53:07
  saying other people should live or I'm not even internalizing and actioning on the lessons
• 53:12
  that I'm telling someone else to action on, whether or not it's a book or a tweet, it like,
• 53:15
  it forces you to take a good hard look at yourself because I look at my Twitter sometimes,
• 53:19
  dude, I'm like, man, that person is so smart. If only, if only I knew that person. But you,
• 53:25
  I'm just the same with the book. It's the same with any kind of content you create. It just
• 53:29
  forces you to take a look inside and realize, like, who are you really? I think it is the best
• 53:34
  mirror you can possibly find. Yeah. And it's an incredibly rewarding creative journey to go on.
• 53:40
  Like for me, it was the first one. Like podcast is tough. I'm curious how you relate to this.
• 53:44
  Like you're never done with a podcast. You know, it's not like writing a book or shooting a movie
• 53:51
  where you're like, man, I spent five years all in on that, but I'm really proud of it as a body
• 53:55
  of work. And now it's just on the shelf. Podcasts are just like a constant, constant TV series.
• 54:02
  It should never end. People that do seasons, seasons of podcasts, unless you are exceptionally
• 54:09
  famous and you have an audience somewhere else tap into, seasons don't benefit your podcast.
• 54:15
  Seasons just allow you to grow slower. Like if you could do a podcast per day, you would just
• 54:21
  grow quicker. Like there's an endless amount of content that people can consume. I mean, if you
• 54:25
  even look at like John Lee Dumas entrepreneurs on fire, he does a daily show that's 30 minutes.
• 54:30
  That's a wild amount of work. But people would if he doubled it up and he did two shows per day,
• 54:36
  people would just consume because there's no amount like maybe maybe you'd see a slight drop off,
• 54:42
  but I would say that there wouldn't be a significant drop off. Like there's ample time for people
• 54:48
  to consume content they like. So the more you do, the more you do, the more people will consume the
• 54:54
  faster you you'll grow the more commercially viable this podcast or project will be. And what that
• 55:01
  means is like there's no end in sight. Like there really is no end. So that being said, the content
• 55:08
  you speak about the conversations you have, the people you bring on, like you better enjoy that
• 55:14
  shit. Like you better enjoy it. And you bet if you don't, you're going to you're going to burn out.
• 55:20
  Like I would say you can't really write a book without enjoying the content, but at least there's
• 55:23
  like a finish line. So maybe I could write a book about a topic that I'm not exceptionally
• 55:27
  passionate about and maybe I could finish it and publish it. I think the content probably subpar
• 55:31
  and the reader would probably pick that up, but at least I could get it over with the podcast.
• 55:37
  You should never want to get it over with because if you do want to get it over with,
• 55:42
  you're not doing it for the right reasons. So I think that whatever cadence you pick or whatever
• 55:48
  your topic you pick or whatever guests you choose to speak to, like go into it with the assumption
• 55:54
  that it's going to there's going to be a there's going to be a reason as to why you're doing it.
• 55:59
  Maybe it's a commercial reason. Maybe it's driving traffic to a product you're selling, whatever it is.
• 56:04
  But go into it with the assumption that there is no finish line for this thing. So as long as
• 56:09
  as long as there's a net positive for, you know, ad revenue or product sales, like you can just
• 56:14
  ramp this up till forever. So you better at least enjoy doing it. That's that's my takeaway.
• 56:20
  If you go into it with a with a mindset of, oh, I only want to do a podcast for the next year.
• 56:25
  I'd be like, you know, go find another medium to create on. I don't think this is a medium for
• 56:30
  you. It doesn't make sense. So enjoy it. But I also like this is sort of like
• 56:35
  dovetailing into another conversation for just content creators in general. Like I don't
• 56:40
  necessarily think that you need to create content in a format that you don't enjoy.
• 56:43
  Like I enjoy podcasting and talking. I enjoy writing. I'm fortunate that I actually enjoy a lot
• 56:49
  of little creative pursuits. But if you hate, if if jumping on a call with somebody who's had a
• 56:55
  great career makes you so nervous that you're like, you can't even like fumble through a sentence.
• 57:00
  And you just get this like, you know, this, you get like star shock and then you screw up the
• 57:05
  content or you, or you hate yourself every time you go on to a zoom call or a riverside and you're
• 57:10
  just dreading it. Why don't you try writing on sub stack? Like just just like pick something
• 57:15
  else that you enjoy because I mean, yes, books do have a finish line. But if you enjoy writing books,
• 57:20
  I mean, I've spoken to Seth God and I've spoken to Stephen Kotler. Seth has like 21 books. Steven
• 57:25
  has like 12 or something. I don't know the exact numbers. What the point is there's a perception
• 57:30
  that you're going to finish it. But if you enjoy it, you're going to keep doing it. It doesn't
• 57:33
  matter. Maybe you're finished like that one book, but you're going to do like, you know, two, three,
• 57:37
  four, five, six, 10, 12, 20. If you enjoy it. So any creative pursuit. I don't think there's a
• 57:43
  finish line. I don't think there's a real finish line. If you actually enjoy doing it because there
• 57:47
  shouldn't be a point in a creative pursuit outside of cognitive ability and alt cymbals and dementia
• 57:53
  God forbid where you won't want to do this thing. Like most creative pursuits in my mind, you
• 57:59
  should be 90 years old and still wanting to do it and still able to do it. That to me is the
• 58:04
  hallmark of like a good creative pursuit that is aligned with with your passions, your hobbies,
• 58:09
  your, your, your perfect format. That's the way I look at it. I love that. That's how I think
• 58:14
  about books. But it's time I finish a book. I come up with a list of 10 more that I want to write.
• 58:18
  So regardless of whether or not, I mean like with a podcast, I'll do another podcast next week.
• 58:24
  Just because the book is the same. There is no finish line. There's just like a little bit more time
• 58:29
  in between your projects, but you still do it for forever if you enjoy it. And then when you
• 58:35
  enjoy it, that's when you get into this flow where you actually create content that is not only
• 58:41
  useful to your audience, but ultimately useful to you. That's the best content. That's when you
• 58:46
  actually create content that resonates. That's when you're actually successful at this pursuit.
• 58:49
  So I think that again, aligning your passions. I mean, you can do like this little Venn diagram
• 58:54
  if you guy whatever for content creation. But I think that it's the same. By the way,
• 58:59
  content creation and my views on content creation and wanting to do it till you die. I truly believe
• 59:04
  that that that mindset should bleed into your job and the work you do. It's not always easy to
• 59:12
  love the work you do. But I think that ultimately after speaking to so many people that have achieved
• 59:17
  like financial success, financial success is one metric. But like having a vocation that just like
• 59:23
  is tied into what you're good at, what you understand, what you enjoy is like this beautiful
• 59:28
  thing that I think most people should actually aspire to achieve. And I think that most people
• 59:33
  are actually using content to get there. They're they're using content to create a job
• 59:38
  that they actually enjoy. That's why we see like I think I just saw some data like 12 million
• 59:42
  influencers are based in the US now are people that do over 12 million people that get paid to post
• 59:48
  content because people just want to talk about and get paid for stuff they enjoy. That's really it
• 59:54
  at the end of the day. Yeah, I think that's true. I think there's I the cool thing about doing
• 1:00:00
  the influencer gig is that you can really make it your own and you can find you can be like as
• 1:00:07
  weirdly you as you want to be. And that's fantastic. I think there's a there's a
• 1:00:14
  downside to that which is just like you know, we're a medic animals. And like if you spend 10
• 1:00:18
  hours a day consuming business podcasts, you're probably just going to start a business podcast
• 1:00:24
  instead of going to start a fucking business. It's like everybody goes to Tony Robbins and their
• 1:00:30
  conclusion coming away is not I'm going to go apply those to become the best version of me. It's
• 1:00:35
  I'm going to become Tony Robbins. I'm going to become a life coach. I'm going to open up my practice
• 1:00:39
  and it's like no, you just that's like the memetic reaction you have to the inputs that you've
• 1:00:46
  given yourself. So like let's not you know, if you're not born to be a podcaster, if you're not
• 1:00:53
  excited to do that to your point, if you find it to be more work like be honest with yourself,
• 1:00:59
  if that's not your calling. But understand that I mean, understand that you should go out and
• 1:01:05
  find your calling and find your passion and find your hobby and find and find something that
• 1:01:09
  actually sort of lights a fire in you. And I do believe that if you find that thing, whether
• 1:01:15
  or not you're writing a book or podcasting or you're building out some dog walking service,
• 1:01:20
  like if you do that for a long enough period of time, and this is where I truly believe like
• 1:01:24
  architect your life so that if you are attempting to do something that is maybe less nine to five
• 1:01:28
  and a little bit more aligned with what what you want to achieve, find a system or a structure
• 1:01:34
  that allows you to attempt that thing for an unreasonable amount of time so that you can eventually
• 1:01:39
  become good at it. Your first book is usually not going to sell a million copies for sure. But
• 1:01:44
  if you write two, three, four books, if you write a lot of content, if you've been blogging for
• 1:01:49
  the past five years, if you've been you know, just if you've just been in create mode,
• 1:01:54
  eventually you will become good at writing and you will create a great book and then you will
• 1:01:59
  find a way to make a significant, you know, amount of money from that thing and that will become
• 1:02:04
  your job, which now is just a creative pursuit that turned into your actual, you know, your actual work.
• 1:02:10
  Yeah, I think there's like there's obviously a million right answers here like for your life.
• 1:02:14
  One is like pursue your passion until it becomes your career. The other is find some shit that makes
• 1:02:20
  money. Do it until you're great at it and then being great at it will make you really excited
• 1:02:25
  to do it and like even though nobody else thinks it's sexy or cool, even if you your five years
• 1:02:31
  ago self didn't think it's cool, you could become the like insurance broker, kingpin of Lackawanna
• 1:02:36
  County and that's your identity and you were fucking stoked to get up every day and like broker
• 1:02:43
  insurance and you're great at it and you make good money and you have a good life like and nobody
• 1:02:49
  else is trying to take that throne from you because they're not even paying attention because
• 1:02:52
  it's not like the peak of some mountain that everyone's got their eyes on. That's a great life.
• 1:02:56
  That's a great life. Before we press record, I guess the last idea that I thought we could
• 1:03:01
  discuss because you mentioned you wanted to speak about I guess investing or or or invest.
• 1:03:07
  What was the topic that you mentioned before we press record? You said that this could be an
• 1:03:10
  interesting idea. Oh, aside from my like publishing writing work, I also run a small venture fund doing
• 1:03:17
  like crazy deep tech investments. I didn't know. I saw that you also do some like
• 1:03:23
  not a successful is you I don't think, but I will not know for 20 more years. That's the nature of
• 1:03:30
  the game. So when you so when you decided to sort of take this on, do you actually did you raise a fund?
• 1:03:36
  Or no? Yeah, small fund. And you focus on like deep tech, not private equity. So you do like
• 1:03:43
  early, what what what like pre revenue, like seed stage, what? Yeah, pre pre seed seed maybe
• 1:03:51
  some series A. The approach is very like find scientists and engineers who are building something
• 1:03:59
  off of a truly like unique technological innovation that have ideally this is the part where I
• 1:04:08
  start to sound insane. The bones of becoming like a mega cap company of the 2050s in in this
• 1:04:16
  like beautiful utopian like it's very difficult to imagine what the world is going to look like 15,
• 1:04:21
  20, 25 years ago or down the line. But I think it's just so critically important as a civilization
• 1:04:30
  to like resource those people and get money to them and get attention to them and get talent to
• 1:04:34
  them and help them build these companies that could be truly revolutionary that I just get such
• 1:04:40
  excitement. It feels like living in a sci-fi book and like getting to write it along the way.
• 1:04:46
  So fun. The win to loss ratio for traditional VC is is already like I mean like people will invest
• 1:04:52
  in 10 companies knowing that only one of them is going to be successful. I can only imagine that
• 1:04:58
  when you're taking these like these these moonshots, these like Hail Mary type investments with
• 1:05:03
  companies that will be mega cap in 2050 that you know you're going to have like a fraction of a
• 1:05:09
  percentage that will actually be successful. How do you just I mean like you haven't realized
• 1:05:15
  significant success yet if you're really like aiming for a 2050 mega cap company. But how do you
• 1:05:20
  how do you vet these people? How do you vet these ideas? I mean that's a fascinating
• 1:05:25
  exceptionally high risk way of investing. So I think it is early but I don't think it's
• 1:05:34
  as high risk. It is not as high risk as it is seen relative to this whole history of like the
• 1:05:41
  traditional kind of the last 20 years of venture capital turns have been defined by software for
• 1:05:47
  the most part. And now I am not sure that software is going to software has been perceived as being
• 1:05:53
  very low capital intensity. And people have been really excited about investing in it because of
• 1:05:59
  that. But it also has low switching costs and people are doing all the customer acquisition costs
• 1:06:05
  as you are getting crazy high. And there is it is turning out to be much more capital intensive
• 1:06:10
  even at scale than people anticipated or modeled when they're making the you know seed and series A
• 1:06:15
  investments. Whereas hardware for a variety of reasons is a lot of times less capital intensive
• 1:06:21
  than people expect because you can get non equity dilutive loans. You can get grants sometimes
• 1:06:27
  from government programs. You can do all sorts of different things to capitalize these businesses
• 1:06:33
  in ways that software doesn't necessarily support. And because there's not the competition that's
• 1:06:40
  all going for the same thing, you know, by the time a company is 10 15 years down the line, you
• 1:06:46
  could spin up a competitor to a software company relatively quickly. It's very difficult to catch up
• 1:06:51
  to a lead that one of these like vertically integrated hardware like deep tech companies have because
• 1:06:57
  they're 10 years into developing not just know how, but sometimes manufacturing sometimes unique
• 1:07:04
  to the big big customer relationships, huge modes. If you look at like what are the what are the
• 1:07:09
  biggest companies in the world right now like Tesla SpaceX those were insane investments
• 1:07:16
  15 20 25 years ago when they were getting started nobody was even thinking about them. And I think
• 1:07:23
  there are a whole host of those getting started today. And like who there's a credible competitor
• 1:07:29
  that we can even really name to SpaceX. Tesla's only other competitors like existing legacy automakers
• 1:07:34
  that are all sort of doing the same thing. And like those are extreme outlier returns. So I don't
• 1:07:40
  think I don't think it'll be an order magnitude different. I don't think it'll be you know one out of
• 1:07:44
  100 in our fund is successful. I think it'll probably still be in one out of 10. But I think those
• 1:07:50
  the exit valuations that we will see relative to somebody who's just investing in a bunch of
• 1:07:56
  software today. I think we are going to absolutely blow the returns out of the water as long as we
• 1:08:02
  hold long enough to realize the you know the true value of these businesses over the long run.
• 1:08:08
  Now is are you investing in companies like X prize like like solving these huge humanity
• 1:08:15
  problems. X prize is like giving so Peter Diamandis and X prize and singularity university and
• 1:08:24
  what what they do is they they're like I don't even know what the latest you know roster of
• 1:08:31
  different ideas that they're funding but they're they're going to say something like hey
• 1:08:34
  if we need to if we need to grow it it's going to be a ridiculous example but I'll just give it
• 1:08:41
  if we're going to try and grow a tree on Mars who can solve this problem and you're going to we're
• 1:08:47
  going to give you a whole bunch of money if you can tell us how to grow a tree on Mars and build
• 1:08:50
  a company around that is it like that insane ridiculous ideas or is it something a lot more you
• 1:08:57
  said vertically integrated so it's not I don't think it's probably like two notches down from a tree
• 1:09:02
  on Mars that is like they should have commercial practicality like in the coming five years 10 years
• 1:09:12
  like but but ideally like doing something that has literally never been done before by the human
• 1:09:16
  race like that's the engineering bar that you want to go for and and when you are doing that
• 1:09:22
  obviously there's you know certainly not a competitor yet but tough to make bets on that but when
• 1:09:28
  you're investing in somebody who's building something that has never been built before and they're
• 1:09:31
  the only person you can sell it like those become really really incredible businesses almost no
• 1:09:36
  matter how much capital it takes to get it as long as it's a valuable problem in a big market
• 1:09:41
  and and like money and returns aside like it's just fucking awesome it's just satisfying to
• 1:09:49
  resource those people tackling those problems like I just don't care about I don't care how much
• 1:09:54
  money you can make investing in like HR software I'm just not going to do it like it's just boring
• 1:09:59
  and I don't care when I get to meet somebody who's like sending the first commercial deep space
• 1:10:07
  craft to bring back like platinum from an asteroid that is that's fucking rad that is just awesome
• 1:10:15
  I want to meet that guy I want to talk to that guy I want to watch the progress I want to
• 1:10:19
  tell however I can I want to spread the good word I want to like be on that team and that's just a
• 1:10:26
  really really fun thing to do like what's the coolest shit that people are building right now that
• 1:10:31
  you've invested in that's a literal example oh shit like actually he's building a spaceship he's
• 1:10:36
  got started mining asteroid mining spaceship yeah like it is now like it may be cheaper given our
• 1:10:43
  current space technology to bring back like some raw materials from near earth asteroids and it is
• 1:10:48
  to mine them from the earth and definitely like safer so that's a really good one there's somebody
• 1:10:55
  building I've done podcast with a lot of these founders on on my podcast but there's somebody's
• 1:11:01
  building this new type of battery that is like 10 times the energy density of existing batteries so
• 1:11:09
  Tesla's don't have a 300 mile range they have a 3000 mile range and planes can become electric
• 1:11:16
  because the power to weight ratio like now supports planes drones the use cases for a whole bunch
• 1:11:22
  of different drones and robots expand massively you know you're laptop of your phone the last
• 1:11:26
  for a week the world changes the electrification accelerates dramatically when we have battery
• 1:11:32
  technology that breaks through sort of another layer like that there's a lot of energy there's a lot
• 1:11:37
  of work to do on energy in general so like that level of energy is like akin to some sort of
• 1:11:42
  radical human transformation that quantum computing would bring similar kind of breakthroughs that
• 1:11:47
  you'd get yeah quantum is like particularly mine bending to me I'm not going to pretend to be an
• 1:11:51
  expert in quantum computing no I don't I don't listen to it I don't understand quantum computing either
• 1:11:55
  like I'm just saying like in terms of technology that would take humanity to another level this kind
• 1:12:02
  of energy unlocking energy that would you know power a spaceship or that so that's not like a
• 1:12:08
  combustion or whatever it is I don't know what power space ships now but it's not some super fancy
• 1:12:13
  battery right it's it's like it's it seems like it's just like really the kind of old technology that's
• 1:12:19
  being recycled again and again and again we're not using really updated energy methods like
• 1:12:23
  the ones that you're talking about yeah I mean I think with a combination of like building a lot of
• 1:12:27
  solar panels building a lot of nuclear and building a lot of batteries like we're going to have a
• 1:12:32
  really different looking sort of power landscape which it may not look tremendously different on a
• 1:12:38
  daily basis you'll just be you you'll never even probably learn the name of this company you'll just
• 1:12:44
  be like wow all my stuff just lasts forever now yeah I remember gas stations yeah yeah gas stations
• 1:12:50
  that was crazy right yeah um in the same way that now we're kind of like remember when you
• 1:12:55
  go to one room of your house to use a computer yeah same idea weird that's very very cool
• 1:13:01
  that's very home phones yeah remember dial up we forget how fast like we we have such amnesia
• 1:13:10
  about how much progress we've made and how weird things used to be but we forget when we project
• 1:13:16
  that forward like how different the world's gonna be in five or 10 years I just think we have
• 1:13:20
  such an obligation to the future to keep making things better and you know resourcing these pioneers
• 1:13:25
  like working on important innovations at the frontier I just get such satisfaction from that
• 1:13:30
  how did you get into this shit because I like the listen to I like to invest but I don't invest in
• 1:13:34
  this like I invest in like SaaS startups and like people trying to build like digital products and
• 1:13:41
  like creator economy this is now I feel boring I feel very boring I'm sorry I did not mean to
• 1:13:48
  neg you I didn't I didn't know that was your your thesis well no my thesis was not my thesis was
• 1:13:55
  not coming up with a new energy source it's gonna power humanity into the fourth industrial fifth
• 1:14:00
  industrial revolution whatever that wasn't that isn't my investment thesis but maybe I should
• 1:14:04
  maybe that's why I should go into your fund that's what that's what we do yeah it's funny you say
• 1:14:09
  that actually that was exactly so I started I started angel investing just in like my friends
• 1:14:14
  because I was like that person's really smart I think they're gonna build a great company you know
• 1:14:17
  I wish I could clone myself and go work for you I I can't so here's you know a few thousand
• 1:14:23
  dollars one of your startups will be able to don't worry but yeah I hope that'd be a fun one if
• 1:14:30
  you're working on a cloning startup holler I mean I want to I want a fun to cloning startup
• 1:14:36
  so it just started with friends investments and then we scaled that up to raise the fund and then
• 1:14:42
  we're just kind of started as a normal like a little bit more like you're describing of just like
• 1:14:46
  things that we think are good venture investments and it wasn't too long into that that I read a
• 1:14:51
  book called where's my flying car that it really makes the case it's a little bit historical
• 1:14:56
  looking is saying like why why don't we have flying cars but it also makes a case for the next
• 1:15:02
  industrial revolution and what it would look like and what technologies could come together and what
• 1:15:07
  the life could be like on the other side of it and it's just a lit a fire under me to be like this
• 1:15:13
  is the real shit like this is what venture was originally started to do this is what turns me on
• 1:15:19
  this is what I'm excited to think about and work on and and the paradox is I think it's actually
• 1:15:26
  going to have significantly better returns than investing in things that are a little closer to
• 1:15:31
  home that a thousand other people feel comfortable and confident investing in because they're just
• 1:15:36
  all gonna try to eat each other's lunch the returns are gonna be competed away and there's
• 1:15:40
  gonna be one dude way over there like bringing back platinum asteroids you started a trillion
• 1:15:45
  dollar company that we invested in 20 years ago and I'll be like very old and gray and be like
• 1:15:49
  I was a good idea thank god we did that yeah I think it is really all in service this is like really
• 1:15:58
  the underpinning philosophy of all the work that I do all the books that I write all the investments
• 1:16:03
  that I make like we owe it to the future to pay it forward like we owe the future our best effort
• 1:16:11
  to create to create greatness like we live in an insane mind blowing abundance because of the
• 1:16:19
  generations of work and sacrifice and knowledge and effort and engineering and building that went
• 1:16:24
  into creating farms tractors like air conditioning light bulbs cars like can you we are just so so
• 1:16:35
  lucky to be alive right now and there's nothing there's nothing stopping us from having
• 1:16:40
  other orders of magnitude of just mind blowing technological progress but we don't think about it
• 1:16:47
  day to day we don't feel obligated to continue it we just kind of like puts around with the work
• 1:16:52
  that's in front of us and I just get such like spiritual satisfaction out of working towards a long
• 1:17:00
  term vision of a better future and I find that so energizing and so exciting and it's just a thrill
• 1:17:09
  to meet people that also see that have a very specific piece of that that they are uniquely working
• 1:17:16
  on that I get to then participate in support evangelize cheer them on resource them like whatever
• 1:17:23
  we can do to you know help those pioneers keep moving forward I love it we all we all ride on
• 1:17:30
  on their hard work last last thoughts I'm super curious just on this topic when you look at like
• 1:17:35
  the traditional VC firms or like financial institutions like you know and recent Horowitz black rock
• 1:17:42
  any pick any pick any of them do you see them putting money into these kinds of spaces as well like
• 1:17:48
  you must get other people to go in on these rounds yeah oh yeah some of them I think
• 1:17:53
  in recent Horowitz is is like pretty good I think the the people that are really
• 1:18:00
  consistently at the frontier are lesser known firms like future ventures Steve Jervitson is like
• 1:18:07
  one of the OGs of this he used to be a draper Fisher Jervitson but started his own fund a few years
• 1:18:12
  ago 50 years led by Seth Bannon is a really is a newer but really strong up and coming one
• 1:18:20
  there's a whole like sort of coalition of like deep tech futuristic investors that are doing
• 1:18:26
  really really cool stuff founders fund is like one of the bigger ones that invest in these like
• 1:18:31
  highly more speculative but like and then a ton of angels right I mean the Collison brothers are
• 1:18:37
  really great about this Navale is great about this biology is great about this is part of what sort
• 1:18:41
  of drew me to them in the first place is just feeling this philosophical kinship with them
• 1:18:47
  so where do people connect with you I mean you have your own podcast obviously
• 1:18:50
  uh socials website drop it all yeah ejorgenson.com is kind of my personal site that has
• 1:18:56
  links to absolutely everything on it um scribe media if you are you think you have a book idea you
• 1:19:02
  think you have a book in you you think a book would help you build your business like come talk to
• 1:19:05
  us um we I would love to help you brainstorm and that whole crew just does exceptional exceptional
• 1:19:10
  work um if you want to meet some of the founders that I talked about like my podcast is smart
• 1:19:16
  friends um and it's it's just like the shit thank you I think it's like the use case of all
• 1:19:22
  podcasting you know it's like on demand smart friends you just want to people to hang out with
• 1:19:27
  they're just gonna make your life better um but yeah there's some there's some interesting
• 1:19:31
  stories to tell on that but uh I appreciate you uh you know have me on and sharing stories
• 1:19:37
  this is awesome talking to you some of this this has been fun good good and I appreciate
• 1:19:41
  you it has been fun uh last words of wisdom that you want to leave the audience usually I'll say like
• 1:19:45
  hey you know what would be a lesson you'd tell your 20 year old self I think you already dropped
• 1:19:50
  one earlier but any any sort of like last words of wisdom based on your life seasons of your life
• 1:19:56
  what you've learned as an author entrepreneur investor just to to close it out don't be afraid to
• 1:20:02
  chase a meaningful purpose uh I think uh David Centra has a great line about this was the best
• 1:20:09
  financial decisions are not financial decisions so like you get to decide the meaning of your life
• 1:20:15
  you choose a meaning that you think might be the answer and throw yourself at it even if you
• 1:20:23
  don't know how it's gonna work out or why it's gonna work out and the world has a way of
• 1:20:29
  rearranging itself around willful people so choose something meaningful work on it with
• 1:20:37
  intensity and you will wake up one day and find an army of supporters behind you like helping you
• 1:20:44
  achieve that vision