Passion & Pain

All these books, there is the decision you can make to compromise on the quality of your product or take a shortcut or do something you would never dare do it. I just read the biography of the guy that started In-N-Out. Compared to his contemporaries, the McDonald's and Carl's Junior and all this explosion of fast food that was happening at that ti... See more

That's another thing too, where I'm only interested in people that do things for a long period of time. There is a subset of people that can start a great business or be a great investor for two years, five years, 10 years. I'm interested in people that, you started the conversation saying about Edwin Land and Estee Lauder. Okay. Two obsessives. Th... See more

The best description of a business I ever heard came from Richard Branson. He's like, "All businesses, it's an idea or service that make somebody else's life better. If you make other people's life better, you'll capture that value in return." So I don't find many of these people are moderate.

There's a cult. Anybody knows this. Go fly to LA and try to go to In-N-Out. Good luck. I was just in LA two months ago. Tried to go to In-N-Out twice because I read the book. I'm not waiting in that line. There's a cult around In-N-Out because the expression of the founder's soul is manifest in the product. People have In-N-Out tattoos. How many pe... See more

So to answer your question, there's a quote I have on my phone. I've had this quote since 2017. I'm not a fan of moderation. I'm attracted to extremes. What do you want your life experience to be? Do you want to be exceptional? Do you want to push the boundaries of your capabilities? Do you want to walk around in a fog butting up against your poten... See more

There's a great quote that Nick Saban said. He said that average players want to be left alone. Good players want to be coached, and great players want to be told the truth. Michael had a giant ego and a giant drive, but he would run up to the coach and tell me what I need to get better at.

The only person out of every single person that I've studied on the podcast that I consider my blueprint for, I want that, I want their life in totality is Ed Thorp. Because, history's greatest entrepreneurs, how'd they get there, they're going to over optimize their work to the detriment of everything, their health. In many cases, they die earlier... See more

Edwin said that there's no such thing as group originality or group creativity. He goes, "I do believe wholeheartedly in the individual capacity for greatness." And he says, "Originality are attributes of a single mind, not a group."

The reason I'm so obsessed with just studying people that got to the top of their profession is because one third of your life is going to be spent working. Half of your conscious life, half of the time you're not asleep, is going to be spent working. For a certain personality type, to not Excel at that, not to be really good at that means that lif... See more