Based Camp - How a Stanford MBA Can Ruin Your Life： No One Wins the Rat Race

00:00:00.000 one of the, a few of my classmates got a company. It's easily a billion dollar company now. And I

00:00:05.020 was talking to one of the guys, because when you're working on a company like this, you are

00:00:08.900 stuck 24 seven, basically tied to your desk, extreme working hours. So I was like, so what

00:00:14.660 are you doing now? And he goes, oh, I left to start another company. And I don't understand it.

00:00:21.200 I don't understand why, like for me, startups were not the point of the startup. The startup

00:00:27.760 was to get you financial freedom or to get you the freedom to do what you want to do.

00:00:33.460 You have dreams about one day doing some big project that you haven't started on yet. You're

00:00:40.220 never going to do that project. So go out and start today or it's never going to happen.

00:00:44.900 I'm just telling you that right now. It's never going to happen if you aren't in some small way

00:00:49.700 working on it right now. Jump out of the plane, pull out the parachute. No, you are the only person

00:00:55.680 who can decide that. And I think that's important for everything. When it comes to getting a partner,

00:00:59.540 when it comes to having a kid, you have to just throw yourself out of the plane. There's never

00:01:04.800 going to be a time where you really feel ready. Would you like to know more?

00:01:08.440 All right, Simone, it is wonderful to be chatting with you again today. Today, we are going to reflect

00:01:15.560 on my 10-year Stanford GSB reunion. That's the Stanford MBA program. It's generally, I think,

00:01:25.000 about the hardest program to get into in the world. Harder than Harvard, right?

00:01:31.220 We went viral for one thing or another on Reddit once. And some people were like, oh, he misleads

00:01:36.860 people in the way he talks. It makes it sound like he got a neuroscience PhD at Stanford,

00:01:41.860 but he only got an MBA. And I'm here fuming because it is much harder to get into the MBA

00:01:46.220 program than the neuroscience PhD program. I am like, what? Anyway, because I could have done that.

00:01:53.060 I actually had applied to both of them, but I withdrew my application when I got into the MBA

00:01:57.100 program because I was like, what's the point? You get into the MBA program and you can basically

00:02:00.740 write your own check in life if you get into a Stanford or Harvard MBA. But what I want to talk

00:02:07.000 about in this podcast is a few things. One, the utility of an MBA in today's market economy,

00:02:11.640 because I've seen some heavily overlapped YouTuber to us was like, MBAs don't matter 0.98

00:02:16.500 anymore. And I was like, you don't know what you're talking about? Like I am fairly against

00:02:22.620 the university system, but he's just unaware of the opportunities.

00:02:27.660 The doors it opens, the network, it's insane. Like basically when you were there,

00:02:32.540 the most prestigious companies out there just lined up to try to hire you.

00:02:37.520 My teachers included Eric Schmidt and Connalisa Rice and...

00:02:42.260 The people that could bring in for your classes.

00:02:44.200 Like Chamath would come in and like yell at everyone in our class. And these are small classes 0.83

00:02:48.740 too.

00:02:49.200 When Evan Spiegel came in and swore a lot in front of your class.

00:02:54.380 So I want to be clear that... And people are like, oh, you get high profile. People are like,

00:02:58.440 no, really, the classes don't matter. It's the alumni network afterwards. I guess I can start

00:03:04.440 with this. When you cold email people, especially like right around graduation or for the first few

00:03:09.840 years after graduation, and you include that in your subject line, you get like a 50, 60% response

00:03:15.200 rate, actually, especially from high profile people, because they're often looking for bedded,

00:03:20.980 hungry, young people that they can put into positions as sort of gophers. Because what you 0.83

00:03:26.580 begin to realize is that from the perspective of many of the quote unquote elite in our society,

00:03:32.420 what there is a shortage of is competent, self-motivated young people who don't just

00:03:39.820 dismiss them or arrogant or working on their own projects or something like that. And to an extent,

00:03:44.360 they're right. If you're in our current economy and you are competent and ambitious, it's a big

00:03:49.800 question as to why you aren't just starting your own company. No, seriously. Like why aren't you?

00:03:54.060 So this helps vet for them that sliver of competent and ambitious people who aren't just immediately

00:03:58.880 doing their own thing, which is high utility for groups like that. Also for venture capitalists,

00:04:03.560 it makes it much easier to raise money, et cetera. You're basically putting a modifier on everything.

00:04:07.300 Now, this is not true for all MBA programs. This is basically only true for Harvard and Stanford

00:04:12.220 and to a lesser extent Wharton. And then after Wharton, MBA is just not worth it because the MBA program

00:04:19.100 isn't like an undergrad where it like declines in quality on a linear basis. It's like a logarithmic

00:04:24.180 sloop down. And the reason is because you're sacrificing two years of your career that you

00:04:28.440 could be using to put yourself into a higher position. Basically with our kids, you're going

00:04:32.880 to tell them, unless you get into Harvard or Stanford, maybe Wharton, probably not. Don't

00:04:39.200 bother, right? Don't bother. Yeah, that's what I'd say. 0.99

00:04:42.180 By the time our kids are going to university, you're going to tell them not to go to university,

00:04:46.800 probably. Yeah. Yeah, because it's okay. You sacrifice two of your career years for this. So

00:04:51.920 you better be getting an actual big boost, which is what causes this logarithmic scale

00:04:57.440 in MBA program quality. But anyway, the reunion, because this was really interesting, because

00:05:01.360 I got a chance to compare myself to how other people were doing. And it highlighted to me

00:05:10.100 how unimpressive the people who are objectively more successful than me are to me these days.

00:05:19.900 And the catastrophically poor life choices that people even in positions of economic privilege

00:05:29.680 end up making. And it's worth highlighting this. So I can go over a few anecdotes that

00:05:36.280 really got to me. A few of my classmates got a company. It's easily a billion dollar company

00:05:41.640 now. This was started by four or five of my classmates. And they've all moved on from it

00:05:45.620 at this point, but they started it. They've made enormous amounts of money. And I was talking

00:05:49.900 to one of the guys because when you're working on a company like this, you are stuck 24 seven,

00:05:54.820 basically tied to your desk, extreme working hours. The team, they worked really hard to

00:05:59.580 make this happen. And it was an incredibly boring logistics based company on like the way

00:06:04.980 that code travels between various like high performance apps.

00:06:08.480 Oh, and this was after a ton of pivots, not just from the, this first company, but from

00:06:13.280 other companies they started before this.

00:06:14.820 Oh, they worked so hard. Yeah. So the first company they started was actually about

00:06:18.500 dog monitoring.

00:06:19.960 And then another one was about photo books. I mean, they were relentless. They'd done

00:06:23.220 everything.

00:06:24.280 So I'm going to describe the two bad idea companies that they started first. The first was not necessarily

00:06:29.700 bad ideas, but it just gives you an idea of how entrepreneurialism works. They started a

00:06:32.740 company that was for monitoring people's dogs for like really obsessed dog moms that were like a baby 1.00

00:06:37.820 monitor for your dogs that would monitor their health. I could see that doing well. They just

00:06:41.520 didn't get any market traction. Then the next was like automatically printing out your Facebook

00:06:45.880 pictures as photo books for elderly relatives. Not a terrible idea. Didn't catch off. We actually

00:06:51.540 had an order one. We liked the one that we were like, I think we still have the one that we got

00:06:55.260 product. It didn't cost that much. You could do it for 50 bucks. But then the final one that they

00:06:59.020 went into was for deep linking code between apps for, I don't exactly understand it, but if I was going to

00:07:04.840 try to explain it, it was like, so that Facebook could like deep link contact to another system

00:07:11.420 without using a normal type of URL deep link. I don't understand it. And anyway, so we're talking

00:07:18.620 with the guys who founded it and he was like, yeah. So I was like, so what are you doing now?

00:07:23.000 And he goes, oh, I left to start another company. And I was like, what does it do? And it was something

00:07:30.740 equally boring. Like not world changing. I can understand dating yourself to a company if you're

00:07:34.920 like trying to change the world or something like that. Or if you have full control this time, but

00:07:40.660 no, he raised money from VCs again. He is yet a save to the entire cycle again. It's like you sell

00:07:48.840 all, and he was still living in like Palo Alto, right? Not dating, not going out. And I was, I don't

00:07:54.300 understand it. I don't understand why, like for me, startups were not the point of the startup.

00:08:01.280 The startup was to get you financial freedom or to get you the freedom to do what you want to do.

00:08:07.600 And this was actually very similar to a conversation. Just so you know, I didn't actually

00:08:11.920 out anyone with this conversation because five people from my class were founders of that company.

00:08:16.140 So that doesn't really narrow it down. But this was very similar to many conversations I had at the

00:08:21.320 class. And actually somebody, simply similar was said on a couple of occasions. So another one of

00:08:27.980 my classmates who actually was the most similar to us, moved to Napa, works around wineries, some sort

00:08:35.240 of like winery consultant thing. And her husband does like wine sales. That sounds very romantic,

00:08:41.040 honestly. Yeah, they're not making a lot. They're probably making around what we make as a family,

00:08:45.840 which is... We should point out that what you, you kept telling me while you were there,

00:08:49.120 because I stayed home being postpartum and all that with the kids. Oh, we're like the least

00:08:53.120 successful in our class. Everyone's more successful than us. And by successful, I ultimately found out

00:08:56.760 you meant in terms of earning. And in terms of the histogram of earnings from Stanford grads,

00:09:01.240 you were off the charts. There's like two standard deviations from the mean.

00:09:04.900 Yes, basically you're impoverished among...

00:09:07.120 Class number of my class, I think, is earning somewhere half a million a year now.

00:09:10.660 Can you imagine? That's so much...

00:09:12.960 Within one standard deviation in the top range was well over a million a year per individual.

00:09:19.120 Again, this is how useful a Stanford MBA is, right? This is what Stanford grads are earning,

00:09:25.360 that the average is 500,000 shows you how valuable that MBA is.

00:09:29.960 So they had told this other person and me on different cases, oh, you guys must be like

00:09:35.020 the most successful people in our class, because you are doing what we all want to do after we make

00:09:41.840 enough money. And this is where I was like, wait a second. You know that this other person in the

00:09:48.520 class is doing this and I, we are like off the chart in terms of the low income group of the class.

00:09:55.420 And then it got me thinking about the way people structure their lives more generally.

00:09:59.140 And it made me realize that this is the way so many people structure things. Is there like, oh,

00:10:08.100 I'll go out there and get rich and then I'll use the fact that I've gotten rich to live the life I

00:10:14.180 want to live without asking themselves, how much does it really cost to live the life I want to live?

00:10:21.460 What is the ideal life I have? And pursuing the lifestyle in concurrence with wealth and

00:10:31.480 prominence and everything like that. With the understanding that while you are living a

00:10:35.360 lifestyle you want to live, that is going to hinder your, we'd be making so much more if we were

00:10:39.260 living in like San Francisco or New York, but the quality of life in those environments is terrible.

00:10:43.020 And also just, it's so ugly in the Bay Area. And I don't think people realize that they think San

00:10:47.820 Francisco, you think of the most beautiful streets on San Francisco, you think of quite tower

00:10:51.500 on Lombard street. You don't realize that most of what people are living in around Palo Alto in

00:10:58.780 Oakland, around California, even in San Francisco is just ugly suburban sprawl because soon tight indie

00:11:07.400 they're just gross looking houses that aren't getting updated because zoning is so terrible.

00:11:13.340 It is not a pretty place to live. And even if you have a ton of money, the best you can buy with that is

00:11:20.060 not very nice. So it's just a terrible area. Like the cost of earning that much is basically living in a

00:11:26.700 gross area now.

00:11:28.360 Yeah. Well, and this brings me, one of the classmates I was talking to became like a realtor type guy

00:11:33.860 and he did New York real estate was one of the things he worked on. He was one of the, I assume,

00:11:39.700 less successful people that you can make a lot of money in New York real estates, who knows?

00:11:43.700 And he was telling me that in the New York real estate market, you would always see the same

00:11:50.820 story. People would come into New York and get a house that was like cheap and small and far away

00:11:56.760 from the center of the city. And they'd be like, I'm just getting here to find a spouse and earn some

00:12:00.600 money. And then I'm going to transfer from that into, um, then leave and live the lifestyle. I

00:12:09.260 actually want to live financially unconstrained. And he goes, and the same thing always happened

00:12:13.580 with follow-ups. He goes, once you got somebody into the city, they're a repeat customer.

00:12:17.480 You mean with, within city purchases, like they don't.

00:12:20.740 Yeah. Within city purchases, no matter what they tell you, it's always, I want something a little

00:12:25.240 closer to central park. I want something with a little better view. I want something a little bit

00:12:29.000 bigger two, three years. And it's just this cycle that once somebody gets into the cycle,

00:12:34.360 they can't break their mind out of the cycle because of their immediate goals. And I think

00:12:39.960 that this is the problem with the way goals work in somebody's mind is that their immediate goals

00:12:45.480 are usually structured around doing what they're doing now, but higher prestige and slightly better.

00:12:51.740 And sometimes their long-term goals are a like leap step away from that.

00:12:57.420 If you understand what I mean, it's like a completely different type of a thing.

00:13:02.160 Like a lateral move in life. It's a very different career and move. And I think one of the things

00:13:07.880 that's getting in people's way is they know what they know. So the startup founder example that you

00:13:13.280 gave to us, he knows how to start companies. He knows how to work his ass off. He doesn't know

00:13:21.060 how to necessarily become a writer or a philanthropist or whatever. It's just so

00:13:26.720 different. And I think there's also this big fear of potentially failing, especially once you've been

00:13:32.380 so successful. I think a lot of the people who get into one of the most prestigious schools in the

00:13:37.740 world, like Harvard or Stanford, and then they graduate and then they continue to succeed.

00:13:42.360 The cost of then trying something new and failing, I think becomes higher. So this is along the same

00:13:48.160 lines of how they say, you should never tell a kid, oh, you're so smart. Oh, you're so smart.

00:13:52.460 Because then they're going to stop taking risks because it risks them losing their identity of

00:13:57.940 being the smart one. Instead, you have to be like, oh, you're so hardworking. Oh, you're so creative.

00:14:02.140 Oh, you're so whatever. Because that encourages them to take risks and try different things.

00:14:06.880 And I think because these people are so successful, they are trapped in their gold-plated chains. They're

00:14:13.000 trapped by their success and the cliff that they could fall off becomes higher and higher.

00:14:17.540 And so they don't really want to make these crazy lateral changes, even if they have nothing to lose

00:14:22.040 because they've already made it. Because they've also built this life around prestige and success.

00:14:27.400 That, but I think it's more than that. And I think that this message is actually transferable

00:14:32.140 outside of the Stanford circle. I think the Stanford MBA circle just

00:14:36.680 shows the comical extremes that can take in somebody's life. And I think sometimes you

00:14:41.020 need to see the comical extremes to understand personally, oh, what am I doing? Because we've

00:14:47.860 actually seen this in our fans where we talk to our fans and I go, why aren't you looking

00:14:50.880 for a spouse right now? And they go, I'll look for my spouse once X milestone has been reached.

00:14:57.240 And then I can achieve higher quality spouses. And I'm like, I literally in my entire life,

00:15:02.480 I don't know a single person who has taken that approach and ended up married.

00:15:06.160 Not, not, not in a happy relationship, married at all. When I actually, when I was talking to the

00:15:13.220 startup guy and I was like, okay, so are you going to go look for a spouse or are you doing that?

00:15:17.740 And it's, oh, when I'm done with this next startup. And I should be clear for somebody to be like,

00:15:21.420 maybe he just really likes startups, like the grind. And he told me explicitly, no, it was hell.

00:15:26.440 He was like, I was working so hard. I'm going to try to take it a little easier this time.

00:15:29.980 And I was like, why did you do it then? Why did you start it again?

00:15:34.300 And his response was, I wanted to prove to myself that the first time wasn't random chance.

00:15:41.360 And I think that I totally get that. There's a, there's like this honor in that, right? Okay.

00:15:46.420 You ended up one of the most successful people of anyone you've ever met. And now you want to prove

00:15:51.000 to yourself that it wasn't just a fluke, which is okay. But if it wasn't just a fluke,

00:15:59.460 then maybe you have success in a different domain next time. But also it precludes. And this is where

00:16:05.100 like the pragmatist guide to life, our first book, I consider it to be such a rudimentary book when I'm

00:16:10.380 recommending it to people. I'm almost embarrassed, but because I'm like, this is something that most

00:16:14.300 people should be thinking through while they're in high school. Yet they don't. And essentially what it

00:16:19.600 prompts you to do as an individual, and it's got an audio book that comes for free with a 99 cents

00:16:24.240 ebook. So like you can get it. It's very easy to get. So it's, but if you want it on Audible, you can

00:16:28.240 get it there. It's just the, we can't keep the price that low on Audible. So anyway, pragmatist guide

00:16:32.740 to life. It's a book around determining what has value to you and then living a life in dedication to

00:16:39.460 that. And we try not to steer people towards any specific answers. On our show, we have a strong

00:16:43.720 bias against specific answers like utilitarianism or hedonism on the, in the guide, we don't like

00:16:48.240 utilitarians. I'll read the book and they'll be like, Oh, you were trying to push everyone to be

00:16:51.720 a utilitarian. And I'm like, actually, we have a pretty strong stance against utilitarianism,

00:16:55.500 but it's useful because then once you adopt a framework like that, whether it's a utilitarian

00:17:00.620 ethical set or like us, like trying to expand human potentiality, then you can be like, okay,

00:17:07.140 now that I have achieved X, if I am doing Y next in life, how do I leverage sort of the inventory

00:17:13.780 of skills and advantages and resources I have to most accurately and efficaciously have my moral

00:17:21.340 system enacted upon reality? And that can be like a religious system, for example, that can be a,

00:17:25.940 there's all sorts of questions here, but I don't think for anyone, especially if it wasn't making

00:17:30.660 you happy, going back to start another startup is the right answer. That is more just like you're on

00:17:37.660 rails and your availability heuristics around the types of things you could do or attempt to do

00:17:43.680 better is anchored to the last thing you were doing. And I think that this really comes to the

00:17:48.600 New York housing market. You may in your mind be like one day, I'd like to live in the mountains by

00:17:54.360 a stream. But when you're thinking, what can I do next? Your next promotion is like marginally an

00:18:01.020 easier thing to achieve and think about, or the house that's slightly closer to Times Square is

00:18:07.740 slightly easier to, or not, sorry, sorry, Central Park. Nobody in New York wants to be in your

00:18:11.300 Times Square. Sorry about that. And to just elevate how attainable our life is, we live in a house that

00:18:18.760 a lot of people would think of is quite large. It is 1700s, beautiful, old, all brick. We are

00:18:25.720 surrounded by a state park and then a national park that surrounds the state park, thousands of miles

00:18:30.580 of walking pathways and a river right in front of our house and a creek next to our house. And we got

00:18:35.840 this for like around half a million, 500K for this in the house next door. And that's for the house

00:18:43.560 next door, which we can use to pay taxes, which we can use to make this lifestyle even more sustainable

00:18:48.000 than it was. That is what the average classmate is earning in a year. Okay. That is like when I'm

00:18:55.460 talking about sustainability of a life like this, like literally anyone from my class could just duck out

00:19:01.700 and then start rebuilding from an environment like this. But I think I also see this in how they're

00:19:07.240 approaching partners. They look for partners who are absolutely perfect. Because I, one thing I will

00:19:13.660 say is that my advocacy apparently has had a big effect on my class. 82% of my classmates have had kids,

00:19:19.380 which is actually when you're comparing it to the general population, a really high number.

00:19:24.400 Extremely.

00:19:24.720 A lot of them joked that it was my advocacy. So I'm not even hated by them being in the urban monoculture.

00:19:28.360 Although I did get in a big fight with one of their girlfriends because I'm so pro-Israel in

00:19:32.960 this war and she was pro-Hamas. And I'm pro-Hamas. She did not think that Israel should exist as a

00:19:38.620 state and all the land should be given back to the Palestinian people and the Jews should be 1.00

00:19:41.580 deported. I obviously got in a bit of a fight there. And I could tell that it's one of the things 0.96

00:19:48.100 where, so this is a system where I guess they should have been more biased against me, but they

00:19:51.240 weren't because they know me or they're like, oh, this is the type of weird thing Mauka would do. 0.93

00:19:55.160 You would always say things that were controversial.

00:19:56.900 Yeah. I think it's one of those things where if you've seen our podcast, you'd be like,

00:20:02.640 oh yeah. Like at first people like, hey, watch us. And then they're like, oh yeah, I get it. Of

00:20:07.460 course they would promote this. This is totally within their, but what are your thoughts on this?

00:20:11.860 Like living the good life, Simone, and how to approach it?

00:20:15.600 Yeah. I think most people are not actually trying to live the good life. I think that,

00:20:20.180 especially when you look at high achievers, many of them never really sought to live a good life or

00:20:25.840 even pursue happiness. The objective function that they have typically without ever thinking

00:20:30.620 about it, it just worked out this way and was part of their disposition as well, is that they are,

00:20:35.900 you could say, prestige optimizers or achievement optimizers where they've just always done the

00:20:40.040 best. Okay. I'm in the school system. I have to get an A, I have to get a 5.0. I have to get into

00:20:44.880 the best college. I have to get, have all the best extracurriculars, win all the sports games,

00:20:49.060 win the science fair, whatever it might be, right? Always win, always be number one.

00:20:52.220 And that's, what's happening now is they're making a ton of money. They have their Stanford

00:20:56.920 MBAs. They have their kids. They've like literally like their, their prestige or achievement maxing

00:21:01.600 essentially. No, you're absolutely right. And that is not, that is not having an objective

00:21:06.780 function. That is not having a, a moral framework that is not knowing what you want and, and really

00:21:12.520 pursuing it. It is just being an optimizing machine. They're almost like AIs and we all are like

00:21:17.280 AIs, but they are AIs with an objective function of achievement. Paperclip maximizing.

00:21:22.280 Yeah. But they're just achievement maximizers. They're the paperclip maximizers.

00:21:25.720 Actually a really interesting point that you're making here. And I want to be clear about what

00:21:29.440 I'm saying with this is that they like, when I'm like, I am less impressed. Like we have

00:21:35.200 the people who we give our apartment next door to, who are helping getting, get on their feet and

00:21:40.340 start a company. And they've recently come out of the prison system, which by the way,

00:21:44.160 they're okay with us saying, because they've said it on the pitches. So I know they're okay

00:21:47.200 with us saying that now. And people would be like, I genuinely, when I hear their story,

00:21:52.420 I have more respect for them than many of our classmates. And people would be like, why is

00:21:58.420 that? And it's because I judge your person by their future and not by their past. And when

00:22:04.960 they are thinking about their future, they have a cohesive plan of how they're going to build

00:22:09.680 a good family and a good life that is realistic. And they are ambitiously trying to do it.

00:22:15.340 And that makes me proud for what they're attempting. Right. So I, but with this other group,

00:22:21.600 and this is with classmates and stuff like this, when I'm like, I don't like respect what they're

00:22:26.000 doing. It's not a difference in value systems. And I need to be very clear here. I, as people know

00:22:31.480 from this podcast, I'm actually pretty open to many different value systems as, and I will rank them,

00:22:37.040 but I'm open to many different value systems. It is that they do not have a value system.

00:22:43.660 There is no value system that just says like this logically consistent that just says more money

00:22:49.660 better. Um, and here I'll play a clip from an old video game where a guy goes, bury me with my money.

00:22:56.780 Bury me with my money.

00:22:59.300 Where it's, uh, when you die and you're on your deathbed and you're reflecting on your life

00:23:04.800 from all of the various things you could have value, whether it was charity or religion or family,

00:23:12.040 or even personal hedonism. Like I can respect at a higher level than I can respect this sort of like

00:23:18.840 mindless prestige optimization, people who optimize their lives entirely around hedonism,

00:23:24.840 because at least they have some like logically consistent value system they're optimizing around.

00:23:29.960 Whereas so many people, I think even the people who are society sorting, it's like the best of the

00:23:34.320 best per generation, which, okay, I'm not saying that Stanford is perfect to do it accepts, but it's

00:23:38.960 certainly accepting the top fraction of a percent of the population in terms of like just definitionally

00:23:44.320 in terms of various measurable tests and looking at where they gotten in their first few years of

00:23:49.480 their career that within that population, being able to think outside of, I just want more prestige

00:23:56.520 is actually, it seemed pretty uncommon to me. Like maybe only 50% of the class was doing that.

00:24:03.240 Um, and I think it shows when people are like, why do you look at so much of society's like actions

00:24:09.260 as just mass action, right? Like I don't really ascribe that much to malevolent individual players

00:24:14.580 behind the scenes. And I ascribe a lot to just sort of social pressures that lead to evolved cultural

00:24:20.300 subsets, which lead to a sort of broader societal action. And I think it's because you don't realize

00:24:25.900 how much of the society's quote unquote elite, i.e. the people in the positions to change things,

00:24:31.840 to move things, to deploy capital are really just operating on autopilot to an extent. Um,

00:24:37.600 and here I should know when people are like, what, what makes you so happy about yourself?

00:24:41.000 If you have so little money, I look at what I do have. I have financial stability for now and into

00:24:47.300 the foreseeable future, which I established before putting on a podcast and everything like that.

00:24:52.100 And this is financial stability that I can't be fired from. So I can't be canceled easily or

00:24:56.220 anything like that, which was also really important to me that I would never require because there's

00:25:01.340 two bad ways that this can go. Either you're afraid of saying something that gets you canceled,

00:25:05.900 right? Which leads to a form of audience capture, or you always are pandering to your audience

00:25:12.160 because you've been canceled and now you've got to appeal to a specific kind of audience. And

00:25:15.460 that's another type of audience capture, which is limiting my personal freedom, which I didn't want to

00:25:18.700 have. Um, I am living a life where through the building of the school, through the building of

00:25:24.280 this sort of content, I feel I am doing a thing of value for the world. So every day I feel like I'm

00:25:28.880 living a life of value through writing the books, through the media appearances, through our

00:25:33.560 pronatalist advocacy. And I have a decently large family for society today, four kids and going, and a wife

00:25:42.120 who I have a, I don't know, I have literally no qualms about our relationship. I could not see,

00:25:48.100 I, I, I, I genuinely just adore everything about her. Yeah. We're all right. We're all right.

00:25:55.120 And all of this is on an upwards trajectory. It's like, why would I want money for anything other?

00:26:00.760 If I had more money, I would only want it for more advocacy. Like we already donate like about 50%

00:26:05.580 of what we earned to charity when we can. If I had more money, it would just be for more charity.

00:26:11.480 I think the big takeaway you got from Stanford was from the 10 year reunion was that you don't

00:26:18.980 have to first be successful in a career or insanely wealthy to pursue what it is that you care about

00:26:26.080 most. That if you very intentionally set up your life in a way that allows for a sufficient amount

00:26:32.140 of financial freedom, you're not running away from debt. You are able to pay for healthcare and

00:26:38.460 your basic living expenses. You can pursue what you want. And this is, I think this is only really

00:26:45.700 something that's important for the, those who are lucky enough to be a little bit wealthier. This is a

00:26:52.520 problem of wealthy people and not of your typical person because the typical person is like totally just

00:26:58.420 going for that, but I'm not sure. What do you think? Here isn't a problem of wealthy people.

00:27:02.940 And this is a very important takeaway is it was the way that many of my classmates who are still

00:27:07.660 single were relating to finding a partner. Never ever say I will find a partner when X, you will never

00:27:18.000 find a partner if that's what you are doing. And this is especially true for men. It just does not

00:27:24.360 work that way. You want the type of partner who can see the potential in you and is excited to bring

00:27:33.240 that potential out. If you are looking for partners and somebody can't see potential in you,

00:27:41.560 but they would marry you if you had already achieved objective success, that relationship will not be a

00:27:49.820 happy relationship. In a big way, the very fact that you are securing a partner before you have your

00:27:57.340 wealth is securing a better partner than you can easily secure or source after you have your wealth.

00:28:06.900 Because when somebody is marrying somebody younger or somebody with big ambition or something like that,

00:28:12.540 their ability to vet you by your dreams and competency is part of your vetting process of

00:28:20.320 them. Are they the type of person who is going to make the sacrifices with you to get your family to

00:28:27.200 the place it needs to be? And if they are not, then what you are going to end up with is one of these

00:28:34.140 bimbo hussies who is really marrying you for your money. 1.00

00:28:37.020 I would just more broadly, once you become wealthy as a male or female, I think finding a partner

00:28:43.720 who isn't after your money is really difficult. It's just a truism.

00:28:49.740 And yeah, it is a truism. And the types of partners who are after your money are lower quality,

00:28:56.000 often personality-wise. And I've seen this. I've seen the people who marry after they got wealthy

00:28:59.980 and the people who marry before they got wealthy.

00:29:02.100 Here's what I think is happening, though, and this is really interesting, is I think after people

00:29:07.560 get wealthy, they subconsciously think that they can date out of their league. That is to say,

00:29:12.440 they think that because they have more money, they can get someone who is more attractive

00:29:16.500 than what they would otherwise get. However, the more attractive people that they're able to target

00:29:21.760 who are willing to date them, even though looks-wise they're out of their league,

00:29:27.000 are people who are only interested in money.

00:29:29.040 The people who are more attractive than them, but also in their league financially,

00:29:33.040 professionally, or intellectually, would still not be willing to date them because then at that

00:29:37.000 point, that person is still under their league, looks-wise. So what you end up getting is someone

00:29:40.920 who's the things that matter, lower quality. But you still have this assumption that, oh,

00:29:45.280 because I'm successful, now I get to marry someone who's more attractive than I am.

00:29:49.980 Yeah. And I would elevate this. The thing that I have seen is that among our friend group,

00:29:55.000 everyone I know, who married somebody after they got wealthy, and it clearly wasn't. Now,

00:29:59.860 there's some people where it's like, clearly they knew this person beforehand. That's not like a

00:30:03.160 supermodel or something like that. I'm not counting those people. I'm talking about the

00:30:05.920 people where this person is clearly more attractive or uniquely young compared to the

00:30:09.700 person they married. I do not know one of them was a happier marriage than the wealthy friends

00:30:15.820 I met who married somebody before they got wealthy. All of their marriages are pretty much

00:30:19.680 terrible. And it's generally because these people who they marry have very bad objective

00:30:24.400 functions. They're typically around wealth and status, and you never want to be married to

00:30:28.140 somebody like that. Or they have a very poor mental health, which can just make a relationship

00:30:34.300 absolutely like a trap. Or they are dumb and unable to have intellectual conversations with them. 1.00

00:30:44.280 And so in a way, yeah, you're actually hurting yourself further. So I say that. And then the other 1.00

00:30:48.360 thing is that if you have dreams about one day doing some big project that you haven't started

00:30:54.460 on yet, you're never going to do that project. So go out and start today, or it's never going to

00:30:59.300 happen. I'm just telling you that right now. It's never going to happen if you aren't in some small

00:31:04.740 way working on it right now. This is true for startups.

00:31:07.360 This is just with so many things. People wait for permission, right? This is something that we

00:31:10.740 experienced when we were, for example, looking for a company to acquire. We assumed that

00:31:15.080 we would know what the company was when our investors would say to us, hey, yeah, I like

00:31:21.120 this. You should go for this. And then we realized eventually that our investors were never going to

00:31:25.600 say that. No one was ever going to say, now you're ready. Now you should go for it. Jump out of the

00:31:30.820 plane, pull out the parachute. No, you are the only person who can decide that. And I think that's

00:31:35.540 important for everything when it comes to getting a partner, when it comes to having a kid,

00:31:39.020 you have to just throw yourself out of the plane. There's never going to be a time where you really feel

00:31:44.180 ready. Absolutely. Yeah. Hopefully this has inspired somebody, whether it's a book you want

00:31:49.860 to write or a company you want to start, you need to do it in some small way, the minimum viable

00:31:53.840 product of it, the minimal viable version today. Because there's no level of achievement people

00:31:59.400 have reached, as Malcolm has found, where they feel like they're ready. There are people who are

00:32:05.280 making insane amounts of money, who have all the power, who have all the connections, and they still

00:32:11.060 don't feel ready. There's just no point at which you're going to feel ready, really.

00:32:14.880 Yeah. And it's the same with finding a partner. Often what I find with the people who don't have

00:32:20.700 partners, oh, you just can't get a partner. They've turned down perfectly good partners.

00:32:24.320 They're Hamza-ing. You can watch our Hamza video if you want to see the story of somebody who did this. 0.96

00:32:28.740 It is very easy if you aren't really dedicatedly looking for someone to marry,

00:32:34.340 and you are looking for the perfect person to marry, not just the whatever, right? It's not

00:32:40.340 going to happen. It's not going to happen. Yeah. I'm glad you went for it. I love you too.

00:32:48.600 Yeah. Let's see if I can adjust myself a little. All right. Is that okay?

00:32:57.700 You look stunning.

00:32:58.980 Closed is better. No.

00:33:01.040 Stunning, not brave.

00:33:02.680 Stunning, not brave. Stunning, not brave.

00:33:04.220 Oh, no.

00:33:07.340 That's the way we ask ourselves if we're looking good to go. Do you look stunning or brave today?

00:33:11.820 Yeah.

00:33:12.140 Oh, no.

Based Camp - May 31, 2024

How a Stanford MBA Can Ruin Your Life： No One Wins the Rat Race

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