WEBVTT - Thinking About a Career Change? You’ll Need Skill, Work – and Luck

0:00:02.520 --> 0:00:08.840
<v Speaker 1>Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news, Pay the.

0:00:09.640 --> 0:00:31.600
<v Speaker 2>Rides remarks based on enough time job at the.

0:00:36.920 --> 0:00:40.720
<v Speaker 1>How often have you thought about making a major change

0:00:40.960 --> 0:00:44.919
<v Speaker 1>in your career. You're gonna give up time, effort, money, education,

0:00:45.800 --> 0:00:48.760
<v Speaker 1>but in the end, if it pays off, it could

0:00:48.800 --> 0:00:52.760
<v Speaker 1>be very worthwhile to be true to yourself. On today's

0:00:52.800 --> 0:00:55.640
<v Speaker 1>at the Money, let's bring in Morgan Housel. He is

0:00:55.680 --> 0:00:58.480
<v Speaker 1>the author of the Psychology of Money, a book that

0:00:58.600 --> 0:01:01.040
<v Speaker 1>sold over seven million worldwide.

0:01:01.440 --> 0:01:02.960
<v Speaker 2>His new book, The Art.

0:01:02.800 --> 0:01:08.080
<v Speaker 1>Of Spending Money, arrived in October. So, Morgan, I know

0:01:08.160 --> 0:01:11.520
<v Speaker 1>you've had a bunch of jobs and even a bunch

0:01:11.520 --> 0:01:16.640
<v Speaker 1>of careers Ski Patrol valet, Like, what was the original

0:01:16.680 --> 0:01:17.520
<v Speaker 1>career plan.

0:01:17.360 --> 0:01:19.920
<v Speaker 3>With you when I was When I was a teenager,

0:01:20.000 --> 0:01:22.600
<v Speaker 3>my first job was well, my first job was a

0:01:22.760 --> 0:01:23.800
<v Speaker 3>was a host at Denny's.

0:01:23.880 --> 0:01:25.240
<v Speaker 2>That was that was a glorious job.

0:01:25.720 --> 0:01:28.039
<v Speaker 3>And then so I grew up as a ski racer,

0:01:28.120 --> 0:01:30.200
<v Speaker 3>so then it was it was a natural flow for

0:01:30.240 --> 0:01:32.399
<v Speaker 3>me to get a job in the ski industry. I

0:01:32.440 --> 0:01:35.280
<v Speaker 3>worked in a in a ski rental tech place for

0:01:35.319 --> 0:01:38.480
<v Speaker 3>it for a while, and and then I got my

0:01:38.560 --> 0:01:41.560
<v Speaker 3>first kind of quote unquote real job was as a

0:01:41.680 --> 0:01:44.240
<v Speaker 3>valet at a high end hotel that was on a

0:01:44.280 --> 0:01:46.480
<v Speaker 3>ski resort, so that was cool. But all throughout my

0:01:46.920 --> 0:01:51.120
<v Speaker 3>kind of like uh, late teenage college years, I really

0:01:51.160 --> 0:01:52.800
<v Speaker 3>only thought I had one career path, and that was

0:01:52.800 --> 0:01:55.000
<v Speaker 3>how I was going to be an investment banker, and

0:01:55.000 --> 0:01:56.880
<v Speaker 3>then maybe later on that changed to I'm gonna be

0:01:56.880 --> 0:01:59.080
<v Speaker 3>a hedge fund manager. I didn't really know anything about

0:01:59.160 --> 0:02:02.120
<v Speaker 3>either of those careers, but nineteen year old Morgan loved

0:02:02.120 --> 0:02:03.480
<v Speaker 3>the idea that they appeared to make a lot of

0:02:03.520 --> 0:02:05.040
<v Speaker 3>money and have a lot of power, and so that

0:02:05.120 --> 0:02:07.040
<v Speaker 3>was appealing to me because I was all that I knew.

0:02:07.600 --> 0:02:12.120
<v Speaker 3>And then, haphazardly, not not on purpose, and kind of

0:02:12.480 --> 0:02:15.839
<v Speaker 3>with a sense of shame, I stumbled into a job

0:02:15.960 --> 0:02:18.480
<v Speaker 3>as a writer. Because I graduated college in two thousand

0:02:18.480 --> 0:02:20.560
<v Speaker 3>and eight, nobody was hiring. The economy is a mess.

0:02:20.760 --> 0:02:22.960
<v Speaker 3>The only job I can find that was related to

0:02:23.000 --> 0:02:25.360
<v Speaker 3>investing was as a blogger for the Motley Fool. I

0:02:25.440 --> 0:02:27.400
<v Speaker 3>did not want to do it. I hated writing. I

0:02:27.400 --> 0:02:30.440
<v Speaker 3>had no experience doing it, but I thought I would

0:02:30.440 --> 0:02:32.160
<v Speaker 3>do it for six months until I stumbled into it,

0:02:32.200 --> 0:02:35.720
<v Speaker 3>but then I ended up loving it. It took a year,

0:02:35.760 --> 0:02:37.440
<v Speaker 3>but it was like, actually I was like, oh, this

0:02:37.240 --> 0:02:39.240
<v Speaker 3>is this is pretty fun. I actually liked doing this.

0:02:39.760 --> 0:02:42.760
<v Speaker 3>And then over you know, that was, you know, seventeen

0:02:42.800 --> 0:02:46.000
<v Speaker 3>years ago. And over those seventeen years, I've had several

0:02:46.040 --> 0:02:49.240
<v Speaker 3>different transitions doing different things, but they've all kind of

0:02:49.240 --> 0:02:51.919
<v Speaker 3>been had this common core of I just like being

0:02:52.040 --> 0:02:54.840
<v Speaker 3>an observer of how people think about money and investing

0:02:55.080 --> 0:02:56.640
<v Speaker 3>and I want to tell a good story about it.

0:02:57.040 --> 0:03:00.640
<v Speaker 3>But there have been several different paths and transitions within that,

0:03:01.560 --> 0:03:03.720
<v Speaker 3>within that core that I've gone down.

0:03:03.880 --> 0:03:06.880
<v Speaker 1>A blogger for the Motley Fool. I wouldn't even call

0:03:06.919 --> 0:03:11.120
<v Speaker 1>that a journalist. You're just a content producer at that point.

0:03:11.320 --> 0:03:14.240
<v Speaker 1>How long did it take before you this six month?

0:03:14.680 --> 0:03:16.280
<v Speaker 1>I'm going to just put up with this until I

0:03:16.320 --> 0:03:19.560
<v Speaker 1>find something better. What was the transition that led you

0:03:19.680 --> 0:03:23.400
<v Speaker 1>to realize, Hey, I got a knack for this, Maybe

0:03:23.440 --> 0:03:25.200
<v Speaker 1>there's more to this than I realized.

0:03:25.320 --> 0:03:27.840
<v Speaker 3>I think what was really good In hindsight, it felt

0:03:27.919 --> 0:03:30.600
<v Speaker 3>terrible at the time, but because the job market in

0:03:30.600 --> 0:03:32.560
<v Speaker 3>two thousand and eight, nine and ten was so bad,

0:03:33.000 --> 0:03:36.000
<v Speaker 3>I didn't have the choice of giving up. There's no

0:03:36.080 --> 0:03:38.680
<v Speaker 3>other job for me. I had a rent payment to make,

0:03:39.000 --> 0:03:41.320
<v Speaker 3>so even in the first year or two that I

0:03:41.400 --> 0:03:43.720
<v Speaker 3>didn't like writing at all. It was like, yeah, but

0:03:43.760 --> 0:03:45.840
<v Speaker 3>that's what you're like. Sorry, Paal did deal with it.

0:03:45.880 --> 0:03:47.960
<v Speaker 3>That's what you're doing. There's no other jobs out there

0:03:48.200 --> 0:03:50.320
<v Speaker 3>that was really good in hindsight, because it took me

0:03:50.360 --> 0:03:52.800
<v Speaker 3>a couple of years to kind of find my stride

0:03:52.800 --> 0:03:55.520
<v Speaker 3>a little bit, just like anybody in any job. The

0:03:55.560 --> 0:03:58.680
<v Speaker 3>other thing about writing online or doing anything online is

0:03:58.720 --> 0:04:01.280
<v Speaker 3>that if your work is bad, people will tell you

0:04:01.520 --> 0:04:03.720
<v Speaker 3>in no uncertain terms how bad it is and how

0:04:03.800 --> 0:04:06.120
<v Speaker 3>dumb you are and how stupid you are. That is

0:04:06.200 --> 0:04:08.320
<v Speaker 3>painful in the moment, but it is such a powerful

0:04:08.320 --> 0:04:11.120
<v Speaker 3>feedback loop that you're able to learn very quickly if

0:04:11.120 --> 0:04:13.840
<v Speaker 3>you're paying attention to that criticism. And so every blog

0:04:13.840 --> 0:04:15.280
<v Speaker 3>post that I wrote, I would put it out there

0:04:15.280 --> 0:04:17.440
<v Speaker 3>and people would either say this sucks and I'd say, okay,

0:04:17.480 --> 0:04:19.159
<v Speaker 3>let me try to learn from that, or Hey, this

0:04:19.279 --> 0:04:20.960
<v Speaker 3>is really good and let me try to learn from that.

0:04:21.279 --> 0:04:25.120
<v Speaker 3>So the feedback mechanism was so powerful that after doing

0:04:25.160 --> 0:04:28.200
<v Speaker 3>it for two years just to make rent, it was

0:04:28.279 --> 0:04:30.680
<v Speaker 3>kind of like, oh, this is actually fun, and there's

0:04:30.680 --> 0:04:32.279
<v Speaker 3>some readers out there who seem to be enjoying what

0:04:32.320 --> 0:04:34.719
<v Speaker 3>I'm putting out and that's so it was good that

0:04:34.760 --> 0:04:36.760
<v Speaker 3>I had that forcing function of having to do it,

0:04:37.000 --> 0:04:38.920
<v Speaker 3>rather than having an exit ramp where I could have

0:04:38.960 --> 0:04:39.960
<v Speaker 3>gone and done something else.

0:04:40.200 --> 0:04:47.040
<v Speaker 1>So I'm curious about the transition from blogger and I

0:04:47.040 --> 0:04:49.200
<v Speaker 1>have been blogging for one hundred years, so I don't

0:04:49.279 --> 0:04:55.320
<v Speaker 1>use it pejoratively, but to a more formal either journalist

0:04:55.560 --> 0:04:59.440
<v Speaker 1>or market commentator that was the next tier up. How

0:04:59.480 --> 0:05:00.279
<v Speaker 1>did that happen.

0:05:00.720 --> 0:05:02.760
<v Speaker 3>I've never considered myself a journalist. I don't think I

0:05:02.800 --> 0:05:03.200
<v Speaker 3>ever will.

0:05:03.279 --> 0:05:05.839
<v Speaker 1>I don't have it either, but I will accuse us

0:05:05.920 --> 0:05:07.400
<v Speaker 1>of being journalist.

0:05:07.360 --> 0:05:09.360
<v Speaker 3>Right, you know we are, we are journaling, but I

0:05:09.360 --> 0:05:12.480
<v Speaker 3>don't consider myself a capital J journalist. But what's true

0:05:12.760 --> 0:05:15.360
<v Speaker 3>is that once I realized that my audience was growing,

0:05:15.720 --> 0:05:18.800
<v Speaker 3>and I realized who that audience was, there was a

0:05:18.839 --> 0:05:21.920
<v Speaker 3>little bit I struggle to say, sense of duty. That

0:05:21.920 --> 0:05:23.320
<v Speaker 3>that sounds like it's too much, but it was a

0:05:23.360 --> 0:05:25.520
<v Speaker 3>little bit more of Hey, people are going to read

0:05:25.520 --> 0:05:27.720
<v Speaker 3>this and they're going to take it seriously, so make

0:05:27.760 --> 0:05:30.400
<v Speaker 3>sure that it's right, make sure that it is is

0:05:30.440 --> 0:05:33.520
<v Speaker 3>not dangerous advice for them. And so I look back

0:05:33.520 --> 0:05:35.039
<v Speaker 3>at some of the things that I wrote early in

0:05:35.080 --> 0:05:38.200
<v Speaker 3>my career, and it's not that it was. It was reckless,

0:05:38.240 --> 0:05:40.000
<v Speaker 3>but I would just I would just throw my thoughts

0:05:40.000 --> 0:05:42.440
<v Speaker 3>on the table, regardless of what they were, and throw

0:05:42.440 --> 0:05:45.160
<v Speaker 3>people under the bus, which I tend not to anymore.

0:05:45.800 --> 0:05:46.760
<v Speaker 2>And what is this?

0:05:46.880 --> 0:05:49.200
<v Speaker 1>What is this throwing people under the bus? You speak

0:05:49.240 --> 0:05:50.359
<v Speaker 1>of it.

0:05:51.720 --> 0:05:54.040
<v Speaker 3>You've done it once or twice, and even when they

0:05:54.040 --> 0:05:56.560
<v Speaker 3>deserve it. I think there's a there's a principle. I

0:05:56.600 --> 0:05:59.560
<v Speaker 3>forget who came up with this of like criticized broadly

0:05:59.640 --> 0:06:03.560
<v Speaker 3>and pre individually. So it's fine to criticize an industry

0:06:03.720 --> 0:06:07.720
<v Speaker 3>and say mortgage bankers in two thousand and five were reckless,

0:06:07.720 --> 0:06:10.400
<v Speaker 3>if not criminal, But once you call them out by name,

0:06:10.720 --> 0:06:13.359
<v Speaker 3>even if they deserve it, that's a tougher thing to do.

0:06:13.960 --> 0:06:17.320
<v Speaker 3>It's usually the case that when you're criticizing somebody, at

0:06:17.320 --> 0:06:19.320
<v Speaker 3>best you have half the story. Sometimes you have five

0:06:19.360 --> 0:06:22.960
<v Speaker 3>percent of the story. But praising in the individual is

0:06:22.960 --> 0:06:25.400
<v Speaker 3>great because you underestimate how much you can change somebody's

0:06:25.480 --> 0:06:26.960
<v Speaker 3>life by praising them when they deserve it.

0:06:27.440 --> 0:06:31.400
<v Speaker 1>Huh, really really insightful thought. So take us along the

0:06:31.440 --> 0:06:35.880
<v Speaker 1>steps and along the aha moments where you realized, oh,

0:06:36.000 --> 0:06:40.679
<v Speaker 1>this is something significant and I could build a professional

0:06:40.800 --> 0:06:43.200
<v Speaker 1>career doing writing.

0:06:45.080 --> 0:06:46.600
<v Speaker 3>It was interesting for me as a writer. That I

0:06:46.600 --> 0:06:48.640
<v Speaker 3>think might be a little bit unique is day one

0:06:48.720 --> 0:06:51.720
<v Speaker 3>that I was writing for the Mali Fool, the very

0:06:51.760 --> 0:06:54.040
<v Speaker 3>first blog post I ever wrote. I was getting paid

0:06:54.080 --> 0:06:57.000
<v Speaker 3>a full time salary. It was not exhorbingan but I

0:06:57.080 --> 0:06:59.520
<v Speaker 3>was living off of it from day one. And ninety

0:06:59.720 --> 0:07:04.240
<v Speaker 3>percent of bloggers go through years where they're not making

0:07:04.240 --> 0:07:06.760
<v Speaker 3>a single cent and nobody's reading their work. And so

0:07:07.040 --> 0:07:09.000
<v Speaker 3>I had made a profession out of it from day one,

0:07:09.040 --> 0:07:10.960
<v Speaker 3>and there was really no ramp of let's see how

0:07:10.960 --> 0:07:13.560
<v Speaker 3>I can make money from this. As the years went on,

0:07:13.640 --> 0:07:15.360
<v Speaker 3>it could increase, and then I got into speaking in

0:07:15.360 --> 0:07:16.360
<v Speaker 3>books and some other things.

0:07:16.520 --> 0:07:18.600
<v Speaker 1>So what was next? After Motley Fool.

0:07:18.520 --> 0:07:20.640
<v Speaker 3>After a Mither Fool, I joined the Collaborative Fund, which

0:07:20.680 --> 0:07:23.360
<v Speaker 3>is a private equity firm. And my entire job now

0:07:23.400 --> 0:07:26.040
<v Speaker 3>ten been dire for ten nine ten years. Yeah, and

0:07:26.080 --> 0:07:28.280
<v Speaker 3>my entire job there is writing. It's a home for

0:07:28.360 --> 0:07:30.880
<v Speaker 3>my writing. And so it's all that I've ever done,

0:07:31.160 --> 0:07:33.760
<v Speaker 3>but finding unique ways to make a living out of

0:07:33.800 --> 0:07:35.600
<v Speaker 3>doing it. There's several different ways you could do it.

0:07:35.640 --> 0:07:38.040
<v Speaker 3>You can be a full time reporter for Reuters or

0:07:38.040 --> 0:07:39.760
<v Speaker 3>for your local news or for the New York Times.

0:07:39.760 --> 0:07:41.800
<v Speaker 3>That's one way to do it. You can do substack,

0:07:41.840 --> 0:07:43.920
<v Speaker 3>you can try ads. There's a million different ways to

0:07:43.920 --> 0:07:44.160
<v Speaker 3>do it.

0:07:44.240 --> 0:07:46.560
<v Speaker 1>So let's get a little technical. Let's talk about some

0:07:46.640 --> 0:07:50.600
<v Speaker 1>blocking and tackling. What sort of tools did you develop,

0:07:50.680 --> 0:07:55.240
<v Speaker 1>What sort of subroutines did you learn that helped you

0:07:55.320 --> 0:07:56.840
<v Speaker 1>become a better writer.

0:07:57.560 --> 0:07:59.800
<v Speaker 3>Ninety nine percent of being a good writer is being

0:07:59.840 --> 0:08:02.360
<v Speaker 3>a good reader. And ninety percent of your time as

0:08:02.360 --> 0:08:07.080
<v Speaker 3>a writer is reading. And so the huge majority of

0:08:07.120 --> 0:08:09.160
<v Speaker 3>my day, and it's been like this for almost twenty years,

0:08:09.280 --> 0:08:14.480
<v Speaker 3>is very casually sitting around in my sweatpants reading reading books,

0:08:14.520 --> 0:08:17.960
<v Speaker 3>reading blogs, reading reports, listening to podcasts. And it doesn't

0:08:18.000 --> 0:08:19.840
<v Speaker 3>look like work, but that's the work of a writer

0:08:20.000 --> 0:08:21.800
<v Speaker 3>because you do that and you start putting the pieces

0:08:21.800 --> 0:08:24.400
<v Speaker 3>together of Oh, I read this chapter in this book

0:08:24.480 --> 0:08:26.320
<v Speaker 3>and it reminded me of something I listened to in

0:08:26.320 --> 0:08:28.760
<v Speaker 3>this podcast, which reminded me of the study that I

0:08:28.800 --> 0:08:31.000
<v Speaker 3>read recently. I can tie all those together and come

0:08:31.080 --> 0:08:32.920
<v Speaker 3>up with a really unique story myself that I can

0:08:32.920 --> 0:08:35.720
<v Speaker 3>write about. And so that's that is what writing is

0:08:35.720 --> 0:08:39.560
<v Speaker 3>is reading, and what writing is not is forcing yourself

0:08:39.600 --> 0:08:42.040
<v Speaker 3>at the keyboard, forcing the sentences out. That's when you

0:08:42.080 --> 0:08:44.280
<v Speaker 3>get the worst writing. You should spend all of your

0:08:44.280 --> 0:08:47.679
<v Speaker 3>time reading and thinking and maybe ten percent of your

0:08:47.679 --> 0:08:48.560
<v Speaker 3>time actually writing.

0:08:48.960 --> 0:08:54.000
<v Speaker 1>I love that. That's really really insightful. Psychology Money came out?

0:08:54.200 --> 0:08:57.840
<v Speaker 1>Was that twenty twenty twenty one September twenty twenty, all right,

0:08:57.880 --> 0:09:01.040
<v Speaker 1>so twenty twenty, So that's a you know, a dozen

0:09:01.120 --> 0:09:05.760
<v Speaker 1>years after you begin at the Motley Fool. What was

0:09:05.800 --> 0:09:09.720
<v Speaker 1>a transition like writing a book from writing a bunch

0:09:09.720 --> 0:09:11.440
<v Speaker 1>of really short blog posts?

0:09:11.960 --> 0:09:14.680
<v Speaker 3>It was. It was interesting because when I started writing

0:09:14.720 --> 0:09:17.920
<v Speaker 3>Psychology and Money, I was like, Hey, this is a book,

0:09:17.960 --> 0:09:20.960
<v Speaker 3>this is not a blog. I need to have five

0:09:21.040 --> 0:09:24.760
<v Speaker 3>thousand word chapters and they all need to be cohesive

0:09:24.800 --> 0:09:27.560
<v Speaker 3>and tell a singular narrative. And that's what I set

0:09:27.559 --> 0:09:29.760
<v Speaker 3>out to write. And I've told the story before. But

0:09:29.800 --> 0:09:32.880
<v Speaker 3>after about three months, maybe six months, I had three

0:09:33.040 --> 0:09:35.640
<v Speaker 3>really bad chapters, none of which made it in the book,

0:09:36.040 --> 0:09:37.760
<v Speaker 3>because I was trying to do something that I had

0:09:37.760 --> 0:09:40.360
<v Speaker 3>no experience doing. And I had to look back and say, look,

0:09:40.360 --> 0:09:44.000
<v Speaker 3>for the previous twelve years, I have a skill and

0:09:44.160 --> 0:09:48.400
<v Speaker 3>a muscle of writing one thousand word blog posts. I

0:09:48.440 --> 0:09:50.640
<v Speaker 3>don't have a skill of writing five thousand word chapters.

0:09:50.640 --> 0:09:53.080
<v Speaker 3>It's just not something that I do. And so I

0:09:53.120 --> 0:09:55.440
<v Speaker 3>just kind of I threw everything out and I said, look,

0:09:55.480 --> 0:09:58.280
<v Speaker 3>I need to leverage whatever little strength that I have

0:09:58.840 --> 0:10:01.320
<v Speaker 3>and say I'm good at writing short form blogs that

0:10:01.360 --> 0:10:02.920
<v Speaker 3>can kind of live on their own. They're not going

0:10:03.000 --> 0:10:05.640
<v Speaker 3>to tie tie into the next chapter. They're all going

0:10:05.679 --> 0:10:07.720
<v Speaker 3>to be kind of like standalone, live on their own.

0:10:07.880 --> 0:10:10.400
<v Speaker 3>The publisher hated that, said it's not going to work.

0:10:10.440 --> 0:10:12.800
<v Speaker 3>People want a cohesive book, and I said, yeah, I'm sorry,

0:10:12.800 --> 0:10:14.439
<v Speaker 3>but this is all that I can do, like to

0:10:14.600 --> 0:10:17.040
<v Speaker 3>deal with it, And I think it actually worked out

0:10:17.080 --> 0:10:20.640
<v Speaker 3>well because it's easy to underestimate how much people's attention

0:10:20.720 --> 0:10:23.920
<v Speaker 3>spans have declined in the last fifteen years, and so

0:10:24.440 --> 0:10:28.080
<v Speaker 3>the attention to read a three hundred page nonfiction book

0:10:28.120 --> 0:10:30.440
<v Speaker 3>that is a cohesive narrative from page one to page

0:10:30.480 --> 0:10:32.440
<v Speaker 3>three hundred is very difficult.

0:10:32.559 --> 0:10:34.000
<v Speaker 1>It's a big ass these days.

0:10:34.360 --> 0:10:37.240
<v Speaker 3>But can you ask people to flip through short chapters

0:10:37.240 --> 0:10:39.160
<v Speaker 3>that live on their own. If you don't like this chapter,

0:10:39.280 --> 0:10:41.600
<v Speaker 3>just flip to the next. You can start there. That

0:10:41.760 --> 0:10:45.320
<v Speaker 3>is a better ask, And everybody knows the nonfiction business

0:10:45.320 --> 0:10:48.320
<v Speaker 3>book that could have been a blog post, it could

0:10:48.320 --> 0:10:50.439
<v Speaker 3>have been a magazine article, but they stretched it into

0:10:50.480 --> 0:10:52.680
<v Speaker 3>three hundred pages. I think the only way that you

0:10:52.679 --> 0:10:56.240
<v Speaker 3>could avoid that was by writing short, standalone chapters that

0:10:56.280 --> 0:10:58.360
<v Speaker 3>live on their own. Here's my point. Let me tell

0:10:58.360 --> 0:11:00.240
<v Speaker 3>an interesting story, and then I'm going to move on

0:11:00.280 --> 0:11:01.760
<v Speaker 3>to the next one and not waste your time.

0:11:02.120 --> 0:11:05.199
<v Speaker 1>So I find it hilarious. We share the same publisher

0:11:05.360 --> 0:11:08.360
<v Speaker 1>for How Not To Invest, that you wrote the forward to,

0:11:09.000 --> 0:11:12.080
<v Speaker 1>and your book The Psychology of Money. This is the

0:11:12.120 --> 0:11:15.719
<v Speaker 1>first time I'm hearing that they weren't enthralled with your

0:11:15.760 --> 0:11:21.640
<v Speaker 1>original concept the have we crossed eight million copies yet

0:11:21.640 --> 0:11:23.800
<v Speaker 1>you're like seven million on the way to eight million.

0:11:24.320 --> 0:11:27.040
<v Speaker 1>I have a whole section in my book about none

0:11:27.040 --> 0:11:30.480
<v Speaker 1>of the professionals know what's gonna sell. Nobody wanted to

0:11:30.520 --> 0:11:33.600
<v Speaker 1>do Star Wars. They all passed on Raiders. This et

0:11:33.840 --> 0:11:37.800
<v Speaker 1>movie is dumb. We have another Spaceman movie like on

0:11:37.840 --> 0:11:40.720
<v Speaker 1>and on it goes John Wick, Squid Games. All the

0:11:40.760 --> 0:11:44.000
<v Speaker 1>reviews of the Beatles, initially on ed Sullivan were horrible.

0:11:44.480 --> 0:11:49.640
<v Speaker 1>It's I'm shocked to hear that the experts were like, eh,

0:11:49.840 --> 0:11:51.680
<v Speaker 1>we're not really impressed with this concept.

0:11:52.240 --> 0:11:54.920
<v Speaker 3>There's a Daniel Common quote where he said, the more

0:11:54.960 --> 0:11:58.520
<v Speaker 3>outlier of the successes, the more an element of luck

0:11:58.720 --> 0:12:01.319
<v Speaker 3>played a role, not that it all luck, but he

0:12:01.760 --> 0:12:03.800
<v Speaker 3>phrased it as like there's no exception to that rule.

0:12:04.040 --> 0:12:06.600
<v Speaker 3>The more standard deviations it is as an outlier, the

0:12:06.600 --> 0:12:09.320
<v Speaker 3>more luck there was period end of story. And I

0:12:09.320 --> 0:12:11.240
<v Speaker 3>think that's true for books as well. It's true for

0:12:11.320 --> 0:12:14.240
<v Speaker 3>every startup. Jeff Bezos tells a story about how much

0:12:14.280 --> 0:12:18.400
<v Speaker 3>he struggled to raise one million dollars to sell one

0:12:18.480 --> 0:12:20.160
<v Speaker 3>third of it. I think it was of Amazon in

0:12:20.240 --> 0:12:22.760
<v Speaker 3>nineteen ninety four. Could he had to take one hundred

0:12:22.800 --> 0:12:24.840
<v Speaker 3>calls to get to raise one hundred to raise one

0:12:24.880 --> 0:12:28.520
<v Speaker 3>million dollars for Amazon? So it's it always makes sense

0:12:28.520 --> 0:12:31.480
<v Speaker 3>in hindsight, it never makes sense with foresight. I think

0:12:31.480 --> 0:12:33.920
<v Speaker 3>that's true. And I think books are very much like

0:12:33.960 --> 0:12:36.719
<v Speaker 3>a seed stage startup where even if you do everything right,

0:12:37.120 --> 0:12:39.800
<v Speaker 3>it's probably not going to work. So don't look I

0:12:40.320 --> 0:12:43.480
<v Speaker 3>don't look poorly at all or criticize the publishers who

0:12:43.559 --> 0:12:44.319
<v Speaker 3>passed on a book.

0:12:45.440 --> 0:12:45.800
<v Speaker 2>Huh.

0:12:45.840 --> 0:12:49.840
<v Speaker 1>And our final question, what's your big takeaway about someone

0:12:50.000 --> 0:12:54.880
<v Speaker 1>thinking about either exploring a career that wasn't their original intention?

0:12:55.640 --> 0:12:59.320
<v Speaker 1>Or making a career shift towards something that they have

0:12:59.400 --> 0:13:01.040
<v Speaker 1>a natural aspleude towards.

0:13:01.559 --> 0:13:03.680
<v Speaker 3>One thing about careers is that so many of us,

0:13:04.679 --> 0:13:07.040
<v Speaker 3>the careers that we have in our thirties, forties and fifties,

0:13:07.559 --> 0:13:10.079
<v Speaker 3>are tied to our college major that we chose when

0:13:10.080 --> 0:13:12.600
<v Speaker 3>we were seventeen or eighteen. And when you frame how

0:13:12.920 --> 0:13:15.400
<v Speaker 3>absolutely absurd that is that you made a decision when

0:13:15.440 --> 0:13:18.200
<v Speaker 3>you are seventeen years old that is now tying you

0:13:18.240 --> 0:13:21.559
<v Speaker 3>into a career when you're forty five, it's completely insane.

0:13:21.640 --> 0:13:24.760
<v Speaker 3>And so the idea that if you're truly unhappy doing it,

0:13:25.080 --> 0:13:27.480
<v Speaker 3>that you should you should move on to something else.

0:13:27.480 --> 0:13:29.200
<v Speaker 3>There's a great quote from Tilt where he says, if

0:13:29.240 --> 0:13:31.760
<v Speaker 3>you're going to panic, panic early. And I think you

0:13:31.760 --> 0:13:34.320
<v Speaker 3>can tie that to careers as well. If you really

0:13:34.360 --> 0:13:36.800
<v Speaker 3>realize that this is not for you and you're unhappy,

0:13:37.280 --> 0:13:39.880
<v Speaker 3>panic early, quit, move on, cut your losses, move on

0:13:39.880 --> 0:13:41.600
<v Speaker 3>to something else, rather than tying it out for the

0:13:41.600 --> 0:13:42.960
<v Speaker 3>next forty years of your career.

0:13:43.120 --> 0:13:46.280
<v Speaker 1>So to wrap up, if you're thinking about a career change,

0:13:46.360 --> 0:13:49.760
<v Speaker 1>if you have an aptitude towards a particular skill, if

0:13:49.800 --> 0:13:53.560
<v Speaker 1>you want to just try something different, find a way

0:13:53.600 --> 0:13:56.080
<v Speaker 1>to do that. See what you're capable of, see if

0:13:56.080 --> 0:13:58.840
<v Speaker 1>you can make a go of it. But be aware

0:13:59.520 --> 0:14:03.360
<v Speaker 1>merely pursuing your bliss isn't going to get you anywhere.

0:14:03.840 --> 0:14:06.320
<v Speaker 1>You have to develop some tools, some skills, and some

0:14:06.480 --> 0:14:11.760
<v Speaker 1>abilities in order to earn a living in your new career.

0:14:12.480 --> 0:14:23.560
<v Speaker 1>I'm Barry Ridholts. You're listening to Bloomberg's At the Money