How I Grew from 0 to 500k Followers In Under 2 Years - Sahil Bloom
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Oh, by the way, before we get into this episode, I would love to tell you a little bit about Life Notes. Now, Life Notes is a weekly-ish email that I send completely for free to my subscribers, and it contains my notes from life. So notes from books that I've read, podcasts I'm listening to, conversations I'm having, and experiences I'm having in work and in life. And around once a week, I write these up and share them in an email with my subscribers. So if you would like to get an email from me that contains the stuff that I'm learning, almost in real time as I'm learning it, you might like to subscribe. There is a link down in the show notes or in the video description.

Society, think of wealth as the measuring stick of our lives. And you think of money as the measuring stick. And the reason is actually a functional one, in my opinion, which is just that it's the easiest. It's so easy to like stack yourself on the scoreboard of money. I met way too many people that had a

astronomical amounts of money that I would not qualify as happy by any stretch of the imagination. You know, I have a close friend who sold his company for a billion dollars recently. He made $300 million. I was asking him, like, are you materially happier now than you were when you were just running the company? And he said, not really. And the reason is because...

Hey friends, welcome back to Deep Dive, the weekly podcast where I chat to creators, entrepreneurs, authors, and other inspiring people. And we talk about how they got to where they are and the strategies, techniques, ideas, mental models that we can apply to our own lives to help us live our best lives. Now, what you're about to hear is a fantastic conversation, if I say so myself, between me and Sahil Bloom. Sahil is an ex-pro athlete. He used to be a professional baseball player, and now he is an entrepreneur. He's an angel investor, and he's absolutely huge on Twitter. He's like

One of my favorite accounts to follow on Twitter. He's grown from zero to like 500,000 plus followers in like less than a year. And the stuff he tweets is just freaking amazing personal development, life advice, mental models type stuff. Sahil's also recently become a dad. And so we talk about how that's affected his approach to like life and happiness and productivity. And I've learned so much from this conversation. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Sahil, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me.

This is gonna be so much fun. I've been following you on Twitter. I feel like you've absolutely exploded on the Twitter scene in the last like year or so. So we definitely want to talk about that. But I'd love to get started by kind of talking about what it's been like as a new dad. I'm curious because you have had a pretty illustrious career and then you had a kid and I

And I've heard from some people that when you're like a tech bro and then you have a kid, suddenly it gives you this newfound motivation for life because now you have a reason to ascend the ladder and acquire more because it comes at this for the sake of your kid rather than just for the sake of yourself. How has your drive and motivation changed since becoming a father? Yeah, there's so much to unpack here. I think it's a great place to start the conversation because it actually speaks a lot to me and to myself.

my changing motivations and how I feel as a human being. I, you know, first off, what I would say is I think there is this general weird, almost cynicism around parenthood that has permeated through culture broadly where like, you know, you say you're having a kid and everyone's first reaction is like, Oh, you know, get your sleep now. Or, uh,

you know, like, hope you had fun, you know, hope you had your fun years in, or, you know, like, all of the stuff is, like, you know, people are sort of saying it jokingly, but there is this feeling of, like, your life is kind of over, like, that part of your life is over, and the fun days, and the sleeping, and, you know, being clean, and all of those things are done, and I just generally, like,

as a bias, whenever there is a broad sweeping feeling or push in one direction, I try to push back against it or at least see the other side. And so going in, I was like, I had boundless optimism around it. I was not going to be cynical about the experience. I was like,

This is the best thing that's ever happened to me. My wife and I, you know, candidly had, you know, tried for a little while and we weren't sure we were going to be able to conceive naturally. And it was a real blessing that it ended up happening for us. And so I was just so taken by the fact that we were going to have a son, that this was all going to happen, that I couldn't see anything but the positive in all of it.

And the second he was born, you know, I had this like really profound feeling where I got to hold him. And I had this feeling of like, look, I'm 31 years old and I've spent the last 31 years of my life, or maybe that's not realistic, the last 26 years of my life trying to understand what the meaning and purpose is of all of this, like of life. What are we doing? Why am I working? What am I doing all these things for? And then suddenly I was standing there.

And that was looking me straight back in the face, like that meaning and purpose. And I really did feel that way. I was like, oh, this is why I'm here. Like, this is the whole reason. And ever since then, it's just been this like transformative day after day for me as a human being. And, you know, I don't even mean that in like a...

grandiose sense. I really mean it very literally on a daily basis. I, for the first time in my life, feel like I really have enough. And so you said, you know, at the beginning, people feel like it's this motivation. Now I have a why I'm going to go out and I'm going to, you know, go accelerate my career. I'm going to go make more money. I'm going to do it for him, you know, for this kid. And I've actually gone the other way where I'm like,

I want to spend time with this child. I don't want to be working 100 hours a week to try to make more money and have a yacht and a private jet and this and that. I want to get to be a huge part of his life. I want to coach his Little League team. I want to be able to spend time with him when he's doing all of these things. And so it's interesting. I think people go one of two ways with it. And I've definitely gone the direction of just...

I want to be around. I really want to enjoy this and be able to support him. Nice. I love that. That's great. Can we zoom in? So you said that you were looking at this baby thinking, yep, this is meaning and purpose. This is why I'm here. Can we unpack that a little bit? Is it like, I'm here to help this baby survive. I'm here to help this baby thrive. Like what's going on in your head when you have that kind of feeling? Yeah, I mean, I'm a thinker by nature. Like I would say I generally overthink things. And a lot of time during my like career post-age, like, I don't know, maybe really post-age 20s,

I spent a lot of time just thinking about like my motivations. Like, why am I doing this? Why am I getting up? Why am I working hard? What am I like, what am I trying to do? What's my reason for being? And not like that I was feeling depression or feeling anxiety or anything. I just, I wanted to know what I was striving for. And I would say I, like a lot of people, I imagine our age fell into this pattern and cycle of like,

you know, I'm doing this because everyone says this is what I'm supposed to do. Like I'm supposed to try to, you know, climb the ladder in this finance job to make a bunch of money so that I can have $30 million someday or whatever the number is. And so then I can, you know, have fancy wine at dinner. And I never really stopped to think like, is that really what I want? Does that make me happy intrinsically? And if happiness is what I ultimately am striving for as a human being, why, why am I then doing this? And when I had, you know,

I just felt that sensation right there of like,

this is actually happiness. This is my true moment. And like the purity of that feeling and of that happiness was unrivaled in my life. And so what I realized in that moment was, um, it wasn't, you know, taking care of this child, you know, being there, et cetera. It was literally that feeling of like, this is what pure joy feels like. This is what enough feels like. I don't need a yacht or a plane or fancy wine or fancy food or restaurants or a nice house, et cetera. It's like,

this connection that I feel is all I ever really want. Okay, so I'm 28. And I feel as you were describing all the stuff around, like, why am I here? Why am I striving? That's literally what I've been playing in my mind for the last like 12 months or so struggling to come up with an answer. Because I think one of the nice things about the medical career path is that you don't really have to ask yourself that question. Because it's like, you sort of are on the following the yellow brick road. And there's always a next step. And there's always a next step. And

It's a very clear path. But then as soon as I stepped off that path, especially as like the YouTube channel and the business started making more money, especially when I got to the point where I'm like, damn, you know, I was intending to build streams of passive income. I have streams of passive income. What's the point now? Is it to build more and more streams of passive income, like more financial independence? But like to what end?

I kind of just want to spend my time reading, writing and teaching. And that seems kind of fun, but like, I don't need that much money for that. But like, I still feel like I still, still need to make all this money and blah, blah, blah, blah. And I've been really struggling to figure out like, why am I actually striving for all this kind of stuff? So I'm curious for you, like pre-kid, what were your conclusions? Um,

because we talked a little bit about what happened post-kid that like suddenly it's all about this. But how were you thinking about this kind of before you had the kid? Yeah, and I think this answer actually applies to pre and post-kid. You know, notwithstanding all of that of like feeling like I have enough, both pre and post-kid, I had had this realization that,

I was on, you know, I was in the finance world, right? So it's pretty similar actually to the medical world where there was this nice, neatly trodden path from point A where I was standing to point B when I was age 65 and life had gone great and I was retiring and I was wealthy and had accomplished everything that you're supposed to accomplish as like a, you know,

you know, the son of an Indian immigrant, like that would have been a good life. My mom would have been proud. It was like, oh, he made money, took care of us, et cetera. That scared the shit out of me, excuse my language, that I could like put my head down, blink and wake up in 25 years and be like, what the hell just happened? What did I just do? And did I enjoy it? No. Was I like nerding out on a daily basis, excited about what I was doing? No. And was it going to steal my happiness and my joy along the way?

probably. When I started to deconstruct it, you know, again, it goes back to me being an overthinker. I started to deconstruct it a bit. I just generally realized that society, think of wealth as the measuring stick of our lives. And you think of money as the measuring stick. And the reason is actually a functional one, in my opinion, which is just that it's the easiest. It's so easy to like stack yourself on the scoreboard of money. And I met way too many people that had

astronomical amounts of money that I would not qualify as happy by any stretch of the imagination. Because what happened, and you know, I have a close friend who sold his company for a billion dollars recently. He made $300 million. And I was asking him, like, are you materially happier now than you were when you were just running the company? And he said, not really. And the reason is because, you know, he was like, look, I sold the company. This is great. I got invited to all these like cool trips. And I went on this trip and

And I was there and I had rented this really nice yacht for all my friends and we were there. And I got there and there was just three bigger yachts right next to me. And so suddenly, I'm on the thing, all my friends are here coming, they all think I'm the man. And then they see these other boats and everyone's like, I wonder who owns that? I wonder what the story is with that one? Because there's always someone that's gonna have more. It's just the reality of it. And so you suddenly get into this pattern where it's never enough. Everyone has this tendency where,

you know, like you mentioned it, you know, when you're a medical student or when you're trying to make it in the early years of that, you're trying to basically first like pay off your debt. Then you're trying to maybe make a few million dollars and then you want $10 million. And then you'll say like, oh, I'll be happy when I have $10 million. Then you have $10 million and you say you'll be happy when you have $30 million. The number just triples no matter what. And it's just the reality of how humans are. We get on this hedonic treadmill and we're never happy. And

And so for me, what I realized was I didn't want that. Money actually didn't make me all that happy. What made me happy was freedom. I loved being able to spend time with people I cared about. I loved having the freedom to work out and to feel physically fit and experience vitality, to have headspace mentally, to be able to think about my own mental health, mindfulness, spirituality, et cetera, and really experience a much more comprehensive view of wealth in my own life.

And so I started prioritizing that. I started trying to think about, okay, what was like my playbook gonna be for building comprehensive wealth? And all of that comes out to happiness, right? Like all of it then boils down to hopefully a level of fulfillment and happiness in your own life. How do you think about the difference between happiness and fulfillment or happiness and meaning or like short-term versus long-term happiness, like weather versus climate? What's your mental model for this? Yeah, I would say my general model is that happiness is short-term.

and fulfillment is like the long-term. And I personally think that like a lot of happy moments will generally lead to a lot of long-term fulfillment, but I don't think you can generally experience happiness in a long-term state. I think it's effectively felt in like three-second increments is I think the science of this. Like a moment in time is three seconds from a scientific perspective. And when you feel happiness, I personally think you need to register it

Like, I am very, very good about when I feel happy, I'm like...

oh, hey, I feel happy right now. And I want to like mentally register it so that in my mind, I know, hey, I felt really happy on several occasions today. This was great because I think it's easy to just like ignore it, pass it by. Kurt Vonnegut, the famous author, has this amazing commencement speech. I think it was like 1997 at Rice. He gave a commencement speech and he said, when life is sweet, when you have those like sweet moments in life, pause and look up at the sky and say, if this isn't nice, then what is?

And I always loved that because it's this like forced stop in your life when those moments are good. And we, it's so easy when you're a striver and when you're, you know, like you or like me, you're like focused on growth because you love building, you love growing. That's what motivates you. You want to get better each day. You say you love reading and writing and teaching. Like,

Why? A lot of that comes down to you love learning. You love being a little bit better and knowing a little bit more about the world around you. That's happy for you. That's fulfillment for you. But we often, when you're like that, don't stop. You don't pause. You don't appreciate those sweet, sweet moments in life. And so I love being able to pause, recognize those little moments in time. And I've just found it's made a dramatic difference.

impact on my daily happiness and my long-term fulfillment. Yeah, anytime I come across that quote, I find that I then do it for the rest of the day and then I forget about it. And as you were saying that, I was just thinking that, "Huh, if this isn't nice, I don't know what is." Having this conversation, following you on the internet for a while, I get to do this as my job. We're in the middle of a heat wave, but it's air-conditioned and it's super nice. This is so good. It's completely absurd. When you actually break down your life, I feel the same way about mine, you're getting paid

to have interesting conversations with smart people, not me, but with other smart people. And that is, I mean, that's amazing. Considering where you were two years ago in your life, completely remarkable. I think about it every day. You know, I'm like, I'm at home right now, right? This is my office. My kid is in the other room. He's two months old. If I were to talk to him,

If I was in my prior job, I would be traveling three, four days a week. I'd be working 90, 100 hours a week. And I'm making much less money than I'm making now. And so I have the freedom and the income to be able to spend time with the people that I really love and care most about, with my parents, with my kid, with my wife. And if that's not nice, I really don't know what is. Fantastic. Yeah, I was just imagining what my life would be like if I were still working as a doctor, probably be in some really, really, really hot office job.

dealing with patients coming in through heat stroke. And it would be fun in a way, and it would feel like camaraderie, but certainly not as great as what this setup is. Yeah, not as impactful, right? I mean, like, a doctor's role is amazingly impactful on the micro level. And I think that motivates tons of people. And my whole mental model for life is, you should find the thing that you are most uniquely well suited to create the maximum impact around. And

you could have created significant impact as a doctor. But I think you're fantastic. You would have been a great doctor, I'm sure. No doubt, right? I think you're smart. You're curious. You would have been a great doctor and you would have impacted a lot of lives. But you're fantastic at what you do now. You're in the top 1.01% of the world at being able to do what you do now. And so the number of people you can impact positively through doing what you're doing now is probably a thousand X what you could have as a doctor.

And so from a like societal net benefit perspective, matching you into what you should be doing is a huge positive because so many people are better off for having you do that. I never would have encountered you if you were a doctor, right? You never would have had a positive net impact on my life. Now you are. Yeah, that's something I do think about a lot in the sense of like,

measuring impact and effective altruism and all that kind of stuff. What does motivate you? I think motivation wise, I'm just going to think out loud here. It feels like there's like the selfish motivations and then there's like the selfless motivations, shall we say that I want to have a nice life that I like and I want to have impact.

on other people and help other people in some kind of way. And ideally, the Venn diagram of those things is the thing that you end up doing. And I feel like I found that in doing this sort of stuff, basically teaching online and learning from cool people like you and just like making videos about that stuff. It feels really cool. And it feels like some sort of impact as well. But I guess the thing that I struggle with is like trying to tease out in a way, what is the true motivation? And I don't know if this is a good way to think about it, but one way that I try and think about it is

Okay, let's say I didn't want to, I didn't need to worry about making money anymore. Let's say I had 100 million in the bank, which is, and hopefully at that point, I wouldn't be trying to seek 300 million. What would I be doing with my time? And I think broadly, what I'd be doing with my time is fairly similar to what I'm currently doing with my time. I'd still be doing the podcast, I'd still be doing videos, probably I'd make less courses or just chuck them on YouTube for free, because I just put it on the internet for free. But beyond that, my life would be very similar to what it currently is. But why do you need 100 million for that?

Yeah, no, that's the next question. It's like, I don't really need a hundred million for that. And I think I'm already at the point where I can just probably do that forever because I don't particularly have expensive tastes and this works nicely. One thing that I do struggle with, like I have a bit of a question mark about, and I'd love to hear your perspective on this is,

is in the back of my mind, there's this large amount of fear of like, okay, I've sort of lucked into this position right now. Business is going well, YouTube channel is going well, you know, peaks and troughs, like with any kind of social media type thing. But it almost feels like, I guess, being an athlete, and I guess you'd have experience of this, where you know you've got a few years in the limelight to really make hay while the sun shines. And then you're going to be hung out to dry. You're going to become a has-been. And all those fears are just like in my mind of like,

is this a sustainable career for the longterm? And especially when I have a family and kids and stuff, then will I, will I regret the way that I spent my time in my youth? And will I regret not going for 10 million or 30 million and instead be comfortable with like less than that? Any, any thoughts on this? So many look, I mean, I think this is first off, it's like, it's a combination of like imposter syndrome with this like scarcity bias that I think we all have when you first make it where you're like terribly scared of being broke. And,

And, you know, being back to like zero. And for whatever reason, rich people feel this a lot. And it's the weirdest thing in the world, just psychologically, that it's almost like functionally very difficult. Like you have skills, there are things you can do, you'll be fine. But we all experience this and have that type of fear. And look, I mean, I've felt that a lot. I went from like a normal finance track and like very stable, et cetera, to doing something entrepreneurial and, you know, on my own. And that doesn't have a pattern that I can match it to or a precedent that's set around it.

You know, my general bias on these things is that you'll figure it out and you have incredible energy around what you're doing. And when you have incredible energy and motivation around what you're doing intrinsically, there is a path that opens up that you cannot ever predict.

And trying to predict it is actually silly. Like if a year ago you could have predicted where you are today, I would call BS. And I think that applies, you know, you're 28. I would guess at like every point over the last eight years, if you had tried to predict where you were two, three years out in advance, you would have been wrong. Yeah.

And I think that applies to today. I actually don't know if you're still going to be doing this in two or three years, but I do know you're going to be fine and you're going to be like figured out something really cool that you're going to be working on and doing. And, you know, the last piece, like more tactically that I think about a lot is I think about income and wealth separately. And so I think that what you really want an ideal setup from a life perspective is that

is that you have income generating activities and then you have wealth generating activities. And the way I generally think about it is that you take your income generating activities, you want those to obviously cover your expenses, et cetera. As soon as all of that is covered, you're taking all of that income and deploying it into wealth generating activities. And if you set up a simple set of systems in that way, it's very difficult to ever be truly in trouble. And if you're

especially during a period where you're earning at a high level, not all of a sudden having your lifestyle creep up to the point where there's no net excess at the end of the day from the income generating is the way to make sure that you're always fine. I mean, I've just like personally, I've always had these fears.

And so I've personally built like a little personal model of my life of how I'm thinking about taking like excess that's being generated and deploying it into things that I consider wealth generating, investing, you know, my fund that I have, all things like that. And make sure that like, look, if I die or if I can't work and we have literally zero income, how long can we coast on what we have for? And when you get to it, like, I mean, my general goal is to like get to the point where

over the next couple of years where it's like forever, you know, like we can, we can make do with our current lifestyle forever. And I think that's an amazing place of like, I call it default alive. It's like, um, Paul Graham has an essay on this, but getting to the point where you feel like your default alive from a personal finance standpoint is a massive mental unlock.

Alrighty, let's do a little interlude. Now, I want to tell you about one of my favorite books, which is Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon. Austin Kleon's books have profoundly changed the trajectory of my life. Show Your Work, in particular, is the book that first encouraged me to start my own blog way back in 2016. Steal Like an Artist is really good. Somehow hit the New York Times bestseller list with this book that's actually mostly a collection of illustrations, but

Like genuinely, it's sick. And it's great for creatives and people struggling with originality and stuff. I would recommend reading the book. It's actually not very long. It doesn't take very long to read. But if you want another way of engaging with the ideas in the book, then you might like to check out Shortform, who are very kindly sponsoring this episode. If you haven't heard by now, Shortform is the world's best service that summarizes popular nonfiction books. But it's way more than just book summaries. So for each book, they have a one pager that summarizes the book in a single page. They also have detailed chapter by chapter outlines. And so for a book like Steal Like an Artist, where there's not a lot of text in the book,

The short form summary adds to and builds on the ideas of Austin Kleon himself. Then in between some of the chapters, they've got these interactive exercises which help you engage with the topic a little bit more. And if the author says anything particularly controversial, then short form will often flag up that, hey, this is a thing that might be potentially fake news, lol. Here is another author and what they thought about the thing and how they disagreed with author A. And so it's quite nice as a way of getting a balanced viewpoint about the books that we read.

Now, there's two main ways that I use short form in my life. The first one is that if I'm short on time and if I've got a book recommendation and I'm not 100% sold on whether I want to read the book directly, I'll often look at the short form summary of the book and be like, you know, are these ideas interesting enough that I will actually want to read the book itself? And usually I have about a 50% hit rate with this. I tend to read about 50% of the books that I read the summaries of and don't read 50% of the books that I read the summaries of, which

because I have a never ending to read list. This is actually really helpful. And secondly, short form is good as a way of revisiting ideas from books I've already read. So if I'm doing book research for my own book or if I'm making a video or if I'm just trying to revisit the ideas because I think they'd be particularly relevant to my life, then it's often way easier for me to read the short form summary of the book

then it is just reread the whole book. Anyway, if any of that sounds up your street and you would also like to get access to the world's best book summaries, then head over to shortform.com forward slash deep dive, and that will give you 20% off the annual premium subscription. So thank you very much short form for sponsoring this episode. So, okay. So income, income versus wealth, take income generating activities and use those to cover your expenses and then transition through transfer, basically everything else into wealth generating activities. You said the phrase set up simple systems. Can we zoom in on that? Like what sort of simple systems do you have for this sort of

So, I mean, the first one I mentioned is like create a model of your finances. I'm a huge believer in just being able to like look at things and visualize them for peace of mind. And like if you're like me, I think most people our age are probably like this where you have this level of fear and like scarcity around what your life is going to look like. And if everything goes to crap, you know, like right now, say we're in a recession and I lose my job or, you know, we're in the creator economy, quote unquote, like everything

if people pull back spend and advertisers pull back and all of this, you know, people stop spending money on courses, et cetera, like, will I be okay? And I think visualizing it, be able to look at it and pull on all the different levers is a great starting point. That's one, one general system. The other way I do it is honestly like I sketch things out. Like I carry around this, this notebook with me, um,

And I will just draw, like I'll draw that system. Like I'll draw a circle income generating and I'll write all the different things that are levers within it. And then I'll show like, okay, here's my expenses coming out. Here's where the rest is going. And I'll draw on all of the wealth generating activities. And I learned that from like Walt Disney had this whole thing of like, if you're having trouble with any concept, just draw

draw it out. And even if it's a crappy looking drawing, it really helps you cement it and understand the idea and have clarity around it. So I will do that frequently. I'll just like sketch things out when I feel that way. But that'd be probably the two big ones that I would think about from a system standpoint. I guess like the last thing I would say is just sit down and think about what you're like, if you were going to have three wealth generating activities and you were only allowed to have three and like that can be, you know, one should definitely be a brokerage account. Like, you know, just

basic investing and the other two can be of your choosing but you never want to get into a point where you're like in you know in 30 different things like there's just no reason for the complexity everyone there's been this like general trend towards almost like status flexing on all of the different alternative investment classes that you're invested in you know you're like oh well i you know invest in master class i have art i invest in real estate through you know

Fundrise or Lex or whatever all of these platforms are and I invest in this. And you literally have like $10,000 spread across 15 different asset classes that is like

you're much better off just putting all of that in the S&P 500 or like into a broad index fund that charges you nothing because none of those are like durably generating above market returns over the long run. I just, I don't really believe it. Even startups, angel investing, I think is more about learning than it is about generating returns for the most part. So all of these things, I think like complexity is just a demon that most people run into along the way. And like keeping your life super simple. I mean, I have,

steadily learned this lesson the hard way where I like will go down the rabbit hole on something that I think is going to be a huge game changer. I'll lose money on it and then be like, man, I should have just put that into my brokerage account. I would have been much better off. I know what you mean. We've been like within this business as well. We've definitely suffered from a complexity creep of like

oh as you grow bigger suddenly there's more opportunities do that and that and that and products there products there of course there of course there of course there are content here and it's just like actually focusing on the simple stuff of like what's the bread and butter and just do that and do it well and do the fundamentals well then that's probably way better than trying to be scatterbrained about yeah and you have an idea every day like you're a smart guy you're ambitious you just have interesting ideas every day and you write them down and then people want to go execute against them and the reality is that like warren buffett had this thing of like

like a list, like a prioritization list. And the basic idea is like write down 20 things that are important to you, like the 20 priorities for your life, cross 10 of them off the list. You're left with 10 things that really, really matter. Then cross seven off the list and you're left with the three things that truly, truly matter. And if anything comes up that is something that's not on those three, you just say no. And it, you know, it gives you like a very easy way to cut through the noise around things. And it sounds crazy,

crazy and draconian, but it really does work. Because what ends up happening is when you say yes and you take on all those other things, now I'm super busy and my bandwidth and my headspace is strapped. And so then when the really juicy opportunity comes along, I can't take it because I'm so swamped or I'm just like,

I don't even have the headspace to think about that. I'm just going to say no because I can't. And that's a terrible thing because now you're missing the high upside stuff because you took on the random one-off singles. Yeah, we had a bit of a tangent. We had a two-hour long session with a marketing agency earlier today, run by some people that we're friends with. And we were just sort of going through the business and figuring out what are the main levers and thinking like, oh, for courses, do we want sales team, A-B testing pages and stuff? And what they were saying is like, hang on, let's go back to basics. What's your biggest...

organic channel answer the youtube channel everything else is way way way smaller than that and they're like how much effort are you putting to the youtube channel compared to the other stuff i was like oh not very much and they were like yeah we probably want to just double down on the youtube channel just like focus on the basic big thing and don't worry too much about all of the other little things that we could and should be doing and that's the thing i guess in creator economy and i guess people with normal jobs have this as well where

there's this long list of things that you know you probably should do. I probably should be on TikTok, probably should be doing Instagram Reels, probably should be doing LinkedIn posts. Gary Vee says LinkedIn and TikTok are big these days, probably should be doing Twitter threads like you do. And also making videos for the main channel, also doing the podcast. And there's just ends up being this long list of options and actually having the, I guess, discipline, but also like the, I think the scarcity mindset feeds into this because in my mind, I'm thinking, shit, TikTok is where everyone's going to be next year. No one's going to be on YouTube. I'm going to start making TikTok content.

And we just sort of get into this scattergun kind of approach for the sake of trying to build a safety net. But actually, it's probably counterproductive in actually building that safety net. Yeah, I mean, it's like a constant challenge, right? There's always going to be some new platform, some new thing, you know, some new opportunity that you're missing out on. That feeling of FOMO, I would say in general, the ability to feel and not feel.

take action against FOMO is like a superpower of some of the highest performers in the world. Like that ability to remain focused and ignore the noise and just say like, this is what I'm going to do well. It's like the Bruce Lee line of like, I don't fear the man that has 10,000 kicks. I fear the man that has one kick and has practiced it 10,000 times. I think that that's like,

generally an amazing way to think about life and and look i say all these things all of them are things i struggle with like i can quote this stuff till kingdom come but when some new thing comes up i'm still going to be like ah should i be doing that i don't know it's like causing me a bunch of tension to even think about it and you say tiktok you say all these things i'm like oh man i'm not doing any of this i'm looking at your youtube channel right now i'm like man this guy kills it on youtube i have zero youtube do i need to be doing this um so it uh you look i i

I don't think there's any way around this stuff, but I do tend to think that being like a king of one thing versus a jack of all trades is the right approach long term. Yeah, I do some like I have the same thing when I look at your Twitter account. I'm like, oh, man, zero to 500k in like a year. And you've got the whole angel investing thing off and you built a fund. Maybe I should build a fund. Someone told me I should make a rolling fund. But like, I don't know anything about it. That feels a lot of work. I angel invested in a dozen companies or so.

And I kind of semi-regret it because they message me asking for things and I take years to reply to WhatsApp messages and then I feel bad that I'm not able to actually offer them decent value. And then I read Tim Ferriss' blog post about why he stopped angel investing and I'm like, you know what? Maybe I should just like, I don't know.

I don't know, stop. Even though it's not even that many, at least compared to you and other people. Yeah, I mean, the more things you take on... Our heads only have so much room in them to take things on and to actually pursue with any degree of energy or ferocity. And you're wired the same way as me, where you're much better off having two things that you can pursue with all of your might and energy than you are with a hundred that you're kind of like...

eh, eh, eh, you know, putzing around. And you just need to figure out what those couple of things, I mean, you know it, you're crushing it, you're doing great. But I think for a lot of people to take that message away, it's just like, don't try to be everything to everyone. Like, you're just not, you know, and honestly, it's the same of like your audience. There are going to be people that don't like the things you're putting out. They're going to be, you know, if you're trying to make it as a creator, they're going to be people that have negative feedback. They're going to be people that don't like your stuff. That's fine. I actually, you know, like,

I write a lot of things that are kind of general self-improvement and growth and decision-making. And I get plenty of shit from people that are like, oh, you know, this is just the same self-help thing or whatever, like people want to say. And my whole thing is like, don't read it.

If it's not for you and you don't get value from it and it doesn't inspire you or make you feel better or make you feel a little smarter, don't read it. I'm not asking you to love everything I put out there. That's totally fine. I totally acknowledge it's not for everyone. But if it helps a few people along the way, man, that makes me feel pretty good. So that's just generally how I'm thinking about it. I was going to ask you a question on that front. Your Twitter threads always seem to go viral. There was one you did a few months ago now, a few weeks ago, being like, I've just had a kid. Here are 30 lessons or something I would teach my kid online.

And I was like, I read the whole thing. I was like, this is sick. And I saw all the, you know, likes and retweets and stuff. And I was like, this is sick. And then I looked at the quote tweets and there was just some people being like, oh my God, this guy's the worst thing. I was like, what the hell? It was just like, advice my kid, man. And people being like, oh my God, this guy needs to go die in a fire and stuff. It was like, how, how,

How do you react to that sort of thing when you're literally like, here are some lessons I teach my kid and people are telling you to go die in a fire? I didn't read the go die in a fire one, but that's new. I like that one. Yeah, I mean, look, that goes back to the point I made at the beginning. There's this weird cynicism around parenthood and that was actually my first experience with it was I posted this thing that I was like, I was almost tearing up

writing that because I was thinking about and reflecting on my own life and things my parents taught me and my grandfather who passed away. And I, you know, I was writing it. It was very emotional for me to write. I put it out and it did, you know, like 95% of the response, 99% probably realistically was extremely positive and a lot of people found value in it. But there's that,

you know, group 5%, 1%, whatever it is, they got really angry that I thought that I could teach my kids something like they, they were like, well, all you're going to learn about is like poop on your face and, you know, throw up in the middle of the night and crying all night. And, you know, what an idiot that he thinks he can, you know, teach his kids that he's in for a hard lesson, whatever, all of that stuff. And I was just like, man, what a weird way to live life.

Like, you're just going to live life thinking that you're a passenger and that everything is just going to happen to you and you can't create or change or be the, like, driver of your own life. I feel like an empathy towards that. I think... I forget whether it was Gary Vee. I think it was Gary Vee that said this, that when he sees haters, and that guy has a lot of haters, when he sees haters, his first reaction is to feel empathy for the person of, you know, you're like...

if you are the type of person that writes, I hope you go die in a fire on Twitter when someone has put something out, you're probably not a very happy person. And there's probably something in your life that is causing some level of tension or sadness or depression or whatever it is that is leading to you writing that. And so it's actually better rather than getting angry, rather than being upset to feel empathy for that person to hope that they can find happiness and peace in a way that they clearly aren't at the moment.

The other thing I would say is like Joe Rogan was just on the Lex Fridman podcast and talked about this. You know, he, that guy has obviously a lot of haters out there for some good reasons. And he says he just doesn't look at it like entirely, you know, and it's like an unspoken rule with his wife that she doesn't bring it up to him. And he just will not look, won't read any of those things, won't engage. My policy in general is the second one person sends like a bad faith, you know, negative response to me, I'll just mute them.

them. And I don't block anyone really, because it sort of like gives them a win that they can be like, oh, I got under his skin. But if you mute them, then I never have to see the thing, you know, never have to see their negativity again. So that tends to be my general policy. But look, I mean, when you're growing and doing things and, you know, putting yourself in the arena, there's always going to be someone on the sidelines that wants to throw a rock at you. It's just the reality of it. And for all the good that it's brought to my life, I'm fine kind of taking a few of those stones to the head along the way. This is...

One of the commonest fears that I come across when people want to start YouTube channels or start putting themselves out there in any kind of capacity, it's this worry of,

what will I do about the haters? I'm not sure I can take it kind of thing. What was your approach to this like in the early days when you didn't have such a large following? And yeah, how did you go about sort of getting to this fairly zen place where you're like, yeah, I'll take it? Yeah, I mean, I say I'm at this end place, just to qualify it. I say I'm at this end place. It's

it still bugs me. Like, you know, I, I still will see it the first time before I'm able to mute someone and it'll bum me out. Cause I'm like, man, I'm trying to put out positive things. Like people that know me, I'm a pretty nice guy. Like I, you know, my friends, I think like me and I, I'm generally pleasant to be around. I'm like very positive. Um,

And I hope that comes across on Twitter. Like, I don't fight people back on Twitter when they say things to me. I normally will be like, oh, sorry, you didn't like it. Or, you know, sometimes I'll message people and just say like, hey, this was, you know, in good faith. I wasn't trying to upset anyone, whatever. In the early days on Twitter, I was putting out extremely like positive educational content. And so I would say I didn't really encounter any haters until I was at about 25 or so thousand followers. At which point I started getting it from like,

crypto Twitter, like anonymous accounts where there's no ramifications to talking crap when you're an anonymous account and you're hidden there. And so honestly, what I would do is I would message people. And what I generally found, like someone would send something really mean and I would message them and say like, hey, sorry that whatever I did upset

upset you was you know generally trying to write it in good faith whatever I would send a nice message and like 99% of the time they would come back and be like oh I'm sorry I'll delete it like you know when you actually confront someone with or like apologize like hey that wasn't my intention no one really likes to like fight face to face they just assume that you're not going to react and

because you're like a big account and you're not going to see it or you're not going to read it and that there's no ramifications to their actions. And so when you actually confront someone, generally most people actually back down and are fine. I would say that was generally my approach in the early days. And again, it's like...

When you're doing something, when you're in the arena, never worry about the opinions of the people that are on the sidelines. That's just my general bias. There's plenty of people on the sidelines that are too afraid to put themselves out there. You should take a lot of pride in being willing to put yourself out there because it's scary, it's vulnerable, it's lonely. And when you do that, you should stop taking advice from people that are on the sidelines.

How do you, while we're on the topic, how do you balance in terms of the stuff that you put out there, the sense of I want to share this versus I think this will perform well? Very difficult. The platforms and the algorithms and your emotions always lead you towards wanting to do the thing that performs well. I've talked to many YouTubers that feel this way, that it's like,

I basically repurpose my top videos over and over again in new formats because I know they'll do really well and that the algorithm will do it. And I'm so addicted to the dopamine of this many views or whatever it is that I just keep doing it over and over again. And not just the dopamine. At that point, the economics of it. Twitter's a little different. There's no embedded monetization. This isn't Twitter. My writing on Twitter is not how I make money. Indirectly, sure. It leads to all of the other business things I do, but not directly. I try to balance in general...

You know, like that's not to say that I never write the thing that I think is just going to perform well. There are certain topic areas for me that I know with a pretty high degree of certainty are things that resonate with people that they'll find interesting. I would say now I'm in the place where like four out of five things that I post are

are things that I am just super interested in and wanting to write about and think about. I will always, always think about what is the opening tweet to this that will grab the most people and that will perform well. So I...

even if I'm writing something that like I think is a more niche esoteric topic, I'll always try to have a hook, you know, basically like the equivalent of a, you know, a headline or a thumbnail on YouTube that will grab people. And the pushback against that is like, oh, clickbait headline. And my answer is like, yeah, clickbait headline. Like I'm trying to get people to read this. I'm not trying to have no one read it. And if that's what it takes to get people to see the thing that I'm very proud of that I put out,

then yeah, I'm going to do a clickbait headline and people are going to click on it. There's going to be some people that get mad along the way. That's just how these things work. And so, I mean, I would say I'm never putting anything out that I'm not proud of and that I don't think will benefit some people. But I'm always trying to make sure that it gets seen. Because at the end of the day, that's the game we're playing. It's like, I get no points for putting out something that is amazingly well-written and so thoughtful and interesting that 50 people see. No points. And like...

am I going to feel proud of that? That I wrote it? Maybe, but that no one saw it. It's like, what was the impact that that had on the world? So, you know, like, look, I posted this thing this weekend of razors, like the most interesting razors, like kind of decision-making heuristics. It was the most viral thing I've ever put out. I think it's like at 95,000 likes, it did 25 million impressions or something like that. It was...

I don't know, 75% stuff that I've already posted in the past that I was able to like repackage into something that had a much better hook, tightened it up, like pulled it all together in a more consistent storyline. But it wasn't all like brand new content that I hadn't posted in the past. It was like super efficient from a time ROI perspective how I put it out. And so I think about this stuff a lot. I would say I'm generally probably not as strategic as like

I think there are tacticians about this thing that like look at the analytics on every word and how they post different hooks. I'm not like that. I'm more inspiration driven. I never create content in advance. I mean, I write things, um,

that morning and then post them. Like I post once a week on Twitter, largely from a thread perspective. And I write it that morning. I'm not like, I don't have a repository of things that I'm going to post in the future. So I can go both ways on it. That's generally how I've thought about it though in the past. We're just going to take a quick break from the podcast to introduce the sponsor of this episode, which is very excitingly Notion. If you watch any of my YouTube videos, you have heard me talk about Notion for, I think over three years now. If you've been living under a rock and you haven't heard about Notion by now, it is this sort of all-in-one collaborative productivity tool.

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is just revolves and lives inside notion and it's just been an incredible tool for helping us stay on the same page and stay productive as a remote and asynchronous team of 20 people now not all work collaboration tools are created equal obviously some of them help you organize your company's information but there's others that help you organize just projects and tasks the nice thing about notion is that it actually does both and it's all in one tool which makes it super easy to use and it's beautifully designed which makes people actually want to use it rather than kind of shy away from wanting to use it because it's just actually so well well put together

Yeah, the balance that every, well, me and everyone else I know struggles with as well. I was chatting to another YouTube, yeah,

YouTuber friend about this over dinner last night. And I was saying that like, you know, my dream YouTube channel involves one where I just make videos about whatever I find interesting. And this friend was pushing back and saying, why not put the esoteric stuff on a second channel and put the stuff that you know is going to perform well on the main channel? Because ultimately, the main channel is the nucleus of your business. And you know that and you kind of know what's going to perform well on the main channel is going to be finance or productivity or whatever. But

If you want to take a foray into health and relationships, which is kind of outside of your niche, go second channel. So now you're still posting it. You're just posting it on a different platform.

And there was something about that was like, oh, that feels like really good advice. But there's something about it that feels a bit like I'm kind of giving something up by even thinking about the different platforms for like performance reasons and stuff. Yeah, I've rejected this recently. I mean, I talked about the fatherhood stuff and the content I've been posting there. I would say from the early days, maybe this will help you or you'll have some ideas that come from this. From the very early days, my realization around the longevity of

Twitter, newsletter, podcast, anything I did was that content was eventually going to be automated. Like AI is going to replace all written content, video content. Like it's just as AIs get better and better, people are going to be able to produce all the things I write via AI. There's probably already an AI that will put things into Naval's voice and like write a Naval thread without him writing it.

So that the content will already exist. What you can't really automate or AI, at least in the near term, is personality and the feeling of connection and affinity that you can build with someone. And so my perspective from the early days was I want to build a personality and a connection with my audience, a community with my audience that they just care about the things that I am finding interesting.

And so that has manifested itself in a few ways. One, my newsletter, I don't have like a specific thing I write about. I write about things that are capturing my interest that I find interesting that I'm learning at any point in time. And my newsletter is really a journey of things that I'm learning along the way. My Friday newsletter in particular is like,

five things that I found interesting during the week that I'm going to be sharing similar to like what Tim Ferriss did and I think did a really good job of it's like the five bullet Friday idea I'm going to share interesting things that I'm learning on the journey similarly with Twitter recently it's manifested itself in like I'm sharing more content on fatherhood on parenting on my like journey around wealth and what wealth means to me and what enough means to me

recently, I've done a lot around like health and fitness, something totally off the path of like, normally I write about growth and productivity and self-improvement, et cetera. And well, I was like, well, self-improvement, health and fitness is a huge part of that to me. And I really care about physical training. I really care about recovery stuff. And so I started posting things about my workout routine or mobility or runs that I'm doing. And it resonates with

some portion of my people and they're building this level of connection with me in a different way and that has been my perspective is like i'm just going to share the things that i'm getting excited about

If people aren't excited about those, that's fine. I'm not the guy for them. But if I can build that like depth of connection with a smaller subgroup of the people that do follow me where they want everything, like anything I put out, they're like, oh, I got to be going and doing that running workout or I got to go build that habit that I was building. That's cool. And that's what I really want long term. And that's what I think is durable long term. Yeah, I think I've kind of landed at the same conclusion that, yeah, what is the YouTube channel I would want Tim Ferriss to have? Yeah, that's what he is.

Yeah, every few days he just makes a video about whatever's on his mind and I couldn't really care less. I'm just interested. I like the thing. To what extent do you think this model of "I will share things I care about" is a luxury once you get big already?

versus a strategy for even when you're quite smaller and trying to break into the Twitter thread boy sphere or the productivity YouTuber sphere or whatever other creator sphere people want to go into? I think it is a luxury. I could say otherwise. I don't think I would be being intellectually honest if I said otherwise. I think it's really, I mean, like, I think you can do it at a micro level. I think there's plenty of people who do it at like a sub 1000 level where you have like basically your friends and friends of friends

who find your life very interesting and the things you're doing and pursuing are interesting. And so you're getting this like micro creator connection of someone curating really interesting ideas or insights for you. I think it's probably really hard to like grow a durable presence as that guy, because there's so many, I mean like,

At the macro level, Tim Ferriss is probably the biggest in the world of like, he's going to go learn and do interesting things and you're going to be along for the journey. And he's going to maybe write books about it or do podcasts about it. Like that's what he is. And so you're not going to like beat him as you're trying to come up along the way. I mean, look, my like goal, if you were to define what I'm trying to build, um,

Like, I want to be, you know, the modern day or, like, you know, younger and maybe slightly less quirky version of, like, Tim Ferriss, James Clear, Shane Parrish, like some hybrid of these people that I really admire and have read and created, you know, and created around. That's...

what I kind of like doing. Like I'm sort of, you know, Shane Parrish has the like intellectual angle. I love that. I learned a lot from that. Tim Ferriss has always had the body angle. I love that stuff. Passionate about it. You know, James Clear with all of his habit building, self-improvement, super passionate about that. And I sort of feel like where I am is kind of like

this hybrid of those different personalities and building a, you know, a life in a, in a universe that's similar to what those guys have done and kind of standing on the shoulders of those giants a bit is really my vision for it. Like I want to write a book. I want to like, you know, go create more. I want to speak more, do those kinds of things. And that's, I mean, that's my vision for it now. It's interesting you say those names. So that's almost identical to what my vision for my stuff is, but like subtly different. So my sort of

if I could amalgamate like a future kind of playbook career out of what people are doing, it's Tim Ferriss for the same reason as you. Like, actually, it's not really for the body reason. It's more like longevity of career reason and how he just seems to post stuff that he cares about. And like he, you know, crypto does well on his podcast. But after a few episodes, he's like, I don't care about crypto anymore. Let me just post about them.

like random, random thing. He seems to just follow his own interests. I would add Cal Newport to the list because I really vibe with the whole like academic angle of like, he's a tenured professor and he teaches real students in real life, which seems fun and does the reading of the books and stuff on the side. And I'd probably go with Derek Sivers or Austin Kleon on the list because I like how they don't take themselves too seriously. Yeah.

And I think a lot of the other people in this sphere are a bit too serious. And I want to be the sort of lighthearted, toilet jokes, Harry Potter references, that kind of version of this, which is basically my personality just like doubled up a little bit. I love that. I think it's so interesting. Like I just, I'm learning a lot from just listening to you talk about these things and the way that you're pursuing it. But I think it's so interesting to just try to like

archetype that way a little bit and figure out, you know, what is your vision? And reality is you're going to build your own version of all of these things and a different perspective and a different way that you grab people. And it's like I said, right? Like Tim Ferriss, part of what has allowed him to do all of what he's done is

is that he was making smart investments along the way, that he was taking, you know, when you make the like $10 million a year from a big book that you're eventually going to do or whatever it is you're going to do where you're going to have one big thing, it's like, what do you do with that? You know, and how are you using that to establish yourself for the long term so that you can continue to do the interesting things that make you unique and that make you stand out for people long term?

I mean, clearly you've done that, right? Like you have a massive following on YouTube. People clearly care about the things that you're talking about and doing. And that's something to be super proud of. But I think that the focus on longevity and the focus on the durability of it, that's what's going to allow you to stand out. Because I just think most people aren't thinking about that. They're like, oh, this is cool. Let me like, you know, post more shirtless pics on Instagram or whatever it is that allow me to grab people for now. But there's always going to be someone hotter. There's always going to be someone richer. There's all, you know, like...

all of those things are fleeting, but this connection and like intellectual connection that you can have with your community, I think that is really durable. That's why we still love Tim Ferriss is like you and I sitting here 20 or whatever, 15 years after four hour work week came out. That's why we still love him and we'll consume anything that he puts out. I've been thinking recently around, you know, when people ask, Oh, how did, how did your YouTube channel succeed amongst all the others and stuff? And it's, it's easy to connect dots and there's obviously survivorship bias. So all of those caveats aside, um,

One thing that I was sort of thinking from basically day one is what does the five-year longevity version, what does the 10-year longevity version of this look like? And I knew immediately it was like, okay, I'm making content for medical students. That's got a sell-by date for as long as I'm a medical student. We need to do some reinventing very soon just to try and stay ahead of things. And most other creators who I know, the ones who are huge, I think, in those terms, and sort of like, I want to do this for the next 10-plus years, the ones who are less huge...

tend not to have gotten to that level of thinking just yet. And I think secondly, like one, well, one thing I've been thinking a lot about is this question of like, what is the infinite game that I'm trying to play here? What is the thing that I'm doing just for the sake of doing it? And the way I get to that is asking that question of like, you know, if I won, if I won the Euro millions and had a hundred million in the bank, like what would I be doing? Okay. That's my infinite game. I want to spend my time reading, writing, learning, teaching.

cool. Once you're playing your infinite game, the only objective is to continue playing. And then things like, oh, what if we double down and like triple the size of the team and go big? It's like, but like that has a high risk because now it increases our costs significantly. And it's not any, it's like, I'm still playing my infinite game. It's just like, it's, it

In a way, it becomes asymmetrical downside, trying to go too big once you're already at your point where you're spending your time doing the things you care about and having a nice life. I've wrestled with a lot of very similar things. I think one thing that durable creators with long-term longevity will do, and it's something that I would encourage everyone to think about as they're scaling, is scale business outside of your creator business.

So use the creator business to build other businesses that sit alongside it. And maybe they're tangentially related to the creator side of it, but there are other pillars of business that are like real enterprise value or at least real income streams that are just outside of like, I'm earning money on YouTube or I'm earning money from a newsletter. I have like an agency business that I created and started, which I don't really talk about or write about, but it's a

pretty big business now and it's very little time from my perspective. And, you know, I have a couple people that work for me. It's very tight. And it's an example of exactly what you said. If I wanted to spend, if I wanted to ramp that up, let's, you know, let's say for even numbers, let's say it's 100 grand a month. If I wanted to ramp that up to 200, what would that require? Well, if that requires me forever

4X-ing the amount of time and mental, you know, and headspace that I have to spend on that, that's really not worth it to me. Like, you know, I would bring home way more money, great, like I'd be wealthier, whatever it would mean. But if it means that I have to spend that much more time on it, that's actually not a trade I want to make. And so I'd rather keep it

small and keep it at the scale that it's at and not have to go spend all that extra time on it in order to do it. And that is something that I think is a rewiring of your brain. Because when you're coming from a traditional mindset, your mindset is like more, more, more. I got to get every single dollar in my... I'm wired this way. I have like an immigrant mindset around this from, you know, from my parents. It's like,

I got to get everything I can get right now. You know, like my dad is a tenured professor. That was like the ultimate income stream job. It's like, it wasn't a wealth creation job. It was a income. And my wiring by nature was to like say, Oh, someone's willing to give me a thousand dollars or something. Let me go do that thing. Cause I need to collect every dollar I can get. But that's actually the wrong mindset for the longterm. Because what I really want to do is like,

well, right now, this is a great setup. I don't have to spend a ton of time on it generates a bunch of cash flow, I can walk into the other room after this play with my kid for an hour, take him for a walk. You know, I can go for walks in between calls and clear my head, make me more creative. All of those things are massively valuable to my life, just not in the way of money. You know, I was having a conversation with another YouTuber friend last week, kind of talking about this idea of like, you know, people say that if you're not growing, you're dying. And it's like, in a way that very oversimplified model, it can cause you to make a bunch of decisions that you

don't necessarily want to make. But what this friend said was that growth doesn't just have to be in terms of revenue. Growth can, in fact, be in terms of it requiring less time from you. And there was just something about that framing of it that made me think, oh, hello.

Yeah. If I could sustain the same kind of revenue and profit and have to spend less time doing stuff I don't want to do, then actually we're winning. And I would take that over like doubling our revenues at the expense of having to spend more time thinking about stuff I don't necessarily want to do anyway. The best business decision and the biggest mental unlock I've ever made was canceling a $10,000 a month client in my agency business. And that was like

a year ago, if you told me that I was going to ever do something like that, I would have just told you to shut up. Cause that sounded crazy to me. Like you're going to turn off something that, you know, is like a great hourly rate. Like I was probably spending, I don't know, 10 hours a month with that client. It was like an incredible hourly rate by any stretch, but it was causing me so much stress. And I was like, it just wasn't worth it. And it was taking me away from a bunch of other things. And I, so I ended the contract and my life has been like

so much better since I did that. And I'm making less money on a monthly basis because I removed it. It ended up allowing me to go and capitalize on a few other opportunities that I know are going to make me like probably 10x as much in the long run. And it freed up my mind. Like during that

10 hours now I can write creatively. I can read more. I can spend more time with my son, help my wife around the house. Like it just has made my life better doing that. And it was a huge mental barrier for me to actually do that. And now I feel like really liberated from the actual experience of doing it to be able to think in that way more comprehensively.

about time, about value, about what your hourly rate is, where you'll actually want to take something on. And it really means, I mean, it changes a lot when you first do that. Yeah, I actually had a similar moment yesterday. Then this was the first time I've made a decision like this, where I was just about to record a sponsor plug for one of the YouTube videos and they were paying 15 grand. And it was a product that I don't use. And I was like, oh,

I could spend five minutes downloading this and just doing the thing. And it would just take five minutes and five minutes of my time for 15 grand is a pretty solid hourly rate. But then there was something about it that felt really off. And I was like, no, this is a point where I have to make a decision. So I sent a message to the agency being like, sorry, guys, we're not going to do this deal because I don't use the product. I'll try it out in the next few months. And if I end up using it at some point, we can do a deal at some point. But sorry, can we disappoint them and cancel the deal? And that suddenly felt like a huge weight off my shoulders. And now that feels like

in a way, well, in law, once you have precedent for a thing, then you tend to kind of continue doing the thing. So now I have precedent that I will genuinely only do sponsor plugs for things I actually care about. And there's something about that, like, you know, I'm,

I am now, you know, obviously that's a privileged position to be in and I would have probably made a different decision even last year. But just knowing that I value authenticity more than like cash is nice to know. Yeah. You know, it's privileged, but there's a seed of really important insight there for anyone to take away from this, which is when that happens, when you have an experience like that, one thing I would encourage everyone to do is like write that down on a piece of paper and

under, you know, core values or something like that. Because I've always found that I have a tough time like defining, like if I were to sit down and you were to tell me, write down your 10 core values, I don't know what the hell I would write. That sounds really daunting. But when I experienced something like that and I draw a line in the sand on something like that, now I know like, okay, that is one of my core values. I'm not going to promote anything that I don't genuinely use and benefit from.

I'm going to write that down on a piece of paper. And when you write that down, now you're like, okay, I'm starting to build that list of things that I really care about. And maybe it's five, maybe it's 10, maybe it's 20 eventually. But now I know, like I've written it down that line in the sand that I drew mentally. I've now like,

like verbalized and really put it somewhere. And as that builds and compounds, I've just generally found that that makes a huge, huge difference because like it's written somewhere. Now it feels like it's really cemented into, you know, how you operate and how you do business with people. I really like that. I've literally just written that down and like core values list because I've done a bunch of these exercises to try and figure out your core values and I've never really vibed with many of them. So hard.

It's so hard to do. I think generally like structure is like the enemy of progress on these things. Like people are always, you know, the big one for me has been journaling. Like, oh, gratitude practice and journaling. And everyone's like, oh, you have to journal and you have to do gratitude practice and you have to do all these things. And what I realized was like, if I tried to force myself into a structure around any of those, I just didn't do it. It was like, oh, now it feels like a chore and I'm not going to do it. So what I did was I was like, look, my daily gratitude practice is going to be, the hard line on it is going to be that I'm going to

three things at the end of every single day that I felt grateful for. I can either write them or I might just say them in my head when I'm in the shower before going to bed or lying in bed, but I'm going to do that. And that for me ended up making all the difference in my life. Like removing the feeling that I had to sit down and write it down in a journal, suddenly it became very accessible for me to do. And it's made a huge difference in my life. But I personally think that like

Having too much structure or making something too challenging is holding back so many people from these like simple daily habits that would otherwise really improve their lives. One of the other kind of moments I have around this core value stuff is...

I mean, I did a bunch of like about five different core values exercises. They all landed on freedom being like the ultimate true core value. And I was like, okay, I mean, that vibes with everything I know about myself. But then this time last year, our accountant and business advisors were suggesting, hey, it's currently costing you a million a year to live in the UK. Why not move to Dubai? And I was like, okay, interesting. I sort of talked to some lawyers, talked about this a bunch.

And I was like, well, if you do that to be, you have to become non-tax resident in the UK. And it's like, that means like you can only spend somewhere between 90 and 180 days in the UK every year. I was like, oh, that is the, the price of being in the UK is a million plus a year, but actually all my friends are here. My family is here. I actually do value the freedom to come and go as I please and just hang out in the UK, even at the expense quote expense of paying a million plus in taxes every year. I was like, yeah, that's fine. That actually feels really good. And that cemented. Yeah.

Yeah, I actually do value freedom more than I value money, which was nice because before it was just a theoretical thing. But then I had like a concrete example of like where that core value made me make a decision that someone else may not have chosen to make or that I might have not made it under different circumstances. Yeah, I use like Twitter as my...

my tracking system on some of these. This is a hill, by the way, that I'm willing to die on. The one you just said. I lived in California for 12 years from the time I went to college until last summer, until July 2021, when my wife and I moved to New York mainly to be closer to family. I have so many friends, wealthy friends that have sold companies or done whatever, and they're like,

oh, why did you move from the highest tax state in the country to the second highest tax state in the country? Like, why didn't you move to Florida or Texas or one of these zero income tax? You would have saved a lot of money. And my answer is always like, yes, I would have objectively saved money on taxes. But to what end? Like, I have no family there. I don't have friends that live in these places, maybe a couple. But like, have you ever been to Florida in the summer? Not super nice, like 100 degrees and super humid every single day. Same with Texas. Like, I

I'm in New York. I'm close to family. I get to see them all the time. I'm super willing to pay a tax, like friction cost for having the life that I want to live around these things. And that means a lot to me. And that's worth way more than the taxes I'm going to save by moving to one of these other places. Yeah, I realized that sort of trade of money versus vibes recently as well because...

Again, some other YouTuber friend I was speaking to was saying, why do you have employees in person? Why do you have employees in the UK? In the UK, you have to pay their pension and their insurance and they want work-life balance. Why not hire people abroad where you can pay them less money and then you just be on Zoom calls with them? And I was like, yeah, but it's just less fun. And I was like, I really like hanging out with people in person. I like people. It's fun hanging out with people. I don't particularly enjoy being on Zoom calls all day, but I do enjoy hanging out with people all day. And so...

Yes, it's more expensive and maybe not the best quote business decision, but like the point of the business is instrumental in helping me live the life that I want to live while also having the impact that I want to have in that little overlappy Venn diagramming bit. So it's not really fun. I will die on the hill of working with people in real life is way more fun than over zoom. And I mean, creative, like the creator economy, one of the most challenging parts as a creator is the loneliness of it. I'm sure a lot of your YouTuber friends that are like sort of coming up, like they haven't built the business around themselves yet. It's just them. Um,

I'm sure a lot of them deal with this, where it's like, you're on your own, man, and you're having to create constantly. I mean, like, I don't know what YouTube is like. I imagine it's this way where you just feel like, you know, you have to create on a consistent cadence, you know, two videos a week, whatever the number is, and you're having to come up with new ideas. You're having to post them and create good videos, and you're stressing when the video doesn't perform as well, and you're feeling good when it does, and it impacts your mood, and it's lonely, man. If you're on your own, it is lonely. And, you know, I'm fortunate with Twitter in that, like,

I sort of got out of the phase where I needed to do that before it became hyper-competitive. Like now, Twitter, there's so many people writing. Threads have become a whole meme and there's so many people writing the same threads. It's a market, right? It's like anything else where if you're early to a market, which I was, I was probably the first person that was really writing threads competitively.

consistently, you benefit the most and you get to get out in front and then it becomes much more competitive. And so it's challenging. And now like if you're in there, it's challenging and you're having to do more cringe things to like try to grow and, you know, posting whatever. And it's like that on YouTube too, I imagine, where like the people that were doing it consistently early on scaled and did really well.

and people that are trying to like go start now and build, it's more competitive. Like you're really having to figure out new ways to stand out. And so having a team around you and people to help you with that like emotional and mental side of that struggle, I think it's, again, it's like,

you'd pay for that. Like it's worth paying for because it means something to your mental state. I'd love to go back to something we talked about a bit earlier in the conversation. This idea of default alive from a personal finance perspective. I guess easy enough on the path, well, it is now kind of the fact that you and I have been doing this for a while for us to be at that point. But I wonder if you were speaking to let's say

uh someone who's at university or just about to graduate or has just graduated you know so let's say someone in their early 20s get going into their first job who's like listening to this and thinking you know what this default to life thing sounds pretty good this financial freedom thing sounds pretty good what would be your like playbook how would you go about kind of getting to that point from the point i've got a bunch of friends who started finance careers or like worked at mckinsey or something well how would you approach that yeah that journey

So for people that aren't familiar with the reference, Paul Graham, the founder of Y Combinator, has this essay called Default Alive or Default Dead, which you can look up. And it was in reference to startups. And it was about, you know, startups are either default alive or they're default dead. And what he meant was that, like, if you stop growing and you just kind of run out the current expense load and the kind of

current growth rate or whatever the revenue is that's coming in, will you be able to self-sustain or will you eventually just run out and die? And I read it and it's interesting as it applies to startups and it's sort of a Bible for startups during recession times like right now. But I think it's more interesting to think about as it relates to yourself. You want your own personal situation to be default alive.

And so like, what would my playbook be? I mean, if I were starting out, I would say the first thing is the systems point, which is figure out like, what are your income streams? And if you're going to get your one core job, that's obviously going to be your first income stream. I personally think that like figuring out a way to build and create,

I think passive income is a little bit of a misnomer that's become a meme. Like no income is truly passive. I've never had passive income in my whole life. There's always something to do. But creating, you know, some sort of side hustle income that allows you to augment that in the early years, I think it's a great time to do that. Like just figure out how to set up certain things, you know, whether that's online income, whether it's like...

Frankly, you know, doing a little like side hustles, consulting services, etc. Figure out what your skills are and how that you how you can sell those for more than what they cost you from a time perspective and create that income base. Live frugally in the early years. I think it's like a huge, huge advantage. Everyone that I know that did that, I wouldn't say anyone regrets it. Like people that just lived within their means, you know, make sure you're saving money every month and take that money and put it into things that compound.

And, you know, I in general think that like money, you know, you should just be thinking about investing and compounding and everything you do. And I think that's knowledge. I think that's career skills and it's definitely money. And for me, that's like do the basics, like put money into a zero cost business.

you know, ETF or mutual fund that is just going to kind of track the market. Don't try to outsmart the market and be the like genius investor. Don't fall victim to the like FOMO when your friend has some like, oh, this is 10x with no risk, or this is like 20% yield annually, no risk. It's just like, just avoid it. You know, I've lost money on plenty of those things. Just trust me. It's like anything that sounds too good to be true definitely is. So I think it's just doing the basics. Like

you will, if you are getting a stable job and if you're kind of like thinking about and building, you know, augmenting that income along the way, if you're living frugally and if you're investing that money, everyone can be a millionaire by the time they're, you know, in their mid thirties. Like it's just, it, the math just works out if you, you know, if you live that way. And so I, that, that's what I would encourage people to start with. And like, if you're living that way and you're living frugally,

I think it's a huge advantage. The other thing I would say is like, if you are going to scale up your lifestyle, which like, look, I'm sitting here, I'm in a nice house. You know, like I have done those things. I've scaled up my lifestyle as I've, as I've done better. I'm always careful to know what can I scale back?

And if I need to, there are things that I can pull back on, like different things about our life where I'm like, hey, this wouldn't impact my life in any material way for me to cut back on this cost. Maybe it's that I like to take Uber Black instead of Uber X. It's a stupid thing, but like...

you know, to get home from the city when it's late. Or if I want to work in the car, I'll do a more expensive Uber. Or like, maybe I'll take the train instead of Ubering. That'll save me a bunch of money every week. Or maybe like, instead of that really nice, you know, dinner that I like to take a client out to, maybe it's something slightly cheaper. But there's ways that like, you think about in your own mind of like, okay, if I need to, I can cut back on this, this, this, and this. And having those levers in your mind

it just creates like a stress reduction that is really beneficial to how you live on a daily basis. It's just like this peace of mind that brings a level of calm to the rest of your life. Okay, a bunch of questions on that front. Observation on this point around cutting back things. I like to think, I mean, these days I definitely live within my means, but I've had a lot of lifestyle creep over the last like year or two, especially as the business has skyrocketed and I decided I was going to move to London. And if I'm moving to London, I might as well live bang in the middle of central London and like the nicest, and it's, you know, all that kind of stuff.

And then I, I, I find that like, depending on what my information diet is, I feel differently about this. So I was, I was listening to an episode of my first million where they were interviewing Neil Patel and talking about his like crazy $250,000 a month, like burn rate in like full-time chef, full-time housekeeper driver. I was like, bloody hell that,

Part of me was thinking, oh my God, part of me was thinking that sounds kind of cool. But then I watched a friend, a video yesterday of another YouTuber friend of mine called Olier who made a video of how much money he spends in a year. And I was like, it was like 40 grand a year. And he was like, yeah, you know, I just live on the basic 40 grand salary. And this guy's making like 800K a year off his YouTube channel and like could easily make more. But he's like living a pretty chill life, does whatever he wants and does it on 40K a year. And I was like, wow. And in a way, like the more of those sorts of people that I see, the people that are living 40K,

frugally relative to the ridiculous income that they have, the more I feel very satisfied with my current situation of like, actually, yeah, this feels good. But whenever I speak to someone who's like in the 10 million plus range and they're talking about like how they fly private because it's good ROI and stuff, then I start thinking, oh, maybe I should be trying to grow the business. I find myself sort of pulled in

in different directions and I always feel like I have to come back to the center of like, no, let's return to the thing that I actually care about, reading, writing, learning, teaching. I don't need lots of money to do that. And anytime I try and chase more of it, it just adds more pressure to making YouTube videos, which like hampers creativity and it just leads to bad things happening when I try and over-optimize for

growth and stuff. The one thing I would say as a broad point, anytime, and I don't know this person, but anytime someone boasts or brags about their level of wealth or success, I tend to assume that it is about, you know, one half of what they say. I just think that like,

real, true, ultra successful people don't really ever brag about their success or their wealth. And so like, I just tend to assume that they're lying or exaggerating to a significant degree. It's like a schoolyard rule of thumb. Um, but yeah, I've generally found that it to be true. I'm personally just like, I'm generally super turned off by people that, you know, brag about how they're doing and their wealth and like the things that they're doing and how they're like flying on certain. I just like, I don't really care. Like,

Are you happy? You know, are you interesting? Like, I'd rather talk to my Uber driver who has like some interesting backstory in life than to some like, you know, rich guy who's really showy with his wealth and, you know, flexes on me by telling me how much he spent on certain things. Just me. Maybe other people feel differently. That's just my perspective. And then look, I mean, my framework for thinking about all this stuff is I love to live in a way where when I want to spend money on something and I see it, I don't need to worry about it and think about it.

And the way that you do that is by living well within your means in normal times. Like, you know, I want to live in a way where I'm making, you know, great money because hopefully I'm creating a bunch of value for the world and for other people. And I'm living on a normal day-to-day basis quite frugally and like,

we're super happy. I have, you know, everything I could want. Kid is healthy, which is the only thing that matters in the world. You know, family's healthy, et cetera. And if I end up seeing some like cool vacation or I want to go do something, or I want to like get a new, you know, gym thing for the backyard and it's expensive, I literally don't need to think about it because I know that my normal course life is like cheap and saving tons of money every month. And like, if I want to buy some pair of shoes that I really have wanted and they're expensive, I

I used to be in a state when I was working in finance where I was literally like month to month. I was making a bunch of money, but I was month to month. Like I'm not really saving much money every single month. And I was basically living to what my salary was because of the lifestyle I was living. And then when something would come up and there'd be like, oh, this, you know, nice bachelor party and it was going to be expensive. It would stress me out because I'd be like, oh man, that's going to put me over. I'm actually going to lose money this month. Now I'm in a spot where I'm like,

I'm actually not spending anywhere near as much as what I was and as what I'm making from a business standpoint. And so then when the thing comes up, I can feel like excited about it. It doesn't stress me out. I can just get this thing because I'm like really looking forward to it. Or we can go on that little vacation because, and it feels exciting and not stress inducing. And I think that is a huge, huge deal. When you're able to actually go and like,

buy the thing or go on the trip or go invest in the thing and feel excited about it because it is exciting and not stressed because it's like pushing you to the limit. That's a big, big improvement from a lifestyle standpoint. Something a lot of people say, and I often say to young, younger people as well as an old dude, that like this idea of augmenting your income because, you know, having being reliant on a single source of income is not particularly anti-fragile, as they say. And it's worth like, I don't know anyone who has ever regretted

having a side hustle to augment their income. It's always a thing that people are really glad for. But then there's often, when encouraging friends to do this, there'll often be a little bit of a pushback of like, yeah, but when I get home from work, I'm super tired and I know I need two hours of Netflix to unwind. And then I know I want to do my, I don't know, go to the spa and chill there for an hour. And I know I want to talk to my family for an hour. And then it's time for bed and it's time to sleep and start the day anew.

started the day fresh and I don't want to be working on the weekends because like work life balance and stuff and I'm always like okay fair enough if that if that's what you've decided that you want to do with your life then great you know you do you as long as long as you're happy that's fine but in the back of my mind I'm always kind of thinking do you really need those two hours of Netflix like

Will your future self not be more glad if you actually didn't spend that time watching Netflix and instead spent that time learning how to code, building a website? Then I think, am I just some hustle bro, productivity bro who's just like over-indexed on everyone should have a side hustle? What do you reckon? I have a lot of thoughts on this. I mean, look, I think in general, everyone has to figure out

what works for them and their life and what makes them happy to the way that you said it. I tend to think that most people actually work a small fraction of the amount of time that they think they're working. I worked in a mainstream office, right? I was there. I worked 90-hour weeks. How many of those hours were spent like

browsing ESPN.com or, you know, on the Wall Street Journal or whatever because I was like waiting for some work to come in and you just find ways to fill time. It's called Parkinson's Law. It's like work finds a way to expand to the amount of time allotted for it. And so you know that you have to be at work from nine to five for the entire week. You just find a way to fill that. It's not that you're doing productive work for eight hours a day. No one does that. It's impossible to focus for eight hours a day. It's literally like physically, scientifically impossible. And so my thing is always like,

A, I don't really believe that most people need the two hours to like unwind from that during the day because you were sort of unwinding during the day in some way, you know, whether you were like browsing things or took a lunch break or whatever it was. And B, I think there's like just a better way to work in that context. And like if you can find a way during your workday to work in, you know, 60 minute blocks of like true focus and then go take a walk or like,

you know, relax or do something that is different during a separate period, read something that is improving you, et cetera. I think you can find ways to like hack the normal work life so that you're actually making progress in other arenas if you want to. And if what you decide will make you happy will be, you know, having a de-risked financial situation by having multiple streams of income, by being more anti-fragile, then I think you can do that without saying that I need to come home and work for five hours a night or work five hours every weekend day.

The other thing that I would say is that generally, side hustles need to be something that you actually care about and want to go do. I know people who have done a side hustle as an Uber driver, DoorDash, or whatever it is. I think you can do that. It's not ever going to be great leverage on your time. It's just the reality of it. The best leverage on your time is going to be things that you have a skill at that you can sell to someone for more than what they cost you to provide. Whether that's

online, you know, you create a course and you're selling it and it's infinitely scalable. Or if it's like services, like, Hey, I'm really good at building financial models because I work in finance. Well, there's a lot of startups that will pay you like 10 grand to go make a financial model. And if you can figure out a way to sell your services to those people, you can go make a lot of money. Like,

I know I found a bunch of those startups and I was helping people get it. I was taking like clipping a fee for connecting them with financial analysts at one point. Like I was hustling doing that, but there's a huge market for that, that like investment banking analysts, if you wanted to work a little more on the weekend and like build a model, cause you kind of enjoy it, you could make way more than what your hourly rate is from your investment making job by doing that. So that's, I mean, like I just generally think there's an infinite number of opportunities out there. And the reality is that opportunity is not what's lacking.

what's lacking is people that are willing and able to go and capitalize on those opportunities. Yeah, I really like that framing of it. We're in the middle of one of our cohorts for Part-Time YouTuber Academy, cohort six at the moment. And people always ask repeatedly, hey, how did you manage to do the YouTube channel thing while working as a doctor? And my answer is always like, well, A, I've been answering this for the last five years, but I'm happy to continue doing it because...

I mean, it's obvious to me, but it seems to still be novel to other people. But it was always like, you know, even working a 60 hour week as a doctor, yes, yes, there are some days that are like back to back chock-a-block, but most days there's like some amount of downtime. You know, you've got to ring radiology and then you've got to wait five minutes on the phone because they're on the phone. You can't really do anything else because you've got to call radiology. So in that time, I'd just be opening up Notion on my shitty Windows computer at work and just planning

planning out a video or you wait five minutes because a patient's gone to the toilet and you need to wait for them to take their blood. There's always like little bits of downtime here and there where one option is you flick through Instagram or Twitter. And the other option is you open up Notion or Apple notes and draft out your next video. And that's, that's the way I hacked even a workday as a doctor, which, you know, most people are not saying they're browsing ESPN, but like they are waiting around for something or other to happen and tend

tend to be browsing Instagram. Yeah. I mean, I only realized this when COVID hit. Like, I mean, I was in the office a lot or traveling a lot and I only realized how much actual like work hours to down hours I had when I wasn't in the office. And so like the work kind of became more transactional. And so I was going from thing to thing and realized that the like friction time in between stuff was actually totally free. And I had just been finding ways to fill it with random stuff that wasn't necessarily productive. And so that was a big unlock for me personally. But yeah,

But yeah, I mean, I like, I've now found that like my best thinking, business thinking, creative work, et cetera, comes on like a walk or while I'm driving in silence in the car or in the shower or something. And so, I mean, I just, I literally just carry little notebooks around with me everywhere I go. I tend to not use my phone when I'm walking. So like I carry these little notebooks around and just write stuff down and,

they tend to have like all of my best ideas or sketches or whatever it is that I'm working on. I like that thing that you said around you, something along the lines of your side hustle needs to be something you actually enjoy. A good friend of mine is a sort of, sort of baby YouTuber. I actually expect, you know, like somewhere between 10 and 20 K subs and, and,

She's been doing it for like a year and a bit, that kind of thing. And one thing that she says is that like the YouTube videos are kind of fun, but like she doesn't enjoy it as much as I seem to. And she's like, well, I could take this more seriously, but I'd really only be doing it for the potential for money further down the line. And I'm not inherently interested in the thing.

Whereas I think for me, I was lucky because I picked a thing that I was inherently interested in. How important do you think it is to genuinely enjoy the side hustle you're doing versus treat it more like instrumental for the sake of building some amount of financial freedom further down the line? I think there has to be a level of intrinsic motivation from joy that you get from it. The reason I say that is just because there's two sides to this, right? There's like intensity and there's consistency.

I think that money can create intensity. Like, I think that you can see like, oh, I'm going to make a million dollars this year and it's going to make me focus a ton and I'm going to really grind it out and, you know, put in all these hours and do this. I'm going to get the bonus or I'm going to make my YouTube channel big, whatever. But the consistency and your ability to show up every single day when you feel good, when you don't feel good, when you're tired, when it's a holiday, when your family has something and you have to miss it, like that consistency only comes from enjoying it.

it and from wanting to be a part of it and enjoying the process around it and enjoying the ups and downs. Like it's not always going to be good. You're going to put things out you're proud of and they're not going to go anywhere. You're going to get punched in the face. Haters are going to tell you they want you to go burn in a house, you know, like all of that stuff. The consistency only comes from enjoying it along the way. And like, you know, I will say this on

until the cows come home. The biggest driver of my success in anything in life has always been that I am consistent. Baseball, I was never the most talented, never going to be the most talented, but I was just going to show up every single day and just come at you over and over and over again. And it's really hard to beat someone that does that. Like, it's just very hard to durably beat someone that just keeps getting up, keeps showing up. And I felt that way when I took, you know, my approach to Twitter. I was like...

I might not write the most viral post ever. I've still, you know, never had a post that goes over. I mean, now I just had my biggest one ever, but never had something go over 100,000 likes. I see people putting out like 10 Excel tips and it goes over 100,000 likes. And it's crazy to me. Like I've never done that, but I have written something on Twitter every single week, you know, since May of 2020. And I would stack that consistency up against anyone in the world that has, you know, been around during that period. And so people are like, Oh, what's the hack? You know, how did you grow to this big? I'm like, well,

The hack is that I wrote 250,000 words on Twitter over the course of the last two years. That's the hack. I spent thousands of hours writing on the weekends while people were out doing fun stuff. I enjoyed it, and I got energy out of it, and so I wanted to keep doing it. I think you have to enjoy it in order to do that, because otherwise I would have just been miserable. I would have been at home writing, working long hours, because I was trying to balance it against my day job until I ended up doubling down on this.

The enjoyment is so key to creating that consistency. When it comes to this enjoyment, to what extent do you think it's finding something you enjoy versus finding enjoyment in the thing? I think it's the latter, actually. I've never really thought about the characterization there. Personally, I don't think you know whether you enjoy something until you really get into the weeds on it. If I waited...

to only pursue things that I thought I was passionate about at the outset. If I just didn't pursue anything because I wasn't passionate about it, I think I would have missed a lot of really cool things along the way. I just think you don't realize you're passionate about something until you get into the weeds. Like I didn't know I was passionate about writing. I had one idea to write this thing on Twitter. Like it was May 12th, 2020.

I was out on a walk and I had this idea come to me and I was like, man, I really want to write this one thing. I wasn't passionate about writing on Twitter. I wrote this one thing. It picked up because it was clear that it came across, it resonated. And so then I was like, oh, there was something to that. Let me write another thing.

And as I started doing it, I realized I was getting a lot of energy from the writing and from the research and from learning about it. But I didn't like set out saying I love writing things on Twitter. I didn't even consider myself a writer. I didn't think of myself as someone that loved writing. And along the way, I found this immense love for writing, immense love for like sharing, you know, self-improvement or productivity knowledge or different insights around these things. And, you know, that was what the big unlock was for me. And so I think it's delightful.

really do think it's the latter. It's like, you know, you find an enjoyment in something as you pursue it. And that only comes from trying things. And so, like, I think if there's one lesson to take away from it, it's to go experiment, try things, you know, and be quick and

switch, like test and learn very quickly and try things and like double down on the things you really enjoy and that you learn and that you're growing around. Yeah, I totally agree. This is in fact the thesis of the book that I'm writing where it's like the secret to sustainable productivity really is to find a way to make what you're

what you're doing already. Find a way to make it more energizing. I think it's that question of like, does this thing currently give me energy? And if not, can I pull on the various levers that we know from the science and the research and stuff that

tend for most people to correspond to stuff being energizing, you know, power play people, autonomy, mastery, purpose, all these other things that I'm in the process of writing about. All of that stuff is stuff that really can apply to almost anything that we're doing because the whole, the whole thing of like follow your passion and is, is sort of a bit of a thing that's reserved for people with decent amounts of privilege to be able to spend all day playing the guitar, which is the thing that I truly enjoy. But there's what I found is that like,

With the YouTube channel, with the podcast, with writing, with medicine, with random stuff at university, with anything I've done, the more I've lent into the stuff that's within those specific things fills me with energy rather than drains my energy. And the more I've been able to sort of use that as a guiding framework for like, is this energizing? Is it draining? If not, make it more energizing. The more it's just felt like,

I'm operating on like easy mode because nothing feels like I'm pushing a boulder up the hill and it never feels like I need to use discipline to put out a YouTube video because I'm just doing the bits that are energizing and I'm just not doing the bits that are not. Yeah, it's an interesting, it is a really interesting framing. I do think things, you have to give things time to get to easy mode. Like my newsletter, I would say for the first nine months, I mean, I've only been doing it for,

I guess 14 months now. But for the first like nine or 10, it really felt like it was on hard mode. I would say only in the last couple of months have I felt like, oh my God, this is fun. I really enjoy this. This feels easy for me. It feels like flow state when I'm doing it. And that's cool. It's cool when you feel that, that something all of a sudden becomes easy. I always like, I use a lot of like sports or fitness analogies, but there was this hill. I started running earlier this summer because it was nice out. I hadn't ran like really in my whole life. And I was like, ah, this is a thing. It's good for me.

I like to be outside. Let me try it. So I started running and there was this hill near my house. I'm a very competitive person. I ran up it where I told myself I was going to run up this hill and I ran up and I was gassed, like completely dead, you know, had to stop. Couldn't really make it up the whole hill. And I was like, man, screw that. Like, is that hill? Like that was so hard that that happened. So what I said was like, I'm going to run up that hill every single day for the next 30 days.

And I don't care whether I feel good or not. I'm just going to run up it every day for 30 days. And I just finished that 30 days. And yesterday, I went out for a run, and that hill was right at the end. And I ran up the hill, and I got to the top and felt great. And I was like, man, I just completely... In the span of 30 days, that hill went from being a nemesis. I thought I was going to die feeling fresh and running up it to like...

it was like my dessert at the end of this run. I ran up and felt totally good. And it's like a powerful metaphor in there of like 30 days is really all it takes sometimes to go from feeling like, you know, beginner mode to expert mode on something. Um, and it's just dedicated effort consistently applied. Yeah. I love that. It takes time to get from hard mode to easy mode. Yeah. Yeah.

That's very good. Yeah, so few things are easy mode from day one. And if they are, it sort of feels a bit suspect. Yeah. There's always that little bit of like discomfort in the early stages. Generally, I find like if I think back to YouTube channel early days where it was like a struggle to edit, there was that feeling of like, ooh, nice. I've got, I've vanquished this beast at the end of it. So I got a little bit of like a dopamine head out of like, yes, it's felt like a lot of work to do this thing. But I'm glad like...

Maybe I wasn't happy while doing it, but I definitely felt fulfilled afterwards. And then over time, I started to get happy during the editing thing. And then I started to appreciate the craft itself rather than viewing it purely as an obstacle to overcome to do the thing I actually wanted, which was to get the video out. So I have a question for you on this general topic. So I have, I don't know, zero subscribers on YouTube. I don't know what my actual number is. Maybe I have like five.

Effectively zero. But I do think that I have a lot of really interesting written content that would make some amazing videos. Like just taking the written content and turning them into videos that I could kind of talk about, narrate over, et cetera. You know, I've been told maybe that I have a face for radio, but I think I could manage it. What advice would you have if I were going to, like it's,

terribly daunting to me because I have zero videos, 21 subscribers. I just checked big, big subscriber count 3.199 million away from you. So like what, what advice would you give to someone that was, you know, in my shoes, you have a bunch of content, et cetera, like try it. Don't try it. You know, dedicate, you have to dedicate a ton of time to it. How would you think about it? Loads to unpack. I would think about it.

in the sense of, there's three levels. Level one, level two, level three. Level one is get going. Level two is get good. And level three is get smart. And in between these different levels, you have a choice that you need to make. So level one is get going. That's just, so what I'd say to you or anyone else in this position is just make five videos and see what happens.

just like don't overthink it. What would this look like if it were easy? Do the Tim Ferriss thing. Take one of your tweets, like literally just even on this very setup you have with a podcast with a microphone, just like just chat through it because you're good at talking and you know, all that stuff and see how it feels. Five videos in, at that point you have a decision to make of like,

do I want a casual relationship with YouTube or do I want a serious relationship with YouTube? Serious meaning, am I going to commit to doing this consistently? Casual being like, oh, I'll post, I'll clip my, I will send this, anytime I do a podcast, I'll send the video to my, an outsource editor and they'll just chuck clips of me on, that's like casual because you're not really taking it seriously. Serious is like, I'm going to commit to it. Beyond,

once you've decided that it's serious at that point, it's get good, which is like, okay, let's actually get good at making videos. Let's see like, what does it take to make a good video title, thumbnail, hook, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Let's dial in my production value, stick a light in the background, stick a plant in the background, figure out what I want to do. And at some point, and I think this will happen pretty quickly for you because you are pretty experienced in this content stuff.

your videos will be quote sufficiently good that you don't cringe at them and you'll start to see some level of traction again gonna happen quicker for you because you've got stupidly large audience on Twitter so you can always transition some audience from Twitter to YouTube now once you're once you're at the point where you're not cringing at your videos anymore at that point they're good enough and now most of the gains I mean improving at YouTube is a lifelong endeavor of course but now most of the gains are going to come from getting smart and at that point the question is on the spectrum do I want to treat this like a hobby or do I want to treat this like a business

And the more on the business-y end of the spectrum you are, the more you then start doing the things that a startup would do. Market research, competitor analysis, how are you going to stand out, what's your niche going to be, who's your interviewing target audience and figuring out what people want. Looking at analytics and trends and all that jazz. Looking at other people in your niches' viral videos to see if you can replicate their performance and their success and do it, but do it in your own way. And you start to get into all of those like...

business strategy parts of YouTube. But I think the mistake people make is they overthink their niche. They overthink like, what's my target audience? What's my niche? Like, I don't want to make videos about that, which is sort of like a level three thing while they're at like level zero or level one and they haven't started making any videos yet. So I think you could absolutely bang on YouTube.

to be honest. But a big part of it is because you don't need it. So it's really a case of, do you enjoy doing the thing? You seem pretty natural and confident on camera. So I think it's definitely worth trying. Interesting. Super, super helpful. I appreciate all the perspectives. And the idea of just like outsourcing the whole thing, what do you think about people doing that? Like, you know,

paying a bunch of money. Like, you know, it costs a lot, honestly, like the people that have quoted me on doing this, you know, two, four videos a month, whatever, it's super expensive, but there'll be really high production value from the get go because you're, you know, giving it to people that really know it. What do you think about that? I think it's reasonable. I think you cannot outsource the writing of your own videos.

Totally. I have tried so hard. It's basically impossible to do. And everyone I've spoken to has really, really, really struggled with this. Unless you're like a Vox Media or a Wendover Productions where you're researching scripts and it's not a personality, but I suspect you want to be a personality channel. But if you, I mean, absolutely outsourcing the editing to make it look slick would be completely, totally reasonable. But there's no getting away from the fact that you actually have to do the work yourself. And that work has brought me into the writing. But you're a writer anyway, so you'll probably chill about that. All right. Well.

Well, cool. I have a couple other questions and yeah, I'll send you free access to all of my courses about this. So if you are interested, you can just click on it, create, basically download my brain into yours. If you want to do the YouTube thing, how do you make money these days? Man, this is going to be a long conversation. Uh,

Yeah, so I mentioned I have the kind of agency advisory business, you know, that's broadly speaking, helping startups with social and content, like narrative, really narrative and storytelling, you know, and that's mostly across written content, mostly like Twitter newsletter, you know, have a few writers on staff and, you know, helping with

strategy execution and amplification of content that kind of, you know, is a is a pretty self-sustaining business. I have my fund, which is a $10 million venture fund that I invest in early stage technology companies, 100 to 250k checks. You know, that's really a long term wealth creation vehicle. You know, I take a percentage of where did you get that?

10 million from? Are you getting LPs, is it? Yeah, so I did a traditional fund, not a rolling fund. So I have three anchor LPs that are kind of larger checks and then a long list of, you know, really like some institutions and high net worth individuals. A lot of that was because I had spent my first seven years of my career in high finance and so had a lot of relationships and, you know, LPs, et cetera, from my private equity days that, you know, that I was able to go talk to and kind of tell the story of what I was going to go build.

When did you make the fund? - January 2022, so just a few months ago. - Oh, damn. - Yeah, yeah. - How did you just like, if I wanted to make a fund, can I just make a fund? Like how the hell does that work? I know basically nothing. I don't even know what LP stands for. I feel like I'm a complete beginner to this. - So AngelList as a platform makes it very easy to go create a fund.

You could do it a couple of different ways. You could do a syndicate, which is people can kind of subscribe to see deals that you're looking at, and then they can, on a deal-by-deal basis, decide whether to invest in something. That is economically the best way for you to do it because then you get carried interest. So like a

percentage of the profits on a deal by deal basis rather than across an entire fund. So having a dud doesn't matter because it's just like on an individual deal. Or you can do a rolling fund, which would be basically people subscribe to your fund on a quarterly basis in a minimum amount. You can publish that on YouTube or on Twitter or wherever your channels are. And people could who want to kind of like invest alongside you because they believe in the things you're doing and the value you create, they could invest alongside you. I did a traditional fund, which means you can't

market it on Twitter. You cannot market it publicly. I did that mainly because I had the relationships and LP interest that I didn't need to at the time. I think in future, I would open it up so that more people would come into future funds and I would market it more broadly so that other people could invest alongside me. But for this first one, I wanted to kind of keep it pretty tight in how I pursued it.

Okay, this sounds pretty cool. I'm going to need to ask you more questions about this rolling fund at some point. You've got this fund, you decided in January you're going to make a fund, you've raised $10 million from people that you just knew because you worked in finance for ages. And now you invest in companies and you've given them 100K to 250K and you're hoping that over time some of them will become the next Stripe

and return the fund? Is that the idea? Yeah, Stripe would be great. I would not be doing any more podcasts if one of them turns into Stripe. No, yeah, I mean, generally speaking, it's like pre-seed and seed investing. So you're investing at valuations between...

10 and, or, you know, maybe 5 million and $25 million. And, you know, the goal is that you're, you know, seeing some of those become billion dollar companies. And so, you know, you're seeing 25, you know, turn into a couple billion dollars and those companies go public or they're acquired. And, you know, the 100K that you put in becomes worth $10 million in a, you know, in a great outcome and 100X outcome. And,

And the general goal is that you kind of 5x the value of the fund. So you turn $10 million into 50, I would say, would be like a supreme, amazing outcome. 10x would be like astronomical. You turn 10 million into 100. 2, 3x is like average probably. And you've done OK. But the whole goal is that you're delivering outsized returns to your investors. And then you get a percentage of the profit. So I take 25% of the profits that I generate. So if I 5x the fund, I take $10 million back from that. Yeah.

That's pretty cool. Yeah. Okay. From what you know, this is a bit of a subject question. From what you know about like what I do on YouTube and stuff, do you think it's reasonable for me to think about doing a rolling fund? Yes. Yeah. I mean, this is very broadly like in line with my thesis on where the world is heading. And so like, I'm more than happy to catch up with you more on this and, you know, give you kind of more of a playbook around it as well. Because my general perspective is that we've had this like barbell that has formed around

the investing landscape within early stage companies. And what's happened is you have the like really high name brand venture funds on one end, you know, the Sequoias, Andreessen Horowitz, you know, Tiger Global, some of these like really big brand name funds that when they invest, it's a huge marker to say like, wow, stamp of approval on this company, amazing investors.

And then there's this like wasteland of like kind of like mid-tier VCs that it's been very unclear for a long time what is their value add. And a lot of them do have like very clear value add. And so I don't want to, you know, dunk on them. They're great. But a lot of them don't. And a lot of them are just like a VC that's managed to raise some money and their performance isn't great. And it's unclear what value they're going to bring to the company that they invested in.

Then on the other end of this barbell, you have people like me who have one very clear lever of value that they can bring to you. For me, that's like, I'm going to get eyes on what you're doing and, you know, amplify things that you're putting out when you're announcing things, when you're making announcements, I can create a video when you, you know, announce your fundraise, that's going to get tons of eyes on what you're doing. It's going to help with, you know, customers, fundraising, recruiting, et cetera. And that's,

That is super valuable. And for a small check size, it's really easy for me to make the case that I should be invested in the company. And the whole game is you need to see the best deals and then you need those companies to want you to invest because they can take money from anywhere. And if they have a $10 million fundraising round,

there's 100 million of demand for that 10 million. You need to make sure that you're one of those dollars that gets put into this thing. And so having that clear lever of value is a huge, huge advantage. You clearly have that. You have a huge platform that you can talk about these companies around organically and help support them along the way. The key is like,

there's no free lunches, right? And you can't just be promoting companies constantly on your different networks and channels. And so it's finding that balance where it's like, hey, people care about the things that I care about. I'm only going to invest in companies that I'm really passionate about and that I believe strongly in. And so when I'm talking about them, I'm not shilling this company. I'm talking about something that I care about because if I've invested in it, it matters to me. And so I think drawing that line is really important long-term.

Okay. I am definitely going to hit you up to chat about this more because this sounds actually kind of fun. But what else is in the CyHill portfolio? Yeah, all the media stuff. So podcast, you know, we have sponsors on every episode that's growing nicely and doing well. Newsletter, you know, sponsored, send it out twice a week over the course of the month. And then I have like

a handful of random things like job board. I have a course that I run from time to time. I've got a couple of affiliate things for stuff that I really am excited about and products that I use a lot and kind of like a smattering of other things. And then I'm a co-owner of a couple of businesses on the side that I don't talk about publicly that are just kind of cashflow streams in general. Nice.

That sounds pretty cool. So you've got this portfolio. Yeah. Yeah. I've got a bunch. I mean, like when you talk about diversity of income streams, I've got a lot, which is great. I mean, it's from two years ago where I had one to today where I feel like I have a ton. That's been pretty exciting for me to see that all play out. And, you know, look from my prior time and experience in the

in the private equity world, I still have, you know, kind of profit interest in the funds and in different companies that I invested in from those days. So I do feel pretty diversified more, more broadly across, across a bunch of different things that I get energy from, which is great. What does your daily calendar look like? Very open, man. Um,

I love it. I intentionally don't spend... Yeah, I mean, I don't spend time on calls really anymore. And this has been a big shift for me. I used to be... I mean, in finance, it was like you were call to call just stacked over and over, over the course of the day. And I've just got... I got so burned out from that. And so now, I mean, I almost...

don't take calls. Like other than for the fund, which I will do calls for to like deals I get really excited about, I'll do the work beforehand to make sure I'm excited. And then I'll take a call. Other than that, I don't do many calls. And so my calendar is like, I don't have a single thing on it before 11 AM. That's like my, you know, morning. So when I wake up in the morning, I do, you know, my general morning routine is like, I do some morning,

mobility work for a few minutes, a little bit of breathing, go get a coffee. I have a cold plunge that I just got. So I'm going to start doing that for five minutes. And then I will sit and kind of like write, read, et cetera. Generally speaking, I'll have my son with me now during that time. Like he'll, you know, kind of sit, sleep, relax with me while I do that. My wife can, you know, rest and sleep and then, you know, go for a walk, have breakfast with my wife, kind of have like a period of relaxation. I'll work out during that time. And then my day starts and my day is like

blocked into kind of blocks of focus work, like I said earlier. So I'll have, you know, generally speaking, like 60 minute blocks of kind of focus on something. And maybe that's recording a podcast. Maybe that's doing something like this. Maybe it's writing for my newsletter, but just sort of like targeted things that I'm trying to get done. Maybe it's something with the business. And between those, you know,

I take like 15, 30 minutes, go for a walk, clear my head, whatever it might be. But in general, I'm like huge on the unstructured schedule. If you look at my schedule on any given week, it's like massive blocks of open time. What does your team look like? If, if any. So I have a few different things. So on the, on the agency side, I have a couple of writers who help with things on that. Just like, you know, kind of creating content and executing on the fund. It's just me today. Um,

On newsletter, I have a team that kind of helps with the like business side of it, you know, sponsors and kind of similarly on the podcast have a team that helps with production and sponsors and all of those business sides of it. And then I'm kind of in the process of bringing on like a chief of staff to just help more broadly over the top on kind of everything. So team is pretty light. It

you know, intentionally pretty streamlined and all of the content is still created by me, which has always been important to me. Like I still write all of my own content and, uh, and put all of that out. And so is this like employees or contractors? Like what's the, what's the setup here? Contractors, contractors. Yeah. I don't have trying to think, no, I don't have any employees formally. So no, no like benefits or pension or anything like that. It's all, all, uh,

you know, kind of monthly contractors. Damn. Okay. That's, that's pretty interesting. So many more questions about this that I'd love to ask in a, in a part two, I wanted to ask before we close things off, you're pretty ripped. What's, what's your workout routine? How do I, how do I get ripped like you?

Oh, man. 15 years of consistent workouts. No, no, no. I'm pretty like OCD, man. When I want to get locked in on something, I just stick to it. And so, I mean, like I go back and forth. I'm sort of like Tim Ferriss in that I like experimenting with different things and seeing what works for me and what doesn't. So, yeah.

I have a trainer who kind of sends me all my workout programs. I have a gym at my house that's all built out now with all the fun stuff in it. And from a diet perspective, I'll try different things. So for a month, I'll do hardcore keto, won't eat a carb for a month.

and see how my body responds to it. I'll like do blood testing around it and see, you know, how I perform. Sort of a nerd about those things. Right now I'm doing more of like counting macros and kind of like doing a carb cycling thing to see how I perform around that. But I don't know, man. I mean, I do, I physically train every single day. I do something mainly just because I love it. Like I just, it's my, probably my number one hobby is just like, I love being active. I love getting outside. I love doing this stuff. Okay. I've, I've got a personal trainer now, you know, he comes to my place three times a week and it's like,

You know, when I see it scheduled on the calendar, I'm like, I know this is going to be hard work. I know it's not going to be particularly fun. Sometimes it is, but like yesterday was leg day and God, I hate leg day. And it's like, I have some friends who seem to genuinely love weight training and

But unless I'm doing like a bench press or just like a deadlift, those are like the two things that I enjoy. Everything else feels like a lot of work and a lot of pain, a lot of suffering. Is there like a mental model shift that I can make to start enjoying this kind of stuff? Or is it like you have to do it for ages on hard mode before it becomes easy mode? Like how do you?

No, I mean, I think there's a component of that. I also think you should have it tailored to the things you do enjoy doing and make those like upfront so that you can find the motivation. Like I will tell my trainer, sometimes my trainer will program like, you know, five sets of 10 rep squats. And that like, to me, when I look at that on my calendar, I'm just like,

I don't want to do this workout because that to me is like sucking wind. I'm going to be dying for five sets of squats. I'm not going to feel like I got stronger because I'm just going to be miserable. And it demotivates me. And so like I'll tell him I don't want that at the beginning. Like just give me something that feels exciting for me to dive into it because I find that it's like jumping into a cold lake or getting into a cold plunge.

once you're in it's fine it's the like getting in that's the hardest part and like the anticipation of it and so i would just like if you love deadlifts and you love bench like have your trainer bring that to the front like do i mean you could do a dumbbell bench and then a and then a bar bench on multiple days and be totally fine or you could do neutral grip or close grip or whatever and like change it up but just something that gets you into it similarly with deadlifts you trap bar you do straight bar sumo whatever but

just like a hip hinge movement that you might like similarly like an rdl you know you can find a way to like hack your your kind of motivation around it sick right so i think we'll we'll draw this to a close there thank you so much this has been wonderful i still have a long list of other things to ask you in my little notebook but um hopefully we can do a part two in person potentially i would love to do it in person yeah i'm in the process of applying for an o1 visa for the us so fingers crossed that works but if not then you're coming to london at some point soon so we can

we can get together and record in person sometime. Either way, we will make it happen. I'm looking forward to it, man. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Uh, where can people find you if they want to learn more about you? I am at Sahil bloom on Twitter. Um, and then my newsletter you can find at Sahil bloom.com. Perfect. So thank you so much. This has been wonderful. Take care of yourself.

and thank you for listening, everyone. See you later. All right, so that's it for this week's episode of Deep Dive. Thank you so much for watching or listening. All the links and resources that we mentioned in the podcast are gonna be linked down in the video description or in the show notes, depending on where you're watching or listening to this. If you're listening to this on a podcast platform, then do please leave us a review on the iTunes store. It really helps other people discover the podcast. Or if you're watching this in full HD or 4K on YouTube, then you can leave a comment down below and ask any questions or any insights or any thoughts about the episode. That would be awesome. So yeah, thank you very much for listening. I'll catch you hopefully in the next episode.