The Exchanges

Q remember the beginning, but they will remember the end, and if you want to be the one to prime your team to do more, then you want that to move forward. I've noticed a couple of things as being friends with you, that you integrate this into your life consistently. For instance, the mic check. Tell people what you do on a mic check. Does the internet know about this?

A Yeah, so when I'm doing a mic check, I will either sing or I'll recite lyrics from a song. So earlier today, you know, we were doing a mic check. I was like, somewhere over the rainbow, way up high, there's a land that I heard of once in a lullaby. Um, or before I'm filming a video, I'll either play some like energizing music in the background, or I'll grab the guitar, which is often next to my filming setup. And I'll just, I don't know, sing Budapest by George Ezra or something like that. And my team will just be looking at me being like, yep, there he goes again. But it's a good sign because it means I'm about to film a video and priming myself into that state of energy. You know, people like Tony Robbins do this before they go on stage. They like have a little trampoline, they jump around a bit. And And for people who are, you know, a bit cynical, like mostly I speak to Brits and they're all very cynical. It's like, what is this? But actually, you know, the state that you're in has an enormous impact on how you show up in your work and how you show up for the people around you.

AI assessment note: “when I'm doing a mic check, I will either sing or I'll recite lyrics”

Q Could we rapid fire, like, what are all the ways that people are not using AI right now that they absolutely should?

A I'll give you one way that if you just focus there, you'll get 80% of the value. What is the biggest problem that you are facing right now? That if you could just solve it, it would unlock a huge amount of value for you. This can be personal or professional. And then instead of going to AI and asking it questions like it's Google, go to AI and engage it as a strategic thought partner To interview you about how you're currently thinking about solving that problem, and then show you the non-obvious approaches you could implement that would lead to faster results. And a very simple framework for that is correct. Give it lots of context. Assign it a role where you tell it the kind of expert you want it to be, but then make it interview you by asking one question at a time between three and five questions to gain deeper context so it can then accomplish a task, which is whatever you want it to do.

AI assessment note: “I'll give you one way that if you just focus there, you'll get 80%”

Q Interesting. I really need to try this. So is it, how do you enact this sort of calmness and fights in your life? Is it discipline or spirituality or something else?

A I think it's a mixture of both. I mean, you really narrowed it down. I think that the spirituality, I think of it as mental training, and then the discipline to not get lost in the heat of the moment. And when we have arguments, like, they totally happen, but now, instead of trying to win, because that, that was the game before, was like, how can I win the argument? And let's say you're married to, like, a lawyer, like, they're always going to win. They're going to put together a better argument in their mind really quickly. Instead, what we try to do is We're arguing because I can't see you clearly. There's something that I'm missing. So instead of trying to win, my objective is, can I hear your part of your story, your version of what happened to try to really understand where you're coming from? And simultaneously, she's giving that space to me as well so that we can take turns trying to hear and see, okay, what am I missing?

AI assessment note: “I think it's a mixture of both. I mean, you really narrowed it down.”

Q It's a beautiful statement, actually. Um, so do you have, like, enlightened states when you meditate for that long?

A I have states of clarity. Like state, like the word enlightenment is so loaded, you know, it's like who, like, and whenever someone's like, oh, I'm enlightened, like, I usually look the other way. Um, I think you see a person by their actions and how kind and respectful they are to themselves and others. Um, but yeah, there are definitely moments of clarity where, you know, the retreat retreats will start with, like, the objective of You know, trying to maintain your awareness of your breath for a minute, but then when you go to these longer, six-day retreats, like, you, you could be aware of your breath for, like, 30 minutes perfectly, an hour perfectly, 2:03 hours perfectly, where, and you become so immersed in that, that, that object, you absorb, you get absorbed into that object, and there is, there are such profound states of clarity and bliss. But then you use all of that, you know, that really strong nurtured mind to then turn it back into the body and let you, you know, you're basically examining, like, what is the truth? Like, what is the ultimate truth? And the truth that you're looking at and feeling directly is everything is impermanent. Everything that arises will ultimately pass away. There is a dissatisfaction to life, especially if you attach yourself to everything. And at the ultimate level, what Is Diego. Diego is a set of mental and physical phenomena that ar…

AI assessment note: “I have states of clarity. Like state, like the word enlightenment is so loaded”

Q What do you do? How do you reengage a failing marriage?

A I don't, I don't think it's actually that hard. I think you do the same things you do to screw it up. It's just, you just move it in the other direction. Like it, it, you know, the spiral of like apathy and disdain for each other is the exact same recipe as the spiral in the other direction of like reconnecting to each other. And that is, it's these little tiny things that you slightly reframe. You know, it, it, it's giving the other person just this little bit of grace. Like I genuinely think that, that, that the easiest thing we can do is just Start treating our partner with love and attention and connection. And I think it's a, it's a hundred percent return on your investment because either. You're going to reverse the spiral. So you're going to give your partner more grace, more attention, more praise, more love, more affection than maybe you owe them if we owe each other anything. And either that's going to inspire them to start doing the same and feeling good about you, this chicken or the egg thing, or you're going to have done this for a while and you're not going to get any return on an investment. And isn't it better to know? Isn't it better to know, like, wow, maybe this thing is really broken between us, and happily ever after might mean happily ever after separately. Like, I'm a believer in people splitting up when that's the right move for them. But I genuinely th…

AI assessment note: “Start treating our partner with love and attention and connection.”

Q not going to be able to handle it on September 18th with a free live event. Every attendee is going to get something that I wish I got 10 years ago. It would have made me way more money. So scan the link in the QR or click the description. Let's get back to my conversation with James Sexton. What percentage of divorces have, ah, you know, affairs or non-monogamy?

A I mean, a massive number. A massive, I would, I would be speculating, because it's hard to measure those things. I would say close to 70 to 80%. Where there's some, where infidelity played some part, in some degree. Like, how many is I've fallen in love with another person and I'm leaving you? That's a smaller percentage, although still shockingly high. Um, but there's a lot of like, yeah, he cheated and I took him back, or she cheated and I took her back, and then, you know, she still betrayed me in this way or that way. There's a lot of, yeah, they were flirting with this person, or like a lot of times, and again, I, I tend to think that I look at the infidelity, the financial impropriety, the dishonesty, all as the, the symptoms of the underlying illness, and the illness is the disconnection.

AI assessment note: “I would say close to 70 to 80%. Where there's some, where infidelity played”

Q billion dollars a dollar a day, you're not gonna love that deal, right? As much as a hundred million dollars in a week. So, Uh, when you do a deal, you've done, you know, you invested in 90 companies. I'm sure you've, you've done hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of deals across your lifetime. What is like your number one philosophy or secret or tool to doing a great deal?

A For me, the way I think about it is if it's going to be a great deal for me, it's got to be a good to great deal for the other person. Very rarely do you get to a place where it's great for one side and poor for the other, and everyone's happy, right? And so for me, I come at it, I'm like, what do I think I need to do this deal? And will I do the deal under these terms? And what I always do is I kind of make a note. I'm a kind of a pencil and paper guy. What won't I do the deal at? And because what happens is emotion gets you very engaged. You, you know, the heat of the moment, the bidding stuff like that, that becomes a problem. Right. And so for me, I try to think about what am I willing to pay? And to your point, the terms, well, what's more important price or terms duration, if it's a real estate deal, like you, you name it. And then more importantly, who's the counterparty? Can I trust them to deliver the deal that they might say they're going to do? So to me, all of those things come into play. Your mentor is right.

AI assessment note: “if it's going to be a great deal for me, it's got to be a good to great deal”

Q Like, I guess, let's say there's somebody listening right now, and this somebody could be me on many days, but, you know, when you don't want to do something, like, you have that deep in your veins, please, like, I would rather do anything else in the world except the thing I know I need to do. What would you tell them, or what do you tell yourself?

A Well, I think it's helpful to break it into pieces, right? Is it common for you to Not want to do the thing you have to do. Because if that's the case, then it's not the thing. It's the have to part that you're, right? That people go on vacation and do things that they just paid a lot of money to do that are supposed to be fun, but if that was their job, they would hate it. So that's part of what's going on here. And we can talk about what are the trades we make to solve problems? What are the trades we make to create the thing we want to build? Or it could be that you're engaging with something toxic, and there's something in your system that's saying, don't do that. And I had a young friend who took karate lessons, and after three weeks, he said, they yell at me and they hit me. Now, some people think that's fine. He did not. Don't take karate lessons, right? If it's making you sick to negotiate to win in certain settings, small claims court or whatever it is, then don't, because you only get tomorrow once. You don't get, get a chance to do it over again. We have more freedom than we want to admit. So how are you going to spend the resources you've got, and what are you going to get in return?

AI assessment note: “I think it's helpful to break it into pieces, right?”

Q Right? It's no, I listened to you. We had a conversation, even though it was mostly in my head, and I took your feedback. I implemented it. I got better. So by the end of the thousand, it wasn't they all suck. It was I got better. Is that right?

A Yeah, and it doesn't have to be interacting with the same person over and over again. You learn so much from all the people who walked by your store and didn't come in that you changed the window, and as soon as you changed the window, someone came in and said, oh, I should do that more. So we get what we measure, and the feedback loops are super important because if you're measuring the wrong thing, so if you go to the gym and you see someone on one of the Stairmasters and they put their hands on the side rails to lift their weight up, Why did they do that? It hurts your back, it doesn't give you a good workout, because it makes the little number on the Stairmaster go up. That's the only reason. Is that why you went to the gym? To make the number on the Stairmaster go up? Because if so, you succeeded. When we measure things that don't matter, if we're busy counting calories but not losing weight, did we count calories because we like counting calories? Or did we just learn something about our metabolism and maybe we're counting the wrong thing? So if you want to get funded and people who care enough to listen to you are saying no, can you imagine why they might be right? The answer, they're an idiot, is not acceptable. Why might they be right to reject me? Because everyone who makes a decision is correct based on who they are, what they believe, what they want, and what they h…

AI assessment note: “Yeah, and it doesn't have to be interacting with the same person”

Q know, younger people getting married less, having sex less, some of that's good perhaps, but also it's just like tamping down our risk spectrum. So I wonder, Like, for somebody who's sitting there and worried about taking on more risk and putting themselves out there, what do you say to them or what do you repeat to yourself when you're like, this feels risky, I'm going to do it anyways?

A The way you learned how to walk, and the way you learned how to talk, and almost everything that's important is you did it a little, you discovered what happened, and then you did it some more, and you got good at it. Please don't quit your day job. Don't quit your day job. Go try to mortgage your house, risk your life savings. Don't do that, right? But maybe on Saturday, go to a garage sale, buy 18 dollars worth of stuff, and see if you can sell it on eBay. Is that risky? I don't think it's risky. I think it's generous, because there's somebody in Toledo who wants that thing you found, and they're eager to pay for it, and you're gonna charge them less than it's worth, and there was someone in the garage who wanted to sell it to you, and they're eager to sell it, and you paid what they thought was, and you came out ahead by creating value for people. So when people talk to me about risk, I asked them things like this, like, when was the last time you did something generous that might not work, where if it didn't work, only three people would know? And that's how I grew up. That's how I spent the formative years when my business was struggling. I was constantly doing things where if they might, if they didn't work, almost no one would notice. And you may have heard me tell the story about my mom, but I'll tell it again. My mom was one of the pioneers of museum stores. She co-fou…

AI assessment note: “when people talk to me about risk, I asked them things like this”

Q It's so good. What advice do you have for somebody today who wants to be successful and win?

A So if you want to be the first millionaire in your family, you have to do these three things. Number one is start saving money consistently, and it doesn't have to be a lot. You don't have to listen to these online gurus who say you have to start with 10,000 dollars or 25,000 dollars or a 100,000 dollars. I'm talking about a hundred dollars out of your paycheck. 50 bucks, 20 bucks, whatever it is, just save up consistently, and you'll be shocked as to how that money starts to compound over time. The second thing is, instead of asking whenever you receive a little bit of money, what can I buy Ask yourself, what can I invest in? And the third thing I will say is the most important, and that's to cut out three time wasters in your life. And we all know what those are, because your girlfriend has probably told you, your spouse, or your mother, or that little internal voice inside of your head, replace those with learning two new skills. And you'll be shocked six months from now as to how those new skills you've developed have turned into new income streams. So now that you have those three steps, if you follow them, you'll be amazed as to where your life can be a year from now.

AI assessment note: “if you want to be the first millionaire in your family, you have to do these three things.”

Q And then what about a hundred million dollars plus? Like, what are those entrepreneurs like that's different from somebody who can get to twenty million or a million?

A At a hundred million, you're providing something that is fundamentally disruptive to an industry, or you have some element of scale. Interestingly, I actually worked less hours when we got bigger than I did when we were smaller. And that was, that was a real key to me. Like when, when I sold my business at the end, the last one, we were just about four hundred million in revenue. I used to go on vacation all the time. Like, I used to go away all the time, and we were fine. You know, the world didn't end when I wasn't there. When we were a million dollars, if I didn't call the office two, three times a day, if I was on vacation , oh my gosh, it would, it would be disaster.

AI assessment note: “At a hundred million, you're providing something that is fundamentally disruptive to an industry”

Q Do you think that you can be a really good leader and a people pleaser?

A Yes. Yes. To a point. I think inevitably to be a great leader, you asked me good. Inevitably to be a great leader, you have to be great with people up to a point, and then you have to have that level where you don't care. I don't care if you agree with me. I don't care if you like me. I don't care what you think about me, but I need you to follow me. If you're willing to follow me, I respect you. But if you're not at a hundred percent, I need you to leave. Like, I think you have to have that edge. That was my problem. I was too nice a guy. I didn't have that edge. That's why guys like Mark, I had like, oh, but you have to have that edge in business in order to be great.

AI assessment note: “Yes. Yes. To a point. I think inevitably to be a great leader”

Q How much of Gen Z's financial situation are because of the big things, house and salary increase, et cetera, as opposed to their daily decisions?

A In my own personal experience in the four years of doing three to four episodes a week, um, It rarely comes down to their actual price of housing, even though that is the largest percentage of single item we typically have in a budget, people have made mistakes and they've gotten rent more than they needed an extra bedroom that they didn't need. And then we proved to them by pulling up on Zillow that no one, their city, there's like 1500 places and non bad crime areas that they could afford the, to go in with two, 300 dollars cheaper. So, but I mean, it's not that that's insignificant, but it is more the personal choices. The death of a thousand cuts is really something you never see because you're stopping at the drive through. It doesn't seem like anything, but most people, it kind of blows their mind when they come on the show and they see it for the very first time, how much money is actually going to bullshit. A thousand dollars going out to eat a month is not uncommon on our show. And a thousand hours a month, 12,000 dollars a year is an insane amount of money. Compounding at eight to 10% a year in the S&P 500 over the course of decades is crazy money. It's a great down payment on a house. It's crazy money. So it is a, it is those personal choices. It doesn't mean housing's great and where you are, it's going to be worse. San Francisco, LA, New York, it's going to hurt. I…

AI assessment note: “It rarely comes down to their actual price of housing... it is more the personal choices”

Q you want to make more money and have a better life, and you think that it's in your purview to actually do it. And so, um, those are my people, and I think they find you too. You know, like, you've said a lot about cars. You've talked a lot about how cars could be good or bad financial decisions. Like, is buying a car a bad financial decision, typically?

A No. Cause oftentimes in our car infrastructure world, you have to, unless you live in a few blessed places in the United States, you need a car to get a job, to get a car. It's the amount of car, the kind of car, the year, the car, where you are financially, when you're getting your car, those are the big things that matter. Americans think they need their mega Ford F one 50 with a thousand dollars a month at 12% interest to go pick up groceries once a week. That doesn't make sense. Americans are stupid with the cars we get. You can get a five, six, seven year old car that is used, that you get checked out by a mechanic, that's the clear part, you know, a couple different independent mechanics outside of the dealership, outside of the lot, you get a little seal of approval, maybe not the perfect deal, but a good car that's going to be safe, reliable, and lasts a while without a lot of maintenance, and there's, I mean, there's used electric cars, I mean, not everyone can do it, because not everyone has access to the charging, but it's incredible what you can get for that 10 to 25 dollar range instead of the 50,060 thousand hour cars that Americans feel like they have to get, or else their family's gonna die if they get in a car crash. Yeah. So Americans are just really silly with our car purchase. We'll justify anything to get the nice new car. It's cause it's a toy. It's fun. I…

AI assessment note: “No. Cause oftentimes in our car infrastructure world, you have to”

Q said, you know, I know the manipulation and tactics that go into pricing these luxury things, but then once you bought them, you felt differently. And so I guess my question for you there is, What is the manipulation that you see go into really expensive items so that we can decide if we still want to buy them or not? It's not right or wrong. It's just, should we?

A Yeah, Seth Godin wrote a great book on this, and it says all marketers are liars, and we the consumer are complicit in the lie. We want to be lied to because the human mind loves the story, right? So if I showed you this amazing painting and told you someone in your family acquired it, and they passed away, and they've bequeathed it to you in their will, and it's a Jackson Pollock. They bought it when they're, you know, whatever, at a flea market somewhere in the Netherlands one day, And you're like, oh my god, I have a Jackson Pollock. How much is that painting worth? Tens of millions of dollars. And then they're like, oh, my bad. That was just a painter's tarp to spill over paint. You're like, how much is that worth? And you're like, not a lot. Actually, it's kind of taken space. I need to throw it away. No, I was just kidding. It's a Jackson pot. Oh, ok, it's worth. So just understanding the story behind something changes your perceived value so much. And if I were to do this in a workshop context, you'll see the pendulum swing from trash to like cash and back and forth. It's just about the story. So if we want to build a really great brand, whether you're buying into a brand, or you are creating the brand, you need to make sure you learn how to tell that story. A story that's compelling, because the better the story, the better the brand. So that's one thing. Number two is …

AI assessment note: “understanding the story behind something changes your perceived value so much. And if I were to do this”

Q I'm not a yapper. All the things, right? But it's really hard to, uh, sell a Zale diamond at a Tiffany's price with the Zale brand. And so I think brand in general is something that feels fuzzy, but is so important. So I guess, can you lay out in your mind what is important about brand, personal or otherwise, and why should everyone be really conscious of their brand?

A A lot of people would say, like, all the action and the activity and the heat is in marketing because it could be measured. There's an ROI. You put money in, you put money, you can take money out. When it doesn't work, it's very clear. Is a brand just about impressions and feeling? And is it about a vibe? And it can be much more scientific than that. Here's how, here's what we know. When you buy a t-shirt and there's no brand attached to it, like literally it's in a plastic bag with three shirts, what are you gonna pay? You're going to pay the utility price of the three t-shirts. In theory, the cotton, the construction and the packaging, the shipping to a place, I'm not a dime more. So basically you've covered the cost of producing this thing. Now you, you take that t-shirt and you give it to three different companies with three very different brands. We'll define what that is in a second. Then that price skyrockets from 10 dollars for three shirts to like 3300, or even a hundred dollars. Why is that? It can literally be the exact same shirt. I want to point out to like Maslow's hierarchies, hierarchy of needs, because at the bottom is just like food, shelter, that kind of stuff. Like, am I going to be alive? Next is about, can I have some abundance? Can, can I buy some things? And then do I have meaningful connections, relationships, and family? And then above that is somethin…

AI assessment note: “above that is something called status. And above that, I would consider identity”

Q have a You, you've said before, you don't have a marketing problem, you have a positioning problem, which is sort of exactly what you just talked about there. You're not, it's the same idea, it's just poorly packaged. So what do you mean when you say you don't have a marketing problem, you have a positioning problem? And do most people who sell something actually have that as their problem?

A I have no way to verify this, but I suspect it to be that. Everybody wants more customers. To get more customers, you need more leads. And they think, if I wave a magic wand, I'll just get more leads, and I'll be able to do this. Actually, there's lots and lots of problems. You probably don't have a great offer. You probably don't know who your ideal client profile is. And back to this whole thing. Alright. We seem to be more interested in things that were made specifically for a certain type of person. We understand this. Like, those jeans that you bought don't appeal to me. I'm not gonna wear them. And it might not appeal to a lot of other people for a lot of different reasons. It's too woke, it's too hippie, I don't care if it's American or not, it's too expensive, so they're not into that. But the clearer they get on the person that they're serving, And what they stand for, the more likely it is they're going to find customers. It's counterintuitive. So when we talk to creative people, they're like, well, I work with entrepreneurs. Duh. Who else would you be? I work with people. Okay. That's, that's really clear and specific. So they're afraid that if they were to become more specific with who they serve, then they're going to lose out on the market. It's, it's a weird mindset. So they look at the total addressable market, say it's this table, eight and a half billion peopl…

AI assessment note: “the clearer they get on the person that they're serving, And what they stand for”

Q So what would you say to somebody that was young, Stuck in their job. Doesn't think that they could make it. What would you tell that person?

A One of the things to keep in mind is there are a 168 hours in a week. Your employer wants 40 hours. There's still another 128 hours left. And so even when you take out time for eating and sleeping and showering and everything else, you have at least another 40, 50 hours that you could do something else. And so I think it's very important to live close to where you work so you don't spend a lot of time commuting, and you effectively have enough time for a second venture or second job, and because someone else is already paying your rent and groceries and everything, you don't need the second venture to feed you, and we are now in a knowledge economy. So a lot of things that people will want to do does not need capital. It just needs what's between your ears. It just needs you to be creative, to think about what could be, should be, can be, etc. So, you come up with an idea. You have the time. 40, 50 hours. You keep your job. You do not quit your job. You try your idea. Let's say it doesn't work. No problem. You go back to square one. Think of another idea.

AI assessment note: “You keep your job. You do not quit your job. You try your idea.”

Q But was that only after that replaced your salary?

A Yes. After nine months of banging at doors and doing things, I had three clients, and those three clients were giving me enough cash flow that it exceeded my salary. And that's when I quit. So effectively, it was risk-free because I never went to a situation where I was without cash flow, without a paycheck or any of that. And then very quickly after that, It doubled the salary. I was making two or three times what I was making and it just kept going and I, the business was growing so fast that I kept reinvesting and, and all of that. Uh, so that company, I emptied out my . I was 25. I had about 30,000 in my. I took that to zero because I said, if it, if it fails, I can go back and start over. Not a problem. And I took every credit card I could get. So I had 70,000 in unused credit card credit limits available. And as the company started growing, I used every single one of those. In fact, they were all maxed. Because the company was growing so fast that by the time I got paid from clients, you know, I had to cover that. And then about two years after I started, I met a banker who converted all of that into a line of credit, paid off all my credit cards, and I said, hallelujah.

AI assessment note: “Yes. After nine months... those three clients were giving me enough cash flow”

Q What is your mental model that you like the best for deciding the next bet you're gonna take? If you only get 10, you must have very clear models for determining when you want to add on a risk.

A Yeah. So what we are looking for is total no brainers. So let's say I own a home in Austin. Okay. And let's say I bought the home for two million dollars. Okay. And I go to my realtor after one month of buying the home and say, Hey, uh, what's my home worth? They said, Oh Vonish, it's still worth two million. Okay. And let's say I go back After another month. And the guy would say, yeah, still worth two million. And then maybe after a few months he'd say, oh, you know, it's 2,050,000. Ok, so if you just kept writing down what that house is worth and what a buyer would pay for it, you're going to see very little change over time. If I look at all the stocks in the New York Stock Exchange and I throw a dart at any one of them, let's say IBM or Amazon or whatever, and I just look at the 52 week range on their prices, it will be 100 to 200. Or 80 to one 50. It's a wide range. Your house is not going to go from one and a half million to two and a half million or one to two million. It doesn't do that. So auction driven markets accentuate price movements much more than you would if you were not auction driven. And because they accentuate price movements, sometimes you get extreme mispricing in both directions. You get extreme overvaluation and you get some extreme undervaluation. So what I'm looking for is anomalies. I'm looking for weird things that make no sense. And because we hav…

AI assessment note: “So what I'm looking for is anomalies. I'm looking for weird things”

Q Yeah. How can you tell if someone is going to be your advocate or is actually going to be your adversary in the workplace?

A Yeah, well, one way, of course, is relationship. If, if you can be friends on any sort of topic, commonality, common place you went to school, common sports team you like, kids, whatever, it's more likely they're going to advocate because we take care of our friends. The second thing, though, is people help those who help them. And I think I made a lot of my career effectively by deal making, by finding people that I could align with what they wanted and help them get what they want, and then I would sometimes talk to them privately and be like, hey, I will help you get this, but like, I'm looking for a little help here, and most people are very willing to, hey, you help me, I'll help you, uh, because there's no harm in it, uh, and so If you can't do that though, and someone wants something completely opposite of what you want, then there can be a problem. The other thing could shoot down is style. If there was a case, you know, where like I'm very outspoken and driven and you run into somebody who's very consensus based and wants to be cautious, that can lead to friction right away. Because I think a lot like you, I'm like, let's go, let's make a decision. And they're like, let's study it. Now, of course, I'm, I'm like giving a little lilty voice, which probably isn't fair, but that's how it felt to me, and of course, they're like, this guy's crazy. So, that can lead to confli…

AI assessment note: “one way, of course, is relationship. If, if you can be friends”

Q Yeah. What are the, the career killers that you can do that people will remember forever in their jobs?

A Betrayal is the number one. Any sort of, and to some degree that's the letting me down where you promise something, like I'm counting on something and then it doesn't show up and it makes me look bad. Anything that hits people's ego or identity is actually more than raw performance. If you lose me money, I'm upset, but if you make me look bad, I'm furious, even if I can't admit it, right? So, uh, if you leave me hung out to dry where I feel foolish or I feel incompetent. That's gonna be the number one thing. The second thing is anything that leads me to distrust you more generally. I see you, you know, cheating on an expense report or behaving inappropriately. Again, anything that makes me question you as a human being is probably deeper than things that make me question your performance. Cause performance, maybe you can get better. Maybe I can train you. Uh, maybe you can learn. Whereas if I start to distrust you, there's really no path back from that, right? It's a little bit like how many marriages recover when a partner cheats, right? It's just usually kind of over. Yeah. Same thing.

AI assessment note: “Betrayal is the number one.”

Q also what they think, uh, And neither of those things may be total truth. And I could only imagine at a company as big as the ones that you've been at, how real that is. Like, as a leader, how do you find the truth in your business units? And how do you figure out where the series of, like, compounding lies is, if you even agree with this sentiment?

A I completely agree with compounding lies. It's, you said earlier, you could talk yourself into anything. Well, this is a company doing it at a larger scale, talking themselves into, believing their own PR, Talking themselves into, oh, this is a great idea. It's Manifest Destiny. Um, I think the way Jeff partly got at this was driving hard on the numbers. So, okay, well, if it's Manifest Destiny, you know, show me the numbers. Like, what are the trends, or not like, what's the market research, but then what are we seeing? He would wait a very long time for a business to go profitable if he could see the line. But if the line wasn't leading there, he would be very hard on like, Hey, you know, this line never gets there. Like it never comes into the, you know, what's, what's the plan. He would drill really hard on the numbers. The second way though, I think you figure this out is you go talk to people on the front line. You go talk to the individual engineers or the individual people delivering the services, because all the managers in between are kind of reporting up things that make them look good. They're not trying to lie. Just no one wants to be the bearer of bad news. It's unpleasant if you go all the way down. So I always maintain some contacts with people, many levels below me. When I had a big team, I would still talk to people who were five, six levels in this giant orga…

AI assessment note: “driving hard on the numbers... you go talk to people on the front line”

Q Yeah, people need to hear that more. My last two questions. One is, um, you run a fully remote company now. What is the key to managing people and to being a leader to remote workers?

A Yeah. I mean, trust is huge, right? Like, you know, the ability to give people that much freedom is that you really have to trust in the talent acquisition part of the job, bringing the right people, the right people with the right morality, the right ambition, the right, uh, intensity in that environment. Like you, you need that, right? They have to be really locked in, but also this is the not fun part and the part that probably people Hate for me as a CEO is like, you got to be even more aggressive about your goals. You have to be more on top of people's performance, like performance management, setting aggressive goals, making sure that people are actually locked in, like is really, really important because I've learned personally that if you don't give people enough work and if you don't set high enough goals, people are going to naturally slack off. Like if you set the goal here where you can set it here, People aren't gonna go beyond that. They're gonna, they're gonna meet you there. So I try to set ambitious goals to make sure that people are locked in. And then also, communication is key, from Slack to Zooms to Google Meets to having people meet in person. Like, that is an integral piece of it. Like, you still have to have in-person moments every year that people can really feel that camaraderie.

AI assessment note: “trust is huge, right? Like, you know, the ability to give people that much freedom”

Q What do you think makes a good leader versus a bad leader?

A Well, I'm gonna cheat and say it depends. Um, it really depends on the nature of the leadership challenge. So, uh, I did this, uh, episode of my podcast with, um, the, with the former Chief of Staff of the Air Force, and the former Secretary of the Air Force, and they were talking about a mistake they made when they were working together in the Air Force, and they had written a book about leadership, which is where I read the story, and their notion of what effective leadership was, was servant leadership, that They had to put the institution first and themselves second. But there's a reason they say that, and that is that they were leaders in the Air Force, which is an institution with a 80 year history, ah, with an extraordinary amount of talent, Working for them. A very, very large organization doing a million different things where there's no way the, the chief executive can be expert in all the things the Air Force is doing, or even know what all the things the Air Force is doing. You know, I could go on, a very, very strong culture that they inherited, they did not create. Right? So all those circumstances mean you don't want Some fiery, charismatic, you know, authoritarian leader. You actually, the organization and the culture is so strong, what you want is someone who knows how to run the team. Yeah. Right? And who puts their institution first and their own ego and self…

AI assessment note: “it really depends on the nature of the leadership challenge.”

Q Yeah. Now let's talk about your background. It's not like you grew up with a ton of cash, building in Silicon Valley, doing all of this. Like, what was the come up story? For people who maybe look at you now and go, well, must be nice.

A Well, it's a, it's a grind, but I'll tell you, I was fortunate enough to watch the grind firsthand. And so, I don't know if you know, my parents were both immigrants. My dad grew up in India in a poor village, like outside the suburbs of Delhi. My mom grew up in Israel, moving around. Her father was in the United Nations, so moving around constantly. And they came to this country with nothing. Um, And at the time, what was so, I think, magical was anybody could come to the United States with a dream, and it was truly one of these places where you could come, barely even speaking English, and have an opportunity to build one of the most amazing futures for your family. And I got to watch firsthand, you know, when my parents had me, He had just got, my dad had just gotten his first kind of break and was, you know, a junior level role. He got moved to Seattle, uh, to join a company called Microsoft. And this is still in the early days. And I got to watch them not just build that, but then when I was six, My, just my parents decided they wanted to pursue their own entrepreneurial dream, and they quit their jobs, took our life savings. My mom and dad together started a technology.com company, and every day after school, my brother, sister, and I would get dropped off from school to the office, and we would just watch them build, and what became a really successful, um, .com business…

AI assessment note: “my parents were both immigrants. My dad grew up in India in a poor village”

Q Do you think that you just get anesthetized to it after a while? Like, does it just become sort of easier because you build up a muscle eventually to the difficulty?

A No, but I also think you can't get numb to this stuff. Like, some people, every day, I mean, you know, you just have, you gotta have the pinch me moments, you know. As things get bigger and crazier, You just, sometimes you look around, you're like, how was my day meeting with this person and doing that thing and seeing this thing? And it's pretty surreal. I think the minute you become numb to all this stuff, Kind of fucked. Um, because part of what makes this thing worth doing is that excitement you get every time you get a cool new opportunity, and I feel like every day at BuiltNow, the scale and things that we get to do are like, on a daily basis, things I would have dreamed of doing once, 1015 years ago.

AI assessment note: “No, but I also think you can't get numb to this stuff.”

Q seems like one of your superpowers and your team's superpowers is, um, you bring a lot of people on board. Lots of partnerships and deals and connections, which is not always what tech companies are known for. Um, how do you think about setting up partnerships and pitching people to come into your ecosystem? Like for somebody who hasn't done it before, do you have rules or frameworks for that?

A It's so funny. This is the part that I enjoy most about Builds, bringing all these worlds together from real estate to culture to, you know, this month we worked with airlines to do, you know, transfer bonus on rewards. We worked with Disney and Anne Hathaway to launch Devil Wears Prada too, and we're also launching a new mortgage platform to help mortgage brokers. So the breadth of what we get to do is part of the fun of what we build every day, but I also think it's where the value creation lies. And so I'd say there's two different things that I think a lot of folks miss when they're doing partnerships, and the first is they go into these meetings to go pitch their product. The reality is no one cares about your product. They care about their problems, and it sounds so obvious, but the first thing is understanding what each stakeholder in your ecosystem cares about for their business, right? And if you can just walk into a room and start with understanding what they care about, And solve their problem. You're already at night and day compared to the 50 companies that come in. I see it now on this side, the number of people who come in and start their meetings by pitching me on what they do without any concept of what matters to us. It's a tough space to start, right? But then the real fun, I think, is that, you know, if you're reaching the biggest company in entertainment, T…

AI assessment note: “the first is they go into these meetings to go pitch their product”

Q What would Naval say about how to become luckier? Like, how could you become luckier?

A I think the, the path towards luck is, you know, you can follow those things up. You can, Sort of go from one level to another. You can do luck through persistence and effort that then becomes a little bit more of luck through, or I have a feel for the, the dynamics. Um, and if you really, if you gain enough information through the persistence and reputation through the persistent luck, you'll have better information on where the luck might be heading and you can sort of meet it there and position yourself for it. And if you do that enough times over time, like You become the only person who can do it. So if we use the real estate example that uses for leverage and just like take that as like, you know, if you're a, if you're starting off as a general contractor or handyman, like you don't just wait around for jobs, you go knock on doors. If you knock on doors and do a great job, you'll start working more and more and get higher and higher quality referrals. If you are doing a bunch of work in one particular neighborhood, you start to learn like maybe that neighborhood is up and coming and a new development is going to move in. And then you can, You can buy land ahead of the development, or you can invest in the person who's coming in to, like, renovate this neighborhood, and if you do that a few times, then you become, you know, the person who builds the developments in the ci…

AI assessment note: “You can do luck through persistence and effort that then becomes a little bit more”