99 Years of Charlie Munger Wisdom in 52 Minutes (#525)

Shaan Puri

Today there's gonna be literally a 1,000 threads that are charlie munger was lived till 99 here's 99 lessons I learned and they're gonna regurgitate the stupid quotes in wikipedia but this is my first minute we do things differently around here we're not just gonna give you the regurgitated quotes I gotta give you that you know little special jus that au jus that you can dip that sandwich in alright charlie munger has died at age 99 and all around the world people are remembering charlie this guy who was warren buffett's business partner he's a billionaire but he's so much more than that he was a guy who he was in the military he dropped out of school went to the military then he somehow talked his way into harvard law even though he didn't even have an under undergraduate degree you know he started a law firm that people don't even ever talk about that's you know does 100 of 1,000,000 in revenue he you know started investing with warren buffett and has basically outperformed the stock market over like a 50 year. By a huge degree and you know bill gates called charlie you know maybe the broadest thinker he knows he said that he has the best 32nd brain of anybody he's ever met and we wanted to dissect that brain what's inside that what made charlie so prolific why did warren buffett say that berkshire is shaped in the mold of charlie munger and that he is one of the you know the smartest and wisest men he's ever met and we pulled out 7 of the big ideas charlie said a lot of things over the years but we we identified what we think are the 7 big big bits of wisdom that charlie has shared and what we wanted to do was instead of just making a listicle which you're gonna see a lot today you're seeing people on twitter you know every thread boy is gonna be like charlie munger died at 99 here's the 99 bits of wisdom and they're gonna copy paste wikipedia we didn't wanna do that what we wanted to do was take the 7 that we thought were really really impactful and specifically tell a story of how that's happened you know how we've how we learned that lesson in our own business life or in our life it made for I think a pretty amazing episode I told sam I said dude this this notes document that we have for this episode things you got a handkerchief this thing is dripping with wisdom and you're gonna that's how you're gonna feel at the end of this podcast you're gonna need to take a shirt you're gonna need to wipe the old podcast player because this episode is about to be dripping with wisdom I hope you enjoy this episode on the 7 bits of wisdom from charlie munger so let's jump into the wisdom so what I think would be fun is we just sort of trade our favorites because this guy's got 100 of little charlie isms you know little little quips or or quotes about the way the world works about the way minds work about the way the markets work and I just thought it'd be great to just like pull out you know this is trade you go first and then I'll go on you know some of our favorites and either I think we can just you know talk about them or share you know a way that we've we've either heard him talk about it or how it's played a role in our life

Sam Parr

alright you go first okay

Shaan Puri

I'll I'll start with a very easy one so one of you know one of his big ideas is to get what you want you need to deserve what you want and so he says you know the easiest way to get everything that you want is to deserve it and it's so simple that it's almost like obnoxiously simple this advice but he's like whether it's the real like you know if you want the partner you want you should be deserving of that level of partner right make yourself worthy of a partner like that same thing with investments he he kind of actually calls out a few things that money can't buy so he's like trust in other people success and admiration those are things you cannot buy you can only earn and so if you want somebody's admiration deserve it if you want somebody's trust deserve it if you want success deserve it and I'll share like a very simple more practical anecdote about this because again like his big ideas are amazing but they just sort of float in the clouds unless you bring it to earth with like a real tactical example so when we sold the milk road I've said this before but one of the reasons we we sold to the guys we did was I really really respected these guys it was not the highest offer but these were the highest quality people that we could sell to and we just had a hunch that like selling to the highest quality people will result in the best long term outcome and even if every even if like you know we lose a dollar today actually just being in business with these guys is gonna create you know for every dollar we're taking less today we might create 3 more dollars in the future just by being around high quality people and I'll tell you a story that came out of the due diligence that like was like a nugget of gold that stuck with me that was exactly this so these guys that we were selling to had built businesses that one of the guys had sold his businesses for about 90 to a100,000,000 and the other guy had sold his business for over 200,000,000 and both of them had built businesses that were seo based and I know a lot of things about marketing and growth but I know 0 about seo I am an absolute beginner novice I never touch seo I don't do businesses that are seo based I literally know nothing and so one of the ways I priced in the deal was oh I'm gonna learn seo from these guys who are frankly masters at seo and so we get to the.

Shaan Puri

Where we do the deal, I've built up... you know, like we're not negotiating anymore. I'm like, "Oh good, I'm gonna start digging. I'm gonna start picking these guys' brains for SEO stuff." So, I sat them down and said, "You're gonna teach me about SEO now." They started to tell me something, but I was like, "Okay, okay, that's the general stuff. I've heard that before. What's the real, like, master stuff? What's the real, you know, black belt stuff that I don't know about? The stuff you can't just Google and read on some blog?" You know, one guy created the number one search result for "I want to buy gold online," and that's the business that was sold for a few hundred million dollars. He bootstrapped it, never raised any money, and he did it because he knew how to be the top result for "buy gold online." I asked him, "How'd you do it, bro? What'd you do? Was it some hack, some technique?" He said, "You know, we did all the normal things. When I tried some of these hacks or techniques, it didn't really work." Then he said, "You know what happened? One day, I Googled 'how to buy gold online,' and we were the fifth result at the time. So, what I did was click the link. I thought to myself, 'What does Google really want?' Google wants to give you the best search result. Meaning, if somebody searches for 'how to buy gold online,' they want you to get to a page that's gonna answer those questions and not have you search again." He continued, "So then I printed out all five of the results, us being number five, and I printed one through four as well. I sat down for an hour, looked at them, and read them. I had an honest conversation with myself: 'Why would I click on my page? What is better about my page than these other pages?'" I was like, "Wait, so you didn't do something like black hat SEO stuff that was this advanced trick?"

Sam Parr

yeah why why aren't you using the word ai

Shaan Puri

And he was like, "No, we didn't deserve the click. We weren't better pages." So, all I did for the next year was, every week, I printed out all the pages and then I made my page, you know, 10% better. I figured out one way that we could be objectively better. Even if we weren't moving up in the ranks yet, I could look at it and say, "This is a better page. We deserve to be higher ranked." I had literally never heard this before. In the moment, honestly, I was kind of disappointed. I was like, "Dude, I came to you for that secret juju about SEO. I'm not trying to hear that you gotta work hard and just actually make a better page." But it was also kind of refreshing. It's like you go to the people who are masters of SEO and they're like, "Yeah, you can do all the tricks, but at the end of the day, you have to have the best result. You have to have the best page." You have to have an honest conversation with yourself: Is your page better than these other pages? He's like, "If you really want to sustainably climb the ranks and be number one, that's it." That was such a tangible business example of how to get what you want; you have to deserve what you want. I'll never forget that. That was one of the biggest takeaways I had from the whole process.

Sam Parr

that's beautiful

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Sam Parr

that's alright

Shaan Puri

She runs a company that basically helps content creators, like us, set up meetups. In a couple of weeks, we'll put the link in the description and also tweet it out. But in about a week or two, around the world, there are MFM meetups, which is kind of fun. We're not going to be there because they're all happening on the same day in different locations. Forget us! If you're one of these people that listen to the podcast, you're probably going to get along with other listeners. It's just a thing, you know? People who listen to this podcast are business nerds with a sense of humor. If you like business nerds with a sense of humor, they're all getting together. Everybody's going to a bar. You know, there's one in Toronto, there's one in California, and there's one in Austin. They're going to hang out. It's called...

Sam Parr

The River. If you go to getriver.io (so "get" G-E-T, and then "river" like a stream, river.io), you scroll all the way to the bottom and you'll see my "First Million" meetup there. They're happening in Austin, Houston, Denver, Nashville, Atlanta, Cincinnati... all over North America, I believe.

Shaan Puri

right oh her name's ray you were right okay so ray move us to the top for this week because we gotta oh here we go so my first million so so yeah they did this for all in I think and that's kind of one one of the proof of concepts I think this is gonna be fun so so do it we'll try to like I don't know call into a couple of these and say hi but this is cool so that's happening next week that's fun go meet some other people who are part of neckbeard nation and then what do you think is that a thing number 2 we're doing the poker tournament so a while back we talked about this business that we found fascinating which was a cloud poker tournament it's like this digital poker tournament wherever these webcams on it could be private for our community and 300 or 400 people signed up we just never scheduled it but now we scheduled it it's december 13th it's happening we will give away merch and some cool stuff as prizes we'll come up with some dope prizes maybe like you know whatever $1,000 or a call or free merch or whatever so yeah it's atcloudpokernight.com so cloudpokernight.com/mfm so if you wanna register for that if you already registered we'll send out an email to be able to let them know that that's happening and last thing is I do a thing every year which is I this month this month of december is the plan for you know other people are thinking about christmas I'm thinking about end of year next year hit my goals and so I basically use this time for planning for 2024 so I'm gonna host a free session which basically is I I'm currently doing it for all my businesses I make like a one page plan for what I'm trying to do next year and it's basically like the big goal and then the breakdown of like how I'm gonna do it I have a method of how I get to that answer and you walk away with kind of like a clear one pager for your business ben had the idea he was like dude I love when we do this he's like we should just like do this together with other people that own businesses that wanna do it and so yeah people wanna do it I'm just gonna be on a zoom and I'll walk you through my process totally free you'll walk away in an hour with like a bunch of clarity on what's what your next year looks like I have a bunch of good questions that help people get clarity so if you wanna attend that plan for 2024.com so go to plan for 2044.com ben's gonna spin up a website and we'll we'll invite people to that if you're the type of person that wants to kinda like set the vision and the intention for next year

Sam Parr

I like that one. He also had another line, Munger did, where he's like: > "I never try to disagree with someone's opinion unless I've understood their side better than they do." And that's like a specific example of, let's say, debate. He was like, "I need to... I need to *deserve* this."

Shaan Puri

Right, so that's number two. I love that one. He says, "I'm not entitled to an opinion. I can't have conviction until I can argue the other side better than someone who believes the other side." He's like, people think this is some crazy high bar, and those people haven't ever asked somebody who believes something why they believe it. It's actually quite a low bar to surpass their own understanding of something. You know, I think about this with Bitcoin, for example. I'm a Bitcoin believer, and my approach to this was always to say, "Here are all the reasons why I believe in Bitcoin. It just makes sense for reasons A, B, C, and D." But actually, the better way to do it is to say, "Smart people who don't believe in Bitcoin would say A, B, and C, and I understand that. Here's what I think about those and why I've landed on the side of conviction that I have." It's just a much better logical way to think than to just say, "Here's what I believe, and I'm going to come up with all the evidence. I'm even going to make up some of it to justify my opinion," which is, I would say, how... what do we...

Sam Parr

call steel manning

Shaan Puri

yeah so steel manning is like argue the other side better than they would even argue it

Sam Parr

So, one of my favorite things... I'll bring up one good line. Whenever I hear about these "freaks"—I call them freaks, and I mean that in an admirable way—I like when they're on the Berkshire Hathaway podium giving their speech. They're basically set up like a comedian to deliver these beautiful lines. What I try to find are just weird day-to-day quirks that they have and the ways they act on a daily basis. For example, our good friend Jack. When I'm with him, he'll say, "Oh, I didn't name my daughter." I ask, "Why?" He replies, "Well, I need to get to know her first. I'm going to wait to name her, so she's just named 'Baby' for now. But once we get to know her..." I'm like, "That's so weird!" But then you start thinking about it, and it's actually not weird. It is kind of strange to name a human being before you've had the chance to meet her. That's just one example of an everyday quirk from one of our friends, Jack. He's wildly successful and has been successful in odd ways. You can see how he acts in daily life. There's this cool story from a book I think is called *The Making of an American Capitalist*. They talk about how, "Physically, Munger was unimpressive. He had an elf-like face, pasty skin, and glasses an inch thick. Though something of a snob and highly judgmental, he had a deep sense of ethics, and his smarts were matched by Churchillian self-assurance. Once he was asked if he could play the piano, and Munger replied, 'I don't know, I've never tried.'" And I thought, like...

Shaan Puri

what a telling lie

Sam Parr

Like, what a telling lie! Most people, when you say, "No, I can't play the piano," will respond with, "I probably could." There's definitely the potential that I will be a great piano player; I just haven't tried. When I read that line, I thought, "This man's beautiful. This man's one of a kind." I love people like that because, myself, like most everyone, we default to, "Can you do this?" It's like, "Of course not! I don't have the capabilities. I cannot do that." But that little mind shift of, "Well, not yet," is key.

Shaan Puri

Noticing that, props to you! I read that line in the research, and I didn't even understand what was remarkable about it. I just moved on. I didn't even notice it until you just said it. So, good on you for even observing it. That's a good one!

Sam Parr

Well, that's what I'm saying. When I'm reading about these guys, it's like these little one-off lines or these... For example, they'll say, "He founded this law firm," and then, "Next, he was bored there." Next, like whatever. And I'm like, "Hold on, let me go look at this law firm." Then you start reading about this law firm and... like, dude, this is quirky. This is a weird, super strange law firm. And so, anyway, yeah, this line... it's a beautiful line about just showing the day-to-day about how you can be different.

Shaan Puri

let me give you number 4 so my number 4 charlieism I wanna bring up is let me tell you a little story about where I where I felt this first and then I'm gonna tell you the charlieism so let's rewind the clock 15 years I was living in indonesia and in indonesia I lived in this building that had a ping pong table and I don't know anybody because I'm living in jakarta indonesia I don't have any friends there and so I used to go down and just hang out by the ping pong table because I thought well that's maybe like you know my equivalent of like going having a drink at the bar let's just go see if anybody's down here to play and maybe I can meet some people and so sure enough I would go down me and my brother-in-law we would go down and we would play and my brother-in-law is better than me at ping pong and he the way he plays is what you imagine somebody who's good at ping pong I would serve and he would hit back but like we would get to this. Where he would hit like a smash and my brother-in-law is kind of a character if you've ever met him he's like he's not just gonna hit it fast he's gonna jump even though you don't need to jump he's gonna be like whoo he's gonna just make you feel like he just smashed this shot and like I was so like I was trying to get better than him he was trying to get better than me and I thought okay he's just got higher skill he's more advanced he's brilliant at this like he could just hit these amazing shots and I gotta be able to hit amazing shots so I'm practicing hitting amazing shots and he and so whoever used to come down he would beat them he was the best guy in the building until one day this 55 60 year old man came down named poppy uh-oh and we're like your name's poppy he's like I'm poppy alright okay I don't know if he's a bit flexing on us if there's a real name and he takes a a paddle out of his of his like case and we're like oh dude he's got his own his own paddle oh shit he was like the guy who brings his own bowling ball to the bowling alley you know this guy means business so we're so we already are on like a game basically and so I play him and poppy beats me but he didn't do anything like he wasn't smashing the ball he wasn't doing it and I just thought oh man I was off today alright like aaron you play him and so I have my brother-in-law aaron play him I'm like alright aaron's never lost to anybody in this building let's see what happens and he starts playing poppy and he's trying to do what he always does he's trying to hit brilliant shots on the corner down the line cross court you know drop shot and none of it's working poppy is destroying him and the way that poppy plays is like this is for anybody who's like a real ping pong fan I need like something to demonstrate so use this pen pretend this is a paddle normally when you play ping pong your arm is back you're doing like a full stroke like a tennis thing

Sam Parr

just looking dope he used to just hold

Shaan Puri

it like this forward like the paddle just facing you and then he would just move left and right like a wall and he would just whatever you hit he would just hit back and the thing about poppy is poppy was never hitting brilliant shots but he would also never hit it out and never hit the net and so inevitably he would just keep hitting it back and you one of your brilliant shots would go out of bounds you would hit it too hard too soft you'd hit the net like you would mess up and he would always score based on your error and he crushed us and he crushed us that day and he crushed us every day and he would just chuckle and say good game and he would go upstairs and we'd be like fucking poppy man I'm gonna get this guy and we never got him the whole summer I was there we never one time beat this guy and then one day he invited us up to his house afterward his apartment in the building he lived in the penthouse beautiful he was so successful in business we're like poppy dude you're balling out of control he had like a secret poker room he had a a wall of just like super fancy like liquor he like people have a wine cellar he had like a fancy liquor wall it was crazy he had a shower with like 6 shower heads and we were like dude this guy poppy this and we're like what do you do and he's like I sell soap and we're like you're like you make soap he's like no no I just import and export and we're like is it better soap he's like no it's just soap well he's like it's good soap it's not the best and we were like well how do you sell he's like well I just go to people that need soap and we're like this fucking poppy like this is how he lives his life too he's just making no no brilliant shots but no unforced errors and so this is a charlie mungerism which is avoiding stupidity is easier than seeking brilliance and he says other people spend their whole life trying to be so smart all I'm trying to do is not be idiotic it's harder than people think but this is more important than trying to be brilliant and so charlie was basically like how do I just avoid the great errors in life let's say it's investing how do I avoid the great errors of investing if it's health how do I avoid the great errors of health and that's basically what he oriented around he wasn't perfect at it but I thought what a totally different you know a different strategy than you'll ever hear which is about being the best and becoming more advanced and becoming you know being brilliant and talented and his thing was just just avoid stupidity and you'll you'll outperform everybody

Sam Parr

Is there a category in the Oscars for podcasters who can weave a story into Charlie Munger? If yes, I think you might get that nod. That was wonderful, we gotta give it up. That was wonderful... you had me enthralled, and I didn't know where you were going with this. I didn't know...

Shaan Puri

where I was gonna go with it

Sam Parr

Sometimes you just open your mouth and start talking and see where it goes. And you won that, Mister Wonder. You totally won that one. That was a beautiful... a beautiful way to tie that in. Copywriting, that's what that was.

Shaan Puri

Well, honestly, the reason why today there's gonna be literally a thousand threads that are "Charlie Munger lived till 99, here's 99 lessons I learned" and they're gonna regurgitate the stupid quotes on Wikipedia... This is my first [lesson]: We do things differently around here. We're not just gonna give you the regurgitated quotes. I gotta give you that, you know, little special *jus*, that *au jus* that you can dip that sandwich in.

Sam Parr

Well, you came with heat. That's going to be hard to compete with. Let me ask you something: right now it's November 29th, so most people are doing their next year financial planning for their businesses. For years at The Hustle, I made a very similar mistake that I bet you made, and that is over-optimism. Have you ever hit any of your projections in the first 6 years of your career?

Shaan Puri

never I've never met a goal I've ever set

Sam Parr

Yeah, dude, if you ask people at The Hustle, one of my big weaknesses is... it's looking at the numbers on the Excel sheet. You know, you see like $7,000,000 here and you're like, "What if we took that 7 and deleted it and put a 9?" I'm like, "Look how much more profit that gave us! Let's just do it!"

Shaan Puri

that genius yeah

Sam Parr

That's basically it. People would be driven crazy because that's what I would do. I would just look at the sheets and think, "Yeah, that looks good." Hey, look, if you just delete that number and put it to that number, look how much better this looks! So let's just do that. I've made that mistake so many times. I bought a property recently, or a few years back, and I remember thinking, "Okay, this is only an okay price property, but you know, I'm going to take better pictures or I'm going to do something when I sell it." I thought, "That's how I'm going to make all this money. I'm just going to increase revenue and I'm going to do this, this, this." And guess what? Just like years of failing at projecting, I totally messed it up. So now I try to be way more modest with my financial projections. But I completely have always messed it up. Munger's got a bunch of good quotes. He's like, "It's dangerous to rely too much on models and formulas. The reality is way more complex than that." He says, "We're very disciplined in our approach and we're not swayed by flimsy optimism." Then he goes on to say, "It's pretty ridiculous that people are biased by both over-skepticism and over-optimism in the business world." If the micro reality is good, good decisions and good systems are what I look for. I don't use predictions of macro environment changes. So basically, the...

Sam Parr

Being is... his whole philosophy was to buy businesses where, if I bought a good business at a good price, I'm golden. Then, if I ever want to sell it or if something crazy improves, that's icing on the cake. Whereas what I do—and I bet most people do, and I try my hardest to avoid this nowadays—is I default to "no." The optimism is actually the truth. The truth is just... that's just what they did because they don't know what the hell they're talking about. You know what I mean? Right. And that's been one of my biggest mistakes in business: over-optimism. What it does is it crushes team morale and it gets you in a losing state of mind. It just sucks. What Munger said was, "You make a lot of money when you buy a good company at a good price, but you make all of the money by letting it ride for 20 years." So, the patience is where the big money is, and I struggle like crazy to do that. This year, I'm trying things a little bit differently, but I have never hit any of my projections because it's just too optimistic. It's basically just mental masturbation, making these projections, and it's harmful. It's a liability.

Shaan Puri

Well, there's like... there's the thing you want to hit. You know, some people say you want to hit 70% of the goals that you set. That's like the right balance between ambition and practicality. Hitting 0% of your goals obviously means you're setting the wrong goals. Hitting 100% of your goals means you're, you know, obviously playing it too safe and conservatively. So, there is some number in between. You could pick 70, 50, 60... whatever works for you. And yeah, I think most entrepreneurs and investors, for that matter, are on the side of optimism. Because boy, doesn't it feel better in the moment to be optimistic?

Sam Parr

I want to know something. I'm trying to do no goals. I'm trying to do no goals, and it's not working out with any of the partners I'm involved with who are trying to fight.

Shaan Puri

in this you know what it's not doing working out

Sam Parr

Yeah, I've tried no goals and I'm getting no buy-ins. So... I've grown to hate goals, man. Like, it shouldn't change.

Shaan Puri

But this is like your thing with money. Do you have a weird relationship with money that you need, like, money therapy? You probably have a weird relationship with goals that you just need to work out. Like, you know, these extremes... Crazy goals that nobody can hit, or no goals at all. You know, I would just assume that the answer is actually somewhere in the middle, right? The [moderation] is probably somewhere in the middle, not either extreme.

Sam Parr

The analogy that I would give people is like this: Let's say Usain Bolt is in the Olympics in the 100-meter race. He runs this race... it doesn't matter if: a) We timed the race b) He won Just tracking that time... he ran faster than everyone else. Who cares? Who cares about that stuff? So I'm like, it doesn't matter. Don't compare yourself [to others].

Shaan Puri

to others is the answer instead

Sam Parr

well we're talking about munger and these guys were the analogy kings man come on

Shaan Puri

in this analogy you're usain bolt correct

Sam Parr

Yeah, okay, good. I just... I get fed up with overtracking and overplanning. So, like, we're... you know, Hampton is 18 months old, let's say 12 months old, and we're trying to look at... so, they want to plan 12 months out. I'm like, "Yeah, that's 50% of the company's existence."

Shaan Puri

Let's go to one of his other ideas, which I think is kind of related. This is one of Munger's big ideas, the one he is well known for. I have taken it into my life: this idea of **inversion**. He says, "Invert, always invert." So, what does this mean? It's basically a way to think through problems backwards. For example, if you wanted to solve a common question that people ask, such as, "How do I be successful?" or "How do I be happy in life?" there might be a thousand different answers to that question. But what Munger would do, in order to get to the answer faster, is to invert. Why does Bill Gates say he goes from A to Z faster than anyone? He has the best 30-second brain of anyone. It's because Munger's default way of problem-solving is to invert. So, instead of figuring out how to be happy, he would say, "Let me just figure out what is the surefire path to misery." He literally wrote it out. I can read you the answer to what he said is the surefire path to misery.

Sam Parr

or what did what did what did he say

Shaan Puri

Okay, so his president actually did a talk, and he calls this his "prescription for misery." He says, "What a beautiful line," by the way.

Sam Parr

is that beautiful language or what it is it's it's wonderful and he says in you know

Shaan Puri

Number 1: **Ingesting chemicals to alter your mood or perception.** If you rely on chemicals to change your mood, eventually this leads to misery. This is like alcoholism or overstimulation. Number 2: **Envy.** He has this great quote: "The world is not driven by greed; it's actually driven by envy." He goes on to say, "I am lucky that I’m an old man now and I've conquered my envy. I don't give a damn what anybody else has. I don't want what anybody else has, and I don't care what they have." But most people are not like that. For most people, envy drives them up the walls. If they see that the neighbor has a nicer car, or that their friend has a higher-paying job, or that their coworker gets promoted—something they didn't even want in the first place—envy kicks in and drives so much of their behavior. So, number 2 of the prescription for misery is **envy.** The third related point is **resentment.** If your joy goes down when other people's joy goes up, that is a surefire way to have a miserable life. Those are three that he stole from somebody else, and he says, "I'd like to add my fourth on top of that." He says, **Number 4: Be unreliable.** If you're unreliable, you will be distrusted by all of those who matter. You might be a mighty fine turtle, but you will be outrun by hordes of mediocre turtles if you are unreliable—even some turtles that are on crutches. It's like this idea that availability is the best ability. If you are unreliable, it cancels out any talent that you have. That one hit home for me because, as you know, I am a bit of an unreliable person, and I have paid the price for that many times. Yeah, hey.

Sam Parr

by the way should we bring up that mfm podcast meeting that you missed yesterday

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I just was on a different call and forgot about it. These things happen, and it is a penalty I pay. It is part of my prescription for misery. Here's the next one. He says another number 5 is to **learn only from your own experience** and your own trials. Basically, if you decide that your firsthand experience is your only way to figure out good versus bad, and you're not going to learn from other living and dead people, that is a surefire way to misery. You will learn much slower than somebody who learns the other way. The next one he goes, when hit with adversity, **go down and stay down**. That's another prescription for misery: to not bounce back from adversity, the inevitable and unavoidable blows of life. And the last one he goes, **don't be objective**. Stay stuck in your ways. Hold on to your initial ideas, your most loved ideas. Hold them with a death grip. That is his final prescription for misery: to never change your mind in light of new facts.

Sam Parr

My biggest weaknesses are envy. So, this podcast is fun for you and me to do, but sometimes it creates a lot of envy. We have all these amazing people on here, or if it's just you and me, like Sean just did great, and Sam didn't do as good. When we have all these amazing people on, you start talking to them and you're like, "I'm just as smart as this guy," but this guy is...

Shaan Puri

How do you know? Because when you ask, "How old are you?" that's the trigger of like, "I'm feeling terrible." Can you really just do the finishing blow and tell me that you're two years younger than me?

Sam Parr

Yeah, like we have so many. And every once in a while, there are people who I'm like, "Yeah, you're just better." So I'm not envious; I'm happy.

Shaan Puri

Zillow-ing people's houses after you see them, that's not real. Nothing good happens on the end of a Zillow.

Sam Parr

So, I have... I've got... I read a lot, and I like reading biographies. Whenever I read a biography, I do sort of what I did up here, where I write down, like, let's say it's a business biography. I'll write down the years and make notes of interesting things that happened to that person in that year. If it involves a dollar amount, I'll write the dollar amount, and then in one cell over, I'll say, "What's that dollar amount in today's numbers?" Then I'll say, "How old were they?" So, I'm like reverse engineering different people's lives. But you know what I'm really doing? I'm comparing myself to them.

Shaan Puri

yeah of course

Sam Parr

I'm comparing myself to them

Shaan Puri

You're Usain Bolt's at all running that race, except for you're not Usain Bolt. You're Tyson Gay, and you're watching Usain Bolt in front of you.

Sam Parr

And I justify it by saying, "If I read someone and I am better off than they are, I say 'Great, I'm doing better than them and they ended up wonderfully. I'm gonna end up wonderfully.'" Or if they're kicking my ass at my age, I just think...

Shaan Puri

Motherfucker, this sucks. I gotta give you credit for your honesty and vulnerability because you're being honest and vulnerable admitting this, but I do not advise anybody follow this game plan. It's the same recipe for mystery.

Sam Parr

I'm not saying this is helpful; I'm just admitting that the last thing I sort of suck at is being bendable. What was the last one? How did you describe it?

Shaan Puri

He's like, "You know, don't be objective. Don't change your mind. Stay stuck in your ways. Hold on to those initial ideas you had before these new facts and circumstances came out."

Sam Parr

Yeah, you know, I try to think of myself as bendable, but I could work on that for sure.

Shaan Puri

The ones that I struggle with out of this are the **unreliable** one for sure, and then maybe **envy** as a second one. I think that's probably like number 2. I think I'm pretty good on all these other ones.

Sam Parr

that's interesting I would I I I wouldn't have thought by the way of you as an envious person

Shaan Puri

I think that's a hard one to kick, you know? I don't think I'm, let's say, terrible at it, but it's definitely there. It's not something that I could be like, "Yeah, I have conquered that mountain." No, no, no... I'm still somewhere on that mountain.

Sam Parr

Hey, do you know what I think the 10th commandment is? "Thou shall not covet thy neighbor's wife," right?

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

don't be jealous don't be jealous my friend so if the I

Shaan Puri

have a joke but I think if I said this joke it's gonna get me in trouble with at least 5 people at minimum in my life so I'm just gonna not make this joke alright so I wanna give you some examples of the invert principle because I think this is one of the most important ones so when he was a military meteorologist it's world war 2 his job is to keep pilots safe and he's like okay what what's everything I need to know about pilot safety and he's like you know there's like 7 textbooks about everything a pilot needs to know and then instead he's like no no no okay let's work backwards what are the most likely causes of of crashes or incidents for pilots and he went and studied that way simpler answer he's like okay I just need to be able to predict snow ice and fog really well as a military meteorologist those 3 if I can avoid the if I can get my pilots out of the way of those 3 I can ignore everything else because those 3 are the the real killers and let me like so he inverted it in order to like do his job let me tell you another example of this when I was in college I got picked as part of something like thing called kairos that was like the top college startups in the country honestly it was like worse than forbes 30 under 30 in terms of like credibility literally if you signed up you won and even better if you signed up you won and then you you made friends with the person they would take you on this all expenses paid trip to china for a week to go meet jack ma the ceo of alibaba the founder of alibaba and so we go I get picked on this trip I go fly to china I don't even know what alibaba is we go to their headquarters I'm like holy shit this is like ebay for china or something this is crazy and we get a sit down meeting with the ceo this guy is like one of the most powerful people in china and somebody you know we got to ask questions and one of the kids asked you know this sort of simpleton question like you know what's your advice you know I wanna be successful what's your advice like what are what are the keys to success from your experience and and he says you know I was obsessed with this question also what are the keys to success what is the blueprint for success and I talked to a 100 successful people and I got a 100 different blueprints and I thought well that doesn't really help and this is jack this was actually a guy named david way I think is his name he was the current ceo at the time he was the one answering this part and he goes so he goes every success is different it's its own little unique snowflake but every failure is the same and we were like you know we lean in and you know he had his answer and his answer I don't think is actually the right answer for this but like he goes they like tied into the alibaba story and he goes every every every big company that that eventually fails so his his answer was like not how to be successful but how do you not screw it up once you're a big company which was the problem they were having he goes too much money too much technology and too many people and so he tells a story about like how they were gonna compete with with Google and with ebay when they were coming to china he's like we needed to invent our version of Google adwords and he goes jack ma said cool you get I think it was like 12 15 people he's like 12 15 people this is like gonna be a huge part of the business Google has 2,000 people working on this he goes did I stutter you get 12 to 15 people you're gonna work he's like we need some office space you know give us like a couple floors of the office or whatever he's like you're gonna work out of my old apartment he said your old apartment we need a proper office he goes I started alibaba in that apartment I think it'll work and he goes technology is like you know we're gonna need this many servers we should get the best stuff and you know we need this much but let's have double that for redundancy in case you know the servers go down we don't wanna lose anything he goes oh if I give you redundant servers you're gonna design a system that goes down I'm gonna give you only the servers you need and in fact you go get go get used servers so it can run on even shitty servers and you know he'd sort of david goggins them that was like hit the story that he told about like and they they eventually did it they pulled it off

Sam Parr

but I wonder if that guy found that inspiring at first or like what the fuck jack

Shaan Puri

yeah I was definitely like a fuck you man come on but yeah when it all works out then you can tell this great story bezos has a simple inversion too they were like you know jeff tech you're you're you know one of the like internet ceos internet's evolving so fast technology is always changing what technology innovations are you most excited for what's gonna change about amazon in 10 years and he goes oh I don't think about that instead I think about what's not gonna change because customers are always gonna want the most selection the lowest prices and the fastest delivery and so everything else can change but that's not gonna change and so we focus on what's not gonna change because we have to change with the times in order to like constantly beat customer's expectations on delivery speeds low prices and and vast selection and so you know this idea of inversion is so powerful even in my own like life I was telling you like I'm having a bunch of progress right now with my diet which is great because like you know the scoreboard is currently 30 you know 34 years of no progress and you know like a month of of great progress right now well what changed and well I did a bunch of things but but I also actually just inverted so instead of trying to figure out out what's the best diet program what's the best workout program exactly how many grams of this how many milligrams of creatine how many grams of protein how much how much of this instead of trying to like go is it the paleo del keto diet mediterranean diet what should I be doing it was just the inversion like what's a surefire way to be fat and that answer was quite simple yeah I was like I need to eat more of the calories and I'm gonna burn yeah eating shitty foods that are fried and ultra processed you know right now I eat late at night pretty sure that's a recipe to get fat you know sitting all day instead of walking for my meetings probably pretty good way to get fat is to sit all day and I just inverted and I was like okay cool I'm just gonna walk more I'm gonna you know eat less calories than I consume and I'm gonna not late night snack because I always eat crappy food when I do that it's literally all I changed and like boom like started to get results finally after like you know instead of like being like let me go download 19 hours of andrew huberman and try to like follow this protocol it's like that wasn't the problem right like that that was the complex solution rather than the the easy inversion

Sam Parr

that's great

Shaan Puri

Let's do a couple more. Do you have any other ones that you like here? I have a story you told that I thought was pretty cool.

Sam Parr

let's wrap up with that story

Shaan Puri

Alright, so he's teaching a class at some college. He goes to an economics class and he has this general idea: you need to learn all the big ideas in a space. He says, "I don't know anything about psychology, but I figured there are probably 20 big ideas in the world of psychology. I should just read the books and try to figure out what those 20 big ideas are in your space." He believes that if he knows those 20 big ideas, he will be better than 98% of people who spend their whole life studying it. He points out that 90% of people, including some who spend their whole life doing this, get lost in the weeds. One of the big ideas he had was about economics. He asks, "What are the big ideas in economics?" Everybody knows that economics 101 includes the supply and demand curve. The basic idea is that as the supply of something goes down, the demand goes up, or the price will go up. Similarly, if you drop the price of something, the demand should go up. People generally understand this about economics, but Charlie has a point: you learn the big idea, but then you also need to understand the exceptions to those rules. For example, "I before E except after C." He explains that generally, when prices go down, demand should go up. For instance, if the demand for TVs is, let's say, X at $5,000, but if you drop the price of a TV down to $5, there's a lot of people that will buy it. So he goes into this economics class and says, "Everybody understands that when prices go down, demand goes up." He asks, "Fantastic! What are the cases where that's not true?" Then he puts the students on the spot, asking, "What's a case where that's not true, where the opposite happens?"

Sam Parr

an item that is supposed to signal prestige

Shaan Puri

exactly so hands go up 50 hands go up and they say luxury goods any item where price is a signal for quality or status and he's like you know this is luxury handbags and whatnot you know a louis vuitton bag was $2 tomorrow the demand would actually you know briefly go up but then in the long term go down and he's like so everybody gets that one and he goes what else and now you get crickets right like shit what else and he goes he goes any industry where demand is based on bribing the purchaser and he goes what he goes yeah there's like many industries the defense industry many parts of the the medical industry where actually it's a screwed up kind of perverse incentives where companies take profits and they use those to you know shower you know goods or or or money or experiences on buying agents purchasers and yeah whether that's through advertisement so like I spend a ton of money advertising and that's how I create the demand and if I didn't have any advertising budget I wouldn't be able to create the demand or it's things like the you know the the military industrial complex where there's like some cronyism where it's like yeah you give me this contract today because in 5 years you're gonna be on my board and your retirement package will be 10 times what you're making in the government and because we all know that that's true because I have so much excess profit you want to reward me with big contracts and actually you want to pay more for these contracts so that we can be this really successful company because it rewards you in the end and he's like once you realize that that's an exception to this rule you will understand how the world actually works you will understand where the laws of gravity actually break and I just love that story I think it told like it's a interesting little nugget business wise but also you know the way that capitalism works but it also shows kind of the way this guy thinks which is this I before e except after c mentality where he goes into any space he tries to speed run and figure out you know what are the 10 to 20 big ideas of your space and then he looks at the exceptions and you know I did this recently I was I went to brian johnson's house and afterwards I was like thinking about longevity and I was like alright should I be one of these tech guys that like really fucking cares about longevity like is longevity gonna be my shit or am I gonna zag and be like longevity is overrated

Sam Parr

and I

Shaan Puri

was like I need to have an opinion and I decided

Sam Parr

What would Munger say? Hey, Munger lived to be 99. He looked like a longevity freak.

Shaan Puri

Well, somebody said this—while Duval said this—he goes, "Buffett and Munger, these guys are like in their nineties, and you know they famously eat McDonald's breakfast every day, and eat M&M's, and drink Diet Cokes. Maybe for show, but you know, they at least do it. They're not sitting there taking metformin and like cold plunging every morning." And he's like, "You know, it just goes to show how important not being stressed is actually to your health." Yeah, because these guys actually were quite low stress in the way that they live their life. They spent most of their days reading, playing bridge, talking, and thinking. Very few meetings. They didn't stress out about investments; they were buying whole, long-term investor type of thing—low stress compared to a lot of successful people. But on the longevity thing, I was like, "Alright, let me go learn what are the 10 big ideas in the longevity space." I literally carved out two days, and me and Ben, all we did was just deep dive into longevity. I read books, I power skimmed through some books, I was like, "Who are the five thought leaders, and what are their most popular TED Talks?" And like, let me go watch those. Let me go see what these... you know, what does Peter Ortiz say? What does Brian Johnson say? What are the quotes?

Sam Parr

so what's your takeaway of all of it

Shaan Puri

my takeaway was that the big ideas and this is like somebody who's a big longevity person will will argue with me because I'm gonna do the short version of this but the big idea is essentially everybody in everybody's health declines we are probably past the age of like to live forever so there's like one big idea which is that if we ever figure out a way to reverse aging or like minimize cell damage it's not just gonna be this gradual thing like we used to live till 80 then 90 then a100 then a110 a120 a130 it's gonna be like there's gonna be a step full jump once we figure out how to stop cell damage but if you've already had too much damage they're not gonna be able to like get you back into your twenties you're gonna be like past the. Of no return and so like the big breakthrough is if you can figure out how to stop cell damage we don't know how to do that yet when that happens there's gonna be a age sort of. A tipping. Where people below that are gonna live to like 300 and people above that are still gonna live to like 110 and like there's gonna be this big like disparate you know polar you know polarity between those two outcomes that's interesting the second interesting thing is like in terms of the peter attia school of thought of longevity which is not live forever but it's like live a longer health span so health span versus lifespan is one big idea and the health span idea is at the end of your life everybody's gonna have a marginal decade which is like your last 10 years of life your your your health is gonna decline pretty dramatically from like being immobile in pain in in pain to like you know really you know not being able to wipe your butt by the end right so it's like that's typically the like bad version of aging what peter tee and these guys are trying to do is basically push that decade out so if it was gonna happen to you from 80 to 90 let's make it from 90 to a100 or if it's gonna happen 90 to a100 let's 100 to a110 and the cost of your today lifestyle in order to affect that final marginal decade I personally was like not worth it I'm gonna find the 80 20 of like healthy things to do that are not so costly like not so painful or hard to follow or like regimented or whatever like I'm not gonna forget to live today in order for my 890 to a100 to be like better I will take the instant gratification please and so I was like you know my takeaway was basically I don't care about the marginal decade I'm not gonna orient my life around that there's an 80 20 of like healthier stuff to do that's like I don't mind switching to that lifestyle I'll do those and then that's good enough for me and if like you know wonder drugs come out in some.

Shaan Puri

In the future hopefully I'm in time for that cut off that was my conclusion

Sam Parr

Do you think that Buffett is going to die like next week? Is this like, you know, an old couple that dies together? That very well might happen. I think Buffett announced recently that, at the age of 92, he finally found his successor. Alright, well that's the pod. Before we go, if you made it this far, Sean, I want to tell you that the people in the YouTube comments have been making fun of you and me. They are saying that I dress like a serial killer, which I don't know what that means entirely, or that now that I'm a father, I'm starting to dress like a father or look like an accountant. They're also making fun of your hair. I don't exactly know what they're making fun of about your hair because I think you've got great hair.

Shaan Puri

But... well, no. I looked at that video and I was like, I'm also looking exclusively at my hair in that. I had a bad hair day in the sense that I wake up, roll out of bed, and I do this podcast right away. I don't even look in the mirror. Dude, I'm like the hairiest guy on earth. Like, I got hair on my fucking palms... I'm like a gorilla. And somehow I think I'm losing some hair, like I'm getting a little light, and people were like, "Yo, he's gotta start taking whatever the drug is called." I forgot what it is, but...

Sam Parr

So, to all the commenters, **go f*** yourselves**. We're just doing our thing.

Shaan Puri

Well, I don't care what other people think of me unless it's related to my looks or my intelligence. So I did go ahead and wet the hair a little bit today and, you know, try to spruce it up.

Sam Parr

It does hurt my feelings too sometimes, if I'm being honest. But besides that, you're gonna hear me say, "Oh, I don't read the comments; it doesn't bother me."

Shaan Puri

Hey, but you know what's working? Sean P! My little Gary V branding pivot is kinda working. In the comments every day they're like "Sean P! Sean P for president!" And right now we're a small but loyal army.

Sam Parr

don't think anyone said sean p for president

Shaan Puri

There's a small but loyal army. As they said in *Arrested Development*, "There are dozens of us!" But it is from that small base that we shall grow. Sean P., it is.

Sam Parr

alright that's the pod