Bookworm Transcripts

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So I did a thing, Mike.

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What'd you do?

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I collected ideas, and then I thought about them some more,

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and then I wrote them down and I sent them to you.

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Which is exactly what I think you asked me to do.

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But yes, there was a little bit more detail in the homework for the Life Theme cohort.

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I think that's what you're talking about.

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Yes, I did my thing.

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I did my homework.

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That's the point that I'm trying to make here.

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I did my homework to the Life Theme cohort.

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I'm not going to explain all the ideas and stuff because you need to be a part of the

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cohort.

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But it was an eye-opening experience, and I've not really done that exact process.

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So kudos to you for making me think more than I originally wanted to think.

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Ooh, now I've got to know what was eye-opening about it.

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Mostly I've known a lot of the things that I love to do.

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There's some stuff that's no surprise.

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I love running sound for different events.

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I was not necessarily aware that some of the stuff I love to do is helping people solve

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their problems.

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Some of the short-term stuff, like, "Why is my goat not taking a bottle?"

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Well, I grew up around cattle and pigs and stuff.

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I kind of have some pretty good guesses as to what's going on.

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So sharing that knowledge with people helps solve their problems.

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That's just a very weird example now that I'm saying it out loud.

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But something about that, I love doing that.

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But I've not really connected the dots with that as a recurring theme until you made me

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stop and think about it for a week.

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So...

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Awesome.

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Yeah.

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Didn't realize some things about myself until I did this.

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So good job.

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Cool.

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Thanks.

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Hopefully, the other four weeks will be just as enlightening.

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Since you're talking about it, I'll just mention two things.

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One, the life-theme cohort.

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I'll put the link to that in the show notes.

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If people do want to jump in, I'm leaving it open for now because I have as part of this

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first-round lifetime access, I'm not going to do that in future versions of this.

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But basically, it's the lowest price it will be.

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It's going to go up from here.

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Someone asked me what it's going to be.

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I don't know what it's going to be.

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I just know it's going to go up.

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And I'm going to basically do them a couple times a year.

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And so if you jump in now, even if you can't go through it now, you get access to the future

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cohorts for free.

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And then the other thing is that we took...

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We edited the audio, but the gist of that first session, which went really, really well,

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we released that as this week's intentional family episode.

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So people will want a feel for what it's kind of like.

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You can listen to that episode.

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And I'll put a link to that podcast episode in the show notes as well.

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Cool.

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But it was a lot of fun.

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When I started, I thought there's no way I'm in a fill an hour.

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And of course, we went an hour and 20 minutes, and I had to cut something.

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So yeah, it was cool, a very interactive group, very international group.

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That was kind of cool to see.

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And it was a lot of fun.

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Everyone was very engaged, and that makes it easy as a presenter.

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So glad to hear that you got a lot out of it.

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And I hope everybody else did too.

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Looking forward to the other sessions.

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Just having read some of the feedback that people have put in the circle community for

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it, I would say a lot of people got a lot out of it.

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But that's me.

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I'm not going to put words in their mouth.

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Just saying.

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Awesome.

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It was good.

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Thanks for doing that.

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Anyway, there you go.

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I've now done my follow up right out of the gate because it was a big deal.

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How about you?

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I know you got three things here.

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That's true.

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That was your action item was committing to that LifeThem cohort.

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And you did deliver it down to the wire, but you did deliver it.

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Hey, I got it done.

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Nobody said it had to be done super early.

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It just had to be done.

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Yeah.

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I saw the notification come in about 10 minutes before we recorded post from the movie.

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It was maybe 20.

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So I haven't even had a chance to see what you put there yet.

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It's okay.

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It's okay.

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I just gave away one of them.

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Yeah.

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We get it.

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So I had three action items all kind of related to find my rich life.

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What does a miserable life look like?

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Who is the person you don't want to be?

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I have kind of failed at these, but sort of also took action on them because this was

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inspired by the previous episode, The Pathless Path, which has gotten me to think differently

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about what I want to be when I grow up.

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And I guess at this point, it will be public knowledge, but especially by the time this

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publishes that I am leaving the day job and I'm going to be a full time content creator.

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So that is inspired by these action items, but I don't have like a list of these are

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all the details of what a rich life looks like exactly or what a miserable life looks

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like exactly.

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But I can tell you that the rich life has 100% less meetings than the miserable life does.

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Does this count as a meeting?

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Like you and me?

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No, okay.

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All right.

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All right.

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I could see.

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I'll give it to you, I guess.

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Yeah.

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I'm still kind of thinking this through.

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I've actually been thinking about like, what do I want my ideal week to look like?

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Because anytime you go through a major life transition, it's an opportunity to kind of

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redefine what normal is going to look like.

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And I've got a blank slate.

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So I still need to take the time to do that.

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I've been a little busy with offboarding at the day job.

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I really do want to make sure that everything is taken care of and there's no surprises

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after I'm no longer there.

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And this is just purely, you know, I feel like this is a move I have to make.

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My oldest son is 15 and a half, right?

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And he's the one who told me about the pathless path.

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And I keep telling him, like you're capable of more, think bigger, you know, take chances,

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but on yourself, well, I got to model it for him.

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So this is one of those things that I feel if I don't, that the time is right, the circumstances

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are right.

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Like, I know a ton more about how to do this than I did last time I was in a similar situation.

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And yeah, I feel like I'm in a position here to be successful with this and I need to give

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it a shot or I will regret it on my deathbed.

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But all that to say, still have, you know, the offboarding stuff with the day job, still

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have some of the meetings that I'm responsible for their podcasts and other things, wrapping

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up the school year.

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In fact, I got to go to an end of year presentation for our classical conversations thing right

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after this recording.

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So I haven't had as much time to think about this as I would have liked when I stated these

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action items.

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And the reason I say they're unfinished is because I pictured coming back with a very

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clear, detailed list of this is what it's going to look like.

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And I know exactly when I have that, how exciting and compelling that's going to be.

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But it's not there yet.

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It probably won't be for another, another couple of weeks, unfortunately.

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But I'm moving in this direction and it is kind of exciting to think about this.

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Well, as I look at the things that you had set for your follow up, like defining all

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these things and answering these questions, like, I don't think I would want to do these

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because it'd take a lot of time just to put them down on paper in some form.

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So it's a lot of thinking time.

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I don't think it's actually all that much work, but I haven't had the time to sit think

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about these things a whole lot yet.

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Yeah.

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And a couple like low hanging fruit, you know, where I know I'm not going to have to do this

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in the middle of the day anymore.

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So I have more flexibility.

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And usually when I try to squeeze in my run on Tuesdays, I have to cut it short because

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I got to be back for the leadership meeting and stuff like that.

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Like I can, I can establish the boundaries where I want them.

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And that's, that's really exciting to me.

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But I haven't had the chance to sit through and do that.

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One of the things I did think through though, and I'm not going to get there right away,

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but this is where I want to end up.

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I mentioned, I'm sure I've mentioned on this podcast before, the one on ones that I do

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with my kids.

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So once a week, bring one of them to a coffee shop and we play games for an hour, right?

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And even with my busy schedule, I can squeeze in one of those days a week for that, about

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95% of the time.

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I was thinking though, like to find my rich life, wouldn't it be awesome if I could do

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that every single day, right?

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Just different kid every day of the week.

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And I just am at that coffee shop every morning.

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And then I started thinking through like, well, what would that actually cost?

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Because a coffee for me, coffee, hot chocolate, whatever for the other kid, it's like 10 bucks.

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Right?

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So if I do that 10 bucks a day, that's 50 bucks a week.

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If I do four weeks in a month, that's $200.

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And then 12 months in a year, $2,400.

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And if I did my math right, that sounds like just that single item, you could look at it

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and be like, oh, that's kind of a lot of money, but $2,400 to have dedicated one on one time

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with each of my kids every single work day.

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I'd pay $2,400 bucks for that.

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So I know that's one thing I want to move towards.

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It's like I said, there's a lot of things that have to fall into place before I can get

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to that, but I feel like it's possible.

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And yeah, that'll be exciting.

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That'll be awesome.

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Yeah, I know one of the things I've been trying to do is take one of my kids to work

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with me.

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I do enough like physical hands on stuff with my day job that it's possible for me to bring

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one of them to work with me.

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I know like tomorrow my oldest Emma is planning to come with me to work.

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So I know she's going to be helping me terminate.

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Shielded RJ45 ends on our cat six cables for a new soundboard install.

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So she's going to be helping learn how to do that.

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And then we're setting up new soundboard stuff.

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So like she's going to be taking some of that on, but that's four or five hours I'm

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going to have with her doing that.

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So it'll be fun.

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But yeah, those are like gold times.

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Like I love, love, love having that opportunity to spend that much time with them.

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When I want to teaching them the things that I do at work.

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So and they love it too.

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They borderline fight over who gets to go with dad each day that I have to do that.

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So gotta be careful not to, you know, make it too much of a thing and too much of a fight,

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but at the same time it's kind of fun to make that possible.

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So doing it every single day, I don't think I could pull that off.

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Not at that scale, but going to have coffee.

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I could see that, but my schedule would not allow that one.

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Fun idea though.

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Yep, exactly.

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And that's the whole point is like, let your mind wander and think about, you know, what's

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the best thing I can imagine, you know, for for this sort of thing.

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And then realizing that actually, you know, what that's a lot more possible than it seemed

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at at first.

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Well, cool.

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Well, on that point, maybe we should step into today's book is this, I feel like, could

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either be fairly straightforward and done or we may end up spending a lot of time on

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this.

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I'm not real sure which way this one's going to go.

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But regardless, today's book is the almanac of Nval Ravakant.

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And this is by Eric Jorgensen, which is a little bit of an oddity in itself.

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Like this is wisdom and knowledge from Nval.

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And yet it's put together by Eric.

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And that part by itself kind of threw me off a little bit at the beginning.

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It's like, wait a second.

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Wouldn't this be written by the guy that the wisdom is from?

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So it's a little bit odd in that regard at the same time, like this is very highly rated

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on the Amazon.

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And a lot of people seem to recommend this book.

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I can kind of see why having been threw it at this point has a forward by Tim Ferris,

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which he broke his own rule in that because he doesn't write forwards.

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I could see why this one's not very good.

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Yeah.

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I kind of thought that too.

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It's like, interesting.

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It's kind of lame.

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I read it.

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Like, I really wish wanted this book to exist and here it exists.

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And I'm not usually one to do this, but here I am doing it.

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So here you go.

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Like that was kind of my takeaway from the forward.

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Sorry, Tim Ferris, but don't do that again, please.

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But yeah, I thought it was interesting that he broke his own rule for writing forwards

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for a book.

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Really wanted one to be written, really wanted a book by Nval to be written, but then ends

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up writing the forward for a book that's not written by Nval, but written by somebody

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else about him.

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So a little bit weird in that sense, but regardless, it's a fascinating read.

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What were your initial thoughts on it, Mike?

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It is a fascinating book.

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Like you said, it is a little bit weird that it's written by somebody else for somebody

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else.

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But I think I had never heard of Nval Ravakant before, but after the introduction to him

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and looking him up on Twitter and looking at his blog, I understand why.

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If I were to summarize it, he's basically like an angel investor at this point for Silicon

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Valley companies, but he was originally a developer, I think, or a coder.

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And he just kind of climbed the ranks, and now his name is pretty well known in those

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circles.

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And that type of person probably doesn't care if he ever writes a book.

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He's too busy just absolutely crushing it.

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So I understand why Eric Jorgensen wrote it.

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Jack Butcher illustrated it.

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Tim Ferriss wrote the forward because there was no way Nval Ravakant was going to put forth

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the effort to actually put this together.

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Now that could be good or bad, right?

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This guy could be a complete jerk.

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And he got lucky a couple times and we don't want that person spewing their philosophies

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about life into the universe.

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But that's not the case with this one.

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I think that's why this one is so highly rated is that he seems like a pretty level-headed

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guy.

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It's a lot of the straightforward, no-nonsense productivity type stuff, but practical applications

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and set in a way that feels more approachable, just like you're having a coffee with a friend

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as opposed to reading a formal book that has been edited heavily and has a certain tone

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to it.

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I don't know.

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It feels very approachable, I guess, maybe is the best term.

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Like you're not going to get on Nval Ravakant's calendar to go pick his brain to have coffee,

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but that's kind of what this feels like.

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And to some people, they may think that, "Well, why would you ever do that?

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That sounds stupid anyways."

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But for me, I think that's awesome.

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And I would totally do that if I could.

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I remember being at the Sean West Conference when it still existed and Nathan Berry was

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presenting.

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And he shared when he was starting ConvertKit, he had tried several other businesses previously,

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and he was just trying to get around as many successful people as he could to pick their

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brains about things.

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So he would send messages to people he really wanted to meet.

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And he lives in Boise, Idaho, where ConvertKit is, I believe.

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And he would send a message to somebody that he really looked up to.

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He was like, "Hey, I'm going to be in New York this day, this day, or this day.

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When we get together, I'll buy you lunch."

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And he sent out a whole bunch of those messages, and then a few people responded, and then

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he would book the plane ticket and go there.

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He wasn't actually going to be there, but he just wanted an audience with those big thinkers.

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And I think that's really smart.

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And so this is kind of that in book format.

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Yeah, it's so true.

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It reminds me a lot of, no, this is longer, of course, but the book I'm working through

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Tim Paris, obviously the tribe of mentors, that one's going to be coming up for me probably

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quite a bit over the next months, probably, just because of how long that thing is.

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But it has that feel where you're getting a peek into somebody's brain and how they

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process a specific avenue.

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In this particular case, we're given an insight into Nivol's take on wealth and happiness.

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And that's exactly where he starts on this is the wealth side of it.

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It's just a two-part book.

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He's not deviating.

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Well, he is deviating from the three-part nonsense, I guess, that continues to plague

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all of the books that we see.

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That's me being obnoxious.

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But he does have the two parts here, so wealth and happiness.

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There's a bunch of little subtitles underneath of it, but there's two chapters in the first

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part.

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And then there's what, three in the second part?

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Yeah.

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So, first part, wealth starts with the chapter called building wealth.

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And there's like a lot of little subtitles here.

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I didn't write them all down into our outline for today.

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I'll bring up a few of them here and then obviously make villain where you would like.

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But there's one specific topic here that he starts us off with at the beginning of this

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building wealth section, which is specific knowledge.

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And this is essentially talents and skills that you enjoy doing and that you become,

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I guess, world-class at is my take on how he's intending that.

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It doesn't have to be quite at that scale as he gets to a little bit later.

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But the specific knowledge is a thing where it's stuff you love to do, stuff you're really

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good at, and that's what creates the leverages he'll get into.

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We'll get into here a little bit later to then create value for other people, which then

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drives wealth creation.

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So this is like the basis of this whole wealth thing where you've got to have a certain amount

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of knowledge in an arena before you can start building on these other components.

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This struck me as very like become an expert in your field-ish.

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More or less, so it's not necessarily that specific.

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But at the same time, I was like, this is something I feel like I could do.

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I have some of this, but then what do I do with it?

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Obviously, he gets into that a little bit later, but I don't know.

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What's your take on specific knowledge, Mike?

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You picked the one thing in here I didn't really like.

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Perfect.

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So he mentioned that specific knowledge is found by pursuing your innate talents.

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And that's the part that I take issue with.

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I mean, you probably do have some innate talents, but it's kind of contrary to the growth mindset

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that we talk about all the time.

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And I guess just where I'm at with my current situation and what I've learned in the last

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year and a half at the day job, it wasn't my innate talents.

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It was being forced to develop skills.

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So one of the skills I developed was for lack of a better term, financial literacy.

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I took classes on like balance sheets and income statements.

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I'm not naturally gifted with numbers and finances, but it was a skill that someone at

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the company needed to have.

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So I developed it.

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And now I know how to do it and I feel like I could help other people do that who also

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have an aversion to that and don't want anything to do with it.

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That's very contrary to what he's talking about with specific knowledge.

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So that's anti-specific knowledge that actually I feel going into the next season of my life.

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One of the things that I'm kicking around the idea of doing is being like a business

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guide for specifically creative entrepreneurs because creative entrepreneurs, somebody who

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is making something and it blew up and they can't do it alone so they start hiring team

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members, but they don't know anything about scoreboards and getting everyone to pull in

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the same direction and running scrum with a team and then ultimately reading income statements,

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balance sheets, understanding cash flow, which is different, all that kind of stuff.

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I would love to work with people and help them understand that stuff, put systems in

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place to help them fill in those knowledge gaps.

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But if I was pursuing specific knowledge, I would not be going there.

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I wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole.

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So I don't know.

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I was also thinking about as I read this section, Iki Guy with the overlap of those concentric

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circles.

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There's something there.

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It's not just what you can get paid for, what the market wants, what you enjoy doing.

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Those are places to start, but I think really what it is is capitalizing on opportunities,

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which is another theme that he talks about a lot in this chapter because there are opportunities

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everywhere and he talks about how the most important skill for getting rich is becoming

00:22:42

a perpetual learner.

00:22:45

Productize yourself is linked to that specific knowledge, but that's the thing is I don't

00:22:49

think you have to zero in quite as far on specific knowledge.

00:22:53

So yeah, I have unique experiences with working at a digital marketing company and having

00:22:59

experience with the family business and emotional intelligence assessment and I have been creating

00:23:04

for a long time.

00:23:05

So like, how do all those things overlap?

00:23:07

That's more important to me than what are my innate talents.

00:23:12

I don't know.

00:23:13

Maybe it's different if you're 18 years old and you're trying to figure out what are you

00:23:15

going to do with your career.

00:23:17

Maybe the advice is a little bit different there and if you can figure out what you're

00:23:20

really, really good at then just go ahead and lean into that, but I don't know.

00:23:23

I think it's an unapproach, but I don't necessarily think it's the best or the right one.

00:23:28

Yeah, two things to kind of follow up on that.

00:23:33

The one piece of it that's a little bit strange to me is the concept of innate.

00:23:38

It has like this, I was born with it mentality, which I think we would both agree is sometimes

00:23:46

the case.

00:23:47

That's the exception.

00:23:49

In most cases, it seems like these are skills and expertise.

00:23:54

It's been trained or developed over many years.

00:23:57

Now that may have begun at age three.

00:24:01

And then by the time you're 18, you're extremely skilled at it because you've got 15 years

00:24:06

of experience doing it.

00:24:07

That's very possible, but that's not necessarily the norm.

00:24:13

It seems to be the thing everybody's like trying to do with their children nowadays, but that's

00:24:17

not the common path.

00:24:22

There's a lot of competition in that territory, which is why, what is it, page 44, he has

00:24:28

a quote, "Escape competition through authenticity."

00:24:31

I love that.

00:24:33

That's the thing.

00:24:34

It's not competition if I'm truly me in the process.

00:24:38

That's something he does refer to quite a bit here, it's like be yourself.

00:24:41

Don't be who people tell you you need to be.

00:24:45

I think it's something people get into a lot of trouble with is this should business, the

00:24:50

things I feel like I should do because of what other people tell me I should be doing,

00:24:55

or the expectations that I think I should be living up to.

00:25:00

That just gets in so many.

00:25:03

It just creates a lot of problems.

00:25:04

I really like that quote, "Escape competition through authenticity."

00:25:08

Be authentic, and the competition doesn't matter because you are who you are.

00:25:14

I really liked that.

00:25:16

He does get into this concept of leverage here where he's going to refer to the specific

00:25:25

knowledge or using labor that you have at your disposal, money, or what was the other

00:25:31

one, products that are easy to replicate.

00:25:34

He's specifically referring to books, code and software, that type of thing that's easy

00:25:40

to just replicate.

00:25:42

And courses would fit that category.

00:25:45

Having the expertise to build things that then can give you leverage to then go on to

00:25:51

the next thing, these are all the process of building wealth, is being able to accrue

00:25:56

these skills and these products that then can build on themselves.

00:26:02

That one got me thinking a lot about the video course thing, like the cohort thing.

00:26:07

All these people who write code and then it blows up and becomes a big thing like that.

00:26:12

That is a very big real thing that is possible.

00:26:18

That's the type of thing he's encouraging you to get into.

00:26:21

Yeah, I love the whole topic of leverage.

00:26:23

This was another book, the Pathless Path talked about how that one struck a chord inside of

00:26:31

me.

00:26:32

This one also did, and kind of complimentary.

00:26:36

He kind of talks about how, and this is all building wealth, right?

00:26:40

Do I need to be a billionaire?

00:26:43

I do not.

00:26:44

That is not the thing that is going to make me extremely happy.

00:26:48

I also think though, if you're able to build wealth, you can affect a lot of positive change

00:26:54

in the world.

00:26:55

So I'm not against it either.

00:26:57

And he kind of talks later on about how like, well, if it's not important to you, you're

00:27:00

never going to get it, right?

00:27:01

But at this point, when he's talking about building wealth, he says that if you don't

00:27:07

own a piece of a business, you don't have a path towards financial freedom.

00:27:12

And he didn't say this specifically, but when he said that, kind of what it triggered

00:27:17

in my mind was a montage of all the things that I have done in the last 10 years online.

00:27:26

I'm starting with work with Asian efficiency, and then the sweet setup and Sean Blanc, and

00:27:33

then the digital marketing stuff, and each step along the way, I learned a ton of skills

00:27:38

and I'm grateful for the time there, but I was always building somebody else's thing.

00:27:43

And as I was reflecting on that, I realized that part of the reason I do that is because

00:27:48

it's safer.

00:27:51

I can make things.

00:27:53

And if Sean Blanc's audience likes it, then that's kind of validation like, hey, you're

00:27:58

good at this, right?

00:28:00

But it's scary to say I'm going to do this thing and believe that I can attract an audience

00:28:05

like that.

00:28:07

So this is very enlightening.

00:28:11

I mean, this is not really what he's talking about at all, but what it triggered to me

00:28:13

was like an analysis of myself, probably coupled with this life-themed cohort stuff.

00:28:21

And I was like, I have been playing it safe pretty much my entire life.

00:28:28

And do I believe I have the skill to be successful or not?

00:28:33

I have a lot of people in my life telling me that, yes, I can be successful.

00:28:37

And so I was like, okay, thanks.

00:28:39

I appreciate that, but I don't ever do anything with it.

00:28:43

So by the time I was reading this, I had already put in my notice at the day job.

00:28:48

It did not force that decision.

00:28:51

It didn't reinforce necessarily that decision.

00:28:54

But it crystallized for me what the next steps kind of look like.

00:29:01

I can't go back.

00:29:03

I've got a gap book that I'll mention later, but it's called Burn the Boats.

00:29:10

And essentially, the subtitle is something like, ensure your success by not having a

00:29:15

plan B.

00:29:18

And that's kind of what I feel like I need to do right now.

00:29:24

And that was kind of crystallized because of that one comment from this section.

00:29:29

The other thing with the leverage, he talks about he can have classes of leverage, labor,

00:29:33

money, but then also products with no marginal cost of replication.

00:29:37

Now he's a developer, so he's talking about apps and web apps and things like that.

00:29:42

I don't have that knowledge, but I can make knowledge products.

00:29:47

So when you mentioned that, I started getting a whole bunch of ideas for different types

00:29:54

of products to be building, both for the Faith Facebook activity brand.

00:29:59

And then also, like I mentioned, the business coaching stuff, that's an idea that really

00:30:02

intrigues me.

00:30:03

I'm going to go to Craft and Commerce shortly, the ConvertKit conference.

00:30:06

That's where those people hang out.

00:30:08

So I'll be able to get some live feedback and see if that really is something that people

00:30:11

are interested in.

00:30:14

But the goal, he says, is to be in control of your time.

00:30:17

Again, this is exactly what I needed to hear at the exact time I needed to hear it.

00:30:21

He mentions on page 62 that 40 hour work weeks are a relic of the industrial age.

00:30:25

I feel like we kind of touched on that a little bit with the pathless path last time.

00:30:30

But I really, I understand and feel compelled now more than ever to really sit down and think

00:30:38

about what does the future, my ideal future look like.

00:30:43

We're going to talk about that week three of Life Theme cohort too.

00:30:46

Hopefully, I'll have some details by then.

00:30:48

I've got an old version, but it needs to be revised.

00:30:52

I need to follow my own advice here.

00:30:55

Talk about this on Friday.

00:30:56

Think bigger, right?

00:30:58

What would it look like if I couldn't fail?

00:31:02

What would it look like if fear wasn't holding me back?

00:31:06

What would it look like if I didn't have obligations that kept me from taking chances?

00:31:17

Not that you just chuck it and whatever I'm going to do, do whatever the heck I want.

00:31:22

But I don't know.

00:31:23

I think I've given up too quickly on some of these things previously and I'm excited by

00:31:30

another chance to give it a shot.

00:31:35

Page 84 starts talking about luck and how to make luck like different types of luck anyway.

00:31:46

One of the things he mentions is that luck finds you if you're the best at a thing.

00:31:52

This is interesting.

00:31:54

Getting asked to do, here's an example from My World.

00:31:58

I run sound for very large events at times.

00:32:02

Because I've developed that skill set, whenever there are things that come along inside my

00:32:09

friend group where they need somebody to run sound for, say, paid talent, and then it becomes

00:32:14

a paid gig.

00:32:16

I'm one of the first people they talk to about doing that.

00:32:21

Yet I have a few friends that are trying to break into that world to get paid to do those

00:32:26

gigs and want to make that their thing.

00:32:29

There's like, "Man, you always get asked to run these things."

00:32:32

I run for way bigger things.

00:32:35

Then people see that and then it ends up meeting your skill level is significantly higher

00:32:40

than what they need.

00:32:42

I don't always run those things when I get asked to just because I don't have the time

00:32:48

to just go run for a 40 person event and they're not going to pay what it would require for

00:32:53

me to go do that.

00:32:55

It doesn't make sense.

00:32:56

I'll pass them off to these other friends.

00:32:59

I get the luckiness of being asked to do that because of a skill set that I've built

00:33:05

up.

00:33:06

That's a very small scale compared to what he's referring to in the scheme of things.

00:33:11

It's that concept.

00:33:13

If you get really good at a certain skill set, you can become the person that people go to.

00:33:20

It makes it look like you're super lucky to get those opportunities when really it's

00:33:27

just you've gotten good at something and then people want you to do it more, but for them,

00:33:32

which makes it look like luck.

00:33:34

Yeah.

00:33:35

I like the section on luck.

00:33:39

The first three are basically lower level versions I feel, which is the intention.

00:33:47

Hope luck finds you.

00:33:48

Hustle to you.

00:33:49

Stumble.

00:33:50

Prepare the mind and be sensitive.

00:33:51

It changes other than others miss.

00:33:52

Then the last one is the one that we should be striving for.

00:33:54

We come the best at what you do, which again, I would argue doesn't necessarily have to

00:33:58

do with your innate talent, but whatever.

00:34:02

The other things I liked from this chapter were the three big decisions early in life

00:34:06

where you live, who you're with and what you do.

00:34:08

I feel like that is important, but over indexes, I think on where you live.

00:34:14

Part of that is based on my experience as a now full-time content creator living in Wisconsin.

00:34:21

There's not a bunch of people hanging out here.

00:34:23

If I was going to hang out with these people, I would probably move to Austin, Texas.

00:34:27

That's where it seems like that kind of crowd hangs out.

00:34:29

There's probably other places too, but the bottom line is that you don't have to be there.

00:34:35

There are digital places like that where you can live quote unquote.

00:34:42

There are advantages to not living in those places.

00:34:45

I became aware of that.

00:34:46

I was at the retreat with the mastermind guys because my cost of living is way, way less

00:34:54

than someone who lives in some of those other places.

00:34:58

That means that I can reach the same audiences online.

00:35:02

The internet doesn't care where people live.

00:35:04

My run rate, basically, is a lot lower than it would be if I lived somewhere differently.

00:35:11

There are advantages to being around those people.

00:35:14

He's thinking of Silicon Valley.

00:35:16

Absolutely, those people all being in the same place.

00:35:18

That definitely was a catalyst to that whole thing being what it was.

00:35:24

The last thing he mentioned in this chapter, last thing I jotted down, I really love the

00:35:28

closer you want to get to me, the better your values have to be.

00:35:32

I think I'm going to implement some sort of filter like that.

00:35:37

Nothing official, but I feel like when I meet somebody new, it can go a couple of different

00:35:45

ways.

00:35:47

If I feel like they're trying to figure out what I want to hear and appeal to me, basically,

00:35:59

that's a big red flag.

00:36:00

I don't have a better way to describe that, but do you understand what I'm saying?

00:36:04

It's almost like they're a chameleon and they're trying to fit the scenario and use

00:36:08

the right words.

00:36:09

I don't know.

00:36:11

You can see right through that.

00:36:13

Be who you are.

00:36:15

Then we'll see if we're a match and we'll hang out some more.

00:36:21

Those people who just try to fake it, the lack of authenticity just absolutely drives

00:36:26

me nuts.

00:36:28

I think a version of this.

00:36:30

One should implement, but it's going to become part of the Mike Schmitt's test for sure.

00:36:35

I think that actually goes back to that quote I mentioned earlier, the escape competition

00:36:40

through authenticity.

00:36:42

It's seen as a competition in social situations, which is what I've noticed.

00:36:48

Getting into certain circles where people want to be a part of a conversation, so then

00:36:54

they start trying to inject a story that is kind of related, but not really.

00:37:01

If you know your stuff, then you're very aware that that story has nothing to do with what

00:37:06

you're talking about, but they really want to be a part of it.

00:37:10

It just feels very, very fake, but it's because they're trying to compete and trying to do

00:37:14

the whole social status thing.

00:37:17

I can't stand it, but I get why people do it too.

00:37:22

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00:39:13

Let's go to the next chapter here.

00:39:16

Underneath of this Building Wealth Part 1, the second chapter in this part is Building

00:39:22

Judgment.

00:39:23

The first one was Building Wealth and then Building Judgment.

00:39:25

It's interesting to me that that's captured underneath of the wealth half of this, that

00:39:31

judgment is such a big deal when it comes to wealth building because you're making some

00:39:37

high-level decisions.

00:39:39

There's a quote here towards the beginning of this chapter.

00:39:44

Just trying to understand what is he referring to when he's talking about judgment.

00:39:50

He does define it in his terms, at least Eric's defining it on behalf of Navell, I think,

00:39:58

using some of Navell's words.

00:40:02

That part's still a little weird to me.

00:40:05

Anyway, this is page 94.

00:40:08

Wisdom is knowing the long-term consequences of your actions.

00:40:13

Wisdom applied to external problems is judgment.

00:40:19

Building the wisdom of being able to understand what are the consequences of something, specifically

00:40:26

your actions, what are the long-term consequences of the actions that you are taking, and then

00:40:33

applying that knowledge of those external consequences, those long-term consequences,

00:40:39

and applying that to problems, that's judgment.

00:40:43

The more I've thought about that, I really like some of that definition there.

00:40:50

Having the wisdom and having the ability to make good judgments is critical to building

00:40:57

wealth.

00:40:58

That's the clean way of saying why that is in this particular section.

00:41:04

But shortly after that, this will take us all the way back to what you're talking about

00:41:09

and follow-up, Mike.

00:41:11

He refers to having time to think for yourself, because many people who have high values and

00:41:17

build high amounts of wealth, large amounts of wealth, think for themselves even when

00:41:24

they have experts tell them what to do or what the answer should be, they will still

00:41:29

want to process everything themselves.

00:41:32

They want to understand it in details.

00:41:35

That I can appreciate, because there are many times when someone will tell me, "This

00:41:40

is the best way to do this."

00:41:42

I regularly want to say why, and it drives people crazy.

00:41:49

Part of this is me adopting my wife's habits, because Becky does this to me constantly.

00:41:53

Why would you do that?

00:41:54

It's like, "The wood needs stacked.

00:41:57

Who cares how I stack it?

00:41:59

You don't need to ask me why.

00:42:00

Just I got to stack wood.

00:42:03

It doesn't matter."

00:42:07

I get that, asking why and trying to quiz and work through even what the experts tell

00:42:12

you can sometimes be frustrating for the other person.

00:42:16

If you're trying to build wisdom and develop good judgment, it's a critical step.

00:42:21

That's an important part of the process.

00:42:23

Yeah.

00:42:24

I didn't jot down nearly as much in this section as I did the previous one, but there were

00:42:32

some related concepts that I really liked.

00:42:36

You talked about how smart thinkers are clear thinkers.

00:42:40

That one is challenging because the more you study some of these concepts that we read

00:42:49

about in these books, the more it becomes clear as mud.

00:42:57

That's the natural first step, additional information, and how does this connect.

00:43:01

You lose the clarity, and then you've got to put in the effort and figure out where

00:43:05

all the pieces fit.

00:43:07

That part is even subjective because you define it for yourself.

00:43:13

That really is the thing that makes people smart.

00:43:17

I like that.

00:43:19

He also talks about how the more desire that we have for something to work out a certain

00:43:23

way, the less likely we are to see the truth.

00:43:27

There was a lot in here about this whole idea of judgment is like right versus wrong.

00:43:31

That's the picture I get in my head, especially with some of the application that you were

00:43:38

talking about there.

00:43:39

But ultimately, the thing that stood out to me from this section was that you just have

00:43:45

to let it go.

00:43:48

The more you're just okay with the way things are, the less stressed out about things you

00:43:53

are.

00:43:54

That kind of gets into the next section on happiness too, but you can see the seeds

00:43:58

of it starting here.

00:44:01

I remember hanging out with the guys at the retreat, and one of them had mentioned they

00:44:07

were listening to somebody, and I'm blanking on the name.

00:44:12

That's a big name guru guy.

00:44:15

People are just not...

00:44:18

You can tell they want the answer to life, and he's sharing stuff, and it's not really

00:44:22

landing.

00:44:23

In the middle of the thing, he's like, "You want to know the real secret?"

00:44:26

Everybody's like, "Yeah, yeah, what's the real secret?"

00:44:28

He's like, "I don't mind what happens."

00:44:32

That's what I think the message for me from this chapter is because he mentions tension

00:44:38

is who you think you should be.

00:44:39

Relaxation is who you are.

00:44:41

It doesn't mean you just accept who you are, and you don't try to get better.

00:44:46

But I think in the past, I've been guilty of anchoring too much on this is who I should

00:44:50

be.

00:44:51

There's those "shoulds" again, and he does talk about how you need to get rid of those.

00:44:56

There's some other things that I liked from this section, but that was the big one, is

00:45:01

like, "Dude, just chill out a bit."

00:45:03

Yeah.

00:45:04

There's a couple more here.

00:45:08

Like how to build good judgment.

00:45:12

One was to collect mental models, which we have a thing around mental models.

00:45:18

The other one, page 113, read a lot.

00:45:22

Can get on board with that.

00:45:24

That's very quickly followed up with a statement and a quote that I wrote down.

00:45:29

If they wrote it to make money, don't read it.

00:45:33

How many times have we picked up a book and we're like, "This feels like a sales pitch

00:45:36

for X, Y, and Z."

00:45:39

Like that right there summarizes why I feel like we get frustrated with those books.

00:45:44

It's just not to share information and knowledge, which is the way that this one's written.

00:45:50

This almanac of Nival Ravakant was written in a way to share knowledge.

00:45:53

It's not a pitch for any sales thing whatsoever.

00:45:58

I think you'd actually have to do some digging to find some way to actually give money to

00:46:01

either one of these guys.

00:46:04

But that might explain why we don't necessarily care for those books.

00:46:08

So, I now have a reasonable justification because Nival said I shouldn't read it because they're

00:46:13

trying to make money off of it.

00:46:16

Yeah.

00:46:17

Well, I mean, it's not necessarily bad to make money off of the ideas, but I totally

00:46:24

understand what he's getting at here.

00:46:28

I think one of the things that comes to mind from this, you mentioned we read books like

00:46:36

this.

00:46:37

So, let's just call a few of them out here, shall we?

00:46:40

Sure, why not?

00:46:42

The one that stands out to me the most is the 12-week year, which I actually really like

00:46:49

that idea, but it doesn't need to be the length of the book that it is.

00:46:56

And it's not just that book.

00:46:58

Now they've got the 12-week year for writers, which I bought because you keep thinking there's

00:47:03

going to be some additional context here.

00:47:06

And really, they're just looking for additional ways to make revenue from that single idea.

00:47:12

And the people who have the really great ideas, they aren't necessarily the best sales people.

00:47:21

If you get a good idea and you are a great salesperson, you will spin off 12 different

00:47:27

versions of this sort of thing.

00:47:30

Biggest example I can find of this, by the way.

00:47:34

Do you know who Dan Kennedy is?

00:47:35

No, I don't know that name.

00:47:38

Dan Kennedy is kind of like a digital marketing guy from back in the day, is my understanding.

00:47:45

And he's got a book that I bought.

00:47:47

I haven't started it yet called The Ultimate Sales Letter.

00:47:51

But then there's like 20-something different versions of that for individual niches.

00:47:59

And if you search for Dan Kennedy on Amazon, you'll see a whole bunch of these that are

00:48:03

just applied to different markets.

00:48:07

And on one level, that's smart because if you're speaking directly to somebody in a specific

00:48:12

situation, then maybe you have the credibility that you can actually solve their problem.

00:48:18

I don't know.

00:48:19

But when you do a Google search or an Amazon search and you see all of these different

00:48:24

flavors of the same idea, it leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

00:48:28

Now contrast that with, like I said, I have never heard of Naval Ravakamp before.

00:48:34

But this guy just seems wicked smart.

00:48:38

And some of the stuff that he says in here, it's almost like passing comments.

00:48:42

And it's like, if you really knew how profound that was, you would expound on it for another

00:48:47

150 pages because some people do that.

00:48:49

He's just like, "Eh, whatever.

00:48:52

On the next thing."

00:48:54

That's the way I want to be, is like, "This was a good idea.

00:48:57

Cool.

00:48:58

I can write about it a bunch.

00:48:59

I can help people out with it, but I'm not going to anchor on that.

00:49:02

On to the next thing.

00:49:03

There's always going to be a next thing."

00:49:06

Now he does talk about the way he reads books, which I think I have a little bit of an issue

00:49:11

with.

00:49:12

I didn't even write it down.

00:49:15

I don't even know what I probably should have, but I didn't write it down.

00:49:18

I remember the section you're talking about, but I can't place any of it in my brain right

00:49:21

now.

00:49:22

Well, he basically skims a lot.

00:49:24

He could learn something from Mortimer Adler and how to read a book.

00:49:27

So in the end of all, if you're listening, I recommend you go skim that book and then

00:49:33

come back and reassess your approach to reading here.

00:49:40

I agree with some of his ideas.

00:49:43

Basically that there's too many books out there.

00:49:45

So if you're reading a book and it's a slog and you don't think you're going to get anything

00:49:49

from it, feel free to put it down.

00:49:52

I mean, the only reason we follow through is because we have to talk about them on a

00:49:55

podcast.

00:49:56

Some of them.

00:49:57

That's true.

00:49:58

Some of them, I'm sure, you absolutely love them.

00:50:01

Oh, I'm so glad Joe picked this book, but truth be told, there are some where I'm like,

00:50:04

"Joe, why did you pick this one and now I got to finish it?"

00:50:09

That does go both ways, by the way.

00:50:12

Yeah, I know it does.

00:50:15

But in general, if you don't have a podcast, you do every two weeks to talk about books.

00:50:19

You can put it down and move on to the next one.

00:50:21

There's plenty of other books out there.

00:50:22

Now one tip I will give people.

00:50:24

I think I might have mentioned this recently, but this, I think this is brilliant life advice.

00:50:32

And I've told this to a couple other people in real life.

00:50:34

And some of them are like, "Oh, that's so great.

00:50:36

I'm going to do this."

00:50:37

As you can just tell, it goes right over their head.

00:50:40

When you are around somebody who is smart, but you look up to and they recommend a book,

00:50:47

buy it instantly, take out your phone, go to Amazon, place the order.

00:50:54

Because what will happen is you will collect a bunch of these books that are in your environment,

00:51:00

in your home.

00:51:01

And when you're looking for the next thing to read after you develop this reading habit,

00:51:06

you will have a bunch of great material available to you.

00:51:10

So you've already done the filtering out of the junk.

00:51:15

And there's just always going to be something there.

00:51:18

Now if you start something and doesn't really do it for you, like the vol is saying, "Feel

00:51:22

free to move on to the next one."

00:51:25

But that, I feel like that's the big question a lot of people have is like, "Well, what

00:51:30

should I read?"

00:51:31

And a lot of people will go search the internet for the top 10 lists.

00:51:35

I mean, I've got that on my website, try to help people out as a starting place.

00:51:39

But really, the people who you look up to, they have certain knowledge, they've gotten

00:51:44

it certain places.

00:51:45

And they're basically revealing to you where they got it when they recommend these books.

00:51:48

So buy them.

00:51:50

And don't trust that you're going to go to the library and get them later.

00:51:52

You won't.

00:51:53

You'll forget, right, which is why you need to place the order and have it show up at

00:51:56

your house.

00:51:57

And yes, it's 15 bucks a book, 20 bucks a book.

00:52:00

Even if you buy three or four of these books a month, that's not that big of an investment.

00:52:06

And it's an investment in your future.

00:52:07

These ideas are going to compound and they're going to create a better life for you.

00:52:13

You got me going on this reading stuff, but there are a couple of other things I wanted

00:52:16

to mention here.

00:52:18

He says...

00:52:19

I wasn't trying to.

00:52:20

Yeah.

00:52:21

For the record.

00:52:22

Yeah, that's okay.

00:52:23

Praise specifically, but criticize generally.

00:52:26

This is brilliant advice that, again, there could be like whole books written on this and

00:52:32

why this is the right approach.

00:52:35

But this is one of those things that can quickly just kind of fly under the radar and I wanted

00:52:39

to call out.

00:52:40

So basically, if somebody does something well, you say, "Good job, Joe."

00:52:46

Right?

00:52:47

But if someone makes a mistake, you say, "You know what, Bookworm team, we need to do better."

00:52:54

And I literally had an opportunity to practice this because the intentional family episode

00:53:01

that I mentioned earlier with the audio from the Life Theme Call, that was not the audio

00:53:07

we had intended to release this week.

00:53:10

That's all I will say.

00:53:13

All right.

00:53:15

But I was reading this and I kind of understood this previously, but this was good reinforcement.

00:53:22

Had to address a couple of things, right?

00:53:24

So I tried to do it in a way where it's like, "You know what, guys?"

00:53:28

Because Rachel had created the content Toby had done the editing.

00:53:32

Then result was this audio that I was supposed to publish, right?

00:53:35

And I decided to, guys, listen to this.

00:53:38

Would you want to come back for another episode after listening to this one?

00:53:44

Tell me honestly.

00:53:45

And if you think it's top quality, then it's the best we could do.

00:53:49

We'll go ahead and we'll release it.

00:53:51

But personally, I think we can do it a little bit better.

00:53:55

So we had to scramble and figure something out, but it was a cool learning opportunity.

00:54:01

And I feel like everyone kind of got it.

00:54:03

It's like, "Oh, yeah.

00:54:04

We have an obligation to listen there to deliver something of value."

00:54:08

It's not a light thing that people are giving us their time to listen to this.

00:54:13

There's so much information out there.

00:54:14

There's so many other podcasts out there.

00:54:16

So many other things that you could be doing, some of the other things that you could be

00:54:20

listening to, we want to make sure that we're delivering the goods.

00:54:26

And yeah, it was cool because I wasn't criticizing a specific person.

00:54:30

You should have done it this way and you should have done it that way.

00:54:33

It's like, "Team, this just isn't good enough."

00:54:37

Right.

00:54:38

Yes.

00:54:39

I get it.

00:54:40

That's really good advice.

00:54:41

The whole praise specifically criticized generally.

00:54:45

It does go a very long way.

00:54:48

I don't think I could have explained it in those terms as Navall has in version.

00:54:55

Side note, he was an early investor in Twitter and he loves Twitter.

00:54:59

He has a whole section in the back of Twitter, "People to follow," and how he likes the platform

00:55:06

because you have to think a lot harder about how to say something in such a short space.

00:55:13

So he really likes it in that sense.

00:55:15

Anyway, back to the criticism thing.

00:55:17

I don't think I could have explained it in that way, but I know that it's generally

00:55:21

been a practice of mine whenever we have a video crew or a slide crew.

00:55:26

It's like, "Okay, how'd this morning go?"

00:55:29

And I'm like, "Well, I didn't do this or didn't do that."

00:55:31

It's like, "Well, if you know specifics, you can go after that, but just know I feel

00:55:36

like it could have been improved overall."

00:55:41

And I feel like you know what you need to do in order to do a good job for the next time.

00:55:48

By the way, you did an amazing job hitting those slides and the timing and stuff whenever

00:55:54

Dave was doing his announcement speech because that's not always easy to do with Dave.

00:55:59

So good job on that.

00:56:01

That concept, that construct of what I just gave you is just a general criticism of this

00:56:07

was not great down to you nailed this specific thing.

00:56:12

I don't remember where I learned that.

00:56:14

I've had a manager or some point explain that construct to me and I've just kind of adopted

00:56:20

it for a long time now.

00:56:23

But Navell says it significantly better than I probably could have ever summarized it in

00:56:31

that very short phrase.

00:56:32

So kudos to him on that.

00:56:34

But he's also a big fan of Farnham Street and this is where my single action item comes

00:56:40

from.

00:56:42

I put join Farnham Street membership question mark, but I have already joined it.

00:56:50

Already done.

00:56:52

Good job.

00:56:53

All right, let's improve our happiness and go on to part two here, which is happiness,

00:57:02

which starts with a chapter that I didn't write down the title of learning happiness.

00:57:07

There we go.

00:57:11

It starts with an interesting statement that has kind of given me pause and then I processed

00:57:19

and I kind of want your thoughts on this, Mike, but he states that happiness is learned

00:57:26

and that happiness is a default state when nothing is missing or wanted.

00:57:32

That's my summarization, not his exact words.

00:57:35

So happiness is learned and it is a default state when nothing is missing or wanted.

00:57:44

And to clarify that last little bit, like if there's nothing missing, like, for example,

00:57:49

if someone passes away, you are now missing that person.

00:57:52

So if nothing is missing, but you're also not envious of a thing, like you're content

00:57:57

with where you are, that's the default state of happiness.

00:58:01

I think that's ultimately what he's referring to.

00:58:03

That actually has given me great pause and just kind of realizing that in that short

00:58:10

raising there that if I'm unhappy, it's generally because of some mindset that I have latched

00:58:21

onto, not the external circumstances.

00:58:24

So the external is not at fault.

00:58:28

Getting a nicer car, getting a more property around our house, like those things do not

00:58:34

matter.

00:58:35

That is not applicable to happiness.

00:58:37

It's purely my perception on the situation.

00:58:40

What's your take on this, Mike?

00:58:42

Do you think he's off his rocker or is he onto something here?

00:58:46

I think he's onto something.

00:58:48

I wrote it a little bit differently.

00:58:49

Said happiness is a choice.

00:58:51

Yeah.

00:58:52

He mentions that a lot of our unhappiness comes from comparing things from the past to the

00:58:56

present.

00:58:59

And the fundamental delusion is that there's something out there that will make me happy

00:59:03

and fulfilled forever.

00:59:06

So I do think that a lot of this is mindset and it doesn't matter if you are in our situation

00:59:18

or further along or not as far along in terms of he's quite a bit further along in the pursuit

00:59:26

of wealth, but that doesn't translate necessarily to achieving happiness.

00:59:32

The more that you have potentially, the more that you want.

00:59:35

So really what he's saying is you got to learn to let that desire go in order to really be

00:59:42

happy.

00:59:43

And I think that I don't know exactly what I think.

00:59:48

I have to think about this more, but I think this really challenged me.

00:59:52

You mentioned that desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you

00:59:55

get the thing that you want.

00:59:58

And I can totally see how I've done that in the past.

01:00:02

I also think that that's kind of just the way that society and culture forces us down

01:00:09

by default.

01:00:10

So I really liked what he said on page 141 about how the real winners are the ones who

01:00:15

step out of the game entirely.

01:00:16

I don't know exactly how to do that.

01:00:19

I've probably kind of made the first step, I suppose, by not having a normal job, right?

01:00:26

Realtime content creator and figuring out even with that, there's certain things that

01:00:32

if you just look at the way other people are doing things, you could be like, "Oh, well,

01:00:36

I'll do that the same way."

01:00:38

But I feel like I could do that, but then I'll desire the greater results, things like

01:00:46

that.

01:00:47

I have to decide for myself what is the real right way to do this.

01:00:52

And once I figure that out, then the real challenge is just staying in the moment.

01:00:56

Yeah, I want to work hard and build things that I'm proud of, but happiness not being

01:01:03

tied to an outcome I think is really important.

01:01:07

And I need to figure out exactly what that looks like for me, but challenge to do that

01:01:12

based on this section of the book.

01:01:15

Yeah, he's got a success.

01:01:18

Does not earn happiness.

01:01:20

It is a choice.

01:01:22

I also wrote down like, "Envy is the enemy" when it comes to happiness.

01:01:28

And also, one that I think you'll resonate with, happiness is built by habits.

01:01:35

Go habits.

01:01:37

And then, you know, it's interesting, like that can come from a lot of things, from building

01:01:41

the habit of like mindfulness, which I think we'll get into a lot more in the book I've

01:01:46

picked for two books from now.

01:01:50

And trying to just realize that again, the way that I think about a situation, the way

01:01:57

I perceive it, the way I choose to view the situation is more often the determiner when

01:02:05

it comes to my own personal happiness.

01:02:08

So if I'm willing to think about a situation as a way to learn as opposed to how terrible

01:02:15

I did and how I failed at something, like those are two different games.

01:02:19

Like those two different ways of considering something.

01:02:23

Like if I failed to mix something correctly on a soundboard, that's not me completely

01:02:29

failing at running sound for that whole event.

01:02:33

That's me finding something I need to improve on and that I can grow in later.

01:02:38

That's all in perception.

01:02:40

It's all in your brain.

01:02:42

The exact same scenario to do completely different outcomes.

01:02:46

So being willing to admit that happiness is my own responsibility and not an external

01:02:55

circumstance, it's kind of tough to come to grips with that.

01:03:00

At least I find that it means that if I'm not happy, it's my own fault.

01:03:05

I don't want to take credit for that.

01:03:07

I don't want to blame somebody else.

01:03:08

It's way more fun if I can blame somebody else.

01:03:11

If it's my own fault, well, I'm the only one that can be responsible for changing it then,

01:03:17

which is both encouraging and slightly disheartening at the same time.

01:03:23

Yeah, I mean that's a strong word there.

01:03:26

That's the next chapter.

01:03:28

Actually take responsibility for fixing yourself.

01:03:30

Yep.

01:03:31

Yeah, the enemy of peace of mind, he says, "Our expectations drilled into you by society

01:03:36

and other people."

01:03:37

So you got to figure out what it is that winning looks like for you because life is a single

01:03:42

player game.

01:03:44

That kind of is building on an idea from earlier.

01:03:47

I think it was maybe the first chapter about how wealth is not a zero sum game.

01:03:53

Status is, there can only be one person who's at the top of the mountain, but when it comes

01:03:58

to wealth, just because somebody else is successful doesn't mean that you can't be.

01:04:05

So you can't look at what other people are doing when determining what winning looks

01:04:11

like for you personally.

01:04:15

He also talks in this section about how you're a combination of your habits and the people

01:04:18

you spend the most time with.

01:04:20

That's an interesting way to phrase it, but also learning happiness and not having that

01:04:27

associated with an outcome necessarily kind of sounds like he doesn't believe in goals

01:04:32

either.

01:04:35

And then there's this thing he calls the trifecta.

01:04:37

I've seen this illustrated previously, but this is pretty great.

01:04:42

When you are young, he says that you have time and you have health, but you have no money.

01:04:47

When you are middle-aged, you have health and money, but you have no time.

01:04:50

And when you are old, you have money and time, but you have no health.

01:04:53

And really, the goal is to have all three of those at the same time.

01:05:00

So it's really just describing the default way that people's existence is.

01:05:07

And you should be challenging that and thinking about how you can tweak it.

01:05:11

But when it comes to the way that things are and the habits that you have, you've got three

01:05:15

options.

01:05:16

You can change it, you can accept it, or you can just leave it.

01:05:20

This isn't something that's worthy of my attention, and I'm not going to stress out

01:05:24

about this.

01:05:25

I'm just going to let it go and go do something else.

01:05:29

Yeah, we're kind of jumping into the second chapter.

01:05:32

I'm going to just introduce it quick since we're like halfway through it at this point.

01:05:35

But saving yourself is the second of the three chapters in this happiness section, which

01:05:41

is what we've kind of talked about, taking responsibility for yourself.

01:05:44

He does talk about diet, exercise, and meditation here and covers a handful of different types

01:05:52

of meditation.

01:05:53

That part, I specifically called that one out because, and I didn't call out all of them

01:05:59

in my notes, but the quintessential, here's what you think of whenever you think of meditation.

01:06:06

Like somebody cross-legged sitting on the floor, focusing on their breath.

01:06:11

Like that concept of meditation was just one of a bank of types of meditation that he called

01:06:16

out from walking meditations to accidental meditations because you're in the shower.

01:06:23

Those also count.

01:06:26

It made me wonder if this is why I've struggled with meditation in the past.

01:06:30

Maybe this is in your camp as well, Mike, because we've got enough other things where

01:06:34

these different types of meditation maybe play into our daily routines, that it's possible

01:06:40

that that's actually happening just in a different way.

01:06:46

So that I thought was interesting.

01:06:48

Then he has the Scott Adams quote in here, "Set up systems, not goals."

01:06:54

Yeah.

01:06:55

Again, love that.

01:06:57

We talk about that one quite a bit.

01:07:00

This is a thing that I'd love to do.

01:07:02

Let me build systems.

01:07:05

I may not be the greatest at using the system once I have it built, but I really like to

01:07:08

build it, which is a weird problematic situation for me personally, but it's way it goes.

01:07:17

So yeah, save yourself.

01:07:19

Yeah.

01:07:21

He talks about several different types of meditation and basically confesses that none

01:07:25

of them really have clicked for him.

01:07:28

But I do think that the way he describes the mind being a muscle, being able to observe

01:07:35

your mental state, he is more of a meditator than he gives himself credit for.

01:07:44

He talks about how that mindfulness aspect can manifest different ways.

01:07:49

That was interesting.

01:07:50

I've always thought that for myself, it's probably why mindfulness meditation is not

01:07:55

ever completely stuck for me because it's so focused on your breathing or the guided

01:08:03

meditations and the version of that that works for me is my prayer habit.

01:08:07

I pray every single day that is a form of meditation he talks about.

01:08:13

And that was kind of cool to get the validation of that from him.

01:08:17

He talks about how meditation is kind of like intermittent fasting for the mind.

01:08:20

I think that's a cool idea.

01:08:22

And so it's something that you maybe don't need to do all the time.

01:08:25

I'm sure there are other people who would argue with that.

01:08:29

He kind of talks about maybe this is just a result of the culture that he's a part of

01:08:33

in Silicon Valley, but that he doesn't know anybody who is really consistent with it.

01:08:37

I think I do know some people who are really consistent with it.

01:08:42

But yeah, I think the big takeaway from this is to continue to try to train my mind.

01:08:48

And there are other things that can go along with that.

01:08:51

You know, journaling is another thing, things like that.

01:08:55

But the other thing that I like from here is that most of our suffering he talks about

01:09:04

comes from avoidance.

01:09:06

And I think that when we try so hard to not do something, and this is really coming from

01:09:21

anchoring on like, this outcome is good and this outcome is bad.

01:09:25

When you do that and you try to avoid the bad outcome all the time, you're not going

01:09:30

to be able to at least 100% of the time.

01:09:34

And so the fact that you can't avoid it, that causes suffering and is the way that he would

01:09:40

describe it.

01:09:41

And I think I'm guilty of this, even a lot of the stuff that isn't realized tend to be

01:09:49

a worst case scenario thinker.

01:09:53

I hesitate to label myself pessimistic versus optimistic.

01:09:57

There was actually an interesting John Maxwell podcast on this recently where optimism is

01:10:03

like a learned trait.

01:10:06

You can kind of naturally think about the negative things, but you don't have to let

01:10:10

your mind stay there.

01:10:11

You're constantly trying to direct it towards something that's healthier.

01:10:16

And that's something that I definitely need to do.

01:10:20

Because just letting my mind run on its own, it's going to create this sensationalized

01:10:28

picture of how the world is falling apart.

01:10:31

And there are certain people in my life that I recognize are not helping with that.

01:10:35

So be careful who you surround yourself with, to his earlier point, who are you allowing

01:10:40

to speak into your life.

01:10:43

But the big takeaway from this section for me is to just keep trying, right?

01:10:49

It's never going to be perfect.

01:10:51

Progress not perfection.

01:10:52

And really the wind comes from not giving up.

01:10:56

Let's jump into the last one here because then we can tie things off in a nice little

01:11:01

pretty bow.

01:11:02

But it's philosophy is the last chapter of this happiness section.

01:11:08

And he gets into like meetings of life, which I didn't really follow his very well.

01:11:18

This is a, I think you missed the mark here scenario.

01:11:22

He did have a section shortly after that about living by values.

01:11:25

That I can definitely get behind.

01:11:27

Like having these statements or these constructs that he's not going to deviate from.

01:11:34

This is maybe similar to what you were talking about earlier with, you know, if you don't

01:11:38

have a certain level of a standard or values, like you're not going to get too close to

01:11:43

me, like that idea, right?

01:11:45

It kind of fits into that territory where if something isn't following by one of your

01:11:51

values, it's an instant no situation.

01:11:55

You know, that's, that's very interesting to me.

01:12:02

And I'll save this last bit for the end of this, but that particular piece to live by

01:12:05

values is one that.

01:12:09

And I know we've had like principles or by Ray Dalio.

01:12:11

This kind of has some of that feel, uh, uh, navel's style of sorts here.

01:12:18

Not specifically, but generally speaking.

01:12:21

Um, but that, that is very appealing to me.

01:12:24

I'm not real sure what to do with that one as far as like an action item goes, but it

01:12:27

is an interesting idea to just have these statements like, I'm not going to do this if

01:12:34

this and this, I'm not going to do that.

01:12:36

Like those are the, the ideas there.

01:12:39

Anyway, I really like that concept.

01:12:42

Yeah, I agree.

01:12:43

I didn't really care for the meaning of life part here.

01:12:46

He talks about those four options, but I didn't think even we're very good.

01:12:50

So I write them down.

01:12:52

I didn't either.

01:12:53

Yeah.

01:12:54

The, the big takeaways for me from this section are to live by your values and that all benefits

01:13:00

in life come from compound interest.

01:13:02

That's an idea he kind of talked about in the previous part, uh, wealth, I think, and

01:13:08

he's talking about judgment, maybe in relationships, how you, if you wouldn't work with someone

01:13:16

for forever, then you shouldn't work with them for a day.

01:13:21

Uh, basically like you want to find people who align with your values and then you just

01:13:26

want to do life with them.

01:13:28

And by maintaining those relationships with the right people that will compound to have

01:13:34

a benefit for you throughout the rest of rest of your life, essentially.

01:13:38

So I think that's a really cool idea, really good advice.

01:13:45

Just be careful who you're surrounding yourself with.

01:13:49

And then related to that, he talks about anger being a hot cold that you hold in your

01:13:52

hand before you throw it at somebody.

01:13:54

That was a, uh, a powerful, uh, image.

01:13:59

And uh, I don't know that I get angry all that often, but I do get frustrated quite a

01:14:04

bit.

01:14:05

So part of that is probably me being around wrong people.

01:14:10

Uh, part of that is I'm letting things bother me that shouldn't be bothering me.

01:14:16

So uh, I can feel that like starting to, to rise in me certain times and it never manifests

01:14:22

as, as anger and I lash out at people.

01:14:24

Um, but I, I do want to just notice that and then chill, right?

01:14:29

Because don't mind what happens.

01:14:31

Don't let anything steal your, your happiness.

01:14:34

Um, the takeaways from here mentions kind of closing that the present is all we have,

01:14:41

right?

01:14:42

So don't live for tomorrow or for someday.

01:14:45

But then the other thing is inspiration is perishable.

01:14:47

So act immediately.

01:14:50

This kind of gets into the whole idea of motivation.

01:14:53

But um, I really like this.

01:14:57

Uh, essentially another way to say this would be like, don't put off till tomorrow, which

01:15:02

you can do today, but you're not always going to feel like it.

01:15:07

So what do you do in those situations?

01:15:10

Do you just force yourself to muscle through anyways?

01:15:12

There's got to be a better way to do that.

01:15:15

And so I think if you follow a lot of the advice that he's talking about here, you're

01:15:19

going to create this environment where you're motivated to do the things that his words

01:15:24

are your specific knowledge, your innate talents, right?

01:15:27

But it doesn't have to be that necessarily.

01:15:29

But over time, I, I do get this picture of you can create this environment where you

01:15:35

are doing things that are of high value.

01:15:37

There are things that you really want to do because of the impact that you're able to

01:15:40

make in the world and you're able to do them with people that you enjoy working with.

01:15:45

And you can do that over and over and over again.

01:15:46

There's momentum that gets built there.

01:15:49

And if you can figure out what the things are that you can do now that are going to

01:15:53

move you in that direction.

01:15:54

Those are the things that as soon as you get inspired and you see how that connects, do

01:15:57

that right away.

01:15:59

You don't have to do it all.

01:16:00

But what's one thing that you can do right now, it's going to move you towards that,

01:16:05

that picture, that future that, that you, you want to have.

01:16:11

That was the last note that I had written down.

01:16:13

The inspiration is a perishable act on it immediately.

01:16:17

And I just took that as, here's your book.

01:16:20

There's all of the inspiration you should need to get moving.

01:16:25

Act on it right now because that inspiration will slowly dissipate.

01:16:29

Or in some cases, it will quickly dissipate.

01:16:32

So get to moving, which is maybe a good place for us to move on to action items unless there's

01:16:37

something else you would like to bring up here.

01:16:42

I have one, and I know you and I talked about this last week, Off Mike is something that

01:16:48

I was working on.

01:16:50

And it was partially because I had started this book, but I'm in the process of starting

01:16:54

to write some blogs again.

01:16:58

And I've got a couple of those written.

01:16:59

I've not released them as of this recording, but by the time this episode goes live, those

01:17:04

will start to hit the, hit the website.

01:17:07

So JoeBilig.com, where else would I put it, right?

01:17:12

So Joe's going to start blogging again.

01:17:15

And a little bit different flavor, first one or two is going to be kind of in my old mentality,

01:17:21

but I'm kind of transitioning some of what I'm writing about.

01:17:24

So we'll see how that goes.

01:17:26

But yeah, this is partially the inspiration from Novell here is like, okay, you know,

01:17:31

there's a lot that I could share.

01:17:32

I have a lot of things that I want to write about from my voice.

01:17:36

And that could potentially lead into some other things.

01:17:38

So that's the easiest starting point that I can provide for myself.

01:17:43

So I'm going to head down that path.

01:17:45

Cool.

01:17:46

Super fun.

01:17:47

Awesome.

01:17:48

What about you?

01:17:49

I just have the one which I mentioned already when I read it was to consider joining the

01:17:53

Farnham Street membership, which is not cheap.

01:17:55

I think it's 150 bucks a year.

01:17:57

However, I have since joined.

01:18:03

The reason is that the Farnham Street, I just really like the stuff that they put out.

01:18:13

We've covered the great mental models, volume one and two previously.

01:18:19

But there are it's also a blog that I enjoy and I find myself going back to over and over

01:18:26

again.

01:18:27

So there's obviously additional content there.

01:18:29

There's also a couple courses that they offer like the art of reading, which I want to see,

01:18:34

obviously what they have to say about that.

01:18:37

And really just the quality of the ideas I feel in this book was very high.

01:18:45

There was a lot of signal, not much noise.

01:18:49

So I kind of went left with the impression that Naval Ravakan is a really great thinker.

01:18:55

And he thinks that these people are really great thinkers.

01:18:57

So I'm going to surround myself with other people who are good thinkers in the attempt

01:19:05

to become a better thinker myself.

01:19:09

So it's also interesting timing for me.

01:19:12

I mentioned with leaving the day job.

01:19:16

I know that when it comes to creating garbage in, garbage out, right?

01:19:22

So at the very least, higher quality ideas are going to spur more interesting things

01:19:29

that I make.

01:19:30

So it's an investment in the types of things that not just the podcast episodes like this,

01:19:37

but other things that I'll be creating.

01:19:42

Yeah, I think this is an investment in the future.

01:19:47

Cool stuff.

01:19:48

Well, let's jump into style and reading.

01:19:52

And I have to say the style of this is a little bit strange from a holistic stance.

01:20:00

From a down in the technicals of the writing, this is really well written.

01:20:06

It's a little strange in that this is not written by Naval despite the fact that we're

01:20:10

talking about Naval the whole time.

01:20:13

This is written by Eric Jorgensen, who has mostly compiled, but also put his own words

01:20:20

into this.

01:20:22

So it's a little bit strange in that sense.

01:20:24

I must say that Eric has done a good job of putting this together in this way because,

01:20:29

like, I had a really hard time knowing, like, what did he write versus what did Naval say

01:20:34

and what did Naval write?

01:20:37

There's lots of citations there, so he's telling you exactly where he got all of this

01:20:42

information.

01:20:44

So it's strange in the sense that I'm not used to reading a book.

01:20:48

So point blank by someone, but yet has a different author.

01:20:55

It just has a weird flavor to it from that stance.

01:20:59

So I found it very easy to lose track of, wait, is this Eric or is this Naval?

01:21:05

It got to be pretty easy to lose track of that.

01:21:07

That particular point aside, I really, really liked the book.

01:21:12

I really liked the way it was put together.

01:21:15

Naval has tons of tweets that are embedded in here and they have their own formatting,

01:21:20

which makes it easy to figure out when it is a tweet by Naval.

01:21:24

So you know those words are from him.

01:21:26

So I really enjoyed that process and the fact that that was very easy to tell.

01:21:32

Naval has a lot of great wisdom to share here and does a good job putting it together.

01:21:37

There's just some strange, like, what's with the meanings of life thing?

01:21:42

Like, it just seems very odd.

01:21:46

Like, your actual content there is just, like, your viewpoint there seems way off to

01:21:51

me, like, I didn't even really grasp what his, like, he has one of the points there that

01:21:58

is, like, his way of saying that someone has meaning in life and it had to do with some

01:22:05

scientific evolution thing that I didn't follow.

01:22:09

So anyway, that aside, there's a lot you can get from this.

01:22:14

Absolutely, this is something I feel like people should pick up.

01:22:16

Obviously keep on a little bit of a discerning filter here with some of this stuff if you're

01:22:21

coming from a faith background because he has a strong belief on the evolution train.

01:22:29

So that all said, as far as a rating goes, like, absolutely loved it.

01:22:33

There's just a few qualms I have with it.

01:22:35

So I'm going to put it at 4.5.

01:22:36

I mean, it's a pretty solid book.

01:22:38

Really, really happy I picked this one up.

01:22:40

So I was glad I got to drag you along on this one.

01:22:43

But the real question is, what do you think of it, Mike?

01:22:47

I enjoyed it a lot.

01:22:49

There were some things that, yeah, you got to pick out what you're going to keep.

01:22:54

And I think if you were to talk to Naval Ravakant himself, he would say the same thing.

01:22:59

Like, don't just blindly accept everything that I'm going to say.

01:23:01

This is all just based off of my experience.

01:23:03

But here's everything that I know.

01:23:06

There's no fluff in this book.

01:23:08

It's great.

01:23:09

I like the formatting of the embedding the Twitter stuff.

01:23:13

So there's things that they use for specific tweets.

01:23:16

But then also, he has these tweet storms or threads, essentially.

01:23:20

And even those are formatted in a way that you know exactly where they're coming from.

01:23:24

And it's really well done.

01:23:25

I really like the visuals.

01:23:27

There's not as many as I thought there might be.

01:23:30

But I like Jack Butcher's style.

01:23:34

I will join you at the 4.5.

01:23:37

I don't think it's one of those books that's completely life changing.

01:23:42

I'm definitely going to be different from this moment forward.

01:23:44

But there's definitely the possibility of that, some of these ideas.

01:23:47

It's kind of weirdly formatted.

01:23:49

And there's certain things that he's obviously more skilled speaking to than others.

01:23:56

But I don't fault them for including anything that they've included in here.

01:23:59

It's 200-some pages.

01:24:02

And it feels like if you were to address all these things, it could have been a lot longer.

01:24:06

There are a couple bonus sections in my book of, you mentioned like the Twitter people

01:24:11

to follow and the books that you recommend you read.

01:24:14

I don't necessarily recommend the same books, but whatever.

01:24:20

Yeah, I think anyone in the bookworm audience, if you've listened to more than a handful

01:24:24

of episodes, you're going to enjoy reading this one.

01:24:28

It's going to move pretty quickly.

01:24:30

And it's not going to be a huge time investment.

01:24:33

But yeah, it's a very, very good book that I had never heard of before.

01:24:40

And I am very glad that you picked it.

01:24:42

Cool, cool.

01:24:43

Alright, let's shelf it.

01:24:44

What's next, Mike?

01:24:46

Next is The Gap vs. The Gain by Dr. Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan.

01:24:52

This is a recommendation from Carol last time when I had no idea what I was going to pick.

01:24:57

So thank you for the suggestion, Carol.

01:25:00

And this is an idea that I've talked about a bunch of times.

01:25:04

And I'm really looking forward to having an in-depth conversation about it with you.

01:25:11

Yeah, it would be good.

01:25:13

I just started this one this morning, so I'm looking forward to this conversation.

01:25:16

It would be a good one.

01:25:17

Awesome.

01:25:18

For sure.

01:25:19

Following that, this particular book has a fairly decent section on like mindfulness

01:25:25

and meditation in it.

01:25:27

I wasn't wanting to go down the let's pick up a book on meditation route.

01:25:31

But I found one that has been hitting my radar for close to a year now, even though Mike

01:25:36

has never heard of this one either, it sounds like.

01:25:38

The things you can only see when you slow down is by Haman Sunum.

01:25:43

And I have to say this one has shown up quite a bit.

01:25:47

It's rated roughly the same as the one we just covered, the almanac of Nival Ravakot.

01:25:52

So it's in that same territory rating-wise.

01:25:55

At least from what I'm seeing.

01:25:58

So I feel like it should be a good one to cover, but I also feel like in my life, things continue

01:26:04

to ratchet up speed-wise and I keep wanting to slow down.

01:26:08

So this is maybe a bit of a selfish.

01:26:10

I feel like I need this right now and I want some accountability and support around it

01:26:15

from all of you amazing bookworm people.

01:26:19

So please help me slow down a little bit.

01:26:23

That's my hope.

01:26:25

That's fair.

01:26:26

How about gap books, Mike?

01:26:27

Well, I did have a gap book.

01:26:28

I'm not done with this one yet, but I mentioned it earlier.

01:26:33

This- I'm not sure where this came on my radar, but it was one of the recent books that we

01:26:38

read and I trusted the source.

01:26:43

And that is Burn the Boats by Matt Higgins.

01:26:46

Toss Plan B overboard and only sure full potential.

01:26:49

A little bit of a sensational title there.

01:26:52

And I had some people flipping through it and they made the comment, "Mm, this guy seems

01:26:56

like he's kind of full of himself."

01:26:59

So it's so far it's pretty good.

01:27:02

The thing that got me on this was that one of the blurbs at the front is by Adam Grant,

01:27:08

which I really enjoyed the Adam Grant book that we read.

01:27:11

So I'm trusting that it's going to pick up a little steam here as we go.

01:27:17

But yeah, just seems like a theme for me right now and the season of Reinvention.

01:27:27

What am I going to be when I grow up?

01:27:29

Hopefully this will help me figure it out.

01:27:32

What about you?

01:27:33

I don't really have a gap book this time around.

01:27:36

I kind of jumped straight from the almanac into the gap versus the gain.

01:27:41

So not really any of them this time at all mentioned, but I will mention that I love

01:27:46

our Bookworm Pro members because they are freaking awesome.

01:27:51

And I'm always very grateful that people are willing to support us financially to help

01:27:56

keep the lights on here at Bookworm.

01:27:59

So we've been at it for just shy of seven years at this point, which is kind of hard

01:28:05

to get my head around at this point.

01:28:07

Episode 170.

01:28:08

Wow.

01:28:09

That's a lot of books and a lot of time.

01:28:13

So thank you to those of you who have continually supported us and helped us to keep the lights

01:28:17

on here.

01:28:18

We absolutely could not do it with all of you.

01:28:20

Amazing listeners.

01:28:21

So thank you for that.

01:28:23

If you haven't already, head over to club.bookworm.fm and join the club there.

01:28:27

It's completely free to join that.

01:28:29

If you want to get access to the Mind Node files that Mike has put together and some

01:28:34

extra perks like the bootleg episode or the ad-free version and such.

01:28:41

If you're interested in any of that, you can join the pro membership, which will get you

01:28:45

access to all of those special things.

01:28:47

So again, thank you to all of you who listen, and especially to those of you who are Bookworm

01:28:51

Pro members.

01:28:53

Awesome.

01:28:54

If you are reading along with us, pick up the gap versus the gain, and we will talk to

01:29:00

you in a couple of weeks.