The Daily Stoic - Ramit Sethi on How to Live the Rich Life

Episode Date: December 12, 2020

On today’s podcast, Ryan talks to his longtime friend, author and financial expert Ramit Sethi. From backbreaking summer jobs in Sacramento to financial success and acclaim, Ryan and Ramit have walked a similar path—hear them talk about what they’ve learned from those shared experiences.Ramit Sethi is a bestselling author and expert on how to use money to live the richest life. His first book, I Will Teach You to Be Rich, along with his courses and advice, has taught thousands of people how to avoid pitfalls with their money, get better jobs, and achieve financial independence.This episode is brought to you by Amazon Music. one of the things that makes this time of year truly wonderful is the music—and my family’s getting its holiday music fix thanks to Amazon Music. Whether it’s the Charlie Brown Christmas album or Mariah Carey, Amazon Music has something for any holiday occasion. You’ll get access to more than 70 million songs other songs too, on-demand and ad-free. And not only do you get access to all that music, you also get access to MILLIONS of podcast episodes at no charge, plus thousands of music stations and top playlists. For a limited time, new subscribers can get three months of Amazon Music Unlimited, absolutely free, by visiting Amazon.com/Ryan. Starts at $7.99/month after. New subscribers only. Terms apply. Offer expires 1/11/2021.This episode is also brought to you by Theragun. The new Gen 4 Theragun is perfect for easing muscle aches and tightness, helping you recover from physical exertion, long periods of sitting down, and more—and its new motor makes it as quiet as an electric toothbrush. Try the Theragun risk-free for 30 days, starting at just $199.This episode is also brought to you by ExpressVPN, the #1 worldwide VPN. ExpressVPN has super-fast connection speeds and keeps your data safe. No more advertisers selling your info for a quick buck, no more downloads at a snail’s pace. Sign up now at ExpressVPN.com/STOIC and get an extra three months on your one-year package, absolutely free.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicFollow Ramit Sethi:Homepage: https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/Twitter: https://twitter.com/ramitInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/ramit/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IWT/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/ramitsethiSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoic, something that can help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, wisdom, and temperance. And here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers, we reflect, we prepare. We think deeply about the challenging issues of our time. And we work through this philosophy

in a way that's more possible here when we're not rushing to work or to get the kids to school. When we have the time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with our journals and to prepare for what the future will bring. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wunderree's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target,

the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoke Podcast. My guest today is someone I go way, way, way back to, basically back to elementary school. We grew up in the same small town outside Sacramento, which I'll talk about.

He's gone on to be an incredible author, entrepreneur, finance guru. I'm talking about Remi Tsefee. I was closer to his brother, Minesh growing up, also himself, an entrepreneur. But Remi is a great guy. I've actually taken some of his courses. We used a zero to launch. We were working on Daily Stoic. My wife took his dream job course. I've read his book. I will teach you to be rich. Every time he comes to Austin, we get together and have breakfast. I have breakfast with him when we both used to live in New

York. Just an overall great guy, one of my favorite people to talk to. We text back and forth when we can. Just a smart guy, he always has like interesting, like Tim Ferriss. He always has an interesting way of seeing things, breaking things down. You might think, given the title of his site, I will teach you to be rich, his stuff about the rich life that there might be an epicurian streak in Rumi that's somewhat different than the Stoics. And you know what that may be true, but you know, Senaqa says, you want to read like a spy in the enemy camp.

And that's not to say Rameet is at all the enemy, but his unique way of living, thinking about life, thinking about success, thinking about careers, thinking about money has something to teach all of us. And I think there's a lot for everyone to learn in this episode. We go a little long, we had some technical difficulties in the middle, so it cuts out, then we had to start over. So if there's a little difference you notice, somehow I lost not just my Wi-Fi, but my cell service at the same time in a very inopportune moment. Remed was wonderfully patient and stuck with it.

And we were able to finish the interview. Great guy. I think you'll like this. Here's my interview with Remy. Check out his number one bestselling book. I will teach you to be rich. And of course, his many courses great to follow in Instagram as well.

Choi. I was thinking, as I prepped for this, that we did pretty good for a couple of kids from Orangeville and Faro's. It is amazing. I mean, I think back to the modest upbringing that we both had. And then I think how we learned about each other later in life, which was funny.

But yeah, I looked back on those times, I loved high school. Like I had a blast. I had great friends. And also it was kind of an idyllic way to grow up. Like it was nice for me. Like good friends, good family. We didn't, like we weren't jetting around, but like we were good. We're happy we had enough. We ate pizza once a month. Great. From mountain mics, where was your kitchen? Yeah, yeah. Well, Roundtable was a little too expensive, although I did eventually work there. I was a... My sister did as well. Yeah, that's right. She got me the job. So I was a pizza maker and then one day I was promoted to a oven guy. My starting wage was $4.25

an hour. Some weeks I would work like two or three hours because school came first. And you know, I'd worked there a long time and some days I would go in there on a Friday night. By the way, my mom had to drop me off because I couldn't drive myself yet. Some of the pizza guys would be like, who are you? And I was like, who are you? I've been working here for years. Right. And you get the check and that my checks was sometimes like $38 for the week.

But when you're a kid, that's a lot of money. Then that and being a soccer referee and all these weird things you do when you're a high school kid. And I don't know, I just, it was very innocent when I looked back on it. I remember I was like 15 and my parents were like, you gotta get a fucking job. And I was like, oh, okay.

And I had a job at a deli, I had a job at Wendy's. I remember I got a job hired as a cook at Wendy's. And I was promoted the first day when they realized that I spoke English to cash register. But only in retrospect, like many years later, I was like talking to my sister about all these crappy jobs I had. And she was like, oh yeah, Mom and Dad never made me get a job. And I was like, what? What? How did this happen? I was riding the bike to Wendy's every day in the Sacramento summer. And what were you doing? Yeah, amazing. But it's weird.

I think you were a little bit, you're a few years older than me because I went to school with your brother. But like Sacramento, you don't, first off that Sacramento is like the series of suburbs, people don't think. But like you're a child of immigrants, my mother, both my, on my mother side,

my grandmother and my grandfather are both immigrants from Europe. You don't really think of Sacramento as being like a melting pot like home for immigrants, but it was like a surprisingly diverse and like middle class like what America should be kind of think. Yeah, I mean, I, I don't know if everyone is like this, but there were just issues I didn't think about as a high schooler until I got to college. And then you start learning about diversity and you start learning, for example, I thought that if one kid in a family is a high achiever, then they all are because my siblings are all high achiever than they all are because my siblings are all high achievers.

And so I go to college and within the first week I'm meeting tons of people from all over the country, from states I've never been to. And we start talking about our families and this and that. And I start learning that, you know, there's someone who's a high achiever and then their sibling is not. And something may have happened or they just, they're just not. They just took a different path in life. And it really opened my eyes. Another thing I thought going to college was, I had this preconceived notion that if you went to private school, you were spoiled and probably a little lazy.

I get to college within 10 days, you can see people's study habits. And you find out that the correlation is basically zero. There are people who went to private schools who were harder than anybody else. There are also people who are lazy and had everything handed to them, same for public schools. And so within 10 days I'm discovering all these things that I just knew were true were actually not. And I think that is one of the beautiful benefits of higher education. You realize that all these things you took for granted,

you thought were facts were totally just stories that you told yourself or were fed. Well, there's a certain shelteredness. I felt like Phil Jackson famously said that Sacramento was a bit of a cow town. And it doesn't feel like it does, so you don't quite get this, like if you grew up in Ohio, you might go like, yeah, this is kind of,

you might understand that where you're from has that sort of stereotype, that Midwestern stereotype. And I didn't quite realize this, I remember you've joked out how your dream course is that from zero to habanero, how to have spicy foods, which I, please let me be the first customer for when you do it, because like, it wasn't until I went to call it, like, I realized, like, I probably didn't have guacamole until I was like 18 years old. Like not like I didn't know that it like I didn't need I don't even know if I knew it existed. Yeah, but yeah, sushi. Yeah, didn't have it. Yeah, so there was a there was an

interestingness to it that your point about sort of different at different levels of ambition and different families is is is interesting because I both you and your brother went to Stanford. And I wonder is that sort of the immigrant push from your family? Like my parents, they knew that they wanted me to go to college, but it was clear that there wasn't this sense of a certain college gets you to a certain,

like there wasn't, my parents had gone to Sac State, so their college is college. And one of the things I sort of learned is like, no, no, there's colleges, and then there's like universities or something, you know, like there's different levels. Yeah, I think with time I have gotten a different perspective than what I grew up with.

I think what you just said about, from the outside, there's colleges. It's very similar to anyone, for example, who wants to maybe lose weight or put on some muscle. They're like, I got to work out. And then once you start getting more experience and perhaps even competing, you realize, oh, there's power lifters, bodybuilders, there's this, there's like such discrete levels. When I look back on my parents,

they had a series of unconscious and conscious habits that I think contributed to my siblings all being pretty successful. But I also think some of it was pure luck because there are a lot of other people who did basically the same exact things. And they just either took different routes or could, you know, had bad luck or just didn't want that same outcome,

which is also fine. So some of the things I learned later, looking back, and I think you only learned these looking back. When you're a kid, you're just a kid. My parents once told me in my 20s, they said, don't get a big house. I was like, why? And they couldn't get a big house because they couldn't afford it. Sure. But in retrospect, they said, don't get a big house because if you do,

kids will go off into their own area and they won't congregate. And when you have them in the same room, that is how you build a family bond. Huh. It was like, whoa, that is very sophisticated. So they did that. That was more economic. My mom, you know, Indians, we love spelling bees. I love spelling bees because they are as close to a meritocracy as you can get. There's nothing genetic about it, it's work. And so my mom would, we didn't have a spelling bee

in my elementary school. Where did you go? She got a look at? No, I went to Trajan, because we had just moved from another state. So I went to Trajan and she organized the spelling bee and she would, every day, this is like around six, their seventh grade,

she would quiz me. We had a book, spelling book, for like one and a half to two hours a day. Now, I think if you think about today's day and age, can you imagine a parent happily spending one and a half to two hours a day with a spelling book? Right. It's, I think it's hard to imagine.

I think a lot of us are like, well, I got this in that. She did it. She loved it and it made me great at spelling. And it also just taught me discipline. You know, like, I don't have to love every day. But after a while, they chose their heroes very carefully. And I think this is a very profound point for anyone.

For people listening, you're listening to Ryan, you're listening to him talk about classics, history, you become who your heroes are. For example, if you think about Silicon Valley, there's a lot of engineers who unconsciously follow what Mark Zuckerberg does. What does he do? Number one, marketing is overrated, You should just have the best product, too. Forget about fashion. That's stupid. Even though Zuckerberg wears Brunello Cuchinelli, forget that. It's just wear t-shirts, et cetera, et cetera. Sure. We're Steve Jobs, same thing, being an asshole, bingo. And so we choose these heroes and what we don't realize is that their, those attributes unconsciously seep into us. What I learned from the other side of the table is my parents chose heroes.

They would celebrate teachers, like for Indian culture and Eastern culture, you know, teachers are like gods, right? Guru's, you know, you're bowing, you're listening, anything they say, yes. And it's no surprise that I have become a teacher and that I love teachers. So yeah, those are some of the things that I think my parents unconsciously and consciously did. Yeah, it's like, what are you learning on this spelling, me thing? Sure, of course you're learning how to spell words, but you're really learning like, if

you want to get good at something, it takes hours of deliberate practice, most of which you will not get credit for and most of which is not fun at all. Yes. Yes. That's one of the things I love about your work. You're always, especially mostly when it comes to finance, but you're looking at the unconscious scripts that people have. I think about, the parents don't mean them, but you can pick them up. If you don't do that work on yourself, they can sometimes they serve you well, sometimes they don't. I remember when I was looking at colleges, like I really wanted to go to Pepperdynum.

So I made my parents take me to Pepperdynum. They wanted me to look at all these much cheaper state schools. And I remember when we were walking around, and I was like in love with the campus, and my mom said something like, you would have to become very successful to be worth paying to go here, which was like, you know,

a horrible thing to say, now that I think about it. But it was like, oh, so she's picked up some idea about money and about education and about children from her parents that she's passing on to me. And you have to, I think, you have to, this is why therapy is good. This is why, you know, me having a spouse that has their own assumptions is good.

Because you got to figure out where those scripts are helping you in your life and where they're holding you back. I love that you brought that up. And you could unpeel what your mom said for hours. Yes. Where did she pick that up from? Her mom and dad and from there,

it's been passed down generationally. Yeah, I call these invisible scripts and we have them on an individual level and we have them on a cultural or societal level. Yeah. In America, we have a lot of invisible scripts. Some are good. I think some are maybe maladaptive.

One of the most common ones is you should buy a house. Yeah. It's the best investment of all. Sure. And I talk a lot about how that's not necessarily true. And people get really mad at me. Even when I simply suggest run the numbers. And just for everybody listening,

I have rented by choice for the last 15 plus years. I could buy, but I choose to rent. And this, when I tell people this, and they hear it, and I can see them in front of me, they are visibly stunned. Because they're trying to reconcile, wait a minute, I will teach you to be rich guy. Any rents?

But I thought rich people buy. So that's one. We have some really good ones in America. The idea that if you work hard, you can be successful. Sure. That is incredible. And also we have these general societal ones about fairness, like if I cross the street,

I know that a car is not gonna come barreling by if there's a red stoplight. That turns out to be incredibly rare when you visit other countries. Sure. We take that for granted. So that's that. And I think if you dive into these invisible scripts, it can become fascinating.

And I love what you said about having a spouse because a spouse or I'm guessing a child is one of the best ways to evoke these invisible scripts. Yeah, because your spouse is just like, what the fuck are you talking about? That is the craziest thing I have ever heard. Like, no, we're not going to do it that way. And I think, I think in a good marriage, it's why you actually don't want to be too similar or ideally you come from different childhood backgrounds because it allows you to go, like my wife will be like, my wife will be doing it, and I'll be like, you know, we could just pay someone to do that. You know, like, you don't have to do

it or, or, you know, you can just make this decision or whatever. And then with me, she'll be, she might be actually saying the exact same thing back to me, but I can't see how that script has got me trapped in a behavioral pattern that isn't serving me well. Yeah. I've experienced the same thing. I mean, my wife and I have, we talked about money when we were engaged and got married. That was the, that was and has been the challenging discussion because we come from such different perspectives. One of the things that I, we recently took a Gottman seminar and this was cool. So John Gottman has famously written all these books about relationships and we loved his book or we read one or two of them and we decided to take a weekend seminar. So this seminar was approximately eight hours a day

Saturday and Sunday. I mean, it was exhausting and you're getting into these emotional discussions and so we did it. It was very tiring but we're so glad that we did it. And one of the things that we really loved from the Gottman material is his point that when you have something you fundamentally disagree on with your partner, you're probably gonna disagree forever. And that's okay. You don't have to agree on everything.

Of course you wanna be values aligned and you wanna be able to see eye to agree on everything. Of course, you want to be values aligned and you want to be able to see eye-to-eye on most things, but you are probably not going to convince them to see your way for a couple of things in life. And once you accept that, life becomes a lot easier. And so that's hard for me because I'm like, well, I want to use my persuasion. And it's so obvious, look at the math, but that's not the way the relationships work. And I think getting a teacher to teach me that and show me how that works has been helpful for me. And I think helpful for us. Yeah, I think too. It's like a lot of the sort of middle class or blue collar immigrant or like, you know, sort of self-made. A lot of that mindset serves one well up to a point

and then it becomes maladaptive very quickly. So it's this tricky thing. Let's talk about this because you and I growing up where we did, we saw and grew up with that mindset. And you're right that you learn certain things that, like I said, I look back with a lot of fondness because we didn't eat out a lot. Once every four to six weeks,

we took our coupons from Penny Saver that came in the mail. And those coupon books, did you buy those? Yeah, yeah, entertainment books, 10 bucks, great. That was fantastic because it helped us at the level that we were at. However, once you, if and when you become

more financially successful or career-oriented or whatever it may be, those rules, like you said, they stop at a point. What happened for you? I'm curious. And how has that manifested as you have become successful author, living a different place? Like, I'm curious about that. author, live in a different place. Like I'm curious about that.

Well, I have a bunch. One that strikes me about your work, I remember you tell this story about you're going with your family to negotiate for buying a car and your dad's like negotiating. And I remember the exact scene because I was in it a bunch of times, probably at the Roseville Auto Mall or something or late at night. It's fun for five seconds while you're playing with the popcorn machine or running around and then,

and then it's just dragging on for hours and hours and hours and then you talk about how your dad's like, he's like, he cancels a whole deal because they won't throw in the car mats. And I remember when I first heard that story, that struck me as a very similar thing to the kind of values that I grew up with. And that's sort of

millionaire next door, save your way to wealth kind of a thing. And I internalized that, and that was how I grew up. And then it was maybe like the second or third car I bought, where yeah, this thing is, you thought it'd take two hours, and now you've been there for five hours, and You thought it'd take two hours and now you've been there for five hours and it doesn't end. And you, at a certain point, I had to go, wait, my time is worth more money than I am trying to save here. And also this is making me unhappy. How much, and I think there was a switch, it was like, isn't the point of having money

to make things like this go away if you can? And that was a breakthrough for me, for sure. You were able to make that breakthrough. And I know many people, many of my students who have made considerable amounts of money, they still struggle with spending it consciously. In other words, they buy their time back or et cetera. What made you able to do that?

Did you struggle at all with that process? Well, I think one of the things I learned from the Stokes was this idea of momentum more that life is short. You could leave life right now. Do you want to be pedantically haggling over small amounts of money that you are that is not free, right? Like you you you you are buying this thing with life, right? So there's this great Sena Colline where he says, um, don't think about death as something in the future. Think of death as something that's you are buying this thing with life, right? So there's this great Sena Kalein where he says, I don't think about death as something in the future. Think of death as something that's happening right now.

He says the time that's passed belongs to death. So like when we would spend time as a kid doing the longer, harder thing to save small amounts of money, it was never discussed whether that was worth, whether that was worth the other cost. Do you know what I mean? Like we would, my dad had this, we would go to Disneyland fairly often, you know, every couple of years, the whole family would reunite at Disneyland.

My dad had this argument about whether, is an example from mine. My dad was convinced, and this is before 9-11, so he's even more wrong now. But he was convinced you could drive to Disneyland faster than you could drive to the Sacramento airport, fly to, you know, fly and whatever. And so not only is I think that's not true, but like what my dad was unable to calculate was the immense stress that this probably caused on him, that caused on our family, all this stuff. And then two other wrinkles on it not to give too much away about my parents. But I was talking to my wife the other day, we were talking about, I remember when we

would go on road trips as a kid, my parents would take out the middle seat of our minivan. So my sister and I could play on the floor while we were driving, like, which, so it's not just you was saving money, but like, he couldn't calculate what would happen if we all died in a fiery car crash. Like, so I think it's like, what do you really value in life? Is it saving time?

Is it saving money? Is it being safe? I remember, I remember as a kid, I was telling this to my wife too about the pandemic, we went on a vacation to Hong Kong when I was in high school because flights and travel was very cheap during the SARS outbreak. So, so I was like, can you imagine us using the dangers of the pandemic to save money traveling? I mean, that's insane. I value my family more than saving money on a vacation. But you can pick up these scripts to go to our point. Yeah, I love these examples. I'll never forget, you know, that looks like a good deal on hotels.com.

We better get that one right now. Right, even though you don't actually want to go there, it was almost like the deal was worth more than anything. That's exactly it. There's an author, Marshall Goldsmith, who's written some great books. And one of the things he talks about is, the need to be you.

And this is what happens when you become successful to a point in you plateau. And he works with smart people. Why can't they make it to the next level? And it's the excessive need to be you. So that might happen with people who say stuff like, well, I just tell it how it is. Well, okay, that may work when you're on the playground

and you're telling some jokes, but at work, you need to change if you wanna make it to senior management. Sure. The excessive need to be you can also come when you are using the same scripts that were functional when you had a family and not a lot of money versus now when you are more comfortable and maybe you care about risk a little bit more.

I find that it's almost a point of pride sometimes for people to not care. They want to continue to live that script. Like I don't care. Like yeah, I can go in economy, no problem. Which is fine if that is what you truly want. If you look and say, you know what? I have X dollars and I would rather spend it on a beautiful dinner when we get to our destination.

God bless. Please. But more often than not, I find that there's no calculus happening, no calculation. And sometimes it's this interesting and almost perverse script of like, I don't care, I don't need that. I don't want to be the kind of person who has to fly in that seat. And that is when you really starting to confront identity. I remember one of my students who grew up, multiple six figure business, and we were talking, I was helping her out, and she lived in the Midwest, and she was telling me how she hates grocery shopping, hates it. I was like, why don't you just pay someone to do it for you? And this is years ago before there was postmates, et cetera.

And she looked at me like I was nuts. She said, like, why would I do that? I can just shop for myself. And that is the point. Yes, you can. But at a point, your financial means have already changed. That happened long ago. It's your identity that hasn't yet changed.

And it's up to you if you want to change that identity or not. That's an interesting that I excessive need to be you. I think explains a lot of the trouble people are having with the pandemic. Like you'll talk to people and again, obviously, I think it's, you got to sort of stipulate or exclude people who don't have a

choice about these things, right? Who are struggling, who don't have access to certain technologies, whatever it is. But you talk to people, let's say an RPR group who are successful, have businesses, their time is worth a lot of money, and you'll go with that family, people depend on them and you go, so, you know, what are you doing there in the pandemic? Have you been socially distancing, you've been safe? Oh yeah, we haven't seen anyone to go. I mean, I do go to the grocery store a couple of times a week or whatever, and you're like,

why were you going to the grocery store a couple of times a week, not during a pandemic when there was no health risk? Like, you know, you can not do that, right? And it's clear that it's just a habit. And questioning that habit is hard to do. And I think people who are handy, people who like doing stuff for themselves, it can be hard for them to question, it's not whether you can do it or not, it's whether you're the best person to do it or not. And to be able to delegate does not say anything about you,

except that you are prioritizing something other than that thing. I completely agree. One thing I would say is that it's natural. Just like if you have a bike, you need to oil the chain every so often and do some maintenance. It's normal that your identity will need to be polished or re-examined regularly.

So I would recommend, you know, once a year, once every six months to 12 months, you take a look at your calendar and you say, okay, I see my calendar right now. Great. I'm going to put that aside and then blank calendar. What do I want it to be? Now, again, of course, I'm speaking to people who have some semblance of control over your calendar. If you can't change your nine to five job calendar, fine, I'm not talking about that. What happens before and after work? What happens on Saturday and Sunday?

And I recommend the blank page one because I tried for about a year and a half to take my calendar and rework it meeting by meeting. And I discovered that there was incredible pushes pushback for me to change even one meeting. So I would say, guys, you know, I'm not sure I need to be in this meeting or should I have it? And nobody wants change. So I couldn't do it.

And I'm the CEO of my own business. Sure. So after a year and a half, I said, you know what, blank page, what should I be going to? And that transformed everything for me. But I would just encourage people, your identity is, we have seasons in life and we've been talking a lot about this. There are seasons with money, there are seasons with careers with money, you know, when I was in my 20s, I was very

growth-oriented. I'm willing to spend 70, 80 hours a week and I'm investing heavily great. In my 30s, I was a little bit more settled. I wanted to spend more. I started to spend on things that I loved. I also, but I retained some of the stuff I didn't care about. I still drive my car from 2005. Until last year, I had my laptop from eight years ago. I ran my business off of it. Like, don't care about that stuff, but love clothes, love travel, et cetera. This is the IWT concept of spending extravagantly

on the things you love, as long as you cut cost mercilessly on the things you don't long as you cut cost mercilessly on the things you don't. We know also from financial literature that typically people accumulate as much as they can in their 30s, in their 40s, they have a kid and typically a mortgage. It's in their 50s when they start thinking about retirement.

And this is often pretty late in life. So if you can start a little earlier, you get a massive edge, Just why I wrote my book. What I would say is, acknowledge the seasons. I think one of the most humbling things is to acknowledge, you know what, I'm pretty much 98% the same as everybody else. I have the same productivity challenges, fitness challenges, food, etc. challenges, food, et cetera. Let me do the basic stuff I need to do to optimize my food, my fitness, my money, et cetera. And then for that special 2% where I'm unique, where I'm different, I can go crazy. I can try all kinds of risky stuff or things that I love that nobody else gets. But I also need to acknowledge that these are the seasons in life. Like right now, I don't meditate. It's just not my thing. But I know that later acknowledge that these are the seasons in life like right now. I don't meditate

It's just not my thing, but I know that later in life. I probably will sure That's what I would say. What do you think about that? No, I think the seasons of life is a good thing I remember I talked to our friend Tim Ferriss not long ago and he was talking about experiments Which is another way of saying it and it's something that's been freeing for me where it's like okay like let's say There's some like household chore that I'm gonna pay someone to do the way of saying it. And it's something that's been freeing for me where it's like, okay, like let's say there's some like household chore that I'm going to pay someone to do. You know, we were doing the maintenance on our pool ourselves. And then it felt crazy to, you know, you do the math.

You're like, oh, I'm paying someone $200 a month to complete the pool. That adds up really quickly. And so, so like if you, if you flesh that out the lifetime of where you live, that can be very high. But if you say, I'm busy with work right now. And what's important to me is say finishing my book, it's more important that I have an extra 20 minutes with my kids every day, so on and so forth, that I'm going to decide for now to do this, right?

Even like if you have a business and you want to hire an employee, you don't go, what does this do to the margins of my business forever? You don't have to, you're not, you know, this isn't a lifetime contract. The idea of like, I'm gonna try this for now is has been freeing for me

because then I'm not extrapolating out, you know, what this is going to be forever. That's interesting. That's actually the opposite of what a lot of people in the beginning stages of personal finance do. They go, wait, this computer is a thousand bucks. If I multiply out how much I could get compounded, that's like $25,000. Oh my God, is it worth it?

And I think that's helpful. I used to do that with quarters because it was how many quarters of laundry is this worth to me back when I was in college. At a certain point, I stopped doing that. And this is what has been very freeing for me. Below a certain price point, I don't wanna spend more than two seconds on it.

So this old, oh, you shouldn't buy lattes, forget that advice. lattes are not going to save you. And honestly, most people need to be, they need to stop asking $3 questions and they need to start asking $30,000 questions. So forget about the lattes, buy all the lattes you want. Spend more time on things like,

what's my asset allocation? Have I automated my investments? Am I healthy? Right, care. A night, am I sleeping? Let's get that right. And let's stop worrying about, can I order an extra appetizer? When I moved my level of focus, almost like my eye gaze went

from $3 up a little bit, suddenly life became more fun. And it also started to move the needle in a much more positive way than being stuck at that $3 level. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life. But come on, someday parenting is unbearable. I love my kid, but is a new parenting podcast from Wondry that shares a refreshingly honest and insightful take on parenting. Hosted by myself, Megan Galey, Chris Garcia, and Kurt Brown-Oller, we will be your resident

not so expert experts. Each week we'll share a parenting story that'll have you laughing, nodding, and thinking. Oh yeah, I have absolutely been there. We'll talk about what went right and wrong. What would we do differently? And the next time you step on yet another stray Lego in the middle of the night, you'll feel less alone. So if you like to laugh with us as we talk about the hardest job

in the world, listen to, I love my kid, but wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. Well, that's sort of the Ben Franklin thing about Pennywise pound Foolish. But one of the things you talk about that I think ties, it's sort of a timeless philosophical question. So the good life, you talk about the rich life,

I saw you tweet the other day, something I loved, where you're like, for me, the rich life is never stepping foot in Home Depot ever again. Which I love is it's like, what do you want to be doing? What do you like? What is what is hell to you? And how do you make sure that you make choices that as much as possible avoid that? Like if you had to go to Home Depot to save your family, of course, you'd go to Home Depot,

right? Or if suddenly, you know, your business disappeared and Home Depot is the only place that hired you, you get a job there in two seconds. It's, but it's, if you have a, the Stokes talk about this idea of preferred indifference, that not, uh, ENCE, but, uh, T.S. Indifference, like so, so Senaqa says, you know, it's better to be tall than short, probably, better to be rich than poor, probably. So it has nothing to do with like, whether you're a good person or not, but if you had a choice,

which one would you choose? And the idea that being philosophical or wise or smart means that you don't choose the obviously better thing if you can is silly. It's like a course of philosopher could be rich, right? Of course a philosopher could be famous. Like, why would you turn down things as long as they don't change you if you have the means to enjoy them? So I think this idea of what is your rich life, to me, is like one of the most

essential questions a person can ask themselves, I agree. It's a very fraught question too, especially in this culture because, first of all, the word rich implies lots of things. In fact, the idea that money, listen to how people say this, money changes you, money changes you. I'm so disgusted when I say that. That's how people say, well, let me tell you, money does change you. And it should. It has allowed me to dream bigger

and take adventures I never would have to be more generous. And so- Well, money is optionality. So of course it should change you because you now have more options. Correct. One of the things that I see on Twitter a lot

is somebody starts their tweet by saying, if I had a million dollars, I would never, and I just closed the tweet. I'm like, I have no interest in what you think you would do because you have no idea until you are there. This is the, when I talk about my money dials, I have 10 money rules. And some of my rules, when I say money rules,

a lot of people, the first thing they do when I challenge them to make their own money rules, they all do the same thing. The first time they create their money rules, a lot of people, the first thing they do when I challenge them to make their own money rules, they all do the same thing. The first time they create their money rules, it's all restriction. No spending on this, only by generics, no need to get that, right? Okay, fine. That's sort of the puritanical view that America has on money. It's all about no. I have a series of rules that are meaningful for me.

Some of them are, you could say restrictive, but some of them are also really permissive. One of them is business class on flights over four hours. Okay, now that is, okay, I can financially afford it, but it also says to me that I don't need to fly business class if I'm just going on an hour-long flight. I don't need it. Sure. But longer than that, that's powerful. Another one is to always have one year of emergency fund cash.

That's sort of, okay, that's nice. It's a little bit more than most recommend fine. But then they get, they start to become very personal. They fit me like a glove. These are my money rules. I said, never question spending money on books, appetizers, health, or donating to a friend's charity fundraiser. Now, why?

How about the last one? That's interesting. Yeah, I'll tell you why each of those. Why am I talking about appetizers when I'm talking about business class flights? One of them is $10. One of them is maybe thousands. Why are these even in the same universe?

Well, the answer is these are my rules, not yours. And if you knew me growing up, we never ordered appetizers. We couldn't afford it. So to me to be able to go to a restaurant and say, ooh, that looks good. Should I get that? Oh, that looks good too.

Get them both. 20 bucks, but incredibly meaningful to me. And the fundraiser one, I think, starts to get into some of the relational ones on the list. There's that one. And there's also Mary the right person, which is a money rule, and earn enough to work only with people I respect and like. So these are all about people. The money part, at a certain point, you solved it. You won the game. Now it becomes meaning and people.

The charity fundraiser, my wife and I ran a fundraiser a couple of years ago. And we hosted it in New York. And it was regarding children being separated at the border. And I wrote a big post on it on what we learned and how much we generated for the organization. One of the things I learned was that the psychology

of giving is totally different than the psychology of buying. I had some, but I had multiple people, one of my readers who spent approximately $15,000 with I will teach you to be rich. He wrote in because we had five scholarship tickets available for our event. He's like, I'd like to apply for that. I was like, you've spent $15,000, why? He goes, well, I don't, this is a hundred dollar ticket, by the way.

He goes, yeah, but like, I don't really, it's not in my charity budget. And because I have zero shame about raising money for an organization, I was like, listen, not only are you gonna buy one ticket, you're gonna buy five tickets. So pay those tickets, otherwise, don't write me again. Right. And it was offensive to me that someone who can obviously afford a tremendous amount is trying to take a free ticket from someone else. But I learned because this happened multiple times that the psychology of giving is different than the psychology of buying. So when I, what we learned and why I added this to my money rule is if one of my friends ever runs a fundraiser, like a 5k, not only I'm going to give, I'm going to give more than they ask and I'm going

to try to be the first one to give. Because if someone with some of my friends gave me 150 bucks, I'll never forget it. It meant so much because you feel so insecure when you're raising money and always anyone going to support me. For somebody to even give anything was awesome. Five bucks, I love you. I appreciate it. But to give the full-ask or even more, it was like, I mean, it was an incredible feeling. And so that's why I added it to my money. I'm so glad you brought that up because it's something I've sort of been working on in

my life and I'm curious how it connects with you because of the money scripts that I got as a kid. I don't know if I didn't, if I got any negative ones about giving, but I didn't get, get any about generosity or charity or giving. And so as I become successful and as I've sort like, you know, sort of figured out what's important to me, I've decided that that's something that's meaningful and important to me, but I realize I don't really have any of the skill set or the experience.

Like, let's say you grew up Mormon and so you grew up tithing a certain percentage of your income, that would be a script you would have that you'd be quite familiar with. And so the charity and giving, we just did a script you would have that you'd be quite familiar with. And so that sort of charity and giving, like we just did a, a raise for Fiat America, where like I put in 10 and I thought maybe we double it. And people, we've raised like 110, which is a million plus meals. But it's like the feelings that that evokes in me are very unfamiliar.

Like it just being around generosity, watching generosity, being a part of it, it's a very emotional, surprising thing because I don't have a script about it. Well, man, I'm really happy to hear that. I think you and I should talk more about how we can give and how we can build our philosophy around it. I'm really glad you bring up the fact about giving back. Maybe we should work on that together because I'm building my own philosophy around philanthropy and charity. Growing up, I think middle class,

it's no surprise that we didn't receive messages of philanthropy. That's very much an upper class thing. The way that we were taught was, you know, we would go and do sava, which is service at our temple. We would serve food and things like that. But it was not really, we were not attending gala's and writing checks. That was not happening. One of the things that the reasons that I have been public about gaving, we did feeding America, the reasons that I have been public about giving. We did feeding America, ACLU.

I wrote a $101,000 check to provide free transportation for voters on election day. And the extra 1,000 is because Indians always add an extra one. Ah, so what I really want to do there, it's not just the money. It is inspiring an audience of young people to realize you can give. You don't have to wait till you're 70. You don't have to take that Silicon Valley invisible script. This is what every single person in Silicon Valley said, oh, I'd really

love to give, but I just don't know where it's going. So I need to build a spreadsheet and make sure I optimize for all the variables so that I can track all, track it and trace it. Once you shut the fuck up and write a check, okay? And you can track it as well, but you don't have to wait till you're 70. What they are really saying when they say that, these are rich people. We both know them. You can write a $10,000 check. You can find it in the cushions of your couch. I know how much money you have. And you can also find organizations or you can found one yourself that will provide accountability. But guess what? There are greater things in life than accountability.

This is a key invisible script that pervades in America, this idea of responsibility and accountability. We have people talking about, oh, the government doesn't spend correctly. Yeah, okay, we should increase efficiency. I agree. Those same people can't manage their budget of $50,000. And they're sitting here preaching accountability and responsibility for a multi trillion dollar economy.

No, thank you. Write the check and work on improving accountability over time. Well, I think it's a way, it's like you can always find a reason to not do something. So you can let perfect be the enemy of good, you can let, you can create these scripts about,

I'm waiting or you can create this, and, or, or even like I'm interested in effective altruism and give well response to the pockets, I think it's really interesting. But it's like you can also, that's also a way to sort of intellectualize and almost make the problem distant. And I think the effective altruism thing is really interesting. If done hand and glove with, what are your obligations here where you live in the community that you belong to

that in both of our cases has done very well for you. You know what I mean? That's like, and you and I have both taken some heat for some political stances we've taken over the last year. The interesting thing I've seen about some of, I get the sort of white working class anger, the left behind anger from certain Trump supporters. What I have more trouble understanding or tolerating

is people who the system worked for, as well as the system could possibly work for, being angry and wanting to punish other people lower down the chain. It's a weird mentality, but I feel like there's a great line from Bill Campbell, if you've read that book, Trillion Dollar Coat, which is incredible. It's great book. But he says, if you've been blessed, be a blessing, and I've been trying to sort of build that

into my life in all sorts of ways. I appreciate you, man. I appreciate you saying it and being public about it. I just read your post yesterday that you're new and that you made. And I want to show people that you can be successful. You can be accountable in your business. You can be profit oriented, all of which I am.

I have metrics. I have amazing team members. We want to generate profits. We sell amazing products to customers. And I also am happy to give. Yes, you can do both. I believe in personal responsibility. I worked hard.

I studied spelling bee books for hours and hours on end. But I also believe that there are systemic issues that hold all of us back and especially certain groups. You can hold both of those beliefs at the same time. I believe in personal responsibility. I also believe in tackling systemic change. And when I say that, especially as someone in the personal finance world, personal finance is very heavy

on personal responsibility. Listen, I love it. What do you think I've been talking about for the last 16 years? Start an IRA, fill up your 401k. Everybody can save 20 bucks a month. That's personal responsibility. But I also know that if I was not born in America with two educated parents who pushed me, I'm not sitting here talking to you and I'm not taking a six week vacation. So we need to acknowledge both of those things. Well, I think there's the operative word in the phrase that you said and I think people miss is that it's personal responsibility.

So the Stoics, Mark's really says this great line. He says, strict with yourself, tolerant with others. So it's like, I hold myself to incredibly high standards and I hold myself personally accountable. I don't give myself much slack, et cetera. But that has to be balanced out by an understanding that other people are struggling with things that I didn't struggle with.

They had nox against them that I didn't have so on and so forth. And they're not a contradiction. It's like you can hold yourself to a strong set of rules and then you give a lot of people space and time and help so they can get to a place where they have the luxury of being as strict with themselves as you and I are. It doesn't take anything away from you to be and not to give to others and to be. And even to give empathy, I will also say that at some point in life, all of us will struggle

with something. And everyone listening, even people who are extremely on the side of personal responsibility, for those people listening, listen up. You are struggling. All of us are struggling with something in life that we know we should do, but for whatever reason, we haven't been able to do it. For a lot of people, it has to do with food, fitness, weight. For a lot of people, it has to do with food, fitness, weight, for a lot of people it has to do with money. Oh, I know I should set up an investment account. I know I should save more. I got this debt.

Over time, I have become much more compassionate. In my early 20s, I was judgmental with myself and I was super judgmental with everyone. I was like, why don't you just open up a Roth IRA? It's so obvious. Look at the math. Now I understand that to even talk about words like Roth IRA, it includes such a level of complexity and maybe their parents lost their house in the 2008 recession. There are lots of generational things going on. Or maybe it grew up in a family that didn't even have access to banking.

You know what I mean? Like it's so easy to assume this stuff. And you know, there's that expression where it's like, if you're not liberal when you're young and you have no hard and if you're not conservative when you're older, you have no brain. I hate that expression so much. One, I mean, I grew up in a conservative household. Sacramento was a surprisingly conservative town. But I hate the idea, let's put aside the policy beliefs because I think there's a lot. Different people can have different policy beliefs from totally different. I hate the idea that your heart should be hardening as you go. That's the exact wrong way to go through life.

The more you experience, the more you live, the more people you meet. It should be increasing your compassion and your sense of community, not the opposite, because if that's not true, then your life is getting shittier as you go. You're becoming more cramuginly and angry and selfish and isolated. Like, what kind of success is that? Everybody listened to what Ryan just said. Just think about the two possibilities for your life as you become more successful. In option one, you become increasingly judgmental. You look down on others who didn't make it

to the same level. You judge them, you punish them, you become punitive towards them. And you end up in your life with a relatively large bank account, and every day you wake up and you are outraged. How could they do this? They're coming to take away X, Y, or Z from me. And that is the logical end conclusion of your life in option one.

Option two, you acknowledge, hey, I worked hard. I feel that I was justly rewarded, but I also acknowledge, you know what, I was lucky. And man, if that person hadn't called me in for that interview because I know this person, that might not have happened. You know what, I am grateful that I grew up in a country where, as I've made more money, this moroting gang didn't kick down my door and demand 30% of every dollar, I'm grateful that electricity and water turns on when I turn the faucet. And you know what, I can afford

to be generous financially. I can afford to write a $500 check or $1,000 check, and I can also afford to empathize because there's a couple things in my life that I still struggle with. And yeah, I know I should be able to do all right, but it's just hard for me. And now that I realize it's hard for me, oh my god, it must be really hard for someone else who's taking care of an ailing parent or just never grew up learning this kind of stuff. So I'm going to be generous. Which do you want to be? You have a choice. You create your life, you choose.

And you may have to go. So if you do tell me. But the one last thing I wanted to talk to you about, because I love that so much, is you and I both, because of some of the stands we've taken and things we've talked about, and because of the niches we're in, sort of me and Stoicism, you and finance,

there's been a bit of a backlash from it. And you've talked over the years about your platform, how you respond to emails, haters and such. One of the things I keep trying to explain to people, it's not what I don't need to convince you of what I think. If you don't like it, that's fine. But what I do think is important is your impulse to tell me that I shouldn't be saying it.

Because you've totally misunderstood why I do what I do think is important is your impulse to tell me that I shouldn't be saying it because you've totally misunderstood why I do what I do, right? Like, like, I've taken to replying. Sometimes I just if I'm feeling really snarky, I'll just be like, okay, Karen, and that's all that I say. But if I really am going to take the time to explain, I go, look, I did not become a writer explain, I go, look, I did not become a writer to not say what I think. This is my job. My job is not to tell you what you want to hear. My job is to say what I think. And to me, that's our obligation as human beings, whether you're a politician, whether you're a writer, an accountant, an athlete, your job is to do what you think is the right thing to do. It's so interesting to me that we have this impulse now, I was decided to try to crush that in people,

instead of saying, well, I'm going to reply with what I think. Do you know what I mean? It's weird. Yes. I love this topic. I have all the time in the world to talk about this. Okay, let's just get that spirit. I love this. So how do your readers react when you tell them that? That's a very powerful point.

How do they react to that? Usually there's no reply at all, but I think it's, well, why'd you have to be political about it? There's this interesting thing where it's like, if someone disagrees with you, it's political. You know, like, or that, I mean, what I love about stoicism is it's like, look, they go like,

what would Sennaka think about you getting political? It's like, oh, you mean Sennaka, the professional politician? I think he would be okay with it. You know what, like, life is politics. The idea that you can talk about money and it not be political is preposterous. Money is what makes the world go around. Therefore, it is political. So there's this interesting thing where when we disagree with someone, we say you're getting political, when we agree with them, of course, we have no objections to it. That's right on. This psychology of this is what fascinates me. And last time we talked about trolls and haters and it's not just that I love engaging with them, which I do.

It's that I love the psychology of being able to actually talk to someone who writes me an email. And the first thing they say to me after reading for nine years is, fuck you! And I'm like, what's wrong? Are you having a bad day? Come on, I have a recommended, I can give you some hair cream if you're having a bad hair day. Let's talk. And it completely opens up a conversation. I rarely convince them, but like you, I have, I actually have metrics on what happens. You know, half of them don't reply. 25% say, oh my God, I didn't

think anyone would actually read this, which raises the question. That's a big one. People think sometimes the person they're yelling at is not a real person, and they think it's just a cathartic like vomiting of aggression and meanness that they don't think is going to land on anyone or anything. But of course, it does. I find that one to be actually the most haunting of all, because you're having a tantrum as a child would screaming into the ether. And when I respond to them or others respond, they're startled. And of course, it rarely causes them to really consider their overall worldview. Maybe I shouldn't have childlike tantrums But anyway, this psychology, I think, is fascinating.

And I have, you know, for the last 10 years or so, I've been cataloging these. I have filters of filters on types of responses people give. One of the things that I love when they say, remeat, I'm disappointed in you. And I think to myself, okay, hold on a second. First of all, the only people who get to be disappointed in me are my parents. And I get to be disappointed in my future children, but I don't think you get to be disappointed in me.

What are we talking about here? What is the relationship going on? Right. And in the past, they were disappointed because, you know, I give away 98% of my material for free, and I decided to charge for some of my programs. They're disappointed in that. Again, what is happening here is they are seeing this relationship be redefined, and they don't like it. And so they're writing this thing as if it's going to change me. The other thing that I've learned is that people believe

that if they are following someone, they have to agree with everything they say. And if they don't agree, you know, it's one thing if the person wears a shirt they don't like, most people can overlook that. It's no problem. But when it becomes salient, like I don't eat this. Or as I recently said, if I live a good life, I'm never walking in Home Depot again. Well, guess what? Some Home Depot lovers got really mad. You can see the comment, they are pissed.

I don't like home repair. I don't want it. It's okay. So they take it personally. Now, when it comes to the people they follow, if they politics becomes the most salient of all. And suddenly, they're like, I agree with 98% on what this person says, but he said this thing about politics, I'm disappointed.

And to me, that just represents a lack of discernment. I follow a lot of people who I don't agree with on certain things, that's okay. If I actually disagree with them on values, then I'm gonna unfollow them, fine. I think an interesting part about it too, and I think this is an important, this is where I think it becomes a lesson,

even if you don't have a platform, is that almost all of the disappointed, I hate you, unfollow, you just blew up your business. It's actually a lie, and it's an intimidation tactic that's not true. So like, just to peel back the curtain, when I see like people say toxic political stuff, because I've posted over the years,

I, on Instagram, you can flag the account, so they can continue to comment, but they don't know that their comments aren't showing up unless you approve it, right? So I kind of see these as like, infected people. And what's fascinating to me is that they'll say this nasty, horrible stuff on one post. I follow, I hate you. And then I watch they continue to comment. So it wasn't true.

It was really just a bullying tactic that they hoped would work, that didn't work. And you kind of realize that it's like, oh, so there's all these things you're not supposed to do or say, you're not supposed to be true to yourself, you're not supposed to be your true self, or there's be all these consequences. But the consequences are illusionary.

And sometimes you have to sort of pierce through that a couple times to realize oh There actually isn't anything to be afraid of. I'm gonna say what I think funny that you do that I do the same thing. I see them because they're restricted and they're going out on Instagram Yeah, and whenever I see a restricted comment come up I notice that is inevitably toxic right and it what that tells me is the following. Number one, if you're a creator, of course, you should listen to what the market is telling you. Of course, you should listen. And there are times where you're going to say something that is insensitive or inappropriate. And you should take action and acknowledge that. I've done that three times in my career for things I

said that were, they were wrong and people told me that and it was a very quick response and I said, you know what, that was a mistake. But you should also be able to discern when it is a bullying tactic. And what I've learned is that it's, as long as you have a good values orientation, it's rarely about the creator.

It is about that person. And that sound, you know, we've all heard people say that, you know, hurt people, hurt others and all that stuff. But when you dig into the psychology, which is why I love chatting with them, you realize, whoa, there's a lot going on there. Yeah. And I think it was helpful to me to realize like, oh, and because Mark really talks about this, he says, you know, there's a lot going on there. Yeah, and I think it was helpful to me to realize, like, oh, because Mark really talks about this,

he says, there's infected, you can get infected with the plague and he was saying this during the real plague, but there's also a different kind of plague that infects your character. And I think you're watching people who have, you know, whether they got COVID-19 or not, they've been infected by something in a way worse because it's chosen.

And to me, that's like callousness and cruelty and conspiracy theories. And life's just too short to be that kind of person. It's definitely too short to have those kind of people in your life. Have you stopped being friends with anyone who, for example, supports Trump or you disagree with on very salient political issues. It's interesting too, because yeah, I get this reputation, I'm some like insane liberal. It's like, I would happily vote for a Republican. I voted, I think I voted for Republicans before.

It's been a weird period of a couple years here, but I've definitely voted, I definitely no Republicans. I definitely have, I definitely know Republicans, I definitely have advised and worked with Republicans. I mean, there's a number of sitting Republican senators that read my books, who I've gotten to know, and I chair so his relationships. I mean, Ben Sass blurred my last book. So I would never go like, oh, because you voted for Trump,

you're dead to me or something. That's not at all. But your point you made earlier, I think, is a good way to distinguish it. There are, there, there, I would never get rid of someone from my life because I disagree with them. If someone is has changed their values and is living by values that I find to be a parent or, you know, toxic or negative. That would be something that I would change. So I think I've definitely seen some people

over the last several months who it's like, oh, I'm gonna definitely spend a lot less time with this person and they're gonna have a much smaller role in my life, given who they've revealed themselves to be with their choices and beliefs. What about you? I find it to be with their choices and beliefs. What about you? I find it to be one of the most challenging things that I have thought about in the last four years.

It is really hard. And I have ended relationships because of politics. And I talked about it with friends and people who I go to for advice. And I talked about it for a long time, like over a year. It's one thing if someone comes out blatantly and says something super offensive, for example, about immigrants. That's easy. That's an easy goodbye. It's a lot harder if it's more subtle.

If it's the type of media that's brought up is, for example, the Heritage Foundation. And every talking point, like the frequent talking points I receive in Instagram DMs. When I tell people, I did a whole segment on how raising taxes on millionaires, overall does not cause the mass state migration that people think it does. And I showed them the data and the books and all that stuff. And, you know, to this day, I get people, I got a guy who makes $20 an hour in Florida telling me that they should not raise taxes on the rich. I said, listen, my friend, they don't want your money, they want mine, and they should have it. I can afford it.

Sure. And so the response to that is typically these right wing talking points and tropes that I've heard a million times. And with each one that I engage and I show them some data and all that, and at the end of the day, the conclusion is simply, I don't want to pay more in taxes. I don't find that to be intellectually rigorous. I don't find it to be morally upstanding. I don't find it to be relevant since our friend is making

$20 an hour in Florida. And that is a little harder because it's subtle. And you know that the value system is aligned with certain things when you trot out these certain talking points. So I find that difficult. Yeah, I've been trying to repeat to myself. It's probably somewhat of a stoke idea. It's just like they're good people who believe a bad thing or they're good people who have done a bad thing. And that's like, I think that's a more concilatory belief than dear bad people and I'm writing them off. But it is hard as you watch one bad thing lead to another bad thing to another bad thing.

And I think if you have a strong sense of, what's fascinating to me is it's like, people will listen, I've written 10 books of historical stories and about, you know, advice on how to live your life. And people are like, Oh, you know, you're talking about, please tell us more. And then if that veers slightly, if that, if, you know, if it, if it, if I, if I write a story about, you know, 2000 years ago, they love my analysis. But if I dare to analyze what's happening in 2020,

I have no idea what the fuck I'm talking about. And so it's hard if you are a student of history, if you do really know what you're talking about, not to see how related these things are and what the implications of them are. So it's a tricky thing. One of the reasons that I have been so fascinated and so troubled by what is happening is,

when I was at Stanford, I studied cults, coercion, lying, deception. And there are some very foundational elements. We have cognitive dissonance by Fessinger and bystander effect research. What happened? You would think that people are so logical that if they were sitting in a room and it started filling with smoke, well, of course, people are going to get up and leave wrong. We can experimentally cause them to stay sitting in the room

by leaving other people around them who are just casually having a coffee, right? And you can actually cause people to do things that are not only against their own self-interest, but can result in their own death. Well, guess what? We're seeing precisely that happening today. And I think back to the, some of the foundational cult research that was done, there was a group of people who believed that aliens were gonna land. And they had a date to their credit. They actually had a specific date.

Well, the first time, of course, the aliens didn't come. And so they said, no, that was just a practice round. Okay, great. So this social psychologist infiltrated because he knew he was gonna be able to see what happens at the moment that reality detaches from their beliefs. Second time, they don't come again. Somebody starts crying in the room, the clock ticks midnight, and then what they did was

they switched their cognition, and they said, these aliens spared us because we are believers. And so what this social psychologist Leon Fessinger realized was there are criteria to define what happens in a quote cult. And one of those is you need to have social support. You cannot withstand the forces of quote quote, reality on your own. And that is why I find what's happening today, so troubling. It's one thing if you believe that the election didn't happen, that Biden didn't win. Okay, you can believe that. But now you have tens of millions of others who believe that and are actively supporting you on social media.

In my opinion, it is almost impossible to disentangle that. If that's one of your family members, maybe with a prohibitively large amount of time and money you could. However, it's unlikely. And this is why I'm so fascinated and troubled by what I see going on. It's, you know, at the beginning, you think, oh, that's funny, you know, certain people believe certain things. But just as you said, Ryan, when you start to see where the path leads to people not believing in viruses, in people not believing in masks, in people not believing that an election actually happened, suddenly you realize this isn't a joke and it's actually causing life or death decisions

and that from a psychological perspective is extremely troubling. It's also interesting to me the number of people that you and I both know that have large platforms that you could have this conversation with privately but don't want to say anything like I was talking to Tom Bill you who's great and he was saying he's like, but don't want to say anything. Like I was talking to Tom Billio who's great. And he was saying he's like, look, I don't like to be political because that's not what my audience is interested in. And he's like, but what really made me start talking

about this stuff was the realization that I wasn't saying it, not wanting to hurt the audience. And it's alarming how many people I know who are otherwise smart, courageous, civically-minded people who are sort of conspicuously silent about things because they think it would be bad for their email list. I. And it is bad for a email list. I can tell you.

It is. I can tell you that myself too. That's really funny. You say that. On Instagram, whenever I post, it's like, people leave. And I'm okay with that. I will say there is a foundational article called Who Goes Nazi?

Oh, and it is, first of all, before anyone listening says, oh my God, Rameet is comparing X to Y. Just read the article. It's a canonical article. And it talks about the type of people who in this writer's view would go Nazi. As I read this, as a student of history and psychology, I start to think to myself, what does it take

for somebody to speak up about something going bad? And I have a video I actually posted years ago where I talked about why I don't discuss politics. I was very proud of myself. I was wrong. And over time I started to speak up. I saw children being separated.

I saw lies about taxes. I saw, I saw, lines got crossed. And I said to myself, I am the son of immigrants. I've been, I went to Stanford on scholarship. I've been financially successful. I've bootstrapped a company. I've served 45,000 plus customers. If I can't speak up, then who can't? If I can't speak up, then who can't? And so I agree with you. It has been confusing and eye opening to look at people with a platform who have decided to ignore what's going on.

And again, I'm not asking anybody to be as political as I am. You choose your destiny. I'm not going to judge be as political as I am. You choose your destiny. I'm not gonna judge for how much you talk about, but I will say that when, you know, we talk about the elephant in the room, I mean, come on. How can you, how can you, if not, if you're not gonna speak up now

then what's the line that has to be crossed for you to say something? Well, that's that great, that great expression. I think it's from Hillel, the John Lewis popularized it. It's like, if not me, then who? And if not now, then when? I mean, and these are sort of fundamental questions that I think ultimately though,

go to bring this back to the beginning. They're actually a part of your childhood values, but they're also a part of the rich life. Like what is the point of being financially successful, of building a brand of platform, having an audience, if you're not going to use it when things count, that's what I have, that's the conclusion I've come to. When there are consequences on the line, when it's not so easy, and when I go out and talk about this stuff, yeah, there are a lot of people who have been reading me.

Many of my, you know, customers who said, Rameet, I've bought XYZ, but I'm out. And that doesn't feel good to see a great paying customer who I really respect, but I also know that there's a larger picture. And again, if I can't do it then who can? And what is the point of all this time and money that we work for if you're not gonna actually leverage it?

I think that's great. And I'm so glad you did. I'm so glad we connected and appreciate it. Thanks for going over to anytime. I always love talking to you. Thanks for the invitation. And yeah, I just wanna say thanks for being courageous. It really means a lot.

And I see it and I read it and I recognize it and I appreciate it. Well, I would say it's literally the least we could do. You know what I mean? There's like real people doing real courageous things. It's literally the least you can do. That doesn't mean it's meaningless, but it's literally the least you're obligated to do as a human being. All right, thanks, man. I appreciate it. Great to talk to you. Don't forget to subscribe

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