transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] When you interface with crypto, you end up with the question, what is money? Never did I expect that to change the course of my life. And it's maddening how few people actually understand it, which is exactly why people are manipulated by the system.

Speaker 2:
[00:10] Are you playing the game or being played by it?

Speaker 1:
[00:13] The system was designed so that only the people educated enough to buy assets would not only escape the negative effects of inflation, they would get rich off the back of it. There's a way better way to beat inflation than a house. It's very difficult to master, and it is.

Speaker 2:
[00:30] Welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery Podcast, where we dive into the minds of the world's greatest thinkers and doers. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Gervais. A high-performance psychologist named Michael Gervais. Who Pete Carroll brought in to work with the Seahawks. Famous for his work with Felix Baumgartner when he jumped out of space in the Stratos Project.

Speaker 3:
[00:48] Olympic athletes depend on something more than just training and talent.

Speaker 1:
[00:51] They have to stay mentally tough.

Speaker 2:
[00:54] Today's guest is Tom Bilyeu, entrepreneur, co-founder of Quest Nutrition, and founder of the YouTube channel Impact Theory. Who's built a massive following by challenging how we think about money, power and the systems shaping our lives.

Speaker 1:
[01:08] If you are wondering why we're living in a populist moment, it is 100%, not mostly, it is 100% tied to the fact that we have an economic system designed through malice to abuse us. Now we start getting into the dark territory. Up until now it's been sunshine and rainbows, Mike.

Speaker 2:
[01:25] Let's explore why and how people feel financially stuck. How the wealthy think about using money and how embracing technologies like AI is essential for us to get ahead.

Speaker 1:
[01:35] This is where people go wrong. If you're using AI to just tell me what to do and you let it turn you into a pair of hands, you don't get anywhere. If, on the other hand, you use it as the world's greatest study partner to actually learn how something works, I am scandalized at how much faster I'm able to move in every aspect of my life because of AI.

Speaker 2:
[01:54] With that, let's jump into this week's conversation with Tom Bilyeu. Tom, it's been a while.

Speaker 1:
[02:04] It's been a minute.

Speaker 2:
[02:05] It's been, congratulations on what you've been building and what you've done and your deep understanding of new tech, of the economic situation that, you know, we're in right now and using it from a, or speaking from a political standpoint as well, like.

Speaker 1:
[02:23] It's been a wild ride.

Speaker 2:
[02:24] I'll say that. But you're way out in front.

Speaker 1:
[02:27] I'm way out on a limb, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[02:28] Is that what it feels like to you?

Speaker 1:
[02:30] In a fun way, yeah, it does. It's high consequence. People really care, really care. Meaning, if you say something they don't like, there are going to be consequences, whether that is as simple as an unsubscribe or a negative comment, or it's people like really having beef. My political commentary will spill over into my wife's subscriptions, where they will leave because of something I said. It's wild. So it's one where I think about that a lot as a video game developer, which is like my primary identity, which is very surprising, I think, to most people. I think about that. Like, do in a modern context, do people want to hear Walt Disney talk about politics? And I think the answer is no. So it's fascinating that I just can't stay quiet. This moment feels too consequential.

Speaker 2:
[03:22] Is that why you are out on a limb to use your language about your point of view, about politics and economics and AI?

Speaker 1:
[03:30] I'll speed run how this happened, because I never thought that this would be what I would talk about. So you and I met, mindset was my primary thing for the first several years.

Speaker 2:
[03:39] On the heels of a successful exit and build an exit with Quest Nutrition.

Speaker 1:
[03:44] Yeah, so if people don't know that story, to speed run it really quickly, I go to film school, think I'm going to graduate, get the three picture deal. I do not. I have no idea how to break into the film industry. I'm looking around. This is the late nineties. There's no YouTube. There's no cell phones with cameras. It just seemed impossible. I met these two successful entrepreneurs. I said, look, man, you're coming to the world with your hand out. If you want to control the art, you have to control the resources, so you should get into business and get rich. I was like, yeah, that's really smart. Let's do that. I thought it would take 18 months. It took 15 years, but it worked.

Speaker 2:
[04:20] To build Quest.

Speaker 1:
[04:21] Well, so Quest ends up being the final company that actually works. There were unfortunately others. So yeah, together as a trio, we had started a software company together and we exited that to start Quest. Long story there, but Quest ends up being successful. So that's the one where when I exit that, I'm like, I can actually build this studio now. And so that's what I've been doing. Quest ends up being successful. So that's the one where when I exit that, I'm like, I can actually build this studio now. And so that's what I've been doing now for almost a decade, which is wild. We're coming up on our 10th year. So it's, yeah, thank you, man. Thank you. It's very exciting.

Speaker 2:
[05:00] I really appreciated when we met your intensity, your clarity, the systems that you work from. And I've been watching what you've been building. And I'm really fascinated by the courage that you're demonstrating in a polarized world to speak what you think is important to say. And whether I agree or disagree is immaterial. What is, I think, most focused in this conversation for me is, how are you organizing your life to lead from the front in a high stakes, consequential environment? And that for me is something I think we can all learn from. So can you speed run that piece of why, to use your language, why you are out on a limb and speaking that way right now?

Speaker 1:
[05:44] So COVID hits and I had recently left Quest. And so thought that the 1000 of my 3000 former employees that grew up hard in the inner cities, I thought they're going to get completely destroyed by this. They're going to lose their jobs and this is going to be brutal. They just don't know anything about money. And so I thought, OK, let me start making financial content for people, them and people like them to try to help through COVID. And I didn't understand money. That's what I came to realize. No, I knew how to make it. I didn't know how to invest it. I didn't even know how it worked. And that was the most eye-opening thing to me ever. I start with, OK, how to save, balance your checkbook kind of stuff, really basic finance 101. And at the same time, you're having this massive Wall Street bets moment, where it was the GameStop era, cryptos exploding. And so I start learning about that and realizing you end up at a question. When you interface with crypto, you end up at the question, what is money? And never did I expect that to change the course of my life. But that makes me realize, oh, the world doesn't work the way that I thought it did, that we actually are being manipulated by a group of elite bankers. It's wild. It sounds so conspiratorial, but it's so basic and so straightforward. And I can now explain it to anybody how it works. And it's maddening how few people actually understand it, which is exactly why people are manipulated by the system. And so I'm like, whoa, I set out to help people in like a really simple way, only to end up like Matlock, like realizing, wait, like these are all just lies on top of lies, like what is happening? And so through all of that, I became somewhat enraged about the way that money is treated and the way that it's effectively stolen from people. So I wanted to do something that would help. And so now I just base everything on cause and effect, and I try to map out cause and effect.

Speaker 2:
[07:40] Yeah, okay. I mean, if there was number of gems per minute, I mean, you just kicked off a bunch of them in that opening sallow. So can you do this? Can you just explain money to your best ability?

Speaker 1:
[07:57] Yeah. Okay. So money is a way that we all capture the value of our time. Now, that's a very judgmental word, and some people are going to feel very attacked by that. But the reality is, skills have utility, which is a theme of my life. That's probably what I should have written on your bathroom wall. Skills have utility.

Speaker 2:
[08:22] You didn't leave your phone number?

Speaker 1:
[08:23] I didn't leave my phone number. I'll go back. You don't read a book to say that you read it, you read a book because it has a piece of information that you can deploy in your life, and it lets you do something other people can't do. So when people say time is money, what they mean is the only way to get money is to, at some point, you're trading time for it. So you do a thing that somebody else values and they give you money for it. Now, if you get very good, you can put your money to work and you effectively break the time for money equation. But almost nobody but a rich kid starts there. Where you start, and even that kid is going to have to master how money works if he wants to invest it well, otherwise, it's other people doing it for him. So, if you think of time as an opportunity for you to capture your energy in a form that you can carry with you across time, that other people will accept as a method of exchange so that I don't have to create a beaver pelt in order to get a hamburger, right? It's like that would be a barter system. Every society ever realizes very quickly, it's super cumbersome and I don't really know how many hamburgers this is worth and maybe I know how many hamburgers this is worth, but I don't know how many pieces of lumber it's worth. So, why don't we create an abstraction layer? And that abstraction layer is money. But it's effectively you going, oh, I'm really good at making beaver pelts. People really want beaver pelts. So, I'm going to spend an hour of my time making a beaver pelt and I can make this abstraction layer we called money. I can make a knowable amount of it for doing that. Now, in a modern context, we all go to an office and we do a thing and we're paid $50 an hour or $100 an hour or whatever. And that's us trading time for that abstraction layer where somebody says, with your skill set in this context, an hour of your time is worth this thing. Now, we can stop there, but I'll put one more piece on it and say, if all of that sounded crazy to you, go watch a season of the TV show alone. And you will understand why we have come up with mediums of exchange always and forever. Because when you're by yourself, you effectively starve to death every time. You're going to lose that game. So what people do very quickly is they go, ah, I need other people. And then they go, and I need to specialize. I'm going to be the one that fishes. You go build the hut. And this is exactly how you survive a winter, which tends to be why societies that came from a punishing environment tend to be the most successful, because they've just reinforced, reinforced that level of specialization, cooperation, goal-oriented thinking about the change of the season. So you're planning ahead, all that stuff, which, irony of ironies, all of this became clear to me when I started programming what's known as a survival crafting open world video game. You start to realize, oh my gosh, there's just all these incentives and simple rule sets that create all this emergent behavior. So humans have emergent behavior based on the fact that it's hard to stay alive. And one of those is money. The ultimate modern example is the US. 80 percent of the people that came to the US, like in the colony days, died in the first winter. So you can imagine the 20 percent that survive.

Speaker 2:
[11:37] No way, wait, wait, wait.

Speaker 1:
[11:37] Yes, way, way, way.

Speaker 2:
[11:38] 80 percent.

Speaker 1:
[11:39] That's a specific colony, but yes.

Speaker 2:
[11:41] Oh, okay. So just to make sure I'm understanding is that people that came to the US that left their home of origin came here and died because it was so harsh here?

Speaker 1:
[11:52] Yes. Long before we had 13 colonies, we had people, I think it was Jamestown, we had a whole bunch of people just dying the first winter they arrived in, whatever the colony was. Let's say Jamestown for now but if there's a historian in the chat. On the East Coast, the Thames River used to freeze, just to give you an idea of how much colder it used to be. So A, there's that and B, when there's no heaters, there's no building that you don't build, suddenly the minus 20 is a lot more brutal.

Speaker 2:
[12:25] That 80 percent I'm thinking makes more sense to me when you think about the travel here, how harsh those conditions were.

Speaker 1:
[12:32] That, but it really, now what percentage died in transit I wouldn't be able to say, but it was, the echoing refrain is that first winner is just brutal.

Speaker 2:
[12:42] Yeah, okay. All right, so now I've got the kind of the historical context of how you're viewing money and understanding it. Bring us into the modern understanding of the economy and how money works, you know, real time in this system. Yeah. And I know you're not going to escape this conversation without crypto, which is, again, I want...

Speaker 1:
[13:06] It's a pretty minor part of the story. So, yeah, yeah, like, okay, if we want to talk about the Titanic, at some point, I'm probably going to talk about the lifeboats. Crypto is just a lifeboat for a system designed to abuse you.

Speaker 2:
[13:16] All right, let's stay there for a minute, because that's the first principle that you're working for.

Speaker 1:
[13:19] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[13:19] Which is grim.

Speaker 1:
[13:23] It is grim, and if you are wondering why we're living in a populist moment, that's why. It is 100%, not mostly, it is 100% tied to the fact that we have an economic system designed through malice to abuse us.

Speaker 2:
[13:39] Yeah, all right, you don't strike me as somebody that fits the profile of a conspiracist.

Speaker 1:
[13:45] I definitely don't.

Speaker 2:
[13:46] You don't strike me as somebody that fits the profile to be a pessimist.

Speaker 1:
[13:50] Definitely not.

Speaker 2:
[13:51] I have not met a pessimist that is world's best or world-leading. They are fundamentally, in my experience of them, I'm sure there's some that are out there, but my experience of world's best, world-leading are fundamentally optimistic. They can see something, and it's compelling. And they believe that if they could just organize their life and their teams and be great teammates together and resources, that that beautiful future could take place. Why else would we apply so much energy towards trying to create something new or different? So, but when I hear this statement, that a system is designed through malice to abuse, I go, oh, it's grim, it's dark. Is that pessimistic? No, it's not quite pessimistic. So, where does this come from for you?

Speaker 1:
[14:38] Mapping, cause and effect. So, we, here are gonna be the things where I'll either lose your audience or they're gonna be like, oh, I get how this guy's mind works. So, the way that I think is very straightforward, we all get trapped by a frame of reference. Your frame of reference is made of your beliefs, your values and your biology. And because the human animal is not designed at a censor's standpoint to interact with the world as it actually is, we are designed to interact with gross simplifications that it creates tremendous blind spots. So, my entire world view is that you have to get outside of your frame of reference or your whole life will be you trying to interact with things, but you're always just off because you're dealing with your perception of the world instead of the world as it actually is. That's where most people, they spend their whole life there, they're completely stuck because they simply can't see what's actually happening.

Speaker 2:
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Speaker 1:
[17:58] Yes, there is a movie Don't Look Up.

Speaker 2:
[18:00] Is that kind of capturing?

Speaker 1:
[18:02] They are all stuck in a frame of reference. That doesn't jump to mind. The one that jumps to mind is The Matrix. Where The Matrix is like, okay, if you realize that you're in a matrix, you suddenly realize that you can bend certain rules. Now, you were always in The Matrix. You always had that ability. You just didn't realize the true nature of the structure of that world. And in failing to understand it as a simulation, you failed to take advantage of the simulation.

Speaker 2:
[18:32] I'm imagining Red and Blue Pill. Which pill do you choose?

Speaker 1:
[18:35] The Red, of course.

Speaker 2:
[18:36] Okay. Just as a frame of reference. All right.

Speaker 1:
[18:39] Yeah, the Blue Pill puts you back to sleep. So, no thank you.

Speaker 2:
[18:41] And the Red Pill is like, let's go.

Speaker 1:
[18:42] The Red Pill promises only the truth. And that's, it makes me very sad that Red Pill, as an idea, has been co-opted. It was always meant in the movie to just be, because he even says as he goes to take the Red Pill, he says, remember, all I'm offering is the truth. And that gave me the chills. Oh, I love that movie so much. So yes, if you interface with the truth, it can sometimes be deeply uncomfortable. But at least it's high utility.

Speaker 2:
[19:11] If you and I could speak right to the listener and viewer, I would say above all else, making a fundamental commitment to be radically honest with yourself and others, I don't know of a higher leverage point to take to create the life that you would like to live. And so, do you co-sign that idea or do you say... I love it. Yeah, you do. You co-sign that idea. Yeah. All right. So, frame a reference. And again, that was beliefs, biology, and one other thing you said?

Speaker 1:
[19:40] Values.

Speaker 2:
[19:41] Oh, so frames a reference, it's values.

Speaker 1:
[19:43] Oh, yes.

Speaker 2:
[19:44] Different than beliefs.

Speaker 1:
[19:45] Oh, yes.

Speaker 2:
[19:45] Okay. Separate values from beliefs.

Speaker 1:
[19:49] So beliefs are what you believe to be true about the world. Values are how you believe the world ought to be.

Speaker 2:
[19:56] So are there a couple of values that are really important to you to align with? And are there a couple of values that you're like, not that one?

Speaker 1:
[20:03] Well, so I don't have anti-values, but when I encounter one that I dislike, I certainly know it when I see it. So fairness, I would have to also parse to where do you mean everybody is invited to the starting line at the same time? Everyone has the same height of hurdle and all of that before them? Yeah, that's fair. Love it. Do you mean that we all cross the finish line at the same time? Because that requires violence. And this is where I go from metaphor to having a very aggressive reaction to that, because people allow themselves to live these values in the abstract, online, to be a part of the chattering classes as they call us.

Speaker 2:
[20:48] What does that mean, chattering classes?

Speaker 1:
[20:49] You talk a lot, but you never interface with real life. And so, that's where I go, oh yeah, that's where I go crazy, is these are people that are woefully ignorant of history, and every civilization ever that has tried to make sure that everybody crosses a finish line at the same time has had to kill people to do it.

Speaker 2:
[21:10] What the hell does that mean?

Speaker 1:
[21:12] Look at Mao Shina, look at Stalin, look at Lenin.

Speaker 2:
[21:16] But these are not, these are not, they do not believe in that first principle.

Speaker 1:
[21:22] Yes, they do.

Speaker 2:
[21:23] No, for everybody else, but not them.

Speaker 1:
[21:27] Well, that's how they live it in practice, but in reality, the thing that they're actually marching on, saying to fall behind the banner of, it's always equity. It is equal outcomes, that you cannot have this level of inequality. That's what scares me about this moment, because anybody saying you can't have this level of inequality is correct. We have now gone into toxic inequality because of a monetary system that is designed through malice to abuse you. We have created something that is intolerable. And now we're confusing the intolerable with a fundamental thing that you must have. So take water. If you don't have water, you die. But if I keep shoving water down your throat, you will also die. So imagine I'm shoving water down somebody's throat just over and over and over, and they're about to die, and somebody goes, water is bad. We've got to stop people from drinking water. You're like, you're taking the wrong lesson here. The lesson is, don't force feed people water. Right? So this is actually about a biological process. Make sure that they're not dehydrated. That's the real thing. It's just not a catchy bumper sticker. So you need inequality because inequality is, all right, everybody, this is going to be really hard to accomplish. This thing, you want to innovate, you want to make the world a better place, going to be very hard. You're going to get, you're going to run into every element of chaos you can imagine. You're likely to fail yours through the roof. But if you can pull it off, then there's glory and outsize rewards on the other side of that. And if you're mad at God for setting humans up to want that, don't be mad at me. I'm not the one that set it up like that, but that's how it is. And so if you want a society to innovate, and you can just look at right now in the world what society innovates the most by an order of magnitude, the US. So we have a system where people can get unequally wealthy. Now, for reasons I've already stated, we've broken that system, and now we're creating a problem. But if even look at China, for decades, they were starving tens of millions of people. I don't think anybody argues the number 45 million. Some people push that all the way to 100 million. So imagine your society starved 45 million people to death because you didn't want anybody to have more than somebody else. And then when that leader finally dies, Mao, the person that comes in to take over, Deng Xiaoping, finally says, listen, getting rich is awesome. And so we want people to be able to get wealthy. And it was through the willingness to allow unequal outcomes that pulled over 100 million people out of poverty.

Speaker 2:
[24:02] Let's go back to this idea that you need to break from your framework, your reference points, to be able to see the world differently and to grow.

Speaker 1:
[24:13] To map cause and effect.

Speaker 2:
[24:15] Map, cause and effect.

Speaker 1:
[24:16] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[24:16] All right. So the cause is the way you see the world is based on your beliefs, biology and values. Yep. Correct. And the effect of that is the way you operate in the world. And you're saying if you want to operate differently, examine your beliefs, examine your understanding your biology and reestablish an alignment with your values.

Speaker 1:
[24:36] Yes. So those are your three leverage points if you're trying to form a new frame of reference.

Speaker 2:
[24:42] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[24:42] For most people, 50% of your biology is malleable, 50% is not. So that one people tend to get very strange about. So it's probably easier to just accept you do have a nature. And now let's focus on the other two, your beliefs and your values. If I can just get people far enough to say your beliefs are a choice, I know they don't feel like it. It feels like a simple recognition of what is true. But going back to the biology part, you are designed to only see 0.0035% of the electromagnetic spectrum. It is an absolute fraction of a fraction of a fraction. So what are the odds that you only seeing that tiny little sliver actually understand how the world is? Cool. It's basically zero. So if we can agree you can't even interface with the real world, then your beliefs suddenly become interpretations. And I will certainly give you that. You have a bunch of interpretations of the world that you shorthand to truths. And I'm just saying we don't even know fundamental physics, so we don't understand the real world. And if we did, by the way, the closer we get, the more technology unlocks to us. So the whole atomic age was about taking one step closer to actually understanding fundamental physics. But if I can get everyone to agree we don't understand fundamental physics, we certainly can't interface with the vast majority of the universe, therefore our perceptions are likely to be wrong. So then I would say the thing that you should be predicating your beliefs on is, I think that when I take this action, it will yield this outcome. If it does 100% of the time, you're pretty close to what is actually true, certainly in terms of utility. If it isn't always the same, you're missing something.

Speaker 2:
[26:25] Inputs and outputs, cause and effect.

Speaker 1:
[26:28] And that takes us back to where this all started, which is we live in a deterministic universe. If I can get people to drop a dime on that, then it's like, cool, this is all predetermined. Now, most people hate that, but you live in a rules-based universe. If you do this, you will get this outcome, not most of the time, every time.

Speaker 2:
[26:45] Just to be clear, deterministic, what is your language one more time? We live in a deterministic society or?

Speaker 1:
[26:53] Universe. Universe, like literal universe.

Speaker 2:
[26:55] And so you are aligning with like Sapolsky.

Speaker 1:
[26:58] Very aggressively.

Speaker 2:
[26:59] You are a student of or?

Speaker 1:
[27:02] Yeah, I probably wouldn't go that far, but yes, I think Sapolsky is right. He wrote a book called Determined. Anybody that's holding out hope that this is not a deterministic universe, read that book first. It is the first principle I really hope everybody works from, because suddenly the world will make a lot of sense and will become exceptionally navigable. And I think, I really think, unless somebody is a true mystic, that they believe that. They may believe that there's still room for free will within a rules-based universe. Fine, I'm not going to spend any time on that.

Speaker 2:
[27:39] Yeah, I didn't want to either.

Speaker 1:
[27:40] But somebody going, for instance, you would never be like to an athlete, you know, I know I have them over there, they're training weights and they're eating really well. But you, I want to run an experiment where you're going to eat either nothing or milkshakes. And man, best of luck, because there's no rules, it's not deterministic, so lifting weights may or may not add muscle, may or may not make you stronger, who knows? It's not deterministic, no cause and effect here. So it's like, once you say it like that, people go, of course, that's a cause and effect. Exactly, so that's all I'm saying. And that cause and effect goes everywhere, including your money.

Speaker 2:
[28:16] A system designed through malice for abuse. Who designed the system?

Speaker 1:
[28:23] Bankers in 1913, I don't remember their names, but those names are knowable.

Speaker 2:
[28:27] Bankers in 1913 designed an economic system.

Speaker 1:
[28:31] That is correct, which we now call Modern Monetary Theory, but it started in 1913 when they tricked the legislature to creating a central bank, which previously America had been opposed to. We did it once, put a time limit on it, at the end of the time limit, we eradicated it and did not bring it back. And then in 1913, they found the magical sequence of words to convince the legislature to pass the Federal Reserve Act, which is neither federal nor are there reserves.

Speaker 2:
[29:03] So that's the malice. They designed a system.

Speaker 1:
[29:05] Well, the malice is far more distressing than that. That was the lie.

Speaker 2:
[29:09] Keep going. What's the malice?

Speaker 1:
[29:10] The malice is that you create a system where I can steal money. And this is provocative, but it is also true. Inflation is theft. It is not a natural order of things. It's not like a law of nature. It is the cause and effect of having a central bank, which is able to print money out of thin air. It is not tied to anything. And because by this is where the term fiat comes from, which just means by decree. So by fiat, the government says there's now more money. The problem is, you have to make money in accordance with an equal amount of new things to buy. Otherwise, it becomes inflationary. When you inflate the money supply, you steal people's purchasing power. Now, the difference between money and purchasing power is all they needed to create the system that we have now. If people understood, you might as well say they stole your money, because that's how it feels. So the reason that things get too expensive is because your purchasing power is being knowingly stolen from you via inflation. Now, you should be asking, why would somebody want to do that? Because they understand a part of the game that you don't understand, which is that if somebody is inflating your money supply, all you have to do to get wealthy is buy assets that meet certain qualifications. But if you buy those assets, then the more the money supply is inflated, the wealthier you become. Now, the next question you should ask is, well, how many people own those assets, Tom? And the answer is 10% of Americans own 93% of the assets. So if you want to know why we have a K-shaped economy, it is because the system was designed to make it possible to inflate the money supply so that we could deficit spend so that only the people that were educated enough to buy assets would escape, not only escape the negative effects of inflation, they would get rich off the back of it. And this is why the stock market is screaming higher and higher every year. And since 2020, it's been on an absolute rocket ship. And why when you tell the average American, hey, but don't worry, the S&P 500 is at 50K, they're just like, what are you talking about? Like, this is irrelevant to my life. I don't even know what you mean by that. Because they're living in a world where they take their time, they trade it for money, and that money is going down in value, literally, not figuratively, literally every day.

Speaker 2:
[31:47] That's the K shape. The downward...

Speaker 1:
[31:50] People that own assets are on the top, and 2025 is one of the best years of their life. And then the people on the bottom side of the K are people that don't own assets. It really is that simple.

Speaker 2:
[32:00] I'm going to ask you what the assets are that 10% own, 93% of in a second. However, Professor Scott Galloway, I love the clarity of his thinking, and he said something to the effects of, in the last three years, if you own a home and own stocks, happy days, champagne and cocaine or something like that. It's a party time.

Speaker 1:
[32:19] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[32:20] I do not use campaign cocaine, and I do not like champagne, just to be clear. But it was a fun statement for him to say. And those are the two assets, home and on the stock market.

Speaker 1:
[32:30] There's a lot more than that. So the reason that homes matter so much and the reason that everybody should be very angry about what's happening with homes right now is that a house is the only asset that the average person understands intuitively. It's an expensive way to avoid inflation, but it helps you avoid inflation. And for a very long time, that was a great way to play the game. Now it's like you basically had a class of people get into houses and then they became a voting block. That was what's known as NIMBYism, not in my backyard. So housing is somebody else's problem. Don't do anything that negatively affects the value of my house. And once you do that, you're basically saying, don't build. And once you say, don't build, you're saying that this house becomes an asset class where the people that have one, it will go up in value, but nobody else is going to be able to get on the property ladder. So Gen Xers sort of got the last little bit of that and by Millennials, it was game over.

Speaker 2:
[33:23] Meaning Millennials are not able to get in?

Speaker 1:
[33:26] Not on mass. It's the whole idea of the American Dream where you go and you work hard and you buy a house and all that. It's just that's out of reach. Now the great irony is there's a way better way to beat inflation than a house. It's just people don't understand it intuitively. It's very difficult to master and it is the casino known as the stock market.

Speaker 2:
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Speaker 1:
[36:21] So if you understand it as a casino, you're in a much better position, but there are games that you can play in the casino where on a long enough timeline, at least over the last, call it 100 plus years, you're all but guaranteed to win on a long enough timeline. You've got to be holding for 20, 30 years, but I don't think in the last 100 plus years there's ever been a period of 20 years where you would come out behind if you had a very diversified basket of stocks.

Speaker 2:
[36:48] Unless you were needing to withdraw your assets in 2008.

Speaker 1:
[36:52] That's a totally different story, and that's why it's best thought of as a casino and you've got to always have a long term time horizon.

Speaker 2:
[36:59] Okay, and so the 10% that own the 93% of assets, you're speaking of those two basic assets, which is a home and the stock market.

Speaker 1:
[37:07] There's a better way to understand it. So that would be you need an asset that can't easily be inflated. And that's why people fight against more housing, because that's inflating the housing supply. That's why it's better if people don't think of their house as like the asset that they're going to use to retire. You want to make sure that people can afford a house, get into a house to build their nest, to own something, to be invested in the neighborhood, all of that stuff, incredibly positive things. You don't necessarily want them going, and this is going to be how I'm going to retire, this is what I'm going to leave to my kids, because you do want to be able to let the market decide. And so if you go to places like Houston, where it's been deregulated, housing prices are pretty flat. And so that's not one where people are just like, watching their house price pump, pump, pump. And that's a way better position for the community than what we're doing now. So that's where we get into Bitcoin. So Bitcoin is a potential asset that can't be inflated. So there's whatever 21 million, I can never remember if it's 21 or 22, but whatever the number is deflated though, it not only can it is deflated right now. So yeah, if somebody loses something, then that's gone forever. Yeah, unless they can find it.

Speaker 2:
[38:21] But well, well, unless it rebuilds again.

Speaker 1:
[38:25] Well, you can't do that. There's no way. Like if you sent a Bitcoin, there are void addresses. So it is like throwing it into a volcano. If you do that, it really is gone forever.

Speaker 2:
[38:35] Oh no, I don't mean that. Yeah, I mean, what we're watching right now is the devalue of Bitcoin.

Speaker 1:
[38:41] That's not deflation. So no, no, no, you have to strip. So this is one of those, I hate that economics is just complicated enough that when people try to wrap their head around it, they just go, I don't want to think about it.

Speaker 2:
[38:53] It is interesting.

Speaker 1:
[38:54] Really fast though, because I need to explain to people. You have to separate two things and then I'll be quiet and you can ask whatever you want. But there's two important ideas. Prices going up or down is not inflation or deflation. Inflation or deflation is adding more to the thing or taking something away.

Speaker 2:
[39:12] Good clarity, great clarity. There's a, it's not deflated, but there's a lower value.

Speaker 1:
[39:18] It's volatile.

Speaker 2:
[39:19] Yeah, it's volatile.

Speaker 1:
[39:20] Yeah, stock market's volatile, crypto's very volatile. If you think of Bitcoin as a tech stock, you'll understand it in the right way.

Speaker 2:
[39:27] Think of crypto as a tech stock, okay, which is volatile.

Speaker 1:
[39:32] Volatility is currently part of what people want in Bitcoin. Once you understand that, it's like welcome to the, maybe not quite PhD level class, but we're now, we're not in 101 or 201 or even 401 at this point. We're getting a master's degree at minimum.

Speaker 2:
[39:52] Why have you studied economy at this level?

Speaker 1:
[39:54] I was literally trying to help people during COVID that I thought were going to lose their jobs. I didn't understand money printing. As I tried to figure out money printing and inflation, I started understanding how things actually worked, and it made me incredibly angry. As somebody who, I've gotten wealthy, so all of the anger, like I'm the guy who, like Scott Galloway for the last three years, I've just gotten wealthier and wealthier and wealthier. It's crazy. And yet, I'm watching society destabilize. And so I'm like, can we all agree this is a really dumb game to play? And so I don't know how else to like, I want to scream and shake people and get people to understand. Also, as a student of history, oh my goodness, you start realizing just how badly socialism and communism go. Like, I won't even trouble your people with it. But I will read books at night, like as I'm falling asleep, and I cannot read books about certain periods of time, almost always tied to socialism or communism, because when those societies break, they break so bad, they're stories that I hesitate to tell people. So yeah, anyway, so I had to come to understand it because it has utility. So first of all, by understanding investing, I've made myself fantastically wealthy. I was already wealthy, but it's almost ridiculous how once you understand investing, in the good times, you're making a ton of money. Now in the bad times, you can lose a ton, like in the blink of an eye. So you really have to be thoughtful to understand you don't see the future clearly, to diversify, I don't over index on anything, yada yada.

Speaker 2:
[41:32] Well, let's do the basic application of your principles, which is not exactly what stocks you're buying, but how are you allocating your pot of wealth?

Speaker 1:
[41:42] So I allocate it as a paranoid man who is convinced he is not an investing genius, that he is just trying to get as close to how the world actually works as possible. So how does the world work? One, the future almost always surprises us. Number two, the stock market almost always follows the path of maximum pain. And so you start putting together things like that and you realize, okay, I need to spread across 12 to 15 economic forces. So buying tech stocks in seven different ways is not diversification because the economic force that you're up against is anything that could disrupt tech. The second tech gets disrupted, now you're in trouble.

Speaker 2:
[42:25] Which it is disrupted right now.

Speaker 1:
[42:27] Yes, aggressively.

Speaker 2:
[42:29] So the AI bubble, if you will.

Speaker 1:
[42:31] Well, AI is disrupting traditional technology and then AI itself is almost certainly going to follow in the footsteps of the Internet. And there will be a bubble bursting where things just don't happen quite as fast as people expect them to. Not that it's not going to happen, just doesn't quite happen as fast. So the stock markets will tank, that will just completely evaporate some of what might otherwise be good companies, but poof, they're gone because they were using too much debt. And then anybody-

Speaker 2:
[42:59] Which is all the big seven are like, or not all of them, but at least five of the big seven are highly leverage going into the next phase of their growth.

Speaker 1:
[43:07] Yes, there is so much leverage in the system, it's insane.

Speaker 2:
[43:10] Yeah, okay, so 12 to 15 levers, if you will, and how you're diversifying. Yep.

Speaker 1:
[43:17] Now, I'm not saying that that's where I'm at, because I'm not that sophisticated, nor am I going to spend that much time on it. Ray Dalio is the king of this, he calls it the all weather strategy, but you're going to be in US stock markets broadly, ETFs, you're going to be international broadly, ETFs, you're going to be in developed, undeveloped, you're going to be stocks, bonds, gold, silver, crypto, that's how you start getting across everything.

Speaker 2:
[43:43] Do you have somebody that you work with or are you making these choices?

Speaker 1:
[43:45] I do, but they do what I tell them to do.

Speaker 2:
[43:48] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[43:49] So now listen, I'll heed anybody's advice that's thinking about this hard because I am convinced I'm wrong about a great number of things and I can't tell which things I'm wrong about. So I always want people to give me disconfirming evidence, but I see it as my responsibility. I'm not just like, tell me where to put my money.

Speaker 2:
[44:05] Yeah, that's where I am actually.

Speaker 1:
[44:08] That's tough not to be. You have to spend so much time on it.

Speaker 2:
[44:11] So if you have a thousand coins, how many coins do you put in Bitcoin?

Speaker 1:
[44:17] Well, that's going to be person dependent. So everybody should invest based on a thesis. So I have a strong thesis about Bitcoin. So it's one of my, might still be my largest single holding, but it's still like, I don't keep deploying into it. I, over a couple of years, I dollar cost averaged in. And then I said, this is the amount that I'm going to have in that.

Speaker 2:
[44:39] You're not chasing the low rate. You're not buying against it right now. You do think it's going to go up.

Speaker 1:
[44:44] I do think it's going to go up, but I think it's going to go up slowly over time. I don't think it's this, it's going to hit a million dollars in the next 12 months. Like that does not seem true.

Speaker 2:
[44:52] How do you argue that it's not a Ponzi scheme?

Speaker 1:
[44:55] Well, everything is a Ponzi scheme.

Speaker 2:
[44:59] You are so provocative.

Speaker 1:
[45:00] But here's the thing. Remember, you are talking to Captain Cause and Effect. So I'm just saying, I'm not saying these things should be provocative. Everybody else is living in a frame of reference that is lying to them, and they are perfectly happy to be there. And I'm just saying, make contact with reality. So there's a guy named Peter Schiff, I love him to death, and he's very smart, and I'm sure a lot of people made a lot of money with him, and I have him on the show whenever I can get him. But the way that he talks as if gold's value is derived from its industrial use is hilarious. Gold's value is derived by whether or not people think it is the flight to safety, period, end of story. What made it spike recently? I mean, it went up like crazy. We didn't start using it in industrial stuff, it was all of a sudden, people were like, oh, wait a second, central banks are buying this because they don't believe in the dollar anymore. So the dollar, based on debt money printing in the central bank we talked about, are doing dumb things, so now that's going down, people are losing faith, gold starts going up because the central banks are buying it. It has nothing to do with industrial, it has only to do with what? Belief. People believe it's safer than the dollar, so they start going into it. Once you understand the entire casino of the stock market is just predicated on people's beliefs. Now, that's provocative and people hate it when I say it, but that really is true.

Speaker 2:
[46:19] Yeah. So I think what's important from an action standpoint or a go-do standpoint is like, I'm hearing everything you're saying, but maybe unclear what the right question is to ask you about, what do I do with this information now? And we haven't really gotten into your sophistication in AI to build businesses and to kind of move with speed into the next chapter of life, but what do I do with this information?

Speaker 1:
[46:47] Well, you have to decide, are you going to invest your money or not? If you're going to invest your money, then you've got to start paying attention to how do I spread across economic forces.

Speaker 2:
[46:56] I think 90% of our community is invested.

Speaker 1:
[46:59] Perfect, so if 90% of your community is the 10%, then it just becomes dollar cost average in all the time, never stop, always be focused on the long term, make sure you are ridiculously diversified. You are going to stop yourself from having massive wins, so that you can stop yourself from having massive losses.

Speaker 2:
[47:20] So let's go back to like, I think this is what most people in our community are considering. How much do I keep in cash?

Speaker 1:
[47:26] I would keep at a minimum six months, so that you don't have to make any adjustments to your lifestyle. If you can do a year, even better. I do three years. So I have three years of cash on hand, so I don't have to change my lifestyle one iota, so that if something bad happens, and I'm like, yo, this might be longer than three years, then I can cut my lifestyle and extend five years, six years, ten years, whatever.

Speaker 2:
[47:50] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[47:51] So yeah, that is, I would be very thoughtful about that.

Speaker 2:
[47:55] Yeah. And then allocate the rest across real estate, Bitcoin and the stock market.

Speaker 1:
[48:01] Yeah, I maybe have a slightly different take on real estate than most people, but yes.

Speaker 2:
[48:04] You own your home, though.

Speaker 1:
[48:05] I do, but if I could not, I probably would not. I just wouldn't have bought it in the, if I understood money, if I understood California and I understood money at the time that I did it, at the time I thought like everybody else, like, oh my God, this is the best investment ever. And then I realized that California is on a suicide mission and they make me deeply uncomfortable from what their long-term plans are. So yeah, now we start getting into the dark territory. So up until now it's been sunshine and rainbows, Mike. So yeah, but it starts getting weird when you look at where we go as a society from here.

Speaker 2:
[48:44] Okay, what about a car?

Speaker 1:
[48:47] I don't care about cars, so I have a car for emergencies, but I Uber everywhere. I try to be super efficient with my time.

Speaker 2:
[48:55] That's right, yeah, I think that's where you are with it. What are some of the beliefs that you hold now or even have shared that you think you could be wrong with?

Speaker 1:
[49:02] I think I could be wrong about anything. So I look for the utility of a belief. So always know where you're headed, and then ask yourself, does the things that I believe currently, do they move me towards that or away from that? So for instance, when I was younger, I was convinced that life was like you got Delta hand of cards and you just had to play them the best you could. And that was really demoralizing for me. And there was like this idea being talked about that people weren't really convinced was real, but they were saying, hey, the brain might be plastic and maybe you can get better at something. This is what I did write on your bathroom wall. And I thought, okay, why don't I act as if that's true, even if it's not? And let me see if it has utility. And that changed my behavior so profoundly that I was like, even if this, I'm just lying to myself, this lie is so high utility that I'm going to keep doing it. Now, it turned out to be true, of course, but...

Speaker 2:
[50:05] And you say that is the circular experience for people that believe in free will. It really has a high utility.

Speaker 1:
[50:13] Yeah, well said. Whether it's true or not doesn't matter. It's super high utility to act as if it's true.

Speaker 2:
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Speaker 1:
[52:49] Specifically or philosophically?

Speaker 2:
[52:51] No, like in your life, like you have high agency, that you believe that you're going to choose how you're going to design this life, even though you operate in a deterministic approach, which has me a little confused. But you...

Speaker 1:
[53:04] I'm happy to talk about it.

Speaker 2:
[53:06] No, it's okay. You have high self-efficacy, efficacy for a word for a felt sense of power. I choose and when I choose with efficacy, I think I'm going to make a difference. So you have both those. You have a motor. So you are motivated by something. You have systems and structures to help you be efficient with that motor. It sounds like and feels like you have the ability to lead others and to be a good teammate. So you're not on an island of yourself. And I could go on and on, but I don't understand like why, like what is the vision that you're working towards that is so compelling that you're putting all of the velocity into your life the way that you are?

Speaker 1:
[53:51] Okay, two things. So the most important thing to understand about me is I believe that love is the greatest gift that we get to experience. So my marriage is my highest priority. That is the thing that I invest most earnestly into. Within that context, I am a mountain climber. So I'm not trying to reach a peak or hit some accomplishment and be like, oh, there I did it. I'm always just thinking, I know I like the act of climbing the mountain. So I could stop, turn around, look at the view, but that's not what motivates me. Facing the rock and doing the hard work is the very thing that I love. But it only works if you're specifically trying to get to somewhere on the mountain. The great irony, right? Because I don't care whether I get there, but I have to be driving towards that thing. I'm motivated by two things. One is you could lump them all together and that I want to help people. I want to have honourable goals. And I want to help people around really meaningful problems. So I'm motivated to help adults, which is what I do with my YouTube content, my podcast and my University, Impact Theory University. And then I want to help kids, which ironically is my primary driver. It's the thing I'm least known for. It's the thing that I have worked the hardest to find a path to in a rapidly changing media landscape.

Speaker 2:
[55:15] Is that why the video is going there?

Speaker 1:
[55:16] Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2:
[55:17] And you don't have kids?

Speaker 1:
[55:19] I don't have kids, no. The great irony.

Speaker 2:
[55:21] Yeah, and you are deeply invested in creating something of value for children.

Speaker 1:
[55:27] Yes. Because, so here, I never thought that I would end up making something for kids. I'm not somebody that was always like, oh, I always just find myself drawn to children's entertainment. In fact, I would say it was the opposite.

Speaker 2:
[55:38] It's funny because when I was at your house, your studio, you had a lot of fun, young artwork, pop culture artwork, right? So there is that youthful, I don't get it from you. I don't, like, if you and I were walking down the street, and I was like, hey, Tom, I don't get like this youthful, I get like a pretty serious like, hey, listen, the system is designed a certain way, you better get yourself together. You know, like, there's an intensity, rock climbing intensity about you. But you have a unique vantage point based on how you've designed your life that you are not a parent. And so you're seeing the, you are viewing the child relationship from an outside in not having one yourself. Yep. Doesn't mean it's right or wrong, but you're not parenting, you want to give too many. What are parents doing well and not well that you uniquely can see from your vantage point?

Speaker 1:
[56:32] Well, so I would say the vantage point that I'm seeing it from is probably less as an outsider and more just going back to this idea of cause and effect. So the reason I found myself drawn to children's entertainment was because I tried to have the impact that I wanted to have in the world via adults. And I just found that while they can change, most do not. And so that got me obsessed with when are we at our most malleable? And so found that with my talent and the things that I'm interested in, that led me to what's known as the age of imprint, which is obviously less than like early, early childhood. Gabor Maté gave me a very distressing look at life and he said, what happens to you up until the age of three is more important in terms of who you will become than every day after that combined. And I was just mortified to my core. But that I'm just not drawn to that age group in terms of entertainment and things, which is what I interface with the world through entertainment. And so that got me focused on the age of imprint, which is 11 to 15, where you start pushing away from your parents, where you turn to culture. And I thought, oh, cool, I can intercept people there. There's only one idea that I'm trying to get across. I mean, as a primary driver. And that is if you put, it's what I call the only belief that matters. If you put time and energy into getting better at something, you will get better. And so I want to drive that message home to kids via entertainment. And for reasons that are just like super weird quirks of my own personality, that manifesting through storytelling.

Speaker 2:
[58:06] Yeah. Okay. Very cool, man. Look, I really appreciate the clarity of your thinking, the first principle base. And we've covered a lot of land here. If there's one or two things that you could point to as a summary wrap up here. If we knew what you knew, how would we parent better?

Speaker 1:
[58:30] So this is where we were headed down briefly, that your kids are having a biological experience, their brains work in a certain way. You need to figure out exactly how the brain develops and understand like with gentle parenting, which is like the as a non-parent from the outside, you guys look crazy. That's just not the way the human mind works. And so like anything, kids are going to test to find the boundaries. If there are no boundaries, then they're adrift at sea. We are not born with values and beliefs. We are given those values and beliefs by our parents. And so you need to say, okay, what beliefs and values will serve them well in the future? What's going to help them develop strong self-esteem? What is going to help them function well with others? Like some very core basic questions. And then you have to do the ridiculously hard work. And by the way, thank you all for doing that hard work. Somebody needs to have kids and raise them well. That's incredibly important. And truly, truly, Mike, I mean this seriously. When I meet parents, I thank them for their service. I am truly grateful that people have kids and that they raise kids. I think it's wonderful. I think it's the surest path to meaning and purpose. I think it's high risk to not have kids from... You'll seek that sense of meaning and purpose. And if you're not very good at identifying other ways in your life to get that, it's going to be tough. Anyway, with that all said, there are going to need to be certain things that you're doing to instill those beliefs, to instill those values, to give them discipline, to understand, like for instance, if you put a kid in front of an iPad, that you're doing that at a time where their brain is forming. So their brain is now forming in a world where you interface with a screen and all of those different things that they would otherwise be doing. Those neurons either just don't get developed or they get pruned and the ones for the device get myelinated and become the primary driver. There's some studies coming out from Jonathan Haidt that show there's very distressing stuff around social media. There's other studies now coming out showing that kids that are sitting in front of iPads have less gray matter in their brains, which is the myelin and so they're not out like learning a broader variety of tasks, which they probably should be. And so going through the lens of biology. And so like, why is it this one of the most fascinating studies? Why is it that if you put a monkey in a cage with no real monkeys, but a metal monkey that has food and then a fur covered monkey that has no food, why it will cling to the fur covered monkey, run over, grab food from the wire monkey, and run back to the fur covered monkey? Okay, both of them are fake. To me, that's like a love thing. We just have this instinct to want to be in close proximity to our parents when we're young, to want to be loved and reassured, and that that's going to have this huge impact on our attachment styles and things like that. So for me, that is one of the big things that I would try to keep in mind in the chaos, in the battle of all that, I totally understand how difficult of a job this is. But just reminding myself that, you know, the formative memories matter a lot. Time with mom and dad matter a lot. Giving them attention matters a lot, just from a brain formation standpoint.

Speaker 2:
[62:03] Okay. What is the best practice that you have for giving love or sharing love?

Speaker 1:
[62:09] I think about identifying that person's love language, that my goal is for them to feel at a nervous system level, that I love them, that I support them. And that means showing it in a way that they understand. So not like for me, words of affirmation are massive. So if my wife gives me words of affirmation, I feel seen, I feel recognized. If she shows appreciation, like I'm feeling good. For her, it's quality time. So I need to engage with her in an activity that she loves, that she feels like, wow, you really did that thing for me. Now, she likes to hear words of affirmation, and I like the quality time, but she could give me all the time in the world if she's not verbally expressing that, hey, you did that thing, I was very impressed, and I'm very grateful, that means the world to me. I'm not gonna get there. Now, I could say all the things in the world to her, but if I'm not just sitting down and being with her, it's not gonna sink in.

Speaker 2:
[63:07] And what's the best practice you have for leading?

Speaker 1:
[63:11] Well, so this is where I will confess that I think I have one superpower when it comes to leading, and that is I will outwork anybody, and my dominant emotion is excitement. So I can get people excited, and I lead by example. However, I think some of the greatest leaders, they really see themselves as a facilitator. I don't see myself as a facilitator. I am frustrated by the need to facilitate. I want to do. I want to be the guy swinging the sword, and that people will fall in and fight with me because I am good at swinging my sword, because I train so very hard, because I show them respect for fighting alongside me. That's awesome, and I'm very grateful. But I do tend to want to isolate and just do my thing. And I think that's terrible for scaling leadership. So I'm well aware of my foibles.

Speaker 2:
[64:12] Are you a rule follower or a rule breaker?

Speaker 1:
[64:14] I'm a rule follower who's learned that you have to occasionally break the rules.

Speaker 2:
[64:20] Yeah, I normally wouldn't ask this, but I think you actually are a rule finder. Like you want to understand the rules, right? More than a follower of that.

Speaker 1:
[64:30] And I'd really, like I'd push it even beyond rules and say, I mean, unless you're talking about the rules of the simulation, which I secretly think we live in, that then yes, the rules. I want to know how does the world work at like the most fundamental, inviolable way.

Speaker 2:
[64:48] In the world that we're in right now with AI, I mean, you are speaking from real experience and you are teaching on how to use AI for personal development, business development for sure. One of the things I want to, I just want to get your take on, Impact Theory is really about searching for, quote unquote, I think small t, maybe big t truth, like you're designing it to get down underneath of what's really happening to help people do the same in their life. And then AI will prop up that it has the answer. But it hallucinates. It is, and some of them are designed to please and give you an answer.

Speaker 1:
[65:28] Even though it's coded by man, that's the thing that should really freak you out.

Speaker 2:
[65:30] How are you helping or how are you discerning yourself between the information that AI is presenting and how you're using it?

Speaker 1:
[65:40] I think the most important thing is to get down to understanding the sequence of cause and effect on any given issue. So don't take its word for it, right? If you look at people that use AI, they're saying that they can see a decline in like brain activity. And so it's like if you're using AI to just tell me what to do and you let it turn you into a pair of hands, you don't get anywhere. If, on the other hand, you use it as the world's greatest study partner to actually learn how something works, now it's like unbelievable. I am scandalized at how much faster I'm able to move in every aspect of my life because of AI, but I'm trying to learn the thing.

Speaker 2:
[66:23] Yeah, I think it's pretty clear. I am using AI a lot. I'm on the train. Can you maybe point to how you, if you were to set up, but I'm also really concerned about the lack of accuracy that it's presenting with. Okay. If you were to start Quest again, you had a massive exit, super success on lots of fronts. If you were to start any company, Quest is just a fun way to think about it. How would you use AI to get it up and going? Or if you're mid-stride and your company is doing pretty well, how would you insert AI? Go either direction or maybe both. Finding Mastery is brought to you by AMP. When it comes to high performance, there are no hacks, no shortcuts. There's the work and there's the environment you build so that you can actually do the work consistently again and again and again. For most people, what breaks consistency is not motivation, it's friction. That's why I'm really excited about AMP. So, what is AMP? It's a new smart in-home gym, really clean, it's got a nice premium feel to it, it's really sleek. It's designed to remove the clutter, the complication and some of the excuses that we all know get in the way of building strong, consistent training routines. And it fits real life. We have one here at the Mastery Lab and one of the ways that I use it, especially when my calendar is stacked, I use it at the end of the day, before I jump in my car to head home, I get a quick 20 minute workout in. It's great. They've also made it really easy. No complicated set up or major installation. Everything runs through one smart dial and their app, it's terrific. Guiding you step by step, all AI enabled. It really does feel like having a personal coach right there with you, keeping you honest, moving you forward. You can choose workouts from five to 60 minutes. You can rotate between strength or HIIT or Pilates, yoga, mobility. With 500 plus movements in their library, it stays fresh. So you can build a habit and actually stick with it. If you want to make fitness simpler and more consistent, go to amp.ai. Again, that's amp, A-M-P dot A-I.

Speaker 1:
[68:26] Yeah, so right now, the state of AI is such that you use it to extend human capabilities. So everybody at Quest, almost regardless of what your role is, would be given access to AI and say, okay, whatever you're spending a lot of your time on, whatever the hard thing is, work with AI to see if you can do it a better way. The number of things you can improve on a production line are insane. So even a production line worker spending 30 minutes or an hour a week, if you're really gonna be stingy about it, even that is likely to move them forward. If you're in the marketing department, the sales department, if you're trying to figure out what should the, what's the right way to negotiate this deal with a retailer, it's like, oh my God, that stuff would have been so much easier with AI because AI knows in your industry what is standard, like even just knowing that, you know, saves you 30 phone calls trying to find the guy that's sort of in an area that's a little bit tangential to what you're doing and they can sort of give you a ballpark of what it's probably gonna be, right? Because you go from like, I have no idea, like I don't know what this is, to an AI will be like, this is standard in that industry, this is standard in this industry, in this state, like it's unbelievable.

Speaker 2:
[69:35] Pre-A.I. I was on your podcast and you had a team. You had a media, full media outfit. You've had great success there. Does your media team look different based with AI.?

Speaker 1:
[69:46] Oh, yes.

Speaker 2:
[69:47] And so have you changed the number of people on your team?

Speaker 1:
[69:49] Oh, yes.

Speaker 2:
[69:50] So I'm imagining you've gone down or down. How are you using it and how might our team here be better by using some of these?

Speaker 1:
[69:58] It's all going to come down to what the specific thing is that you're trying to do. But everything exists in what I call the physics of progress. So the physics of progress, I call it that because there is nothing else. Like everybody that's ever been successful has used this, whether they call it that or not. It is the scientific method recontextualized for business. And you go, I know where I'm trying to get to. There's an obstacle in my way. I'm going to come up with my best guess hypothesis on how I overcome that obstacle. And I'm probably going to come up with a bunch of things. I'm going to prioritize those. I'm going to say by doing this, I expect to impact this key performance indicator by exactly this much. You then run the test and then you see what did I actually get? And then you get a little bit smarter because you think about why it either worked, didn't work, work better than you thought, worse than you thought, whatever. And you try again. What we do is we feed all of that into an AI and we just say, here are however many data points are relevant to that test that we just ran. And then we say, okay, we run three of these a day or whatever. If it's Instagram posts, TikTok, YouTube videos, whatever, you give them all the relevant data, you tell them what you're doing, you show them the video or at least give them a breakdown of what it is if they're blind to the actual imagery. You start doing pattern recognition, you start asking it to suggest tests, you show it your competitors, you feed them as much information on what's working on your competitors as you can. And it will start giving you a just an absolute host of incredible things that are worthwhile testing. And so now you start to understand like, what are the patterns that we're seeing in the data? What are the things that the algorithm actually cares about? And then that LLM is also aware of all the commentary that's happening in the world. All of the experts that are posting YouTube videos and blog posts and LinkedIn posts, whatever, about your topic. And so it will go, all right, here's best practices. This is what most people are doing. This is what this competitor is almost certainly doing. There'll be things that they're blind to for sure, but like the analysis is insane. And so you can't just, this is where people go wrong. It's oftentimes going to give you trash. And you can't just go, oh, AI is bad. You go, okay, hold on a second. That doesn't make any sense to me. This is why it's important that you understand, you're building a mental model of the cause and effect of how the same works. So the AI gives you a bad answer. And then you go, that's a terrible answer. It's terrible for this reason. Why did you say that? Or, you know, what are you thinking? Justify your point. And it will very often go, you're actually right, thank you for pushing me. And then it will click into, just like a deeper tool, because it's often choosing them automatically. It'll click into a deeper tool, do more research, and it'll come back and say either, no, I'm sorry, I still disagree with you. You're incorrect about that, Tom. You don't have this fact. Here's what the data actually shows. Or it'll come back and say, you were right, thank you, you pushed me. Here's this thing, you were wrong about that part. But actually, I think the real answer makes your argument even stronger. You're gonna get some variant of that. And if you treat it the way you're treating it, like a thought partner, and you're not just taking what answers it gives you, you're not just turned into a pair of hands, but you're really using it as a tool to understand.

Speaker 2:
[73:09] You don't have AI employees yet. Your employees are using AI as a tool.

Speaker 1:
[73:13] Correct. Yeah, right now, I don't think there's anything truly autonomous that doesn't have significant enough risks that it's not worth it.

Speaker 2:
[73:21] May I say, I wish I had your expertise as a partner in Finding Mastery because you have such a wealth of a broad range of clarity of first principles and a big motor to put them into action. Thank you for coming in.

Speaker 1:
[73:36] Thanks for having me, man.

Speaker 2:
[73:37] Yeah. Thank you for being out on the edge, being on a limb. Today, I don't think you said anything that was wildly dangerous.

Speaker 1:
[73:45] We didn't talk politics.

Speaker 2:
[73:46] We did not talk. Yeah. Well, just leave us with one thought that will stir people in a way to get them thinking a little bit about your point of view on politics.

Speaker 1:
[73:57] Don't be on a team. Don't be left. Don't be right. Don't be Democrat. Don't be Republican. Think about cause and effect. The economy works in a knowable way. Who is doing the things that are better for the economy and who is doing things that are guaranteed to be problems, even though they sound good. And if you vote based on that will be in a better situation.

Speaker 2:
[74:17] There you go. Where can we find you?

Speaker 1:
[74:20] At Tom Bilyeu on YouTube.

Speaker 2:
[74:22] That's the best place.

Speaker 1:
[74:23] For sure. That is where I am the most active. Join me live. Subscribe to my YouTube channel Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

Speaker 2:
[74:30] How are you doing that?

Speaker 1:
[74:31] But we-

Speaker 2:
[74:32] I'm in awe.

Speaker 1:
[74:32] It's a lot.

Speaker 2:
[74:33] Yeah. I'm in awe. Like you stand up three days a week, a daily live show.

Speaker 1:
[74:36] Yeah. That one is both my joy because it is very fun to do. And it is an extraordinary amount of energy to prep for all the episodes. So you've got to really be in the thick of it.

Speaker 2:
[74:51] Yeah. Well done, man. All right. Appreciate it. Thank you, Tom.

Speaker 1:
[74:54] Thanks for having me.

Speaker 3:
[74:56] Next time on Finding Mastery, we're joined by Super Bowl champion and one of the most respected leaders in NFL history, Andrew Whitworth. In this conversation, he shares what it takes to lead in high pressure environments, how to unlock potential in others, and why even at the highest level, self-doubt and mental health are part of the journey. He also opens up about identity, fatherhood, and what happens when the thing you do no longer defines who you are. Join us Wednesday, April 29th at 9 a.m. Pacific, only on Finding Mastery.

Speaker 1:
[75:31] All right.

Speaker 2:
[75:31] Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community. If you're enjoying the show, the easiest, no-cost way to support is to hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you're listening. Also, if you haven't already, please consider dropping us a review on Apple or Spotify. We are incredibly grateful for the support and feedback. If you're looking for even more insights, we have a newsletter we send out every Wednesday. Punch over to findingmastery.com/newsletter to sign up. The show wouldn't be possible without our sponsors, and we take our recommendations seriously. The team is very thoughtful about making sure we love and endorse every product you hear on the show. If you want to check out any of our sponsor offers you heard about in this episode, you can find those deals at findingmastery.com/sponsors. Remember, no one does it alone. The door here at Finding Mastery is always open to those looking to explore the edges and the reaches of their potential, so that they can help others do the same. So join our community, share your favorite episode with a friend, and let us know how we can continue to show up for you. Lastly, as a quick reminder, information in this podcast and from any material on the Finding Mastery website and social channels is for information purposes only. If you're looking for meaningful support, which we all need, one of the best things you can do is to talk to a licensed professional. So seek assistance from your health care providers. Again, a sincere thank you for listening. Until next episode, be well, think well, keep exploring.