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