#872: Graham Duncan — Talent Is the Best Asset Class (Repost)

0:00 Optimal minimal. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. So now I'll do this one question. Now it is seen. My cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal and those cells. Sure

0:24 Hello, boys and girls, ladies and gents. This is Tim Ferris, and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show where it is my job to deconstruct world class performers of all different types. Whether they come from military entertainment. sports. Бізнес It's a pretty wide spectrum, and today my guest is

0:44 Gram. Duncan. You can find him at gramduncan.blog. Eastrock Cap.com and at Graham Duncan NYC on Twitter. Graham is the co founder of East Rock Capital, an investment firm that manages

0:57 Approximately two billion for a small number of families and their charitable foundations. Before starting East Rock fourteen or so years ago, Graham worked at two other investment firms. He started his career by co founding an independent Wall Street research firm. Graham graduated from Yale with a BA in ethics, politics and economics. It's a lot of stuff. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. And serves as co chair of the Sone Conference Foundation, which funds pediatric cancer research. Josh Waitskin, one of our very good mutual friends, will probably pop up.

1:26 Here and there in this conversation. Thought of the thing. Most often as the basis for searching for Bobby Fisher, although he would cringe to hear me limited to that, calls Graham. Quote The tip of the spear in the realms of talent tracking and judgment of human potential in high stakes mental arenas.

1:44 End quote. That is a very Josh sentence. And Graham, it is a real pleasure to be sitting here with you. Thanks, man. Thanks for taking the time. We've had Many conversations we haven't caught up in a while. We've also had terrible food poisoning together along with Josh.

2:02 So I feel like We have seen each other. In high stakes. Maybe not mental, physical arenas. We we if I recall correctly, almost

2:12 decapitated each other when learning to paddleboard with Josh at one point. And I am excited to chat for a lot of reasons. Number one, I always learn something. When we sit down and talk. And I don't think of you first and foremost.

2:32 As An investor. You certainly do that very well, but I Enjoy

2:40 Watching your thinking. and listening to your thinking. So th I I think that for people who are in the audience and who might be wondering right off the bat. How will this apply to me? It is

2:53 Hopefully. transferable to a l just about any domain. I think that thinking, clear thinking is really a lot of what we'll be discussing, but for people who just heard this bio. and are kind of scratching their heads. As to what you exactly do.

3:08 How do you explain What you do. Well, I try to find people who are better at doing a thing than I am at doing that thing.

3:19 And I first came to this twenty years ago. I had just started a firm with a professor of mine at Yale. And we're running this independent research firm. I'd hire A sales guy.

3:31 Cool. We're two years in and we're in a group meeting and he says to me at a certain point, Graham, what the fuck do you do here? And At that point I

3:41 had some real imposter syndrome going because I was hiring and firing thirty people much older, much more experienced than me. And so I sat there for thirty seconds'cause it's like what the fuck do I do? And I I've always said to him, you know. Robert.

3:56 When you first interviewed the cum To our firm, you were applying to be an analyst. And I was interviewing you as an analyst. I didn't see your eyes light up when we talked about Political analysis or economic analysis. But then you proceeded to stalk me for the following four weeks. You called me at home back then. You email me twice a day.

4:16 And I had this moment of revelation I was also interviewing salespeople. Robert should be our salesperson and you trusted me enough to come and try it. And now you've built our entire business. And I'm not a good analyst.

4:30 I'm not a good salesperson. But I put you in that seat. Now we've built this thing. I put you into this positive feedback loop that We're calling a business here. And that's what I do. And I feel like

4:42 I wouldn't pick that skill out of a lineup as my thing. It's the cards I was telling it's what I end up being compulsive about and interested in in this way. Yeah. world seems to like me doing it. But It's an odd center of gravity. But today I think about it as

4:56 My mission in life is to get as many people as possible into positive feedback loops. And It's a good skill to have because it's right next to a weakness of mine, which is I'm kinda lazy. Maybe that's why we get alone. So I like getting the design right up front so that I don't have to like if I hadn't be talking to Robert once a week as a political analyst saying, Do this, don't do that. I don't wanna put something into somebody, I wanna have them

5:23 do the thing that they want to do anyway. If you construct organizations and teams that way. You unlock a lot of stuff. So for me today I use that philosophy a lot'cause I act in effect as a general contractor for families to manage their wealth. In order to do that, my team and I meet over a thousand teams a year to try h to hire the best

5:43 Investment. Craftsmen of any given substrategy. And sometimes those craftsmen Those investment managers. Who were trapped inside large organizations

5:54 start their own firms on their own or with their help and you you unleas all this extra investment energy Ingenious that they weren't accessing in their prior context. And we get to participate. And that together with them. So it's now been twenty years, but I feel like a

6:09 Basically been playing different variations of the same game. And at at that time, how old were you roughly? Twenty four, call it? Twenty four. So we're gonna we're gonna talk I'm sure a lot about this and Uh well I I won't make this just a a list of Josh quotes, but I mean I I was texting with him.

6:30 And he reiterated, I think, what he just said. And Josh, my apologies. I know we didn't talk about me reading your text up front, but This is pretty safe. So a core genius. For Graham is talent hunting, finding funky A plus. So that funky word on it, at some point we're gonna talk about it.

6:47 A plus potential mental performers in the finance space. And then he goes on. You have systems and Frage. That you use for this.

6:59 At twenty four, though I would be really curious to hear you. Try to describe what made you good at it then. Also, if there's anything that comes to mind. Ар тенз за юсі

7:13 that other people tend not to see. Or are there Any types of questions that you ask yourself that Even at that point, perhaps You had picked up along the way. Is there anything that comes to mind?

7:25 Well, I think of it as having a certain taste in people and I like taste because and I think I had a certain taste back then and it's evolved and I can articulate a little better than I could back then. But I mean if you think of taste, I like taste over judgment because judgment implies there's one answer. Whereas taste you have a certain taste in podcast guest, right? There's something similar

7:46 Two the group and you could pick a Tim guest out of a lineup. Right. Tall, dark, and handsome. Yeah, so

7:54 I'm trying to think back then I think the imposter thing kinda helped because I was trying to hire people who were better at doing a thing than I was at doing it and I knew I couldn't do it. And so I was forced. To say, okay, what constitutes excellence in this thing? In that context, we'd hired a bunch of sales guys. They actually didn't like code calling.

8:13 And a lot of sales guys, understandably Don't like the rejection of Cold calling and I found this one guy for whatever reason thrives on it. A couple of years ago I ran into somebody who was a client or a prospective client of ours back then. І сей стіл дрем.

8:27 This guy Robert is trying to get me on the phone and I wake up in cold sweats in the middle of the night. We built our entire business on this guy. I think it's seeing I find myself curious about what makes people tick in this way that I don't get Tired of it.

8:42 And how is that? Tastes. evolved to today. So if a component of that taste Or At least

8:51 Alerting your spider sense. Is identifying certain Outliers. say in preferences or behaviors back then. Like Robert thriving on Cold call.

9:01 Rejection. Yeah. What do your tastes look like? Today. Or more recently, or what constitutes your taste. when you're scouting for talent or evaluating talent.

9:13 in the the world in which you now operate. I like a framing I read once that people like musical instruments. And the range of notes they can play is dependent on the range of tensions that they've learned to hold. And I like that because it acknowledges that everybody whatever they're playing right now, there's actually other notes they can play in a different Context.

9:34 So As an example. Uh Tension I'm focused on right now in the investment management world is I think there's something really interesting about the tension between

9:43 Someone's intensity. And integrity. Or if you double click on each of those aggression. And humility. And if you were to rank

9:51 To try to use a concrete example. I've written an essay before about David Tepper. I don't know David Tepper. He's somewhat in the public domain. He's on C N B C He's written some. And I think David Tepper in many ways is the platonic ideal of a a good hedge fund manager and a good investor. And one thing he he holds is like I think people work for him, but I've interviewed people who've worked for him.

10:11 They experience him as as that mix of like super aggressive in taking a position in uh An equity or debt security. From zero To twenty percent of the fund.

10:22 With no No hesitation. And yet If you were On the other side.

10:27 Of a transaction with him. He's not going to Do something. That you characterize a I mean you would never say fraudulent, but He's not gonna be overly aggressive. Like he's playing the game because he enjoys it.

10:40 But he has an ethical core. And I feel like that tension A Goldman Sachs they have this term. Is someone commercial? And

10:48 I think of that. I love that word and I think of commercial as People give off this vibe of I'm gonna create more value than I capture. Yeah.

10:57 versus somebody who's more transactional. is trying to capture All the value. And People who are commercial.

11:03 Who balance that tension of aggression and integrity or aggression and humility. They tend to clump together, they like doing business with each other, and so you hit these pockets of People with that. How do you test for something like that? Or Stress test it. In the sense that

11:19 I would imagine many of the people, if not all of the people, who make it to the point that they're interacting with you or your team. Have already cleared a lot of hurdles. They've already checked a lot of boxes. Mm-hmm. And many of them will be good at selling themselves and no one is gonna volunteer that they lack integrity. They'll be well there is this one thing. Right. Uh I'm a very, very, very skilled and intelligent, you know, deceptive artist or never.

11:47 So how do you Try to evaluate that. Well one Evolution of my process has been I just treat my interview as one perspective. And then

11:58 people think of references as the thing you do after the fact to me it's the whole thing. References and getting the sense of s how someone's interacting in a repeat iteration game in this thing we call financial markets, to me that's People generate Trust. And it's like this intangible asset that that's around them and the trust sits.

12:17 in the heads of everybody. they've interacted with over time. And my job is to see how everybody else they've interacted with The employees, their former bosses, their піers. end up relating to them.

12:30 in the way because of the body of work they've had. In the past. And so Like w we did that dinner with Chris Fussel that time. I think Fussell and Stammy Crystal's language around Trying to assess

12:42 Someone's credibility. And then based on that assessment, how much decision space to give them? To me that's so beautiful and that's exactly how I think about what I do. So And they have this formula credibil equals Proven competence.

12:56 Plus relationships. Plus integrity. So What I'm trying to do What I'm trying to understand, for instance, someone's

13:05 Integrity is understand how they Behaved. in prior moments of stress. Right.

13:12 Two thousand eight. Was it amazing for anybody that's still investing who was around in two thousand eight. It's a great moment to check in on how they behave during that period because that was like An earthquake going off and It tested every single possible human relationship. It tested

13:28 When people were partners in investing and they're both portfolio managers. A lot of People got divorced after that. limited partners, the people who invest in hedge funds and the general partners that tested those relationships, testing people's relationships with the banks. So if they've been around a while.

13:42 To me an interesting question is What happened in oh eight? I'm I'm sure we'll have additional crises soon that will again enable us to separate those who behave well from those who behave badly in those periods of stress. So it's super reference focused. Yeah.

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16:24 With their thirty day trial and free returns, you can try it out risk free. So check it out. Eat sleep. dot com slash Tim. I And then I have a series of questions.

16:36 I ask people That I feel like have high signal value, but again I try to have a lot of humility and a light grip on my ability in a one hour meeting to

16:48 Figure that out. What are some of the High signal. Questions. That you've filtered through.

16:54 over time and have found to be particularly useful. Do any come to mind? Whether you're looking for You know anything. For your wife to have a kid or Anything is

17:10 You ask somebody If you were hiring somebody to do this What criteria will you use? That's a great question. What it captures is their definition of success and also capture some nuance that you wouldn't even known to ask about.

17:25 So when my wife and I were looking for an OBGYN. This was my question. And One guy said. Well What you're maximizing for is the downside.

17:36 And if the baby is in distress You need a good NICU. So my primary criteria to Intensive carrier unit. Right. And the the best

17:46 NICUs are usually attached to teaching hospitals like Mount Sinai. So I would look for affiliation of that doctor with a good NICU. And then I would also act He his second criteria was I would ask the nurses. Because the nurses no. Who

18:01 Freaks out. During tricky situations and who's got ice in their veins and who makes good decisions, who treats people well in those settings. And the nurse is The good nurses want to work for the best doctors. In that hospital setting.

18:13 I actually have This thought that they equivalent in financial markets are the traders. The traders are on the receiving end. Decisions.

18:25 They often have a very strong A sense of who the good investors are. Like David Tepper's trader, I bet. And again, I don't know this, but my hypothesis would be They're in awe of David Tepper because they're on the receiving end.

18:38 of when he's buying when everybody else is freaking out. Now you have to be careful. And one of the arts of references, I think, is controlling for the context and the perspective of the reference giver. Traitors like traitors. Right. So if somebody doesn't trade a lot.

18:53 They may not think as highly. of this portfolio manager who's really more of a buy and hold person and it doesn't give them any business and they think is kinda lazy. Well, okay. That could be true, but it also could be just they run a super concentrated portfolio, they only buy one thing a year. So I really like

19:09 What criteria would you use? And the other great thing about the question is it It improves your own criteria. For the next interview. That's really, really fascinating. I was just chatting with a friend of mine, Toby, who's the CEO of

19:21 Shopify and the way he learned the business side is he went to Silicon Valley and met with Let's just call it It doesn't. Venture capitalist as an engineer. And each meeting he would pick up

19:35 new questions, new terminology, be able to answer one more question and it just improved his ability to vet. uh not only venture capitalists but also to learn the lingo and the terminology. Question related to The references themselves. Most folks out there, if they think of references, whether they have provided references.

19:58 Bin of references or they're trying to hire is you ask the person you are interviewing or will be interviewing for their references. They give references who they expect to give Praise. And then you get in contact with those people. There's the piece of which questions to ask, and then there's the the piece, and there are many others. Of which people to talk to.

20:19 What does your process look like for determining who to talk to as references? So I actually think The candidate giving you references is usually obviously you wanna find off list references if you can, and one advantage of interviewing a ton of people in a given thing is often you know people that they've worked with in other contexts that they didn't give.

20:41 I actually find on list references like bizarrely high signal value because What happens is After ten minutes on a reference, People run out of like nobody wants to lie. They run out of their script. They run out of their script. And so I one of my closest friendships in the business was when somebody

20:59 who runs another family office. With calling me on a reference on somebody. And I went into that call thinking Okay, I like this guy. We don't have money with him. I I respect him. He stuck me on his reference list.

21:09 Okay. And the guy sat on me for an hour and would not allow me to Basically give a positive endorsement without specifics. So I think of it as a net promoter score. Either at the beginning or the end of a reference, I'll say

21:23 Okay, what I hear you saying is you're kinda giving this guy A seven on the net promoter's card. Is that right? Did I hear that correctly? Or I'll just ask it directly. On one to ten, what's your level of endorsement of this person? If I was calling you on a reference, let's make up a fictional assistant that worked for you four years ago. And I was debating hiring them. Well first

21:43 We know each other, so I would I would do it in person, I track it down and say, Tim, so what's the skitty? But let's say we don't know each other that well and I'm calling on a phone. I would be trying to understand, okay, are you still in touch with that assistant? What's the social dynamic? I make it safe for you. I'm calling twenty people.

22:00 I am not passing any of that information back. To the candidate unless you asked me to? So you need to make it safe for them. But if at the end I've got In effect. An aggregate.

22:11 number of net promoter scores on a given person. You start to see patterns after Reference number. Four. And then you know you can stop'cause you're hearing the same thing over and over again.

22:20 And this I mean, I'm very primitive. Of course, you've done infinitely more hiring, but I remember This bit of advice that I was given by Think about who it was. I'm blanking on who exactly it was. Kyle Maynard is who it was. quadruple congenital amputees climb kilomanjero and was

22:39 A star wrestler. Fascinating guy. I he learned it I think from It was from a very successful CEO and it was the Rank.

22:47 X could be anything from one to ten, but you can't use a seven. Right. And I have used that in restaurants. I have used that for so many things. And it removes that safe Mild endorsement. Yeah. When you are then speaking to these references who have been provided. Are there any other approaches you use to fair it out?

23:07 Weaknesses. one stance that I think is really important is that I'm not trying to catch somebody In any way. I'm just curious, and the references pick up on this vibe. And I wanted to help The candidate.

23:20 construct the best environment for them. Right. Right. Cause that's there's no gotcha to it. Like we're all crazy. We all have lots of weaknesses. Yeah. And so one thing I see other people in the coolant roles to me, too, is they they have this I one thing that I see other people Cool. Or in equivalent roles to me. Do

23:40 is they have this gotcha thing. Which I don't agree with. Like all I'm trying to do is help The person Get in the best possible context for them. Ат.

23:52 elicits a lot more because then you're on the same side. Particularly if you're talking to a former boss. That's I guess that's how I Pick him up

24:00 Yeah. Yeah, it's sort of the the mindset with which you go into it and the tone that you Transmit. Yeah. One question I like to ask is if I were going to hire a partner for this person.

24:12 To compliment Their strengths and weaknesses. What would that person be good at? And you gotta be careful in an investment context, you want it to be another investing partner. And then I actually use that. And then I can help to the extent it's applicable, help that person try

24:28 misconception I feel like people have sometimes is that there are products. In in my opinion, in investment management, there are no products. There are only humans. And That's why I'm so focused on the people side of it. The only product is the mindset of the individual and the decisions they're going to make.

24:44 Prospectively from here. So if you were invested in a fund at Fidelity and the portfolio manager leaves, And there's a new portfolio manager. From my perspective, that's a completely new decision. Whereas some people

24:56 have a mentality of oh I'm looking to put out Starts with a I think uh A dangerous mindset which is I need to put out some assets. And to do that, I'm gonna invest in some products.

25:07 I think You don't wanna have the mindset of I need to put out assets. Like you always wanna feel comfortable holding cash. And there should be no pressure. And then secondarily

25:17 In my role we're pretty indifferent on do we have people in house or out in the field. Most of the time The most commercial people want to run their own firms. And so We have a bias to we we g over time a constructed what

25:29 I think of as a team of teams. But You know, it's not a product of products. That makes a lot of sense. And

25:37 I want to bring up a term that Josh suggested bringing up. And this may not be the right place, but That's okay, because this podcast is is always All over the place, like memento. He said ask Grim about wild gardening.

25:53 No, I'm gonna laugh if this is actual literally wild gardening and it's just a complete non-sequiter, but he put it in quotation marks. So he calls me the wild gardener because I don't like to force it. There's a great piece in the Atlantic from years ago. Where someone Looking at

26:11 The temperament of children. Divided them into orchids and dandelions. And It's a little bit similar to the the Susan Kane. high sensitivity

26:22 There's another thinker named Elaine Arin, who has this concept of highly sensitive children, H S Cs. Orchids can be so beautiful, but they need just the right context. They need the right light. Temperature.

26:35 And then the lines are just lower maintenance, but maybe You don't have to worry about the context as much. Mm-hmm. And so I think in partly what I do is back to the System design. Is okay.

26:48 Let's get everybody in your positive feedback loop doing what they're actually compulsive about what they actually Can have a chance of being world class at. And I don't like Trying to stick

27:00 A dandelion where it doesn't wanna be or an orchid where it doesn't wanna be. We're covering a lot that relates to talent selection. And Asking the right questions. We're definitely going to

27:14 Spend some time on questions. That you ask yourself. As well, since that's In part. in large part what thinking is day to day. Mm-hmm.

27:24 But I want to talk a bit about Ambiguity or cases that are not. Exceptionally clear. If you talk to, say twenty references and all twenty come back and say

27:36 This person's fantastic. Let me list the ways. Then that's one thing. Or if they're all negative. But No doubt you've had Instances where

27:48 You get negative feedback, or perhaps you have a lot of positive, but then one on a scale of one to ten in severity is like a nine or ten severity negative. How do you How do you handle cases like that? How do you think through something that is not, at least at first glance, extremely obvious? A lot of life is like this.

28:10 Or if there are any cases, any examples not the naming names, but Yeah. I think it's A matter of holding those contradictory perspectives as long as you need to To Make sense of them.

28:24 And so for me My wife My business partner can experience me as indecisive at times. Because I'm so tolerant of holding the ambiguity on Somebody

28:36 being really good at something because everyone's genius is right next to their dysfunction, I think. And so Until you're clear on it, it can feel and sometimes you you just don't get clear, in which case there's no need to do anything. But One central strategy I have of dealing with is just spending more time with them. You know, we got to know each other well on these intense

28:58 Surfing trips where we almost drowned. I miss beheaded you. And then we got food poisoning. And I like in general Belking to club paradise. Yeah. I w I like getting out of the conference room and not being pitched something across the table. And I like creating other context to interact with people. If there's ambiguity or ambivalence, we'll look at an investment with them. If you look at something that's live with somebody, you learn so much about how they're actually underwriting it, the mental models they're using. What do you mean by underwriting it in this case? So underwriting is a term used in the context of making an investment decision and it refers to the body of work

29:34 That an individual or say a deal team has done to get comfortable advocating for an investment. At a particular price. And so Like

29:43 People will say Based on my underwriting, the returns are attracted relative to the risk. In this case, and by saying my underwriting. They are putting their personal reputation behind the projections and they're taking ownership of the outcome of that.

29:56 Analysis. So if if we were looking at a real estate investment in Washington D C in a potential hotel. We would Rather than investing in a fund, we would, if we're getting a new partner, spend a lot of time

30:09 On that literally looking at that hotel investment and understanding the How The sponsor is looking at the investment. And in that way

30:18 you get to know, Oh, this is what they're really focused on, this is what their strengths are, and maybe we should keep an eye out for these weaknesses or If we make the investment in a fund of theirs, this is something we'd keep an eye on. Just for people who may not have put the pieces together, I want you to correct me here, but you're in effect you have as clients You're

30:39 Limited partners. Family offices. So these are Wealthy family. who Want

30:47 Your help. And then choosing different investment teams. And you are in a way, I suppose, the the team coach who is selecting the players. Yeah, so we work with a handful of families who get to know us well and trust us to be their outsourced chief investment officer.

31:06 They basically give us full investment discretion. over their wealth outside of their personal property. And we manage that as one pool for them. And diversify it across asset classes. So we invest that pool and say A commercial real estate project in Seattle that we make with our real estate partners.

31:23 that are local there or in hedge fund partnerships run by the best teams we can find all over the world. So if somebody's gonna fund? Well look at their fund. If they have a An SPV, a special purpose vehicle where they're investing in a publicly traded security.

31:37 Or a private investment will look at that. They wanna start a fund, we'll help them start a fund. If they don't need our capital in a seed context, but they just are looking for arm's length Normal limited partners will do that. So we try to be as opportunistic and open minded as possible about it.

31:52 Are there any other patterns that you've spotted in the talent you end up selecting that does well. And the the reason I ask is that from what I've observed and this is not my world, but Just

32:07 Hanging out on the sidelines. Yeah. Glancing over at my Perception of what you do. Is that you're picking folks

32:16 meaning investors who are They're not tepper necessarily, right? I mean they are kind of rookie MVPs, or maybe that's not the right description, but You may not have a ton of data. On these folks.

32:30 Feel free to affect. Correct any of that. So are there any Other characteristics

32:37 that seem to pop up more often than not. In the people who end up doing well that you select. I'd say in addition to that Aggression, humility, tension. A second one I think about is originality

32:50 And triage. Are these two So we've noticed that the people who do best tend to have lots of ideas. There's a Academic named Dean Simonton.

33:00 who studied genius across field and he observed that whether it was Bach or any given test the the sheer number of compositions that Bach had were like a hundred times more than average composers. And some of his lousy pieces of of music.

33:16 We're inferior to his peers at the time, but then he also ended up with some great pieces. So there's something around just sheer quantity of ideas. And original thinking that characterizes A lot of them Specifically you'll notice that in the language that people use. So I feel like

33:31 in any field I think. When you start to achieve mastery, you start often people start creating their own language. to capture the nuance that they're seeing that makes them good at their thing. And investment management, Buffett is kind of the Shakespeare Of

33:46 the industry and everybody is living in his language and in his mental models. to the point where it's limiting. So I feel like a twenty five year old sometimes will be saying, I'm sitting on cash just waiting for the fat pitch. And I can't tell whether he knows he's quoting Buffett or not. And even if he's doing it consciously. He's living in this construct, which is a super useful construct.

34:08 But if he proceeds to become the temper of his generation. He'll generate his own language over the course of the subsequent twenty years. And so When people use a lot of jargon and cliches in language that at times doesn't feel like their own to me, that's

34:23 assigned that maybe they're a little bit earlier. And they could use another stage of apprenticeship or that we would probably wait to a later stage. And then that second component. When people have lots of ideas, they're usually not that good at killing them.

34:37 So it's at tension with this triage mentality of look. I'm here to make money. Somebody's gonna die here. I'm gonna save these four people and let this guy die, right? Is that triage. High situational awareness. I'm making live trade offs here. I think that's a quality that

34:51 really good portfolio managers have where They can force rate their portfolio and they can kill their own ideas. You see that often? And then just back to aggressiveness. I was interviewing a guy in

35:03 One question I like to ask people is If you were hiring an analyst, what criteria are you looking for in the analyst? And People who've been Managing money and managing people before

35:13 begin to look for things in their analysts. that make those analysts most valuable to them. And so there's often signal in the way they answer that. This guy said I'm looking for is a trace of fear. And myself. that this guy is coming for me. That he will replace me.

35:30 And I think what he's capturing is that level of intensity, that obsessiveness. That you see in a minority. Probably in any field. Because of just h they've found their game. The game they want to play and they're

35:42 They bring an intensity and obsessiveness to it that over time They're just working so much harder. It's like Wayne Gretzky finding. you know, hockey at age five, right? Like he's obsessed. And he's just going over and over and over again. And

35:55 There are people in the Finance industry are like that. Just obsessed with Investing in this really distinctive way. Warren Buffett is from a young age, obsessed. John Arnold. Obsessed. You mentioned

36:08 Something I want to come back to for a second, which I don't think I'll misrepresent. I think I'll Probably get up at the mentioned Buffett and the terminology and the language, the phrasing That he popularizes well originates and popularizes.

36:21 And how People can parrot that. And leading you to wonder whether they really understand what they're speaking about or simply repeating something from someone who's well regarded, right? And this makes me think of Richard Feynman. And how his dad used to tell him.

36:38 There's a big difference, and I'm paraphrasing here, but between knowing the label, the word or the phrase, and understanding what that label is intended to represent. And You can learn so much about not only others, but yourself and your own thinking by looking at the language that you use. And one of the questions I wanted to ask you, because it came up when you were in Tribe Mentors.

37:01 was How you improve your own Thinking. And something that's that stuck out to me and I'm gonna Track it down here.

37:11 And this was in response to what is one of the best or the most worthwhile investments you've ever made. And I'll skip around here, but The first Line was I invest a disproportionate amount of my income in paying for an ever growing collection of trainers and coaches. And you mentioned handful. And one of them, you said, is the most gifted listener I've ever encountered. She surfaces my hidden assumptions, the ones that hold me rather than me holding them, and teaches me to ask

37:35 Better and better questions. How Does whether it's this person specifically or others. Help you. To surface your hidden assumptions.

37:44 This strikes me as So, so Key to just about everything. Investing just happens to sort of magnify the consequences.

37:55 often obvious way of assumptions and faulty assumptions. But how would A coach. Help to surface your hidden assumptions. Or how might they? This

38:06 Is within this Bob Keegan school of He's a professor at Harvard and he has a theory about adult development. Which is that the

38:17 Process of Moving to adulthood. is One of increasing your mental complexity. And

38:26 Increasing the number of things. That used to be you used to be subject to assumptions you had you couldn't see. And making them object. Over time.

38:35 So an example for many people would be if they grew up in a religious context. Are they actively choosing their religious beliefs or did they arrive at them because their parents in community Everyone was swimming in those beliefs together. And so

38:50 What I feel like a really good coach can do is by listening the way I'm making sense of something can observe, oh You're actually assuming X. I think of it as grip. Your grip on certain things is really tight. And

39:03 If a coach can find what you're gripping really tightly. And that you're actually not you can't articulate the opposite of this belief you have. That might be a sign that you have identity or ego. Caught up in that thing.

39:17 Can you think of an example? So One assumption My business partner pointed out to me recently that I seem to have that I might be holding a little bit strongly is What he was calling futurism, that I'm ready for things to be disrupted.

39:32 And paranoid about disruption. In this way that he observed. is I'm holding I got a little bit too tight of a grip around things. So we're investing in a hotel where there might be risks around climate change. I'm extra focused on the climate change.

39:47 Or if we're investing in somebody A value investor who's often going long things that Silicon Valley's trying to disrupt. My partner's observation is I will be extra

39:58 focused on risks around that. I think he's totally right. Once he said that, it kinda clicked and I realized, okay. Now That doesn't mean I drop it. It just means when it comes up, it's more object to me. And in a case like that. Would you practice

40:13 Articulating the opposite, as you mentioned earlier, and I'm just As my mind is Digesting this right now. I'm thinking of You've read so many books, it's just boggles of the mind.

40:25 It wouldn't surprise me if you're familiar with Bayer and Katie. But She has something called the work, which I you have to be careful with. Using it as your only hammer because and just start looking for nails everywhere, but

40:36 part of that practice is taking this belief that is causing you And I'm not saying this is an example here, but causing you some amount of discomfort or stress or anxiety. And then going through the exercise of stating the exact opposite. Right. So my dad should be this is not a real example, make making it up, but like my dad should be more attentive to my mom.

40:59 And then You stated in a number of different ways, like My dad should be less attentive to my mom. My mom should be more attentive to my dad, etc. And you You have to as part of the exercise look for Data points were

41:13 even the smallest shred of evidence that you could put down if you were trying to make those arguments. And it helps to disentangle emotion and attachment from your initial kind of statement. When your partner brings to light

41:30 something that you might be gripping tightly like this. What are the next steps after that? Or is just the pointing out enough. It's kind of like looking at an optical illusion and you're like, Oh, you see how If you look at it this way, it's actually an old woman's face instead of an hour glass, and you can never again look at that and not see the old woman's face. The Byron K

41:49 I've been to multiple workshops of her. I think she's amazing. I knew it. I knew it. salad place sweet greens and I was in there Maybe three months ago, listening to Byron Cady's new book, A Mind at Home With Itself. And Byron Katie and her husband Stephen Mitchell walk into the restaurant. Order salads and then proceed to sit right next to me.

42:13 And it was the most unbelievable I took a picture of it because I thought I might be tripping. And then you looked at your computer later and no one was there. And I will tell you, they proceeded to have the most mindful meal I think I may have ever witnessed.

42:26 There are some gurus who out of context you think, you know, are not walking their talk. In this particular case I have I can affirm that she is like her stage presence. You've seen her on stage. All the time. Yeah. So I find her credibility on that extra high. Yeah, I think her thing of

42:44 What's the belief? Is it true what's the opposite of that? Can you absolutely know it's true? How do you feel when you think that thing? Yeah, we think what would you be without this. Spent a little bit of time with her a number of months ago and I can Sort of confirm what you just said.

43:03 She is a Exactly. what you would sort of expect and hope were to be based on books. I mean the metaphysics can get pretty mind bendy if you go in that direction, but The

43:14 Framing of Using the word we were talking about labels belief. Like what would you be without this belief as opposed to thought is also really Key. Yeah. Right. It's like something you take. It's a statement you take to be true. And it's just framing it that way puts a Under a different lens.

43:32 So to your question, I think I may have a little bit of ego identity around being unconventional or being into Technology disruption and Not thinking that the status quo is gonna continue.

43:45 Mm-hmm. And so what my business partner is pointing out is Just watch that and Now that we have it on the table, when we're evaluating investment, it's Oh. You know, I don't want to be self conscious about bringing up the paranoia.

43:57 'Cause I think it's a it's a useful lesson to have, but being aware that I'm just a tiny bit subject to that. is really useful. Back in the day, this was 2004, maybe, I had someone approach me in a coffee shop and say, Good day, mate. And introduce himself. Who was that? It turned out to be the founder of AG1. Believe it or not, way back in the day. And people often ask me, what has survived after 20 plus years of testing every supplement under the sun?

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45:36 Tim. Yeah. And if you're looking at a team, whether that's within these offices, you know, we're sitting in your offices right now, or Could be any two, really, but specifically I I guess just to keep us in your power zone investing.

45:51 When do you choose to Teach each individual person to offset. Biases like this. Versus hiring another person.

46:04 Two. provide a a counterpoint. And the reason I ask is And I'm getting way above my pay grade here, but You look at say

46:13 Buffett and Munger. And Buffett's Searching for bargains. And wants to sort of buy at a discount and then Munger is I'm gonna get slaughtered on the internet, I'm sure, but

46:24 is sort of teaching him over time that there are cases where you can buy at Market value or a fair price if the growth trajectory is really high. And they seem to compliment Each other very, very well.

46:39 How do you think about Each person developing the counterpoint Or the ability to look at The opposite versus hiring to

46:51 End up at that. Optimal. Mixture. Yeah. Well, it's back to grip. So w when if I'm evaluating a team, I'm trying to figure out so sometimes I'll I'll hook up Someone who is long Tesla

47:03 With someone who is short Tesla. And when you're Witnessing that exchange you can see whether the person is long Tesla And the person who's short Tesla. Are they actively seeking

47:13 disconfirming evidence or is it an ideological thing? And Tesla is a little bit of an extreme example because it's very ideological on both sides. It's not really a great example. For that reason. It's you can see it because it's more extreme. Right now on Twitter the shorts are And Musk and the people who are long are going back and

47:30 Fourth. The vast majority of them are not Actually looking to hold the other person's perspective. In a team context, you can witness whether there's somebody who's already there. In the hedge fund industry and the private equity industry, what's cool is that the boundary of the firm is pretty fluid. So sometimes a portfolio manager of one firm

47:49 Will have a close relationship with one to five other portfolio managers. Can you define here just for folks so PM, right? Portfolio manager. Who is that person? That's the person who's running the investment firm and who's making the investment decisions and sizing the investments in that portfolio. The main It's the main role. I mean inside a large firm you might have multiple PMs depending on That's a good catch. I I meant more CIO, but If you have Chief Investment Officer Chief Investment Officer, exactly. But a portfolio manager within a large shop like Citadel

48:19 Well have external relationships sometimes and sometimes Those by side relationships. We'll be testing each other's thinking and the equivalent of that Buffett Munger thing. Often exists across firm.

48:31 So they don't have to be within the boundary of the firm. So the the looking for disconfirming Evidence. I wanna stick with for a second. So this is something you see certainly in any good scientist. They're not setting out to prove X.

48:48 coming up with a hypothesis and then Hopefully in is Unbiased and objective away. possible. Are you free?

48:56 Not possibly fully, fully objective. trying to then assess and actively look for disconfirming. Evidence if it exists, or if they can. Isolated. How could one train themselves to get better at doing that?

49:10 And it could be a seemingly Indirect. I'm just wondering. I mean it would seem like One step would be Developing.

49:18 What we talked about earlier. This ability to take whatever assumption or bias you have and then view it as an object so that you're aware of it. So meditation can help with that, doing something like Byron Katie can help with that. Are there other things whether they're precursors to looking for disconfirming evidence. Or that's

49:38 habit itself that helped to cultivate. Well I think an underlying paranoia that you're missing something. Is really useful and the best portfolio managers have that. They're they're just That sense that

49:50 And maybe you dial it up. By regularly reviewing all the mistakes you made and th thinking, okay Some percentage of the time I see things clearly and some percentage of the time I miss it. You know, one thing about financial markets uh in the publicly traded side is A really good portfolio manager's hit rate is like sixty five percent. Like that's off the charts. And fifty five percent will do just fine in a lot of cases, depending particularly

50:12 On their slugging percentage. How do they size? the winners versus the losers. You want to size the winners obviously bigger than the losers. So There's something around

50:22 How do you maintain paranoia and humility? I think One tricky thing. in the hedge fund space is being on the record in any way. in the form of writing letters or being in on C and B C or being in the public domain.

50:37 Probably on the margin. makes it harder to drop it like a hot potato and go short. And to me the most skilled portfolio managers Have an identity not as I am smart and therefore I make money, or I am good at financial stocks, but

50:53 A meta Identity is I'm a moneymaker. And if that involves right now, if in this era, in this moment in history, that's going long Tesla, I'll go long Tesla. If I'll go short Tesla, I'll go short Tesla. But there's no baggage.

51:08 I remember walking into a guy who we have a ton of money with who I really, really respect and he was short Solar City. And it was on the morning that Musk announced that Tesla was buying solar state. It was a very painful warning for people who were short the stock. And I expected this guy to be

51:24 Moping around and Super pissed at Musk. And he was laughing. He was enjoying the audacity. He feels like he's in this game. And I knew that was a possibility. I didn't think he was gonna

51:37 Have the Hutzpa to do that. Right. Like that mentality. That humor, that lightness, that, oh, got this one wrong. On to the next one. If sh that particular portfolio manager ever wrote about something in a letter, he doesn't happen to, but if he did

51:52 I would have no qualms that the following month he can easily be short the position he just and so one nice thing about financial markets is that long short thing, the the ability to Make money by it going up and make money by it going down. Yeah. And change your position. Something Josh.

52:11 Decided. some time ago, which was that he wouldn't t at least Maybe this has changed, but I I doubt. It has changed given his current circumstances, which we won't get into, but very unlikely he's giving many keynotes right now. He stopped giving keynotes because he felt like it would entrench.

52:27 his thinking and calcify his positions because he would he would be repeating these statements. And concepts that he'd then be less likely to subconsciously or consciously to modify. Yeah. This is

52:42 Something I I ask everyone and uh maybe you've heard this before, but Are there any particular books that You have gifted the most to other people. They don't have to relate to what we've been discussing at all, but You are

52:56 So widely read. Do any stand out as books that you've gifted or recommended often to other people? In financial markets, I really like this somewhat obscure book called The Aspirational Investor. by this guy Ashvin Chabra, who runs

53:12 Jim Simons Family Office. Jim Simons started Renaissance Technologies, which is the Dominant quant funds. Amazing story. We're not gonna get into it, but just yeah, renaissance is Really fascinating. Please continue. And one thing I like about Renaissance and Jim Simons, i he has this line on a New Yorker profile of him that

53:28 He thinks what he has is really good taste and interesting problems. He uses the word taste. And this guy who runs his family office used to run the endowment at the Institute for Advanced Studies, and in the book, he identifies what he sees as the flaws in modern portfolio theory, which have totally dominated prevailing beliefs about investing for decades. And Oshvin suggests a totally different approach to portfolio construction. Based on how people actually behave and what they actually care about.

53:54 And so that's a book I give out a lot. There's on the culture side if somebody starting a firm. I'm looking over your shoulder'cause I've got a bunch of them on the the bookshelf here. Tribal leadership. By Dave Logan. Dave Logan

54:07 Has it? Look at thousands of organizations and puts them into categories And Phil Jackson. the former coach of the Chicago Bulls

54:17 has observed that that framework that Logan discusses in trouble leadership is the best framework for understanding world class teams that he's come across. We can go into it if it's of interest. Culture Code by Daniel Coyle, I give people.

54:30 What do you find a value in that book? This book has come up a lot. On the podcast, I still have not read it. It's come up in many different contexts. What is that book about? He's looking at a bunch of different cultures. Pixar, Navy SEALs. He's got three others or something. He's looking for patterns among what make people

54:47 disproportionately effective as as a culture. And I think he captures Some of the Nuance That if you're

54:57 Trying to set up teams you It exposes you to that. Mm-hmm. He'd be a good guest on the podcast. Another book on my homework list check.

55:08 I also like the tools I give that out sometimes. That's by Phil Stutz and Barry Michaels. Have you ever heard of them? I have. Screenwriters work in entertainment. Yeah, they're they're Psychologists and they're in Hollywood and they treat a lot of screenwriters. And New Yorker reporter Dana. Good year, did uh profile them. that highlighted them and then they wrote a book called The Tools and they have a bunch of good

55:31 Packs in there. Some of the most I won't mention them by name, but a few of the documentary filmmakers who are on a very short list of documentary filmmakers who create Massively. commercially successful documentaries. have recommended this book to me. That's that's how it first came up. Just as an example, it's very apropos of Wim Hoff, they have this whole analogy of saying This model of

55:53 To get To what you want, you have to go through some pain. Could you describe for people who Wim Off as if they haven't So yeah, Wim Hoff first I think his first podcast interview was on this podcast. Interesting guy, but who's Wim Hoff? Wait more half it. has developed it.

56:08 A way of exposing himself to the cold and a and methodology around exposing himself to the cold. that he now teaches to Millions of people thanks to You and Laird Hamilton and others highlighting it.

56:22 The ice man, yeah. Dubious honor in some cases because you do need to watch your fingers and toes, but he he is a number of training approaches. Although one sometimes wonders How much of

56:36 What he can do as attribute versus training but for cold exposure and also for breath holding. I don't wanna take us off the rails, but Quick note on breath holding. Our mutual friend Josh almost died from a shallow water blackout in a pool here doing

56:49 breathful training, never do it in water. There's really no good reason. So these guys have this metaphor of They're basically coaching you on your self talk and they're They say you should rub your hands together and say, bring it on. When you're

57:03 anticipating doing some thing that is going to be painful. And they use the metaphor of going into the cold water at the beach. And But Regular

57:14 Embracing of discomfort. is a skill that White Skin is also into and a theme of Like learning to He calls it we think he calls it the other side of pain, but getting used to exposing yourself to pain on a regular basis to the point where you don't bounce off of it. Yeah. Stuts and Michaels

57:32 observe that in their work with producers, agents, screenwriters, et cetera, in Hollywood. people were avoiding doing the thing they needed to do. They were bouncing off of it. And so if you can create a skill and a mechanism to make yourself go into it and get in that habit.

57:48 And they've they've got like six of them and So I do this with my kids. Like we'll literally rub our hands together and be Thinking. Bring it on to X. So I wonder if Josh got this from you. I mean it it wouldn't surprise me if you guys independently arrived at this, but with

58:02 With his son He would take cold showers. And you would always say. It's so good, and he taught His son to say it's so good with these short freezing cold showers. And I don't know, his son is probably making this up four years old at the time. Yeah. And also

58:17 taught his son to enjoy going out in what other people would consider bad weather. Right. Right. The rainstorms and so on. Yeah, so that's an example, right, of just making yourself Making the rain object. So I think what Josh is observing is that for most people They are subject to the weather.

58:33 And they're experiencing the weather is acting on them. Right. And a hack around that is to say Basically, no, I enjoy the rain. I'm gonna find what I enjoy in it and make it Not the world happening to me, but bring the locus of control internally, is what I think he's doing there. Oh yeah. That's not

58:52 If there are more books behind me, then feel free to to mention them. Uh I like Finite and Infinite Games, which has been going around a lot. His other book Breakfast at the Victory. This is James Cars. James Cars. It's really good. I had him to an event, a hedge pun retreat we had a couple of years ago.

59:09 And spent some time with him. A very profound guy. He was observing that I asked him how he came up with the concept of finite versus infinite games and he said he was watching his kids play and he noticed that there were some games like

59:24 card games or baseball, et cetera, where their whole motivation and intent was to have the game end and get the trophy. And then he noticed there were other games. They were playing Where there were more fantasy games where their goal was to recruit other people to play

59:38 in that game with them, such as him as their dad. And the goal was to keep the game going as long as possible. I think it's a super Profound insight of The different ways you can relate to games.

59:50 in your life if you can see the game you're playing. Yeah. Yeah, I have some for examples of infinite games. Which he doesn't give in the book. He mentioned

59:59 As a religious studies scholar, he thinks Buddhism and Judaism are two infinite games. I guess in religious studies Neither of those has a central authority or a central army. So it's Unlike Catholicism, they have difficulty making sense of why it persists over time. And so the framework of it's an infinite game. Those people.

1:00:19 Buddhism And you is a recruiting to various degrees people into their game. And wanting to just keep playing the game for its own sake. How does this the distinction of finite And infinite games apply to finance.

1:00:34 If it does. No, it does I think it does. I mean a a finite player who's an investment manager would be, for instance Trying to hit a certain number of net worth and then leave the game. Right. And that's okay, but it makes it less valuable of a partner from my perspective and The incentives can get kind of weird once they achieve that net worth if they actually stick to it. Now the reality is most people move the bar.

1:00:57 There is a steady reach that everybody wants to have all along the income spectrum, everybody wants to have two times where they are right now. And but I think there are In general I seek out partners who are playing high experience as infinite players who

1:01:14 are enjoying the game for its own sake and are gonna keep playing and wanna recruit other people in That's back to the distinction between being commercial and transactional. There's something about the abundance. mentality behind somebody who's commercial who's trying to create more value than the capture.

1:01:29 That's like leaving room for other people in this way. How do you test for that? If that is it might be a lower on the of hierarchy of needs in

1:01:41 Assessing talent. But If it is something that you try to assess, how do you assess it? The big one is time horizon. If there are somebody who's thinking, Okay, I found this thing that I love to do, I'm gonna do it for the next twenty years and I'm not gonna make short term accommodations to what's going on in the market or with my limited partners or with my team.

1:02:00 I experienced it around time horizon. How do you ask around the question, especially after this podcast comes out, you're gonna be like okay, Graham wants long time horizons. You can see it just in the way they're setting up their business. There are indications of just subtle mental framings on Some people start investment firms because it's the time of their career where they've kind of Their friends have started investment firms. They can no longer stay at the container they're in and they need to start

1:02:30 But it's not an approach goal. It's almost an avoidant goal. It's like okay This is the time where I'm supposed to do this, so I'm gonna do this. Versus a different set that are like, okay. I found the thing I love. I I found the ball I like to hit and I'm I'm gonna do it in this new form.

1:02:45 That implies to me a longer time horizon and I It's a cliche, but a love of the game itself. If you took away David Tepper's money And made him start at scratch right now. I think he'd enjoy it.

1:02:58 Like he's just found the thing he loves and Who else has long term. I think I would invest in something Jako did. I think he has that exact in fact his mantra, right, is default aggressive. He has that mix of aggressive in integrity. Or aggressive in humility. And you think he's coming back from

1:03:17 Iraq, he does CLT trade and then he's entering your world and he Oh, this is this podcast thing and then You know, oh coaching thing and I don't know. I just really admire the way he's doing his own thing. He has

1:03:31 That mix of Time rising. Having an idea, executing on it. You guys should know each other. I'll introduce you guys. I wanna stay with this for a little bit more.

1:03:44 in terms of sniffing around the direct question. Tell me about what happened in 2008. You can Maybe

1:03:53 Also along the lines of looking at how politicians have voted on things as opposed to asking them what they will do. It it just made me think. That looking at time horizon and

1:04:06 sort of intrinsic versus extrinsic motivations and so on. You could you could also assess kind of along the same lines that why Combinator has at least historically by asking a lot of questions around what they've built in their spare time and things like that, which will not be a direct answer to the question, but could act as indicators that point to sort of a general pattern of behavior. And motivations.

1:04:29 I find why combinators and Paul Gramps and Sam Altman stuff high signal from my perspective. So like they have this question they ask themselves Can you say this person is an animal? And not Smile. You know, based on the references, based on your interactions with them. I think they're keying in on the same quality.

1:04:45 of aggression or intensity that I am. Buffett uses passion and common sense. Redalio uses assertiveness and open mindedness, but honing in on this paradoxical tension that I was talking about earlier.

1:04:58 Sorry, what was Tell me the question again. Oh yeah, no, the the I I'm not even sure I asked the question. I think it was more of an observation and Ask around the direct question of time horizon. Which I mean y you already gave a few examples of, so I think it's been answered. So let's pick up on one thing you also mentioned in passing, which I'll

1:05:20 Refresh for People listening by Reading a quote. And I'm gonna get this name wrong. So maybe you could this is a quote that you introduced me to. It was one of

1:05:30 Two candidates for answering question what you would put on a gigantic billboard and uh you could put anything on it sort of metaphorically speaking, right? A message to get out to millions or billions of people. So could you read this It is stuck in my mind, and I've revisited it so many times. But I don't know the proper pronunciation. Claume Appia, who's a philosopher at NYU, he actually I think he used to be at Princeton.

1:05:54 has this quote, It's not how well you play the game, it's deciding what game you want to play. Right. And so you had mentioned the game if you're aware. That you're playing the game. What is the relevance or importance of this quote for you? And I'll read it one more time. So it's not how well you play the game, it's deciding what game you want to play. Well, I think that's

1:06:13 A way of making your game Moving it from being subject To it to object. So An example would be I think a a huge number of people are obviously playing the game of making money.

1:06:25 And they're keeping score in terms of how much money they make or how much fame they accumulate or how much power they accumulate. and making that game object to them and then just making sure that you still want to play that game. I think what I'm gonna do. His quote is about I I ended up writing an essay I tried to capture the various stages

1:06:43 Of mastery and investment management. That's a blog that's on my site and To me that quote allows you to kind of zoom out and say, okay, at different stages in my life, I'm gonna play different games. What game am I playing right now?

1:06:57 And Can I see it? And and in fact that's what the coaches and the coach I've used in the past helps you do is say Okay. You're clearly optimizing right now for this.

1:07:07 Just make sure you actually want That's the game you want to play. Yeah. In a video game, it's the God's eye view. God's idea of the God's I view of the game. You're like, Okay I'm down here in this corner of the

1:07:27 Mountain range. Do I still want to climb this mountain or is that a local maximum and I should actually zoom out and I think you've mentioned this to me before. It may even be In tribamenters, but it it makes me think of the David Foster Wallace commencement speech which has been turned into

1:07:46 books and is online in various forms. But yes, here it is right here. This is water. Yeah. the story of what is it, the two young fish together swim by the old the old fish and the old fish doesn't pass and like How's the water boys or something like that. They're like what's water. Yeah, exactly. I think that's what he's capturing.

1:08:04 So beautifully in that Benson speech is that we all have water. There are things that are water to us at every stage of our life. And the f the fun project is to try to see it. And see it at each stage. And when I think of

1:08:19 even the development, your development over the course of the last several years on your podcast, like You're wrestling with different stuff. You're able to see your own quirks in a different way than you were. And I think that's the process of adult development. That's what Keegan is pointing to as these different stages.

1:08:35 I do the podcast in part because it helps me to see the water. It forces me to try to ask questions or make statements and articulate things that would otherwise just bounce out in my head consciously or subconsciously. The so the podcast is actually a tool for me to try to. discern which water I happen to be swimming in. Yeah. Which makes it a lot of fun. The Greg McKeown is that he says, I said it that way for a long time. McKewn. Greg McKuin's podcast with you recently on essentialism. When he tells that story of how

1:09:03 He felt a ton of pressure to go on the work event. on the project with his consulting partners rather than be at the hospital with his wife uh as she was having a baby. In Keegan language, that's a developmental moment where he's saying basically he's moving from socialized to self authoring. He's saying basically No, my partners don't

1:09:21 define the scorecard here. The scorecard is my scorecard. I decide What's a priority to me. And I'm gonna remind myself of this the rest of my life by embarrassing myself by telling this story over and over again so that I don't do it again. I feel like essentialism is basically That's what he's capturing and I think in a lot of different moments on your podcast.

1:09:40 People are Wrestling with What can they see at that moment? What did they used to not be able to see? And that's the unf it's kind of beautiful. It's the unfolding that we're all doing. You've had an opportunity to observe

1:09:55 I don't know. Dozens, hundreds, thousands of careers or at least look examine probably thousands of different careers. How do you think about careers or career advice? I know that we've had some exchanges Using the metaphor of the river, which might be a good place to start. And then I've

1:10:13 Some other questions related to that, but maybe we can beg begin with that. Yeah, I like the image of a river with two banks. One side is chaos and the other side is order. Something. Dan Siegel, who's a neuroscientist, came up with to try to describe what mental health is. 'Cause he argued the bank of chaos is schizophrenia.

1:10:34 And the bank of rigidity is O C D. And that you can basically put every mental illness on one bank or another. And uh healthy integration is swimming in the middle of the river. In between those two.

1:10:47 And I was thinking about how careers are like that. You start off along the rigidity bank apprenticing for somebody And you're learning the jargon of that industry and you're trying to figure out how people define reality. But you're in somebody else's definition of reality. You're you're refining reality.

1:11:05 And you're learning to be able to see. Whereas The other bank, the Chaos Bank, is more asserting reality. That's where people who are swimming right next to that bank. Or

1:11:15 Just making stuff up, like I think of Musk as being right along that bank. And if Tesla goes bankrupt. That will mean he lost his feedback with reality and b kind of stepped onto the chaos bank and if he pulls it off. He was swimming right next to her, just Steve Jobs the same way. You know, you see it in poets, you see it in writers.

1:11:34 People who are right next to that bank are super original. They're coming up with new stuff. We live In their paradigms to some degree. But if you lose

1:11:44 The feedback loop with The way the rest of the world is experiencing reality. All of a sudden you can see him Crazy. And the danger of swimming from a career perspective, of starting your own thing is you Starting your own thing, a lot of the times is uh

1:11:56 Project of asserting reality. And if you do it too early. it can be very disorienting. And so You want to just swim back and forth. It's not to discourage people from starting their own things at a very young age. But just be aware that that's the project and you might want to come back and refine reality for a little bit and go and just see it as fluid.

1:12:15 Right. It makes you think of I'm not saying this is kind of a direct mapping, but it was Pablo Picasso said learn the rules as an amateur so you can break the rules as a professional. Something along those lines. Exactly. And you you mentioned This bank of chaos. And how those who sort of can swim right alongside it can harness this Paradigm shifting originality.

1:12:36 But as You've also pointed out That same uh originality can Have

1:12:46 Unintended consequences. if they flop onto the bank like Steve Jobs and The magical thinking around. Around his illness. Yeah. If one wants to be

1:12:57 Top one percent in a given field, just arbitrarily to pull a number out of my ass. Does that mean that they need to swim really closely alongside one bank or the other? Or is that a mistake in thinking, or be perceived as being a top performer? Do they swim in the middle or do they Oscillate between the two? Are there different breeds, just in your experience? To be a top one percent depends that maybe on the field.

1:13:22 So that's a Your world. Within financial Markets. You need a continual level of innovation.

1:13:30 and adaptability to stay ahead because the games that were working five years ago No longer work. So For a while there were a lot of event driven strategies where people were investing In mergers and acquisitions. And

1:13:45 making a certain return percentage around that. That game has mainly gone away. So I would say I think of infinite players As playing with the boundaries of the game. So when when Mike Burry came up with the idea

1:13:58 And then Mike Burry famously played by Christian in the yeah, that was a an example of innovation. and playing with the boundary of the game at that time. 'Cause he wanted to express a view that it was short the housing market and he found he had no he he didn't want to short stocks, he wanted to get more leverage on it. You came up with that and then the banks

1:14:18 Offer that to everybody else and everybody else ended up. Everybody else who came into the trade ended up following the trail that he had blazed on that from my perspective. There may be other perspectives on that, but that's my perspective. So As Christian Bale portrayed him, he

1:14:32 was wrestling with his sanity at various points, uh having that trade on is various points the fund was down a lot. His partners were abandoning him. There's something around pushing the edge of your field because

1:14:45 people are gonna catch up with you that is required. I don't know that Trying to think of other examples outside of financial markets of being top one percent or something, but yeah. It's less subjective, but if we're looking at, say, successful authors, I think another example that

1:15:03 Prisc, the Zen in the art of motorcycle maintenance, but certainly towards the end got one might argue pretty loopy. Yeah. Yeah, it's hard to think of top one percent in the in a it's Context but

1:15:16 I think original You look at Rachel Cusk. And Carl of Knosgard, I don't know how to say his name, but those two authors.

1:15:24 I think they're doing original things. As novelists. And I don't think they're at risk of flopping onto the bank of chaos, but they're doing original things. Yeah. I don't know how to think Yeah, one uh this is more just because I th I think you'd enjoy it and I can link to it for people who are interested. There's a

1:15:40 Model of Cognitive function. Yeah, I suppose we put it cognitive function. and personality typing. That has been uh

1:15:50 I guess it's a theory and a model. From Robin Carhart Harris, who's scientist in the UK. Called the entropic brain. Which I think you'd enjoy. So for another time. What about

1:16:01 I'm just looking at my notes here. I have two words based on conversations we've had leading up to this, but I don't have any context here. So Time billionaires. What does that refer to? I was listening to a guy introduce a speaker.

1:16:17 A while ago and he was saying, you know, people don't really understand the difference between billionaires and and millionaires. He said a million seconds is like eleven days. A billion seconds is thirty one years. And I remember that kinda so shit. That's a hell of a way to think about it. A million seconds is eleven days.

1:16:39 A billion seconds is Slightly over thirty one years. And I was thinking about uh Kyler Cohen has a thing about cultural billionaires. Marginal revolution Yeah. In one of his books, he talks about cultural billionaires and I like They I feel like in our culture we're so obsessed as a culture with money

1:16:58 And we reify Dollar billionaires in a way that It'd be nice to Co op that term. The way Tyler Cohen did with cultural billionaires. And I was thinking of time billionaires.

1:17:09 When I see sometimes Twenty year olds. The thought I had was they have They probably have two billion seconds left. But they aren't relating to themselves as time billionaires.

1:17:20 And I was thinking about how if What would Werbut Murdoch as Worth. twenty billion dollars. He's eighty seven years old.

1:17:27 What would he pay If he could take the next Five years of someone's Twenty year old. healthy body, mind, et cetera. Right. And for that twenty year old, how would they price it?

1:17:41 Yeah. Because I was thinking. At various points of my career I might have sold the next five years for something. And

1:17:48 Over time it's kind of got my pricing has gone Vertical because the next five years, if I were to lose and the key to this question is you can't sell the five at the end of your life, you gotta sell them right now. Yeah. Like I don't know how I'd price it. My kids are of a certain age that they'll never be again. I don't know that I live every day that way.

1:18:07 But I aspire to so I was trying to capture You know, I heard um Tim Urban on your podcast and I started reading his stuff. I just I find his writing style and the topics he is interested in. Just amazing. It has this concept of life calendar. Yep. And I bought his life calendar, he sells it as a poster.

1:18:26 And what he does is he does a circle for each week. So he has Fifty two circles on the horizontal. And then Ninety rows. So that you can see a ninety year life in weeks.

1:18:38 And what's startling about the picture Again to this question of how long is a billion seconds. Is how short. It actually is. So what I did is I went through and I put

1:18:49 where I am right now and I started filling in The circles as I go. And I put Where my eldest daughter goes to college, I put when my dad is gonna be ninety. And

1:19:00 I was actually thinking a good product, if there are any graphic designers out there would be to partner with Tim and allow you to create a huge poster and s select a photo for each week. It's such a graphical representation of your life. In a way that's hard to convey in words sometimes.

1:19:16 So I've I've just been thinking a lot about time and how you Live. There's a quote I like there. You know, we're all very focused on the length of our life. How do you appreciate the width?

1:19:26 of it as you're going along. And Somehow keeping that in your consciousness. Can you elaborate a little? The width. The width meaning this present moment we're sitting here having sort of like the depth of attention.

1:19:39 Yeah. the breadth of sensory inputs I mean it's another way of saying trying to stay more present. versus being extremely goal directed. Of

1:19:50 Whatever objective you have in your life right now. Mm-hmm. And How do you cultivate that in yourself? So one thing is I have that life calendar literally sitting in my kitchen. Pause quickly, I'll buy you some time also. So Tim Urban has a blog, Wait But Why. I mean calling it a blog is kinda funny because

1:20:06 Some of his pieces are seventy thousand words. It's broken up into multiple parts. Also, just since you mentioned Musk, I mean uh he was the I believe the only person asked by Musk directly who was a fan of the blog to come in and А фол аксессу Tesla.

1:20:21 The life calendar is a fantastic place to start, as is a piece called the tail end, if you want a really acute sense of time. Especially as it relates to how much time you might have left with. Parents. That is a fantastic piece. So You have the calder. So that piece

1:20:36 Reading that piece made me try to engineer having my parents in New York. much more frequently and I I tangibly did that. Oh no. So literally reading that piece had that big an impact where I was like'cause he points out the percentages how

1:20:51 If your parents don't live in the same place you do You will see them. By the time you graduate from high school, you've spent like ninety five percent of the time you'll ever spend with your hours you'll ever spend with your grades. Yes. I didn't know that about you and your family I after reading that piece, which was recommended to me. by Matt Mollenwick, whose father passed away very unexpectedly, he recommended that piece to me. And that led me to

1:21:13 Really block out and make a priority a trip or a gathering with my Family every six months. Yeah. That piece. Yeah. Yeah. Profound stuff, I think. So

1:21:26 But your question is what do I do? So I I mean all the standard stuff. I meditate. I use Ten percent happier app. Yeah. Sam Harris's app? The the Harris brothers, even though they're not brothers. Dan Harris and Sam Harris. Dan Harris calls that whole crew the Jew Boos. Any Jewish Buddhists. Check.

1:21:50 Cornfield is incredible teacher. I mean, probably the most empathic human I've ever met. Truly walks the walk. And I asked him at one point I said you've got Goldstein Cornfield Or the names like

1:22:05 Sharon Saltford. I'm like, why are it seems like the entire crew who brought Buddhist mindfulness practices the US in some of the Let's say I'm getting a time frame slightly off probably, but kind of eighties. Yeah, like seventies, eighties. They're all Jewish and He goes.

1:22:23 That is a good question. This is just us having a a private conversation, but he said yeah. It sounds like a law firm. But the juboos, yes. So Dan Harris, Sam Harris, uh both of those abs. Yeah, I use both those abs. I try to be nostalgic for spending time with my kids in the present moment. So like My youngest right now. I think I can probably carry her on my shoulders probably a total of five more times. She's getting too heavy. And I know because I have an older kid that there's a that's a distinct phase. But I don't Beyond those

1:22:53 Keeping track. Of how much time Those are good anchor points. The Gretchen Rubin line about how the days are long but the years are short. I think about that a lot. There's one that's Ah boy, I wish I could get the attribution right. It was actually It was intriguement. It was a

1:23:10 It was in answer to one of my questions, is in one of the other profiles, but For a technologist, I know that much. And it was in answer to the question, what do you do when you feel overwhelmed? Or Unfocused.

1:23:23 And this was a question that he asked, which was In effect, in how much would I pay Uh sort of age eighty, ninety, looking back on my life, how much would I pay to relive this moment right now? And I ask that a lot, whether it's just it's like sitting on the grass watching my dog play with a stick or any number of times, that's a question that I ask myself a lot. Like

1:23:45 Forty years from now, how much would I pay? Yeah. Tim Harris on his app has a great Three minute gratitude talk. And he says, Imagine you died

1:23:55 Yesterday evening. What you would give me back in this moment of having A shitty dinner with your kids and wife. Where you're all like in a bad mood and you're all in this very contract state. And I think that's such a again, it borders on the cliche, but there's something in Just daily reminders of that.

1:24:15 I think a lot about the Byron Katie thing of the past and the future are simulations in your head, and the only thing that's actually real is this current now moment that we're in. So we talked about a little bit earlier, we'll we'll do a couple more questions. And then we can we can grab for this Round one on on this podcast.

1:24:35 We talked about You were One option for the billboard. Which was the quame quote. Are there any other

1:24:45 Quotes. Statements, questions, words, anything that you might Put on A billboard. Besides that?

1:24:55 Yeah. Another candidate would be This quote We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. Welcome to the party. And that's a mashup of Pierre Chardin.

1:25:10 Is a French Jesuit priest and philosopher. And then There's a meditation on the Ten Percent Happier app called Welcome to the Party by Jeff Warren. Where You're saying to every negative feeling

1:25:22 Anything that comes up, welcome to the party. He says, Imagine you're an affable host. And it was this great moment. earlier this week where my son Seven year old is still afraid of the dark in his room. And

1:25:36 He was running back to get his clothes and he yelled out. Welcome to the party, Fear of the Dark. Which is so made me so proud'cause he's able to right, he's the that fear is object to him. Like he can he can feel his feelings, right? But anyway, I like that clip because it every time I read it, it shifts the oh. This is what it's like right now. This is a human experience. And somehow

1:25:58 This is our moment. Have you heard the moment like that? No, I I haven't. I really like it. I've been reading a lot of Writing. from Jesuits recently for some reason. And I'm not sure if it's a Jesuit thing or if it's just coincidence that I happen to be picking these up. I really don't know the first thing about the Jesuit order, but

1:26:18 The line Welcome to the party is so helpful because I've Certainly read a thousand times in different forms. making your emotions an object or not identifying, for instance, with I am angry.

1:26:33 But Phrasing in some fairly unnatural way. Like I am currently experiencing anger, okay, fine. But this is much more Memorable.

1:26:45 But it's being the affable host to your whole range of emotions, including like when like the grumpy cantankerous uncle shows up and you're like, Hey, bud, open to the party. You look like you've had a hard day. Uh, welcome to the party. I love it. I love it. Any others? I also love this quote from Mark Twain, right before he died, he was looking back at his life and he said something like that.

1:27:10 There isn't time. So brief is life for bickerings, apologies, heart burnings, callings to account. There's only time for loving and but an instant, so to speak, for that. And I like that because I think the perspective of somebody who's really old and dying is I find somehow extra

1:27:29 high signal because you they're trying to draw your attention. Still At an earlier place in your life. Mm-hmm. Somehow.

1:27:38 I find myself thinking about that a lot. All this stuff that feels so high drama. You know when you're Ninety looking at it. You're just gonna say.

1:27:48 It was all noise in there. Yeah. Yeah, or Right. It's all noise. And or Like the day after you die, if you're looking down and you're like, God, what I would give to have that shitty meal that I thought

1:28:01 Right. was the last place I would want to be. What I would give to have that again. Crim. I always love spending time together and Thank you for making the time. Thank you for having me. It was fun. Yeah, this is a lot of fun. I have ton of notes taken for myself.

1:28:16 Already And books I want to pick up. Welcome to the party. that I want to listen to. People can find you in a number of different places. I'll just repeat them. You know gramduncan.blog. Uh where they can find that essay that you mentioned earlier.

1:28:34 And East Rock Cap dot com. at Graham Duncan NYC on Twitter if they want to wave. Say hello on the internet. Is there anything else you'd like to mention? Things you'd like people to check out? Requests you would have the audience Suggestions, anything at all that you'd like to say before we wrap up. Well I'll just note I helped produce this conference called the Sone Conference. We do it in

1:28:56 partnership with C N B C and We raise money for pediatric cancer and w we do that by bringing fifteen headphone managers and venture capitalists together at Lincoln Center. They each bring the actual investment idea. And we're doing it this year, May sixth, in Lincoln Center. So Anybody listening?

1:29:12 Uh if you can afford it to donate. Come if you can't afford to donate. DM me on Twitter and I'll come up with some of our Free tickets. But it's a great

1:29:21 gift exchange we have where basically the headphone managers bring their ideas. People pay money to come hear them and then we give that money to the leading pediatric cancer researchers. So That would be one. That's the the Sone Conference Foundation S O H N Which I've attended before and found endlessly fascinating.

1:29:40 Endlessly fascinating. It's a fun yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's a really Mind stretching. Experience. Anything else that you'd that you'd like to say?

1:29:50 Uh no. All right. Full stop. Grim? Until next time.

1:29:54 And uh we have a lot to otherwise catch up on. But thank you again. Yeah. Thanks. Uh for being so generous with your time. Yeah. And your cafe to beverages. And to everybody listening. I will have links to everything in the show notes, the books, the essays.

1:30:11 The various Figures. People thinkers we mentioned. Which you can find as always at Tim dot blog forward slash podcast and just search Graham or Duncan. And everything will pop right up.

1:30:24 And until next time. Pay attention to the present. That's all you got. All right. Thanks, guys. Bye. Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend?

1:30:45 Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out. every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests. And these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun. Again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to Tim.blog slash Friday. Type that into your browser, Tim.blog slash. Friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one.

1:31:41 Thanks for listening. You guys know I love wearables, I'm sure you do as well, and they're great, but they give you data. Typically they do not give you solutions. That's why I absolutely love the pod. By this episode's sponsor, Aidsleep. I've been using their stuff for many, many years now. It fits over your existing mattress, tracks your heart rate with 99% accuracy, plus respiratory rate, HRV, and sleep stages. It is wild how much it correlates accurately to the stuff that you wear on you. Then the pod's autopilot analyzes your biometrics and automatically adjusts your bed temperature while you sleep. with independent temperature control for couples. Also important for domestic peace. Users report falling asleep up to 44% faster. This matches with my experience. I've experimented with all sorts of stuff, countless sleep aids, and I've yet to come across a better solution that both measures and fixes my sleep. within the same system. Summers don't need to mean terrible sleep.

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