467 - Gabriel Weinberg: These 10 Biases Impact Who & What Influence You

Transcript

This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is the James Altucher show on the Stansbury radio network. This is James Altucher at the James Altucher Show, and I'm welcoming Kamal Ravikant. Kamal, welcome to the show. Thanks, James. Really happy to be here. Kamal, I don't even know how to introduce you. You've done so many different things, and we talk about we keep running into each other all over the country, whether it's venture capital stuff, personal improvement stuff, Internet marketing, whatever. We're you're you're involved in everything. Yeah. Or maybe I'm just talking to you. Right? Yes. It's true. So you're the author of Love Yourself, Live Your Truth. You're a Silicon Valley venture capitalist. You're a Silicon Valley capitalist. You're a Silicon Valley entrepreneur. You do all sorts of things with Internet marketing. So I wanna talk about all of these things because, really, Kamal, the whole basis of this podcast is I want people to get the sense and the reality that they can free themselves from, you know, whatever's holding them back, whether it's a job or fears about their education or fears about whatever relationships. And you've you've been through it all and lived to tell the tale. So, I'm just gonna start asking questions and you go for it. Yeah. Sure. And actually, you know, one of the thing was I was in the army. You know, it's like, you know, I I mentioned that because I'm very proud of that fact. And also, like, it just kinda shows I'm in such a different place in my lifetime when I was in the army. But just goes to show you how life, you know, you can just end up anywhere you want and utilize experience that you had even when you were 18 now at 40 2. Okay. Let's start with that because why the heck did you go in the army? You're 18 years old. You probably could get into some school or whatever. Why'd you go into the army? I was actually in a state school in upstate New York, for a year. And, it was like 16,000 people. Everyone was from Long Island, and all they did was drink. And it was 500 people in my classes, and I would never go to cla*s. I would just drink and get AIDS, and I was bored out of my mind. I can't stand that whole getting AIDS thing. That's such a drag to getting AIDS. So I was just bored, and I was just going to be challenged. And, you know, at 18, like, just it does seem like the best way to be challenged. So I just walked in recruiter's office and, you know, he showed me photos of which, you know, how badass it could be. And I was like, okay, that sounds right. And also, I was, you know, having been, you know, I was born in India, but raised in the in the in the US. And as being a immigrant and being, you know, a young immigrant, you feel a certain level of patriotism and, like, gratitude to your country that you wanna pay back. And so I did that as well. So I actually left school and joined the army. Well, and what did you start out as a private? Yeah. I did enlisted. I was, 11 Bravo at Fort Benning, which is infantry. You know, I took the AthLab, and that's the that's the test I used to determine what, you know, what specialty you can choose. And I scored like 98 or 99 percentile. I couldn't chosen anything. And I chose the one that the people who basically failed the asset uptake, which is infantry. But which is what is really the military is about, the the the foot soldier. And I tell you, that was like, it was a great training in life. And at 18 to be like, being taught like people shooting at you and how to lead a team of men under stress like that. You know, you carry that with you for the rest of your life. Yeah. And this wasn't like even though this was during the kind of the end of the Cold War, it was short it was probably not too many years after the the Gulf War. So there was potentially a reality of, going to war. Mhmm. Yeah. But you don't really think too much about that when you're 18, honestly. There's a reason why sad thing like young men. There's so many things they send 18 year olds to whether it's college or war Yeah. That 40 year olds would not go to. Like, I would never go to college and I would never go to war. Yeah. True. I think both you and I spend our time talking people out of doing both. Exactly. And yet people act like, oh, no. It's, patriotic to join the army. These people are defending you. I'm fine with that, but I have whenever I put put back the argument, okay. Well, you know, you're allowed to volunteer too and you're 45 years old. Nobody ever says, okay. Yeah. I'll volunteer instead of my child. So Yeah. Well, I applaud you for joining. Like, I think it's a great thing that you joined, but I just don't see many, you know, 50 year olds joining. Nor would I recommend any. In fact, these days, you know, people will ask me, even like 18 year olds. And I'll say, listen, honestly, especially given the state of what will happen, where you'll be sent, what might happen to you in the military. You're better off just grabbing a backpack, taking a couple of $1,000, or go to a country where you don't speak the language for a few months. You will grow just as much as you have in the military. You know, it's it's the level of big thrown in situations where you just not comfortable. Every day you're being challenged, which is what the military is really about. I would say too, that's a good choice for any 18 year old, even those 18 year olds who are trying to decide whether or not to go to college. And I've talked about this on other podcasts, and you and I have talked about it quite a bit. But just in general, getting life experience is incredibly valuable as opposed to any organization or institution which is gonna try to regiment you, which is either, you know, the army or college. But, again, the one thing about the army which I have to say and I wish I had done it is that you get a very good workout for at least 6 months. Is it you know, I'll tell you something interesting. I used to be very very undisciplined before the army. And that was part of the reason I thought it would teach me to be undisciplined. You know, because I never went to my classes and I just drank a lot. Typical college freshman. And I learned something, which was, in the army, they can yell at you, scream at you, and they can force you to do stuff. In the end, you have to step up on your own and do it. Like I remember, like, there was a there was a in in boot camp, your PT test by the time you graduate, you have to score a certain amount on it. And, if you score really high, pretty much how to call your PT stud. And I was like the smallest guy in my unit. Right? Like I was like the only brown guy, in the middle I think it was a US army at the time. This was 1990. At least enlisted wise. And so I had a bit to prove. So I kind of made a mental decision that I was gonna be a PT stud in my unit. I was gonna beat everybody's PT scores. So I remember, like, we would come back to a barracks, like, really exhausted and fall asleep at night. And while people be sleeping, I'd be underneath my bed my bunk doing push ups. But there was no drill sergeant yelling at me. No one kept telling me to be in better shape. But it was like a little decision I made for myself. Like a little, like, commitment I made to myself that I was gonna be better. So I was actually doing that on my own just on top of all they were making us do. And that was How many push ups did you do? I was able to do, I think, like, 90 something in 2 minutes. Oh my gosh. And how many can you do right now? Like, 20 or 30 years later? How however many years later it is. Honestly, I can probably do about the same. I gotta get in better shape. Come on. I do yoga occasionally, but I'm not doing 90 push ups in 2 minutes. So You know, for that, I'll tell you something that changed my life. It was meeting Art Debani, the guy that the paleo diet is based on. Right? And he's the actual, he's a brilliant economist. And I got to meet and have dinner with him about 5, 6 years ago. And he was I think 72 at the time. And I got to meet this man who's brilliant, really thoughtful, very zen, very measured in his thinking. So I I was I've always known I'll get better mentally and emotionally as I as I get as I age. But I got this But this man is in such amazing shape. He's like rippling muscles chiseled at 72. Right? Wow. And I realized, oh my god. What does he do? I can get better as I age physically too. That completely changed my life. My shifted my whole model of aging. So so what does he do specifically? Sorry? What does Art Devaney do specifically? He's the one who came up with paleo. So is it just paleo or is he doing push ups everyday or or is he going to the gym? He actually, basically lives, what do you call the evolutionary fitness lifestyle where he do does brief moments of intense activity and then just leisure. Like, his workouts are just like I follow his very short 15 minutes intense, then just relaxing. What what might be that activity? Like, is it running or push ups or? If it's running, it's sprints. There's a if you Google him and, you know, there's a great photo of him sprinting at when he's, like, 64 or something. And you would swear you're looking at a body of like a chisel 20 year old Olympic athlete. But how does he get chiseled? What's is he lifting weights or is he doing push ups? He's lifting weights and, doing sprints. Wow. Okay. Alright. I'm gonna get started tomorrow. Tomorrow, not today. I'm a little busy today. So, Kamal, let's I wanna start, going and go backwards. So right now, you're a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley, and you're involved in a bunch of different, companies like, whether it's AngelList or Onello or lots of different companies. So what are you seeing out there? Like, everybody asks me, are we in an Internet bubble? And my opinion is no. But what's what's your take? What's the Silicon Valley take on this? I'll tell you something. I was here during the first bubble. I was working. Right? I was helping build a company that people now know as WebMD. Right? So I got to experience all that. I've been here since. And I don't It's not a bubble, it's boom times. It's boom times unlike anything we've ever ever seen. This makes like the bubble back then look like child's play. Well, because why is it Are you saying in bubble terms or in boom terms? Like, I don't understand. I'm thinking in boom terms. Because bubble was the fact that if bubble is like is irrational expectations when you have companies all these companies went public with negative revenues and significant burns and just pumping down stock. Right? Now, it's like most of these companies are private. They'll never go public. They're going to be acquired. And it's like 1 man, 2 man teams. You know, what you should take like 80 of us to build, you know, 2 guys can build now. Right? All the infrastructure, everything is is so well in place. For example, AWS and Amazon. And also back then, like, if you think about it, the only like about 30,000,000 people in the US were online. Now, everybody's got a smartphone. Everybody's online. So, you know, in fact, we're we're we're rushing to catch up to all these people who have all this demand. The demand hasn't been met. You know, I think we a bubble would be when we have exceeded the demand and we're not even close. And there's always great innovation happening. So so at that point then in 1999, you're saying we exceeded the demand, but, you know, just in I agree a bubble is where there's irrational expectations, but there but the expectation that the Internet would change all communication and all commerce, that expectation was rational. It just happened to be that there were there was many companies trying to meet the dream, but you have Amazon, eBay, Priceline, Apple, Yahoo, Google. They met the dream. They were rational expectations. Yeah. And I look at a lot of the companies that are coming up, like, you know, that are that are the modern day version of BevVan. Right? And that are doing great. In fact, I just invested on called Post Rocket, and that you and I talked about. At at that time, it was it was the technology was a limiting factor. It was a connection to the consumer. Right? But now, it's it's, it's amazing. You know, I can you can you can build stuff that people in Africa in the middle of nowhere are using because they have a smartphone. It's it's absolutely mind boggling. So so right now, you you invest in companies and and what are the types of things you look for? In fact, a great adviser of mine by the name of taught me that, you know, this is Oh, gee. I I don't know who he is. He's an unknown person. You know, like, the main thing, actually, my model is a little bit different than the rest, which is I wanna be the dumbest guy at the table. So I'm fortunate that I've been here long enough that I know, like, the big players, and I know people with the best track record investing. And they're friends of mine, they're people I love, people who love me. And in small markets, you know, like, as as you and I know, even in public markets, you know, you have to be an insider to really have any have any advantage. And so I invest with people I really who know this stuff really well, who are smarter than me, and I and I go in with them, and I pick and choose out of that. So, like, my model is be the double 10 So just as an example, like, if Warren Buffett bought IBM shares, then IBM might be a good investment. That's kind of like at a stock market level the way you're investing at a venture capital level. Yeah. But not just Warren Buffett. That's to be Warren Buffett and a couple other people plus it would have to then meet the needs of my fund. Okay. Like, so you you would look for, like, 4 or 5 good investors. They're all kind of separately agreeing. X y z is a good trend, a good company, and then you would start considering that company. Right. And then I would call up my friends in Google and so forth who really know the space or whatever company that knows that space and then get their real feedback on that as well. And what what sectors are kind of, exciting to you in the Internet that are that nobody knows about yet? Well, that nobody knows about, you know, what's everybody knows about Bitcoin. But what's coming up and, you know, right now, I don't know if it's time to invest because no one really knows which one's gonna work. But it's the whole concept of blockchain, which is what Bitcoin is built on. That's that's, like, every smart person I know here is so excited about because it's literally like the new Internet. Okay. Well, let's let's explain that for a second because I don't think most people understand actually what Bitcoin is. Like, Bitcoin seems like this black box coin. Nobody really understands the software underneath it, and definitely nobody understands what what a blockchain is. So I don't know if you can explain in a few sentences what a what a blockchain is or or how it works. I don't know if there's a few sentences I can, but I can tell you the the main thing behind it, which is that there's no central authority. So you can create a contract, you can create a company, you can create a currency, you can do transactions with currency, you can do transactions without needing a central authority like a Visa, like a Federal Reserve. You get rid of the middleman and it's all done through the actual underlying system that handles this. Almost like, you know, someone has coined it the Internet of money. But it can be the Internet of anything. And what the Internet is, it it basically allows you to communicate without a central authority. Right. There's no post office in the middle. There's no government in the middle. No government, no private company, no middle man, which is what the dream of all of us was back in the bubble day. Right? Get rid of the middle man. Although, now you see things like the NSA are in the middle bit. You know, they they talk to Google, they talk to Yahoo, and so on. Yeah. Yeah. But but but with Bitcoin, they can't because of the cryptography. Yeah. Well, that's the theory. I mean, though, they're very smart people working over there. But in the sense that I mean, like the here it is, like, you don't need a Visa. Like, why should be why should I have to go through a particular bank to be able to transact with you and give them a percentage of the fee when when, like, a lot of times it's it doesn't really serve either of us. Okay. Well, here's a great example. Here's a great example. Come on. I'm sorry to to interrupt. But let's say I'm let's say you're in China and you're selling me a car. Okay. Or you're selling me anything, even a digital product, like a book. I have to send money to my bank, who then sends money to the regional federal reserve, who then sends money to the federal reserve, who then sends money to the Central Bank of China, and then it goes all the way down to the local bank of yours in China. And every step of the way, there's a fee. And all those fees added together, that's inflation. So if we can wipe out all those fees by me just sending you a a Bitcoin because it's cryptography. There's nobody other than me who can send you this Bitcoin. Like, there's no way to forge it. There's no way to fake it. It's impossible with with current computers. That wipes out a huge layer of fees in the system in in global in the global economy. Yeah. And that's that's real innovation. And so that'll be very interesting to see what happens here. Though I wouldn't say anyone who doesn't know it to start investing in it. You know, it's like, you you know, offer you don't wanna be too early. You know, as you know, in the market as well, if you try to short something that you know is just overpriced, well, the market may just keep it going forever. And then when you run out of money, that's when you can't correct. Well, as as, Naval, your brother, once told me, if you think there's a 1 in a 100 chance that Bitcoin will be successful, invest 1 1 100th of your portfolio in Bitcoin. That's simple enough. You know, another thing is though is cryptocurrencies in general. So there's not just Bitcoin. There's lots of different types of, you know, currencies based on cryptography. So if you, are a picks and shovels guy, so as opposed to the goal let's say Bitcoin's like gold. So instead of investing in the Bitcoin, you invest in the companies that, let's say, help people create, stores for cryptographic currencies or help people create, you know, derivatives for crypt cryptography currencies. These might be, you know, better investments in the currency itself. In fact, I did invest in 1, which does create create derivatives for for, cryptocurrencies. Exactly. So not just bitcoins, but all cryptocurrencies? Or it basically has the model for cryptocurrencies? Mhmm. Yeah. So that that's interesting. So okay. So bitcoin's one area to look into. And, you know, I'll tell you where bitcoin's being used and where it's very interesting right now is Argentina. Because Argentina currency is going to fail at some point. Everybody knows it. I mean so maybe that means it's not going to happen, but it seems like Argentina currency is doomed to fail. And the there's such a big black market there that eventually people are migrating more and more towards these safe, secure Bitcoin currencies. And when the when that currency fails, it could be the case that Argentina Bitcoin sort of comes online and essentially forces other countries that do business with them to switch to Bitcoin. And that could you could see that who knows if it's 1 year or 10 years from now, that could be the spread of Bitcoin. Yeah. That could be the tipping point. It just takes one country. Right? It takes Right? It takes Yeah. One country to actually just let them, use that for the transactions. And then, it's done. And, you know, it's a great way also for people to move money out of countries that are that have restrictive policies on doing so. You know, it's always like a big thing where people always trying to move money out of China and all these places where you just can't. So there's all these underground networks where you just, you know, you give someone money in one place and then their relative gives you money in the other country, minus large chunks. Yeah. All that disappears with this. I'll tell you, though, one thing, and and this is like you say, this is just the beginnings of Bitcoin. But if somebody says if some listener says, well, how do I get Bitcoin right now? It's not that easy. You can't just privately get it. Yeah. You go to something like Coinbase or whatever. You know, like, what's happened with Mt. Gox. Right? People lost their stuff. It's still early. And when these things are early, there's gonna be a lot of dips and, you know, and people come out of the wood burning, see, I told you so. You know, this is never gonna work. But that just, as you and I know, that means it's gonna work long term. Well, you know, Mt. Gox failed and Bitcoin price did fall, but it still hung in there between $45100, per Bitcoin. So that's not a Yeah. That's amazing. You know, and Coinbase is backed by, you know, some pretty big venture capitalists. So that that's a little more secure. But look, we'll see what happens. So that's one sector. What's another sector that's interesting that, you know, most people don't really know about? Well, my favorite tends to be like the intersection of online and offline commerce. You know, using your phone. When I say online, like, you know, you now it's your phone. Using your phone to solve an on in a offline pain. Like in San Francisco, you know, the taxi service there is is atrocious. We're out in the neighborhood. They wouldn't come on the weekends. Or if they call if you call and, you know, they would say they're coming, and then half a half a hour half hour later, you call them back, and they'd say, oh, the taxi driver picked this up along along the way. It was horrible. So Uber started here. Right? There's a reason Uber started because it was just we were techie. We were just sick and tired of a really like an old, antiquated system, you know, that we were dependent on. And and so Uber took off. And, you know, now everyone knows about Uber. But that concept about just me pull up my phone, and boom, I can just order a taxi or a cab or whatever. And then shows me the person on the way, and that person is rated. And I rate that person, so there's customer feedback. And that, you know, you know that this is not some some guy's gonna scream and yell at you, or be drunk, or whatever. You know, they'll be thrown out in a second. You know, that's amazing. So that's happening with delivery. Like, one company I'm in called Ship, which does the same thing. It's Uber Shipping. They come and take all my stuff and ship it. It doesn't cost maybe more than I would if I went to the post office. I love it. I never I don't get it. So let's say I call them. They'll just drive to my like, are they like UPS? No. It's actually an app. I pull out my app. I take all my my items I'm gonna ship. I take a photo of each item. I put in the address it's going to. And then, you know, next next next. And then I say, okay. Ready? And I click ready. And it shows me actually the driver, the or the name of the driver. They're on their way, where they are on the map. Shows me they'll be here in 20 minutes. They come in 20 minutes. They take all my stuff. They ship it. They send me an email confirmation and build my credit card. I have to do nothing. It's beyond taking a photo and putting an address in. Why isn't that like UPS? Well, for example, UPS, UPS is not gonna do that. I have to go to UPS. I mean, I guess you could create an account with UPS and do that. But then for people like myself, they're not regular shippers. I just wanna send packages here and there. For example, my books to friends. Right? This is perfect. I just made sense of the straw hat in Philadelphia, you know, who left their hat here. You know, I just do ship. I don't have to go to the post office. And companies like these are popping up, which are taking away the pain of going standing in line, dealing with trying to figure out which is the right shipping option and so forth. These guys just do it. And there's more and more companies company like this that are solving this pain, whether it's for commerce or for, health. You know, you pull out an ad, you're not feeling well. You pull out your app. You know, you put in this doctors on his way, and he's gonna come to your house and and take care of you. Like, this is really interesting stuff that's happening. So so what can I do, like, now if I'm if I wanna buy us if are there any stocks that I could buy to invest in, like, Bitcoin or this Uber like technology? Is there anything out there? Stocks? Yeah. Like, the the the Winklevoss twins, you know, that that fought with Mark Zuckerberg in in that movie Mhmm. They're setting up, like, a publicly traded Bitcoin fund right now. I don't trust publicly traded stuff, honestly. I'm curious, though, when when if it's, if it's if it's, like, a Bitcoin closed end fund or something, that might be interesting. But I don't know. Who knows? I mean, I don't know. There's so many smart people with so much technology, so much, like, vested interest, you know, in the public markets who are ahead of me. Like, I wouldn't know what to do there. I'm not smart enough for that. Well, you know what's interesting is take AngelList. That is a way for private investors to find companies that are private still and invest in them. I don't know if people really know about that company. Even better if you're a credit investor, and this is, you know, the the requirements are pretty low in the US. What you do is you go to AngelList and you find an investor who has an amazing track record like Tim Ferriss or Jason Caltenez or, those guys started big. Kevin Rose. I don't know his name. Yeah. Kevin Rose. Right? They have really great track record. And they have something called syndicates, where like you can actually invest in what they're gonna invest in along with them. Right? You just but you can invest a small amount. Because they're $2,000, a $1,000, $5,000 and just go in with them. So immediately, now you have a basically a portfolio that the same company these guys have at the same terms they have. Amazing. That's never been done before. Right? So now you're going along with the Buffet. They you're he's investing your money with you. And that and that's at angel.co.co.co. Yeah. And I think the best part there as well is that these guys don't just, it's not like they'll take the money from the syndicates and invest. They invest in their own, and the syndicates are investing with them. Right? So it's always they're putting their money where their mouth is. Yeah. So it's almost like kind of a stock market of private companies. Yeah. So it's like whereas before Jason will be putting in 50 k. Now, he can put in 500 k in a company because of his syndicate. And, you know, Jason's in Uber and all these other thing, and he's a very sharp investor. Like, Jason, Tim, Kevin, all these guys. That's that's really interesting way. Though, you know, one thing to keep in mind is, you know, startup investing, angel investing. I used to work for an angel fund years ago. And But old school angel, and he was my mentor. He was amazing guy and he taught me. He said, you know, angel investing is the easiest way to lose money. Just know that going in. Right? It's like like if you especially if you don't you know, if you haven't been in this for a long time, you you're you're guessing. So That that's why I think the most important rule in angel investing is always invest alongside a a really good venture capitalist. Because then you know you're not just angel investing, you're also venture capital investing. Yeah. Yeah. And going to be the dumbest guy at the table is the smartest thing you can do. Now that's my secret. Let's see if it works. You know, but I think you will. Yeah. Yeah. Well well and also diversification helps, like being in a bunch of industries, you know, the usual things. Yeah. Come on. I wanna talk about your your books now. So Mhmm. When when we first met, we were going back and forth. We were trying to meet, but you were really, really sick. And Yeah. Then you came out of it. And I asked, what did you do to stop being sick? Like, I thought you were going to die or something. Like, what what happened? This was when I was building my last company. And, you know, like, I went all in and it just really looked like it was gonna be a big hit. And I put I had all my money in it, and my friends put money in it, family put money in it, and the whole thing blew up. And I lost everything. I was in serious debt. I mean, people had lost money. I got really really sick. I've worked from nonstop for like three and a half years. I think I last year was when I finally started taking Sundays off from the office. Like I had taken one vacation. It was just, you know, just insane. Did you have a girlfriend at this time? I did. And she was wonderful. And I was an a*s. And, you know, obviously that didn't work out because my company came first. Right? I was a I mean, I I I called her and apologized about it afterwards. And, you know, she's a great girl and and she's moved on. I'm very happy for her. But, you know, a relationship can't survive, but like, you know, relationship. I like, I was so Everything came first. And like, I mean, my company came first above everything. My social relationships, my You name it. Whatever. My spirituality, you anything. Right? My health. And so I burnt out and I got really sick. And and the doctors couldn't figure out turns out a disaster. I've been sick for like 6 months. And I've just been going powering through it, and thought of a stress. And until I just like, I was like, I couldn't even get up. And then, you know, I couldn't walk properly. I was so exhausted. And, and then, so like, I was basically bedridden for for a while and miserable. And, my company was failing every I'd lost everything. I was just, you know, I think if I was I like, you know, this is honest. If I was depressed, it was a good day. It was it was an upswing. I was just pure misery. And there was one morning when I woke up, and I just decided, like, I can't do this. Like, I can't live like this. I'm just gonna get out of it and die trying because this is this is not worth it. And so, I made a vow of myself. And I think maybe it goes back to like, you know how we talked about the commitment thing that to to oneself at boot camp that I was gonna be a PT stud and do Right. Cruise ups underneath my bunk at night. It was that that same level of intensity. I made a vow that I was actually gonna do something to get out of it. And what I chose was I made a vow to love myself. And trust me, I didn't even believe in the word love before this. I don't know where it came from. It came from a real place of desperation. And I was just gonna really just love myself in every thought, every action, everything I did in every way I was conscious. I was gonna be focusing on love myself. Because I was really hating myself at the time. And so I started just trying things. I just started trying things. I was locked up in my bedroom and I just did, you know, things in my head. And some I noticed started to shift my head. So I went I went with them. And after, like, about a little while, I came up with a practice that What do you mean something shifted in your head? Like, what was going on? Like, my thoughts started getting more positive. Like, I started feeling better. And I just really noticed what worked, and I refined it. And what didn't work, I threw it out. And so, in the in the end, I just came up with a practice that I did every day. And I I got well. And not only did I get well, my I got real like, I got better in every way. Like, emotionally, physically, like, how my lunch started to get better. Like, in ways that I couldn't quantify. Like, in a sense, I couldn't say that I made this happen. But just everything just started to get better. I was like, oh, I think I've hit something. And so that's when we met. I told you about it. And I remember you saying, you need to write about this. And I kinda like poo pooed it because I was like, you know, you you didn't talk about it at the Silicon Valley. You know, I failed. And the last thing I wanted to do was write about, like, well, this guy had failed and, you know, he got better by loving himself. And then I, you know, think in the end I wrote the book because I committed to you. And, you know, I want let, commitment go. And, you know, putting that book out, you know, which I was so terrified of putting out. And, you know, you're the one who told me, like, you don't put anything out unless you're scared what people will think of you. And that's the best advice I ever got. And so I put it out. And, you know, within 5 weeks of being out, it self published. That book was the number one self published book on Amazon. No more And this is the more titled Love Yourself. Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It. Right. Yeah. And it was very simple, very honest. I mean, I'm I'm, I've I'm I taught myself to write over, like, 15 years really obsessively. So I know how to write, how to get a message across simply. So I worked very hard on it. But in the end, it was just a simple to the point quote that, you know, like, I get emails every day from people about how it's helping them changing their lives. And it's it the book putting that book out changed my life. Just showed me the power of just really being your honest, real, vulnerable self to the world. You know, being being ready to be able a laughing stock. And you know what the world does? It just loves you. It just just people are so hungry for it. It's Well, I think people change my life. I think people relate to it because everybody I don't know about everybody. I don't wanna speak for everybody, but I think a lot of people are scared out there. Like, we live, you know, even though you say times are booming, and I believe that, we also live in this era of greater economic uncertainty than ever before, probably because, you know, the notion of the save 9 to 5 job has been gone since 2008. Yeah. Yeah. So people have a hard time loving themselves. First, they feel like, oh, I've gotta pay the bills first, and then I need to love myself. Even though I think your book shows that the reverse happens. Like, first, it comes from within. Yeah. The best probably the best advice I ever got was from a friend who said life is from the inside out. It's like working your inner self first, always. And the outer self just resolves itself. You know, whatever you wanna believe and how that happens, that's up to you. But, you know, even if it's just on the fact that your attitude determines everything, you know, to the very base from the very basic to maybe there's more to reality than than we like to think. Who knows? So so you wrote this book, which was very personal and, you know, it was it was it was basically how you got through this kind of period of sickness by, you know, telling yourself you love yourself and and applying these exercises into practice. And the main thing I have to ask is, did a lot of women write to you after that and hit on you? I wish. Actually, you know, I've been right to me, but they write for advice on the existential crisis. You know? I need to write a book on sex or something for that. Maybe that's true. May maybe that's just like Tucker gets those emails. Yeah. Right? And, you know, it's okay. Like like, it's amazing how you know, I've been it's this is so put in my I really come to believe that people are fundamentally good. Just the emails I get from everyone, you know. Just everyone people want just wanna share. They wanna connect, you know. I really have started to know that for a fact now. The fun I mean, despite the fact that our human race does some really stupid silly things, you know, historically, fundamentally people are good. And that, you know, that's what connecting my readers has taught me. It's just such a gift. Well, I I also think it's the times too. Like, I think always people act out of their self interest, but I think it's more on people's self interest now, to be compassionate to others and to work with others because the normal structures we live in are breaking down. And, you know, you you have to you you have to be compassionate to others so they're compassionate back to you. And, again, it's not a totally selfish thing. Like, it turns out compassion, you know, reinvigorates all parts of the brain and actually makes you a stronger, smarter, healthier person, but it's really important now because the normal, safety nets we have aren't catching us anymore. Yeah. And I mean, actually, look, remember how you built yourself back up? You would just everyday email people and give to them. Right? And expecting nothing in return. Right? If it's just so like, if that's that is the best way to build yourself up in life. Like, you know, forget working your career or whatever, this will take care of it. Well, this is on it and also you talk about choose yourself, how you did that. And, you know, you gave. And you give and give, and people give back in amazing ways. It's true. People if you if you help others, they're go not everybody, but but Right. Right. Who are really also in tune themselves, they're gonna the people you want to are going to give back to you. And I have found for myself over the past 4 or 5 years an amazing community that I never had before only because I started doing my own version of, you know, what I call a a daily practice of of health for myself and and of giving to others. Yeah. And your daily practice, honestly, I think is the best thing I've ever done on the Internet. I really did. Thank you very much. I I tell people that's what the Internet was created It's for that one post. But what is it? How to be the lucky guy alive? Yeah. That one post. I think I sent everyone to that post. In fact, my second book, I have a chapter about it. Like, go read that's the one that's the reason the Internet exists. Go read it. Yeah. Live Your Truth. So you wrote 2 books. And talk about that. Like, I think you've sort of for me, you sort of changed the definition of a book because these were small books. They were self published. You've made a a good living off of them. They've sold quite a few copies. They both were bestsellers. You know, Love Yourself still consistently sells quite a bit. How what what can people do to, like, what did you do to market these books if anything? Well, Love Yourself, I actually hid underneath the rock and pretended I, you know, I didn't exist after I put it out. You wrote a blog post about it which launched it. And then just, you know, it's like that's like, you know, like, when you launch a product or an app or a company, anything. Right? You can you can always game the system if you want, but that's short term. In the end, if if the product is quality and markets itself, it's as long and the key is you put it where people are people are gonna be. Like, I, you know, I could have written that book as as like 20 or 30 blog posts on my blog, and 20 or 30 people would have read it. And that would have been it. I took that same book and, you know, same same, information, crafted as a book, and packaged as a book, and put it in the world's largest bookstore, Amazon. Right? Everyone goes to Amazon to buy books. And what happened? You know, people were there looking for this kind of information. And that's it was really that simple. You know, I tell people, either do not try to be a special you not talk about this. Don't try to be a special snowflake on the web. Don't create your own little special fancy site at this thing because Google exists, people will come find you. You know, if you build it, they will come. Go where people are. You know, create something of value. Right? And then ultimately people will pass around, which is what happened with mine. Like, people tweet about it every day. People every And every once in a while, I'll Google it and I'll find all these new blog posts people have written about it or, you know, all these amazing people just tweet it on their own. Like, Cheryl Wilkinson tweeted about it. They embarrassed tweet about it. Like, you know, they I never asked them. I mean, I didn't even know Cheryl. That's how I got to know Cheryl was because she read my book. Right? And she found it through some other source. The key is the key is really this simple. Create something of value, you know, that's more about giving to others than to yourself. And then put it where people are. If you're like creating videos or movies, put it on YouTube. Do not create your own special site, you know. If you're doing, you know, there's books, movies, you know, a podcast, you know. Don't create your own special site and do podcast there. Put it on iTunes. People on iTunes searching for podcast. Go where they are. And that's I think that's the 80% of the secret right there. There's something about you, put it where people are, and that's the beauty of the Internet. And what we built over here is that's available. Middleman, you know, you don't have to go to studio executive, or movie executive, or even a book publisher. You know. Right. Again, it's sort of like, what you were saying before about Uber. You don't have to go to a taxi cab company to get a taxi. You can just say take your car out and join Uber's, you know, fleet of drivers, and now you're a driver. Yeah. And actually, now a lot of the Uber drivers I meet are former taxi drivers who love it because they control the hours. They can turn the app on and on, work whenever they want. They get paid, you know, paid regularly. They don't have to kiss up to any dispatcher. They don't have to pay all the exorbitant fees. They don't have to worry about medallion. It's actually create a whole, like, system of entrepreneurs, like, real time, real freelance entrepreneurs. It's a very interesting, economy that's developing out of this. Yeah. So it's interesting. So it's almost like the employment numbers are not really telling the full story of what's happening in this economy because we also have this booming innovation economy as well where people could be solopreneurs, you know, kinda one man entrepreneurs, and create these businesses, whether it's you writing a book or a driver, joining Uber. I've I've seen some drivers, get a fleet of cars and have their own kind of limo companies completely under the umbrella of Uber taking care of all the logistics. Yes. Now you have basically, you know, you have fundamentally, Uber is just a dispatch service that has a distribution. Right? A dispatch service that anyone could plug into. Yeah. So I can take I can take my car out. Well, I don't have a driver's license. Claudia could take our car out and and call up Uber and say, I'm joining Uber right now. And suddenly, they'll dispatch her to whatever the next the closest, rider is. Yeah. And now then you have this beautiful Argentinian woman driving around. Yeah. I'm gonna have to call up all the time so no guys hit on her. Yeah. So so, so again, though, with Love Yourself and Live Your Truth, you always were giving me advice about, you know, book marketing and everything. But one thing I thought was interesting is how how many pages is Love Yourself? Oh, god. The paperback, I think, is like, I don't know, 50 or 60 pages. It's short. It's, like, less than 10,000 words. Right. So no publisher in the world would time a 50 page book, and yet you were able to publish that and sell more copies than 99% of the book sold out there. And Amazing. It it changes the publishing industry. Yeah. I mean, I have, like, agents contacting me now and, you know, try to get me to go to publish. So they keep on saying, what are they gonna do for this book that I can't do my best? Basically, Amazon is not doing for me, and no one's gonna be able to answer that. And they say, well, again, your bookstores, but then we'll also take most of we'll own the book, We'll own the rights to it. And also, we'll give you far less. It makes no sense. So what what do you think your next book will be? Basically, I I'm following the Louis CK and George Carlin model where I wanna write one book a year based on everything I've learned from from the last one. Since the last one. Right? So not repeat. Yeah. Not like I love yourself too, or whatever. Whoever I am now, the things I've learned right now. So I'm kinda writing a book right now based on some of the talks I've given, where I was sharing new stuff I've learned and see what good comp you know, see if I can craft something valuable out of it. And so that's the best thing to book a year. What what new stuff have you learned? What new stuff have I learned? You know, I think I've learned more, like, I think you and I have talked about this. So we've been at the bottom, right, a a few times in our lives. And we can we can always write more material out of it. But at some point, like, when you're in the upswing, you wanna write about what you're learning there too. Right? So I'm learning writing more about that about more on the entrepreneurship side, like what it takes. And when I say entrepreneur, I mean like doing anything worthwhile in life. Anything that's an expression of you. That's my definition of entrepreneurship. It doesn't have to be running a business. It could be writing a book. It could be raising a child. Right? Whatever. Just an expression of you. And just, you know, I've learned You know, I'm surrounded by like some insanely successful people, repeatedly successful people. I've had some success. I've had failures. You know, I'm, you know, fortunate, I've learned from them. And, you know, I've learned it. It's it's all a mental game in the end. It's always a mental inside game. So I'm writing about that, what it takes. Because, you know, you run into people all the time, and they just stop with fear. And it's almost like, well, fear is part of the process. Fear is the beacon. Fear is like, oh, good. You're up to something. You know, you have to it's almost like take the same emotion but look at it differently. So I'm kinda exploring that right now. Yeah. I, I like that. I might have to steal all of that. Sure, Jason. I need material. So so, what was the business that failed? It was an ad network. It was a a very good ad network. It was doing very well. But, you know, it's like, I made the wrong some of the wrong choices and partners. I got in the beginning, you know, once it was doing really well, You know, I got people involved who were like showing me all the money that was gonna be made and I got greedy. And so when you're greedy, when you're hopeful, when you're fearful, you choose the wrong people. You know, like I didn't say no when I should have said no many times, but I just, you know, like, actually, I said Tucker was in town this week and I had dinner with him and he said something very sharp. Tucker is a great observer of human behavior. He said, you know, people tell you who they are. He said, listen to what they who listen to them. They tell you who they are. And it's it's a lesson I've also learned in business. Like, people and this is something that I've talked about with Naval and a bunch of other seasoned entrepreneurs. Like, people are remarkably consistent in business. You know, like, if if someone has a history of swinging people over, you will never be a special snowflake. Eventually, you will be part of that list. Right? Just the way it shows people like That's very interesting. Like, what what when he said that, like, what was he specifically referring to? Like, a business or a relationship or We were talking about women actually. Talking I mean, that's a Tucker's a great guy. Tucker's a great guy. You know? Yeah. We were talking about women at the time. But then the conversation shifted to business where I was telling him, like, how I just, 2 friends of mine recently, you know, talked I ran into him, and it turns out they've been screwed over by the same guy. Right? Same entrepreneur who just screwed him out because of the contracts he wrote. And they were just naive and they trusted. Right? And this guy has I mean, I was just finding consistently. This guy has a history of it. And you find that, you know, certain VCs will do that. Stay away from them. You're not a special snowflake, and you're not the one that they're gonna love. Just So but, you know, like, I think when we make decisions out of fear, out of and and hope actually, is when we, when we say yes when we should say no. And you know, like saying no is one of the most important things we learn in life. So you'd say no to so you could say yes to the right people. I think I said, you know, if I didn't I made that mistake. It's hard to say no. You know, I think people It's very hard. We're learn we were taught from early on to say yes to all of our teachers, to say yes to our parents, and then and then we're taught early on to say yes to opportunities rather than really weighing them and and deciding if they're good for us or not. And and you know what? Most opportunities and most people around are not that good for us personally. They might not be bad people, but they might not be good for us. And know this is very important to learn. Particularly, as I get older, I realize I can always and I've done this. I can always lose a $100 or a $1,000 or, heck, I can always lose multiple 1,000,000, but I can never and and I can make it back, you know, if I'm good and I'm and I work hard and so on. But I can never get today back. So this is the one day I can never lose to I I could lose today. Like, this is the day that could go. And, time is very important, and no is what protects your time. And actually you told I think you you told me this is Claudia told me. So like saying no will give the space for the yes for the right opportunity for the right person. Because otherwise, it's the old then you know, think about if you keep on you can't you cannot you cannot fill a full tea cup. Right? You have to you you have the tea cup has to be empty for you to be able to fill it. If the tea cup is full, if you're full of because you said, right, you get to wrong people. Yeah. I mean, you know, then you want you the the right people, the right opportunities won't appear. They won't be available. Yeah. That's really true. So so okay. So switching gears to Silicon Valley again. Mhmm. What what's I sort of feel like, you know, things like Twitter, Facebook, all of these companies, they they create 100 of 1,000,000,000 of dollars in value. Like, the whole West Coast must be booming with everybody buying, like, you know, everybody spending all their new money. Like, we've had always we have this IPO boom in the past year where $300,000,000,000 in value maybe has been created. Yeah. The area where I live in, I'm actually looking at my window. It's like, the rents are just kind of insanely. Just absolutely insanely. And I'm looking out. There's cranes everywhere. So it's it's San Francisco starting to feel like Shanghai. It's really just there. Does that trickle down into the economy in any way? Like, more startups getting funded? Or Yes. Yes. That is one of the beautiful things we have in the valley. It's like, once you make money, you just you just become an angel investor, and you invest in new entrepreneurs. It's that's that's something very special here that you don't see in most industries. You don't see once people make money in finance, they they support other, you know, up and coming financial entrepreneurs or whatever. They support a lot of. So They what? They support a lot of, you know, w***ehouses and things like that. Yeah. Well, you know, that's that's a whole different industry. Makes money. Yeah. Yeah. The oldest profession. More old older than technology. So, so what else what else is going on? You're looking at all these companies. Mhmm. So I'm running this fund, which is which is just great. You know, I get to, you know, I I mean, it's like a talk about not getting old. Like, you know, you keep yourself mentally active. You get to meet all these entrepreneurs who are just doing great new things, and I get to learn from them and see what's coming down the coming down the road and hopefully invest in some of them. Like, what's a typical day? What did you do today? Today, actually, I meditated and I and I read because of the I have this podcast coming up. And I get very, you know, funny thing is I get very very nervous about interviews. And especially on stage, I'm terrified. I'm like literally petrified when I go on stage. But I do but I ended up doing well, I think because of like Actually, you gave me some great advice, you know, which was one, I didn't do that today because I didn't have chance. But, you know, you said watch comedians and meditate beforehand. And so I So actually today I did that. And then after this, I'm gonna start working. I wanna get a there's a couple of companies I'm looking at. I have to talk to the CEOs. And I'm doing some diligence on them. And so, I feel like all of friends of mine who love to love the space and just, you know, go through with them. And then I'm, I should do some research in crowdfunding because it's such an interesting thing. I'm gonna spend about an hour or 2 just reading up on that, and then just write for a couple hours. That's my day. It's great. And you're and you're writing on this this new book? Yes. Yes. Yeah. Really. I mean, it's 22. 26. I think I'm like the laziest guy on the planet too. I I doubt that you're, running a VC fund, writing books left and right. Like, it doesn't sound so lazy, but but go ahead. I'll give you that for a little bit. It really is. You know, it's it's it's a, like, a the the positive should be, like, on your own. There's also a negative should be on your own. Because sometimes you just get lazy. You just sit around and read or whatever. I was But but, you know, it's it's again, it's the 80 20 rule, which is sort of identifying, you know, for people who work 60 hours a week, really only 12 hours of that provided 80% of the value. So it's a matter of discerning which 12 hours are the important ones and spreading that over the week is only a couple hours a week. You know, Tim Ferriss was telling me the original title he really wanted to do for the 4 hour workweek was the 2 hour workweek because that's how many hours he actually did spend on his business, but his publishers didn't think anybody would believe it. Wow. That's great. That's great. It sounds like, you know, that's, you know, I was once, reading an interview with Anatoly Karpov who was, the world chess champion. Anatoly Karpov was the world chess champion in the 19 seventies 19 eighties. And, he said the most he could spend studying chess per day is tops 3 hours. So that shows you here the guy who's world class level. He was the best in the world for a good 15 years. And for him, the top work day, the top hardest working day he could do to to really be productive was a 3 hour day. Wow. Yeah. So it's important to know that any hour, any minute after that quickly loses its so called marginal utility, to put it in economics terms. Yeah. That makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. Actually, you had a great post about, or was it a podcast about it was a second arrow that killed you about this, you know, the beating yourself up for the procrastination that killed you. Yeah. Or feeling like or feeling like you're lazy. You know? So it's one thing not doing work, but then that may or may not be good. Who knows? That's the first arrow arrow. But the second arrow, feeling bad about it, that's the one that hurts. Yeah. Yeah. So that was that was a great post. One of my favorites. So so you I know you go to a lot of, kind of these mastermind things where you learn all the secrets of Internet marketing. Mhmm. Maybe describe what what that is. Like, what do you learn in one of those? Because and the reason I ask is, let's say I wanted to start, an Internet business. I had some product I came up with, and I wanted to start selling, you know, selling that product. What should I do? Well, actually, the only mass I get admitted to a lot, but the only one I belong to is the one run by Ryan Dice and Harry Belcher. And Ryan is a close friend. I got to meet years ago when I was pulling my last company. And we actually met at a bar. He was traveling in San Francisco. We just started chatting, and he just turned to be such a good guy. I remember, like, I told him I can't get in the bar and close. I was like, hey, dude, I realized we're in San Francisco and this sounds odd. But why don't you come back to my place and have a great problem of mine. We'll just continue talking. And he came back and we stayed up all night just talking about his family and his kids and his wife. And we were friends for like, you know, a year or 2, but neither one of us cared about the other day. And then one day, he called me up and he said, I this mass Internet marketing mastermind. Why don't you come? Because you're a Silicon Valley guy. We could use like, you know, new kind of blood and a different viewpoint. And I went. And it was amazing because all these guys, they're in there. They're all very sharp. And a lot of very good people. I've made some great friends there. In fact, a bunch of LPs and my fund are from there. Who just very good at figuring out how to basically acquire customers and convert them. You know, which is fundamentally what every business is. You get a customer and you convert them. Actually, and even keep them. And that's what these guys And they get into this mastermind. And this particular one, they all share with each other. Like, hey, how did I take my Facebook, you know, like, I've acquired customers to my Facebook campaigns. But not like, hey, I did this. But also, like, this is the headlines I use. This is the landing page copy I use. This is a little trick I have to get out how to, like, convert from 5% to 25%. Really sharp interesting people. Oh, so what are some of those tricks? Like some of those tricks. Let me How do I convert from 5% to 20 I saw it. So I send out a list to, let's say, a 100000 people or 50,000 people, and I wrote a book, top 10 ways to survive after the apocalypse. How do I and I and I'm gonna sell it for $30. How do I send this how do I con you know, double my conversions from 5% to 10%. What's the best way? That's one of the smartest things I heard someone share there. And, like, I don't think this is a big secret. And but I guess, was the fact that what he did was he actually was selling a client's products on the client's website. Right? And he was buying traffic from Facebook and very very targeted traffic and sent it to a landing page. And it was converting something like half a percent or whatever. But then what he did was, he just took the same product and you'll you'll get it the moment I tell you what he did. He took the same product, put it in Amazon, and bought the traffic and sent them directly to Amazon. And it was instead of, like, half a percent, it was, like, 5 or 7%, which is huge. So okay. So wait. Let me understand. So instead of sending the traffic to a page he set up, he said send traffic to a page Amazon set up, letting Amazon take their 30% cut or whatever it is. Sure. But the idea is everyone trusts Amazon, but nobody trusts some random website out there. Like, as you put it, the snowflake that's out there. Yeah. I mean, it was like when I heard that, I was like, oh my god. This makes perfect sense. Why be a special snowflake special snow storefront on the web? Like, now I meet any e commerce people. If they're not doing any if they don't have the progenominators, I tell them they're shooting themselves in the foot. Like, that's the world's largest store. People, they're searching. You can even buy traffic and send people there, and it will convert better than anything else. How how what's the best way to buy traffic? Depends. I would say I wouldn't say Google because you really have to know what you're doing, and most people don't because they just lose money. Even most agencies don't. They just know how to spend your money. Facebook is is still really good. Because you can really target people in a way that's still very interesting. And and Facebook is still slightly inefficient. Google is so efficient with their pricing, you know. Just like you're you're paying you have to really know what you're doing on the buying traffic, but also the converting and retaining it to actually make your money. So right now, I would just say Facebook. Twitter should be interesting when they do their app installs. I'm surprised they haven't done that yet. But that's such a big moneymaker for Facebook mobile. But right now, it's just as simple. You know? Like, if someone who doesn't know the Internet just like but you can go to Facebook. You can read up on how to do their stuff, and start with, like, a $20 campaign and see what see what happens. It's I would say do that. And so let's say my report so so let's say I have a report, 50 ways to survive after the apocalypse. You're saying kind of constructed as a book somehow. What if my price is, like, way beyond what people consider a normal price for a book, but not necessarily way beyond what's a normal price for an information product. Is Amazon still, like, the best place to send traffic to? You know what? In that case, what you do is you create a low end product. And this is actually another thing I learned from Ryan's mastermind. And you know, it's it's, those guys do a conference, called traffic conversion, which everyone should go to. You learn so much there. You learn all of this there once a year in January. Is is you basically create something called a lead lead magnet. Where rather than your $30 book, you create a 99¢ book. Right? And with with really valuable content, but that's just a small piece of the bigger pie. You create that, and you sell that, or you even give it for free. So people come to Amazon, get it. You know, people love it. Give good reviews because it's valuable. It's cheap. But in there, you can talk in the end. Like, listen, if you wanna learn more, here's the bigger one and link up to that. Right? Or give me an email address, and I will send you more and better stuff. And once you have email marketing is probably the you know, another thing I learned from these guys is the most effective marketing that exists. But you really you have to know what you're doing there. Right? But it converts better than anything else. Yeah. That's definitely true for me. Yeah. So like, you could create something of like a low, you know, like a low margin high value product. Put it on these sites, and use that to convert people into the larger value product. You know, people do that all the time. Like one of the guys in there, you know, Harry, talking about how it's some he he can, you know, you can if someone spends $7 on a product from you, they would more much more likely to buy a $1,000 product than someone who didn't spend anything. So get the people to spend that initial part, that initial small little part, and then they and give them great value. You always have to give value. If you're not giving value, you're scamming people, and and it'll catch up to you. Right? Right. So create something of really high value, really nice low price point, and then offer from there the bigger piece, the large the much bigger money piece. Well, so now let me ask you this. Do you think you'll ever choose between, you you know, writing slash Internet marketing, and being a venture capitalist, or you think you'll you'll pursue both? Well, I don't do Internet marketing. I just learn it because it's so interesting. But I I learned it so that I could help my the companies I invest in. Right? And customer acquisition and and traffic, all this other stuff. Stuff I ever shined on when I was building that company. You know, like, customer acquisition is such a fundamental basic thing of building a business, and most people pay no attention to it. Right? So, like, I learned it as intellectually really stimulating for me, and also I can help companies here in the valley. I haven't done anything on marketing. I just play, you know, hang out with the best to learn from them, through this mastermind. As far as choosing between venture and, and books, I I think I found my calling with both. I don't think I wanna be a writer, like, not stuff full time, because I I understand now, whether great ones become alcoholics and kill themselves. Why, yeah. Because you have to go into your mind, and into your heart, and emotions, and pull out, go through everything. Stuff that most of us spend our lives avoiding. You know, you have to write to to for a great writer, to be a great writer or artist, you really have to go into yourself. And we spend our entire lives running away from ourselves. And you have to go through the gunk. And and, and you know, so I would do both. What what what are some of your favorite writers who have who have killed themselves or become alcohol? Oh, Hemingway. I mean, I remember when I read his biography by, I think, Hutchins. I actually cried at the end when he got, you know, when he talked about when Hemingway killed himself. Like, but I got it. It's like, you know, writing, like the kind of stuff also I write. I like to go I had to go deeper than myself and really figure out the truth for it to come on the page. You know, I don't want to write from fairy. And so, writing is it's interesting. I actually blown it out the other day to my mom. Like, I think the only good thing I've done in my life is those 2 books. It's really interesting that I felt that. And I think I do because I think everything else I've done selfishly. And those 2 books I did for the world, like, it's a gift. Well, you know, one one contributes to the other. Like, your life is preparation your whole life beforehand is preparation for writing the book. That's that's a very good point. Yeah. You know, I I find for myself because I I sort of believe a blog post so I write a lot of blog posts, obviously, and I sort of believe a blog post doesn't have value unless I can put my own personal story into it. And now I have over 600 posts plus many other, like, Facebook posts and email articles and stuff. It's almost like there's only so much I can write about myself, and I run into the problem where I have to find other ways to get my story in there without writing my story. So I have to write, like, your story or somebody else's story or or just have my own personal stance on something, but still be storytelling. It's very difficult to keep, drilling down inside yourself. Yeah. But, you know, you're it makes you better at your craft. And I think that's what's required. Right? I think he was like I think I read the thing about Picasso where, like, they would they wouldn't let him in museums because he would be in museums, and he would be touching up his painting. Like, you're always trying to you always work in getting better. That's really funny. I didn't know that about him. That's a good one. So well, Kamal, thanks so much for coming on my podcast finally after this is the 6 months of my podcast. This is fun. I can't wait I can't wait to see it live. Thank you for having me. Yeah. You'll you'll definitely come on again. We'll we'll you'll be a repeat. I'll be on after, after your next book or after your next big investment. Okay. So, alright, Kamal. Well, thank you very much, and I will talk to you soon. Sounds good. Thanks, Dave. Bye. For more from James, check out the James Altucher Show on the Stansbury Radio Network at stansburyradiodot com and get yourself on the free insider's list today.