The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - My Chat with Entrepreneur Tom Bilyeu (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_680)

00:00:00.780 All right, guys, today I have someone with me who's already invited me twice to his show.

00:00:06.480 And as a Middle Easterner, reciprocity is a terribly important thing.

00:00:11.420 So I'm glad that I finally was able to reciprocate and bring this hot guy on the show.

00:00:17.400 Tom Bilyeu, how you doing, sir?

00:00:19.400 I'm good, man.

00:00:20.300 How you doing?

00:00:21.200 I'm doing great.

00:00:22.360 I have, I mean, the first time we did the show, I think it was during COVID.

00:00:26.680 So we did it remotely.

00:00:28.200 I mean, I'm talking about your show.

00:00:30.000 The second time I actually came in person to do it in Southern California, you've got a gorgeous setup.

00:00:37.500 People don't have a sense of how beautiful it is where you are.

00:00:40.660 So thank you for allowing me entry into your beautiful sanctuary.

00:00:45.080 I just want to give people a quick summary of who you are, a quick bio.

00:00:50.800 Studied at USC at their film school, which, by the way, Steven Spielberg was rejected at the USC film school.

00:00:58.780 Not once, not twice, but three times.

00:01:01.740 I actually talk about this in the happiness book when I discuss being anti-fragile to rejection and failure.

00:01:08.040 Then you set up, you became a wildly successful entrepreneur.

00:01:12.800 You co-founded a company called Quest Nutrition, which you're no longer associated with, which is a very successful billion-dollar company.

00:01:19.540 And now for many years, you've been hosting the show Impact Theory.

00:01:25.840 I just checked the metrics.

00:01:27.640 Nearly four point something million subscribers on YouTube, nearly half a billion views.

00:01:32.820 You'll have to tell me either online or offline.

00:01:35.580 What is the record or what is the recipe for being so successful?

00:01:39.400 I haven't been able to crack those kinds of numbers, although I've been mildly successful.

00:01:43.320 Well, anything else you want to add to your bio before we get going?

00:01:47.000 No, man, you got it.

00:01:47.860 And at any point, if you want to talk about YouTube and what you need to do to get your numbers, obviously, you're way ahead of the vast majority of humanity.

00:01:56.900 But if you ever want to really smash it, I've got some ideas for you.

00:02:00.920 Because you have the thing that it takes.

00:02:04.920 And I think it's just the algorithm game that you're not playing to its full potential.

00:02:09.740 I look forward to learning from the master.

00:02:11.580 Okay, so I thought we'd start since I started with your quick professional trajectory.

00:02:18.840 Tell us a bit about how you went from being, I'm assuming, someone who was an aspiring filmmaker to then becoming a wildly successful West Nutrition guy.

00:02:30.840 Tell us about it.

00:02:32.040 Maybe you can also share some lessons about what it takes to be an entrepreneur and so on.

00:02:35.380 Yeah, so I'll give you the whole thing in a nutshell with an eye towards an audience that hopefully comes to you for one of the reasons you're so phenomenal, which is the evolutionary lens through which you view things.

00:02:46.780 So I am just obsessed with the idea that you're having a biological experience.

00:02:52.920 And when you interpret your life through that lens, then all of a sudden you can start making some momentum.

00:02:57.800 So my life is the story of at first not understanding that and running into a lot of brick walls.

00:03:04.060 And so I went to USC film school, as you said, but didn't know how to break into the industry.

00:03:10.260 So when I graduated, I thought I was going to get the three-picture deal, be the next Steven Spielberg.

00:03:15.180 It did not work out like that.

00:03:17.180 And this is in the 90s.

00:03:19.000 So there is no, there's no camera on your phone.

00:03:23.660 There's no YouTube.

00:03:24.520 So all of the ways that I would advise somebody to try to make a name for themselves today didn't exist back then.

00:03:30.220 And so I just legitimately had no idea how to break into the industry.

00:03:33.640 And I end up meeting these two very successful entrepreneurs.

00:03:37.180 And they said, look, you're coming to the world with your hand out.

00:03:40.540 And if you want to control the art, you have to control the resources.

00:03:43.340 So you should get into business and get rich.

00:03:46.220 And I was like, yes, that is a brilliant idea.

00:03:49.720 I'm going to do exactly that.

00:03:51.420 I thought it would take 18 months.

00:03:52.960 It took 15 years, but it actually worked.

00:03:56.720 And so in that journey, I began realizing the things that were holding me back, which again, I was having a biological experience.

00:04:04.280 I was living a very small life because I did not understand that I had basically wired my dopamine system to be maximally rewarding when people told me that they thought I was smart.

00:04:18.200 And so I would argue for dumb ideas just because they were mine.

00:04:21.740 And so even though I knew this idea is going to move me backwards from my goal of getting rich so that I can go build a studio, but I want to win this argument so badly because I feel like if I lose, you're not going to think I'm smart.

00:04:33.780 And so there was literally a day that changed my life where I ended up convincing my then business partners of an idea that was terrible, that actively in the argument, there's a voice in my head screaming, you know, this is bad for the business.

00:04:49.540 And so I convinced them, we're going to do it my way.

00:04:53.160 They walk out of the room and I have an existential crisis and I'm like, okay, hold on, no judgment, self.

00:04:59.720 But what do you really want? 0.95

00:05:01.240 Because you're telling people that you want to be successful, but here you are arguing for an idea that you know is dumb just because you want them to think you're smart. 0.63

00:05:09.900 So which is it? 0.72

00:05:10.780 Do you want to be successful or do you want people to think you're smart?

00:05:13.440 And so I realized, whoa, I actually want to be successful.

00:05:17.180 And that brought me face to face with, okay, you actually want that even upon reflection.

00:05:21.500 And yet you're operating in a totally different way. 0.93

00:05:24.400 And so what is, and this wouldn't have been the language I used then, but now what's the neurochemistry that you're in the grips of that's causing you to make dumb decisions?

00:05:33.440 And could you take control of that?

00:05:37.620 Again, I wouldn't have had these words back then, but that dopamine process pointed at something useful so that the more dopamine I secrete in my brain, the more I'm moving towards my goals.

00:05:49.000 And so in that one sort of just being nakedly honest with myself about, hey, there's actually this really gross behavior that you're doing.

00:05:57.920 You're driven by this insecure thing over here.

00:06:01.240 Can you switch that around?

00:06:02.660 And so I ended up taking on the identity of a learner and saying, I'm never going to try to look smart again.

00:06:08.360 I'm going to try to stack skills.

00:06:10.640 I'm going to try to go actually get so good at something that people can't stop me from doing it.

00:06:15.300 And that thing happens to be business.

00:06:17.300 And so then that was the huge unlock.

00:06:20.300 And, you know, I'm obviously condensing a very long story, but we end up selling the company that I'm at at that point.

00:06:27.140 And we ended up building another company, which ends up being Quest Nutrition.

00:06:30.200 And it ends up being a rocket ship tied in in some ways.

00:06:35.120 It's tied to a lot of things.

00:06:36.060 But one of the core things was tied around this idea of I'm having a biological experience.

00:06:40.680 And once I put that front and center in my life, I could start making way smarter decisions.

00:06:46.820 Amazing.

00:06:47.520 Actually, there are several jumping off points that I want to cover.

00:06:51.860 Number one, when you said, oh, I was it was very important for me to win arguments.

00:06:58.500 Two things I want to say about that.

00:06:59.880 It's somewhere behind me.

00:07:01.540 I'll have to look for the book.

00:07:02.540 There's a book called The Enigma of Reason by Sperber and Mercier.

00:07:09.460 They're two French cognitive psychologists.

00:07:12.580 In the book, they argue that people haven't evolved the capacity to reason to seek some objective truth.

00:07:23.240 But to your point, they've evolved the capacity to reason to win arguments.

00:07:30.160 So it doesn't matter whether I'm right or wrong.

00:07:33.260 What's important is that I win the argument.

00:07:35.900 What's important is that my team wins the argument.

00:07:38.900 And so that which you were experiencing, they would argue is the default architecture of the human mind.

00:07:45.620 Now, the reason why I became very intimately aware of their work is because in chapter seven of this book, The Parasitic Mind, where I talk about what are some epistemological strategies that we can use in seeking truth, I say, look, there are some objective ways to seek some objective truth.

00:08:04.520 But here is the obstacle.

00:08:06.600 People aren't necessarily interested in seeking truth.

00:08:09.880 They're interested in winning arguments.

00:08:11.700 So I think it takes actually quite an incredible self-awareness that you eventually had to be able to say, I'm succumbing to this trap and I'm going to overcome it.

00:08:22.940 And so to the old maxim of the ancient Greeks, know thyself.

00:08:26.900 In your case, in knowing yourself, you eventually were able to correct it and that led you to great success afterwards.

00:08:34.340 Yeah, it is a thing that really drives home for me, the idea that we have created a problem in society where we now think philosophy is like this, ah, that's just philosophy.

00:08:47.900 I think that people really have to have a personal philosophy that they can articulate so that they could explain to you what's my North Star, so what am I trying to accomplish with my life and my actions, that they can articulate their belief system, that they can articulate their value system,

00:09:03.600 that they understand that they are caught in what I call a frame of reference, which is like whole life beer goggles that distort everything you see.

00:09:13.060 So you're not seeing objective truth.

00:09:15.020 You're seeing a simulacrum created by your brain.

00:09:19.720 You're living in a simulation.

00:09:21.180 Even if the real world is legitimately the real world, you experience the real world through a simulation.

00:09:26.760 That is your brain.

00:09:27.720 And once you understand that, now it's like, oh, I can articulate all of this stuff.

00:09:32.700 And so now that I can tell you what my philosophy is, I can tell you what my North Star is, I know what my beliefs are, I know what my values are, and I know all of that together creates this distortion that causes me to see the world in a certain way.

00:09:45.140 Then you start asking, can I intentionally distort my frame of reference so that I'm what I'll call is getting closer to ground truth.

00:09:55.240 Now, I think there's a pretty good reason why Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson ended up having this debate that completely derailed about truth, because truth is excruciatingly hard to identify, because we believe that what we see and understand in our interpretation is the truth, not realizing it's just false, that the only thing that's true are the physical laws.

00:10:20.120 So physics is truth.

00:10:22.700 And now if you're building up from physics, you'll very quickly realize you get into the human mind, and then everything else becomes interpretation.

00:10:29.580 And so it's very rare that even if we agree on what the facts are, that we will agree on what the facts mean.

00:10:38.120 And then virtually impossible for people to agree on now that we know what the facts mean, what ought we, I use that word in a moral sense, what ought we do about the fact that these are facts.

00:10:48.020 So the way that I think about truth is, I'm trying to predict the outcome of my behaviors.

00:10:52.940 If I do this in a business, it will go well.

00:10:55.080 If I do this in my marriage, it will yield the result that I'm looking for.

00:10:58.320 If I'm able to do a thing and have accurately predicted what that's going to lead to, I must be getting close to ground truth.

00:11:04.380 If I make a prediction and do a thing and I get a wildly different result, my map of reality is broken in some way.

00:11:12.480 And so once I started going, oh, cool, I care about effectiveness.

00:11:17.100 That's like one of my north stars.

00:11:19.360 Just does this work in getting me towards my aim?

00:11:23.340 If it does, then it is quote unquote right.

00:11:25.760 If it doesn't, it is quote unquote wrong.

00:11:28.780 Now, ought and morality is a separate thing.

00:11:31.860 But just in terms of right or wrong, I have a definition that I can articulate to people that I can use to steer my life.

00:11:38.760 And I just find that the big mistake that people make is they have feelings that they trust.

00:11:46.580 And those feelings make dots feel like they connect that don't actually connect.

00:11:51.420 So this thing feels true. 0.83

00:11:53.220 Therefore, it is true.

00:11:54.520 Even if it has no predictive validity whatsoever, it just feels right.

00:11:59.040 And so I'm going to act in accordance with my feeling.

00:12:01.180 And I'm just like, that's crazy from where I'm sitting because I have such clear goals.

00:12:06.460 And I'm just constantly asking myself, did this thing move me closer to my goal?

00:12:09.340 Yes or no?

00:12:10.180 There's actually a theory in cognitive psychology and emotion researchers.

00:12:16.820 It's called affect as information.

00:12:18.940 So it exactly speaks to your point where people use their affective state to shape their informational landscape.

00:12:26.860 So I'm just putting what you just said in academic talk.

00:12:30.780 So then after you sell your stake in Quest Nutrition, eventually you start this new endeavor, Impact Theory.

00:12:42.380 And we mentioned earlier how big it's become and how much it resonates with so many people.

00:12:46.960 So are you able, I know it's often difficult to speak about one's own qualities and you are a modest guy, but what are the unique attributes or assets that you have?

00:13:01.020 Yes, maybe you know how to play the algorithm so you get more views, but ultimately if you weren't a good conversationalist, if you didn't have interesting and poignant questions to ask, people would not turn to the show no matter how you played with the algorithm.

00:13:15.580 So you can answer that and then tell us whether, because now everybody wants to start a podcast.

00:13:22.100 I mean, everybody and their mother and their dog has a podcast, right?

00:13:24.980 When you and I entered this ecosystem, there were many fewer players in the game.

00:13:31.280 So what would be, so first, what were some of the, what are some of the unique assets that you have that make it successful?

00:13:38.600 And can some of these things talk to aspiring future Tom Bilyeu's?

00:13:43.620 Okay, so just to answer the first thing about me first, and then I'll go on because I actually teach people how to do this.

00:13:50.300 So what makes me interesting, so I'm actually not a good conversationalist, though I think that's very kind of you, but just in terms of me trying to always be very good at recognizing where my skill set lies and where it doesn't, I have a real awkwardness to me in initial interactions, which surprises me as much as it surprises anybody else, but nonetheless is true.

00:14:12.240 So what I had to get good at was really learning about that person, so that I could give an interview that nobody else was going to be able to give, because I would read all of their information, I would read their books, so like when you came on to talk about the parasitic mind, I'm going to read the parasitic mind, I'm going to read your other works, I'm going to read your tweets, I'm going to listen to you in interviews.

00:14:33.240 I'll put in 12-ish hours of work for one interview, and so that's me going, okay, you don't have like a Rogan's effortlessness where you can just talk about anything, so I need to know where am I going with this, and then I am an iterative anything.

00:14:51.440 I'm an iterative builder.

00:14:52.460 I'm an iterative interviewer where I'll do a thing, I'll get feedback, I'll adjust, I'll do a thing, get feedback, adjust.

00:15:00.300 It's what I call the physics of progress, so because I don't lie to myself, and I'm like, nah, I'm not good at that thing, whatever, now I can actually figure out what skill I have to get good at.

00:15:10.240 So anyway, just being relentless on that, I won't lie, I'm intellectual, so I've always been highly verbal, so that was why I started the podcast back in the day.

00:15:23.920 I was like, okay, if you put me in front of a camera in this situation, I can do my what I call magic trick, and so that is part of it, know thy strengths, and so leaning into that, and then I am just unbelievably curious.

00:15:39.680 So I spend, if you average it out, I spend two hours a day in just pure knowledge acquisition, 365 days a year, including Christmas.

00:15:50.020 So I'm just obsessed.

00:15:52.400 Is that largely in the form of reading books or other?

00:15:55.600 Now, I probably do 40% through books and 60% through what we'll call podcasting, but mostly on YouTube.

00:16:04.640 Okay, very interesting.

00:16:06.680 I'm actually reading, he's coming on my show next week.

00:16:10.400 This is a book, I mean, I'm not paid to promote this, it's just because we're talking about books.

00:16:15.040 This is a book by an evolutionist who, the book is about urban ecology and urban evolution.

00:16:23.740 The idea being that in the same way that Darwin studied, you know, the Darwinian finches, how a finch, a bird, will evolve different beak structures depending on which Galapagos island that particular bird is at.

00:16:39.320 Well, urban ecosystems end up creating these artificial islands where what started off as a singular species within the same city, you could then have these islands of, let's say, pigeons that within a very short timeframe can completely evolve different morphological features and behaviors.

00:17:03.140 So I thought, I'm blown away.

00:17:04.860 So I reached out to the guy, I said, you've got to come on my show.

00:17:07.660 So check this out.

00:17:09.000 If you're looking for a book to read, check out this book.

00:17:11.580 I think you'd love it.

00:17:12.320 I know that last time that I came on your show, we actually talked about literature and so on.

00:17:17.760 I think you have an interest in Russian literature.

00:17:20.160 Is that right?

00:17:21.160 Was that?

00:17:22.540 Far more Russian history.

00:17:24.740 Oh, that's what it was.

00:17:25.840 People would be able to call me out very fast on my Russian literature.

00:17:28.820 But yeah, Russian history is part of my trifecta of evil that you and I very much see the parasitic mind in a similar fashion. 0.98

00:17:39.160 And I am aghast going back to looking at the same facts and seeing something different.

00:17:45.180 Either people have not looked at the facts of Mao's China, Lenin and Stalin's Russia, and then obviously Hitler's Third Reich.

00:17:53.780 Or they've looked at it and they take away very different messages than I take away.

00:17:58.040 So yes, I am very into Russian history.

00:18:03.460 Very cool.

00:18:04.520 What are some of the books that have most influenced you?

00:18:09.580 Whether they are nonfiction books, they could be self-help books, they could be literature, anything.

00:18:17.800 Off the top of your mind, here are five books that really changed my way of thinking, way of doing,

00:18:24.760 and I recommend them to all of our viewers and listeners.

00:18:28.500 Okay, so number one is going to be Mindset by Carol Dweck.

00:18:31.740 Now, these are very particular to the things I needed to learn.

00:18:35.420 But Mindset by Carol Dweck, hugely influential.

00:18:40.320 Jocko Willink's book, Extreme Ownership, allowed me to put words to a thing that I was trying to do in my life.

00:18:47.660 And so that was incredibly useful to me.

00:18:49.580 And Phantoms in the Brain by V.S. Ramachandran taught me-

00:18:55.040 Oh, the neuroscientist from UCSD?

00:18:57.240 Yes.

00:18:57.880 Oh my God, he's amazing.

00:18:59.900 One of the great honors of my life as an interviewer was getting to interview him.

00:19:04.040 I don't think he does many interviews anymore, but he's unbelievable and taught me just a tremendous amount about the brain.

00:19:12.720 You Can't Hurt Me by David Goggins speaks to that side of my soul.

00:19:17.140 I think that book is extremely powerful.

00:19:21.620 And then I don't know if it's honest that I would say this if I wasn't looking at it over your shoulder,

00:19:27.940 but it is very true that your book, The Parasitic Mind-

00:19:30.180 Oh my God.

00:19:31.280 Is so important to what we're going through right now that I, one, I've tweeted you, I think, several times saying,

00:19:39.900 hey, congratulations for hitting the Amazon bestseller list over and over.

00:19:44.960 Well-deserved, such an important idea at this point.

00:19:48.620 And even if you strip it of the sort of political valence, the story of my life is the story of being trapped by my own parasitical ideas that I was unaware I had.

00:20:00.760 And so extracting myself out of it.

00:20:02.980 So I don't see myself as somebody who's above that.

00:20:05.500 I see myself as somebody who's like, oh my God, when you can extract yourself from it, you can see more clearly.

00:20:11.960 You can more accurately predict outcomes.

00:20:14.140 And that is very useful.

00:20:16.240 Yeah.

00:20:16.520 Well, thank you for including me in that list.

00:20:18.560 It's very kind of you.

00:20:19.320 I mean, look, it's, it's been unbelievable.

00:20:23.760 And I guess we'll talk about this when we talk about purpose and meaning and happiness, you know, why do we do the things that we do?

00:20:30.320 And, and for me, I mean, there are, I've got many valuable answers to, to explain, you know, what gets me up in the morning, but one of which is seeing how helpful some of your ideas that people consume.

00:20:45.120 And they, they come up to you in the street.

00:20:46.660 So it could be a complete anonymous person who comes up and says, oh my God, I'm just reading the parasitic mind now.

00:20:52.600 And it's blowing my mind.

00:20:53.780 It's completely changing the way I'm thinking.

00:20:55.820 Or it could be Tom Bilyeu or Elon Musk saying, oh my God, your book.

00:21:01.280 And so to me, one of the things that I've had to struggle with, and I think I've reached the right balance.

00:21:07.720 And I'm not sure if we discussed this the last time I came on your show.

00:21:10.320 Well, it's very easy when you're an academic to be a stay in your lane, hyper specialist, right?

00:21:16.820 And that's how academics are taught to navigate through their careers.

00:21:21.280 Know a lot about a very small epsilon and keep pumping out a million papers because there's economies of scale, right?

00:21:29.760 I don't have to learn any new literature.

00:21:31.840 I just keep pumping it out.

00:21:33.140 And I thought, no, yes, of course, I've published many academic papers and top academic journals.

00:21:38.840 So it's not as though I'm a slouch as a scientist, but it wasn't enough for me.

00:21:43.600 I want to be able to communicate with the corrections officer or the trucker who writes to me and says,

00:21:52.200 hey, I just listened to the audio version of the parasitic mind.

00:21:57.440 And it got me from Dayton, Ohio to Portland, Oregon.

00:22:02.260 Now I feel as though I've succeeded because I've been able to reach more than just the few anointed guys at Stanford.

00:22:10.660 So that gives you a bit of a taste of what are some of the things that kind of give me a sense of purpose,

00:22:17.000 that I'm reaching people.

00:22:18.680 What is your thing?

00:22:19.960 What makes you go, you know what?

00:22:21.280 I think I'm contributing positively to the world.

00:22:23.900 What is yours?

00:22:24.620 Well, so I don't believe that humans have a purpose.

00:22:28.880 I believe that we get to decide it.

00:22:30.140 So when I say my purposes, please know I say it in that framework.

00:22:33.140 But my purpose is to empower people.

00:22:36.200 And so that's really gone through multiple phases in my life.

00:22:39.140 Phase one was just pure mindset, just getting people to understand how to build a belief and value system that will allow you to achieve your goals.

00:22:46.080 And then now I've moved into another phase where I'm saying, okay, if you've primed your mind for that, what are you now doing with that primed mind?

00:22:55.680 And so ultimately you get a mindset because you want an outcome, a useful mindset.

00:23:00.760 And so focusing on the biggest ideas that we struggle with in our time.

00:23:07.920 And so my world's really bifurcated into two things.

00:23:11.320 I do a lot aimed at kids in the form of video games and comic books, which is the thing I am least known for.

00:23:18.140 There's literally like 27 people currently that know that I spend time on that.

00:23:21.860 And then what I'm known for is the stuff aimed at adults.

00:23:26.120 And so I feel like it's pretty undeniable that we live in, if not the most pivotal, and I mean that truly in a, we're going to end up going in a different direction, the most pivotal time in human history or one of the pivotal moments in human history.

00:23:43.180 And being awake, paying attention to what's happening and making sure that even though I don't believe in free will, I believe that we do respond to ideas.

00:23:58.460 And so I try to put out ideas that are going to be more useful.

00:24:03.200 And so going back to the idea of, okay, what just mapping out, you're having a biological experience.

00:24:09.740 What are the biological states you're in the grip of?

00:24:12.920 How do you begin to change that through your belief systems and your value systems?

00:24:17.880 And so I spend a lot of time doing that and then helping myself and others think from first principles, approaching the biggest issues of our time.

00:24:27.120 So, you know, bringing people on and talking about Israel, Palestine, bringing people on and talking about Trump and Biden, bringing people on and talking about this one really has my heart, the economy.

00:24:38.660 And just like, okay, like, what do we do with this?

00:24:41.480 Why do these ideas matter?

00:24:42.880 Why is there an answer that's better than another?

00:24:46.180 And how do we judge that?

00:24:47.180 And how do we think through it?

00:24:48.820 So if I were going to sum it up in a single word, it would be empowerment.

00:24:53.280 But that's why to me, the interviews that I do are still based on empowerment, as is the video game.

00:24:58.760 You know, it's very interesting because, for example, in hearing your response to what are the five books that have influenced you the most, or when I hear a lot of your responses to my questions, you're very much someone who's in prescriptive mode.

00:25:14.380 And let me give a broader academic explanation of what that word means in the broader sense.

00:25:22.240 So when you study decision-making, as I have, you could study decision-making in one of three ways.

00:25:28.540 You could study decision-making under the normative framework.

00:25:33.420 Normative means, so classical economists have these axioms of rational choice.

00:25:38.940 If I prefer car A to car B, and if I prefer car B to car C, then it must be that I prefer car A to car C.

00:25:46.100 That's called the transitivity axiom.

00:25:47.760 If I don't adhere to that, I'm being irrational in that strict sense.

00:25:53.800 I'm not adhering to that axioms of rational choice.

00:25:56.960 And so I am violating a normative principle.

00:26:00.000 Normative meaning it abides to a norm of rationality.

00:26:03.940 So that's one way of studying decision-making.

00:26:06.580 Many psychologists and behavioral scientists, such as myself, will study descriptive decision-making.

00:26:14.340 I'm not trying to study decision-making in the context of a norm.

00:26:17.880 I just want to describe how do people shop for a car?

00:26:21.100 How do people choose between political candidates?

00:26:24.280 How do you decide when you've got three attractive prospective mates whom you're going to marry, right?

00:26:29.800 You just want to describe the process and the behavior.

00:26:32.880 And then the third type, so I said normative, I said descriptive.

00:26:38.000 The third type that's going to fit you is prescriptive decision-making.

00:26:43.320 Prescriptive decision-making is when you try to develop a mathematical model that prescribes some optimal behavior.

00:26:51.940 So, for example, there is something called the traveling salesman problem, whereby a traveling salesman has to visit 10 cities, A, B, C, D, E, F, right?

00:27:02.940 In which order should he or she visit those cities to return back to the starting point so that you minimize the cost of travel or the gas cost?

00:27:15.300 So there is an actual mathematical algorithm that I would solve that allows me to minimize cost.

00:27:23.940 So I'm prescribing behavior.

00:27:26.160 And the way that I see you navigating the world, you're always in prescriptive world.

00:27:32.380 This is what I need to do to improve.

00:27:34.140 This is what you should do to that.

00:27:36.200 Is that something that you've uniquely found?

00:27:39.060 Because until I wrote the happiness book, Tom, which involves prescription, how to live a life so that you're happy,

00:27:47.960 I had never been someone who was in prescriptive world.

00:27:50.540 I was in academic world, I was in descriptive world, and it's only recently that I've entered prescriptive world.

00:27:56.800 But whereas it seems like much of your interventions in life are prescriptive.

00:28:01.560 What are your thoughts about all that?

00:28:03.400 That, I mean, you've just put words to something that I can see now strikes me as so self-evidently the way to live that I've never thought about it.

00:28:16.680 And I'm playing my life back like in the sixth sense for everybody that I meet.

00:28:21.900 I'm like, wait, were they in one of the other two modes?

00:28:23.660 What's happening?

00:28:25.640 Yeah, that is so accurate.

00:28:29.700 I just got goosebumps.

00:28:31.760 Sorry, before you go on.

00:28:34.120 That's what the beauty, the mystical nature of intellectual conversations.

00:28:39.900 I didn't know I was going to tell you all this now.

00:28:41.960 It just came up.

00:28:42.860 Go on.

00:28:43.180 Sorry to interrupt.

00:28:43.660 No, man, that's exactly the juice of conversations like this is that helps me see what I do as a category of thing.

00:28:53.020 And I certainly am as prone to this as anybody else.

00:28:55.820 But the thing that I see people do all the time is they mistake their frame of reference for objective truth.

00:29:03.680 And I need to figure out what my wife is doing, because the the greatest source of friction in my marriage is now using your words. 1.00

00:29:13.220 I see the world through the lens of prescription.

00:29:16.340 So the way that my wife and I always talk about it is I'm obsessed with efficiency.

00:29:21.020 Now, efficiency just sort of is downstream of what you're saying.

00:29:24.840 So my wife will at times like now is not a moment for efficiency. 1.00

00:29:28.620 I don't want to do this thing in the most efficient way possible.

00:29:32.220 I just want to explore or talk about or I just want you to sit in my problem with me.

00:29:36.940 And I'm like, ah, I want to solve your problem as efficiently as possible.

00:29:39.900 Everybody's heard that conversation before.

00:29:42.200 So it's very interesting.

00:29:44.060 I need to to have a category for where other people fall would be excruciatingly useful because.

00:29:52.720 I don't understand why people aren't prescriptive all the time.

00:29:56.100 I legitimately can't in this moment think can I offer of a way, please, Jesus.

00:30:02.760 So I think it might partially map onto the intrinsic versus extrinsic motivational system.

00:30:11.840 Right.

00:30:12.040 So, for example, if I were to say to you, you know, I'm I'm going to go back to school and get a degree because I love the purity of learning.

00:30:21.800 I'm a true lover of knowledge.

00:30:24.760 Right.

00:30:25.320 Sophia.

00:30:26.260 Right.

00:30:27.180 That would be intrinsic motivation.

00:30:29.220 On the other hand, if I said, you know, I really think that I need to change careers.

00:30:33.380 And I think based on my unique skill sets and based on the market conditions, I probably should go back and get an accounting degree because that's going to secure.

00:30:43.580 There I am being extrinsically motivated.

00:30:47.180 So I think it might be it's an empirical question that one could test.

00:30:50.860 I think that people who might be very strong on prescriptive approaches to life might oftentimes score high on the extrinsic thing.

00:31:03.560 I'm trying to solve.

00:31:04.440 I'm pragmatic.

00:31:05.480 How do I improve?

00:31:06.840 How do I get forward?

00:31:08.600 Whereas oftentimes, maybe to a fault, I'm very much of a purist.

00:31:14.400 Right.

00:31:14.540 I'm so, for example, I don't like going to networking events because to me.

00:31:22.880 Sorry.

00:31:23.820 That makes two of us.

00:31:25.460 Right.

00:31:25.760 Well, but so let me tell you my reason and then you tell me what yours is.

00:31:29.220 Maybe it's the same because I'm so pure of spirit that if I go to a networking conference, I am violating my internal sense of I just want to connect with people for the love of connecting with them.

00:31:44.080 But if there is an ulterior motive that I'm going there for networking purposes, it feels false and inauthentic to me.

00:31:53.580 So because I have that purity strain in me, I can very much navigate an intrinsic world and I'm happy with it.

00:32:03.040 And I say to a fault because oftentimes I need to be hit by the reality that says, hey, you know, you also have to maximize efficiency, as you said, or you have to solve real pragmatic goals.

00:32:17.740 So maybe I'm too much on the intrinsic end and maybe you're more on the pragmatic end and maybe the optimal point is somewhere in the middle.

00:32:25.380 Who knows?

00:32:26.500 Well, so it's interesting.

00:32:27.280 I think this is a knowable thing and this is where I get hung up with people.

00:32:30.740 So I would say you and I are using different strategies to get to the exact same thing.

00:32:36.920 And so I think, again, you're having a biological experience.

00:32:40.700 All people crave is a certain neurological state.

00:32:44.380 So people want to feel a certain way.

00:32:46.760 Life is purely experiential.

00:32:49.120 And the closest thing I can get to, to a state that people would want to have as their default would be fulfilled.

00:32:56.920 Fulfillment is the only emotional state that I know that can endure even grief.

00:33:03.980 So I have a whole formula for what equals fulfillment.

00:33:06.860 But I think that that is irrelevant for this conversation.

00:33:10.280 I think the reality is that you want to feel a certain way in your life.

00:33:14.560 I want to feel a certain way in my life.

00:33:16.560 And it just so happens that the thing that gets me to where I want to be with just like where I'm feeling the way I want to feel the most often is being prescriptive.

00:33:28.340 So that if we're roughly 50% hardwired and there's nothing you're going to be able to do to change it and 50% malleable, for whatever reason, at this point in my life, you put those two things together.

00:33:39.680 And being prescriptive just is like the clouds part and the beam of sunshine falls on me.

00:33:44.520 And whenever I can be in that mode, the world just feels right.

00:33:47.420 Whereas for you, you're using a more, because I consider myself very intrinsically motivated, but just to use your language for a second, even if I am mistaken and I'm being extrinsically motivated, I'm still not pursuing anything other than a psychological state.

00:34:04.760 I think you're doing the same.

00:34:05.780 You're pursuing a psychological state and certain things get you there better or faster than others.

00:34:10.260 And so it becomes interesting to see how people break along those lines of, you know, what are they pursuing?

00:34:17.000 So take a kid that pursues drama because their parents ignore them.

00:34:21.560 And so the only way to get any reaction is to get a negative reaction.

00:34:25.340 And so they're still pursuing a state of mind where they want to feel that somebody sees them and is paying attention to them. 0.93

00:34:31.540 So we look at it and we go, oh, that's a dumb strategy.

00:34:34.200 But it's actually not if that's the only way that you can get their attention.

00:34:37.020 And so once you identify, oh, the real goal here is to have somebody acknowledge you exist.

00:34:43.300 So throwing a fit.

00:34:44.600 Yeah, perfectly valid.

00:34:46.540 So my life has been a series of what's really motivating me right now.

00:34:51.880 And as I go through those, like in the example that I already explained at the top was, okay, hold on.

00:34:58.380 I thought I wanted to be successful, but really what my value, my hidden value is that I want people to think I'm smart.

00:35:04.940 But once I could pull that into my conscious mind, then I could make a choice about it.

00:35:08.980 Do I want that to be my value?

00:35:10.580 No, I don't.

00:35:11.080 Okay, so we're going to discard that.

00:35:12.300 It's not going to be easy.

00:35:13.200 But now that I see it, I can discard it.

00:35:16.860 So anyway, obviously, not everybody views the world the way that I view the world.

00:35:22.440 But I think we are all chasing the same thing, which is there's a certain way I want to feel.

00:35:26.540 And I'm going to do the things that make me feel that thing.

00:35:30.180 Do you think that given that now you clearly see how much, as you said, the clouds part when you enter prescriptive world, could you have foreseen, you know, in a parallel universe, you becoming a clinical psychologist, right?

00:35:46.760 Because a clinical psychologist, by definition, I mean, they come to see you, they lay out the fact that they've had six very unsuccessful relationships.

00:35:58.680 They don't see the recurring pattern that they're always picking the exactly imperfect person to be with.

00:36:07.600 They want stability, but they're attracted to the bad boy.

00:36:10.400 And it takes you, the clinical psychologist, to say, well, do you see that each of these patterns are repeating themselves?

00:36:16.360 So could you have seen, by the way, not that it's too late.

00:36:19.360 If tomorrow you decide to be a clinical psychologist, I'm sure that you could go and get the training to be it.

00:36:23.820 But would that have been something that you would have naturally gravitated toward when you were deciding to go to the USC film school?

00:36:31.960 Oh, I could have gone into clinical psychology?

00:36:34.480 You know, it's really interesting.

00:36:35.940 So I think humans are, call it 120-sided dice.

00:36:39.380 It's probably more than that, but whatever.

00:36:40.800 You get the idea.

00:36:41.380 And you roll it in terms of character traits and, hey, whatever combination comes up.

00:36:45.300 And if you think of 100 being traits and then the 20 being amplitude of that trait.

00:36:50.240 So I am very drawn to people.

00:36:53.240 I found myself in all of my early relationships.

00:36:57.740 The wounded girl was attracted to me.

00:37:01.780 And I was attracted to whoever was attracted to me.

00:37:05.080 So in the beginning.

00:37:06.220 Also known as every teenage boy.

00:37:07.960 Yeah, that sounds about right.

00:37:10.380 I found myself in these endless conversations with people that they would just pour their heart out to me.

00:37:18.240 And I would try to help them with, you know, whatever teenage advice I had.

00:37:22.760 And it never seemed to go anywhere.

00:37:24.260 And so that ended up showing me that there's a side of my personality where I just have dead shark eyes.

00:37:32.000 If people aren't going to make change, I'm not there for the loop.

00:37:35.880 I just, whatever roll of that dice is, I just, I can't do it.

00:37:40.420 So I don't have the patience to sit with somebody who's not making change going back to my prescriptive nature.

00:37:46.480 I'm like, if I've laid out the solution and you haven't even tried it to test it to see if it works, I can't live in that loop.

00:37:54.820 It's funny.

00:37:55.460 Sorry, before you go, forgive me.

00:37:56.420 So, I mean, you're exactly the non-psychoanalyst because the psychoanalyst says, let's dig deep into your soul for the next 19 years before we may have a light of hope.

00:38:12.520 Whereas you're saying, I'm going to talk to you once or twice on the couch.

00:38:16.120 If by the third time you're not implementing some of this stuff, you're out of here.

00:38:20.260 Yeah, so I've thought long and hard about, because I do love teaching.

00:38:26.700 Now, do I teach one-on-one or do I focus on scale?

00:38:31.160 And so people that have heard me talk long enough will hear me say, I'm a scale guy.

00:38:35.720 What I mean by that is now I don't have to worry about the sort of one-off, are you doing this or not?

00:38:41.120 I'm putting out ideas that I use every day that have led me to tremendous levels of success.

00:38:45.820 I accept that 2% of people will take those ideas and it will change their life forever and 98% won't.

00:38:52.320 And then when I want to focus on the 98%, I go tell stories. 0.90

00:38:55.780 And I just try to plant very simple ideas that nudge people in the right direction.

00:39:00.520 So there's the prescriptive teaching.

00:39:03.020 Most people won't do anything with the information.

00:39:05.140 Then there's the just ideas nudging you, but you can nudge a lot of people.

00:39:11.200 And so those are the two ways I think about it.

00:39:13.520 I tried doing mentoring of young entrepreneurs and it just started driving me crazy because

00:39:19.200 they weren't doing the things they needed to do to exist in what I call the physics of progress.

00:39:26.480 So there just is physics to making a business work.

00:39:31.640 And you either run that or you don't.

00:39:33.740 It's effectively the scientific method.

00:39:35.380 There's nothing you'd be surprised by.

00:39:37.180 But some people just won't do it.

00:39:38.960 Very interesting.

00:39:39.920 And I can't deal with that.

00:39:40.420 So what are, so how many, I mean, I don't know if you know the exact number, but how

00:39:44.960 many guests have you hosted thus far on Impact Theory?

00:39:49.960 So we've done roughly a thousand episodes.

00:39:53.840 So unique guests, let's ballpark it to 800.

00:39:57.700 Okay.

00:39:58.020 So let's 800 guests.

00:39:59.420 And I'm not, I'm not asking you to name people.

00:40:01.420 So have you had, now, earlier you mentioned that, you know, you're someone who prepares

00:40:07.500 well, you're spending 12 hours digging deep into this person to know everything about

00:40:12.320 them, to know how they think, to know what they've written and so on.

00:40:15.120 So I'm sure you're quite judicious in deciding whom you're going to invite on the show.

00:40:20.480 There are many, there's a much longer list of people who'd like to chat with you than

00:40:23.580 people who actually end up chatting with you.

00:40:25.440 So of the 800 people that you've had, do you feel, you know, what is the failure rate? 0.99

00:40:31.840 I mean, I'm sure they were all great conversation, but someone that you sat down with, God damn, 0.87

00:40:36.400 this person turned out to be a lot more duddy than I would have hoped for. 0.94

00:40:40.380 Again, you don't have to give me names, but I'm just wondering.

00:40:42.660 Well, I won't give you names because that would be a dick move, but I'll give you, I'll

00:40:46.140 give you percentages.

00:40:46.840 Uh, five to 10% are just outright catastrophe because they're, they turn out to not be a 0.99

00:40:54.720 good conversationalist.

00:40:55.780 What, what, what is the main source or reason for the catastrophe?

00:41:00.440 They don't know how to say, cause you don't get on the set unless you have awesome ideas,

00:41:05.180 but they don't know how to verbally put across the ideas that they can write about.

00:41:10.660 So again, you're not getting on the show unless you, you've got good ideas, but, but five to

00:41:16.160 10% just cannot articulate it.

00:41:18.960 Uh, and then you've got the majority just by sheer numbers, they're going to be base 0.81

00:41:24.320 hits had fun.

00:41:25.600 Glad I spent the time with them.

00:41:26.920 This is wonderful.

00:41:28.060 Uh, and maybe that's 70%.

00:41:30.500 So now you're, if you give all 10% to the failures, uh, you're at 80% and then 20% are 0.98

00:41:38.300 some shade of, holy shit, that was incredible. 0.67

00:41:41.540 And I live for the incredible ones and, uh, am just beside myself with gratitude that, that 0.96

00:41:50.060 all of those base hits have changed my life in ways that I can't fathom.

00:41:54.100 And what, what, what an honor.

00:41:57.280 Wow.

00:41:57.660 Are there, what percentage of the people that have been guests on your show have you eventually

00:42:04.340 become?

00:42:05.000 Um, I mean, it doesn't have to be your, you're the best of friends and you go to each other's,

00:42:08.900 uh, children's, uh, you know, uh, birthdays, but that you've become friends with off air.

00:42:15.280 You're, you're seeing each other twice a year, not on the show.

00:42:19.100 Less than 1% for sure.

00:42:21.440 Is that just because of the geographical realities that the guests don't live around you or what,

00:42:26.520 what, what is the.

00:42:27.260 Uh, okay.

00:42:28.160 So now, I mean, let's, let's get into Tom Bilyeu's flaws.

00:42:32.180 Uh, so I am obsessed with two things. 0.90

00:42:37.540 One, my wife, she's my favorite human on planet earth, my best friend, and I get to have sex 1.00

00:42:42.360 with her. 0.68

00:42:42.640 So, Hey, uh, she has advantages that other people don't have.

00:42:47.040 And I am obsessed with my work.

00:42:49.200 And so when you put those two together, it just eats up a lot of my time.

00:42:53.400 Uh, then on top of that, I, going back to the earlier thing, I don't go to networking

00:42:58.780 events.

00:42:59.520 Now, I think this is, this is inefficient for the goals that I want to achieve.

00:43:03.820 If, if I were really, if success in the business world were my number one goal right now, I would

00:43:12.020 move to Austin, Texas, and I would just put myself in that, the, the podcast like cycle.

00:43:18.500 And I don't do that.

00:43:20.260 And the reason that I don't do that is I wouldn't be able to take advantage of it.

00:43:23.900 Cause I'd never go out.

00:43:24.720 I never hang out with people.

00:43:26.060 Um, I am, I'm, I'm an ambivert.

00:43:30.840 I can be extroverted, but my default is introverted in that if my wife leaves, it doesn't even cross

00:43:39.840 my mind to invite somebody over.

00:43:41.700 I'm just like, word, I'm going to collapse inside my own imagination and I'm going to work on a

00:43:46.580 business problem or I'm going to read or whatever.

00:43:49.940 I'm just going to do like really selfish things.

00:43:53.440 And the way that I think of them is I know how to optimize my neurochemistry so that every

00:43:59.100 second of my time is as close to optimized as possible.

00:44:03.680 And I think it's a really bad strategy.

00:44:06.700 And so when other people, and I'll explain why, when other people ask me what they should

00:44:11.260 do with their lives, I'm like, you really need one just for business.

00:44:15.860 Networking is so powerful.

00:44:18.240 And two, life has nothing better to offer you than love.

00:44:21.560 Literally nothing.

00:44:22.840 I've made enough money.

00:44:23.940 I can just tell you objectively, I've had enough accolades.

00:44:26.600 The it's just love, baby.

00:44:28.120 That's all it's got.

00:44:28.840 And so I know that I can be this sort of isolationist because I have my wife.

00:44:35.620 And if I didn't have her, I would slide into a dark place.

00:44:38.560 And my whole strategy would be a farce because I basically know nobody else.

00:44:43.420 So now I have made a commitment to myself over the last year that I do want to become

00:44:49.380 friends with people.

00:44:50.860 I don't think adult males are particularly good at this.

00:44:54.700 And I'm probably the worst of adult males.

00:44:57.480 So yeah, I have not become friends with many of them, though I do sincerely in my heart.

00:45:04.840 I would like to spend more time with people.

00:45:08.580 I just, it's the isolation is, I have two vices, stress and isolation.

00:45:16.760 I indulge in isolation too much.

00:45:19.580 And I think it will be unwise.

00:45:20.740 As I get older, I think I will really regret that because I don't have kids and my wife

00:45:29.020 is, I just, everything is invested in her from a friendship, you know, outward facing

00:45:35.420 focus.

00:45:36.920 God forbid something happened to her.

00:45:40.100 It'd be bad.

00:45:41.160 So anyway.

00:45:41.920 Wow.

00:45:42.520 People should not take my advice.

00:45:44.120 So, I mean, there are a few elements of what you've said that resonate with me and a few

00:45:49.680 others that don't.

00:45:50.620 So to share some of, you know, the way I navigate through some of the issues you've been talking

00:45:54.380 about, I wholeheartedly agree that my wife is my best friend.

00:45:58.340 One of the things that, and I find it very heartwarming that people will come up to me,

00:46:03.640 they won't come up to talk about some great idea that I've espoused or promulgated.

00:46:09.260 They say, oh, I love how you publicly honor your wife.

00:46:13.600 And that means a lot to me because I don't do it as a signal.

00:46:16.700 I literally do it again from a purity place, which is I share her cooking and, you know,

00:46:22.260 how, how close we are and we go on walks together.

00:46:25.760 So I'm, I certainly understand that.

00:46:27.720 I think the difference between you and me is that, uh, I am very much of a quality, not

00:46:34.060 quantity friendship circle.

00:46:35.740 I don't need to be.

00:46:36.620 So even though I'm very extroverted in that, if you put me in a, in a crowd, I will navigate

00:46:41.640 through it nicely.

00:46:43.180 I'm not a small talk kind of person.

00:46:45.380 I'm not a networking guy.

00:46:46.780 So I'd rather have two, three very close male friends that I can truly bond with.

00:46:52.840 So for example, before we, we, we came to do this show, I was returning from a cafe and

00:46:59.380 I was chatting with one of my close friends who used to be my undergraduate student back

00:47:05.540 in 1997.

00:47:07.260 We're actually, we're not that far age.

00:47:09.600 He, he went to school a bit later.

00:47:11.260 And so he's maybe six or seven years younger than me after he, he finished, uh, you know,

00:47:16.360 studying with me.

00:47:17.400 We eventually started going out and we became friends and so on.

00:47:20.720 And I remember after we had about a one hour phone conversation.

00:47:24.800 And when I got off the phone, I told my wife, I said, I just had such a beautifully intimate

00:47:29.800 chat with this, with this gentleman.

00:47:32.100 And so I just need, yes, my wife meets all those needs, but one or two other male energy 0.99

00:47:39.820 guys.

00:47:40.120 But the types of males that I'm attracted to in terms of my friendships have to score

00:47:44.860 high on communication ability, meaning that they can't, so they, they're, they're very,

00:47:50.660 they're manly and they could do the, the, the, the locker talk.

00:47:55.080 They're, they're men's men, but they have this, uh, emotional acuity that I look for because

00:48:01.480 I'm someone who's very communicative.

00:48:03.140 So having said all that, have you ever had a male friend that could potentially fill that,

00:48:10.400 that niche for you?

00:48:12.240 Yeah.

00:48:12.840 And to say that I don't have friends would certainly be misleading.

00:48:16.340 Um, but it is, if you look at time allocation, uh, it's not a lot.

00:48:22.200 So part of it is I'm into like some weird stuff.

00:48:24.920 And also please remember that I have the, the staff and trust me, I do not confuse them

00:48:31.760 with friends, but you can be extremely friendly.

00:48:35.560 And because I share passions with the people that work here, I get that scratched.

00:48:41.360 But like, if I found a guy, uh, and in fact, this would be one of my questions for you.

00:48:45.460 Like, what do you do when you're hanging out?

00:48:48.900 I find most guys want to like work out or in fact, that's almost always it.

00:48:53.820 They want to work out.

00:48:54.580 And I'm just like, that is not how I hang out.

00:48:57.020 I chat.

00:48:58.000 I do the sad truth with my close friend.

00:49:01.340 I'm not, it's not, I'm not interviewing them, but I, so in, in the, in the happiness book,

00:49:05.260 I talk about, uh, walk and talk sessions.

00:49:08.980 So I have a friend actually who happens to be a clinical psychologist.

00:49:12.200 He's a professor of psychology at my university.

00:49:14.840 We became friends about maybe five or six years ago.

00:49:17.640 So once at least every couple of weeks, I mean, sometimes life doesn't allow you to

00:49:23.360 do it that often, but we will go for walks for an hour, an hour and a half, which is

00:49:29.280 really important to me because as you may or may not know, I keep track of the number

00:49:33.660 of steps I, I complete in a day.

00:49:36.620 So if we go for an hour, an hour and a half, I just knocked off probably 8,000 steps and

00:49:42.000 there'll be no a priori topics that we're going to cover.

00:49:46.180 But today, you know what?

00:49:47.400 Let's talk about, uh, how much I love Leonardo da Vinci.

00:49:51.820 And do you agree or who, who would you invite to, to your, and so it ends up being that the

00:49:58.600 guys that I'm most drawn to in terms of my friendships are not guys that I go work out 0.97

00:50:05.200 with, or we sit at a cafe to ogle at girls with nice big asses. 1.00

00:50:09.400 Rather, it's someone that I can connect with on a emotional slash intellectual level. 0.91

00:50:16.520 If they don't scratch that itch, then I might be very friendly with them, but they won't

00:50:21.260 be within my inner circle.

00:50:23.800 Well, what would, would it be the same for you?

00:50:26.600 Yeah, very much.

00:50:27.360 So, um, you know, I don't want to throw him under the bus by, uh, calling him a friend,

00:50:32.040 but somebody that I am extremely friendly with and, uh, we'll just take time with him

00:50:38.440 whenever I can get it is Eric Weinstein.

00:50:40.900 Okay.

00:50:41.460 And one of, one of the most enjoyable friend related experiences of my adult life was him,

00:50:49.100 uh, trying unsuccessfully, God, God bless him to explain to me, um, his theory.

00:50:57.760 And so he came over, I'm talking like seven or eight hours.

00:51:01.360 And we just were like, he's like, okay, here it is.

00:51:04.620 This is geometric unity.

00:51:05.860 And, uh, I really, really tried.

00:51:08.180 And that was beyond fun for me.

00:51:11.380 And that, I mean, to be able to engage with somebody of that level of intellect, that's,

00:51:15.880 you know, walking you through an idea.

00:51:17.700 I don't know.

00:51:18.000 It's just that kind of thing.

00:51:19.280 I remember saying to my wife, I was like, yo, that is the kind of thing I could do a lot

00:51:23.300 more of, because that made me feel like I'm still like pursuing something that I care

00:51:29.720 about while I'm with somebody that I care about.

00:51:33.360 And so often this is horrible, but I find myself hanging out with somebody I care about, but

00:51:39.120 we're not necessarily talking about something that I care about.

00:51:42.080 Uh, and so that creates some of that friction.

00:51:45.000 And so anyway, uh, again, don't know him that well, but, uh, am beside myself with joy every

00:51:52.240 time I get to spend time with him.

00:51:53.440 So, yeah, he actually, uh, sorry, uh, I think it was 2018.

00:51:57.680 I was speaking at the association for psychological sciences conference, which that year was happening

00:52:04.760 in San Francisco.

00:52:06.540 And, uh, you know, I had tweeted that I'm in San Francisco at this conference, whatever.

00:52:11.380 And so I receive a, a, I can't remember if he had called me or texted me a message from

00:52:17.200 Eric saying, Oh, you're in San Francisco.

00:52:20.180 So do you want to come over for a Shabbat dinner, Sabbath? 0.71

00:52:24.220 And I said, yeah, sure.

00:52:25.560 And so I'd gone to his house.

00:52:27.200 I got to meet his, his wife and I think one, maybe two kids.

00:52:30.640 I can't remember.

00:52:31.400 There were some other guests.

00:52:32.620 And so I thought that was really lovely because it was impromptu.

00:52:36.120 It was a moment to connect.

00:52:38.280 So I really appreciated that, which by the way, speaks to, so connection, human connection,

00:52:42.720 which we've been talking about for the past five, 10 minutes.

00:52:45.580 So in the, in the happiness book, in my last book, I, I talk about the research from Harvard's

00:52:52.440 longitudinal study.

00:52:53.800 I don't know if you're familiar with, this is the, I think it's the longest ongoing running

00:52:58.940 study for the past eight, the eight plus decades, uh, where they're trying to study, you know,

00:53:06.420 what are the, the, the, the causal variables that can best predict wellbeing, the good life

00:53:12.160 and so on. And the number one predictor to the conversation we're having is the quality of your

00:53:20.700 social networks, your, your friends group. So much so that it actually has a greater predictive

00:53:28.260 ability to your, not only your mental wellbeing, but even in some cases, your physical wellbeing,

00:53:35.900 than your cholesterol scores when you were 50. In other words, having a close knit of meaningful

00:53:43.820 friendship serves as much of a protection against getting heart disease than does eating well,

00:53:52.160 which you wouldn't think. Now I had a cardiologist on my show, I think maybe about a year ago. And I

00:53:57.820 said, okay, well, I get it that there is a, a correlation here, but what would actually be

00:54:03.880 the mechanism by which that holds true? And his answer, although it was speculative is that it's

00:54:10.520 via the inflammation route that when you are, when you are content in your social network that serves

00:54:18.620 as a reducing mechanism of inflammation, which of course leads to heart disease and so on. So, so for

00:54:26.640 you, while I appreciate that you've put all the chips onto the gorgeous, beautiful, lovely wife, 1.00

00:54:33.040 you might want to invest in one or two more other people. If you want to live forever.

00:54:38.500 Brother, I agree aggressively. And this is one of those things where you're asking this at a time

00:54:43.980 in my life where I really am making that effort. And yeah, I mean, hopefully I can report back in,

00:54:50.940 in a year or two and be like, yeah, no, I actually do hang out with people. I think that is better life

00:54:56.800 advice. And I try never there. There are two things that I give people advice on that I don't take

00:55:03.900 myself. And, uh, one of them is if anybody asks me, what is the safest emotional life path? I will

00:55:11.880 say have kids, even though I do not have kids. Um, but I feel very strongly that people should be

00:55:17.540 pursuing fulfillment. And I think the kids are the, the most guaranteed path to that. If you really

00:55:23.260 engage with it and do it well. Uh, and then the other is don't bifurcate your focus. And, uh, I

00:55:29.160 violate both of those. So anyway, I'll lump, uh, friends into the, the kid's basket of a thing where

00:55:34.760 it, the, the deep sense of connection and love and being a part of something bigger than yourself,

00:55:40.520 uh, really, really important. And as I am confronted with the reality that the odds of my wife living

00:55:47.460 forever are virtually zero, uh, that diversifying my, uh, diversification strategy. It applies in,

00:55:56.580 in, in finance. It applies to life. Uh, the reason I put my glasses is not because I've stopped paying

00:56:01.560 attention to you. Cause I want to read you speaking about having children. Do you mind if I ask, was it

00:56:08.240 a willful decision or was this fate? No, because I mean, even if we, uh, so it was, it was willful,

00:56:16.360 but even if we wanted to, we could still adopt. Right. So, um, we don't have kids for a very

00:56:24.520 specific set of reasons. However, just as I recognize that it is a dangerous strategy to not

00:56:31.420 have a lot of friends. Um, I think it is a dangerous strategy to not have kids. And so it doesn't mean

00:56:37.540 that it's going to end badly. It just means that it's high risk. And so I try to be very thoughtful

00:56:42.340 about the different things I need to do in my life to counteract the fact that from the things like

00:56:48.520 when I'm on my deathbed, I can't be like, at least my kids will live beyond me. I won't have that. So

00:56:53.360 that's going to suck for me in a way that's going to be different for people with kids. Also there 0.53

00:56:58.560 will be, I mean, it's just so rare that you're Warren Buffett and until the day you die, you are

00:57:04.720 not just plugged into your business. You're still relevant to the business. Right. So a lot of the

00:57:10.340 meaning and purpose that I get through my company, odds are there's going to be a decade

00:57:13.560 or more where I don't have that giving me meaning and purpose. And so now I'm going to need to make

00:57:19.160 sure that I have that meaning and purpose because I won't have kids to be sort of that ready-made

00:57:23.220 thing or that I'm living through them in some way. So anyway, I try to be very open-eyed about,

00:57:28.820 okay, I'm doing this. It carries these risks. I need to be very thoughtful and, you know, make sure

00:57:33.020 that I deal with that well. So I think there's a way to live most life paths well, but I think

00:57:40.680 people would do well to be honest with themselves about where they're increasing risk as it relates

00:57:47.360 to emotional satisfaction. Can I share with you, notwithstanding that you didn't have kids,

00:57:53.720 some of the joys of having kids, would that be, would that be okay? Okay. So that's, that's what I

00:57:58.460 was looking for. So this is, this is a screenshot of a text. I mean, you can't see it, but I'm going

00:58:04.200 to read it. You can't see it. I'm going to read it for you. Uh, it's, I took a screenshot of a text

00:58:09.680 that my daughter sent me. I would choose my dad to be my dad in every lifetime again and again.

00:58:19.860 Can I tell you something? I mean, you, you get it. Okay. So for sure, all of the accolades,

00:58:25.640 all of the fancy titles, all of the publications, all of the bestselling books, all of the being

00:58:32.360 friends with the famous people and the rest of it, all that pales compared to your 15 year old

00:58:39.480 daughter. I'm going to the cafe and I'm like, Oh, I got to do this. I got to do this. I got to do that.

00:58:44.500 And then I get a ping. I check. And that's the text I got. I feel like I won the world cup of life.

00:58:50.840 So there's a way that chill. I mean, children can be painful by the way. Don't, don't get me wrong.

00:58:55.920 There's a lot of, there's a lot of things that they do that can bring you a lot of pain. There's a lot

00:59:00.700 of difficulties, but there is, I mean, we are a biological sexually reproducing species. It is

00:59:07.800 built into us to want to extend our genes. And so I don't know if it's too late for you or not,

00:59:14.640 but as someone who's slightly older than you, or maybe quite a bit older than you or just wiser,

00:59:20.680 I don't want to say that advice. You know, we came close my wife. So my wife and I have been

00:59:28.400 together for 25 years, Tom, and we only are, thank you. Our, our oldest child is 15. That means we

00:59:35.660 were together for 10 years before we had children, but it was a willful decision in our case. We, we

00:59:41.500 didn't want to have children yet. Now, in retrospect, I wish we would have had more and

00:59:45.320 started earlier, but at that point when we decided, okay, I think we should have children.

00:59:50.460 We exactly went through the calculus that you mentioned earlier, which is when you are on your

00:59:56.160 deathbed, do you want to look back and say, am I totally fulfilled in the life that we've had

01:00:02.560 together as a couple, or were we missing something and not having had children? And, and the answer was

01:00:09.060 unequivocal for us. We better get going into sexy time soon, because if not, we're going to regret

01:00:14.580 it. And so, you know, think about it. You're still a young man who knows, maybe you can one day join me

01:00:21.720 in celebrating your children's success. No, man, I appreciate that. And I think that I find it very

01:00:28.440 odd when people have a negative reaction to that. I think that you're sharing something with me.

01:00:34.160 That's been so beautiful and so transformative in your life that if you have any modicum of care

01:00:39.720 for me and how my life turns out, that of course you want to share that. Uh, I think that's very,

01:00:45.260 very important. Now I've spent a lot of time working with, in fairness, not a lot of kids,

01:00:50.280 but one kid very deeply. Uh, and that gave me a sense of like, okay, I, I know what this is,

01:00:57.040 the good and the bad. Um, and I am perpetually torn because I really want to have children really

01:01:06.620 badly. The only thing I want more than to have kids is to not have kids. And so if, if people

01:01:14.920 understand that, then they'll really understand me. And so when I was going into that decision,

01:01:20.440 which by the way, I, I never permanently weld doors closed. So, Hey, who knows adoption or otherwise,

01:01:25.560 whatever. Cause at this point I have to believe my wife, uh, is certainly not going to get naturally

01:01:30.480 pregnant. Um, but I look at this and go, as I get older, the calculus is going to change. And when we

01:01:40.420 sat down and decided whether we were going to have kids or not, my thesis went like this. Um,

01:01:46.240 I could not love my life anymore. And much like, I'm sure my dog looks at me and says, Oh my God,

01:01:54.520 you poor thing. How you can't even tell that a good friend of yours just walked by here, uh,

01:02:01.000 four hours ago. You have no idea. And by the way, they were really stressed six hours before they

01:02:04.720 walked by. And how do you go through life? Like not knowing this. So there's a big sense of,

01:02:10.640 I have no sense that anything is missing in my life. Right. Right. So I have deep meaning and

01:02:15.960 fulfillment. Uh, I love my wife beyond all reason to measure. So I just, I get so much out of that,

01:02:21.320 but to your point, I'll use my words. There's an, an evolutionarily placed algorithm running in my

01:02:28.640 brain. That's like, Hey, you need to have kids. And so I have that voice in my head as much as

01:02:35.800 anybody else. And so when we made the decision, okay, I don't feel there's a sense of anything

01:02:41.500 missing, though. I do feel that siren call of like, Hey, you should do this. Um, I said to myself,

01:02:48.540 okay, I don't want to do it now. Like when I just stared at it nakedly, this is like with people

01:02:54.160 that say they don't want to live forever, but every day they want to be alive. That's like my

01:02:57.780 thing. I want kids. I just don't want to have them today. Right. And so it's always been, I want

01:03:03.020 them just not now, not now, not now, not now. Uh, and so as I get older, I know that calculus will

01:03:09.100 shift. And so there's going to come a day where I will a hundred percent. And I said this to my wife,

01:03:13.840 Lisa, we have to understand when we're 80 in no uncertain terms, we will regret that we didn't

01:03:20.760 have kids. And so now the question becomes, do you live for the phase of your life where that's

01:03:26.600 a regret? Or do you live for the phase of your life right now? We're like, I fucking love my life

01:03:31.340 so much. I don't know that I want to add that stressor to it. And so it's tough. And look, when I 0.78

01:03:37.820 get to 80, I will be in a new frame of reference. I will see things very differently. And if I don't

01:03:45.060 plan for addressing that, then I will be mad at myself. That is just so clear to me, but I believe

01:03:53.660 that there are ways to address that such that when I get there, I still have meaning purpose.

01:03:58.680 I understand why I didn't have kids. And the only thing that like, there was a voice in my head that

01:04:03.540 was like, Hey, motherfucker, pay close attention because people are going to start asking you 0.99

01:04:08.980 whether they should have kids and you need to be very thoughtful about that answer. And so my answer 0.99

01:04:15.400 has been from the jump. Look, you should never feel pressured to have kids. And let me just speak

01:04:21.380 from experience. There's a great life to live, but don't fool yourself that your psychology won't

01:04:27.200 change as you get older. And I think the, the safest, as I said earlier, path to the

01:04:33.360 emotional fulfillment that you want is your kids. And so, um, I'm running one experiment. Other

01:04:40.020 people are running the other. And I think people need to, to be very thoughtful about how they live

01:04:45.180 their lives. That is for sure. But yeah, I think it's a beautiful choice that I hope many, many,

01:04:49.900 sorry, go ahead. Uh, two more, two more questions, although I could keep you here for another five

01:04:56.240 hours, uh, as is the case of with most of, because just like how you tend to choose your guests

01:05:01.860 carefully and you're successful. I I'm, I've been fortunate enough to almost never miss the mark

01:05:07.340 on having unbelievable conversations, including this one. So thank you so much for coming, Tom.

01:05:11.100 Two more questions. Question one, you've already kind of addressed it when you're talking about

01:05:15.460 regret later in life. And, uh, I think I'd mentioned that I might ask you off air. One of the last

01:05:21.520 questions might be about regret. So in the, uh, happiness book, I have a whole chapter on the

01:05:27.660 psychology of regret. And here I, I can't remember if we discussed it on your show when I came on last,

01:05:34.340 but so, uh, one of my former psychology professors in my PhD, his name is Thomas Gilovich. He pioneered

01:05:41.460 the empirical study of the psychology of regret, specifically the distinction between regret due to

01:05:47.660 action and regret due to inaction regret due to action. Yeah. I regret, I cheated on my wife and now

01:05:54.100 I'm, I'm divorced and I ruined my marriage. So because of an action I took, I did bad things.

01:05:58.780 I regret regret due to inaction is, you know, I became a pediatrician because my dad was a pediatrician

01:06:06.340 and his mom was a pediatrician and it's just expected of me. But now I wake up at 55. I hate

01:06:11.320 medicine. I hate treating kids. I really wanted to be an artist. And I really, I didn't live an authentic

01:06:17.220 life because I did what was expected of me rather than pursue my interest. Now it probably won't

01:06:22.720 surprise you, Tom, that when you look over the long haul, then the biggest looming regret that

01:06:29.520 people have when they're laying, uh, on their deathbed or on the proverbial, uh, porch when

01:06:35.720 they're 85 is regret due to inactions. That's what makes the most regret. So if I now turn that

01:06:42.200 question to you, forgetting about whether you've had children or not, just generally, is there

01:06:46.280 something, and you're still a young man, so your regret calculus might change in the future. But if I

01:06:50.880 ask you today, looking back at your life, is there a source of looming regret that you feel? And if

01:06:58.500 so, can you share it with us? Anything. It's going to be, I regret that I had the fight that estranged

01:07:05.800 me from my parents. I didn't go to med, anything you want. Um, man. So the things that I, the reason

01:07:15.880 that I don't have like these really obvious regrets is because I am a firm believer that you're just

01:07:22.620 running a bunch of experiments and you try a thing. And then if that doesn't work, you move on to the

01:07:26.240 next thing and the next thing. So, I mean, regrets in terms of, it makes me very sad that I didn't learn

01:07:31.800 things about my own psychology earlier so that I could have, um, avoided unnecessary pain and

01:07:37.600 suffering for sure. Um, what do I regret? The only thing when somebody says regret to me, the only thing

01:07:44.260 that ever comes to my mind is you're going to regret not having kids when you're on your deathbed.

01:07:47.920 Like, that's the one where I'm like, that, that is self-evident, but I don't spend a lot of time.

01:07:54.060 I understand what that is, but to walk people through that, I'd have to explain like all of

01:08:00.960 my thinking about frame of reference and how in control of it you are. And, uh, but I think I could

01:08:05.980 link. So the fact that you are consistently in prescription mode might exactly be the mechanism

01:08:16.220 that inoculates you against regret because you're constantly thinking, what is the optimal path?

01:08:23.020 How do I maximize this? What's the road of efficiency? So therefore without using the words

01:08:29.400 regret by constantly being in that prescriptive efficiency optimization mode, you end up in the

01:08:36.980 places that you need to be because you're always running the maximization algorithm. Does that, does

01:08:41.940 that make sense? It does very much so. And, uh, a core experience that I have of the world is that

01:08:51.000 your own emotions can be altered if you change the angle at which you look at them. So if you look at

01:08:58.300 your life as, Oh, I regret doing this and this and this, then those miseries stack up. If you find

01:09:04.280 a way to peacefully assimilate those, what may be catastrophic mistakes. Now, all of a sudden it's

01:09:11.120 like, Oh, but I learned the thing. And now that's going to let me do something better. And because

01:09:15.600 that's a core belief in my life, I'm just like, okay, just focus on the lesson. What did you learn?

01:09:20.280 What did you learn? And then make sure that you deploy it in service of something that uplifts you

01:09:25.300 and other people. And so I try to keep the frame of reference, even though I know this is just a

01:09:31.040 story that I tell myself, but I back it up with my actions, but keep the frame of reference that I am

01:09:36.500 a servant of myself for sure, but I'm a servant of other people. So I'm trying to empower people so

01:09:43.380 that they can legitimately live a better life. And I'm willing to make mistakes and do hard things and

01:09:47.640 suffer and toil because I'm going to fight for people that don't yet know how to fight for

01:09:51.320 themselves. And so just keeping that framing means, well, why would I regret that? Yes,

01:09:57.100 I got bloodied, but it's now made me a better warrior for this cause. Now I am hyper aware

01:10:02.140 that that's a game I play with my own psychology to be able to assimilate dumb choices, you know, 0.95

01:10:11.560 just to call a spade a spade. But it's like, I can sit there and be like, I'm dumb. These were dumb 0.99

01:10:16.140 things. And does that make me feel more expansive in my life or contract? That makes me feel contracted. 0.99

01:10:21.660 If on the other hand, I'm like, yo, you were fighting for other people. You had sincere intent,

01:10:26.660 but you really fucked that up, but you learned something and now you're going to be able to 0.88

01:10:31.040 move forward and more effectively serve yourself and other people. That framing makes me feel expansive.

01:10:36.960 And so because I understand how I can modulate my frame of reference, which then actually modulates

01:10:43.840 my neurochemistry. I'm like, whoa, like this is such a simple game. Look, maybe I'm wired in a

01:10:50.000 slightly different way than most people. And so this just works for me, but that works for me so

01:10:54.840 well. So I don't get hung up on the mistakes that I made in the past. I recognize them as mistakes.

01:11:00.260 I recognize them as mistakes that I made, but I just go, there's no performance. There's only

01:11:05.740 practice. I'm just trying to gain a set of skills. Did I learn something from this? It's going to be

01:11:10.580 useful. Can I help somebody else avoid making a mistake? And that makes me feel really good. So for

01:11:16.300 instance, if you let me list all the mistakes I've made in business, they are legion. But sitting

01:11:22.460 beside me is a computer on which I have begun mapping what building a business is step-by-step.

01:11:29.080 So if this, then that literally making an, if this, then that setup for building a company that you can

01:11:34.880 apply to any company. And I'm like, I'm going to be able to do this uniquely because of all the times

01:11:40.960 I got kicked in the face through making stupid decisions. So it's like, fuck, like this actually 1.00

01:11:45.560 ended up being incredibly useful because I was willing to stare nakedly at my inadequacies. 0.99

01:11:52.480 Take this all on board is like, I can be better next time, but doing it in a frame of reference

01:11:58.980 that says, this is going to make you stronger. And so feeling badly about yourself does not move you

01:12:04.360 towards your goals. Therefore don't do this in a way that makes you feel badly about yourself.

01:12:07.880 So I always have that weird sort of disconnect from the word regret. I make too many mistakes to

01:12:13.420 count. I've made more mistakes today than most people will admit to in their entire life. So I

01:12:19.680 just, the only one that I'm like, this is so high stakes. You better not fuck this up is not having

01:12:25.860 kids. Okay. Well, the only one that sort of looms since, since the having kids has been so prevalent 0.89

01:12:30.980 in our most recent part of our conversation, should you end up having children, I can safely trust that

01:12:39.080 he will, he or she will be named God in my honor. Yes. Obviously. Thank you. Male or female.

01:12:47.440 That's what I said. That's why. Or any other gender. Yeah. Well, you know, there's so many, but 1.00

01:12:52.100 yeah, of course. Yeah. It could play no other way. All right. Last question. Are there any

01:12:59.400 projects that you're currently working on a new seminar series, a new series on your impact theory

01:13:07.480 channel, a new book, anything that you'd like to use this opportunity to promote, take it away,

01:13:13.980 Mr. Bilyeu? Good, sir. Uh, I would push everybody right to YouTube. I am fiendish about, uh, addressing

01:13:22.140 the biggest issues that we face as a society and using first principles to think through them. I

01:13:27.180 really do think this is a super pivotal moment and, uh, yeah, would love people to go there. Let me know

01:13:32.940 what they think. Am I thinking through these problems? Well, am I finding the right people to, um,

01:13:38.220 really paint the landscape of optionality? Uh, YouTube, Tom Bilyeu, go there.

01:13:43.980 Thank you so much, Tom. You are such a delight. You didn't disappoint. I don't know if I can promise

01:13:49.040 you were so kind. You sent me a text yesterday. You said, how can we make sure that our show is

01:13:54.820 maximally successful? I'm going to do my best hope. I mean, we've had an amazing conversation.

01:13:59.740 It should be unbelievably successful. Hopefully with our mutual pool of fans and followers,

01:14:05.820 we'll have a lot of people watch it. Thank you so much for coming. Stay on the line so we could say

01:14:10.140 good-bye offline and come back anytime you'd like. Thank you, sir. Thanks for having me. Cheers.

The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - June 04, 2024

My Chat with Entrepreneur Tom Bilyeu (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_680)

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