Discover Sahil Bloom's Secrets: How to Transform Your Life with 5 Types of Wealth

[00:00:07] Sahil Blooms is one of probably the wisest people I've had on the podcast. Young guy, just wrote the book, The 5 Types of Wealth. And he's talking about time wealth, social wealth, mental wealth, physical wealth, and of course, financial wealth. And he basically has developed ways for himself and for others, content that he's shared in his newsletter and on Twitter and in this book.

[00:00:34] He's coming up with all these great techniques for increasing your wealth in each of these categories. And, you know, and he says things in such a concise and easy way to understand there is just so much value in this episode. This is another episode I'm certainly going to share with my kids, you know, just as like an example, he and he almost has like a mathematical way of thinking about these things.

[00:01:02] Like for instance, for career success, and this really works for any type of success or any of these types of wealth, he, Sahil introduces the idea of asymmetry. So what small things you can do that yield really great outsized rewards. So rewards that seem much greater than the small effort that was put in.

[00:01:26] So an example from career success is like, if you always fetch coffee for the boss and you always do a good job with that, the boss is more likely to trust you with bigger and bigger jobs and, and potentially promotions and higher salaries and so on, because you're the person that delivered and on a very small thing.

[00:01:46] It requires zero effort, but many people don't put in that slightly, slightly extra effort in career, but it's the same thing with social wealth, financial wealth, mental wealth. Like what are those small things you can do that greatly increases your wealth in each category?

[00:02:04] And again, this is an episode I plan on, on sharing with a lot of people, but here is Sahil Bloom, the author of the five types of wealth, a transformative guide to design your dream life. This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is the James Altucher show.

[00:02:39] Book deals right now are very much a function of how many social media followers you have, or, or kind of direct connections you have in some way to communicate to people, whether through newsletter or social media, whatever. How many newsletter subscribers did you have? I had 130,000 newsletter subscribers when I signed that deal. And I think Twitter, maybe I had 500 or so thousand, no Instagram, no LinkedIn. So it was basically just Twitter and the newsletter at the time.

[00:03:05] So I feel like you did a real, and we talked about this when you first were starting your, your newsletter and your Twitter account was growing. Like, I feel like you made a very concerted strategy to build social media, do newsletter, get book deal, have career. I mean, you already had, like, you had been involved in venture capital and other things, but like, that's how people know you is from, it was, and, and I appreciate that.

[00:03:32] I feel like 10 years ago or more, I was doing that strategy. What did you do now? Would you say, what were the most successful techniques? And then we're going to get into your book. And I already did an intro about your book, but what do you think were the most successful techniques you use to kind of build this career for yourself? It's interesting.

[00:03:51] I often think that success stories are these like ex post narratives applied to a chain of events that actually didn't really have a narrative attached to them. I sort of, if I'm being totally self-aware, feel that in the context of my own sort of trajectory. Like, I think it's very easy now to look back and say, okay, yeah, when I was working in private equity, I decided I was going to be an author and I was going to make a career.

[00:04:20] And so I started on Twitter, then I launched a newsletter. I grew it, then I signed a book deal, then I did these things. But the reality was there was no clear strategy to any of that. I very much followed my own sort of energy. And then what I was actually being pulled towards by customers, by, you know, by an audience or by the people that were finding value in the work that I was putting out. And so Twitter was the first because it was the lowest lift. I was still working full time and creating content there.

[00:04:49] At the time, there was a clear arbitrage around longer form content on Twitter, you know, the thread format, quote unquote, which at the time was brand new, didn't really exist. That drove a bunch of growth. From there, it was very effective and easy to drive people from the longer form content on Twitter to say, oh, I'm going to go deeper on these topics that are inherently surface level on Twitter. In this newsletter, sign up here, you could just kind of port people over in significant quantities.

[00:05:16] And so I sort of scaled the zero to one phase of the newsletter by driving people from Twitter over there. That was in 2021. And then threads got saturated. You know, they became this like meme. Everyone was doing them because they were effective. Like any market, they get exploited. They no longer work. It's almost like a joke. Like everyone's out there saying, I read 275 hours of the Koran so you don't have to. Here's the five things I learned.

[00:05:44] Yeah, I mean, it became a total meme, right? Like in some sense, like ruined Twitter for a period of time where like you couldn't log on without having that. And there are ways with all of these platforms to curate your algorithm. And you can say like not interested in this, whatever, and it does a pretty good job. But the prevalence of them, I've always thought that these things just follow markets. And so when people view there as being an opportunity or an arbitrage, everyone rushes into that. It squeezes the opportunity out and no longer exists.

[00:06:12] Those kind of things are much less prevalent because they don't have the same growth impact that they did before. But at the time, they were effective. Drove people over to the newsletter. The newsletter, I was just writing because I really enjoy writing. It's how I think clearly is by writing. And it was exploring topics that I was interested in, exploring things that I was wrestling with personally on my own journey. Especially as I was transitioning in my own life into this new world. As we were having a kid, I was starting to wrestle with all of these different things in my life that I'd never wrestled with.

[00:06:41] These sort of universal questions. And that process and writing of the newsletter and the growth of that was what started to spark the idea of, Okay, everyone keeps asking me when am I going to write a book to go even deeper on these concepts. That seems like something that I would really enjoy doing. A big meaty project that I could really take on and enjoy. And so I sort of got pulled into it from there. And, you know, you mentioned how threads were saturated on Twitter.

[00:07:09] But another thing that I feel was saturated, but you succeeded in overcoming that, was kind of this sort of self-help style content. Like, I feel like, again, I was doing that much earlier, like in like, let's say 2010 to 2015 on Twitter, which led up to my, you know, one of my books. And, but then I got tired of it because I felt like everybody was doing self-help style content. But yours really stood out.

[00:07:38] I mean, that's why, you know, you were on the podcast and whether it was 2021 or 2022, we can't remember. But yours really stood out. And like, so there's two aspects of that when I look at it from outside. There's a skill aspect, like you enjoyed writing and somehow you develop. Even a tweet, like a good tweet could take hours. Like there's a skill involved and a good thread even more. And so there's a skill aspect, but there's also a kind of a personal journey aspect. Like you said, what the content you were exploring was stuff that was happening in your life.

[00:08:08] Like, what do you think had your content stand out? I think that there's an element of people being able to relate or see themselves in the things that you are talking about and the way that you're talking about it. And I think that that goes beyond something that is definable to how someone can relate to the person that they're reading the content from.

[00:08:31] Um, it basically says that the same exact piece of content from, you know, set from an anonymous account versus from your account will perform better under your account because the person feels like they can see themselves in you in some way. I think there's an element of that for people that are sort of within my life stage or age cohort. I'm not like, I'm not doing the, you know, standing in front of private jets. I was like, don't, I don't live my life that way. I don't have that kind of money.

[00:08:58] Like I'm not, my life is sort of in some ways feels relatable, I think. And so when I'm talking about it, when I'm wrestling with these different topics, there's an element where people just feel like they can connect with it. And sort of like a guy you might be able to have a beer with type way. The other piece, which I just think about all the time is the vast majority of self-help content is about answers and it's about forcing one specific answer down your throat.

[00:09:23] Generally speaking, the reason for that is because the person that's forcing it down your throat has something to sell you on the back end of it. Meaning they have a course, they have a mastermind, they have some offer where they're like, here's the answer. So you want to get in shape? Well, here's the only way to do it. Here's the answer. And then by the way, you can buy my like coaching thing, whatever it is. Or here's the only way to make money, buy my, you know, course on how to do that.

[00:09:45] I have taken a completely inverted approach in my own mind, which is I am all about questions and I really want to help people ask better questions. My fundamental belief there is that maybe that is a slower and longer term approach because I think you can grow faster and reach more people fast. If you take a very clear angle and answer to the entire problem. But I think that the questions are universal.

[00:10:11] And so my belief is that with questions rather than answers as the focus, I can connect with an 80 year old reader just as much as I can with a 15 year old. So a couple of things I want to dig on on that. And I'm asking this almost selfishly. I'm curious now what I know what I like when I read content and I agree with you. It has to be relatable. It has to be, oh, this is a real person and not someone just trying to kind of farm engagement for some ulterior purpose. I strongly agree with you on that.

[00:10:40] But what do you mean specifically? Like what are specific questions that you found that surprised you even that you found you were asking in your own life, but other many other people were relating to it. I think one of the biggest ones has just been around wrestling with the nature of time as you reach this, these different inflection points in your own journey.

[00:11:04] And I think they happen at a variety of stages in your life where you have this recognition that time is no longer the sort of permanent, infinite asset that you thought it was in your youth. And you come to terms with it in a variety of different ways that your time is very finite and very impermanent. Why did you realize that? Like I'm older than you and I feel like I have infinite amount of time left. I don't know why I feel that way.

[00:11:34] It's just I don't think about age at all. I maybe have not thought about it as much with myself as I have with seeing this juxtaposition of the newness of my son's life with the aging of my parents. And that was a really challenging thing at first, just seeing that. Like there was so much youth and beauty and excitement in my son's birth.

[00:12:00] And it was framed alongside this first of its kind experience in my life that my parents weren't going to be around forever and that they were slowing down and that they were on the tail end of their life while my son was just beginning his. And that experience was hard to reconcile. Reconcile, it was hard to put into words and the wrestling and the grappling with that was some of the most powerful content that I think I created.

[00:12:30] And frankly, was the framing for the entire book in the first place. So you're going through this, you know, you're about to have a kid. Maybe your parents have some ailments. They're exhibiting signs of aging that you had never seen before. How did that distill into some content that you had a reaction to? I was really exploring like this whole idea of ways to think about and measure time.

[00:12:56] And so I went deep down the rabbit hole on both the like scientific side of time. Carlo Rovelli has a few great pieces on it. He's been on the podcast. Really great guy. Oh, amazing. And then, you know, on the more philosophical side, like, you know, Tim Urban and others who have written on it.

[00:13:12] And I was able to frame, I think, a lot of those pieces, which have been inherently sort of longer and more abstract into some really human topics and distillations in short, you know, three to five minute reads that we're able to reach and really connect with a lot of people in a way that I saw very quickly had an actual tangible impact in their actions. I mean, I was getting messages.

[00:13:36] I still do about people who have taken the extra trip with their parents, have been more present with their kids, have moved to live closer to their families. Actually taking action on something that you read on the Internet is remarkable to me. Yeah, there's a concept Tim Urban's brought up. Actually, Tim Ferriss has brought up, which I think is very powerful. It's a little depressing, too.

[00:13:57] Let's say your parents are 65 years old and let's say you see them twice a year, you know, Thanksgiving and maybe some other, you live on opposite sides of the country. You're busy pursuing your career there in New Hampshire. You're in Silicon Valley or whatever. And you might see them based on the fact that the average lifespan might be 76. You might see them only 20 more times in your life.

[00:14:23] And when you put it in that perspective, you have 20 more moments left with your parents, 20 more days. You're going to see your parents. You grew up with them. You spent 18 straight years with them. And now there's only 20 more days left, like a punch card you could punch off. So I think looking at time in that respect is very powerful for me. I put that in the perspective of my kids or friends or whatever.

[00:14:46] I think that is a very powerful concept that you have reminded people of and kind of a lot of your content is around that idea, including in this book. Yeah. I think there's a lot of power in general in shining a light on things that people know in the back of their minds. And shining a light on them specifically in a way that makes them more actionable.

[00:15:09] Like I tend to think in general, you know, like if I'm going to get, if I hear pushbacks on things that I share, whether in the book or in any content, the most common pushback is like, oh, well, this isn't new. I've heard this before. I totally agree. Like I don't claim, I don't walk around saying this is the most novel, craziest, brand new idea in the world. That's not my thing. And that's not really what I aspire to do for the very simple reason that I actually don't really believe there's anything new under the sun.

[00:15:38] When it comes to contemplating the human experience, Aristotle probably already did it. Socrates probably already did it. Marcus Aurelius probably already did it. Everything is standing on the shoulders of a whole series of giants over the course of history. The entire point is that everyone has done that, but that doesn't mean that you can't frame it in a slightly better, more actionable way that allows someone right now to go and do something with it. And if you can do that, then that's valuable. I agree.

[00:16:05] And by the way, when I mentioned like Tim Urban and Tim Ferriss bringing up these concepts as well, I didn't mean that in a way that. Oh, I didn't take it that way. I'm more just like my point is that I think those guys are fantastic. I definitely stand on the shoulders of giants the same way I think they stood on the shoulders of giants the same way that everyone has in the past. And I think that there is a lot of I think there's a lot of good that comes from doing that in a way that makes it more actionable for someone today to go and do something with it.

[00:16:32] And also, I think it's not necessarily the case that the idea itself is what attracts people. It's also the storytelling. Like you tell stories alongside these ideas. You know, storytelling is like the bridge, how ideas get from your brain to other brains. And also then there's, you're always going to have your particular take. Like their take might be, oh, I only have so many more years to change careers or write books.

[00:17:00] And your take is this kind of bridge between your kids' existence and your parents' lives. And so everybody's got their take and different people relate to each take as well. Or like how Ryan Holiday has sort of brought this philosophy of Stoicism into the modern age by telling stories about, you know, leaders and people and whatever who in today's day and age who are modern day Stoics. I feel like you're very similar in that respect.

[00:17:25] Ryan is amazing in that exact vein of like he has taken and applied a modern lens to something ancient and, you know, and brought and really like revived an entire movement around thinking that way, which is just incredible in terms of the value it's created. I think with you also, you basically have this problem, which is, you know, how do you make the best use of your time wealth and how do you create time wealth and then use it?

[00:17:52] And then there are techniques that you like that essentially you've curated through personal experience and storytelling. You've curated this group of techniques that fashioned how you built the five types of, of wealth. And then people have responded to you through your newsletter and social media. Then you write this book. And so I feel like that I always try to figure out the process of the writers who are on the podcast. And it seems like that was your process roughly.

[00:18:21] Yeah, I have, you know, had the great fortune of having this very fertile testing ground for a lot of ideas over the course of the last three, four years, both with Twitter, the social media platforms, but also with the newsletter. And even more so than that, which is something that goes under the radar is the human stories that I tell in the book, which I would argue are some of the more powerful elements of the book because they allow you to see yourself and connect with them.

[00:18:46] We're almost all sourced from newsletter readers who, without being prompted, had replied to things that I had written that they connected with and shared their stories. And then I was able to spend time with them and really go deeper on those stories. So the newsletter became this like luck magnet of sorts for attracting these incredible human stories into my worldview. Take a quick break. If you like this episode, I'd really, really appreciate it.

[00:19:16] It means so much to me. Please share it with your friends and subscribe to the podcast. Email me at Alcatra at gmail.com and tell me why you subscribed. Thanks. Talk about the five types of wealth. Like how, before we get it, so the five types of time, social, mental, physical, financial wealth.

[00:19:44] What was a point where you felt poor in any of these areas? I felt very poor across all of them in 2020 and 2021. I had spent the first seven years of my career very much marching down the traditional path to what everyone tells you a successful life is going to look like. What were you doing? I was working in finance and investing, you know, very much climbing up the mountain that people tell you is the mountain you should want to climb out of school.

[00:20:09] You go to the good school, you get the job in finance, you work your way up, you become a partner, you, you know, make X million dollars, whatever the thing is. That's sort of the path. And I was on that and I was doing those things. And from the outside looking in, you would have said I was winning the game. But unfortunately, these other areas of my life had really started to suffer. Like what? You know, my relationships with the people that I cared about most in the world had started to show cracks and fall apart.

[00:20:38] My relationship with my parents, I wasn't seeing them at all. I was seeing them about once a year at that point, living 3,000 miles away. My relationship with my sister had ground to a halt for a variety of reasons. My wife and I were struggling to conceive at the time that was creating strain in our life. I was drinking six, seven nights a week. My mental and physical health were in disarray. I was working nonstop and that was basically the only thing I was focused on.

[00:21:05] I had effectively gotten to the point where I had so narrowly focused on the one thing of accumulating money that I was starting to lose everything else. So how did you kind of begin to? Obviously, there's self-awareness is a key component. You had to be aware that this was a problem. And I think that's really hard until it becomes a massive problem.

[00:21:29] I don't know if it became a massive problem for you, but what was some triggering factors and then how did you start changing? Yeah, I mean, the big trigger point was a single conversation. If you ever heard the analogy of the boiling frog, if you drop a frog into boiling water, it'll immediately jump out and save itself. But if you place a frog into lukewarm water and bring it to a boil, it'll stay in there until it dies.

[00:21:54] Those tiny, slow, incremental changes are very hard for us to notice, basically, is the point. And I was sort of like that boiling frog. There was never one big shock moment because it was slow. It was happening over long periods of time. And I think I would have been cooked if not for this one conversation. I went out with an old friend. We sat down for a drink. He asked how I was doing. This is in May of 2021. And I told him that it had started to get difficult living so far away from my parents who were getting older, living on the East Coast.

[00:22:23] We were 3,000 miles away in California. And he asked how old they were. I said mid-60s. He asked how often I saw them. I said about once a year at this point. And he just looked at me and said, okay, so you're going to see your parents 15 more times before they die. And, you know, that's that Tim Urban math, you know, from his essay, The Tail End.

[00:22:49] That just shocked me back into reality of the amount of time we have left with these people that we care about most in the world. Is that finite? That countable? That you can place it onto a few hands? That idea shocked me back into reality. And I realized in that moment that if something didn't change, we were going to end up, my wife and I, in a place where we didn't want to be. We were not marching towards our true values, our true north, if you will, in our own lives.

[00:23:18] And that we needed a sharp pivot. We needed a hard change in order to sort of get back course correct. And so what did you do? Well, the next day I sat down with my wife and we had a pretty candid conversation about what we wanted that true north to be, what our center really was. And within 45 days, I had left my job. We had sold our house in California. Wow. And we moved 3,000 miles across the country to live closer to both of our sets of parents.

[00:23:46] When you quit your job, were people saying, are you crazy? Once you leave, you can't get back into this. People just thought I burned out. I mean, I explained the rationale around family and wanting to live closer. You know, originally, I just thought I would go work for another firm sort of like that on the East Coast. And so it wasn't that shocking of a change. But I think for the most part, people just assumed like, oh, he kind of burned out. He'd been working here seven years, time for a break. I didn't go to business school. That happens, right? People do that.

[00:24:16] They travel around the world for a year because they burned out. That decision was sort of a spark that changed everything because in that moment, we had taken an action and created time. And there was a realization there that like that number 15 more times before they die is now in the hundreds. We took an action. And now my parents, I see them multiple times a month. They're a huge part of my son, their grandson's life.

[00:24:43] We had done something and actually created time for the things that we care about. That was sort of the spark that really brought to the fore in my mind, this idea that you can take action to build your life around the things that are your priorities. You can actually redefine what success looks like to you, what a life of wealth looks like to you. By moving 3,000 miles away and being close to your parents, did you reduce expenses? And plus, you had savings from selling the house?

[00:25:12] Financially, I'm trying to think back to what the actual approach was. So when I moved, I had started the newsletter. There was some early seeds of some businesses that were starting from this kind of like side things. So from an actual income perspective, I still had some income. And actually, once I told my other, my firm that I was leaving, that I wasn't going to be joining a competing firm. They originally thought, I'm going to join a competing firm. Obviously, then you kind of have a hard break.

[00:25:41] But I wasn't doing that. I was going to explore this new opportunity, these creative pursuits. I actually stayed on as an advisor to the old firm. So I still had income as well from that for a few board roles that I had previously held. So you were on the private equity side, you really were on like partnership track. Like you were on boards of companies that they had invested in. Yeah, I was on four boards at the time. That's a lot. Yeah, I was on four boards. And I stayed on those four for another 12 or so months, as long as I was still, you know, remotely valuable.

[00:26:11] And then at that point, sort of started to graduate off them. But yeah, no, I was very much on the track. And frankly, it was a great firm, great group of people. I really love a lot of those people. We still have great relationships. It was very much on me. Like I don't even know how to describe this unless you've experienced it, that I had grown so narrowly focused on money being the path to me feeling good as a human being.

[00:26:36] Like I had all this insecurity built up in me from my years of childhood and my early years of my life that I kind of thought that that money was the external solution to the internal problem. That I was going to wake up one day and feel good about myself when I made X million dollars or when I got whatever the title was or if I got Forbes 30 under 30. And I was chasing those summits thinking like, okay, here's the arrival. Once I hit that, then I'm going to have arrived.

[00:27:02] There's this great quote in the movie Cool Runnings that I talk about in the book where the coach of the team says to one of the players, a gold medal is a wonderful thing. But if you're not enough without it, you'll never be enough with it. That was very much the story of the path that I was on. Not realizing that yes, the gold medal, whatever the title, the number, the bonus, whatever the thing is, it's a wonderful thing. But if you're not feeling like enough without that thing, you're never going to feel like enough with it. Yeah.

[00:27:31] And like also you are working in the business of money that's in private equity or VC or hedge funds. It's basically money is in every conversation. I remember myself being in the hedge fund business, when you run into people who are, let's say, at another fund or did some deals. One of the first questions my buddies and I would always say, okay, what's he worth? What's his, is he at a hundred million? Is he like, that's a big topic of conversation is how much everybody is worth.

[00:28:01] So it becomes part of your mental hierarchy of where you stand in that as well. Yeah. I mean, it's sort of the societally, it is the default scoreboard that we all use. You know, you like walk into a room, if you go to a cocktail party and there's sort of this like natural hierarchy that has formed in everyone's mind of like who has done the best, who's the most successful. And the success is just measured in terms of financial success.

[00:28:25] The whole point of what I'm trying to get across is that you can actually create your own definition of success. You can opt out of that decision. And then I think most people would be a lot happier and a lot more fulfilled if they did opt out and if they created their own definition. In the chapter about mental wealth, which I want to ask you to define, you talk a lot about purpose and finding your purpose.

[00:28:47] And I think this is really hard for people, particularly when they're young, not only because of their youth, but because there is no one purpose necessarily that someone has. But how would you, and you describe some techniques in the book, but when you move 3000 miles, you're without the job. Sure. You're going to see your parents more and you're going to raise a family. But how did you go about kind of figuring out what you should move towards now that you weren't moving towards partnership at the firm? Like that was this huge hole.

[00:29:15] Now you had a huge hole before of time. Well, you know, lack of time wealth, but now you have another huge hole, which is you got to find kind of career purpose. Yeah. I believe that a lot of value comes from understanding and following and leaning into your energy in those periods. Like what are the things that are actually sort of pulling you towards them?

[00:29:38] And I create this map in my mind of what are the activities that are high competency and high energy, meaning I'm very skilled at them. They feel sort of easy to me. And I get a lot of energy out of doing them. Those activities are generally speaking things where you are going to do very well.

[00:29:55] And whether that do very well and financially lucrative or whether it's societally useful or whether it's meaningful to you, whatever it might be, you are probably going to achieve one of those, or if not more than one of them within that realm, within that sort of part of the, of a two by two matrix, if you will. I sort of explored that. I created, I mean, I kind of, I call it now my pursuit map, but I thought about what are those things that are really high energy for me? Meaning I feel pulled towards them. I feel lifted up.

[00:30:23] I feel this kind of intrinsic interest and want to lean into those things. And I feel high competency at them. I feel like I could be one of the best in the world at this thing. And writing and the content that I was creating and the ideas that I was sharing was the number one thing in that realm. And part of that and part of the energy loop that was happening there was that I was hearing from people on a weekly basis that were impacted positively by the things I was sharing.

[00:30:50] And so I started getting this like natural dopamine flywheel of I'm doing something that is meaningful to other people. There are people out there all over the world that are reading the things that I'm sharing and they're finding value in it. And no one can tell me that it's not good if someone out there is being impacted by the thing. It, you know, like it doesn't matter. It doesn't need to be for everyone. It needs to be for the one person that is finding value in this thing that is seeing some improvement in their life, taking some action.

[00:31:19] That really started to pull me into it. And so I never really had this long purpose gap, if you will. Like I never had this long period of aimlessness. I was pulled immediately down this path and started to feel it very quickly. That doesn't mean there weren't struggles in terms of the daily motivation to do it, the structure, which is really big change going from a structured environment to an unstructured one. But the purpose side was pretty well sorted.

[00:32:02] If you were to talk to someone who's like a 24 or 25 year old person who's waiter or waitress somewhere trying to figure out what they need to do with their life, they got some useless degree. What could they, what action could they take today? What could they start to do? I would start to map that out. I would make a two by two grid of energy on one axis and competency on the other axis. I have this in the book, in the mental wealth section, this grid.

[00:32:29] Over the course of a week, sort of map out activities that you are doing, like actual current activities in your day-to-day work or in your day-to-day life to where they sort of sit within that grid. If competency is like a question, you can ask people around you or you can just take your best guess at how you sort of feel your competency level. Is that the thing? And then energy, get a feel for what are the things that you really feel pulled towards versus that feel draining to you in your life.

[00:32:56] That starts to narrow you in on the types of activities that you're going to want to lean into long term. There is an assumption that they haven't been already drained by, you know, 12 hour shifts till four in the morning, you know, trudging home, trying to sleep, waking up, going to the next shift. Like sometimes people get depressed and they want to find a purpose, but they really just, they just have no clue even how to ask those questions.

[00:33:25] Then nothing draws them. Nothing. Yeah, I don't think by the way, like your purpose doesn't have to be your work. I think there's like a default incorrect assumption that most people make that like you have to find a purpose that is your work. I personally actually don't define my purpose around my work. I really think my purpose is to create ripples in the world, just in whatever form that may come. That could come through family actions, that could come through writing that I do, that could come through sort of anything that I'm putting out.

[00:33:53] I would say my highest order purpose is to just provide for my wife and son. If I were to sort of pull everything away and strip everything away, that is the number one thing that I really would define as my purpose. And I would do whatever I have to do in order to do that. So like if all hell broke loose and I needed to flip burgers at McDonald's to provide for my son, I would do that. I mean, I would have no problem doing that because I really do define that as the one thing that truly matters at the end of the day.

[00:34:19] And so if someone says to you, I don't feel drawn to anything, what do you think they're missing? I think that you can find a lot of energy in things that you are not drawn to if you connect them to something you are. If you have something that you care about, whether it's family, whether it's your kids, whether it's parents, whether it's some art that you really like, video games, whatever the thing is, it doesn't need to be your work. And your work can suck.

[00:34:45] But if you are going to work and you're connecting it to that thing that you actually enjoy or appreciate or value in some way, you can get energy for the thing that sucks. I spent time with this guy that's a factory worker during my book research process. He puts together widgets on a factory assembly line for 10 hours a day. He hates his job. Zero, like, you know, there's not an enjoyable set of work that he's doing. It's monotonous. It's boring. It's long hours.

[00:35:10] But his purpose, as he defines it, is to be the father that he never had and to provide for his boys in a way that he didn't feel his father did for him. And every day when he goes to work, he connects to that purpose. He views the work that he is doing as in service of that higher order purpose. He's able to actually fulfill that purpose through doing this thing. And so he actually gets energy for it, even though it sucks, even though it's not interesting or energizing for him in any way, because it's connected to something that is. Yeah.

[00:35:39] And so he's willing to do, I mean, he must have friends at the job he likes. Like, there must be some kind of satisfaction at the job or else I feel like if you do it for 30 years, you're going to just die having just done that job.

[00:36:23] And he was doing it seven days a week, every single week. There was no vacations. He didn't get two weeks off. He didn't get to talk about his purpose. He wasn't like, and my grandfather, my dad always talked about him as like a very like pleasant, you know, interesting, thoughtful man. I think this is a new thing in broad strokes. If you look at sort of human society, this desire, this need, this sort of feeling that you have to have this intrinsic enjoyment or sense of purpose in the work that you do.

[00:36:53] And I don't think everyone feels that way. I think that some people do. And if you do, you should go chase that and you should pursue it. But if you don't feel that, if you feel like you can go punch the clock to just create the value that you need to create for the other people and you don't need to live for your job, you can leave and do other things that you live for. That's fine too. Yeah. And so let's say though, so this guy was factory worker. We normally would look down on that. Maybe I even just did a little bit.

[00:37:20] And, but he found purpose in the idea that he was going to be able to provide for his family and this created great joy for him. But again, like, what do you tell the young person who's not getting any joy at all from their job, but hasn't found a purpose, doesn't really have a concept of what draws them. You know, they need a little bit of energy. They almost need like a spark and the spark is not lit to even be, to figure out, to even be able to figure out what, what, what they're drawn to.

[00:37:49] You got to go find something bigger than yourself. I think that over and over again, you find that the common thread of people that are happy or fulfilled is that they are connected to something bigger than themselves. Um, if everything is just about yourself, it becomes very, very difficult.

[00:38:09] If you start to find those things that are connected beyond you, whether it's friendships, community, you know, religious networks, spirituality, or whatever it might be institutions, national, you know, patriotism, sports teams. There just needs to be something that goes beyond yourself that allows you to sort of escape the, um, you know, the death loop of just focusing on you all day, every single day. So it's almost like you have this set of concentric circles.

[00:38:39] So you're in the middle, but then there's maybe this other circle around it, which is friends, another circle around that community, another circle around that. I don't know, some, some brand or sports team or political party. You're a member of something, a circle around that may be religious or spirituality or whatever it is.

[00:39:01] It's almost like you kind of have to draw these circles and see which circle has something in it that you value, whether it's having more friends or better friendships, or whether it's doing more for community or doing more for a sports team you love or TV show you like or whatever. Maybe that's a good technique for beginning that journey towards finding something bigger than yourself. That's important.

[00:39:24] Yeah, I think that there's also just an element of reassuming control and agency over your own life. I think a lot of hopelessness, a lot of feeling lost comes from this feeling of the inability to take an action and create a desired outcome. And when you feel you are unable to do that, you have lost all control in your own life.

[00:39:50] You know, when you feel like you cannot do something and create the desired outcome, you know, push the ball forward in whatever area of life. And I personally would argue that the single fastest way to reassume that control is to start going to the gym, pursue some sort of fitness or physical health related activity. Because within 30 days, you can actually prove to yourself that that is not true. You can prove to yourself that you are capable of taking an action and creating a desired outcome.

[00:40:17] It is why the first thing I say whenever a young person comes to me looking for life advice, they're feeling lost is wake up at 5 a.m. and go work out for 30 straight days. It has nothing to do with, you know, making money. It has nothing to do with anything other than proving to yourself that you are capable of doing something hard and that you are capable of taking actions that create desired outcomes. Yeah, no, that's a really good idea.

[00:40:44] Like I had one kid, uh, I have five kids, two kids, three step kids. One of my kids was feeling kind of down for various reasons and did exactly that. I went to the gym every day and the transformation was unbelievable. Like it really worked and it was amazing how well that worked. So I agree with you completely. But then of course, when you're talking about wealth and you talk again, you have chapters and stories and techniques and social wealth, mental wealth, physical.

[00:41:14] Financial, financial, obviously many people think about financial wealth and. You know, how does, how does one begin on that track? Like you had an idea that, okay, private equity could do it or. Whatever book deal could do it. What's what's. Again, if you're advising some kid or even someone who's in their thirties, has some dead end job, but wants to make more money. Like what's the first step they can take towards financial wealth?

[00:41:41] I think that the most deconstructed version of financial wealth is the most important place to look, which is to say that money earned is just a byproduct of value created. Everything else that you hear sort of on top of that is just complexity added on top of that very basic point, which is if you're creating a lot of value, you will receive value in return.

[00:42:05] And the percentage of the value you create that you actually receive is going to vary at different times. It's going to vary in different constructs, obviously. But the basic rule that if you create a whole bunch of value, you will receive value in return holds very true.

[00:42:21] If you are in any scenario, whether it's starting to build your own thing or whether it's working in a nine to five job, if you focus on creating value for the people around you and for others, that is the most simple and clear path to making more money than you are today. The reason I focus on making more money is because income can scale infinitely. Expenses can only be cut so much.

[00:42:44] And so for most people, the path to generating more financial independence, getting to a place of more financial security is going to be through income generation. The first question I would ask if I was feeling stuck financially would just be, what are some problems that I can identify with people around me? If I'm working in a nine to five job, I would just have a pad and paper for a week and just identify as many problems as I can that other people are experiencing.

[00:43:09] Whether it's problems that my boss seems to have, like friction points, challenges that they're struggling with, problems that my colleagues are having, problems that our customers seem to be having, whatever it might be. Identify a whole bunch of problems. And then look at that list at the end of a week and start thinking about whether you can actually create some sort of solution to those problems. That create a solution could be as simple as just taking the thing off the person's plate.

[00:43:33] I think one of the fastest ways to get ahead in your early career years is to do that with something that your boss has a problem around, like swallow the frog for your boss. If your boss has something that they don't like doing, figure out how to do it, take it off their plate. Guarantee it's an easy way to just get a win early in your career that creates some momentum. What's an example where you did that? I mean, there's a million within private equity, like silly things. You know, car booking services when you're in new places, rental car, you know, returns.

[00:44:03] So you would return your boss's car to the rental place. Yeah. But like simple innocuous things that actually like make the person's life slightly better, more seamless or easier. The rationale, by the way, is not that you're going to get like paid directly for that. It's that then that person trusts you and wants to have you around more. So like if you do that on one trip, they have in their mind that you're like a good person to travel with. And so then you get pulled into the next deal and you're around for the next deal. That might be the opportunity that actually leads to something in the future.

[00:44:32] It has nothing to do with the car return or the coffee that you got or the notes that you took. You know, the thing that you sent around, whatever the thing might be. It is much more about what that actually implies and the ripple effect of that in terms of the opportunities that you get in the future. The point, though, of all of this with creating value is like very few people actually think to take the initiative to do that. So in a nine to five job in particular, almost no one is going to take the time to go above and beyond what their actual job description is.

[00:45:02] So if you do a little bit more, you will be handsomely rewarded. Like that 10 percent more can actually generate 100 percent better outcomes if you play it out over five years. It's really true. Like most people do not do the slight extra you can do. And they have all sorts of reasons for it. Or one being maybe they don't think of it. But even when they think about it, they have all sorts of reasons why they don't do the little bit extra. And it's so easy to do to create, like you say, enormous value.

[00:45:32] 10 percent more could provide 100 percent more value, whatever 100 percent means in that context. But it's very true. And I've noticed that with anyone I've known who's who succeeded. It's those initial stages of success are not hard. Like you say, it's getting the coffee, returning the car, whatever. Yeah, it's sort of like the mental model for all of this. Look for asymmetries in life. That is in this is every area of life, by the way. We're talking about financial wealth and wealth building right now.

[00:46:01] But it could be in your health. It could be in your relationships. It could be in any, you know, with your purpose. It could be in any area of life. Try to find the asymmetries, meaning the places where you can deploy a smaller unit of input and generate significantly outsized output. This is one of those areas simply because so few people are willing to do it. So few people are willing to do that slight extra above and beyond their job description.

[00:46:28] And honestly, like you get yelled at for even suggesting that people do that in a lot of circles. Even saying you could go above and beyond if you want to get ahead, the assertion of that will often have a whole bunch of people getting very angry at you. The reality is that your job description, it's the online ethos. Yeah. I don't know. I've said it before and I've had a bunch of people send me mean messages and replies. It's like that basically like this idea that like, okay, you know, your job description is your job. And that's so that's all you have to do.

[00:46:58] And I totally agree with you, actually. That's true. And if you do that, I can guarantee if you do your job description very well, I can guarantee you will continue to have a job. You know, assuming something bad doesn't happen to the company. You will get promoted probably on a normal timescale. You will get your annual like inflation pay raise over time.

[00:47:19] But if that's not what you want, if you are trying to generate a top 1% outcome or you're trying to break your family out of a paycheck to paycheck cycle or you're trying to accelerate your trajectory, then you have to do more than what the normal person is going to do. It just that just makes sense. Right.

[00:47:36] You have to do more if you want to achieve the more outcome and that requires sacrifice that required the cost of entry to that is doing something that you don't want to do, which is going to be putting in more time, more effort, more energy to put in that additional set of units of input that create the output that you want. But the point is that it is an outsized reward relative to that input. And that's what people don't realize. They think, oh, okay, well, I'm going to do this and I'm not seeing anything yet. So it wasn't worth it. But you don't know what the payoff is.

[00:48:05] It just takes a little bit longer. And then all of a sudden you see it. You're like, oh, my God, I can connect that to that tiny thing that I was just willing to do that I got pulled into this stuff, that I was there, that I was in the room where it happened in that moment because I was the person that sent out the notes so that they wanted to have me around. Yeah, that's really interesting. And it's a really good, concise way of putting it.

[00:48:42] Let me ask you about social wealth. This is where I feel like I'm lacking a little bit. And I'm just curious your opinion. How many friends or best friends do you think someone should or could have? Now, I know there's no one answer. It's kind of like a dumb question. I'm asking as a little kid, as if I were a little kid asking someone with a great philosopher. Real, true, deep friends under 10. Yeah.

[00:49:11] I think if you have anywhere between five and 10, you are in absolute abundance of real friends. And I don't think you need more than a few, to be honest. I think if you have like two or three people in your life that you can call. And I define this, by the way, as like the person you can call at three in the morning when your life is truly down and out. When you are truly down and out, when things have hit the fan, when nothing is working, when you're struggling.

[00:49:39] How many people do you have in your life that you could call that would pick up the phone? And that would be there for you. If that number is more than a couple, more than three, that's abundant. I mean, you have an amazing depth of real connection if that number is over three. Let's say the connections you have in your life that are like that, are most of them from childhood? Or have you kind of accumulated those two to five or 10 over time? I have a couple from each stage of life.

[00:50:07] I mean, I have a very fortunate to have, I would count both of my parents and my sister within that. Obviously my wife, I would count in that, who I've known since childhood. Really? You've known your wife since childhood? Yeah. My wife and I started dating when I was 15. She was 14. Oh my gosh. And then that's it? When did you get married? That's it. We got married in 2016, eight years ago. How old were you then? I was about to turn 25. I was 24. She was 23.

[00:50:36] Wow. There's very few people like that. What percentage of marriages do you think met before the age of 18? Oh, very few now. I would say if you went back 30, 40 years, it would be significantly higher. It would be interesting to see the stat. I mean, the high school sweetheart thing was sort of like a classic American story. If you were to go back and look at movies and TV shows, I feel like that was a very classic story. Like the football player marries the cheerleader type story. Now,

[00:51:01] and it's pretty obvious why, right? Paradox of choice. We have access to basically anyone via the internet. You are no longer confined to your local region or your town in terms of your options that are out there. And so people go to college far away. They expand their reach, et cetera. Yeah. I feel like it's almost like a supply and demand equation. Like demand always remains the same because you only have so many nights you're alive. And let's say every night you

[00:51:29] want to more or less, you want to be with somebody, but supply has gone from your local village to infinite. And so the value of a relationship of a monogamous stable relationship has gone way down in the past, let's even call it generation or two generations. Yeah. And it's a very tricky problem. I mean, just like in the world of economics, the paradox of choice is the idea that having more choices actually makes you less happy with

[00:51:56] whatever choice you end up going with. So if you have 50 choices of potential partners, you're going to be less happy with the one you choose than if you had three choices. And that's really interesting when it comes to romantic relationships, if you were to apply it there is to just think about, um, has actual overall satisfaction declined in spite of the fact that you have access to anyone you'd think on the surface that that would mean that you were much, much happier. Oh, I have an abundance of options that are out there. Um, but does it actually lead

[00:52:25] to less happiness? Yeah. So how can you restrict your options in order to be happier in, in any area, not just one area, but in any area, I think that the most challenging thing we face is the ease of the eject button, if you will, to use an analogy. Like you think about a relationship,

[00:52:47] great relationships are built through shared struggle, a shared struggle releases oxytocin, which creates these feelings of love and connection, deep, loving, vulnerable connections, relationships are built through challenging times, not just the good ones. But we live in a world where it is easier than ever to press the eject button as soon as you hit those

[00:53:15] struggles. And so what I see with a lot of my friends who are in the dating market is they get into a relationship, they're in the honeymoon phase, everything's great. It's the most beautiful. It's perfect. Everything's amazing. Well, eventually relationships are no longer in the honeymoon phase and stuff starts to get real and you have a real problems or your first real struggle. In the past, 50 years ago, there was not a clear eject button, right? Yes, you could break up,

[00:53:42] but you broke up and you lived in your town and you were going to go out. You were going to see the person all the time. You were going to have to meet a bunch of their friends. Their friends weren't going to like you. There was actually a bunch of reasons why it was hard to like immediately press the eject button. So you had to think about it. You would at least sit with it and try to struggle through the mud with the person. Now, the second it gets hard, there's a eject button sitting right in front of you where you have a million other options right at your fingertips where, okay,

[00:54:09] yeah, I'm going to press the eject button. I'm going to go out tonight with three different people. If I press the eject button right now, three people who don't know me, who it's going to be fun. It's going to be flirty. It's going to be this new honeymoon phase all over again. I'm just going to go back to that. And so you chase that instant gratification by pressing the eject button. But what happens if you do that over and over again is you never actually endure the challenges that lead to the depth of the relationship? So this is the question that I'm now wrestling with

[00:54:35] and constantly with different friends of mine that I'm talking to about their dating or relationships is what is the point where you're sort of actually hurting yourself by getting out of the relationship too quickly? I understand it. Sometimes you want to hit the eject button and there's a good reason. Sometimes there really is a tiger there and you need to kind of break out of the situation. But sometimes you need to just pause and ask yourself that question before doing it so automatically. Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, but you can always say

[00:55:06] there's always an answer to that too, which is how am I, let's say I'm thinking of ending a relationship or I think I'm ending a job. Well, it could be the case that next month the job becomes this, I get promoted to CEO or whatever. I don't know. Like there's always kind of these science fiction scenarios that are really great. If you ask, well, what if, how am I, how can I be hurting myself if I don't, if I eject too quickly? But I guess you just have to be very realistic with

[00:55:32] yourself. I think it's realistic. I think more than anything else, this is about pausing before making decisions. Most of us never take the moment to create space. And I talk about this in the mental wealth section of the book, this idea of space. And Viktor Frankl wrote about it originally that space is where we get our power as humans. It's the space between stimulus and response, where we can actually choose our response. And when everything is so easy and at the touch of your

[00:55:59] fingers, the implication is that we are anti-space. We just, we go straight to that state, straight to the response because we can, it's sitting right there. It's very, very easy to go and do. And it no pause is really where the strength lies. There's this old fable of it's called three men make a tiger. I don't know if you've ever heard this, that like minister comes to the king and he says to the king,

[00:56:26] if I were to come and tell you that there is a, a tiger inside the market right now, what would you say? And the king says, I would say that's ridiculous. And then the minister says, what if I told you that two people were saying there's a tiger in the market? The king says, well, then I would start to question it. He says, what if three people said it? And then the king says, well, then I would believe there's a tiger in the market. And the point is the more something is repeated, the more we

[00:56:54] immediately default to saying, okay, that, that thing must be true. Even if it feels ridiculous, we're just going to say that it's true. These things that continue to get repeated. The lesson with that is not to just reject things that have been repeatedly being said. It is to pause before deciding because sometimes three people say there's a tiger in the market because there's a tiger in the market. Sometimes three people say there's a tiger in the market because everyone is being

[00:57:20] delusional. And we actually would benefit a lot from just questioning the assertion in the first place that applies to sort of everything, like any story you're telling yourself, anything you've been told about the exact path to achieving the life you want. We just need to create more space and pause to question these things along the journey. That is great advice. I've noticed throughout this

[00:57:42] conversation and earlier conversations, we've had one of your key skills is you have a very concise way of, you know, posing these questions and answering them. You know, it's very, very logical, rational, almost simple way of, of kind of answering these very complicated and deep questions in our life. And I think that's why one of the reasons why your content has done so well, why this book is so

[00:58:10] great. I mean, you're like six weeks on the New York times bestseller list now as, as we speak. I appreciate that. It's a, it's a very valuable skill. I feel like I don't have that. Like I have to rely on insane kind of storytelling in order to get my point across. Cause I, rather than just get my point across. Someone once referred to it to me as gisting that I was good at gisting. Like I was

[00:58:36] very good at like taking something and like giving you the gist of it in a way that is like immediately like short and actionable. I thought that that was kind of an interesting articulation. Yeah. I've never thought about that, but it's true though. I wonder, I mean, obviously you've read all these books. So have a lot of people that you stand out as having this very good way of putting things of gisting. I'm going to start using that word. And I think again, I mean, the book is the five types of

[00:59:02] wealth, a transformative guide to designing your dream life. And it's about time, wealth, social wealth, mental wealth, physical wealth, financial wealth, all of these things that are so critical for our wellbeing in life. So Sahil Bloom, once again, thank you for coming on the podcast. I always learn from our conversations and then apply them in my own life, which is why I've been a subscriber of your newsletter probably since you started it. So when you started a real one, you have been a real

[00:59:28] OG, a podcast subscriber, a newsletter subscriber rather. Yeah. I have them since I'm sure I've had them since day one. So you barely had a newsletter. So congratulations on everything. And I can't recommend this book enough. The five types of wealth by Sahil Bloom. Good luck. Come on the podcast anytime. I really appreciate it. I appreciate you. And I'm looking forward to spending time in person, hopefully this spring or summer. Yeah, definitely.