The idea that we have of, like, I want to create a legacy. It's like, dude, you're not making a legacy. He was ruler of a country.

I can't even remember his name. I'm related to him. And so if you do that enough times, it just becomes humans.

Welcome to the game where we talk about how to get more customers, how to make more per customer and how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons we have learned along the way. I hope you enjoy and subscribe you. Welcome back again to the Iced Coffee Hour with Graham, Jack and Alex, where we will talk about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and all things awesome.

I love that. Thank you so much for making the time for us. No, you bet.

Thanks for having me back again. Well, education starts really early. Yeah.

How would you change that right now if, let's say, the current schooling system, which seems to teach you kind of how to stay in line, how to think like everybody else, get your homework done on time, you got to show up at 08:00, a.m. School ends at three. Do you think that's a good model? Obviously, you're baiting me.

No, tell me your thoughts on that. Two broad statements is I think the purpose of education is to teach people how to think rather than how to memorize. And especially now with technology that we have, if you can pass a test with having an iPhone with you, then in my opinion the test was poorly designed because it's not going to.

And then we have to rewind into, like, what is the purpose of education? Right. The education system overall, the product of that is people who can add value to society. Right.

That's the product of the education system. The raw units are humans. The output of the system is people who can add value to society.

Okay, cool. So if that's the system, then there's a lot of leeway there in terms of how we can get there. I think the system that we have set up is inherited from the factory worker when it was being designed versus now.

Now, I think we need a lot more problem solving skills than we did back then, a lot more divergent thinking processes. And if you're not familiar with this, is a fun little exercise. What school teaches right now is convergent thinking.

And so that means that there's multiple variables and one correct answer. And so it's like one plus one equals two. There's only one correct answer, and now they're even telling you there's only one way to find the answer.

And if you don't find it the way they want you to find it, then it's also wrong, which is ridiculous. But anyways, divergent thinking is when you have multiple variables but multiple correct answers, which is like, how many different ways can you use a brick? And what's interesting about that is that you can also have multiple right answers and some answers that are more right than others, which becomes very difficult to grade, but also how the real world works. And we're rewarded based on how right our YouTube video really is, right? Or how right our article is, or how right our product is, and how we can solve problems using more creative methods than trying to converge on a single answer.

Because if it's a convergent thinking process, for the most part, it's already been kind of automated and everyone can do it, right? You get paid for what you can think of in the creative box of like, what are other people not thinking of? And so I think that more of the education system should be around divergent thinking and divergent problem solving. Do you think that's ever going to happen? No, mostly just because of the power dynamics that exist. And if you've ever saw the documentary Waiting for Superman, I haven't seen it.

It was one of the only movies that I've cried during because it was just the education system and it was just showing how there are so many impediments to it getting fixed. It's not just one party. Like you've got the teachers unions, you've got the funding for the schools.

There's all of these things that are almost all diametrically opposed to one another. And then the only people who really suffer are the kids and then ultimately the country. So anyways, I do think the way that it'll have to get solved is that there is an alternative schooling system that gets developed that because of technology.

Naval Ravican said this, but technology democratizes consumption and consolidates production, which means if you're the best in the world, you get to do it for everyone, right? Which a lot of people don't like from a capitalist perspective. But that's also silly because I feel like that's just pareto at work. But why would you not want the best math teacher teaching everyone math? It makes sense.

And because there's zero cost of duplication. And now everyone kind of understands how zoom works and how we can continue to using life virtually, there's really no reason to have. Now it gets scary because teachers unions and what are all these people going to do for work? And all that stuff.

But just like the switchboards for when there used to be girls who would switch for telephones, they're like, well, what are we going to do when technology automates that web three is just blowing up? There would be jobs. As we solve new problems, we'll create new ones, right? And so to say we have to keep something that doesn't make sense, doesn't provide value to the system for the sake of it, doesn't make sense to me. And so I think that it would probably have to be a new architecture where the best people teach and then kids learn probably at their own pace, and the testing would probably have to change in order for it to be more real world.

And if we wanted it to be real world, then I think you need to match conditions, which is real world. You have your phone now take the test. Yeah.

Don't you think that the schooling system would need to be somewhat localized, though? Like, you can't have one person teaching over too big of a imagine one person controlling everyone's math. If you have one math teacher that's teaching everyone in the country, don't you think that there's an advantage to having because each little part in each country has and it doesn't have to be one person. It could be one system.

That's more semantics, you know what I mean? And if the best person is more localized by the way they speak or whatever, then sure, but we're sitting next to Graham, who's got a massive personal finance channel. And so if you're the best at personal finance, then more people will go to you. That makes sense.

Your schooling system does remind me. I completely forgot about Jack. I don't think you know about this.

So in kindergarten, I had issues, and believe me, in fact, my parents explains a lot. My parents pulled me out of the school because after recess, they wanted all the kids to line up in order on this yellow line that led up to the front door. And so all the kids were supposed to line up on that line.

The bell was ring, and we all had to walk in one by one. And I didn't want to stand on that line. And the teachers got really upset at me because I didn't stand on the line or I wouldn't you want to stand on it? I don't remember.

I think at the point I thought it was stupid or like I just didn't get why I needed to stand on the line. I didn't like standing on the line. And my parents pulled me out mid year kindergarten to go to an alternative school.

And that's the school that didn't have any grades, they had no assigned seating. It was basically a big room. And this continued, by the way.

So this school went until 8th grade, but no grades. It was either you got a check, a check plus or a check minus on any assignments that maybe and the assignments were kind of like BS anyway. They're like draw something or like, tell us share something that you're excited about.

But I loved it. It's amazing. But that's what it really helped me, because I hated homework, I hated tests, I didn't like any of it, and I just wanted to do my thing.

But even being in kindergarten, you were the same person as you are today. Yeah, I didn't it's like you only do what you want to do when you want to do it. And that's incredible that it's, like, traced all the way back when you're in kindergarten.

Yeah, might have great parenting, too, because I would say that I was very different when I was younger, because it was very much like, if I wasn't on the yellow line, my daughter like, why weren't you on the yellow line? Right. And then that would be that. That would be the end of that conversation, and I would be on the yellow line the next morning.

And so it's great parenting, too, that they were that's true. Let you do your thing. That is very true.

But I do think that really helps to have something that's different, that's interesting to me, because you were an academic, right. And if you could go back in time, do you think you would have spent so much time trying to do so well in school? Yes, because I think if something's worth doing, it's worth doing well, and that's more of like a personal belief. Was school worth doing, though? I think that it depends on what age, because if you're learning to work hard, and if you're like learning what hard work is, then I think that is a valuable lesson.

The actual subject matter more or less irrelevant. I think that once people understand math and reading, then that's pretty much what you need to go and learn the world. If I were to make recommendations to college students, I would say be a math and English double major, because that's everything you need for life, much more so than the other stuff.

Right, but even with math classes, shouldn't they be teaching you how to use the iPhone app on how to do math? And here's an iPhone. We all get iPhones. Let's add subtract.

Here's how you could do this. Here's a more complicated calculator. I think that there's an element to it that should be there.

Having a baseline of intelligence for math I think is useful. I used to be really bad at math, or at least I identified with being bad at math, and it was until my mid 20s where I decided I wasn't going to be bad at math anymore. And so I actually stopped using a calculator, which would make it seem like I'm contradicting my point and only did mental math for a number of years and calculated the tip on the bill with mental math.

And I would try and do all the marketing metrics and all the sales metrics just in my head, and then I would still use the calculator to check myself. And then you get better and better and better at it. And so I think there's an essence of having a semblance, of being directionally correct so that you can make kind of large, quick decisions, but in terms of exact calculations, the calculator does make more sense.

Also, just using Excel for most people's life is probably even better than learning a calculator. Like, I bought a book in Excel when I was in college, and I was like, why are we not learning this every single job. You need to learn how to use Excel.

I agree. Personal finance, there's so of uses for it. And I had to learn how to do all the it was just a book of the equations, like equals sum.

And I was like, oh, that's how you do that? I had no idea. And so I think those would be the more useful things. But I mean, a lot of people know that there's problems with the education system, but they say, I hear, I forget, I see, I remember.

I do. And I understand that's confucius. And so I think if there were more like if I were to create a school around a skill, the school would be doing the skill.

So if I wanted to teach sales, they'd be selling, they wouldn't be learning sales theory. And so I think that there needs to be more application of this stuff to what people are going to use it in the real world. It's just so difficult to change curriculum.

So I think it's going to have to be an alternative path that's really flexible and they can't do the same thing the old one did, which is like, this is now the way things are, because then it'll get outdated too. So there has to be a built in kind of innovation wheel for not just adding, but also subtracting what things are no longer useful. Because I think that's what people have more fear of.

They just want to keep adding and adding, adding, but they don't also just like say, this isn't really high utility. If we could start all over again, will we include this course or we include this method? Probably not. So let's just let it go.

Yeah, it's too bad that you couldn't create some sort of curriculum like that, though. Like a practical just a two year thing that might be ten grand or something like that. I don't know how much you would charge for that, but for two years, just practical life skills, selling Excel, I think Photoshop would be on that.

Social media, how to make a good TikTok, how to keep retention, how to send an email, how to send an email. That's a big one too. How to message people.

Because fundamentally this is just how to communicate, how to human right. And yeah, and we have to learn all these things on our own. And there is the alternative education industry, which you have a course and depend on how you look at it.

Like a franchise is an education system. It's just packaged differently. And so there's lots of different ways of skinning the education game.

But I think alternative is the way that is going to is the only way that I think it'll emerge. How would you reach out to somebody? Because that's an interesting topic. How do you get someone else's attention? Let's say Jeff Bezos, elon Musk, someone who's typically out of reach for most people.

How would you go about teaching somebody to have access to that person or even just get their attention? It would be hard. I mean, those are really extreme examples because those guys have everything, and they probably have a lot of people reaching out to them. So I think the way to get there would be to have to go through from the heart.

So it's just continuing to network to try and find out information that's not as public about the things that they like, because anything that is publicly known that other people have already gotten him his favorite jersey to his favorite those are the obvious ones, but it's the less obvious ones. It's just like you're just trying to get noticed, and they're like and to be fair, it would still be hard because, I mean, they are the richest men in the world. Like, the amount of money they have is hard to comprehend.

Right. And so there's no monetary value that can be delivered to them. Right.

And there's really no status value that can be delivered to them. So it's like, how do value to someone's life? And so I think that if I were this is me just thinking a lot. If I try to add value or get ain't gain access to somebody like that, it would have to be from the personal side.

Like, those people have everything material they could possibly want, and so it would have to be something immaterial, like, not intangible that I think, would hit the radar. Yeah. With Elon musk.

I think it's privacy. Reminds me of the Twitter guy. Twitter, who is tracking his jets, got his attention, got him to DM him, but now he's tracking with the yachts.

Right. Well, I thought he was doing the Russia. Yeah, I have no idea.

Okay. I try not to pay attention to the news. All right.

Yeah. No, this was a kid. How old was he? Like, in high school? Yeah, 16 years old.

And he got Elon Musk's attention because he was tracking his private jet, and he would post the coordinates on Twitter. Like, his jet went from this location to this location, and then people could speculate from there. Well, why is he going to this part in Texas a lot? Is there maybe something there that they're building? So then Elon Musk DM'd him and basically just said, like, hey, would you mind taking us down? Privacy is important to me.

And then the kid said, no, and Elon Musk offered him $5,000. And then the kid countered back $50,000. And then Elon Musk said, you know what? I'd rather not pay for something like this or something like that.

Or he just didn't respond, which at that point sets up then the narrative that people could just track him and he'll pay them off, which I think is probably better to not engage with them. It's blackmail. It's a version of blackmail.

Exactly. But now that same kid is tracking Russian yachts. Weird.

Yeah, but he's getting a lot but he's getting a lot of attention for it. Well, I think it's important to mention that he's not just tracking them and posting tweets. I mean, he's developing software to do this automatically at 16 years old.

He's a bright kid. Yeah. So he's getting a lot of attention from that.

I see him every few days now on the headline of, like, CNBC, CNN what's the general idea of him? Do people like him or do they not? With the Elon Musk, it was 50 50. Some people were really for it and some people were really against it and they thought it was creepy and invasion of privacy. But when it comes to tracking Russian yachts, it seems like everyone is on not everyone, but a lot of people are on his side on that one.

And they think that he's doing a service. Yeah. So you mentioned during that that you don't pay attention to news at all.

No. Why not? I can't control anything. To me, there's no added value.

My life does not improve as a result of news at all. It does get worse, though. And so for me, eliminating news is just eliminating a negative.

It's like, do I want to have cortisol today? Sure, let me check the news. I could go for more stress. Do you want some stress? Let's go check the news.

Because I think I can't remember where I heard this quote, but it was the job of the news is to make everyone's problem your problem. A journalist made this thing of, like, what makes something newsworthy? And so it's basically ways that they try and manipulate news in order to make it more interesting. So it's like, how do we make something odd or unusual or bizarre? How do we make something more local to people? How do we make it more recent? Like, recency is a component of newsworthiness, and there was four other ones I can't remember, but it was just like, there's a formula for what creates news, and I don't want to be the product for news because a lot of people don't know is like, news stations are private, so they're just like HBO? They're just like HBO.

They have programming and people show up for their shows and they have commercials, which is how they make money. And so their intention is to keep attention, not to disseminate truth. Right.

That's not the goal, because the thing is, the really true stuff is not interesting and will fail compared to a sensationalized news. Like, it's just dollars and cents. So they have to make it.

And that's just the nature of the business. And I understand that. I'm not poo pooing it, but I don't necessarily need to subscribe to it, you know what I mean? People want to give their attention to it.

So then there will be somebody who will sell those eyeballs to advertisers, but their intention is not to educate me. Their intention is to make the world's problems my problem, and I have enough problems, and so I don't need to add more that are irrelevant to me, to my list. Yeah.

So on the scale of understanding what's going on in the world, would you say you're closer to a one out of ten? Like, no, nothing. Probably a two. Okay.

Probably a two. What would you say you are, Graham? Oh, gosh. Probably an eight and a half to a nine.

Wow. Yeah, I'm probably a four. You're a four? Yeah.

I'm super out of touch as well. Yeah. Really? Yeah.

See, I spend all day reading the news and I see everything well, stock market or economy related news, so I see everything that goes on. But also, worldwide events have a big impact on that, so I have to understand those events to be able to summarize that information if I need to. So, yeah, the news is something.

For years now, I've read everything. I'd like to be able to read that. So you could sell the Eyeballs because that's exactly the news.

Right. We try to make things relevant, recent stuff like that. I'm continuing to move in this direction of, like, an anti information diet, but when I work now, I realize that if I just remove my phone altogether from the room, my level of focus just goes.

It feels like I'm on drugs. Because what's crazy, though, is that especially if you have so now I just take my phone when I leave, but when I'm at home, it's not with me because anything that's work related, I have slack. And unfortunately, I feel like the vast majority of the text messages that I get are usually requests.

They're things that people want from me, want me to meet, want me to talk, want me to whatever. And so I end up just getting stressed from seeing all the messages. So I may end up just changing my number again, which I do every so often, but just putting it away.

When I go to sit down on my computer, I still feel like that ghost itch of like, I want to reach for my phone. There's a pause point here for a split second. Let me grab my phone just for that dopamine.

And so I try to not do that. And media sources, social media and news in general, I don't consume any formal news. The only news I get is as I'm posting stuff on social media so that I can get it out.

But I'm currently trying to figure out a desktop version of that so I can just plan it so I don't have to consume. It's just really hard, you know what I mean? At least for me. And I notice if I start my day consuming some social media, I'm just not as sharp, you know what I mean? I feel like I'm a little bit foggier.

It's like you get overstimulated and then everything else seems less interesting by contrast. Yeah. So just eliminating it overall has been very helpful for me.

When you start doing that, when my new executive assistant came in, I was telling you about last night. Yeah. So.

This is crazy, Jack. Okay, so Alex is telling me if you want to coordinate to go to dinner, you just text this number. And I was like, all right.

So I text the number and she's like, this time, this date, does that work with you? I was like, yeah, that works. And she's like, all right, you're going to go to this place at this time? I was like, okay. And I asked Alex, I said, hey, do you know where you're going? He's like, no.

She just tells me where to show up. It's great. How did you pick this place? She knows my preferences.

Yeah, yes. It's great. Know where he's showing up, but do you know who you're meeting most of the time? Yeah.

She'll like, briefly, do you want to go to dinner with Graham? And you're like, no, or yeah, take out a time schedule. How crazy is that? That's crazy to know where he's going. Like, I would want to know this place or this place or what are the preferences? No, it's just chop.

Those are all these micro decisions that you have to make that are big picture irrelevant. You know what I mean? Like, what restaurant are we going to go to? What time? She knows that on weeknights I want to be done by X type so that I can get the sleep that I want. And so she just plans because if you think about all the micro decisions you have and you think about them ahead of time, you already have a decision making process.

You just haven't spoken it out loud. Like, for Leila and I, if we're going on commercial flights, here's a hack. If you go two aisle seats that are on either side, you both get aisle seats, you get to be next to each other.

But rather than having that one person who gets the middle seat that has to trade off two aisle seats works great, right? And so she knows that that's our preference. And so she will always go and try and find two aisle seats that are close to each other. And if those aren't available, what's the backup? What's the decision making process? So it's like you outline all of those things, but you do it for everything.

So it's like, if we're at an event, what type of food are you going to request? I'm always going to probably have the chicken dish. I want them to double the chicken, and I'd probably want some extra carbs on the side. Cool.

So she knows that. So when I go to events, there's like, here's your lunch. And I'm like, great, I don't have to ask for it.

She already knows the preferences are. And it took me a really long time to understand this because I have gone through it's actually something that I was really insecure about. I've gone through eight executive assistants.

Wow. Yeah. Why? I mean, there's two to tango, right? Partially me, partially them just being real.

But I think that a lot of I mean, fundamentally it's my fault because I didn't know what I was looking for. Right. And so if you don't know what you're looking for, it's very hard to find it.

And so that's why this time it's been so great for me. Because she came in and she was a 20 year veteran executive assistant. She's like, this is how this is going to go.

And I was like, yes, this is what I like. I knew within a day I was like, this is going to work. And every other one was like, maybe it'll get better, maybe they'll come around.

I was rooting for them, but it wasn't great. But this one day, one I knew. And so the difference is, a true executive assistant is almost like a time coach.

It's almost like a partner with you where you're both working to optimize you, right? So it's not like an administrative assistant, which is different, which is just like, I will handle your scheduling and answer the phone and respond to emails and things like that. But like, a true executive assistant is somebody who's almost like a partner at the executive level, who understands business at a very high level, can make business decisions on your behalf, knows your personal preferences, things like that. But for me, it's very much like a time coach.

So when I wake up, every minute of my day is planned. And let's say I finish a task that's supposed to take me 40 minutes and it takes me 22, I'd be like, Melanie, I've got 18 minutes. What do I do? And she's like, oh, I'll pull this from tomorrow.

And I'll slide this in and I'll see if I can move this to that. I had a handful of preferences. I was like, no white space.

So for me, on my calendar, I just don't want any white space because I just wanted like from the time I start to time I end, I just want it to be going. And so by doing it that way, though, it's just like, I am just working on whatever's in front of me and she slides things in and I'm just in communication with her. And hey, this person wants to do something, I just send it to her.

And then she goes and talks and says, okay, I get a lot of podcast requests and things like that. And so rather than me having the awkward like, hey, I get ten of these a day, can you just give us some stats and what's your audience? And things like that. It's like that entire process.

She can just handle, and I don't have to go look at their profile, see what she knows, what my decision making criteria for all of those things and what's a yes and what's a no. And so it just allows me to outsource more and more and more of the decisions that are lower value add to portfolio, company growth, so that I can just purely focus on the things that have the highest leverage. Has she ever scheduled something that you've disagreed with, let's say this podcast as an example where she would schedule you on something like that and you're like, I don't want to do that, though probably will.

She hasn't yet. But I mean, if she did, I would say we have to update some decision criteria. Like in this instance, this is why I wouldn't and then I wouldn't be upset because I would only be not upset, but I would only be maybe disappointed or whatever or frustrated or annoyed if the decision criteria that we had laid out was somehow not followed.

But if someone if I have to add to it, then that's just like an opportunity to make the thing better so I wouldn't be upset about something like that. Got it. How did you find her? An agency? We'd actually known each other for a long time.

Really? Yeah, we'd known each other for a long time. She was an executive assistant of a really good friend of mine for eight years. And then as their company grew and organization shifted around, it made more sense for her to pursue a different opportunity and whatnot.

And so we'd known each other already, and so I was always like, I need the her for me. And then it just so happened, and it ended up being her. I'm curious if you could say about how much to me that's what I was thinking.

Yeah, that's what we're all thinking. There's no way it's less than we should take a guess. I'm going to say probably 100.

And you don't have to say exactly, but I'll say 70. No, say 120. Yeah, you need to pay someone.

Well, yeah, if you want somebody who has business acumen, right, and who can say, hey, I want to make some T shirts for us, and can you make some backpacks? And by the way, can you figure out why the book is not on Amazon Prime? Why don't I have the little prime thing? Can you just figure that out? You want somebody who can go and just take that directive and just solve it. Sometimes that's harder to find. And for me, I also want to pay for experience.

Even if there was two people that might have equal ability, I will usually pay more for the experience because I don't want to have to have this person who's less experienced learn those lessons on my clock. I'd rather come with the solutions preloaded. That's why I'm willing to pay more.

Do you fly business or do you fly you fly private. Mostly just being real economy. You do the Uber.

Black or Uber? Like the fancy ones? Uber. Uber. Oh, you mean like you take wow, I have two people wait outside my house and they carry me everywhere.

It's one of those I almost am embarrassed to say, but there's a handful of things that are really expensive and I feel like they are worth it. And I try and spend the money that we have because it's the only way that money has utility for me rather than just making more money, which then for what point? So if I have the opportunity to consume benefit for money, I try and use it. And so the speed and convenience that I get from private versus commercial is pretty significant.

And like short flights are like five grand, so it's not like you know what I mean. And if you're going with somebody else, it's not a huge deal. The longer flights.

If you're going cross country, it's like a $50,000 flight. But it just depends on what you're looking for. So I would say shorter flights, we tend to fly private longer flights.

I'm also like more weary of small planes, so I also will just fly first class on the commercial mozination real quick. If you are a business owner that has a big old business and wants to get to a much bigger business, going to 5100 million dollars plus we would love to talk to you and if you like that, we would like to hear more about it. Go to acquisition.com.

You can play anywhere on the page and talk to one of our team and see if we can help you get there. Let's talk a little bit more about time management because it seems like you can get a lot of stuff done in a very small frame of time. So let's walk us through your day.

You mentioned on the last podcast you wake up extremely early. Yeah, and just for the audience, it's not because I have some superhuman discipline. I think I get tired early.

So if you fall asleep at nine or ten, you wake up at four or five. It's not like a superhero thing. It's been 7 hours.

I can wake up now. So I'll tell you a couple of things. So number one is I don't have a wake up alarm.

I have a go to bed alarm, which is like, hey, you should be winding down by now. I don't even really need to do it anymore because I've just been doing it for such a long time. But when I started it, I wanted to set myself a go to bed alarm.

So I go to bed around the same time I usually know what I'm going to do the next day before I go to bed. That's kind of how I clear my mental plate. And I do think, and I know it sounds kind of weird and woo woo, but I think that overnight my subconscious works on some of the problems because I always wake up with really interesting solutions in the morning to some the problems I went to bed with.

And so it just gives me like great momentum to start my day. But when we wake up, my wife and I wake up about the same time. We usually have coffee in the morning together.

That's kind of like our 30 minutes to just like hang out, chill, watch the sunrise. It's usually between four and five. Wow.

So we hang out, then watch the sun in that time rise and the sun is coming up. If it's not, then we don't watch it. But if we can, we do.

And then from there I go to my office and I start working and she does her own thing. And then we meet again for lunch. And then I go back to work and then that's my day.

And then you cut it off at a specific hour? It's not a specific hour. It's like if I've got a call, usually my calls end around four ish. Do you work really hard at four to basically switch off from work mode into personal mode where it's just like a light switch or still open? Like if something comes up with work wise, you're going to handle it? I'm just trying to say this the right way.

I don't get the same level of stress that I used to from work. And I feel like I've worked a lot on that side of not being stressed by work. And I think a big part of that was realizing last year that I don't have to work at all, at all.

And so kind of confronting that and then realizing that I'm choosing to do this kind of relieved me of the stress that was surrounding it. I'm like, if you don't like this, basically stop complaining to yourself. You're choosing to do this and you have no reason, there's no point in you doing this.

And so not having the stress around it has decreased any kind of negative stuff associated with it. And so I'll stop taking calls at four. But if someone slacks me but I would say I delineate that from like I'm not going to sit down at the computer, but I don't have like hard and fast rules.

If there's something that I want to do, I'll do it. But how do you mentally switch off from work mode at that hour? Because for me, I find it very difficult. If I'm focusing, I can't take a lunch.

Let's just say even when I wake up, I can't do just like a 30 minutes, just kind of do nothing. I have to immediately start. Once I start, I continue that all day.

If I have a break, it throws me off. But even when I stop, sometimes I can't. That switch is still on so I'm always in my head just like, thinking, you're like eating and you're like, don't talk to me too much.

I really want to keep yeah, sometimes I won't even have my phone. I'll just be thinking just like, that quiet space. Totally.

So I split my day so I should probably give more details. So I split my day between high leverage work, which is like, me doing stuff, and then me communicating with companies, which is usually the afternoon. So until noon so basically four or five until noon is when I get all of my work done.

So that's when if I want to build presentations, or if I make content, or if I want to write the book or the things that I do that are like, one of the companies wants to whatever, it doesn't matter. I'll write down my thoughts or review stuff in the morning, and then the afternoon is when I do my communication with people. Because for me, some people function really well late at night.

I don't I'm much better, like, super early in the morning, and that's where I get my highest leverage on my time. And so in the afternoons, when I don't need that creative juice, I can still be super effective on meetings. I'm not thinking like, how do I say this framework differently? Which is a kind of abstract concept and more difficult.

So I understand what you're saying, but my cut off for like, when I stop, quote, working is at noon. It's actually when I have lunch, is usually when I'm done with what I would consider deep work for the day. And that's probably just because the difference in the nature of the work.

Okay. And then after four or 05:00 p.m., once you shut everything off, work wise or try to, how do you spend your time? Do you just relax with a movie? So we actually do go yeah, we do go out to dinner a lot.

A lot, a lot. Every night, actually. Every night? Yeah.

The guy at Mastro is like, welcome back, we see you all the time, like, joking around. Yeah. Wow.

What are your favorite restaurants and what's your food budget? Maybe you have no idea. It's aggressive. It's a lot.

It's a lot. I like it. Yeah, I mean, we very often it's aggressive.

Just like realistically, we probably spend between twelve and 15,000 a month on going out to eat. Would you say that there's like a return on that because you can relax so much that you can cycle that back into I'm somewhat embarrassed by this. I think we talked about this last time.

Is that again, if you could pay a dollar to go out, would you go out? Right? So, yeah, I would pay a dollar to go to Masters every night rather than staying in. And so for us, because we work all day at home, going out to get dinner is like the only real time I leave besides going to the gym. And so that's kind of why going out to eat has serves multiple purposes, not just the food.

It's much more so, like, we sit down, we get to connect, we're served, which is nice. It doesn't have to be five star. I would say like two thirds of the time it's five star restaurants.

And I think a big portion of that is because of the convenience of where I live. So currently I'm running a place that's literally on the Strip, and so I have 45 star restaurants connected to the building. So if there were chipotle downstairs, I'd probably eat more chipotle.

But it just so happens that it's mastros is the closest restaurant to me, so I go there a lot. So, like, massive difference in price, but relative price, not so much. Pretty much since we got to Vegas, we've gone out to dinner.

Not pretty much. We've gone out every single night. We've never cooked once.

So in terms of best places, I think Delilah is really good. I think they have the best dessert in Vegas. If anyone's curious.

Delilah is exceptional, man. So many of them are really good because they're all the best places in Vegas. And Vegas is some of the best dining in the world.

It's crazy, but I will tell you this. The marginal utility of five star dining decreases very quickly. You open the menu and it's the same stuff.

It's like you've got a carpaccia, you've got steak tartar, you've got a tuna tartar, you've got some shrimp cocktail of some sort. There's some fancier bread selection that you can opt for, for $5. Then you've got a couple of salads, and then they've got their really expensive steaks, their medium expensive steaks, and then they've got the seafood selection.

They've Italian sea bass. They're all the same. But you don't look at prices at all.

No, I don't. And you seem like you'd be a big tipper. You're a big tipper.

Yeah, because it's interesting, after our podcast last time, unfortunately, we talked about this off camera, but you mentioned that you want to get rid of all of your money. Like when you die, you're not going to pass it on to your kids or anything. Yeah, there's a pledge or something for that.

Well, I mean, there's the giving pledge, but we already donated. Our states have already been set up to be given away. I haven't signed any pledges for it.

I guess we're going to get into it. I'll tell you a really interesting example that'll drive this home. This is recent.

So my great great grandfather, he was a ruler in Iran prior to the Shah. And so we were like, I'm directly descendant from him. Now that sounds fancy.

It doesn't mean anything, which is going to prove my point. He had 400 children. From those 400 children was my great grandfather.

He was one of 19. Then there was my grandfather, then there was my dad and then there's me, right? And so he was a ruler of a country. So you talk about like wealth and status and everything, right? I actually can't even remember his name.

And so that's just five generations. And so the idea that we have of like, I want to create a legacy, it's like, dude, you're not making a legacy. He was ruler of a country.

I can't even remember his name. I'm related to him, right? And so if you do that enough times, it just becomes humans. And that becomes a very humanitarian perspective too, because if you mix bloodlines enough times, it's just people, right? You take your genes, split them, split them, split them, split them.

You do it ten times, half to the 10th. Power is very small number in terms of what percentage of it is still you. If you still have pride in your biology being passed on, which also gets into having children versus not having children, because then that's a whole nother interesting can of worms.

But as a result of that kind of thought process, the point of leaving a legacy in capital L legacy of like this is going to last past me doesn't really make sense, because the people who I'm leaving it to will never know who I am. And it will get divided so many times as well between all of those people. It would have to be such an insane amount of money, which then would become a marginal amount of money once it's divided enough times.

So for both of those reasons it wouldn't work. But then on the close knit basis of like, well, I want to pass it on to my direct descendants. I just don't know many people who have been given lots of money who are better for it.

And so for that reason, it doesn't seem very beneficial to anything to give it to anyone besides just giving it back to everybody else. And it's also kind of nice because it kind of relieves you of this pressure because then it's just realizing it for what it is, which is just a game. What we're playing right now is just a made up game to keep us occupied.

I gave the casino analogy at the end of the last podcast, but that is how I see it. It's like we're just accumulating chips, they're fake and I can't take them with me, so I'm just pushing them back to the middle of the table, which is what they're going to be done anyways. It's just whether you say like, they're only going to these players rather than all the players, but fast forward three more generations, it is all the players and you don't know the people anyways.

Yeah. So what does it really matter? Do you want kids? You mentioned the time commitment of a dog. Yeah, well, it's too much.

I can't imagine a child. Yeah, I think I would probably have different feelings about a child than I would about a dog, and just so the audience can dislike me. So this is my gift for everybody.

We had a dog, and it just went to the bathroom, like, eight or ten times a day, and it was too much. I could have somebody. You care for the dog.

Oh, yeah. I actually really like animals, and actually animals really like me. It's kind of weird.

Bailey goes crazy when you get in the house, but Layla's, like, you have calming energy or whatever. You know what I mean? I don't know. But animals do like me, and I like them back.

We're cool, we get along. Maybe it's because they know that I'm like, I don't need them. You're an animal, I'm an animal.

We're both just, like, doing our own thing. Like, I don't need to take care of you. I loved the cat I had.

We had a cat, and it died after two years. But cats were way easier. So dogs versus cats.

Like, I like the cat, goldfish would work, whatever. But anyways, back to the kid thing. It's something I've given a ton of thought to the pros for me of having a child are the human experience, which is just like, this is a part of the human experience that is unique, and I think that would be interesting to go through.

That being said, going to prison is also part of the human experience. It doesn't necessarily mean that I should do it. Sometimes people are like, I think you and Leila would make great parents.

And I'll say this and I say this, not as a pejorative statement to parenting in general, but I'm using an extreme example to illustrate a point, which is, like, I could be and this is not disrespectful to people who may have this job man culture these days. I could also probably be a really good gas station attendant, right? I could probably be really exceptional with that. It doesn't mean that I should do it.

And so just because I might be an exceptional parent doesn't mean I should. And in the cons column, there's a tremendous amount of risk, personally, that the person doesn't want to do what I want them to do, right? And so the fact that I still have this desire that I'm projecting on an unborn child is something that I'm not very comfortable with, because if I had one, I would have a hard time saying that I want them to be their own person. I'd want them to be who I want them to be.

And so maybe that is the learning of becoming a parent, is that you unlearn the expectations of projections that you have on the child. But in terms of my personal fulfillment component, obviously I'm very torn about it, but there's so many guys that I've mentored that have taken steps toward me, like, please help me with business. Please help me in these ways, and I'm happy to.

And if I had to trade off I think we're talking about dinners last night, but the amount of time that a child takes, right, let's say it's, I don't know, 4 hours a day, roughly, in terms of headspace and time spent with four. I was actually trying to be really aggressive with four. I'm being really honest.

I was genuinely being really aggressive with four. I would imagine a child. I'm going to pay hell, there's going to be help for it's, like helping the house.

Okay, so 8 hours a day. So full time job, right, for the next 20 years. If I had a full time job in the next 20 years, I could help 100,000 or a million people more than I could just two that just so happened to share my genetics that eventually would get diluted out to nothing.

Is that how you base your decisions off how many people you can get based on? Really? Yeah. A lot of people want to have kids to give meaning to their lives. Right? And as a corollary to this, whenever I see a lot of people doing something, I don't think, oh, that's a great idea.

I think, oh, that's a great path to mediocrity. And again, that's going to insult most people because most people do it. So this, again, it doesn't have to just apply to children.

You can think about it for everything, which is like, if you're trying to not be in the majority because you don't want to be average, then it means that you have to, by definition, not do what everyone else is doing. And so when people are like, I'm taking this action to have children, I would assume that it's probably selfish because you can always count on people to be selfish. It's not like humans only in this one instance are selfless, right? They're selfish because they want to look at it, be like, it looks just like me.

That's why I love it. You're just like me, right? Love you. I love me.

Right? And I'm aware of that. Right? And so that's why I try and audit. Do I want to have kids just because I want to look at a version of myself, you know what I mean? But then I'm also going to project on this kid's life when he might want to be a ballet dancer or whatever, and if there's anything wrong with being a ballet dancer.

But if I'm going to spend 8 hours, it's just like, I don't feel like I'm providing a lot of value, you know what I mean? But it sounds like you're thinking of it from an ROI perspective. Totally going to invest all this, and I might not get a good ROI compared to the guaranteed ROI could get 8 hours a day over here of helping other people. Yeah.

And it's really ROI of the world. More so than me, particularly. There was a brief moment where I had an injury where I thought I wasn't going to be able to have kids, might not turn blacked, and I was like, oh, it's fine.

But I was, like, very worried. And so it was really interesting is that during that period of time before I got it looked at, I just was like, I'm not going to be able to have kids. That's it, right? I'm screwed.

And what was weird is that I ended up becoming almost I became so humanitarian in general. It was like the desire to progenerate went from being specific to a child to general, to everyone, because when you realize you can't have a child, then you want to still pass it on. And I think that's just like a human desire, right, of benefiting the tribe, whatever, but you still had this desire, and rather than being able to get my fulfillment out of one child doing that, for me, it's like I was forced to just be like, well, I have to just give to everybody.

And so I think that was actually a really transformative experience for me. And I think it's part of what has shaped a lot of the thoughts around giving today. In general.

I'm a little confused and curious, not saying this is wrong or anything, and in fact, I admire this, but why is the thing that you hold to the most weight when you're making decisions how many people you can help that could be selfish in and of itself? Probably. Do you think being selfish is bad? I like to believe that most people generally want things that are good for everyone, so if they pander to what they want themselves, they're generally helping other people. I'd agree with that.

But do you think being selfish is bad? Sometimes? I think if it hurts somebody else, then yes. If being selfish is at the detriment of somebody else, or if the net is bad for more people, if it hurts more people than it serves you, you also have to define yeah, I know. And you can't it becomes a circular argument of it's not about being selfish, it's just hurting people is bad, which is the thing which is irrelevant from the selfish action.

Right? Sure. Many people would. And that's bad in the little B sense rather than the big B sense of, like, the universe anyways.

But all that to say, I think people act in their own self interest, and that is and comma, that's fine, and we can expect them to do that. And I act in my own self interest as well. And you're just naturally interested in helping people.

I think I get some level of fulfillment from it. I do. I mean, that's why, like, the book's, Ninety Nine Cents, the courses are free, like, you know, and I plan on writing a bunch more books.

It's selfish. Like, I think I I think I feel good when I do it. And so I do more of it.

