I think courage is learned. You have to

practice it. And

if you're not afraid, it's not courage,

right? If someone's fearless, they're by

definition not using courage. You have

to be afraid of something. I think you

have to prove to yourself that you have

it. And the only way your subconscious

will believe it is if you are actually

doing things that are uncomfortable.

That's it.

which means it is learnable. Hello

everybody. Thanks for making it. We got

lots of questions that were

presubmitted. There's a lot to cover and

I will begin with saying there are many

many questions about AI. It is certainly

the topic of the hour and

I would like to provide a few caveats

and I'll do that by leading in with a

question. How many of you invested in or

even know of Diamond Rio? Diamond Rio.

Anyone? MPman F10. Come on now. You guys

must remember MPMAN F10. These are MP3

players that predated the iPod.

And

Jobs famously changed it from Speeds and

Feeds into 10,00 Songs in Your Pocket.

Also had the industrial design,

engineering, supply chain wizardry along

with his marketing genius, of course.

All to bring to bear on this thing

called the iPod, which then produced,

you guessed it, some of you whizzed,

gray-haired folks, but youngsters do not

realizing iPod leads to podcasting. Yes,

that was the genesis of this podcasting

term. And the reason I bring this up is

that I am not I do not consider myself a

bleeding edge investor or even in a lot

of instances a bleeding edge user. I

like to be on the dull edge. Um, I would

say that the iPod is a great example of

that because if you looked at some of

the technological trend lines, you

looked at a few different pieces of

hardware that had had somewhat derisked

solid state MP3 players, the timing was

right for something to be taken from

very very niche and unwieldy to

mainstream. And certainly we've seen

that unfold. And I view AI very

similarly and in some respects

it is very amendable to that approach

because things are changing so

incredibly quickly. If you hated a model

3 weeks ago it might do exactly what you

need today. And with all of that I just

want to say I do not view myself as an

AI expert. I think if you're looking for

someone who seems to be the Nostradamus

of AI, you should read up on Leopold

Ashin Brena.

You can look up situational awareness

the decade ahead. It was penned and

published online June 2024. And the

number of actual hits, predictive hits

that Leopold had is staggering. It is

just really about as close to

Clairvoyant as

you could possibly be. So, Leopold Ashen

Brener and you should check him out if

you're looking for what's coming. If

you're looking for what I have observed

personally as a muggle, someone who is

non-technical, I'm not writing white

papers, but I get to watch a very large

audience and I have a lot of friends I

can lean on, many of whom are technical,

I can fill you in. All right, that's a

whole lot of preamble. Let's hop into

it. All right, first question is from

Hugo. In a world full of tools, systems

and AI, what human abilities or habits

are becoming more valuable, not less.

So, I'll try to keep this pretty short.

I would say the relational, the tactile,

anything IRL in real life

that can be extended also to, for

instance, in my case,formational

advantage, offlineformational

advantage. A lot of the LLMs are slicing

and dicing the internet. One might argue

all of them are doing that. And whether

you are looking at longevity in

professional terms, if you're looking at

longevity in creative terms,

I think putting on the lens of looking

at what you can do in IRL that currently

now that certainly robotics are

on the edge of some type of Cambrian

explosion. So, who knows? Maybe it's

iRoot 3 years from now. But for now, the

kind of offline

differentiator is a big deal. And I

would say the relational side certainly

the harnessing of awe, wonder, etc.

nature immersion, which sounds like I'm

suggesting everybody disappear off into

a commune in the woods or become

homesteaders or something. That's not

what I'm saying. But for instance, the

fact that I have people I can text for

very narrow types of expertise

even though they have the access of a

generalist allows me to have

anformational advantage because none of

that is online. Conversely, if you're

using Chat GBT or Claude to try to

assess a given public company as a good

or bad investment or somewhere in

between, rest assured that many, many

people, perhaps even millions of people

have already done this and therefore

you're going to be reading more or less

the same thing as many others.

So, that's my stab at that first

question. A lot of this is going to

boomerang back in fusion notes. Let me

take a sip of my sipping ketones. Excuse

me.

This was sent to me by a scientist and

he was like, "Mix 10 milliliters into

250 milliliters of water. Do not chug in

all caps written with a marker on this

experimental

container of ketones." So, we'll see. If

I start seizuring, it'll make for a

great short on social media. All right,

next question I'm going to take a stab

at is from Jeff. With a pre-throat

clearing, not financial advice in

quotation marks disclaimer already

granted to you by virtue of this

question. Where should a small investor

be looking to invest in public markets

as AI continues to eat our white collar

jobs in the coming months and years? All

right, I know I indirectly already gave

the caveat.

I am not giving any investment advice

because that is a terrible thing to do

if you're not registered financial

adviser and all that stuff. I'm none of

those things. So, this is forformational

purposes only.

Number one, you shouldn't gamble,

and I do kind of view it as gambling, or

invest anything you cannot afford to

lose completely because AI is moving so

incredibly quickly. And there's a lot of

whipssaw reactivity in the markets. Chat

GPT comes out with something that

connects to some type of industry in in

an oblique way and suddenly

six public stocks lose billions and tens

of billions of dollars of market cap.

You know, there's there's a lot of

craziness. So, as certainly has been

said before me, the markets can remain

irrational longer than you can remain

solvent. So, don't play with anything

you're not willing to lose. There are

people talking about what's been termed

halo trades, trying to look for things

that are less likely to get disrupted or

destroyed. Kind of the Warren Buffett

approach to non- tech investing

by and large, right? Seize, candy,

railways, etc.

But I would say that

initially

sparked by conversations with Kevin

Rose, and I hesitate to even mention

this, but I do think Google is in a very

interesting position. Alphabet, the the

artist formerly known as Google,

Alphabet is in an interesting position

to in some respects kind of own the full

stack. engineers aren't going to like

that I'm using that term, but they have

distribution. They have hardware, right?

In terms of TPUs, they have

incredible unparalleled access to

information. They've got Demis and Deep

Mind internally. They've got the ability

to spin things out like Whimo. There's

just so much going on within Alphabet

that I find it

very

fun and terrifying to take a close look

at. And I say that also because it is

incredibly it is completely unclear I

would say how exactly

Google compensates for or plans for

shifting to some type of ad revenue from

AI generated responses or an AI based

LLM based platform

versus what we use today in the browser

right and that's inevitably going to

happen. So, the bull case is very

exciting for Google and the bare case is

also

pretty compelling, I would say. But, as

I'm looking at stuff out there,

I tend not to screw around in the public

markets. I just don't feel like I have

any advantage whatsoever compared to

everybody else who's fine slicing

things. But in conversations with

friends and looking at it pretty

closely, I do think Alphabet's pretty

interesting.

So there you have it. I'm not saying

invest in it. You could really lose

money and it might be that they lose for

a while until they win. It could be they

lose completely. So there is that. Next

question is from David. What are the top

three things you should never use AI

for? I would say any skill you want to

preserve in your head,

you should probably not use AI for. So I

use AI for editing. Right now, you very

quickly end up on a slippery slope. So

if I create a rough draft, as I did with

the self-help trap, for instance, I

would then take that, feed it into these

models, and give them a personality.

Right? You are an editor from the New

Yorker. this is your name, right? Maybe

it's a famous editor or the person who

worked with Robert Carroll, whatever it

might be. I mean, that's again, not to

compare myself to those people, but I

want a good editor.

Give me feedback on this rough draft.

What the model will do because they want

to keep you using the model of course is

it will give you all the feedback and

then it will say, would you like me to

incorporate all these changes and draft

a version that uses all these things?

And that's where I have deliberately

hesitated. I've also played around with

it and frankly it's very good. But

therein lies the danger because if you

want to preserve your ability to

synthesize and this will tie into

questions shortly about creativity. I do

think that

it makes some sense

to exercise caution and that there are

already scientists and researchers

looking at the negative cognitive

impacts of depending on AI much like

your ability to navigate is probably

deteriorated since using Google maps and

I would say net net each individual is

more enhanced

augmented using these tools. But if if

you do want to keep certain muscles

strong and able, that's where I would

hesitate. And look, you can always

change your mind later, but if you lose

it, it's a hell of a lot harder to

reclaim it. So that's where I am at the

moment.

Oh, CJ, CJ's question. Do you, Tim,

think AI is capable of creativity in the

sense that humans are? What I would

argue here, and I've read all these

books on creativity? I've looked at some

research which tends to be pretty soft I

would say if I were being less generous

handwavy about creativity or flow. I

mean I feel like a lot of these are

poorly defined. So, we could even go so

far as to say, I don't think we

understand what creativity is in humans,

right?

Could machines have the equivalent of

the muse visit them? Is there a way to

engineer that when we create these

metaphors for ourselves? Are we really

just using poetry or abstraction to try

to verbalize something that's actually

pretty discreet and replicable if you

just operate from a sort of bottoms up

approach with reinforcement learning and

this that and the other thing? Maybe. I

just don't know. Right.

The second question the CJ had though is

the one that I think is worth not

spending more time on, but I would

underline this because I underline it

for myself. As a writer and with the

explosion of AI generated content out

there now, how do you rise above the

noise? All right, it's pretty simple and

I will I will answer that by way of a

story. I was spending time, a little bit

of time, drinking a Paloma

with a very well-known photographer. He

is one of the most commercially

successful photographers in the world.

And

he was laughing and telling a story of

how he gets approached by

photographers. They could be amateur,

but very often they're professionals who

want to know how they can become better

photographers. and they're asking all

these gear related questions and his

answer is just put more interesting

stuff in front of the camera. Make

what's in front of the camera more

interesting. And the equivalent of that,

at least for me as a non-fiction writer,

is doing interesting things. Go out in

the world, do interesting things or

observe interesting things in real life

and write about those things, do

experiments, etc. I mean, there are many

ways to skin this cat. It could be,

let's just say, Travels with Charlie.

Amazing book by John Steinbeck. Road

trip in a makeshift RV with his dog

Charlie. All right. Incredible book. And

as it stands right now, I think it's a

ways off that a humanoid robot is going

to get into a car with a canine

companion, robotic or flesh and bone,

and do something like this, right?

Anything that is analysis based is

relegated to the machines at this point.

They are so good. The AI, broadly

speaking, LLMs being one manifestation

of that are just too good. They're so

good. And we'll talk about how I use

some of those tools a little bit later.

So do interesting things and write about

them. That's the short answer. All

right. There are certain questions where

I don't feel like I have good answers or

informed answers. I could make up some

[ __ ] and spin a yarn and make

something that seems to hold water, but

I'm not going to do that. So, I'm going

to I apologize if I'm skipping some of

your questions, but I don't want to give

you any type of false confidence in my

answers. All right. So, this is a

question from Manneil. How are you

keeping up with all the new AI tools?

Where do you keep your focus? Have you

set up Open Claw? And if so, what's your

workflow? Okay. So, I am not keeping up

with AI developments. People who do this

full-time as the seuite executive teams

of the best known companies in the world

have trouble keeping up. So, I am

definitely not keeping up or trying to

keep up. I feel like as soon as I'm

doing that, I've already lost. So, it's

not how do I win the game, it's choosing

the right game, which might sound

cliched,

but does that mean I'm ignoring

everything? No. With something like Open

Claw, due to security concerns, I let

friends of mine

be the first elect to be some of the

first monkeys shot into space. So, I'm

going to read from a friend of mine who

I texted, right? This is

about this question right before we

started recording. All right. So about

open claw, he played around with

openclaw. His name is Chris Hutchkins.

He's been on the podcast. He has a

podcast called All the Hacks which he

has used to explore some really

fascinating stuff. If you're a points

nerd or like travel, it's a good one. He

goes a lot further than that. But one of

his episodes is, "I built an AI

assistant that works while I sleep." And

he explains what he did with OpenClaw.

However, here's what he texted to me. In

the last week, Claude's desktop app has

shipped a bunch of features that do a

lot of what OpenClaw can do in a more

userfriendly way. Schedule tasks, remote

access, etc. So, that could be a good

beginner way to start. But with all AI

projects, I suggest going in with a use

case. This is again Chris texting. And

then he documented his whole journey

with building a basic app through

OpenClaw, etc., etc., etc., and leveling

up his knowledge each time. We'll link

to that episode in the show notes. Can

find it pretty easily. Here's what he

added to that. For OpenClaw, I'd say you

absolutely don't need a fancy computer.

I ran it on a 2012 Mac Mini for the

first few weeks, but if you have an old

computer and you want to set it up and

test it out at home, great. But until

you feel confident, one, don't give it

access to things like email, credit

cards, etc. And there are some

hilariously tragic stories of this gone

arry that you can find on your own. Two,

that okay, that was my director's

commentary. Two, don't install random

skills you find on the internet. Three,

go to claude chatgpt, etc. and get

advice about how to set it up securely.

Four, every time I've gotten stuck, I've

been able to use claud code in the Open

Claw directory to fix things. So, there

you have. That is by virtue of texting

Chris Hutchkins an answer on open claw

and what I also do is give some examples

of internally how we're using stuff. So

I have an employee who is very

interested in these tools and I have

wanted to encourage that as long as

we're not completely demolishing our own

security from the inside out. So he's

played a lot with cloud code and other

things and I asked him for some use

cases that I could share with you. So I

will pull those up right now. All right.

And this alludes to a term defines a

term that Chris used. All right. So this

is my employee. One thing I did earlier

today was build a skill quote unquote

skill. Fancy name for a text file in

this case inside claw that will generate

the PDF and word versions of an IO.

That's an insertion order for a podcast

sponsor. If I only give it the missing

items from the IO, for instance, company

name, official company name, da da da

da, it fills it out automatically and

creates a PDF. It's a small save in

time, but this is something he repeats a

lot. And there may be a better way to do

it, like a template, hello sign or

something. I also have been working on a

project doing a 20 year roughly 20-year

retrospective deep dive and analysis of

all my angel investing, right? Are the

stories I tell myself about my rapport

card accurate? Are they completely

false? Are they somewhere in between?

Etc., etc. And for that project, coming

back to his uh text here, it's been

really crazy to just tell it quote

here's an API key and it will figure out

how to connect to a given service like

Gmail. And if you have an API key for a

product, you can easily start using it

in Claude as it will simply write itself

a script.

And one of the wildest things, this is

I'm paraphrasing here, but it can ingest

an absurd amount of data and convert it

into something useful. And it can also

enrich data in some very interesting

ways. Right? So if I'm trying to figure

out, okay, right, via email

introductions, who introduced the

winners, who introduced the losers, who

introduced the zombies that just can't

seem to die after years of struggling

or take off for that matter. And then is

there a signal say looking at the

education levels, the schools, the alma

modders of founders, right? What about

single founders versus two founders

versus three founders? Things like this

location, geography, blah blah blah blah

blah blah blah, right? Is there any

signal to any of this?

Another example which might apply to

more of you, the Google calendar

integration has also been helpful. In

other words, updating a calendar entry

from claude or creating multiple at a

time, right? So using claude to calendar

entries. Now, in my case, I have a bunch

of different calendars and different

people on my team add to different

calendars.

One thing that helps us a lot, and maybe

someday I'll share this. for right now.

I I'm probably not going to, but I have

a document, a Google doc that is the ten

commandments of

my calendar basically. And it's rules

around formatting, what to include,

etc., right? Secondary points of

contact, cell phones, time zone always,

right? Indicated in the headline, etc.,

etc., etc. There are lots of different

rules, but he can use that or other

people on my team can use that to then

automatically check calendar entries

through claude code and fix them as

needed. Right? So, some people have

joked that, you know, the 4-hour work

week should be rewritten as the the

4minute work week. I think there's

something to it, right? And there's a

temptation to do an entire section on

the use of AI in place of virtual

assistants and so on. The problem with

that is that

as soon as the ink had metaphorically

dried on that paper, it would already be

out of date. So, I'm not going to do

that, I don't think. So, there you have

it, right? And the API key is is a

really important component to all of

this. Also, and I'm sure some of you

have figured this out, but with cloud

code and Chris Hutchkins alluded to this

as well, for debugging, for instance, we

did a website redesign and there was an

issue with a form. no idea why, right?

And we wanted to fix it very quickly and

we weren't sure how long it would take

for support to get back to us. So, he

was able to dump all the code at the

time into the model and just figured out

how to fix it. And there are many, many,

many other examples of that. Yeah, it's

and many of these things are not quantum

leaps, but they are much like anything

else just automating little paper cuts

so they don't add up ultimately to a

huge gash in your calendar. Okay, back

to work. Tim Ferrris.

All right, let's look at other things.

This is a question from Becky.

What would you say to someone who wants

a career job? Sometimes I feel I get

caught in a loop of same pay range, same

experiences, same mid-level

opportunities. How can I start

increasing my income opportunities and

skills this year? Okay, so I reached out

as I often do, texted a couple of people

about this because they're actually this

is going to be a huge huge mega mega

meta problem for people moving forward

and it's going to increasingly I think

be pervasive. people are going to wonder

what they should do next, right? Which

then informs kind of upskilling

and and there's a later question, so I

might as well explore it here related to

encodings. In the Jim Collins episode, a

question around encodings, and I might

come back to that, but suffice to say,

some of these personality tests and

things like any are actually very

helpful and things like strengthfinder

and so on. And there are two startups

I'm involved with because I recognize

just through questions like this, right,

from Becky which are kind of the canary

in the coal mine. It's not really a

canary in a coal mine. It's like there

was one whisper, now there are 10, then

there were 100, now there are thousand,

right? This question is coming up more

and more and a lot of folks are going to

in one way or another need to zig and

zag even though they might not expect it

right now. And a lot of that's going to

be due to AI job displacement. So the

two startups that and again I mentioned

that I'm an investor in these so I'm

biased but the reason that I invested in

these is to answer this question or more

specifically to help people answer this

question. So the first one is called apt

apt and you can check that out at

triapp.ai.

So triapp rap.ai.

I had the co-founder

and CEO create a code. So if any of you

guys want to try it, ultimately it does

cost money to get all the results and to

get this sort of AIG guided mentor

around your strengths and so on which

you discover or uncover through the

process of going through this. But you

can get 50% off with Tim50. That's the

code to use. Tim50.

All right. All right. So if you want to

take a look at that, you can check it

out. The other is OBO. So obtly

focused on accelerating skill

acquisition and learning. So I think

these two actually go together really

well. Right? You could use apt first and

then OBO. And I've played around with

both. There's a lot that's going to be

coming into both of these, but might be

worth checking out. Honestly, if I were

to tell you to go buy what color is my

parachute or something, you might glean

something from that. But I feel like in

very dynamic times with so much shifting

sand with respect to technology, you

probably need something a bit more or

benefit from something that is more

dynamic and personalized from the get-

go as opposed to you having to do lots

and lots of heavy lifting with a fixed

format. So, that's what I would say,

Becky. And definitely let me know what

you think because if something's broken

or if you love something or you hate

something, all that stuff can get fixed.

All right, next one. This is from Jeff

and we will do some live questions.

These ketones are actually doing

something, which is good cuz it's 400

p.m. and I don't want to have any

caffeine.

Yeah, fortunately, it doesn't taste too

much like jet fuel. All right, let me do

one more. Jeff, okay, this is the

question. You've worked across books,

podcasts, and experiments that each

attracted their own communities. What

have you learned about proactively

shaping a community's culture, not just

growing an audience? And how has direct

interaction with people changed the way

you enter creative flow today? The last

piece is probably the hardest answer,

but I can tell you that I think that

proactively shaping a community's

culture actually helps you to

build an audience,

but to what end, right? Not build an

audience like, oh, I'm aiming for 2

million, 3 million, 10 million YouTube

subscribers. I don't like renting

audience in a way that's dependent on

algorithms, right? And you can look at a

lot of the biggest YouTube channels.

It's like their average views per video

have created even though they have huge

numbers of subscribers. You see that

with engagement on X and other places.

However, one thing that never goes out

of style is 1,000 True Fans by Kevin

Kelly. You can read it for free at

kk.org.

And therefore, I will focus on the

proactively shaping a community's

culture. In my case, I think it's pretty

simple. I treat a closed community like

I would a dinner party at my house. So

somebody walks into my house and this is

a shoes free house, right? Because who

wants like dog [ __ ] and bubble gum on

your kitchen floor? I don't. So the

shoes come off at the door, right? So

let's say somebody comes in, they're

like, "No, I'm keeping my boots on."

They come in tracking mud all over the

place. They sit down at the dinner

table. they kick their feet up on the

table and start calling people [ __ ]

or something like that person's going to

get dragged by their hair out and then

they're never coming back in. Right? So

that's a bit of an maybe melodramatic

example, but zero tolerance policy for

broken windows, right? You know, Malcolm

Gladwell and others have written about

this, but it's like when these minor

infractions are permitted, I'm going to

pull out a fancy term that tech people

like, the Overton window.

Right. This the broadness of what is now

allowable behavior shifts. Okay? Or I

shouldn't say shifts. It's a [ __ ]

window. It's not supposed to get wider

or shorter, but it moves in a more

aggressive behavioral direction, right?

So if you allow minor infractions,

you're going to get moderate

infractions. You allow those, you're

going to get major infractions. So, from

the very first days of say the blog, the

the comments section has guidelines and

it's like remember the Fonza, we're

going to be cool like that. Like, if

you're an [ __ ] we're going to boot

you and blacklist you and you can

criticize me, but don't be a dick to

other people. And if you are, you're

gone. Like, that's zero tolerance. And

you have to enforce that, right? If you

don't, people are crafty. They'll learn

how to manipulate you because you are

asking to be at least abused by not

enforcing your own rules. So that's the

first one. It's just like you have to

excise the cancers and remove the

poison. You just have to because the

default state of pretty much the entire

internet now because it's been allowed

and encouraged

through various gamifications on social

platforms is just being loud, obnoxious,

awful. So you have to set rules to to

counterveail that. Also, and Jeff, I

think you've experienced this. If if you

have a private community of 100 people

or 200 people or 50, doesn't really

matter, and you charge $5

a quarter, $5 a year, doesn't really

matter. But if you have some very

nominal cost, people opt in who

generally want to contribute and be in

an environment of positivity. That's my

experience generally.

So having some very very nominal fee at

the door I think is incredibly helpful.

Right. And you find that also with

events. I've done plenty of live events.

don't really do them anymore for a lot

of reasons, but

very very rarely in the past, I would

throw these live events for like, you

know, book launch parties, 100 people,

200. If people can RSVP to an event,

your abandonment rate or no show rate is

going to be skyhigh. If you force them

to pay $1 to hold their spot, suddenly

the no-show rate goes down to low single

digits. Right? So, I don't think there's

any rocket science here, but the tough

part is being willing to enforce, right?

And maybe you give someone a two

strikes, you're out policy, but frankly,

I find that that can metastasize and for

instance, I have a lovely dog was a

stray two months ago, adopted her, and

she's really smart. She's part

Anatolian shepherd, it would seem. And

if she realizes, for instance, that she

can kind of pit me against my partner

and that she doesn't actually have to

listen to sit until the third time.

She's not going to listen to the first

two. She'll just stare at you defiantly

and then sit the third time. Humans are

the same way. They'll do that, too. If

they know they have two strikes, you're

going to get more bad behavior because

they know they can get away with it

once.

All right. So, there you go. And let's

go to We've got plenty more questions,

but let's go live to some live

questions. And I apologize that there's

so much in the chat, so I'm going to

have to I'm going to have to Oh, yeah.

The crown means top fans. All right.

Well, thank you. Thank you, top fan. All

right. Let's throw out some live

questions and I'll give it a shot. If

you already posted one, please post

again because I can't I can't scroll up

and go through hundreds and hundreds and

hundreds. Favorite color? Green right

there.

Green. Green. Green.

Uh specifically, it's like the color of

late morning light, like 11:00 a.m.

sunlight around

August coming through maple leaves. That

is the color of this sort of like

translucent green. All right.

future of Vlatta. Okay, for those who

don't know, also Coyote, Coyote

continues to do really well. I feel like

I have done mostly what I can do with

Coyote at this point, and it's sort of

in steady state. I mean, the reviews on

Amazon and elsewhere are great. It

continues to sell well through the

distribution channels. I wish in

retrospect earlier on I had really

focused on fam even though there are

plenty of adults who enjoy it focusing

on families that have at least one or

two kids in that sort of 8 to 15 range

and that would have helped with escape

velocity sooner but hindsight 2020 I'm

really really happy with with how it's

turned out and then veratta honestly now

that the AI tools are getting good

enough

about 6 months ago ago, I was planning

on creating a movie trailer for

effectively a script. I've got the whole

thing in my head focused on Tyrion. If

anyone, this is the legend of Cockpunch.

Now, I think I will, for obvious

reasons, lean towards legends of Vlatta,

but focusing on the relationship between

Tai and his father and all sorts of

craziness that ensues. So, I've got like

a whole movie script in my head and

concept art that I haven't really done

anything with from some of the top Magic

the Gathering and DND artists you can

imagine. So, we'll see. We'll see. I

could see screwing around with that this

summer. All right. Yes, shout out to

Jeff for keeping the CP community

humming. Happy to spend some time there

as well. All right. If I could only pick

from the books on the shelves behind

you, what book would you want everyone

in this group to deep dive into or dive

deep into? I mean, man, I mean, I have

those books up there for a reason,

right? I have thousands of books. I've

donated most of them. These are the ones

I keep up for me to look at.

Give me a second. I'll tell you.

Okay.

So, I'm going to give answers that may

not be satisfying to some folks. That's

okay. I would read I'll give you one

that I suppose you might expect from me.

So, one is going to be The Effective

Executive from Peter Ducker. Classic,

old, short, incredible bang for the

buck.

However, the other books

I would say again talking about what you

do in a world of AI, do more interesting

things.

There's a book back there called Of

Wolves and Men by Barry Lopez who won I

believe it was the Booker or Pulitzer

Prize for another of his books called

Arctic Dreams. Of Wolves and Men is one

of the best non-fiction books I've ever

read and it really shattered the mold.

It redefined what

let's just call it non-fiction nature

writing could be. It's just an

incredible incredible book. So, there's

one, but again, this is choose your own

adventure. Pick and choose. Travels with

Charlie by John Steinbeck. I mentioned

it earlier, is hilarious. Also an

incredibly accurate and

enjoyable warts and all ride through the

US, right? What a quirky weird ass

country. So, that's another one. Pretty

fast read. And then there are entire

shelves back there related to animal

tracking and so on because I've done a

bunch of that. I don't think most of you

should probably spend a lot of time on

that. If you haven't read I'll simplify

the title here. Alice in Wonderland. You

should go read Alice in Wonderland. Read

the whole thing just quotes from it. I

have a collector's edition back there.

And then there are a few actually that I

was going to mention for one of the

questions you guys submitted or as an

answer. the 8020 principle, Richard

Kosh. That just never gets old. Just

does not get old. And there's another

book of his up there called Living the

8020 Principle. It might be living the

8020 way. And he really walks the talk.

And if you haven't heard my podcasts

with Richard Kosh, KO,

he's also one of the best investors I've

ever met. I mean, he's had I don't know

if he's disclosed the actual amount, but

like he is I know a lot of the world's

best investors and he is quietly way up

there in the Pantheon. So, also a

practitioner.

He's on the field. So, worth paying

attention to him. All right. All the

places I've traveled to, which have been

the most breathtaking, there's so many.

I mean, Queenstown, New Zealand at the

right time of year, I think is

incredible.

But you name it, you name it. I think

upstate New York, honestly, the Gunks

and that entire region where a lot of

the Last of the Moheakans, the book

certainly I don't know what about the

filming of the movie, but that takes

place in that region.

You can kind of put me anywhere. I mean,

I just I think so many places are

beautiful. Take a couple of drawing

classes. That makes things much more

beautiful overall. Like gesture drawing

classes. Get some live nudes. keep it

interesting. I mean, you you may get an

obese dude with his schwans all over the

place. So, just just so you know, it's

not automatically going to be a Victoria

Secret model, but that's okay. Uh, can't

win them all. All right, this is from

Hilka.

All right,

I'll I'll abbreviate a bit because this

was a long question. I'm only going to

hit the the first part here, but I'm a

bootstrap founder and repleted revenue

flying into San Francisco next week to

pitch and network for a few days. If you

were in my shoes and wanted to squeeze

the maximum long-term leverage out of

that short trip, what specific things

would you do before, during, and after

the event to one, have the right

conversations, and two, turn them into

real opportunities rather than just

great chats? Okay, bonus. How is your

bootstrapped versus VC changed lately

for tech software? I mean, I think it's

just getting cheaper and cheaper to make

software. So, I think we're going to see

a lot of self-funded startups. I mean,

good news, barrier to entry technically

also economically is much lower. Bad

news, the barrier to attention in

actually getting people to use your

stuff has never been higher. So, there

is that. But I do think that we're going

to see huge self-funded bootstrap

companies, assuming that there aren't

just a few gods, aka, you know, super

intelligence

AI beasts that eat everything. All

right, but coming back to your question

about network,

this has also never been more true. I

think in real life wins.

Everything else is too crowded. So there

is a talk I gave. I don't think there's

any video. You don't need video,

frankly, but there was a talk I gave at

South by Southwest. We'll link to this

in the show notes, but if you search my

name

and how to build a worldclass network in

record time, this will pop up. This is a

a talk I gave

who knows, seven years ago, 10 years ago

at South by Southwest describing exactly

what I did at South by Southwest 2007

when I launched the 4-hour work week.

And my entire budget for that book for

launch and marketing and so on was spent

on a few trips

to I think it was web summit

maybe something expo blog expo and then

south by southwest and there's an

approach described in that that I think

is very very effective and it's still

surprising to me no matter how many

times I talk about certain things

people just don't follow But,

you know, if I'm like, hey, if I wanted

to shill some shitcoin and be like, it's

going to the moon, right? People would

buy it immediately. But I'm like, hey,

here's this thing. It actually takes

some hard thinking and you need to plan

for it. But it's so much more effective

long term than all of this hustle

culture [ __ ] like

you know, three card monty that you want

to do, you know, every day for 10 hours.

It's like the the upfront stuff really

matters a lot. In this case, I really

recommend this talk, how to build a

world-class network in record time. And

that sounds like YouTube clickbait, but

it's actually true.

A lot of friends who are still friends

of mine almost 20 years later came from

South by Southwest 2007. And a couple of

those events I flew to. These were not

just transactional interactions. And

there is there is a way to approach

this, right? You definitely need to

study any sessions and attendees

beforehand.

The good news is good news bad news is

that have the right conversations

you don't need to worry about. You have

no idea

how to have the right conversations.

Your goal is to meet people who are

hopefully world class at what they do.

Sympotico with you, meaning you guys

will actually get along. could be

extracurricular interests, side hobbies,

it could just be the way the two of you

are programmed. And there are other kind

of general strategies like talking to

moderators of panels instead of the

panelists. Everybody floods the

panelists. The moderator gets orphaned

and in many cases the moderator is just

as impressive. And certainly the

moderator knows everybody on the panel

and lots of people on other panels and

everywhere else. So there are a couple

of of tips in that that I would suggest

checking out. All right, next question

is from Alex. My company is growing

quickly. There are a lot of things that

I need to be doing to hit escape

velocity and be able to hire to manage

at the top. I think that's manage. It

says mange, but I assume you don't want

mange. How do I choose what not to do?

All right. All right. Well, the good

news is we already talked about a

couple. So 8020 principle, Richard Kosh,

I would read that. The effective

executive, absolutely read that. And

it's really going to give you a

frameworks

for better discerning yourself what to

do and not do. the other depending on

the scope current scope and scale of the

company and then the ambitions

especially if it's venture-backed is to

read a book called the high growth

handbook by Allad Gil E L A D G I L

arguably the best one of the best

certainly angel investors of the last

few decades I mean his his hit rate is

absolutely insane He's he's invested in

at least 40 unicorns.

Also a tremendous founder and operator

in his own right. You can check him out.

Has a pretty wicked biology background

on top of everything else. So those are

a few that that come to mind. And then

maybe last but not least, it's been a

long time since I read it, but the blue

ocean strategy probably worth checking

out because if if you choose to compete

in a crowded category, you just have a

harder road ahead of you. So creating a

category of one in a sense, much like

Cirtole did back in the day, right? I'm

expecting you're not dealing with

Eastern European acrobats, but you get

the idea. All right, this is from JC.

When exploring sematic or psychedelic

healing spaces, what specific questions

or observations do you use to quickly

distinguish between a highly competent,

grounded practitioner and a narcissistic

guru?

Tough,

a lot of good actors out there.

You know, the first thing that comes to

mind and obviously with all the usual

the usual caveats, right? These things

are powerful. You can definitely

destabilize yourself. They're illegal in

most places, etc. I said, "Don't break

any laws. Talk to your doctor." Blah,

blah, blah. But

ask, you could ask practitioners or you

could ask someone who's had two trips

and they're suddenly

acting like a messiah proitizing

everybody. You could ask them the same

question. But

specific to clinicians or practitioners,

ask them

what types of adverse events they've

seen, right? what are the most

concerning adverse events that they've

seen?

A simpler way to put that is how do you

handle freakouts, right? What do you do

when somebody really loses their [ __ ]

And if their answer is people don't lose

their [ __ ]

there aren't any adverse events, they're

either lying,

delusional,

or very inexperienced. Right? maybe all

three. Those are not mutually exclusive.

So, I find that to be a pretty quick

necessary but not sufficient way

to use a particular line of questioning

to separate seasoned practitioners who

are honest from those who are neither of

those things.

Of course, do your own homework. I don't

think anyone who's new to this and by

new I mean they have not been doing it

more than a decade ideally multiple

decades is

makes the the fly list for me.

It's just become too godamn trendy. So

I would just say

probably unfairly but I would be biased

towards people who have been doing this

since before

Michael Pollen's exceptional book how to

change your mind right that might be the

cuto off for before and after let's go

back to live questions yeah Kumari great

documentary Fred recommended everybody

should watch Kumari ku m a r e I won't

ruin the surprise

check that out it's a great great film

I liked it so much that way back in the

day there was a startup called

quarterly.co

which sent out boxes of goodies to

people who subscribed, right? And I

would hand curate all these things that

I really liked. It was kind of like Five

Bullet Friday but on a quarterly basis

where you get all my favorite things

shipped to you in a box. Very difficult

business to make work. But at one point,

this also dates me. It tells you how

long ago it was. I reached out to the

filmmaker who made Kumar and we figured

out a way to make it work that I would

ship something like 3,000

USB drives each of which contain this

movie to my subscribers. That was one of

my items that I sent. All right, lots of

questions about conferences. I don't

have a particular take on conferences

these days. I apologize. I just I'm not

tracking it actively. There are always

interesting meeting places in person.

So, I don't believe that's outdated.

South by Southwest has gotten very large

and quite corporate. Doesn't mean you

can't have interesting interactions, but

you know, I would look for the events

ideally that are

fewer than a thousand people, fewer than

500, even better if you can. It's from

Chris. If I weren't an author and

podcaster, what other careers or

industries would you have pursued? I

wanted to be a comic book pencellor for

ages and

still do some actually of my art pads

right back over there where I love to do

live gesture drawings honestly helps me

get out of my head. Somebody will be up

there. They'll hold a pose for like 60

seconds at a time and then change or two

minutes or five minutes at a time. You

really can't get in your head. There's

just not enough time for it. So, I

really really enjoy that. But I wanted

to be a comic book pencellor and was an

illustrator through a good part of

college, helping to pay for expenses,

things like that, illustrating books and

so on. So I uh the the prospects then

were not very attractive financially to

do that, especially after my extended

family paid a fortune on my education.

So I shifted gears, but certainly felt a

draw towards that. What kind of dog is

Molly? Molly is a rescue mut. She is

Labrador,

blood hound, and pitbull mix.

Then I'm sure there's high 57 of other

breeds in there. In terms of training,

honestly, I put up some basic training

videos on YouTube if you just search my

name in dog training. But the books that

I have found most helpful are Don't

Shoot the Dog by Karen Prior. I think

everybody should read that. I think the

back copy says something like

Whether you want to stop your cat from

jumping on the table, train your dog to

do X, or convince your like

mother-in-law to stop nagging you, like

the instructions are all the same.

Something like that. It's pretty funny.

But Karen Prior brought clicker

training, sort of audible

queuing of that type from marine mammal

training, dolphins, orcas, etc. to dog

training or at least she's one of the

people responsible for that. really

fantastic book on behavioral change and

shaping behavior overall.

And then listen to my podcast with Susan

Garrett. Susan Garrett g a r e t is

impressive because she has won I want to

say I don't know 5 to 10 national dog

agility championships even though she

herself is much older than most of the

human competitors who have to kind of

run alongside their dogs. and she really

really knows her stuff. So those would

be I would say two places that you can

start at two or three places. Very kind

comment here. All of your works hold so

many lessons on protection and

nourishment, the root of being a father.

I feel that way. Thank you. My friends

have been my closest friends are like,

"Yeah, you know what? You're going to be

a great dad." So that's part of the

reason why I'm headed that way. Even

though, you know, word on the internet

is that I've self-help optimized myself

into being single and miserable. That's

not true. So,

all those trolls can suck a dick. Um,

makes makes me feel like I'm drinking

tequila. Beware of those ketones, guys.

More on my thoughts is from Cindy on

enog dating and business peeps. I think

anyagram look it might be tech friendly

astrology, but I've seen it used at

Shopify. I've seen it used at Dropbox.

I've seen it used by more than one

person to meet very good matches in

intimate relationships

and I think there's something to it. I

mean it is a tool I would say that I'm I

try to be as tool agnostic as possible

but I found the enog there are other

options of course as one good option for

identifying your own blind spots for say

your partner and this could be someone

you you know work with superior

subordinate colleague

what your likely blind spots are where

you're likely to be oversensitive

and therefore how you might want to

handle things internally like meetings,

decision-m, conflict resolution

and that's pretty interesting and it has

been tested on a pretty large scale

within places like Shopify and Dropbox,

right? Unlike many other things. So, I

find it interesting and

the app that I mentioned earlier,

tryapp.ai,

code Tim50 for 50% off. I don't get any

affiliate kickback or anything. That's

just to save you guys some money. They

incorporate the inagram. So, pretty

interesting. I was telling them I was

like, "Hey, once you figure out this

kind of business career mentoring side,

you could very easily have a matchmaking

capability built into it." All right.

Quantum computing I find fascinating,

amazing, and terrifying in equal

measure. I have not done much in the

quantum computing world. I have looked

at

maybe how certain

cryptocurrencies are more prepared to be

quantum resistant than others, right?

I've looked at stuff like that. I mean,

not to mention

all of our other fancy passwords that we

currently use and security, but I have

not really gone super deep. I feel like

that's an area much like Fusion

where you really want to be as technical

as possible waiting into those waters. I

did a podcast with Steve Gerbbertson

ages ago who was one of the first

investors in D-Wave.

But yeah, I mean people are talking

about AI, but man, when when quantum

actually hits and the joke has been with

Fusion, for instance, that fusion is

always 30 years away. I don't think

that's true anymore. Now, I could be

proven wrong, but I also think that's

true with quantum where people are like,

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. That shit's never

going to work." I'm like, "H, we'll see.

Look at Google's excuse me, look at

Alphabet's investments into

quantum computing. It does raise some

questions. Very interesting and also

pretty scary to imagine what postquantum

looks like. This is a good question. How

do you maintain so many friends despite

your countercultural

ideologies?

We, my friends and I, I think have maybe

implicitly,

and this is maybe survivorship bias, but

agreed that like as long as you're

civil, like you can disagree on all

sorts of stuff. And I surround myself

with friends who are going to push back.

And this includes my oldest friends.

This isn't just like fancy friends that

I've accumulated since the podcast or

anything. This also applies to my oldest

friends from high school and college.

So, I would also say that most of my

friends are pretty adaptable in light of

new information. I don't spend a lot of

time around blowhards who are like, I'm

an X, I'm a Y, right? I'm a liberal and

that person's a neocon. or I'm a

conservative and that person's a libtard

or whatever. Like, I don't hang out with

those folks because while I recognize

that level of simplicity is appealing in

a very chaotic, messy world, it's not

particularly

an accurate reflection of reality and

the gradiations in between extremes. And

it's certainly not very helpful unless

you are playing the political game and

that's just an arrow in the quiver that

you have to use. But otherwise,

I just stay away from that stuff. I

certainly don't steer away from

controversy, but I ask myself, is this,

and this applies to watching news or

social media, and I know I've said this

before, but I haven't had any social

media apps on my phone for probably

three or four years. And the way I feel

about the news in the 4-hour work week

is probably 10x more intense now in

terms of my selective ignorance around

mainlining quote unquote news, right?

Because if if it's not relevant to your

life and if you are not going to make a

decision differently or take action

because of it or maybe avoid action

because of it, if there isn't some kind

of followup, you don't need it is my

general feeling.

And that's going to become not just a

maybe perceived luxury. I've been doing

this for decades now, right? And I

wouldn't consider myself ineffective in

the world,

but

it's going to become a survival

imperative. If you want to remain sane,

you can't doom scroll 24/7. There's no

way you can't doom scroll even a few

hours a day.

So, I've seen some crazy crazy

physiological data from people on and

off of social media like blood tests and

like mental health assessments and so

on.

Ham D caps 5, you know, all this kind of

stuff. It's not good, guys. So,

I'm I'm uh getting up on my soap box

now, but like we were talking about that

no [ __ ] rule. Just because someone

disagrees with you does not mean they're

an [ __ ] But if someone is really

throwing sharp elbows for no reason,

it's like they're out. Like I'm I'm I

very freely

have an inflow and outflow of friends.

There are certain friends who have

remained in the inner sanctum and I for

them too cuz they reserve the same right

for years and decades and decades now.

But it's like, and people are allowed to

have off days, but it's like if someone

has suddenly adopted being an [ __ ] as

part of their personality or identity in

service of quote unquote keeping it real

or something. I don't have time for

that. All right. Somebody asked about

podcast interviewing a female

screenwriter. Yeah, sure. Depends on the

screenwriter, but was actually reaching

out to two female screenwriters

not too long ago. I don't think I heard

back. So, what are you going to do? This

is a comment by Tim. This sounds super

simple. My longest, latest relationships

share a common sense of humor. Married

for 33 years, and that's foundational.

Same goes for oldest and longest lasting

friendships. Yeah, 100%. Humor is just

reflective of so many other qualities,

right? And there's a difference between

humor and just like a kind of

cynicism, right? Quippy cynicism. I'm

not so much into that. But like if if

there's a fast banter and people also

are good at making fun of themselves,

not all the time, but in the right dose,

it generally bodess well. What inspired

my most recent blog post? Fugacity Labs.

This is on the self-help trap. What I

learned from 20 plus years of optimizing

myself, optimizing on quotation marks,

might have been improving. We split test

a bunch of different headlines. But what

prompted that is just seeing how,

you know, at worst miserable, at best

constantly anxious or self-doubting so

many people are in the selfhelp,

self-development world, right? And I

feel like we are all sitting on a

slightly too warm stove top of baseline

anxiety due to the technological

tectonic plates that we're dealing with

and certainly the kind of algo driven

personalized feeds that will just pour

gasoline on your lyic system. And coming

back to what we can control, right? It's

like, okay, sure, I can I can suggest

people delete social media apps off of

their phones. Realistically, most people

are not going to do that. And there are

some upsides. If you have the ability to

moderate with these tools, you can stay

connected with friends, etc., etc.

Although, I've become more and more

dubious of those defenses.

if if people were able to instead of

just looking at screen time by app to

see what actual usage is the use cases

that they're spending time on with a

given app I think that would be very

illuminating in any case in lie of that

what else can you do what other levers

can you pull and I think the in real

life relational component is the lever

that makes all other levers easier in a

way. So that's what prompted writing

that blog post. Very nice question. How

can we help you? Whether here in the

Discord book forum just

just try to be

go first with people to quote Gabby Ree.

I interviewed Gabby with Lear Hamilton,

one of the kings of big wave surfing.

And I think her billboard answer was go

first. Just like smile and say hi first.

Just do that. I'd say helping the world

to be just like 1% brighter in some tiny

way, right? Like tip the breeze, like

leave a 20 as a tip like once a month

somewhere. I know that's not necessarily

trivial money for folks, but it's like

give somebody an absurd tip, right? Like

if they're really good, really kind,

just like or it doesn't need like have

an iced tea tip. I'm a 10, right?

Something like that. Doesn't need to be

money. You get the idea. Do I have any

news to share about the notebook? Yeah,

I'm going to I'm going to put on my

diving goggles and get back into it in

the next probably month or two, pretty

soon. have a couple of other things and

I'll have I foresee at least one big

announcement related to other projects

coming up in the next few months. But

going back in, wish me luck. This is a

question from John. Still love the 17

questions.

People can find those 17 questions. I

think they're in Tools of Titans, maybe

Tribe of Mentors, but also on Tim.blog.

There's a PDF with the 17 questions I

most often ask myself.

I've got one

question that I would probably add is

some version of what is the most

generous interpretation of this.

Right?

I have been trained since a wee little

lad

to be pretty

anger forward. Let's just say if I were

a wine, very anger forward. And

the way that shows up, there are to get

fancy myriad ways this shows up. One is

that

some days

I can just feel like the entire world is

conspiring to make me annoyed. And

obviously that's not true, right? But

if it seems like someone is ripping you

off, right? which does happen

most of the time. It's probably just a

misunderstanding, right? So, what's the

most generous interpretation? If you

feel like your significant other did

something to annoy you,

did something to annoy you, or they

always do X, they never do Y. Like,

okay. Well, what's the most generous

interpretation of this?

And I'm borrowing this from other

people, but I feel like that is a very

helpful question.

And you could pair that with a bunch of

other ones. I think Christa Tippet,

great podcaster by the way, but Christa

Tippet, one of the OGs

on Being, I believe, is her podcast. And

I believe it's Christa. I might be

misattributing, but at least I'm not

saying Oscar Wild or Abe Lincoln that

she said anger is pain shown in public.

Something like that, right? So you can

apply that to yourself too if you're a

little

anger forward.

And that doesn't mean naval gaze and you

have to do 12 years of therapy to figure

it out. like what is the most generous

interpretation of this? Whatever this

might be, I would add that to my

questions. Okay, if you go to a city and

you have two days, what are your go-to

activities? Bicycle tour, bike tour, for

sure.

One of the best ways to meet locals,

figure out what's fun that isn't just a

glossy photo,

post it on Instagram

or an ex super expensive

three Michelin star restaurant, bicycle

tour, hang out, you know, also hang out

with, you don't have to actually stay at

a hostel, but like go talk to the

manager of a hostel or somebody who

works the front desk and has been there

for a couple years. They'll have lots of

great recommendations. Okay. Where does

accumulating wealth fall on my scale of

overall success?

Zero.

It's like, look,

I mean, a lot of wealthy people make a

lot of excuses as to why they need to

keep making money. Like, well, you know,

I could give money now, but if I

compound at such and such, compounded

annual growth rate, and then, you know,

I'll give it away when I'm dead,

basically, or yada yada yada. I just

don't buy it. You know, working dogs who

have been tracing a rabbit around a

track their whole lives in sixth gear

get very good at chasing something in

sixth gear. So, they want to continue

doing that. I'm not holding myself up as

some enlightened being. I've just had

the benefit of seeing so many people

crash and burn or just end up with this

existential malaise because when they

actually pause for a second if they do

pause and sometimes life's life life

forces you to pause with a divorce or

medical emergency they have this

maybe sense of hollowess or certainly

not a sense of fulfillment. So I've just

seen that so many times. It's like

accumulating wealth. Who cares?

It's just like how many people can give

you the full name of Alexander the

Great, right? It's like nobody's going

to remember you. Nobody's going to

remember me. Nobody's going to remember

us. It's okay. It's totally fine. It's

actually very freeing.

It's like every everybody should read I

think it's Percy Shelly. Azymandas.

Yeah, Percy

Shelly. Azymandas. Everybody should find

this. Oz Y M- N D I A S. So good.

Everybody should read Aussy Mandas. What

do I prioritize instead of wealth

relationships? And this sounds so trit,

but it's like there are people who say

that and then you go visit them and

you're like, "Holy shit." like their

kids hate them and like they never see

their best friends or their quote

unquote best friends are constantly a

different roster because

as Arthur Brooks would put it, they're

deal friends, not real friends, right?

But

I mean, the past year review helps to

make this point for me over and over

again. And if you don't know what the

hell I'm talking about, just search my

name in past year review. But thinking

about it's like, okay, who are the 10

most important people in your life? Did

you spend as much time as you would like

to spend with them last year? If the

answer is no, invest in those 10 before

you invest in anyone else, right? And

track the results. Then you look back,

look at the number of peak positive

experiences, right? Energetically,

emotionally, whatever it is over that

quarter, that year. It's not something

you have to do all the time. and you're

like, "Oh, yeah. Doubling down on those

10 really made my year so much better."

Blocking out time with those people in

advance made it so much better. Okay,

let's do more of that.

So, yeah, that's about it. Yeah, it

might have been Tara Brock who talked

about the

anger is fear on the outside. Who knows?

Some smart person who's a lot chiller

than I am said that. David,

here we go. As a soon to be father, I'm

thinking a lot about parenthood. If you

started a family, what would be the top

three values or lessons you'd hope to

instill in your children?

I have thought about this a lot and I've

had I've been able to watch what has

worked and what has not worked. I think

optimism,

resourcefulness,

and like lots of physical activity, lots

of physical activity. You got to run

that dog. Tired dog is a happy dog. So,

yeah, optimism. I think Mike Maples Jr.

was the first person who really

underscored this. He has a bunch of kids

who have turned out well. Optimism is

kind of number one. It's like the mother

quality that enables all else.

Resourcefulness, I would say I think

Maya Angelou actually said courage is

sort of the mother quality cuz

everything else at its breaking point

depends on it. So I had something which

is like no failure only feedback. Just

encouraging them to try stuff. Positive

reinforcement. Try stuff. Try stuff. I

mean, this applies to dog training, too,

but some of my friends who have never

had dogs get all pissed off and get

their knickers in a twist when I compare

kids to dogs. I know they're not the

same, but you know what?

Shapi behavior is pretty similar across

mammals. Anyway, optimism, courage slash

try a bunch of [ __ ] It's fine. It's

just feedback. And then resourcefulness.

And I think if you have optimism and

you're willing to try a bunch of stuff,

aka use courage in certain ways, then I

think resourcefulness is a byproduct of

that. So those would be the things I

would focus on. And lots and lots and

lots and lots of physical activity

together as a family, right?

Okay. Rachel, thought I'd throw out an

odd question this time. Have you Have

you ever been on a treasure hunt or

geocache? What's the weirdest, coolest,

most unexpected thing you found out in

the wilderness? Could be something

natural or unnatural.

Well,

black bear stole a leg from my elk last

year. That was pretty annoying. And we

found it chewed to all sorts of into all

sorts of mangled contortions. That was a

bummer. Don't want to have sloppy

seconds after a bear has gotten into

your elk leg. Just pro tip. I've been on

treasure hunts and geocaches. I would

say the thing that comes to mind, which

is somewhat unrelated to your question,

is that if people are like, "What's the

most interesting way you've lost money?"

Because I do get my face ripped off then

and again, part of the early stage

investing game. I invested in treasure

hunters, very famous treasure hunters

who were searching for sunken Spanish

gallions full of gold bars and all sorts

of stuff. And ultimately one of the

people involved just absconded with all

of the investor money and it turned into

this like where in the world is Karmen

San Diego [ __ ] debacle. But you know

makes for a story. So once again don't

bet money you cannot afford to lose

especially when it involves Spanish

gallions.

Oh good lordy lordy lordy. This is

coming back to encodings. Cindy, you and

Jim Collins talked about encoding. This

is a term that Jim uses which is

somewhat comparable to strengths. Like

what are your innate strengths? Right.

So, we spoke about that. I'd love if

you'd go deeper on the topic. Share more

about how it resonated with you

personally and give additional practical

advice on how people currently locked

into work or career situations can

progress with a plan towards living

fully within their encoded selves.

I find that asking your best friends,

could be family members,

could also be employees. 360

reviews can be very brutal. You can

listen to my conversation with Joe

Gibbia, co-founder of Airbnb, about how

brutal that can be. Doesn't have to be

brutal, though. I would say that a

couple of questions come up that I have

asked close friends, some of my best

friends, people who know me really well.

when have you seen me at my best? Or

when do you see me at my best? But it's

good to have practical examples or

concrete examples from the past. Not

just like when you tend to do this, you

tend to do that. It's like no, give me

an example. Like when have you seen me

at my best? When have you seen me at my

worst? Like what stories or memories

come to mind? Then what is easier for me

than for other people, right? What do

you see in me that I'm I find easier

than most people? Jim didn't like that

question, right? Because he wanted it

all to be internally individually

referenced. But this is how I do it. I

actually do find that aspect helpful cuz

then you're not only finding strengths,

you're finding strengths that allow you

to potentially compete. And I I just

like having both if I can.

And then you could ask, you know, what

this is very closely related to the last

one, but what what strength or ability

do I discount in myself,

right? there's certain things a friend

of mine was making a point about

something related to startups recently

and I was like yeah I mean it doesn't

strike me as particularly special

because ABNC and he's like that's the

problem he's like you can't see it

because like you're the fish swimming in

the water and I was like huh okay then I

bounced it off a few other people and

they're like yeah that's like a [ __ ]

weird superpower of yours and I don't

understand it and I was like oh never

really realized so what strengths or

ability do I discount in myself right

this is you using that question for

somebody else or not harness, right? It

could be discounting, could just be like

what strength or ability am I not using

that I have? And

one question that can infer a lot of the

answers to these others also is if I

weren't doing X, whatever your current

gig is, like what could you see me

doing, right? And

I feel like if you ask enough people who

know you well enough and who aren't

going to [ __ ] you, who will also be

willing to answer questions about your

weaknesses, right? In other words,

example given, when have you seen me at

my worst, if they can't answer that,

they're not going to give you fully

candidate advice. So, I would say those

are a few of the approaches that I've

used and I've found them very helpful.

Geocaching. A lot of people here into

geocaching. Yeah, I mean sure it'd be

fun. I've also dreamed about doing

orientering courses which I think could

be super super fascinating. This is the

last question. I think it's a good one

to end on. Is courage external or

internal? How do you teach it to kids? I

think courage is learned. You have to

practice it. And

if you're not afraid, it's not courage.

Right? If someone's fearless, they're by

definition not using courage. You have

to be afraid of something. So, you can

edge yourself and you can edge kids into

that, right? It's not like, "Hey, you've

never been in the water before. Let's

take you up to do cliff diving." No, no.

Yeah. I mean, that's unhelpful fear with

severe consequences. It's like you can

stair step into it. But I think I don't

think courage is a decision. I don't

think courage is something you get from

reading a book. I don't think courage is

something that you can develop

abstractly. I think you have to prove to

yourself that you have it. And the only

way your subconscious will believe it is

if you are actually doing things that

are uncomfortable.

That's it.

Which means it is learnable. And there

may be some

set point that contributes to it right

in one way or another. Right? And if

you're Alex Hunnel and your amydala is

like basically asleep, it's like, okay,

well, right, that explains a few things.

But it's also something that you can

very

sequentially sort of expose yourself to

just like you would to build a tan or to

get stronger in the gym. I think it's

through action, right? It's like

progressive resistance that you develop

courage. And it's very I've seen my

friends do this with their kids and this

is also why the physical activity is

very very helpful to prove kids to prove

to kids or help them prove to themselves

that they can do hard things right like

okay sure you could wait until they can

sit down with calculus and try to figure

that out or you could be like yeah that

thing that you're nervous about doing

like hitting a baseball climbing a

whatever you know 5'9 in a indoor

climbing gym like yeah okay let's get

after

All right, I will I will stop there,

guys. I appreciate somebody asked, "When

is Alex Hold coming on the podcast?" I

had him on about six months before he

free soloed LCAP. If you want to if you

want to listen to Alex Honold before he

got media polished, my podcast is a good

way to start.

Great guy, but it was before he got

polished for Prime Time. And that's

about it. All right, ladies and

gentlemen. appreciate you taking the

time and thanks for all the great

questions.

And be safe out there. Be just a bit

kinder than is necessary to others, yes,

but to yourself also. Go first. Smile.

Say hi. Thanks everybody.