No Small Boy Stuff, Investing Wisdom from Nassim Taleb, plus ChatGPT Prompts We're Using

0:00 What's up, Sam? Hey. You like the uh You like the fit? Where did you get that?

0:04 The no small boy stuff. Christmas edition. But I want to I put my own in it like a day song on a rolless trip. I actually used the phrase no small boy stuff like kind of a lot. Yeah, I remember the guy who tweeted it. I think his name was Bengali eighty seven. And this was back in twenty twenty two. He said, Best business slash entrepreneurship podcast out there.

0:32 Big money that is. No small boy stuff. I love that. And that's basically the phrase that we use for this podcast a lot. No small boy stuff. But frankly, I kind of use it a lot in my life. Like, I don't know, man, that's small boy kinda stuff. Like it's sort of like in in succession where they say You're not a very serious person. It's kind of like that.

0:52 I also use the phrase, but I never say it. 'Cause saying it to me feels so cringe. But I think it like a thousand times for every one time that I say it. And every one time I say it. It feels so awkward to me. It's like saying It's like saying just do it in the Nike slogan way or something. You don't really want to say that hey guys. Yeah. In the fourth quarter, we just

1:15 Nike maybe just do it. And then they'll be like, What why are you saying slogans at us? But I do think it a lot. It's actually meaningfully affected the trajectory of my life is to use this phrase. And'cause there's so many situations where there's like a little small boy response, Oh, I'll I'll behave like a little small boy in this situation. Or Yeah, that phrase and uh what Amjad said recently about what will make the better story. That has had a a fairly meaningful change just in you know, it's only been a few weeks, but like I I think about that actually a lot. He also said something else where he was talking about

1:47 He was basically so comfortable with this like ten year plus Odyssey that he's been on building this, and we're like, Wow, you've been doing this for so long and wow, you did this for years before you had really any recognition or Any funding and he just kept going and he was just like Yeah, I persist. He was just like, Yeah, he's like, I think that's what I do. He's like, I I no I didn't really think about it that consciously, but like I'm pretty comfortable pushing the boulder for a long time up the mountain.

2:13 And I guess I realized like I guess that's my like competitive advantage. Like I'm in it for the long haul. And I'll just persist. It's like Small like Yeah. Quick intake of breath. What do you want to start with today?

2:29 I got a Good story for you. So There's this great Nassim Taleb quote or tweet. Where he uh Taleb who wrote uh black swan and anti fragile. He's kind of this like contrarian thinker. Success hedge fund investor, but he was successful because he had an interesting life philosophy and then he like became like

2:47 Uh a a thinker. Is that his I believe so. I believe so. I believe he's like a successful trader and part of his success Unless I'm mixing him up with somebody else. A part of his success was that He he noticed that humans are Um we would rather

3:03 Win frequently in small amounts. And then lose a bunch when we're wrong. It's like gambling, it's like playing craps, right? Uh you know, one roll of dice, you made a little money, two rolls of dice, you made a little bit of money, but eventually you roll a seven and it wipes out the entire board. All of the chips go away. But he's like humans are more comfortable with that.

3:19 Versus he was willing to lo bleed a little every day and look stupid every day. For years. But then when the his big you know, sort of like the big short, when his big bet pays off and his contrary and bet pays off, he makes back all the money in one day. Got it. And I I think that's his story. If it's not his story, his book is talking about the guy who does that.

3:40 So I can't recall if it's him or if he's the author or he's the author and the the the hero of the story. Okay, so he uh Telev tweeted this thing, he goes I conjecture that if you gave an investor The next day's news twenty four hours in advance. He would go bust in less than a year.

4:00 And this is basically the back to the future premise, right? So I don't remember the movie Back to the Future, but What's his name, Biff or whatever? Biff he finds uh like the sports betting book that sells all the winners for the next decade of exactly. He goes back in time and then he's just becomes a gazillionaire because he knows the scores. Um, okay, so like let's take if you knew the exact score. You have to be pretty dumb to not win. What these guys did and what in the same televising is I could give you the news, so not the price change.

4:29 But I could give you the news. And I bet you would trade in correctly. Dude, I think about this all the time, by the way. All the time, I think if I know what I know today, but I was ten or fifty years ago, how would I capitalize on that? I think about that all the time. Right. And you know, usually the easy answers for that are I just buy Bitcoin, I just buy Google, right? Like yeah, it would actually wouldn't be that hard.

4:52 If you if you could convince yourself, hey Do this one thing and just shut up and trust me. Like don't don't touch it for fifteen years. Now what these guys did was a little bit of a different experiment. So what they did was they took a hundred and eighteen As they call them adults trained at finance.

5:06 And they did the crystal ball test. And the crystal ball test was as follows. They said, We're gonna give you money. So they gave them fifty dollars each. So I said, You have fifty bucks. And you get to place trades. And you're gonna trade, but we're gonna f before you make a trade, we're gonna show you the front page of the Wall Street Journal. The actual front page of the Wall Street Journal.

5:24 From fifteen random days. In the last Like I think twenty years or something like that. Okay. So fifteen random days. We're gonna show you the front page of the Wall Street Journal. And that's a Wednesda edition. And you're gonna place the trade.

5:37 That would execute on the Tuesday. So the day before that news. So you had the news at twenty four hours in advance. They blacked out the stock prices. So they wouldn't just show you, oh, Johnson Johnson's up twenty percent, right? But they would say Like there would be the headline about Johnson and Johnson, they would just bl redact the actual stock price. But Johnson and Johnson beats earnings. Be earnings, exactly. Record job record unemployment.

5:59 Record jobs posting. Fed Indicates blah blah blah, right? Things like that. And and by the way, anybody can go play this game online. There's like a link to it. We'll put it in the show notes, but you can go actually do it yourself. I did it too. Um there's a couple other caveats to this when you go do it, which is

6:14 It's not just a buy and hold. Cause what I was gonna do, I went and did the thing, I was like, Oh, cool. This is news from fifteen years ago. Put all my money in, buy. And I won't trade uh I won't do anything else for the next fifteen year. I know there is a bull market, so I don't need to be smart. But the way that this test was designed was

6:31 The trade executes. And You either go up or down that day. So it's kinda like the trade closes that day. You know what I mean? Like you get one day gain based on the one day news. Okay. So They do it and uh

6:44 The results are not good. As you might expect. Otherwise I wouldn't really talk about this. So the results are not good. Half the players lost money. Even having been given the news. Uh, one out of every six players lost everything. And the way they lost everything was they l they let you trade on leverage. So you can trade up to like twenty X leverage.

7:01 If you want to in this thing, like an options trader could. Or you could just trade, or you could skip. You don't even have to trade any given day. You could just say pass. I I don't I don't feel confident. An example headline would be like an example trade would be they would see something that says like uh Fed has got a cut rate today. I guess you would assume that the index is gonna go up like a couple percent. So you would bet on the index or bet on what? It's basically the S P five hundred. Or it's uh the b the thirty year treasury. So then you can best best you can bet on one of those two things. You bet you buy the SP index for that day. Or you could um short a bond.

7:34 Do you go long or short? Or you can go long or short the bond. Right. So that's uh let me just show you an example. So like This is the Wall Street Journal that they the article that they show you. So it's uh Obama does something

7:46 Um, and then you see this business and finance section and talks about Rupert Murdoch, Chesapeake Energy says that their CEO's gonna step down. Auto sales are up. Homeland Security says blah blah blah. Right. So there's all this n there's all this news. And so you then go here And you place a trade. So you say, All right, I'm gonna go In this in this little game here. You you can see my screen where it gave me a million dollars.

8:07 So I'm gonna trade. And it says today's movement, I g uh you know, I bet a million dollars. So I use my full stack. Uh with no leverage. And um the day was up point six two percent. So I got an extra sixty sixty two hundred dollars, right? Then it gives me the next one.

8:22 And it says oh there's a There's a deadly plane crash. Iran is doing some shit. Okay, cool, blah blah blah. Kraft is in talks to acquire um this Brazilian company. And they're just blacking out any of the stock price news, right? So you read this and you can decide what you want to do and you do that over and over and over again. So fifteen tr fifteen days in history. And they tried to do it as fifteen. Like

8:43 They did a third of the days were like Fed quarterly meeting. Days A third was jobs reports and a third was complete randomness. Um, and they didn't they're like, We're not trying to trick you. There's no uh we're not like cherry peaking like misleading days. These are just actually like random

8:58 Front front pages, okay. This is an awesome experiment. And so uh okay, so back to the results now. So um, like I said, half the people lose the money. One out of six lose everything because they got overleverage. The average person was only able to gain three point two percent. So Even being given the news. During that era, the market was up on average, I think fifteen percent a year over the last fifteen years. I don't know when this was done. Correct. Correct. But again, these are all like one day trades, right? So you you don't you're not just like buying and holding from Oh, it was for fifteen days. The experiment was a fifteen day experiment. Exactly. Okay. And the and

9:32 So okay, now why, right? There's two ways you could lose in in investing. One is you bet wrong, meaning you pick the wrong direction. You think it's going up, it actually goes down. So basically, even given the news, they were basically only able to bet the direction correctly fifty one percent of the time. So It's the same as if, you know. You've just flipped a coin. You would have been right the same amount of times.

9:52 As you were being given. the actual front page of the Wall Street Journal. Okay. So information doesn't lead to actual insight. Um, especially news. The second thing is that uh why do they do poorly

10:05 Um They bet sized very poorly. So when you had an advance when you were correct. People didn't size up their bets enough. And when they're incorrect, they sized up their bets too much for the level of con conviction that they had. Um

10:18 And you know, this doesn't go in line with what people think. So they surveyed people uh separately, and basically seventy percent of people thought that. even if they got the news, you know, sort of like uh four uh like basically they thought that even four week old stale news would be predictive. And um You know, seventy percent of people thought that, but But in this case it it just showed that uh even you know, one day fresh news doesn't even really help you.

10:42 Okay, so then they went and they did an extra experiment. They thought okay Maybe those hundred and eighteen, you know, financial trained adults, maybe they're just not the best of the best. So they went and tried to find the best of the best. The best of the best actually did better. So they went and found five people that were You know, hedge fund guy. the head of trading at a top five bank, uh seasoned macro traders. So they're

11:02 used to trading on this type of news. They're considered the best in the world at this. And they actually did better. So what they did was All of them finished with gains. So all five finish with gains. On average, they were up a hundred and thirty percent.

11:16 And they also didn't bet on one out of every three. News things. The one of the big ways that they were better was they just didn't bet all the time. Whereas The casual was too active. Okay, what else do the pro do differently?

11:29 They were only right. Six percent. More. So yeah, if the um I think if the the at the The the test group was right fifty one percent of the time if it's going up or down.

11:40 These guys were only right fifty seven percent of the time. It wasn't like they correctly interpreted it. But when they were right, they bet sized properly and they never risked too much of their bankroll to where they couldn't recover. And so Isn't that amazing that you know only being, you know, six to ten percent better.

11:57 At your Predictive ability. But would yield a much bigger result, right? Three percent average gain for the test group, a hundred thirty percent average gain for the for the pros. So it's these small edges that can make a huge difference. when you apply leverage properly, which was the the bet sizing.

12:14 And what's the takeaway that Nasim Nassim um said, which is which is what? Well he was saying it in a polarizing way. He goes, I conjecture if you gave a investor the the next day's news, that he would go bust in less than a year. Um and and this kind of This basically showed that one out of six would go bust.

12:31 'Cause they would get overzealous around this. perceived edge that doesn't exist. And On the whole, most people would just do worse than if they if they didn't have the news. It's no better than random.

12:42 Right. And that's actually one of his books, Fooled by Randomness. Um and at the end they use this quote by Ray Dalio in there. This is a great quote. It goes He who lives by the crystal ball will die eating shattered glass. That's insane. So good, like that's it's weird that multiple smart people come to that conclusion that I never would have come to. Like I I would have thought like I I guess everyone would have thought that if you know the future or you know the news, you absolutely are going to outperform.

13:10 Exactly. Exactly. The counterintuitive wise conclusion. Um, let me tell you one one other related one. So there was one other uh story here that was kind of interesting. There was a real world version of this where a hacking group

13:24 Got access. They hacked the press release system. So they had access to the next day's press releases. that companies put out when they have like major announcements, earnings, results, et cetera. They got access to all of the press releases that were coming out the next day and they were using it as like their own form of like

13:42 you know, homebrewed insider information, right? They were able to get insider information and so they could place a bet in the market Overnight or the next morning. And that's like obviously that's like a twelve hour leading indicator, maybe, because like if you're um if you're gonna fire your CEO, you submit the press release maybe at five or six PM on a w on a Thursday, and then nine A. on Friday you announce it or the or the the wire goes live. Something I don't know the exact timing. I would imagine that it's a m it's a tighter window than that'cause there's too much leakage, but Even a twelve second advantage. Would be

14:15 In a a huge advantage. If you knew twelve seconds ahead of time what the news was about to be, you could just push the button, right? That's all you gotta do. That's like an interesting Like uh you know, like Hubspot, for example, whenever they have a uh that I'm a shareholder of, whenever they have like an earnings, I like I know when it's gonna go live that day. So someone is like writing that and they've submitted it to I forget what the P R Yeah, like whatever the popular thing is. That is kind of an i I did I I never even realized that, actually. Well that's that's why there's rules, right? When I was at Amazon

14:45 You couldn't trade the stock. In a there's a window, it's like a frozen window. So X days before the announcement, you can't make any trades. Oh, I know that, but I'm saying the employees of the PR, um Oh right, right, right. The wire they probably have the same, right? I I didn't even think about that as a leaky. Did that trade and then I had to go to the What were they like, You're an idiot? Uh so I

15:10 I'm like I've learnt about this afterwards, right? I'm a startup kid. I don't know anything about this. We get acquired. I you know, I make a trade and then I'm like, Oh shit. Well, so we're at a subsidiary of Amazon, right? You bought Amazon before you sold to Amazon? I bought Amazon stock. I bought more Amazon stock or something. Or I sold some members. I don't remember what it was. And I um I was like, oh shit. I just I just inside our trade. Did I just Get my hands dirty with a little big boy business. And so I'm like, oh shit.

15:39 What do I do? They're like, You need to go speak to the general counsel. And I was like, What? Uh so I get a meeting with the general counsel. Urgent, urgent. Possible possible big money move made. And I send the email, they get me a meeting sn stat. I go in.

15:53 And he's like, So what what happened? And I was like I went and made a trade. You know, I'm in the window and you know, I'm a executive, so Handcuffed me, take me away. I've been a bad boy. Take me away. And uh boy And I was like I was like, Yeah, it was like a hundred and fifty grand. And he was like It's okay. You just

16:14 Uh Did my lunch is outside? Can you bring it in before you eat? This is for actual execs at the actual company who make actual trades. I was like, Oh, okay, gotcha. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Let me guess it out. That's actually hilarious. He just like totally dismissed you. But what about the hackers. So Let's put you and let's let's test your criminal mastermind, which I love I love doing this, by the way. How would I how would I cheat if I was gonna cheat on it? By the way, you know that it's always The women always think to themselves, How would I get away from this bad person trying to hurt me? And the men always think in this in the they're they align with the criminal. Yeah, like how would I get away with this crime? That's like a I I I realize that after watching a lot of true crime. And so go ahead. I like this experiment.

16:58 So you're the hackers. You get this, but here's the problem. You they're like, Sam, we got it. We hacked him. You know. Dave over here in the corner did it. He got into the s we got root access. And they print out all of the press releases coming out, but they put it on your desk like, Hey, we got like an hour.

17:15 We gotta make a trade. And now there's sixty thousand press releases on your desk, what do you do? I guess pick like a random five and hold and and and act on those as soon as uh yeah, I mean uh it's h that's a that's a very challenging situation. I guess it's a it's a challenging situation. So like pick the the the first five and if it's good news Buy the stock if it's bad news.

17:35 Somehow short of but I don't even know to do that. So I guess I would only find like the five good news ones. You're like, I think I would still just end up holding the index fund. Vanguard just stay doing exactly what I always do. Eighty, twenty stocks and bonds, baby. So what what they ended up doing was they were like, All right, you you you sort of need to do a search function. to figure out what news affects the price the most in a positive or negative direction. And um I think what they figured out was that It was merger announcements.

18:04 that would be the highest kind of like volatility for the company that was getting acquired because it almost always gets acquired at like a fifty percent premium to the where the stock was trading. And so I think what they realized was we need to be able to quickly discard ninety eight percent of the news and information because it's noise. Right. Which goes back to the same experiment, right? The Most of the news information is noise. The secret is figuring out what is actually signal.

18:28 And most of us can't do that. And we overestimate our ability to figure out signal versus noise. And so they um they figured out the signal. It was these merger things, and they even they were only right in their predictive ability about seventy something percent of the time. It was enough to make hundreds of millions of dollars very quickly before they got caught for doing this and then they all went to jail. But

18:47 Isn't that cool also? I think that's the ending. When we sold the hub when we sold the hub spot, I think the share price, I think it was three hundred and fifty dollars. And then like the week they announced it, it went to like four hundred and sixty dollars, just something like this. It was February of twenty one. And Damn, Sam the needle mover over here. Well

19:09 Uh so that that stock price went up like I I guess that's a market cap of like one or two billion dollars. And I remember going to Kip, the CMO, I go Huh. You're welcome. He's like, Oh yeah, it was this acquisition that got mentioned one time in our earnings call. It just barely. It wasn't the fact that we had just announced that we grew by forty five percent and have been compounding growth of like th this, this, this. And uh I was like Yeah, causation is difficult to prove. I agree. I'm like, you don't understand. Can I tell you

19:46 Alright, so We two or three years ago, we talked about AI girlfriends. I sort of understood it. Because I like have actually developed like pretty good friendships mostly via text messages. I think a lot of people who have group messages here uh feel the same way. I didn't entirely understand it.

20:05 But in the last two or three months I've been using chat GPT In a way That now I'm like Yeah, if this would go away, I would be very upset. And I understand why people are very upset when they're

20:17 When they're AI girlfriend. Replica got when they did like a software update. Yeah. And so it basically I've been using chat GPT as like my thought slash I Assistant slash

20:32 And you actually said something recently. That made it a lot better. So I sat down. And I'll explain how I've used it. But I sat down and I said, Hey

20:42 Uh, can you ask me all the questions that a therapist or a life coach or an executive coach would ask? And we could spend a few hours But just me downloading, giving you a download on my life. And I did that. And since then it's been magical. And I've been using it for all types of purposes. I use it all day. And and I wanna maybe explain to you how I'm using it. Maybe you could explain to me if you're doing the same, which I think you are, and how you're using it. Right.

21:06 By the way, I'll just give you a quick one. My prompt that I used yesterday for this, I said I I was explaining the situation. I go Ask me a few questions. One at a time. Then when you feel you have enough info Then try to give me a suggestion.

21:19 Because Otherwise it just tries to like, you know, man you know, like mansplaining or what what is it called when like Guys here. Like your girlfriend has explained this up to you and you're trying to fix the problem right away. She's like, No, I'm not trying to get the fix right now. I just want you to hear me and understand me. And you're like, What? Like I thought you just want the answer as fast as possible, shoved in your throat. And like that's what chat GPT does by default. It's it's yeah, and there's a bunch of other downsides that I I want to explain to all this and how I'm working around it. But first I I'm using it for a variety of things. So I'm using it for personal finance stuff, and I'll give an example for each in a second. I'm using it for business questions. I'm using it as like a sparring thought partner of like I'm thinking about doing this.

21:59 What's your opinion? I'm using it as a therapist of like, you know, I'm struggling with this person at work or my personal life. How should I handle this or what should my life goals be? And then I'm also using it for helping me decide which task. So I'll give an example. So for net worth, I use Kubera. Kubera is like a net worth tracker. You just log in with your bank accounts and all your other accounts and it. Tells you your net worth, whatever. Well, they actually have a feature where you can download the information specifically for chat GBT. And you upload it and it doesn't have any identifying information. It's not like it has passwords. It just has a bunch of numbers. And so you can I will upload this to chat GPT and I'll say things like, you know, I'm I I like to be conservative, like Um, what would you rate this portfolio out of ten of risk?

22:39 Yeah. You know, like what's your opinion on it? Like what would Warren Buffett say? You can ask it all types of questions like that. Or you could also say, like, uh, you know, how much should I spend on a house? Or what will my net worth be in twenty years? Like things like that. And it's been actually really amazing. Another thing that I did was I took the main KPIs for my company. And I uploaded it to it.

23:00 And I'll be like, what are the needle moving things that I can do for this company? And you could do your KPIs, which is typically like an express Excel spreadsheet, like Your company's churn, new users, things like that. You can also do your company financials. And then another thing that I've been doing is I will actually take screenshots of my calendar and I'll upload it and be like What task should I be doing for the next week? the next month, the next quarter to get to the goals that I've told you about, you know, my life goals, which by the way, you helped me create. You helped me create quarterly and annual goals.

23:33 How should I be spending my time Today, tomorrow, next week, and next and it will it gives me an agenda. But I literally print out And I work according to that. It's like pretty wild and that's how I've been using it. And then all day I'll be like, um

23:48 How should I reply to this email? What's your opinion? It's kinda crazy. So that's how I've been using it. It's like you have Neuralink, they just never did the surgery. Right, like you're basically putting AI like As the you know, operator in your brain in many ways, but you're just like

24:05 You know, we just haven't reached that tech point where it where the chip is already implanted. Well, the next step of that is here's what's gonna happen. There's gonna be software, it probably exists, and I'm tinkering with a few of them. That records Your computer screen? Your phone screen. The words that you say out loud, the things you type. And it's gonna and it's gonna give you feedback on how you spent your day. It's gonna give you feedback on what to do, things like that. So it's gonna like you know how they there's a book.

24:28 I forget what the book is, but the premise is Google knows more than you because you are more honest in your Google searches than you are when you talk to your spouse or your friends or whatever. The same thing happens where it's like Yeah, you know I I spend this much time working on this, this and this and we're just be like No, you did not spend that much time do it. And also you told me that you're trying to be nicer. You wrote like eight really mean emails. Do you know what I mean? Like that's how it's going to be in the next six months, I think there's gonna be products like that that are actually nailing that. Yeah, I think the uh the CEO of Microsoft

24:57 Um I don't know if you heard the story, but I guess when Ballmer stepped down. And they needed a new CEO. Um and at the time Microsoft was kind of in a

25:08 Downward. Downward to flat. It was an uninspired stock and company at the time. So they needed something. And I don't know if you've heard the story, so the guy who became the CEO, Satya Nadella. Actually you

25:19 wrote a a memo. Like it wrote a kind of like a A manifesto. An internal manifesto about like where what m what Microsoft needs to do. And He ends up getting the job. And at the time it was like

25:31 He's like I didn't He's like, I never thought I'd be the CEO of Microsoft. Like, you know, you join Bill Gates as a CEO or whatever, and then Palmer and You just assume they're always gonna bring in somebody. But they actually promoted him from within. And um

25:44 He um He wrote this thing and one of the key principles that he wrote in this, this is a while back. Like oh five or ten or something? This was in twenty fourteen. So um He wrote Uh he he bet on two things. I I don't remember the second one, but I remember the first one he called ambient intelligence.

26:03 And ambient intelligence is kinda what you're describing, which is basically like um How do you have Uh you know, computer intelligence, uh artificial intelligence. But just like kind of on And be like kind of in your in your environment.

26:17 So that it can be helpful to you. So it just knows what you need without you having to go fetch it, without you having to go ask specifically. It can either anticipate it, it can be aware of out of your context. So that You don't have to like

26:31 first explain the whole situation and then be able to just ask your question. It already knows your situation, so you could just ask the question. That sort of thing. And so isn't that cool that he uh you know like So long. before uh you know, open AI wasn't even Incorporated at that point or something like that. This is this is a very long time ago. So Um

26:49 to bet on that as like one of the two Like Ways that the tech puck is going. Um Pretty baller. Which is shockingly hard, by the way. It's hard to make these predictions and m remove like the limiter part of your brain and just imagine like

27:02 Yeah, but what would be what would be a amazing. You know, like what would be cool if it if it then that's actually that sounds easy. It's it's really hard because you constantly think like Well, I can't do that, you know, like because that's impossible or that would cost too much money. Like there's all these limiters. But the way that I've been using this, like if

27:20 Like It it doesn't work perfect yet, though, by the way. This is like there's a h a few i i issues with this, and I am like super not technical. The first thing is contextual or context windows. Like uh the more you talk to it, it doesn't always learn more. You actually it runs out of memory in a weird way. And uh and so I've been testing like a variety of different platforms, Gemini versus um Chat GPT, but I wanna use Chat GPT because I think it's gonna be around the longest and they're gonna innovate the fastest. But

27:46 It's not perfect at all. But it's like shocking. How useful this is. I finally For a long time I'm like, Yeah, AI's great. Like I can l just like Google a stat and it's gonna tell me. But now it's more like

27:58 This is my life. Like I am using this more than anything. And so like they had their new$200 a month thing come out. And I don't even think I need the features, but I'm like Whatever, I'll take it. And so I've like contemplated contemplating like should I like invest a little bit of money into like building up these systems just for my personal operating system and like making my life great. And keep in mind, I don't know anything about any of this shit. I just know that it's it's just effective. Like it just literally is helping me get my day done better. And it's like A great bit of advice. Uh like here's a really another

28:28 Like practical way. I mean, you I'll upload my measurements for my body and I'll be like, find me clothes that fit. Or like does this fit does this uh pair of pants fit? And you just like post a link. Like I just I've been using it constantly. How are you if you are using it to be like this like sparring thought partner? Yeah, yeah. Well I think this is the key. So um

28:53 So what what we're saying is basically the way that uh I think by default people will use this is you ask a question, it gives an answer. And actually a equally, if not more powerful way is to do the exact opposite. You basically say I have a I'm trying to think about this. Ask me questions. And then you and you get it to ask you the questions. And then in that way it's your sparring partner. It is your thought partner in like kind of fleshing out or or getting your own clarity around a situation.

29:21 And it's available twenty four seven. It doesn't judge. It's in it's, you know, super, super intelligent, but also has like, you know, empathy. You can it you can go back and forth instantly. It's always available. Um And there's no lag time, right? It's better than a friend, right? You know you have a friend who you bitch to and you're like, I just need a vent and like just give me like what should I do here? But you kinda feel guilty like laying everything on them or making it all about you and like they don't quite understand exactly what you're talking about. This is just that person, but better. It's one of the right main reasons why coaches and therapists are great because you're like, Cool, we're gonna have a completely one way conversation here. Yeah. Like I I don't gotta give you nothing. I can come here and be a taker.

29:57 And that's the arrangement. And like, you know, I gave you the money, that's what that was for. And now from there on out, I don't need to consider your feelings in this interaction. That sounds like ruthless, but it's true. It's why it's different than just talk just talking to a friend. Whereas a friend you gotta be like Sorry, am I taking up too much your time? I don't mean to put all this on you. You're like You're always trying to like kind of half apologize.

30:17 And then reciprocate. And one of the cool things about a therapist or a coach is like that's not the social contract. That's not what's expected in that situation. AI's even better. It's like Hey, sorry to bug you at one AM. I just I'd like to talk right now and have like instant responses with complete intelligence and I'll just keep saying no tell me, you know, no try again until I get something that's satisfactory to me. It's like you couldn't even treat a human like that, right? So it's pretty great to be able to do that. It's become strange. I call it dude sometimes. I'm like, dude, what's your problem? That's wrong. Stop getting these like like uh like it's it's it's it's

30:47 strange. Because if you think about it When you're you're texting your friends Like it's uh because it's like in the same window or next to the same window on your computer, like you Kinda forget that this is a machine. And you can train it how to talk. It's very strange, but it's actually quite effective.

31:03 Do you know how an LLM works? You know what like deep learning is? No. I went and watched some videos the other day. Just to get like I was like, How is this magic?

31:14 Magicing. What is going on here? There's one by this guy Think it's called like three brown, one blue is like his his username or something like that. And he explains, you know. Uh machine like what is deep learning, which is like the technique that worked with AI.

31:29 And the second thing was uh you know, how large language models work. What does it even mean? What is large? What is a language model, what does that what does that even do? Well check this out. So okay, like Here's the example that uh that that it gave. Okay, so This is me not even trying to explain to you what it is, cause my explanation is gonna be pretty bad. This is me just saying

31:47 I can't believe that this is what actually is happening. I cannot fathom that this is the actual scenario. Okay, so Let's take this example. I wrote this d I put this on a card'cause like I can't forget this. I'll never forget what I learned. All right. So Imagine this number seven, right? So let's say you're trying to train AI. to be able to see that this is seven. How do you do that?

32:08 You can hard code it, but well, every time you see the number seven, it's like a capture, right? It's like written a little bit differently. So it's like You can't just say this is exactly a seven. 'Cause you write your seven slightly different than me. Maybe you put the little line through it, maybe you have a little angle to it, whatever, right?

32:23 So you just want it to be able to recognize anybody's handwriting and figure out seven or not seven. Right. What number is it? So how does it work? So imagine basically um A classroom.

32:36 Okay, so Here's Um a row of kids. So there's ten kids standing there. And each of the 10 kids is um like holding one of these cards with a different number on it. Right.

32:48 But actually it doesn't have the whole number, so um Or actually they have the whole number, but for at first it just says all right. There's a whole index card. We gotta figure out we don't even know if this is a seven or a dog. Or a car. It could be anything, right?

33:01 So it just zooms in and it says Let's look at this little section right here, like these twenty pixels, okay? These twenty pixels, um, you know. On this area, it's white. So if you got color there.

33:13 Sit down. Kids, anybody who's got color over here, sit down. Cause this picture is white over here. Can't be can't be you. You're eliminated. And then over here it's like Hey, there's some blue ink.

33:23 Something is here. So if you got blue ink in this little section Um stay standing. If you don't sit down. Right. So that like eliminates a bunch of, you know, like kind of Thought processing.

33:33 So then it passes it to the next layer. The next layer of ten kids and it says all right. Uh who here's got this flat line. Okay, so the f the seven stay standing, the five stay standing. You know, the threes are kinda like hey, we got some stuff up here up top. The eights But you know, the four, the number four doesn't have a little roof on top. So it's like I uh I'm out, I'm out. And you're like, Okay, go sit down. It's like paintball, right? You're out, go go to sit on the side.

33:57 And then so now you're left with like, you know, some of the numbers. And then it says all right, we got a little Little stick over here. Who's got a stick over there? And it's like the threes are like, Oh, I'm out now. That's not me. But the sevens and the fives are like, Hey, we're still in. It might be us, right? Bingo. And so you just keep passing it from layer to layer, showing it like kind of more pixels on the screen. And it's trying to get with some level of confidence.

34:19 At the end, right? It's gonna be seven and maybe five at the end, and the seven's like, Yo, I'm ninety percent sure it's me. And the five is like, Ah, it's maybe ten percent that it's me. It's just a ugly five. And then that's how the AI knows. That this is a seven, because it passes it from layer to layer to layer to layer, looking at the pixels on the screen and basically trying to figure out trying to guess. Is it

34:39 Is it one of you? I think with some probability it's this. Okay, so that's Just recognizing a number. Okay. Now imagine what you're doing. You're giving it

34:51 KPIs of your company. It has to understand what a KPI is, what a company is, that you're looking for strategy, what strategy sounds like. It's got to say something that. You as a successful business person who sold your companies for you know tens of millions of dollars That you will respect the output of this. Like, isn't that mind blowing that that's even a thing? And so then now you take how does that work? So it now you take instead of the seven, take an example where it's like The dog

35:18 Blanked. Right. What's gonna come after it you know, it basically sees a sentence, the dog. Uh or the dog. What's a dog and what do they commonly do? It doesn't even know that. It d has no idea what a dog is, has no meaning. It just has it read the whole internet.

35:33 So what they did was they were like, Hey, go read the whole internet, which like if you or I we were like yo, Sam, I gotta like, let's do this, man. We could do this. We're gonna take so much Adderall, we'll stay up all night and we're gonna read twenty four seven all the text on the internet. It would be like Thousands of years before we could ever In just what you know what they gave it. in one training run. Right. So they said, Go read all the internet.

35:55 Cool, done? All right. Now User puts in a sentence. The dog blank. Guess what guess what the next token is? Guess what the next little word is that comes after the dog.

36:07 The dog. It's like the dog barked. The dog jumped. The dog You know, is hungry, right? Whatever. It could be like one of many things. So then it takes the next word, which might be like

36:17 The dog barked. And then It passes that phrase back through. It's like now you've got the phrase the dog barked. What comes after that? And it just loops that over and over again to generate the next word. So that's when you see chat GPT writing.

36:31 Mm. It's literally taking like The the next token it thinks it should say, then it feeds it back through and then says, Okay, well, if I said if I said the dog barked. Then I gotta say loudly, right? Uh okay, loudly, period. Uh, if I said the dog bark loudly, what would I say next? And then it would it would keep and it keeps recursively doing that. And that's what's actually

36:50 That's how it it generates the training thing, right? That and that's like, you know, this is only part of it. Half explained correctly. But Let's assume for a second. Then I'm not like

37:00 completely misinterpreting this. Let's assume for a second that this is only You know a percentage of what I what is actually going on, right? There's still parameters and weights and all this other stuff that I haven't even talked about yet. This is like God, right? This is like w like

37:15 How is this even A thing. It's so mind blowing to me. It's mind blowing. It's absolutely mind blowing. And I think that um You know, I think young you know, I don't I don't hang around like eighteen year olds. I think they're using it for school, so I think they get it. I think I know a l uh a little bit about it'cause I hang out with smart people and I'm

37:34 on the outskirts of like what these guys are doing. So I kinda see it online and I play with it. For the average Joe, for my mom and dad For a thirty five year old who isn't like Tech Savvy who just works as a mechanic. I don't think that they're using it this way. I don't think they're using it at all. And

37:49 It's gonna change everything. It's just like so f like crazy, like when the average Joe starts getting into this. I I think young people, like a twenty-one year old or something, I think it's like changing schools, by the way. It's like the grading system is like totally F D Yeah, like when I like think about this, I'm like I'd like this Like there is no homework. You can't do homework anymore. You know what I mean?

38:11 Someone DM me yesterday. It's not just homework. Someone DM me last night. They were showing me um This guy Oliver, Oliver Hahn. He texted me this thing or d DM me this thing, he said uh Coding interviews. Like so okay, you school yeah, kids in school are Using chat you write essays and the teachers are like Fuck how do we

38:29 How are we gonna it's a cat and mouse game to try to be like, hey, how do I stop you from using AI to just like do your assignments. Well, the same thing is true for coding interviews. So coding interviews which are used to hire programmers, there's this website leapcodewizard.io. And basically it just helps you cheat on your coding interview. It's like, Oh, you got a coding test to get a job?

38:48 Just use this. Watch, it'll write all it's the same thing as a student. It'll write the essay for you, basically. And uh it's like you know. Doing fifteen grand a month and referring revenue of just helping people cheat on coding interviews. This is insane. It's so difficult, right? Uh, but it's kind of amazing. How are you using this every day? Um like let me just go to Chat GPT to tell you like my last game. Tool of choice or do you like any of the other ones?

39:11 Yeah, it is my like default and then you know, I play with Everything else. So Usually if I'm like how factually correct does this need to be, all perplexity. So I go to perplexity. If it's analysis, I'll use Chat GP like have you used like the O one stuff, like the deeper thinking stuff? Only for twenty four or forty eight hours. Yeah, it's brand new. But yeah, it's it's wild. It takes a long time, but it's wild.

39:33 Well that yeah, that's the point of it. It's basically if you told the computer, hey, you don't have to just quickly like again shove an answer down my throat instantaneously, where you're just predicting the next token and Uh, good enough to go, right? Seventy percent chance it's this word, let's just put it in. W they found they could get you could do more interesting tasks if you just said Hey, just take your time before you answer. So

39:54 Just give it more time to think and then it'll come up with a better answer. It's temperamental. Which is amazing. Um I use that. Like check this out. So there was this um press release recently for uh we were talking about IVF, remember? Yeah.

40:09 It's kind of this amazing thing, I don't know if you saw it, it's called Fertilo. Did you see what happened with this thing called Fertilo? So basically it was like the first live birth using eggs that matured outside the body. So like if you've done IVF, it's pr it's like a pretty expensive and pretty like harsh thing on the body, like The woman has to get like injections, which are h hormone injections to try to get your They're trying to get your eggs to essentially

40:30 Um mature. Be produced immature. Inside your body. And so what Fertilo did was they were like, Cool, instead of doing that like long, expensive sort of hard on your body process, we can take an immature egg. Take it out of the body.

40:45 And let's do the hormones hormone stuff out of the body and get it to mature and then we'll put it back in the body. And so it just like removes the um the pain from from the process. And the first Like actual live birth happened w of a baby.

41:00 That was born using that procedure. kind of amazing. If true. It's gonna make, you know, the it's gonna change IVF. Uh you know, it's gonna make it where I don't know if they'll it'll just be called a new procedure or what, but basically for you know a fraction of the cost, a fraction of the time, and a fraction of the pain. We can do

41:18 the thing that we've been doing with IVF. Okay, so Dude, it makes you realise that um I think that Sahel, uh I forget his last name from Gumroad tweeted this Like thing out where everyone made fun of him, where he talked about how he's like giving birth is

41:30 Not gonna happen in the future. You're just gonna um be in the sack. And That's how you're gonna grow. Oh shit, you're right. You know what I mean? Dude, I remember we were at a dinner and Jess Ma just said it casually in passing. She was like, Yeah, like you know I'm really, you know, excited for and fascinated by uh Uh basically like artificial wombs and basically, you know.

41:51 Yeah, you won't give Women won't give birth at a certain point, right? It'll be like Riding horses for transport. It's like you could you could do it if you if you want to go Have a unique experience. And she's like, it won't be it won't be necessary. And she's like pass the pass the mashed potatoes. And you're like, Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. So no, like literally that's exactly what happened. And I was like

42:09 And at the table I looked around and be like, was anybody else mind blown by that? What's going on? Like, don't we all want more information about that? But I'm at I was if there's like far diagonal seven peop people away, but I heard her say it. And I'm stuck over here talking about Facebook ads with some dork and I'm like, uh just I want to get out of this side of the table, get to that side of the table. So after the dinner. Jess, what did you say about wombs? And then she canceled it and I was like, um What was that thing you were talking about? And then she explained, and she explained the company's that she's tracking. And like where we are. in the scientific life cycle of like how real is that possibility and how What are the laws of physics? Is that inevitable or is it impossible? Right? Because

42:47 Basically if something is Not impossible, it's inevitable. Which in itself is kind of a dope idea. Um that already kinda blows my mind. And so she was explaining it. So you know, I've sort of been paying attention to

43:00 Any signs of movement in that area. Cause I think that's really cool. The world's gonna change pretty dramatically when that happens. Um But what I did back to the AI thing, I just threw the press release into ChatGPT and I said, explain this article to me. Tell me what they're saying, tell me what this means in simple terms. It's a press release. And so It might be misleading or overstating the success of this. So tell me about that too.

43:21 And then it just goes. Here's what it means in simpler terms. This company has achieved what they call the world's first healthy baby born. with a woman's egg that was mature outside her body. Normally in I V F the doctors are doing A B C. In this scenario, what they're doing is ABC.

43:35 And then it explains it. And he goes in simpler terms, conventional path is X. The new approach is why. Why it matters. If this is true, blah blah blah blah. And then it says, Here's why it might be misleading.

43:47 It's a press release, so it's definitely spin. Number two, one success doesn't prove a trend. It talks about the world's first, but it doesn't mention how many others they've tried that have failed in the hit rate of this procedure. It's not peer reviewed. It might be exaggerating the future impact. Um, we would need to know clinical trials, blah, blah, blah. And you know, and then I asked it more. I was like, Cool, what is the what does the scientific literature say about this? So all of a sudden I'm getting like a quick biology lesson. Uh another one.

44:11 brainstorming name ideas for a project. I'm like, hey, here's a project. Ask me questions about the project and then come up with names. Then it comes up with dorky names. I'm like, no, make the names not dorky and long and don't make it feel like it's written by Chat GPT. Make it feel like it's written by David Ogilvy and then like comes up with different answers. A lot of financial analysis, so analyzing stocks. Or just like Yo, I see Kathy Wood on my screen a lot. Like is she actually

44:34 Like great at investing. And then AI's like a monkey. I see Kathy Wood on my screen. Is she just hot or good at trading? Right? It's like you know, asking these questions and again, no judgment, just gives me the answers, which was Spoiler. No. She underperforms the indexes. And has over like a fifteen year period and makes a hundred million dollars a year to underperform the index. It's like wow.

44:58 Uh Good on you, Kathy Wood, for you know for for for doing that. Um, let's see. Other ones. Hey, I'm trying to do this in Excel, but I don't know how to do it. Can you just tell me the function I need to write in?

45:10 'Cause like, you know, if you go Google this stuff, you get like YouTube videos you have to watch. Yeah. So now I'm like, all right, forget the YouTube video, just give me the like the exact Typed thing I need to go type in. Or I'll screenshot the Excel window and I'll just say I'm trying to m figure out in column C. What are the ones, blah blah blah blah. And it gives me this like complicated, you know, whatever.

45:29 Count if's formula that's as multiple like selectors or whatever. Oh, I play games with my kids? So we take pictures of like my Sun got all these sharks. And so we just took a picture.'Cause he's asked me questions, right? Like Dada, what is this shark? And I'm like, dude, shit if I know, right? Like

45:49 You know, it's kind of like something I always dreaded as a parent. Like, Oh, cool, my kids gonna ask me questions that I you know, where does rain come from? And I'm like, It's in the clouds. It's like how do you get in the clouds? I'm like Think it was in the ocean and then it just like Zipped up there because it was hot or something. And like I'm like, this is gonna be terrible. I'm gonna expose myself And so

46:09 I just do Chad GPT voice mode. And I will be like, I'll send it a picture and I'll go voice mode. I'll be like, Hey, uh tell me what these sharks are from left to right. And it reads it out to my kids and then my kid can ask a question. He'll be like, Which one is the strongest shark? And it'll be like Actually the great white shark is the strongest shark with the most powerful bite. And he'll be like,

46:26 No, but what if it was with a cheetah? Hey back, well, the cheetah wouldn't be in the ocean, but if it was in the ocean and like it's it'll like interact with my kids if we have like a fun time. They'll uh they'll tell me all the time, Can we play with AI? Dude, that's so good. I've got a bunch of friends whose children are like three, four, five talking age and they like are doing the exact same thing. Let me trivia another hack for parents. You can go Hey, I'm sitting here with my two kids. Their names are you know, whatever. Timmy and Tommy.

46:51 And um we're gonna We wanna do paw patrol trivia. Ask us easy questions and when we're right, say ding ding ding and when we're wrong say, That's not right, try again. And keep track of the scores. All right, go. Literally you could just say that to it in voice mode.

47:04 And it'd be like All right, first question. Marshall is a pup known for What? And you're like fire and it's like ding ding ding. Correct. W with her. Like it it's pretty crazy, uh how the like imagine being

47:19 you know, raised with this. This is insane. The I'll give it let me give three practical ways I'm using it. So they have this new thing called I think it's new ish, called projects. And so I have three folders right now. And the way it works is you have like a folder as a project, and then you can upload files to the project, and then you can have multiple conversations within the project and it refers back to the files or whatever information. I have a help folder.

47:46 And so you know how everyone has like their own health guru? And it's like usually based off of like one book they read. Well, I go and download your book. Yeah. Well, I go and I download the book that I ascribe to. And I will upload and I uh if it's a book that's ePUB, which is how I buy it on Kindle, I convert it to dot text file because that's easier to read, and I upload the dot text file. Uh to the even though it's like huge'cause it's a book, that works.

48:12 I give it a full book. I the full book. I download it and I convert it. And then like So for example Um, we were going to the grocery store uh today and I just said like, you know, there's like this interesting book I just read and I upload the I've re uploaded the book. And I'll just say, Make the grocery list for me. Um and and then I'll and I'll tell me actually uh and I'll say uh w which grocery stores should I go to?

48:33 um in my area and it knows where I live and it says, Yeah, like these three grocery stores will have exactly what you need. I I I think they will have what you need. Because like you know, I'm on like clean me. kick or whatever and he was like, Yeah, the author says like to buy this cut of meat And you should ask the butcher this, this, and this, and like th here's three butchers that appear to have what you need. And it's all based off of like the files that I've uploaded uh for health. Uh but then within health, I can ask it, um it no I'll like

49:01 Hey, this quarter I want to run a five K at this particular time. Um, give me like a good app to use that can help track my running and also tell me like what my goals should be. So that's like a uh a couple health versions. The second one is um I've got a clothing one where I literally took a photo of myself and I used a tape measure to measure various parts of my body. And I upload it to it and I was like, All right, like make a chart with all my measurements. Thank you. Remember that always. Um, here's some like clothing that I want to buy. Here's the links. Can you like go and figure out what size it is and let me like will that fit? And they're like, Well, this pants Uh it it says that the the same

49:36 width is your thigh, but you actually want like two inches usually uh extra width that that will probably feel more comfortable. Or what I'll do is I'll upload like a blog that I'll like, Die Workwear blog, and I'll say, hey, um here's a picture. I'll literally lay a tie next to a jacket and I'll take a picture of it and I'll upload it. And I'll be like, does this tie match this jacket? And I'll be like No, but that other tie that you showed me a picture of a while ago, that actually would look great here. It's like that's how I use it. And then the final way that I use it, and this is like my life coach folder, which is like It's like partially like I'll complain to it and be like, you know, I noticed you've been complaining about this a lot.

50:11 Um, or I'll upload business financials to it. And that's like more of like my sparring partner throughout the day. So I have three folders right now. Health. uh clothing and like a life coach. And so those are like the practical ways. And I'm using projects. That's Yeah. That's the term on chat GPT. Um, and that's how I'm using it as of now. Dude, people are just gonna replace their co founder with

50:30 With this. Right, like You're gonna see a lot more solo founders because You could just have an AI co founder. You're gonna say, um, well, you know, you'll reduce churn if you use this messaging when you email your users. And then you're just gonna say Uh yeah. Well you have my log in to MailChick, like or Shopify, like go ahead. Yeah, get it done. Or you'll be like, you know, my Shopify store

50:53 Uh it's like a two point one conversion rate. And it's like, hey, I you know, we ran this A B test, uh, it like increased your conversion rate to three percent, and you're like Get after it. You know, go do it. And that's what's gonna happen. And so anyway, we've had these intelligent people, Darmesh, whatever, explain to us all these things, but it wasn't until the last two months and in fact in fact recently, actually, since you told me to ask him the the ask chat to be that question. That like I'm like, oh my God, this is my life now. And in fact, you actually sent out a wonderful email the other day where you said, Here's how to ask powerful questions. I uploaded that email to ChatGBT and I'm like, remember these questions and like ask me them often or ask yourself these questions often. Yeah, I mean it's just so

51:35 It's incredible and it's also so obvious that uh I think that chat GPT is I mean it is the Google of our generation. And I guess the other question is like why am I not Why am I not a shareholder of open AI? Like what how do I how do I go to sleep at night?

51:51 Well, I mean Dharmesh had to buy a ten million dollar domain and then convince them to buy it in order to become a shareholder. So like it's like asking like that. There is always a way. But that's like saying like why am I not a billionaire? It's like well like You could be, but like here's some of the barriers to entry that you've got to overcome. So there's certainly you should ask Chat GPT that, by the way. It's a good question, by the way. Uh why am I not a billionaire. It is a great question, but like there is ask yourself that question? I asked a friend that question. Um And uh They weren't even really that close of a friend, so it's kind of a Yeah, it was a blunt question to ask at a dinner. I was like

52:29 Why are you not already a billion? Um And He gave a great answer and he goes uh or actually what he was saying was You know, I wanna start a

52:40 billion dollar company. Something something something. And I was like, why have you not already done that? And he goes. I think when I

52:51 was starting these other companies that I started. Because I didn't actually understand what a billion dollar company looked like. And if I had known that I would've built a different company.

53:00 Um And he was he was correct. And and you know, the the as we dug in, it's like What makes a company a billion dollar company, like, you know, there's really only a couple of paths to that. And you know, one of them, for example, is um Like building something that has network effects. So he had been building companies that could do like great revenues.

53:20 They could even be profitable. They could grow fast. Like you know, like those are some of the things you need. But there was no network effect. It was no durability, there was no defensibility. There was no like Win the category.

53:32 It was like just go to a category where you can win inside that category, but there will be other winners and you'll see now. It was like I uh just for as an example, that was like a a gaming company. It's like th there's a lot of mobile gaming companies. And at the time, like to build to To build a billion dollar gaming company.

53:49 require like you really had to be like one of the like, you know three that were gonna get built in a five year window, right? Like you had to build You know, Clash of Clans or you had to build Candy Crush or you had to build like one of those. And even in one of those, it was like, Oh, actually, you know, I'm sitting here tinkering on cool game designs. And actually the thing I need to do is

54:11 Build a enormous Paid marketing. The top paid marketers in the world to acquire hundreds of millions of customers is what I need to do.

54:21 And like The cool Artsy game design that's gonna win me awards is not gonna That's not what a billion dollar gaming company looks like. So he just didn't understand the shape of something. And I th I find that that to be I find that to be true.

54:34 About most of the goals. So instead of How can I do this goal? Another way of saying it is why have I not already done this goal? Why is that not already true for me? And then it

54:44 Points out some like, you know, either knowledge gaps or execution gaps. better today. Um That That are like more more close to your timeline versus When you set like an ambitious goal that's like far in the future and you sort of bake in that it's gonna take a long time.

55:01 Um You sort of avoid the maybe the harsh realities that might be actually existing today in your world about those. Yeah, you had a great email with a bunch of those questions. It was d here's a Here's a bunch of decision making questions, which is I'm not sure I'm not sure. What should I do? Instead you should say, What would I do if I weren't afraid?

55:19 One bad question is how can I make this succeed? The better question is What would make this certainly fail? An final example is I can't decide which path is the right to pick. A better question or better version of that is what path

55:32 Makes for the best story. This is actually uh Uh a pretty good email. I think I replied. I said this was a ten. Um, but you have like a list of better questions and I use those questions in chat GPT because I What you're what I'm learning with Chat GPT is

55:45 You have to Get it to ask you. better questions in order to you know, its input is important for its output. And so yeah, I I pretty much stole that email. Yeah, they I think the

55:59 The realization was Tim First had said something way back, I think I put it in the Um In the email, but he had he used this phrase, he goes He was talking about it in the in the p in the podcasting. Realm, but first first he had this quote. Yeah, you can read it out. He goes, If you want confusion and heartache, ask vague questions. If you want uncommon clarity and results, ask uncommonly clear clear questions. Often all that stands between you and what you want is a better set of questions.

56:24 Exactly. And uh he said this about his podcast, he goes I view questions as like a A pickax for the brain, like a you know, like a pickaxe when you're summiting a mountain. And you you use it to l sort of like

56:36 uh pierce the the the side of the mountain and and and use it to pull yourself up. And so in many ways you are excavating the brain with this pickaxe and your pickaxe is questions. Um, another phrase I use all the time in businesses is Ask a better question, get a better answer. So often if somebody asks a a bad question, and I'll call a bad question either a vague question, open end question, or a question in the wrong direction.

56:59 Um I think the rookie move is just to answer I have question at face value. Like you should not answer One hundred percent of the questions asked. Like

57:09 A lot of the questions need to bounce back. To send her. Oh, this has the wrong address on it. You gotta write a better address on that. This won't get delivered. The way you've written this address is not gonna get delivered. And and so you You bounce back some questions and say, Maybe the better question to ask is

57:25 Blank. For example like You know, instead of how can we succeed, which is like a million paths all unknown, it's What would make this certainly a failure? That's much more knowable. And we can we can establish a few ground rules from that question and get some momentum towards this. And uh you could see this with your brain, just like if you ask chat, you know.

57:43 They call it prompt engineering when it comes for AI, right? being able to ask the AI in a certain way that's gonna get you a better result. Absolutely the same thing is true for yourself and for people around you to ask better questions, right? Um I do I I I ask annoyingly stupid questions to my team all the time. Like it'll be

58:02 Um One question I love to ask is What are we stupid for not doing right now? And it's just a i that question it comes loaded. With a presumption that there's something stupid we're doing. Of course there is. We're always doing stupid things. And specifically

58:16 What are we stupid for not doing right now? Meaning what is an obvious low hanging fruit? That's in our face. And we're out here searching for the complex. When the simple Stupidly obvious thing is is here.

58:29 And you know, I I would say more than fifty percent of the time, there's a useful answer to that question. But if you didn't ask that question, it would just go unspoken in your company, right? So like how many are those? Another one that I learned from Amazon is Amazon asked this thing in the If you're like if you're an exec that leads a team, you have to like write this document at the end of the year called the OP one. I think it's the operating plan. One. And you you do two a year, right? The operating plan one and then you have the operating plan two at halfway through the year. Was that effective? Yeah, it's great. Uh I'm I'm a fan of the Amazon writing. Culture.

58:59 It's easy to make fun of also and easy to do wrong, but When done right, super effective. So one of the things that they a uh one of the like common questions that they ask in that is What are the dogs not barking? And it's back to that Sherlock Holmes story where he solves the case because he's like

59:15 And they're like, How did you know Sherlock? And he's like 'Cause there's like a house break in, they're trying to figure out who did it. And he's like Well, it was the dog, of course. They go, But the dog, the dog didn't do anything. He goes, Exactly. The dog didn't bark, which means he must have recognized the person that broke in, which means it must have been the you know, the housekeeper or whatever, right?

59:31 And so In your business, there's what are the dogs not barking is a good way of asking What are the things that There's really like I I interpret in two ways. One is What are the things we should be hearing that we're not? So for example, one week I didn't send out my Friday email.

59:47 And I just sat there and I was like Like you want people to complain about it. Emails being like, Hey, where's the Friday thing, man? I love that. Oh, I didn't get that. Okay. Dog not barking, right? And then I had changed how I did the Friday emails because of that. It's like, Well, why'd you make that pivot? It's like

1:00:02 Because I I did Jenga, dude. I took a block out and the tower was fine. Nothing Nothing fell down. I'm trying to only have like I'm trying to be an email in your inbox that if I remove that email Your life got worse, you know. Speak the manager.

1:00:17 Where's my goddamn email? Right? Like if DoorDash doesn't deliver your food, you're you're you're knocking on a door. I want to be at least more powerful than the DoorDash delivery, right? Like that that that's that's what I'm striving for. And so that's one way of interpreting it. The other way is. Um, what are the problems that you don't hear about yet, but are certainly there. Um, that's another way to think about the dogs not barking is like

1:00:38 You know, anticipate a problem around the corner. Because We know it's gonna be there. Um But we just haven't heard it yet. But you know.

1:00:45 We we can anticipate it and maybe get ahead of it. Dude, I'm telling there's gonna be a world probably in three years where you're gonna like So The issue that a lot of smart people like you and me and people listening is like you're like well I'm really smart and I feel like I'm wise and I feel like I know what to do, but like

1:01:02 It's a lot of work. And then like literally the I the the idea guys are going to thrive in five years or the wise people because There's gonna be AI agents doing all of this for you. You know what I mean? Like you're not gonna have to actually do that work. You're just your your your opinions or your taste don't matter. Why can't the AI do the idea part two, right? I don't think you are. So so then what? Right? And then then that's when the brain breaks and you're like, I guess it's over then? And uh

1:01:32 I'm not sure. Wait, so are you actually afraid? Yeah, kind of. Like I I don't wanna say afraid'cause I'm not like Yeah, quivering in my boots about it. But I guess like I don't have a satisfying answer.

1:01:44 And for most things in my life I got a pretty satisfying answer. Sometimes the answer is just I'll deal with it when it happens. All right. I'll just adjust, right? And I could feel safe. I could feel comfortable with that. Uh, that's usually my fail safe. With this one, it's kinda like

1:01:58 So when the AI can Do everything. Right, which is like It seems like it's a matter of when, not if at this point. Um, okay, and it's like seems like it's in my lifetime.

1:02:11 Yeah. Probably In the next ten years. Um It could do the work, but it can also figure out what the work to be done is.

1:02:19 All right. Well I guess I I'm less afraid of the like uh Oh and then it's gonna crush human uh humans and try to you know it'll go rogue and it'll it'll attack us. Like I'm not as afraid of that. As I am just like the what's the point of all this?

1:02:33 What's the point of doing any of this stuff if that's gonna be true? And that's kind of just like a A weird place to land. Um So you want to end there? What the fuck, right? Podcasts are all that safe, dude. No, they're not. No, they're not. Perplexity has a daily podcast that's really good. They just take the news that as great and then they have or no, it's not perplexity. It's uh what's the thing? Eleven Labs. Eleven Labs has they use like a Steven Fry voice and they read the news. I listen to it. It's awesome. It's not safe. We're not safe. No one's safe.

1:03:07 Maybe like a plumber. A plumber sage. I actually think our strategy's pretty genius because we Uh getting stupider. Uh all right. Just like we dumb ourselves down and AI's trying to get smarter. And so there's actually a white space in the market.

1:03:21 for some just imperfect knowledge. Some uh some half baked ideas and some uh some some incorrectness. I think we've really I think we've stumbled onto something. I think we might be the last one standing in this whole podcast game. It's us and Theo Vaughn it's just like the dumbest conversations on earth are gonna be all that's left because the AI's gonna do all the smart ones. Maybe.

1:03:41 I mean I don't know. Maybe Mark Andrewsen should be scared right now. Not that. Yeah, the smart guys are fucked. Like the smart guys built. The the smart guys are digging their own graves. They're like their shovels are clanking together on accident as they're like digging the same grave. They're like oh sorry, my bad. It's like they don't realize that you guys are going into this grave in about a year. My name on the two stuff. Yeah. That's weird. Is there another mark here? Two Margaret Dreesons Like they think that they're like they're like we're putting the blue collar guy in this grave and we're gonna outdoor this fucking job They're like Huh I've never Mr. Dre said. Are you here? Like you know what I mean? Dude, I found my my new sick burn.

1:04:28 And the uh TikTok comments. You know, there's all these TikTok clips of podcasts. Like we should probably be doing this, but we don't really do it very much. But like People just clip. you know, podcast sick uh snippets and that's like a lot of TikToks.

1:04:41 Um And the more viral. The more Basically the more outrageous the comment in the in the podcast, the more viral the tick tock clip because you're gonna get a bunch of comments being like this is that No, that's wrong. That's stupid, that's whatever. And um

1:04:53 I saw the best one, it was just the top. Top liked comment on a podcast clip, which is it just said Podcasting equipment is way too readily available. This is like damn anybody can just get a microphone now? Uh that's how I feel when I see a lot of these clips. I'm like wow, this shit is These microphones are way too easy to access. Have you heard that song Another White Boy with the podcast?

1:05:18 No. Yes, to the song. I'll call another white boy with a podcast. How did I not do that? It's sort of like that uh like finance six four blue eyes. It just says like Joe Rogan. Like it just says like a bunch of like random phrases, but it's called another white boy. We should have a play that song on the way out of this. That'll be our outro. All right. Cue the music. Should make. About the Five mics.

1:05:56 Chairs we sit down. We're gonna be millionaires Just don't forget to like and share Oh. Ooh, another white boy with a podcast.

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