25% Of My Portfolio Is Tesla Stock, Here's Why

There's something insane going on in the world right now. This is Black Mirror, right? This is like Amazon Prime's original new series about how tech like, you know, takes over the world and then the world's never the same again. Do you know who Hal Finny is? The man who up until the New York Times article I thought was the guy who created Bitcoin, but he's dead. So may you know he may have been Satoshi Nakamoto the guy who created Bitcoin but if you even if he wasn't he was definitely the first person to ever receive Bitcoin from the creator of Bitcoin and he's a OG cryptographer etc. a founding father founding father of Bitcoin that's a great way of putting it. So I was on his old blog last night and he died I don't know he died like 10 plus years ago of uh ALS you know this like terrible lucer's disease. I went and read the blog post when he announced when he was like sharing that he got diagnosed with ALS and he was feeling totally fine at the time and I just saw this thing in the comments. It was so weird. It was like watching, you know, uh famous people today but in some like when they were like on the Disney show and they're like young or whatever. You know what I mean? It's like he wasn't famous at this time. He's blogging on his own little personal website and then the first comment is from this guy whatever who today is really famous for basically he's the biggest doomer on AI. So he he's the first comment and he's like have you looked into cryogenics and then h how responds yes I actually have already I'm I'm I'm working with Alor to freeze my body. Did you know that this is actually a thing that happens and how this all works? Yeah, I knew it because Family Guy made fun of it. Isn't Ted William Do you know who Ted Williams is? The famous baseball Ted Williams. Ted Williams was one of the first people to do this. He's frozen right now. Yeah, he's frozen. And so, and I think that there was a joke that Walt Disney was into it as well. But basically, the idea is you freeze someone when they're dead in hopes that one day we'll solve this and you can come back to life. So, he talked about this company Alor. And so, I was like, Alor, and I was really ready for this to be like super evil mega corp, right? Like the free you you pay them tons of money and they freeze your body and they're like whatever. It's but it turns out I think it's a little more innocent than that. It's a it's a nonprofit uh that was started by this this husband and wife couple who they read this book. There was a book that was published that was very influential in the space and it was basically a book that argued that today you could do this thing which is right when you die if you're very fast acting you can essentially do put like antifreeze on your body. So you could freeze your body as is. I think it's liquid nitrogen not it's liquid nitrogen right? Yeah. But it it functions almost like they they basically in inject something in your veins also cuz they need your cells to not like or like like your veins not collapse or something. So they do so they put something in your vein and then they use liquid nitrogen to cool you down and then you are cryogenically frozen for indefinitely. And I've always thought I had heard of the concept. I didn't actually fully realize that there's a business behind this. You pay $200,000 and you're frozen and that you know they've frozen I think 200 people have done it. 200 something people have done it. 00 people have are working with Alor saying freeze me when I die. They just haven't died yet. So I didn't realize like it's a thing. It's like a a business that exists that people pay for and you know it's it's $80,000 just to freeze the head and it's 200 grand to freeze the whole body and then you you know before you die you pay a couple hundred bucks a year to save your spot and there's like this whole operation behind it. So that was like already fascinating thing number one. Okay. So this kind of led me down a little bit of a rabbit hole of like I'm like a hyper normal guy. Like I don't really do that much fringe stuff and I would have never considered doing this, but I've been reading a lot of these stories with AI. We talked about some of them on this podcast about like the guy who cured his dog's cancer and then you brought up the founder of GitLab who cured his own cancer using AI in like hyperpersonalized targeted medicine. Um he's trying to he's trying to No, he did. It's in remission. Oh, he did? Yeah, he did it. By the way, I have like a whole update on it's crazy. I really want to have him on. It's a it's a Let's go to that in a second. is it's it's wild, but I just like went down the rabbit hole. So, I've been seeing this and it's like, okay, like it's not crazy that in the next 30 years that AI is going to figure out how to like cure a lot of disease, death, to be able to bring back cryogenically frozen people to be alive or to like upload their consciousness, upload their brain into some sort of like LLM. Like that's not like crazy to me now. Yeah. Yeah. I don't Well, so the like I always get these videos I get like emotional videos on Instagram all the time and like one of my favorite videos is when a family meets the recipient of the heart of like for example if my like kid or husband or wife died and I get to and I get to put my ear on the heart and hear it always makes me emotional and so I'm like oh man that's like the greatest gift in a bad situation. So, I do love that, but I'd much rather be alive than than that situation. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, but like, okay, you're saying, yeah, but you've never thought about this, right? You're not actually you've never taken a step in this direction. Have you actually been like, yeah, I that would be something I plan to do. Like, you know, I don't want to The only step that I've made is I've read this Wikipedia before. Okay. So, like the doors are open. Yeah. It's there's been some prelim like when I went when I Googled what you said, the uh link was purple. I'd clicked it. On this show, we have spent hours talking to some of the best investors alive. Well, lucky for you, the team at HubSpot, they have pulled out the principles that matter most and turned it into a very simple, easy to read wealth guide. It's 35 principles from the top investors. We're talking guys who have been on the pod like Howard Marx, Manish Pbry, Morgan Howell, Kathy Wood, and a ton others. So, these are all their frameworks, their mental models, their rules. Basically, how to play the long game and how to avoid ruin. You can get it in the link below. So, this led me down a little bit of a rabbit hole. Then, I saw this Elon clip. I I do think it is a very solvable problem. When we find figure out what causes aging, I think we'll find it's incredibly obvious. It's not a subtle thing. The reason I say it's not a subtle thing is because all the cells in your body pretty much age at the same rate. Um, so why is that? It that means that there must be a clock, a synchronizing clock, right, that is synchronizing across 35 trillion cells in your body. So, have you ever seen this clip before? No, I didn't know that he cared about that. The guy just asked him a question. He's like, "Well, I've never I haven't spent time like looking into it. It's not like it's not one of my missions I'm on right now." But then he said this thing which is like you know if Elon says something you sort of pay a little bit of attention. So he's saying you know I suspect it's solvable that the sol that you know the problem is obvious and the reason why I thought was like a pretty first principal way of thinking about it which is like there's got to be a clock because your entire body is aging at the you know roughly the same rate and if your body's synchronized that means if there's a clock maybe the clock can be changed. Maybe you could turn turn the the hands of the clock and slow down the aging or reverse the aging or set it to a different time. And you know, we've seen this with like stem cell treatment and peptides. There's all this stuff going on. And so you're like, hm, that's interesting. Maybe there's something there. And so, by the way, the reason he does say why he hasn't spent much time on this and it's pretty he's he's basically like aging/death is like a feature, not a bug. So he's like uh if people live forever, society will like oify because like the people in charge will be the oldest people and the oldest people will want the least change and like progress and change comes from some like an out with the old in with the new mentality which comes like with a with a physicality of out with the old in with the new. So, I I you make fun of me a little bit and it's deserving. I because I brag about how I think that we Brian he told me we were the first media appearance Brian Johnson has ever done and I take a lot of pride in that because if you go and get past like the silliness of the whole thing and how easy it is to like tease him for what he's doing. If you actually go and read his blog, it is like pretty miraculous some of the stuff that he's doing uh and the way that he looks. It's fun to I mean it's easy to make fun of him. Like it it seems quite amazing that if you just take a little bit of what he's doing, there could be benefits. I just signed up for a fancy doctor and I went and this was the first time that I've met a doctor where they didn't uh not laugh at him. Every doctor that I've ever talked to, they'll have been like, "Oh, that guy's crazy." Like, you know, that's just stupid. Same with like the um the things that you and I did where you uh the preventative MRIs pre Yeah. They like laugh at them. They're like, "Well, it just sets off so many potentially false alarms." I'm like, "That's the downside and that's why you don't want to do it. That's incredible. That's kind of silly." So, I But my point being is I do think that a lot of people are coming around to this and it is quite interesting. It's way out of my IQ level to when people say uh disease and aging is solvable. I think that's like a platitude that sounds cool, but it's it's too hard for me to understand because I just don't know anything about it. But it is like interesting. I wonder if in the history of the world has the richest people on earth, which now they are richer than potentially ever before, that many of them have made this their cause. Have you ever heard of this guy Aubrey Deg Grrey? Yeah. He's um like the researcher who does this. He's like an academic, right? So, he's been doing this for like decades. And he kind of got cancelled, I think, cuz he was like hitting on his like lab assistants or I don't I don't know what was going on. Uh, I'm not saying this guy's a great guy or whatever, but he's this very fascinating guy. He looks like Dumbledore. He's got a huge gray beard, like you know, down to his belly button. Looks like a researcher. He's like a longevity researcher who looks ancient essentially. And he's got this theory which is like his theory, if you've ever gone down the rabbit hole, which I did one night like I don't know 5 years ago. What he said is basically that death is not a mystery that there's these like 12 things that basically cause cell damage. It's just wear and tear. like your your cells in your body are like a car and the more you use them the more they accumulate damage and eventually enough damage they they die. Okay, it's not like some mandate from God. It's not like you know something that we don't understand at all. He his belief is like actually we could see the factors that relate to it and if we could just reverse those factors then we you wouldn't die. The second thing he talks about is like this uh idea of like longevity longevity escape velocity LEV. You ever heard of this? I I've never heard that, but is that as simple as basically your biological age grows slower than your or sorry, your chronological age grows slower than your biological age. Am I explaining that correctly? I think you had it right the first time, but no, no, this is a different concept. But um what he says it's sort of like the uh that guy Ray Kerszswwell who talked about AI, he talked about the singularity. What he meant by that was like at some point it won't be the humans that are programming AI, but the AI will program the next AI to be better. and then that smart AI will program the next AI to be better and it'll just keep and then that's when you get this explosion of intelligence and he's like no you can't see beyond the singularity because once that happens all bets are off which is like kind of what we're getting close to doing inside these research labs it's not just the the highly paid people at OpenAI or Claude or whatever anthropic who are coding the models the models are coming up with ideas and running experiments and coding the next models soon and that's like partially happening but once that fully happens the progress, the rate of progress will like go exponential. It'll hockey stick in a crazy way. Claw did the greatest PR release ever or PR thing where they said, "This model is so powerful, we we can't release it." Too dangerous. I'm like, "Okay, I want it." Yeah. Like, sign me up. It's like the four locos of uh of AI. I heard in Tennessee that they make them at 11% alcohol, but we in Ohio, we can only get 7%. This kid had the greatest night of his life. Then his heart exploded. Yeah. Um, we should do that with a podcast, by the way. We should just be like, "This one is too too dangerous. We can we can really we simply cannot." But sorry. Anyways, the idea being there's there's going to be a point where medical research on longevity is adding years to your life faster, like adding more than one year of your to your lifespan than one year. So like the the research and the interventions and the protocols and the the knowledge around extending extending your life is going faster than your actual chronological age. And when that happens then you sort of get at least like multiundredyear lives if not like you know indefinite life which is like a pretty crazy idea but when I read about this longevity stuff it reminds me of basically what's been going on with AI. Like AI was something that had been talked about for 50 plus years, theorized, talked about, worked on, always seemed niche, never seemed like a breakthrough, always seemed like a boy who cried wolf type of industry where never really made enough progress. And then suddenly you get, you know, Alex Net and then then you get chat GPT and you get these like breakthroughs and then the world's never the same again. And I kind of my prediction is that in the next I don't know 15 years we're going to have a chat GPT moment for life extension and that you're going to get some breakthrough in uh this longevity and life extension that's going to make it where it went from this like fringe kind of like oh academic topic to just something that everybody does. So in um in January of 21 I had this Chinese kid who worked for me. He was an intern. and he was from China. And I remember him telling me, he was like, "Sam, this CO thing, it's it's real and it's got to come to America." And I was like, "Brother, you guys have the bird flu. You got this and that. This is America. These colors don't run. We don't experience we don't wear Yeah. We don't we don't wear masks. This is not a thing." And then a month later, I distinctly remember I think it was in March. I remember when I got the notification I was gonna on my way to go to a Warriors basketball game and it said season postponed indefinitely and I was like you're right it's here you are so right and what I'm asking myself every day is with AI is it January and I'm just like s sitting here being like living my life like as if there's an asteroid on its way and I we just don't know yet and that's what I'm wondering all the time. Is it January of 21? What would that look like? Or like I guess like do you what do you mean when you because CO obviously was a pandemic sort of a catastrophe? Do you mean catastrophe? So here's an example. So uh in in January I think it was what's his name? Is it biology? He wrote this post because you know the joke was like these autistic venture capitalists understand exponential growth. They see the numbers and they're like making people wash their hands before they come into the office. How how stupid of them. and u block or Jack Dorsey's company just laid off a ton of it laid off a ton of people and and we're thinking to ourselves like what this guy's crazy what's he doing and then but like secretly every other company's like should we should we do this and like is there going to be a domino effect over the next 12 to 24 months where it's like it starts happening another one starts happening another one 10 more this week and like they're they're all doing these layoffs because it's actually effective like that is what I'm that's like What I'm wondering, so you mentioned the Jack Dorsey thing and I think the way you said it kind of undersells what actually happened cuz you the way you said it was Jack Dorsey's company, formerly known as Square, now known as Block, laid off a bunch of people. I've heard that there's been tech layoffs. There's even been huge tech deep tech layoffs like that. That's happened many times in history. What's different this time? And I think the reason is different is he laid off the people because he was like, "Oh, the normal corporate model doesn't work or make sense anymore." That actually we're not going to have uh this like org chart with like a CEO and then like managers and managers and managers and managers underneath. Like actually there's just going to be one central brain called AI and all of us feeding context into it. That's what Brian Haligan the former CEO of HubSpot told me. It was like the future companies. It's a hub of AI. They make the majority of decisions and everyone's around. It's a hub that you spot. Like, bro, I see what you did there. Come on. Get out of here. But yeah, this So, okay. So, what does that what does that actually mean? What it sounds esoteric, right? Like the central brain or whatever. Here's the the flip I don't think most people appreciate today. It's like, oh yeah, I like I use chat GPT all the time. I use it for dumb questions. I I use it with my job, you know. My piano teacher was like, "Have you heard of this thing called Clo Claude?" And I was like, "Yeah, I've definitely heard of it, you know, making out with it all day basically." And she's like, "Uh, my dad loves it." And I was like, "What does your dad do?" You know, run has some normal job. And he was like, "Yeah, I use it to make my presentations." And it seems today like this junior assistant worker that you can task to go do everything. Everybody gets an assistant. Everybody gets a uh a junior programmer. Everybody gets like a a chief of staff. That's kind of like I would say the mental model most people are operating with. Wow. If I use this, this makes me so much more productive. I think what's obvious to me and it sounds like to Jack Dorsey is that well the the the super intelligence is not going to be the junior thing to your average intelligence. The super intelligence is going to be the boss. You're going to be the junior thing. And so um and that's what he's that's what these guys are talking about Brian Halligan and Jack Dorsey which is that actually there'll be like a central AI that's making the key decisions allocating resources figuring out strategy coming up with the the the core um campaigns of what you're going to do the products the roadmap the build you know the building of it and then your job as humans will be to feed context mean feed information to make the brain smarter so watch this video this is a factory in India where they're uh like just sewing garments. I think every single factory worker is wearing a headset camera to track their in their hand movements of everything that they're doing. And this is all data that they're being paid to give to the robotics companies like uh Tesla and Figure and like all the all the big robotics companies who are quickly trying to create robots that can do any work. And so the humans here are the training data. All these Indians in this like freaking factory sweat shop are wearing cameras on their heads training the AI overlord that will replace digging your grave. You're digging your grave. And there's a great meme. Look at this. Scroll down. Scroll down one one notch. Look at the look at the now. Go down. Go down. Right there. This one. Look at this meme of this the guy sitting on the tree branch sawing off the branch. And this is kind of what we're all doing. So, um, isn't that crazy, by the way? like just that thing I s showed here. Yeah. Who's who's the vendor or who's the uh who's that who's behind that? Does it say? So, there's a company that's doing this. So, it's a company um this one is called Object Ways. It's a Indian-based data labeling company founded by a 20 20-year-old entrepreneur soon to be billionaire uh Dev Mandal. Dev, come on the podcast. He spotted an opportunity in the gap between what AI wants to do and the training data that they have. All these humanoid robot companies like Tesla's Optimus, Figures AI, there are prototypes that need vast data sets of real world movements to master tasks like cooking, laundry, etc. And so, but collecting this in a high wage country like the US is very expensive. So, enter India where their team of 2,000 employees produces hundreds of videos daily and in one batch, you know, so they'll they'll get like, you know, 2,000 clips of towel folding. So, the workers sit there and they have to fold towels over and over and over again. And they're penalized if they have bad footage. Your camera wasn't pointed at the thing. Hey, you messed up. Don't give bad training data. Give good training data. And so they're they're doing this all day. And then they send it to companies like Scale AI, like the the big data labeling companies here, who then resell that to all the AI labs. What? This is incredible. It's something there's a big word. I don't know if incredible is the word. There's something There's something insane going on in the world right now. This is straight out of like, dude. Like, this is Black Mirror. On one hand, it's it's hyperlogical. It's hyperrational. It's capitalism at work. Dude, these robots when they work, it's going to be the biggest product ever invented in the history of mankind. Bigger than the iPhone, bigger than anything. When you get a $20,000 robot that can do do work, it is the biggest product ever. It's why I have a huge chunk of my net worth in Tesla right now is because that's obviously the biggest product in going to the biggest market in the world. It's just a matter of when, not if. To do that, you're going to need data. That means the data is very valuable. If the robots are valuable, the data is valuable. How do you get the data? Well, obviously, you'd go to the lowest cost place where you got a bunch of humans doing these hand handheld tasks and they're happy to take a hundred bucks a day to wear the camera on their head. Yeah, they got a little neck pain. That C5C6 vertebrae is a little strained because they're wearing this heavy ass camera for eight hours a day. Yeah, they're they'll probably be put out of job soon, but like, hey, $100 today. $100 a day right now or $100 a month. That's That's double my wage. This is great. So, what I had read about last week was that when Claude was messing around with their new model that if I remember correctly, it like escaped. Like, I think it like jumped in. Did Did it jailbreak? The the nuance of the story is a little bit different. It's a little less scary than it may sound. They told the model. The model gets tasked with you're in a sandbox. Your job is to try to escape. So, they're they're trying to see how good. It's not like it just on its own came up with the motivation of like [ __ ] this, I'm out of here. You know, like they're testing and then it and then basically the researcher who set up the task is sitting at a park eating a sandwich and gets an email from his bot like I'm out. Like David Bla, David Bla's ass. You're like, it's not that bad. And then you painted a worse picture. They should do. You remember the old David Blaine street magic videos where he would just walk on the street and be like like do a trick and then and they'd always just inevitably be like the people who have the best reactions where they just run they run around in a circle with their hands over their head. I feel like the AI companies instead of making these like thoughtful in a you know they they go to a loft in San Francisco with natural wood fibers everywhere and then they're like speaking about like you know the future of humanity and whatever they need to do David Blaine street magic about what their models can do. If I was like a if I'm like a tier three model and I'm trying to like jump up that would be my marketing strategy is just showing people's minds being blown with man on the street interviews. Yeah. my co my uh I have a exe like coach and he told me something the very first meeting cuz he he spent over a million dollars on his own like getting coached by the best coaches in all these different uh modalities. So like sematic therapy or whatever the hell that means internal family systems and uh this and that all these different like any different branch of um sort of I don't even know what you would call these like coaching modalities I guess. He spent a million dollars on his own training and he he's like I just went he's like who's the best at that. Um even if I don't fully believe in that method like I want to go experience it firsthand from the best person in an immersive way and get like you know four years of like exposure in 4 weeks type of deal. One of the things that he told me I was like so what does it net out to? I was like you do all that you travel the world you spend a million dollars. You get all the help and self-help and therapy you can get in all the different uh versions. Where do you land? I'm guessing it's something like, you know, that book, The Alchemist, where it's like he goes around the world searching for something and it's in his own backyard or whatever. I'm like, "What's the thing that was in your own backyard?" And he goes, "Oh, all philosophy and religion basically like condenses down into three words. Be here now." And he's like it just whether it's Buddhism or it's uh philosophers or it's you know different rel whatever religion you're you're looking at fundamentally it's about presence and can can you be here now and what be here now means is not just about like not checking your phone or being present that way but not worrying about what happened in the past which can't be changed. uh being anxious or or even excited about what's happening in the future which is not here yet but like actually being able to center your mind around what is happening like in this moment cuz it's the only moment that's real. What comes with that is the lack of desire. So like the Buddhist say desire is suffering and so it's the idea that you can be in a moment and not be wanting anything more than what the moment is already giving you. not wanting to be anywhere, not wanting something to happen and like, oh, then the fun will start. It's like, no, no, this part is the this is the fun. There's nothing missing from this moment. Has any other learnings that you've gotten from him turn into action? I like that. What else you got? Is that kind of what you're saying? Like, what's the what's another one that that's kind of in that? I'm actually thinking like, is this so amazing that I should also get an executive coach because I haven't had one in forever. Um, yeah, I think anybody with the means should have one. And I think by the way that with AI everybody will have the means because it'll drop the price of this pretty dramatically. But yeah, it does. And I think you know, have you ever heard of rubber ducking? I think I've mentioned this once or twice. Have you ever heard of this phrase? So rubber ducking is a uh a programming term. So let's say you're a software engineer. You're coding. You're writing writing code all day and your code's not working. It's not compiling. You have a bug. It's not doing what you want it to do. So the way that most people traditionally solve this problem is, you know, they sit there, they bang their head against the wall or if they want to do better, they would invite someone, you know, another smart programmer to come look at the code and see if they can help debug it and figure out what's wrong. And rubber ducking was this observation that you don't even need another smart programmer. There's a programmer who had a little rubber ducky on his desk and he found that just by talking out like explaining the code to the rubber duck, he would find the issues much faster and much more painlessly. It's sort of like the uh I think it's called like the Solomon complex which is basically like you tend to give other people better advice than you give yourself. And so if you pretend that you are the third party and you advise that person and give them some wisdom, you should just take that and it will be better advice than if you just said do this Sam to yourself. Right. Right. Right. So this idea of rubber ducking is very powerful. So even if my coach wasn't great, even if he didn't spend a million dollars, even if he himself wasn't a successful business guy who had learned a bunch of lessons that way and lived a bunch of life, even if he was a rubber duck, it would be useful. And so, um, I', and by the way, I've tried this. I had a coach when I was at Twitch, they like gave you a coach if you're on the exec team. So it's like, here's a free coach. I was like, I've never tried this before. Let me try this. And I was very skeptical going in because I was like h life coaches like I've been to enough Tony Robbins event to know that like it's the biggest loser at a Tony Robbins event who becomes a life coach. It's like the a third of the audience at Tony Robbins is like broken people who are if you ask them what's their job they say they're life coaches and you're like oh my god you're coaching people like wow that's like it's like um the bartender being your driving instructor or something. I don't know. It's like I didn't know the analogy but it's like I don't want that. So, I had this like very skeptical view of it and sure enough, I get on the call and her Zoom background is like this cheesy green screen thing and then she's like in and she moved to Florida because her own life fell apart and then she was like, "Yeah, I'm a coach now." I'm like, "Wait, so your life fell apart and you have kind of like none of the things I want in life, but I'm going to take advice from you." Like, oh god, this is ha this is exactly what I thought. I felt so smug. And then after the first session, I was like, "Damn, that was really useful." And I was like, she didn't even say anything. I just talked. I just had space to talk out loud. And as I'm talking, I hear the comical absurdity of some of my thoughts and I was able to get rid of them. And you know, for some people this is journaling. For some people, people have different ways of doing this. Other people just talk to their friends or whatever. Or maybe other people just have this solved without needing anything. But for me, I have code running in my head that is buggy buggy software. It makes mistakes. It has uh you know, self self-induced errors. And I want to get I want to fix that code. And so even even just rubber ducking to a person who doesn't say anything um or the things they say are just like very simplistic questions is so useful and I highly recommend it to anybody who wants to improve their code in their head. That's great. You just convinced me. Can can you say what you pay? Is it like five grand a month? Two to two to four grand a month is is like a range that you can expect. But yeah, it's incredibly useful and uh I'll give you another one that's kind of like a realization. So, we start every session with just wins. So, I basically turn into Eminem. I turn into JuiceW World. I start just freestyling at the top. I just we don't even I just say, "All right, I'm going to start with wins before he says anything." And I just start saying random wins. So, I'll be like, "I've been reading this book and it's awesome." And I just feel proud of myself for reading books. I've been saying I want to do it and I never really do that [ __ ] but then finally I'm doing it so I'm proud of that. Uh I took my son to the the soccer game today and last week he was crying about it. But this week he went in and he actually did the class and I didn't have to help him and I felt awesome about that. Another win is that um last night I really wanted to snack but then I just avoided it and I went to I just got a glass of water and I went to bed and I have no filter with somebody and like if I was to say this to you or to a friend they'd be like whoa like didn't ask like what what are you doing? What's happening right now? Or I would feel self-conscious that I couldn't say a small thing as a win. It'd have to be a big thing. And like that's like literally robbing yourself of joy because like actually the better way to live life is to be excited about the small things. But there's no space where you could just be excited about the small things, right? Like where is that cool to do? But in this case like yo, I'm paying you. I get to do what I want here. Uh I don't have to care about how you feel about this. I don't have to listen to you. I don't have to like we're not here to do another thing and I'm just like ruining it by sidetracking this way. No, that's what this is for. This is the space for me to do that. And um I I heard this great quote from Jimmy Carr, the comedian, where he said, "Dude, he's like a like a thinker now. He's not even a comedian. He's like a wisdom guy." If you haven't, have you listened to he did a podcast with Chris Williamson recently that was so good. I texted Chris. I was like, "This is like one of my favorite podcasts in years." And it's because he's a philosopher and he's like a he's very very thoughtful. And so Jimmy Carr said he was like, "Oh, everybody talks about like gratitude. Gratitude is so important, but gratitude is this like almost like heavy activity to do. It's like I know I should be doing that but I'm not doing it. It's like and you feel a little cheesy doing it. He's like celebration is just gratitude in motion. And so he's like just celebrate what's going on in your life. Like just be it's okay to be excited about what your life is. It's okay to be excited about what just happened. And um so that's like an example of like a simple thing that I do with the coach that actually makes a difference because I build a lot of momentum and I check in on the positives of life and not just uh the problems of life, right? Cuz me and you were probably most entrepreneurs by default are problem solvers. We get paid to solve problems. A company is a just solving a problem in the market and then as CEO you're solving the nastiest problems in the company and then when you know anybody if they get stuck in their job you have to dive in and help solve that problem and every day there's a new problem. So we get wired for problem seeking and problem destruction. It's good for achievement but it's not good for happiness is to be a problem seeker. I haven't seen you since uh we haven't we haven't done a solo thing in a minute. The Chris thing was cool. you and Chris and uh George and uh the other the fitness guy. Uh sorry. Yeah, I think you're great. Uh I just can't remember your first name. Uh it was great. It was a great pod. Oh, thanks. Yeah, I'm going uh I'm going to do another one this week. So, we're going to do try to try run it back a second time. The context for those don't know Chris Williamson, the guy who does Modern Wisdom, uh he did an episode which was a little bit different. Normally, he's interviewing somebody like I'm interviewing whatever, Jordan Peterson or Huberman or whoever. And this was Chris hanging out with his friends. Just four guys kind of shooting the [ __ ] was the idea. And the original premise was like a almost like a showand tell like everybody kind of bring just [ __ ] that like you you're interested in right now, something funny you saw something cool that's you know caught your attention and just let's just all show each other what's going on. Uh but it was like a three-hour hang. That was the idea. I thought you were the most entertaining person. Yes. I thought I thought Chris is a very entertaining person. George is entertaining. I thought that the the the combin So George Mack is like comes off sounding very proper and uh you aren't improper but you're more of a like a a different type of charming person and I thought that dynamic was quite good. The half the stories that you told you I think you had like we have discovered them together or or or you've already so like I thought you so I had heard a lot of them and I thought it was so I thought it was funny. It made me a bit proud uh to see you there but I I thought it was great. I thought it was like a fun riff. I think that they should continue trying different people including and have you there though all the time. So um O's Pearlman the magician came to my office and we did a thing with him. We did a pod with him and by the way great pod. Loved that pod. It didn't get a lot of views on YouTube. I don't know what people are doing sleeping on it. It was a great podcast. Thank you. I don't know why it did either. Didn't either. But listen what he did. He came in and we only chitchated for 10 minutes and then we chitchated only for 10 minutes after and in those times he was just performing and I was like I had an off like for some reason in my company it's like mostly like young young women who work there and they are like enthralled by this guy as as I am too and they like walked in and they were I could tell they were waiting and they're like oh you don't have to but you know is really dressed up today. Yeah. Like you know that they're just like wanting you to like dance. if you want to, you can, but like if you don't want to, just like let's So, he was like, "No, I'll do it." He guessed the name that we have a we had a woman who is giving birth soon. He guessed the name of her child. Uh like he was like, "You're like he, you know, she had she Yeah. He like he's like, "Let me figure out what name you're Let's walk through the step by step because I'm fascinated by magic." He walks in the office, but I'm trying to figure out how the hell he does all this [ __ ] So, did you talk to him beforehand? Like how much did he pull from you before he showed up at the office? Was there a lot of talk? Was there any talk? There's one trick that I can that I think I know how he did it. But he thought that you were going to be there and he was like, "Oh, I'd prepared tricks for both of you guys." Yeah, cuz I was texting him. Yeah. And he was like, "I thought you guys were both going to be here." I was like, "Oh, no. I'm so sorry. I thought we communicated with you." And he's like, "Well, I had a different thing prepared, so let me try something else." He was like, "Can you um write down think of you know think?" And he he he says before the podcast, right? There's a And he says the phrase is like uh like he think he thinks that you're going this way and he changes. So he'll be like, you know, I want you to do actually actually let's do this. Let's do this. Write down uh do me a favor. Think of a party that you want to have a birthday party and think there's one person who you want to who you want to show up there. Write that person down. Uh you actually screw it. Let's just do this on air. And he went and he grabs that paper that I wrote and he tore it up. And then he did the trick on air. That same trick. And I think that when that I think the tear was fake, right? Does that make sense? Okay. Okay, that's good. That definitely right. That definitely has to be the way that that that's done. Okay, cool. But then listen, right when we finished the pod, we walked out and the women were just sitting there like to greet him and they were like, "Can you do something?" And he goes, "Yes." And he goes, "Uh, how about you?" And he points at a random lady and he goes, "Um, do me a favor. Think of your best friend." She thinks of her best friend. And he was like, "It's Hannah." and she was freaking out and he was like, "Let me write something down." He writes it down and and he goes, "Uh, tell me where did you meet Hannah?" And she goes, "Mexico City." And he turns his hand and he's like, "That's what I thought." And it was Mexico City. He wrote down Mexico City. And people online were like, "Yeah, he just researched everyone." I'm like, "I had 18 women there. He can't research every per 18 person's best." Well, he doesn't need to, right? He researches one and then he randomly you, right? He chose the person. But do you have a best friend? Like how and how would they know? That doesn't seem reasonable. Well, I do think that's the genius of what he does. So, I've I've cuz I've watched hours I've watched 18 hours of clock time of debunking him, figuring out how he does it, interviews with him, cuz I'm fascinated by the whole thing. And by the way, I'm fascinated by it in two ways. One is the tricks, but the other is the business side of it. Because if you just think about like what he did by rebranding as a mentalist instead of a magician is an alltime marketing move. Dude, post podcast someone sent me an email. They're like, "Check this out. I booked him to do a party for me and it was $150 10 years ago." And he told me how much money he's making now. It's astronomical. Yeah. Exactly. Cuz he's the number one, right? It's a classic marketing thing, right? The law of category. instead of being yet another magician. Oh, he's like Copperfield or David Blaine, but he's not David Blaine, right? David Bla's more famous. He does better tricks, bigger tricks, blah, blah, blah. He's like the street magician. Okay, the cool No, no, no. He's not a magician. Those are those are magic tricks. We all, every kid knows. Everyone knows how a magic trick works. Slight of hand. I'm a mentalist. And he became the number one mentalist. And it wasn't he wasn't even a category. So, I'm like fascinated by the the positioning, the marketing, the business side of what he did. That's not an accident. He created this [ __ ] right? Like he created this this thing that he is epic. And then he figured out distribution and he's like, "Oo, I need these viral moments." So he goes to NFL training camp during Hard Knocks. He piggybacks off their distribution. He blows their minds and everyone's interested in seeing LeBron James get fooled. That's more interesting than just seeing a random guy on the street getting fooled. Oo, okay. Good. Like even more. He told me before the podcast, he was like, "I'm starting to do podcast again because I got overexposed last year." like he like when he used the phrase overexposed I'm like oh so this is all part of the plan right and so then in one of his interviews he just says a great thing he talks about like the secret is um having multiple outs so meaning like let's say you said the best friend thing it's a probability game right so you're not always going to know the answer and so you're like it starts with a letter starts with a letter I'm getting like a k sound a t sound is it a t you know he's hearing looking at you and he's like See? Okay. Then I know it wasn't Steve, it's Trevor. So now I I had Steve written on my left forearm, but I had Trevor written on my right forearm. I'm just never going to pull the sleeve up on my left. I'll pull the sleeve up on my right. Well, he told that story on the podcast. He went on the Today Show and he tried to get Al Roker to guess who a celebrity president would be. And he originally said George Clooney. And he was like, "Oh, no. Uh, what about a female?" And it was and he said Taylor Swift. And then he pulled the shirt off. Let's do someone modern. Let's do something. And he gets you to change it. And you don't know that he had, you know, Taylor Swift on his thing and he had, you know, uh, whatever, Shalom on his butt and somebody else on his shoe. He just never needs to show it. I'm like, "Wow, that's actually pretty great. Pretty pretty genius the way he does that." It It was It was just incredible. He told me a story. He He was like I was like, "Did you do you I made a joke first. I was like, "It's pretty funny that you can do all of this stuff and it's as if they like sent an alien from outer space." He's like we brought up like a se he's like we told the Seth Myers show and they had you like perform at bar mitzvah like why aren't you like doing something more special? That was a great question. Yeah. Yeah. What was his answer to that by the way? He was like uh he's like well what he admits it. He's like you know I'm obviously not guessing what you're thinking. I'm like setting you up to say a certain thing but also I do pre-work in advance and I could teach anyone how to do pre-work but I can't. Interestingly, he did guess he told me that Michigan was going to win the NCAA tournament. Do they win? Okay. He told me he was like at like the Elite 8 round, you know. It's not like Yeah. So, like not that elite and I think they're number one, but like that was a thing that he just guessed. I was like but but he he he he basically it was just weird. It it's it was really uncomfortable to hang out with him to be honest. He was a really nice guy, but like just to be around someone who's so powerful I I I found uncomfortable. You're like the the dudes who burned the witches back in the day. You're like, "This is cool, but I don't like it. Let's Tire up. But I don't How do you I No one has given me a good answer to the pin number." So, basically, listen. Uh yeah, Joe Rogan had a pin number guest live and then he did it multiple times live. I don't know how he did the pin number. I don't know how he did the pin number thing. I think people believe it's just he hires private investigators so he knows he's going on Rogan, right? It's a big So he has an investigator follow Rogan and you could literally just like if Rogan went to an ATM you could just watch him punch it in. It's kind of like the cameras on the head in the factory workers. It's like what's the incentive? If the incentive is I'm going to go on the biggest podcast just tens of millions of people are going to believe I'm like an actual like mind readader. If this happens I will be able to book speaking geeks for 150 grand a pop. Is it worth hiring a PI for two grand? When was the last time you you went and got your pin number? When was the last time you typed your PIN number in? No, no, but it doesn't have to be again, he's got multiple outs, so you hire the PI to do it. He doesn't have to do the PIN number thing. It could be something else. It could be that he always does this other thing. It could be the something in the mail that he threw out that, you know, a letter that he got from somebody. It doesn't matter. He just needs one piece of information that would be implausible that I know. Then I'm going to center the whole trick around that. If I know I'm going on Rogan, I have the PI following him for, you know, whatever a month until I get something. And so, like, that's got to be what's going on. I mean, not to take the fun out of it, by the way. I think it's awesome, even if he does all those things. I'm not I'm not using that to to say it's less cool. I'm just like a kid who's like, "Oh my god, how does this work? It must be this." Right? You have to go with it, right? There's a kayfabe to the whole thing that that has to be like maintained. It's like in wrestling like like you have to sell that the guy punched you, right? Like you got to sell it a little bit for the whole thing to to work. And and life is more fun when you let him do his tricks and like blow your mind versus like trying to out him. Totally totally get that. Um, he's great. I thought the pod was great. I think he's great. I'm super impressed with how he's built his thing up. I think it's really really awesome. There's a great clip that I think people should watch. It was like oddly inspiring and it's Kevin Hart on the Joe Rogan podcast talking about when he met Jeff Bezos. Have you ever you ever heard this clip? No. No. No. No. No. The clip is he's on Rogan and he talks about meeting Jeff Bezos at a party. He's like, "I'm at a party. Jeff Bezos is there. I don't know Jeff Bezos. Jeff Bezos I don't know if he knows me. I have no idea." And I I tell my friend like, "I'm going to go talk to him." And his friend is like, "No, man. Come on. Don't Don't be that guy." He's like, "What you mean?" He's like, "That's Jeff Bezos. He created some [ __ ] that I think is awesome. Like, I don't I'm I'm I don't know him. I'm not going to see him again. I don't know when I'm going to see him again. I'm going to go say I'm going to go say something." He's like, "All right, man. But play like be cool about it." And he's like, "That's the problem. Everybody's too cool." Like, everybody wants to be too cool about everything. He's like, "No, I'm th He's like, "What do you want? What do you want from I'm thirsty for knowledge. I want some information from this guy. This guy's done he's built empires. He's built he's he knows more about the money game than me. He's built he's built technology. He's like, I just I I want to go learn. I'm going to go talk to the guy. I'm not going to be too cool for this. So, he goes up to him and he just says like, "Hey, man. Jeff, I'm Kevin. I'm I admire what you built. You know, I think it's I think it's amazing. I would love to to talk to you a little bit more. now is not the time and place, but I would love to talk to you more at some point to to get to know you. Um, and like hear a little bit more about how you did this cuz I think it's fascinating and I I think there's a lot I could learn from that. But anyways, I just wanted to to come over and say hi because I I mean I admire what you do and I hope someday, you know, our paths cross. He's like, that was it. I got out of his way and he's like, I don't know if I'm ever going to see him again, but if I do, like, I put my face out there. I put my intent. I let it be known that I think it's awesome what you do and I would love to to to to chat with you sometime about it. And he's like he was super kind if that was it. But he he gave this like impassion speech about really about shooting your shot and like dude like don't be too cool to learn. Don't be too cool to make progress. Don't be too cool to put yourself out there. And I just think that that was it was an awesome clip. I was very inspired by it. That is a great clip. That that is cool. I um went to St. Louis recently for Easter and Jesse Puji um invited me to go walking around. Jesse's from St. Louis. He's like, "Hey, do you want to come to my office? We'll go for a walk. I'm going to bring my friend." So, he brings his friend and I start talking to his friend. His friend is named Dave Wayner. Dave was the CFO or now he's the chief strategy officer, but he was the CFO of Facebook for the last 15 years. And we were walking around just like we were all like St. Louis guys. And he's just telling great stories. Dave was telling great stories. I I can I guess I'll call him Dave now. He's my buddy. And um he uh it was pretty cool. Like he was like saying like some cool stuff. Nothing confidential, just like cool like antidotes. And he's told the story about meeting Jeff Bezos one time at um Dave used to work at uh this what's the Sun Valley Conference company, Allen and Co. And he, you know, has been able to meet these ballers forever. you know, he's been I think the CFO of Facebook for 15 years and before that he was hanging out with like titans of industry and he was I I was asking him I was like who who's cool? Who's not cool? Uh just messing around and he was like you know I met Jeff Bezos a couple times and he's one of the only titans of industry who I've ever met. When he looked me in the eye he was never looking around to see who else was in the room and he was like I was a little kind of a small fry compared to all the people he could be around. He looked me straight in the eye and I totally felt like we were connecting and being buddies and he was always really calm and really nice to me and he never like was trying to be like, "All right, nice to talk to you. Now you got to go talk to Putin." And uh that's what this guy Dave told me. Well, who the who the hell does like you know it was a crazy happy hour. Who does Jeff Bezos talk to? I don't know. Like who's he like itching to like go to I don't even know. Um isn't that crazy? I got to I got to go on a walk and hang out with this guy. What did he say about Zuck? He said he's a pleasure to work for. I swear to God. He said he's eventempered. I'm not joking. This sounds like I'm brown nosing. He said he's eventempered. He's like, man, he's been a great boss. Like he's been he never like uh is uh lashes out. He has was always eventempered. He's very polite and uh that he's just been great. He's I mean Dave's worked there I think for 15 or 18 years. I forget exactly how long, but for a long time. Dave, come on the pod. Um although he's still like chief strategy offic you know there's only so much interest the best is the retired guys the guys who are like two years out actually not even freshly retired but two years out and they're like kind of what do I do with my life and like I got things to say and I'm seeing all these dweebs online who've done one 100th of what I've done that have this big audience and they're talking they're yapping I should start yapping that's actually why like uh we we did this pod I did this pod with I still have this book on my thing this guy John McNeel that is awesome. He was president of Tesla. He worked with Elon for years and he's done a whole bunch of awesome startups on his own. Like a Dude, the crazy thing about that pod is his PR person is Jason Yanowitz's wife, Dana. So, she's a good friend of mine and she's been like saying like, "Have this guy on. Have this guy on." And I just dismissed it. I'm like, "A guy who worked for Elon? That's I don't know." Like, and it was so good. It was so good. Isn't that obviously good? I don't know. This is Elon's housekeeper. I'd be like, "Can we book a bigger studio? What what are we going to do?" Like, "Are you kidding?" There was something about it where like like I showed it to Ari. I'm like, "Does this interesting you?" I don't know. We get so many pitches. For some reason, it didn't stand out as being like a mustave. And then I listened to it and I'm like, "Oh my god, this was amazing." Uh, no. He was great. If you haven't listened to that one, that's one of the that one and the Graham Weaver one, but two two recent episodes that I would be like, they're two of my favorite podcasts that I've listened to. You know, I don't I don't normally like listen to MFM once you do them, but like Yeah, we had such good questions to Graeme Weaver. I went and I went and listened to it and I was like we each asked such awesome questions and DHH those two pods where I was like, I can't believe you said that with a straight face. That's hilarious. It's like when Trump recently was on the podium and he was like he's like uh he just says the quiet part out loud all the time that he was like I don't like hanging out with people more successful than me. I like hanging out with losers. I was like, "What?" He's like, "Yeah, if I hang out with someone more successful than I feel like a loser, but when I hang out with losers, I feel great." I was like, "I can't believe he's the president is saying this out loud." But even if he wasn't the president, who do you know that's actually that like fundamentally unfiltered and honest? Did you see what he said about Pearl Harbor to the prime minister of Japan? You don't like surprises? Yeah. She was like, uh, you know, to the prime minister. I thought this was to a journalist. No, like it was the leader of Japan. She was like, "You should have told us about this Iran thing." And he was like, "You want to talk about surprises? Why didn't you tell me about Pearl Harbor?" That was incredible. I I don't I don't like the guy. And I think it's insane some of the stuff that's going on. Agreed. I think it's just I think the the the greed and the theft is is pretty crazy with like if you look at the world liberties financial stuff that they're doing. I think the memes about like how they're like, "Okay, you're you're deporting people, but like rubbing it in with like rap videos and memes." I think it's like so tasteless coming from the official White House account. I can't get behind any of that [ __ ] You know what I mean? Like, you know, like I'm I'm open to somebody who's uh maybe got policies that that you like, but there's something about the way he goes about things that is just like so so distasteful. But also, I do think he's hilarious. I think he's an absolute master of of of the gift of Gab. And I I I do I do think that's amazing and I thoroughly enjoy a nice little twominute compilation of of you know just hilarious things that he sang. So like you know he's complicated and I'm complicated. We we I recorded an episode on Friday with Charles Doohick and he has a book called Super Communicators. He wrote the book Power of Habit, which was a big inspiration to to Ato atomic habits. And it was a great book. And he was like, I'm not a Trump supporter, but when I was uh working for the New York Times, I interviewed him a ton. And he was like, I understand how like one can be very charmed by this. Like he he he checked all the boxes of following the rules of traditional great communicators. So, I don't I don't like to follow a lot of like world events and news or whatever, but you know, when there's like possible World War II, it it probably it gets it goes above the above the above the bar and you start to pay a little bit of attention to it. And so, I was like, I don't really understand what he's negotiating with Iran about. I'm not not totally certain. Uh, so I bought I bought the art of the deal. I was like, I'm going to read the art of the deal to try to understand what is the what is the strategy here? What's going on? So, have you ever actually read The Art of the Deal? No. No. I've read books on him, but not that one. You got to read it, dude. The first 20 pages of The Art of the Deal. Cinema. Absolute cinema. So, the way he writes the book, the beginning of the book, just check this out. This is the first first paragraph of the book. I don't do it for the money. I've got enough more than I'll ever need. I do it to do it. Deals are my art form. Other people paint beautifully on a canvas or write wonderful poetry. I like making deals, preferably big deals. That's how I get my kicks. Most people are surprised by the way I work. I play it very loose. I don't carry a briefcase. I try not to schedule too many meetings. I leave my door open. You can't be imaginative or entrepreneurial if if you got too much structure. I prefer to come into work each day just to see what happens. And then he talks about how how he's like the the first 20 pages are just a That's Yeah, that's cool. If you're running, you know, a privately held company. Yeah. But but you can see he's just doing the same [ __ ] He's doing the same thing, right? I just do it to do it. Uh, you know, I play it loose. I show up and see what happens. And so he he goes like it'll be like nine. He basically says like I do 50 to 100 phone calls a day. Most don't last more than 15 minutes. I just work the phones all day. And so it's like 9:00 a.m. You know, Leoka called, you know, 9:15 my broker called. We got a we got a million dollars of Hilton stock. People think I'm going to do a takeover. Honestly, I don't know. I might just sell it if it's a profit. I might take over the whole company. I'm keeping my options open right now. I feel like there's more value there. But then again, a nice profit is a nice profit. I hang up the phone. We decide that we'll we'll call back again this afternoon. And he just goes call after call of like, you know, the permitting guy called said we're not going to get the permit. Piss. It's, you know, like whatever. Like it's pissing me off. I got to call I got to call this other guy to see if I can get the permits through. He owes me a big one big one from the old Atlantic City deal that we did. You know, it's he's just going like kind of deal by deal call by call for the first 20 minutes. It's honestly pretty fascinating. And like I think he ghost wrote the book. I don't think he wrote it, but he ghost. Yeah. The ghost writer like talks mad trash about him. He was like, I the style of it though is very unique. Like I actually really enjoy the like stylistic way. It seems like you know his personality even if he's not the one writing it. I read um a book that was written about him and they basically said like starting at the age of 25 or I forget when he like they're like he didn't have an office in Manhattan but he had a limousine and he would just drive like to city the you know where the mayor is I forget what's it called city city hall city hall sorry and he would like just start badgering people and then he would go to like properties that were selling and start badgering them and he just went from place to place to place every single day just driving around and he'd be like I got to go back to my office but he he didn't have an office. He just would drive around from place to place to place and in doing that he just kind of created motion kind of created a handful of things and it was just like this insistent like nagging almost. I don't know what what you'd call it but it's like um all right. Is that it? If that ain't it? I don't know. I don't know what it is. That was everything. All right. I producer Ari is like uh like what the hell am I going to do with this episode? Every time we do this the people say thank god we love these. This the third time I'm complimenting us. Uh, but they say that they like these, so it is what it is. It's for the uh the uh this is what the podcast is. If you don't like this, don't listen to the All right, that's it. That's the pod.