How to break out of autopilot and create the life you want | Graham Weaver (Stanford GSB professor, founder of Alpine Investors)

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/ce24e04f7e3e4632

You are ostensibly a professor at Stanford Graduate School business and you shared
That when people come ask you for advice, the most common question you get is, What should I do with my life? Imagine that you're walking home from work, you see this bright shiny object, and you realize it's a magic lamp, and you rub the lamp and this genie comes out and the genie says, Hey, I can give you one wish, whatever you throw yourself into with your whole life and your career.
It's gonna turn out great. If that were true and you had that genie, what would you wish for? At some point in this one life we get, you wanna get yourself on that path of that journey.
This whole exercise connects to something that you're a big advocate of of this idea of getting out of autopilot mode in your life. You're unconscious and you may not even realize why you're doing what you're doing or even realize what you're doing. So for example, I get up, work out, drive into work, fight traffic, commute, maybe I return some emails, fight traffic on the way home, rush through dinner, go to bed. It's not
a day that is intentional. It's not a day where I've said, where do I want to be going with my life? What's important to me in this world. You have another quote which is everything that you want is on the other side of worse.
First.
Pick anything. You want a better body.
Okay, you're going to need to go to the gym. When you go to the gym the first few times, it's gonna not be that fun. The first move is negative. If I'm optimizing for tomorrow and I w I just wanna have a great day tomorrow, I'm gonna stay exactly where I am. So many people I see have this happen where they just
They hit a plateau and they never move past it because they're not willing to have that.
That hard day, month, week, year. When should you quit something? Cause some things are just not worth it. I think the time to quit is when you can no longer

Today my guest is Graham Weaver. Graham teaches a top-rated course at Stanford's Graduate School of Business.
A course which is technically called Managing Growing Enterprises.
But as you'll hear in our conversation, he ends up mostly helping students figure out
What to do with their lives, and how to get out of the autopilot mode that most people are in.
He recently won Stanford Graduate Business School's 2024 MBA Distinguished Teaching Award.
And teaching is actually his side gig.
His full time job is founder and s of Alpine Investors.
A private equity firm which based on my research.
Is one of
If not the top performing private equity fund in the world.
So the advice you're gonna hear today is coming from someone who is actually doing the thing, not just teaching the thing.
In our conversation, we cover practical exercises that can help you figure out what you should do with your life.
Including something he calls the Genie framework and the line lives exercise.
We talk about why life is suffering, and you may as well choose something worth suffering for.
Also why most things in life that are worthwhile take more time than you expect.
Some practical advice for creating accountability in your life to help you achieve your goals, and so much more.
If you listen to this episode and actually try some of the exercises that Graham shares.
I promise you that your life and your future will be better off.
If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. It's the best way to avoid missing future episodes, and it helps the podcast tremendously.
With that
I bring you Graham.
Weaver.
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Graham, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for having me, Lenny. I'm super excited to be here.
Okay, so you are ostensibly a professor at Stanford Graduate School Business of a class called Managing Growing Enterprises.
But
I was reading an interview with you.
And you shared that when people come ask you for advice.
They're not asking.
Uh, how do I start a company? How do I manage my growing enterprise? How do I
How do I make my company grow faster? Most of the questions, the most common question you get.
Which is surprising to me is
What should I do with my life?
First of all, is that accurate? Yeah, that is accurate. Uh about about half of all the times I meet with students
That's the question they ask. It's really funny too, because sometimes they'll come with a PowerPoint presentation and a two by two matrix and a
expected value and all that. But really they're asking the question of hey
What should I what should I do with my life? Which is a by the way, a great question now.
Why do you think that's the case? That's not what I would imagine someone at an MBA school in a business class asking for advice on.
My typical meeting with a student will say
The student will start to tell me about these
Two or three different
uh career or job alternatives that they have, A, B, and C. Let's just use two, A and B.
And then they go through and they start talking about uh A and they tell me all the pros and the cons of A and they go through it and then
They go through B and they start telling me all those things. And I start asking some questions and over
After about five or ten minutes into that.
I can tell that they their heart and their soul and the the their energy is really for B. That's really what they want.
But they're talking themselves out of B and they're gonna talk themselves into A. And so
What I try to do is a, I I first I try to let them
realize that their real energy is for B. Just let them feel that and and understand that.
And then secondly, I try to figure out what are the limiting beliefs they have.
What are the fears? What are the obstacles? What are the voices in their head? What are all the societal pressures?
that are keeping them from doing B and then we try to deconstruct those.
And get'em to go do B. So that's the that's the process.
Is there is there an example of a student going like just this actual conversation you had with someone?
Absolutely. So there's uh a great example of a student of mine was from Brazil and
He came in and was
Yeah, he he was his prior prior job prior to business school is he worked in consulting.
And that was
More or less what he wanted to do.
And then
It at some point I asked the students, okay
Imagine
You
knew you were gonna be successful and what and you would you were gonna
you're gonna have a dream and whatever
Whatever you dreamed was gonna come true, what would you dream for?
And he wanted to start a non profit in his home country of Brazil.
To help uh
students have more access to education. That was what came up for him.
And over the course of our class, we just chipped away at all the fears and limiting beliefs of
Why he
shouldn't or couldn't do that.
And by the end that's what he did. And
Um that so that that's a that's a
That's a real life example and there's
All kinds of other examples. But that that second one of
you know, going and starting a charity.
It's not on the beaten path. It's not what you're
probably your parents are thinking you should do. It's
There's probably a hundred reasons not to do it. You probably don't know exactly how to start.
And so it's it's intimidating, but if you start with a
This this idea, hey, five years out, ten years out, I know I'm going to be successful and and work backwards from that, you're going to come up with a better answer.
This is a framework that it you call the Genie.
methodology of the Gini framework, this question that you just asked.
that we should spend more time on, which is
I guess you tell the story of the genie and how and how you think about it.
I when I was thirteen years old, I was I was I used to listen to these motivational tapes mowing lawns and
I'm I'm I'm pretty sure it was Brian Tracy had this exercise and he said, Okay, and and then I've adapted it. So I've I'll I'll use my exercise now. So I say basically
Imagine that, you know, you're you're walking home from work and you see this magic you see this bright bright shiny object, you walk over
And you realize it's a magic lamp and you rub the lamp and this genie comes out and the genie says, Hey, I haven't been in this bottle for
ten thousand years yet. So I'm not fully formed, so I can't give you three wishes, but
What I can do is I can give you one wish and the wish I can give you is whatever you
throw yourself into with your whole life and your career
It's gonna turn out great.
It's gonna work out great. And it's probably gonna take longer than you think. It's gonna be harder than you think, but
You're gonna be really happy you did, and it's gonna work out beyond your wildest imagination. If that were true and you had that genie.
Blessing you with that wish.
What would you wish for?
And then the students come up with an answer that's really close to
their heart and their
It's the thing they would do absent the fear of failure.
And and then the second part of the exercise is
Basically
That's what you should go do.
You know, that that you should be spending your life.
in pursuit of your genie goal. Maybe you can't start that tomorrow.
You have financial obligations, maybe there's some experience you need.
But at some point in this one life we get.
You want to get yourself on that.
Path of that journey.
And and that that's the exercise that I go through with the students.
It's such a simple idea that I can totally see how po it could be so powerful.
And I love the way it's framed as not like
uh it'll guarantee you'll be successful. It's instead it I'll guarantee you'll be happy. You'll you'll be happy that you took the path. And the reason I say that is that like
There's
Usually the genie goal.
is the not well trodden path.
So you don't even know exact what the goal is. Like this charity to start education.
uh for for um underprivileged kids in Brazil, like
That
That takes its own form over the course of a decade and it
It will almost certainly turn out differently than you think.
So it's it's it's it's more it's more that you'll be really happy you went and started that journey.
And it'll go it will go great. It will probably go differently and take longer than you think, though.
What are some other examples of Genie Goals folks have followed that are kind of non traditional and and they've ended up being happy about it?
I mean mine mine mine was you know buying companies in my dorm room at at business school.
I have a student who's who's starting
Uh an amusement park in Texas.
Uh that's that's a pretty crazy example. Um
Many students who are start who uh are leaving their job and doing startups.
A lot of students who are uh going in the nonprofit world.
So
Really just lots of examples. Um
Uh it's really it's as it's as
It's as div as variant as the number of students I have. And that and that's the magic of it because
you have inside of you some really unique
dream that you maybe haven't even shared and and the goal is that that that's you know, that's your
uniqueness and you and you should be that's what you should be bringing into this world.
This whole exercise connects to something that you're
You're big advocate of of this idea of getting out of autopilot mode in your life.
And the way I think about it is like
People and I uh I'm gonna ask you to describe it, but just like it's almost like you're driving and you've never turned off the cruise control in your car and you don't realize it.
Talk about this idea that most of us are in autopilot and why it's so important to realize that and get out of it.
You
start off in your
And you're unconscious and you're kind of going through the motions and you may not even realize
why you're doing what you're doing or even realis what you're doing. So for example
Typical person gets up
They have whatever their morning routine, you know, I'll use myself. I drive and I I get up, work out, take a shower.
drive into work, fight traffic, commute, you know, late.
I get in, I'm late to a meeting, I'm kind of rushed, meeting, meeting, you know, okay, quick break for lunch, maybe I return some emails.
Few more meetings, a couple Zoom calls.
Fight traffic on the way home, rush through dinner, get back on email.
Go to bed.
Okay, that's my day.
And
That's a busy day.
The I felt I felt like I did a lot. I'm exhausted.
But it's unconscious. You know, it's it it's not a day that is
Intentional. It's not a day where I've said what's
Where do I want to be going with my life? What's important to me in this world?
You know, what what what's what are my values? What
Ten years from now, will I wish I was starting to embark on.
adding that level of intentionality and then working backwards from that.
is really is really the magic of of getting to that ten years from now and and
looking back without regret.
And getting to you know, to a a later point in your life and
And feeling like you're doing the thing you're you're supposed you you're put on the sort to do as opposed to just kind of going through the motions.
So the question then here is how do you get out of that autopilot mode?'Cause it's
First of all, no one really realizes this is the case. And I'll I'll tell a quick story. I was we're interviewing we're going to different preschools and he cares for our son. He's a year and a half oldish and
We went to this Montessori school and the teachers like
What we're doing here, I'm gonna be very clear. What we're doing here is
Informing your child's subconscious.
That's what they're learning here.
And that's a huge responsibility. We put a lot of
Uh uh.
Uh
love into that idea, but it's very important you understand that's what we do at the school.
And I never thought of it that way. That's amazing that they said that. So
You just opened up another
Part of this, which is
Depending on what research you see you you read, somewhere between ninety
five and ninety eight percent of our thoughts are subconscious.
And those get programmed in somehow, some way.
A big part of that, by the way, is media.
our friends, our parents, our boss, our co workers, what we think we're supposed to do.
social media, this is cool, buy this Ferrari, you know, all these different things.
And then you're just operating out of that. And so the idea of
Being intentional is create space, get out of that, get out of the fog of war.
Make some space. I do it.
You're
We'll probably get to this in a little bit, but I do it with an executive coach.
And really ask
The ask deep questions, um, you know, make space, ask questions.
create the intention that you want in each of the areas of your life.
And then start
You know, start having your calendar reflect that intention.
And so this genie exercise is one approach is just ask ask yourself this question.
Uh, can you say it again, just for folks so they don't miss it? What's the question you should ask yourself?
I mean the the the biggest question
I think with respect to your career is
Within reason.
What would you do if you knew you wouldn't fail?
That that that's the that's the biggest question. I I'll give you a few more if you want.
Yeah. These are some other ones that some different
Different questions trigger different things with people.
That could be helpful. Trigger in a good way. I mean, uh so
For ex here's a few more.
Um
If you didn't have to make money.
Uh, what would you do?
Um and and that'll answer, you know, kinda what you enjoy.
Uh Naval Rabacan has a great question, which is
What's
Play for you that is work for other people.
So, you know, for you, Lenny, that might be a podcast. You know, that might be play for you. That's really fun.
You're always gonna do better at that. You're gonna spend more time. You're gonna enjoy it more.
Um
That's that's good one. Another one is
What's the thing you really want to do, but you're just too embarrassed to say it?
And my answer to this question was that I wanted to be a motivational speaker like Tony Robbins, you know, and uh
And I would I was super embarrassed to say that, but that but I that actually works into a lot of my life at this point.
Another question, you know, who are some people that you admire
and wanna be more like and what do they do and and um
And and and you know, where are some of those where do you find those people?
Um, what are some things you want to learn and how do you want to grow over the next five, 10 years? So I know a lot of you're
Your y um listeners are are working in tech, you know, so what
five, ten years from now, you're you're amazing. You're best in the world at X.
Um, what's X, you know, and and how do you start to
work toward becoming great at X. So there's some other
Just some a few more other questions you could throw in uh to help you
Figure out some things you're excited about.
You mentioned this idea of limiting beliefs, and I think a lot of people listening to this are probably having these beliefs right now of
Okay, but I have a family to support. Uh how do I I'm not gonna go start a charity in Brazil. That's absurd.
It's sounds easy, but I can't actually change my life this radically. Yep.
Can you just share something to help people get past that in some way? Sure.
The first thing I would say about limiting beliefs is
They're the most powerful and the most dangerous.
when you don't even know what they are.
So
When they're in the recesses of your subconscious mind, that is ninety five percent of your thoughts.
That's when the limiting beliefs are the most dangerous. So
A s a simple example might just be like
I have a limiting belief that
I
I'm not funny, you know? And that's it, that's in my subconscious and I don't even realize I have it. So I
I avoid things where I'm, you know, trying to be
funny or tell jokes. I mean that's a that's a silly a silly example.
But but but let's use your career now and come up with some may maybe deeper ones.
Let's let's use that charity example the the uh Brazilian charity. I'm gonna start a Brazilian charity. What are the limiting beliefs? Well, oh my gosh, there's a million.
I don't know how to start.
I don't know how I would pay for myself. I have business school debt.
Um, I don't I don't really know what I'm even talking about. I don't even have a plan for it.
Um how would I get funding?
Um, those are all these things that are flooding your mind.
So the the first exercise is just write all that down.
Just get it down on paper.
And then two things will happen. One is when you get it done on paper.
It will o almost immediately strip
that limiting belief of a lot of its power and and a lot of its scariness.
'Cause now it's just something like, for example, how would I fund this?
So the second the second thing that is is that a lot of that scariness becomes just a to do item.
So you're your your
In in the recesses of your
subconscious that is a
very scary limiting belief that will actually keep you from doing the thing you love.
Once it's on paper, now it's just a to-do item that you can actually deal with with your conscious mind.
Just like you do anything else. So how would I
You know, uh I I I
How would I fund this just becomes a a plan. Like I need to make I need to design a plan where I'd get funding for this charity.
And then that just is a problem like any other problem. It's not this nebulous
Scary fear. It's just a it's just literally a to do item. And so
So the first part of Liming and Beliefs, write'em down.
understand what they are, look at them in the cold day of
of light on paper and then translate them into things that are just
obstacles to be overcome and by the way
If you're listening to this podcast, you've overcome
millions of obstacles in your life and these are no different.
Uh once they're down on paper.
Are you actually doing these exercises with your students? Like they're taking a class about growing their enterprise and then it's like okay, let's analyze what you want to do with your life. Is that how this class goes? That's a really good question. So
I'll give you a little bit of background. So I was a case guest
in at at at Stanford Business School while I was buying companies in my dorm room and it was talking about all the things that went wrong.
And so it's kind of a really fun case. And I I did that for twelve years.
And I started to realize that was like my most energetic day of the year. And so
Long story short, I started teaching a class full time. So I did that for four years.
And
I was teaching the Xs and O's of being a CEO, basically, hiring, firing, having hard conversations, managing a board, fundraising, selling.
All the things you would imagine that uh uh
young CEO would need to know.
After about four years I started to realize
That was great, except that no one went and did it. You know, they they so the classes on entrepreneurship
And
They learned how to be an entrepreneur. They did the only problem. There's only one problem. They didn't actually become entrepreneurs. So
Then I said, Well wait a sec, I have to
I have to readjust my class a little bit and I have to spend some time on the stuff we've just been talking about, you know, finding out what your dream is.
You're limiting beliefs, starting to map out goals toward your
Toward your actual entrepreneurship.
Dream or or whatever your G goal is.
So the way I say it is people
The university allows me to teach the class.
Because
I teach them entrepreneurial um
Tri tricks, tactics.
Tools
uh that will help them become a a great CEO and
But the real reason I teach is because I'm trying to help
help people really go find the thing that they're
Excited about and get
get that get into the life path of doing that thing. So I do
I do both, but I I do the I do the second one.
Kind of
Uh maybe that's not the headline of the course, although although I think that's probably why people like the course so much.
It's like a Trojan horse. Exactly.
What do you Tony Robbins used to say.
That people
Hire him for success and
And he has to give them that so they earn you know, so that he feels like he earned his money, but what he really
delivers them is fulfillment. And it's a little bit like that. People take my class
to learn how to be a CEO, but they really get is hopefully on the path of
Doing the thing they want to do.
A lot of what you've been talking about is this kind of a
It's almost an assumption that you will be more successful and happier if you follow
Your energy, your passion.
versus the
Here's how I'll make a bunch of money, here's how I'll move up the ladder.
You speak to her.
Yeah, I gosh, Lenny, I it sounds so cliche when you say it like that that I almost uh I am
I almost cringe a little bit.
Let me try to give it a little bit different framework where it won't sound as as'cause you know, cliches are cliches'cause they're true.
But let me try to give you a little bit
different framework to think about it.
I think about it as you have
Your
sort of your heart or your soul or your or your internal scorecard.
And then you have your head and your mind.
And and the world's external scorecard. And like
I can I'll speak from this from experience. So when I graduated from business school
I took the job I was supposed to take and it was the
safe job at the big private equity firm that paid well.
And you know, looked great on my resume. And I took that job. That was the external scorecard. My head said that. I built like
an expected value calculation, all that stuff.
The problem was it didn't it wasn't my internal scorecard, you know it
It had nothing to do with
What I actually
cared about and wanted to do with my life.
And so the way that shows up is just this tension, friction, stress, anxiety, burnout.
All those things. It just and and you can you can will that. You can will yourself through
For long periods of time.
In fact, you can if you want, you can will yourself through that.
Your whole life.
But then
Once I kind of got into the the path of the thing that I was excited about.
That's when I really felt
My energy
change dramatically and I
I developed almost like a superpower in that thing because
It was
You know, I had I had more energy. I was willing to work longer. I was willing to do it. I've been running my company now for twenty three years.
I was willing to do it for a longer period of time.
Um, I thought about it in the shower. I thought about it when I went on runs, you know, I talked to people they wanted to join because I was excited.
And it just it it was a whole different level of
Of of power and um
that that I that I that I was able to and and and for the life life force that I was able to bring to that.
So I'm saying this from experience that
you're gonna show up so much differently in the thing that you're excited about.
Uh that
That alone is going to make your life a lot better. But the great irony is you're going to do so much better in that thing than you are the thing you quote are supposed to do.
And I certainly, certainly understand
That people have real life
Constraints on
their finances and and and I and I one hundred percent get that.
And so a big part of what I do as students is work through those things and say, Okay, great, you know, let's
Let's talk about this job you're gonna take for X years and you're gonna pay off your loans or whatever.
But during that time, let's get you on the path of the thing you really want to do.
Um so
sometime in your life you want to, you know, sometime soon in your life you want to get on that path.
There's a a bunch of directions I wanna go here. One is I'll just share like what you're describing is exactly what happened to me.
Without
Knowing this advice.
I just started writing things online.
Because the
Pole was there.
And people seem to enjoy it. So I just kept following that path and the whole time my wife's like
You can't make money writing on the internet.
That's not a thing. Why would you do this? You have all these skills that can be
You can make a lot more doing other things.
But I just kept doing that and that's what
led me to this life now where
Uh I make uh much, much more than I made as a product manager at Airbnb.
And
Uh also it's a lot more
It's a lot less stressful. Yeah, and it is probably an example. Probably that, you know, if you go back to what I was saying before, you probably were answered the question, you know, what what would I do if I didn't have to make money? You know, you just did that because you enjoyed it.
What's play for you that's work for other people.
You know, what do you do in your free time? Th you know, you were answering all those questions and then I think a lot of people just say
Oh, well that's just a side, you know, hustle or a hobby.
It is until it isn't, right? And and um
And in your and you're a great example of that.
Just to set it to make expectations of folks. It's not like
Like you tell me, how often does this actually work out for someone where this ended up being
The right path for them.
that it ended up working well for them just
You know'cause
People can hear this and be like, Yeah, okay. Like I'm sure it works for some people, probably not for most people. What's your what's like the success rate?
How are you define that for your students?
Okay. So the the short answer is I don't know.
Um because I don't I don't have full information about
How my students do or what
their path would have been had they not done it. So it's a it's a kind of a difficult
Question to answer.
Um
But what I would say is that
The formula you're solving for
Is
You
Excited about something.
for like a decade or more.
So what has to happen, you excited about something we just talked about, what that is.
The decade or more is
gonna come true more likely if you're excited about it.
But also you have to go in at the beginning with that mindset and
And the structural uh ability to stay at it for a long period of time.
So the the missing ingredient in most of the people that fail is time.
And and I can st uh I'll I'll use my own
Myself as an example
You know, I s I st uh started Alpine.
We lost money on our first fund.
You know, we started doing well, we got hit by the recession, you know, we started digging out, whatever, but
Long story short.
I was fourteen years into
running
my firm until
I could say like with confidence we were gonna s even stay in business, let alone be
really successful and probably
eighteen years until we were
what I would say really successful by external standards.
And now twenty three years, you know, we've had we've had a a great run.
Um but but if you take away
That the the time
Period. Then I would have gone down
as one of the quote failures, um as opposed to I would say
One of the success stories, um
U using this methodology. So time is the really
the the the variant the variable and I and I think
The biggest part of that is it's it's really, believe it or not, not
Typically
The finance or the
the structural piece, it's the
It's the entrepreneur or the individuals.
willingness to actually stay with it.
And and and in then upstream of that, it's their belief.
About how long it's supposed to take.
And I really hate this about
the social media and just media in general where
They try to paint this picture that
things are gonna happen overnight and
I I just
I I we've we've invested in six hundred
Uh founder.
Six hundred businesses.
vast much let's say five hundred and fifty of those are founder
Founders started businesses where we're the first money.
I've never in one
of those examples seen anyone who did thing something
Quickly.
They've all been
Very, very long.
Uh
stories to get to that point.
This reminds me of a quote I read.
That you I don't know if you wrote this or you
Shared it.
This idea that life is suffering, so choose something worth suffering for.
You wrote that.
Talk about that and'cause it feels like it's exactly what you're describing. It's gonna take a long time to do it. Yeah, exactly. It's a good I'm glad you brought that. Yeah. I mean, think about it. Like in in uh again, using my selfie example, the first job I had
I I wasn't suffering any less. I was getting on planes. I was working late hours.
I was my time was not my own.
You know, if I would have had kids, I'd be missing their
Literally
Games and all that stuff.
So I'm doing that anyway.
I'm just doing it for something I don't care about.
And then you know I start
My own company and I was
quote suffering, you know, getting on planes, doing all that.
I just it was just something that I I cared about. So yeah, the quote
Life is suffering, so figure out something worth suffering for. You're gonna suffer.
Either way. And that's another thing I think
people don't realize is like there isn't really a path
that is easy that I I've I've ever found.
You have a another quote along these lines, which is everything you want is on the other side.
of worse.
First. Yeah.
I mean, I know those are two
Not super optimistic quotes, perhaps, but
They're um
But I think that
I think they're true.
The second one, uh, everything you want is on the other side of worse first and
Th this is something where I I almost can't think of many exceptions to this where
You know, you pick pick anything. You want a better
Body.
Okay, you're going to need to go to the gym.
When you go to the gym the first few times, it's gonna not be that fun.
You're gonna set your alarm, you're gonna get sore, you're you know, it's not gonna be great. You're gonna have to probably make some
changes to your diet. That's not gonna be fun, at least initially.
And so the the so
Or you know, so that's one example. You want to change careers
you're going to have to learn a new career. You're gonna have to
You're gonna have to
leave your career, you're gonna have to maybe interview for new jobs or whatever it is.
It's gonna in each case the first move
is negative. Uh it first move is negative to getting in shape. This first movie is negative to get out of a bad relationship.
to um
To get into a career you want to be in.
That is
The reason I think that's important to say
is because if I'm optimizing for tomorrow and I w I just want to have a great day tomorrow.
I'm gonna stay exactly where I am.
Because my life will be better tomorrow if I don't make any changes.
You know, I don't have to break up with my
Girlfriend, have a hard conversation.
Have the tears be you know, be alone.
go on dating apps. I don't have to do that if I if I just stay in it one more day.
Um so if if you realize this and and instead ask the question
Yeah, what would my self my
The the version of myself five years from now.
What what would they wish I was gonna do right now?
You know?
So I can I can guarantee you your five year version yourself will say
get out of that toxic relationship, no matter how painful it is for the next two months.
And if you can make decisions from that.
And then on top of that, realize it's gonna get worse first, then
That's why I say everything is everything you want is on the other side of worse first.
But if you don't do that, you just end up plateauing. And so many people I see have this happen where they just
They hit a plateau and they never move past it because
They're not willing to have that.
That hard
Day
Month.
Week, year, whatever it is.
I'm imagining many people hearing this right now are like
Damn.
I see what I need to do now.
That was really powerful advice.
It makes me think of uh a parenting advice. Here's some parenting advice I recently saw. Dr. Becky has this advice of your job as a parent isn't to make your kids happy.
But it's to make them resilient. I love that. Yeah.
By the way, watch how people parent, they parent exactly the opposite of that.
Exactly.
You know, I and
I don't know how
If you have kids or how old they are, but they when you when you get
kids in school Marin, you know, you see parents
They try to clear all obstacles away from their kids.
It's the worst thing you could do.
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at liveblocks dot io slash lenny
I wanna talk about another exercise that you
But before I do that, I just
There's all this advice you're sharing that people may be hearing be like, Yeah, yeah, okay, this is great.
But I'm gonna share this in the intro, but
And we're not gonna talk a lot about your your your fund.
But I did some research on it and
From what I understand it's
One of the top performing
PE funds in the world.
Which is very hard considering how many smart people run PE funds and how ruthless that industry is.
Uh anything you can comment on there? And is that
Just like yeah, I think that's important for people to know.
Well I think I think one of the things I would say is that
I never stand up in front of students or s or be on a podcast like this and say anything that I'm not doing myself or that I'm advising.
students or or people who work at Alpine to do. And so
I appreciate the kind words and
I think that the
The things that I'm talking about are rooted in
Real results and this is not
you know, uh just kind of happy talk um podcasts. It's
It's one where the the this this is
the the formula, I think, for greatness is to be intentional, get in the path of the thing that you're most excited about, and then give yourself
several decades to do it and that
That's that's based on
you know, investing in six hundred companies and building my own business. So I I appreciate the the kind the kind call out.
Yeah.
For people uh that are listening and be like, Okay, I'm motivated, I want to do this, other than taking your class
Anything you can recommend to just like do these sorts of exercises, ask yourself these questions that you've seen work.
I mean the answer is
is accountability. You know, how how do you
How do you keep yourself accountable to
Kind of
living the life you want to live. And
The
Analogy I would use is let's let's say that
Um you really, really your your number one goal in life is you've got to get in better shape. You just have to. Let's say you have even
Medically that's gonna
Uh you know, you're you're you're
You're gonna have real health problems if you don't do that.
I would say you
Hire yourself a personal trainer.
You know, pay what you need to pay. Okay, maybe you you don't have a ton of money, but that's where I'd spend it.
You know, that person is gonna
A they're gonna hold you accountable to showing up at the right at a certain time.
And B, they're going to
um draft uh they're gonna show you the exercises, they're gonna, you know, call you if you're not there.
Um, you know, you're just increasing the chances of success. Plus you spend some money, you want to get your money out of it.
The equivalent of that in your life is an executive coach.
And and I figured this out.
In two thousand nine in the dark.
you know, recess is the recession.
I hired my first executive coach and I was like, wow.
It's a personal trainer for me.
For two things number one, make space.
To ask yourself
the big questions in life about your career, your relationships, your health.
your spirituality, your your children, whatever the big things are in your life.
Ask the big questions.
Find out what your intention is. What are you looking for in those areas?
And and just have
In my case
you know sever hours a week
to get clear on those things. Okay. So that's part one. And then part two is
that person can hold you accountable. I have one coach
Then I can't even have the call with the coach.
Unless I fill out a piece of paper that sa or an online form that says
Here's what here's what my
one year goals are outcomes I want to have this year are.
Here's what I did last week.
Based on those, here's what I'm gonna do next week.
Toward those.
And here's the accountability or here's the outcomes I want to have for the call we're about to have. And even if I never had the call.
Just having to fill that out every single week.
is incredibly uh powerful and account and hold
you know, allows me to hold myself accountable. Now
So
Hundred percent. That's what I'd recommend.
Let's back up and say, Okay, let's say you can't afford a coach.
Or you're you're worried about that, okay?
Then
And it's the same thing as like, let's say you couldn't afford a personal trainer. I would give you the same advice, which is
Find a very like minded friend of yours.
And sit down and
do it for for each other. So you know, if you're if you're using the work out example.
Okay, you're gonna go on a run Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays with your friend and they're gonna meet you at at seven AM at this
You know.
Trail or six AM at this trail.
That that that's your accountability and and you're gonna you know, you're gonna be more likely to do it. You don't wanna let them down. They're gonna
Yeah.
Beat you up if you don't if you don't get there.
Same is true with this. I used I this is how I started I did this with my roommate in
Business.
And we would
You know, we would go on a walk for thirty minutes and talk about my dreams and hopes and
Then we go on o turn around and talk about his
And it had it was great because we we we made room for each other.
to have those conversations and we also developed a gr a great friendship. So short of
having an actual executive coach, you you know, find a really like minded person that
could get into this with you and that that would be a another thing, but accountability is huge.
But I just say one more thing. I'm sorry I'm going on a little bit long. There's another thing that happens that's kind of magical, which is
You activate a different part of your brain.
When you
Talk.
And you actually activate more of your brain when you talk.
than when you think or write.
So thinking operates the least
uh um activates the least amount of your brain. Writing is a little bit better, but talking
Activate
Like a a whole whole different region of your brain. So
That that's the other big benefit of of not doing this.
You know, just on your own.
uh is being able to talk about it with someone.
I love that there's a whole spectrum of ways to create accountability for yourself.
I love this the second coach you shared where just filling out that form was basically
the bet biggest benefit. And when I was in college, I learned this from these audio tapes. When I was in college, I I had this
Green notebook.
And I was trying to row crew and I never rode crew before. And I wrote down at the top of the page every single morning.
I wrote down I am the number one rower in the country. I wasn't, I was a freshman, novice, hundred thirty five.
Palin Midwestern never been on a boat, so I was
But I wrote that down.
And then I wrote down three things I was gonna do that day to move toward that goal.
And I did that every single day that I was in college.
And it's just incredible. We talked earlier about your subconscious mind.
You just
locking your subconscious mind into
your goals and where you wanna go and who you wanna be and how you wanna show up. It's it's it's it's really powerful.
And that's advice anybody can implement. You could do that best. You could do that to the founder. Exactly.
Yeah.
It's such a simple thing.
I wanna be the best product manager. Here's three things I'm doing today to help me.
Well I'm not going to be able to do it. I have this is
My students have to do this every uh
twice a week it's one of their assignments and they actually have to turn it in.
And uh I have so many students that say like five years later, I still do this, you know.
A couple of times a week and it's been unbelievable.
Yeah.
You will get more done.
I'd say this to all your listeners, you will get more done.
Writing writing down the your goal and three things you're gonna do to move toward that goal. You'll get more things done.
And
three months than you will in three years without that.
That's an awesome thing to just try tomorrow.
At work.
Write this down and see how it goes.
The coach point, I just want to highlight that.
What convinced me to get a coach back when I was
uh working is I just realized one
Every athlete
has a coach that tells them here's how to become better.
Slash everyone that you work with.
That is like a leader and exec.
basically has a coach. And the people that have an exec coach
will do better in their career and life.
Then those you don't.
So why would you not have
someone there just helping you become better at this craft. Like it just makes so much sense.
If you can afford it, there are different price points for different coaches.
Most people can probably afford it.
That's right.
That's right.
Sweet, okay.
Let's talk about another framework that you have that you call Nine Lives.
And this is essentially another way. It's like another way to hack your brain to come up with things you really should be doing, probably.
Talk about this.
Exercise.
So this this idea of like what my what's my passion and what's my
career goal. Like it can be really intimidating. Uh and it is it it is intimidating. And so
Th this exercise is to
Make it less intimidating. And he basically come up with
Nine nine lives. So you see your first life
Life one is the life you have now.
So when I did this exercise I was
Um
I w I think you know, let's say I I let's pretend I did this exercise when I'm
Uh
Um
right out of school, uh taking that job. You know, so life one is
I'm working at this big firm.
I live in the Bay Area, you know, um
Here's what I'm doing. That's life one.
And then you say okay now.
You there's
There's two rules. Uh first rule is
All the lives have to start from today.
So you can't go back in time. They all start from saying and second rule is you have to be excited about all these lives. So I might say, Hey, my second life is I want to start a private equity firm and
you know, be a founder and be a CEO and and you know, that that's life two. And life three is I want to be an author.
And you know, I want to write
Whatever, fiction or nonfiction and
And then life th you know, four might be I wanna I wanna be a professor and and teach and life five is
On your um
You know, maybe I wanna I'm I wanna make videos and be on social media and I wanna be
Like six, I wanna be an actor and
And you go through this whole um
List of these these lives.
And
And and the idea is that
A couple of things from this exercise. One is
Let's say that
Your
in a position where you need to be working in the job you're in.
There might be one of these lives that gives you the most
energy. And it's the thing you if you knew you wouldn't fail, you would do this one.
And it it's good to recognize what that is and then pull that life a little bit into your current life.
So you know, let let's say, you know, Lenny, that you were a product manager, but you really love doing podcasts.
And that was one of your your nine lives.
Start you know, do do a podcast.
Every other week, you know, and and just and just
Pull it into your life.
Which is it sounds like what you did. You know, you started doing it as a side hustle and
And then that'll have two amazing uh effects. One is
you will just have more energy everywhere else in your life.
Like you i if forget if you ever do this full time or not.
Just the act of pulling something into your life you're really excited about.
will give you tremendous amount of energy.
And then the second thing is you'll
I you'll ideally find the path
That
you know, is the thing that you you you know, that gives you the most energy.
The other thing that I've learned in doing this exercise is you actually can have pretty much all nine lives.
You can't have'em at once, but
over the life you know, if if you're fortunate enough to live
you know, long enough you can you can have all of these things. Um
So I have
You know, had the
The the corporate job and the founder
you know, been the professor, but uh been a writer.
Uh built had videos.
Yeah, uh
taught people, you know, I've I've been able to bring in, you know, most of those
uh lives into into this current life.
There's a couple things there that come up as you talk about one is
On that point.
What I do now is my fourth career.
First I was an engineer, then I became a founder, then I was a PM and now I do whatever the heck this is.
And I think people don't realize that's how life often goes. You think you're gonna do one thing and then you have many
different careers that
pivot into. Exactly. And I think that's the thing. It's it's just try to make it a little less intimidating. Like that you don't have to have this one
Life
Purpose passion thing that
you do for the rest of your life. If you just follow
the thing that gives you energy at each time, it'll probably be a good indication of like where you want to be going.
The other thread there is I know one of your other really important pieces of advice is to avoid this
not now idea where everyone's like here's the thing I should be doing my genie goal, but not now.
Thoughts on just how to think about that of just like okay, I know I have these lives I could live but like but not now on
On this or that.
Yeah, I mean in in twenty years of teaching, I've never had
A student.
Come to me and say
Hey Graham, you know, my my real dream is to do X.
But I'm just gonna give up on it. I'm not gonna do it. No one's ever said that. Instead they say
Not now.
And not now.
If they're not careful.
will turn into not ever.'Cause not now is just really
Another way of saying I'm not gonna do it. And then there's a million reasons why you can't do it now.
And those those reasons
Some of our legitimate.
Some of them are just fear, uh fear in another form.
So
In terms of like
How to
overcome that
I think
I think it it's kinda helpful to realize that
It's never really the right time.
Like when you're making a change or you're gonna go
Do something different. It's never gonna feel
secure and safe. It's all you're always gonna have some fear. You're always gonna feel like you're not ready.
You're gonna feel like it's too soon. You're gonna feel like you don't know exactly what that path looks like.
And so just understanding that's normal, you know, that that's called entrepreneurship. That's called
like life and
If you wait for the clouds to part and this ray of sun to come down and say, Now's the time, you know.
You're gonna wait you're gonna wait your whole life.
And
And so I think
I think that realization can
maybe be helpful. And then re and then
And then try to
Try to figure out like what is the what are the things that need to be true for you to launch.
And usually for my students it's something
financial that is the
Is the big bottleneck.
And
What I tell'em is
You know what?
has people can have raised money
To
start a business before. That's happened. You know, where you're you've had uh
People who started businesses without their own money that have been able to pay themselves
And
That's not a reason to not do it. Like it's it's a
It's an obstacle. It's something you have to solve but it's not a
It's not an insurmountable
obstacle.
This touches on a quote I definitely wanted to get to, something that you wrote.
Not long ago.
Here's the quote.
The most important thing I've learned in the past in the first fifty years of my life is that
The true game of life is an internal one, not an external one.
And that
Journey starts with three powerful words.
I am enough.
Talk about that. Why is that so important? Well, that's a
I mean that's a really kind of uh deep topic and um but but I'll just I'll talk about the internal and external
Journey.
Yeah. So life life presents itself as a series of external
obstacles and events and and it and it feels very much like a external journey.
And
And it and it it can feel that way your whole life. But what I think what you'll realize, and I started realizing this
when I really started meditating and um spending time
kind of distancing myself from that, the sub you know, the subconscious thoughts is
It's almost it's it it
A a very, very large part of life is internal. I say very large part because obviously you need some food, clothing, shelter, some basic
you know, some basic needs that are external.
But for most people that are have the ability to even listen to this podcast.
I would say the vast majority of your life is internal. So what what do I mean by that? I mean that
You're writing a story
About
What it is you think you need to be happy.
Or you you're writing a story about
Things you think you um
You need to be
to be enough or to be respected or to feel worthy or
Um to get admiration of other people.
You're writing that story.
And and that that's just a story.

And if you really follow this logic, you'll realize
You'll realize that. You'll realize it is one hundred percent just a story.
Or it's a story that you should even care.
And
And then that that opens up.
a lot more agency that you have over deciding
What is important to you? You know, what is your internal scorecard? What are the things that that matter to you? Not
Not what
the external world thinks or what
Or or or the story you've been writing for a long time.
This when you start to open this up
It's really kind of scary at first because
Um you'll start to realize most of
the things you're operating f from are really just stories that have been written at some point in your life.
And uh and and and so it's it's actually terrifying at first and then it starts to become really liberating.
Was there an example of that in your life?
'C externally it feels like you're killing it. Killer P fun, teaching at Stanford, like the scorecard's looking good.
Uh, so it's interesting you say that.
The first time I really realized this was
Um
When I it was in two thousand fifteen.
I I mentioned to you it took me fourteen years to be successful, so we adjust
sold the last company from our second fund, which is where we really got paid.
I
had a financial event that was
It wasn't like I never have to work again in my life. It was just like I could exhale a little bit.
you know, I knew I was gonna be able to pay my mortgage and put my kids through college.
It was that kind of an event. And
And for like a couple of days I was euphoric because I I felt like I'd worked so hard for this. I've been again at this for 15 years, but really longer than that. If you go back to
getting into college and the whole thing had been a long
A long journey.
And then
It hit me.
That
Nothing changed, you know, uh nothing nothing internally changed at all. I still had the same problems.
I still felt the same way about myself. I still had the same kind of
a lot of, you know, negative thoughts about in myself, like not like this goal that I thought that I had for this whole long period of time.
It it didn't actually change anything.
It it changed externally for sure. I I I like I said I could I could
Exhale and
Pay my mortgage and and those those are all really good things.
But that was the first time when I realized like, oh, wait a second.
It's really
Up to me to
Find things that are gonna give me
Joy and and the
And the achievement of some kind of external event is
is not one of those things. And I I I I know that sounds really, really weird, but there's so many people that I've heard
That have had very, very similar stories. Um
And so it's really it was really disorienting for me. And I actually was the first time in my life where I
experience depression.
Because I just had this thought of like well
That
wasn't what I thought. I I think I was working my whole life for that and it
It wasn't what I thought it was gonna be.
And so now I was thinking, Well what
What is it then? You know what
What is the thing that's gonna
give me joy. And then that that takes
You know, that takes some
uh some introspection to to ask those questions.
I was just having a conversation with a friend who's
An angel investor and he just had a bunch of exits.
And he's like, Cool, I got some money in my bank account now, but I don't I don't feel anything. Like it just doesn't
I thought I'd be like, Holy moly, it's all
This is um exactly what I was hoping for.
Nothing changed exactly as you're describing. Th you know, there there I think pe I think you get a little bit of peace of mind.
when you have some financial security which is which is valuable.
But in terms of
Now
My life changes. Now I'm enough. Now I
I'm happy now I
Um feel good about myself.
Um
None of that.
changes for really anybody that I that I know.
And the hardest part is you said is you think it will. You think, Oh, I'll be so happy once I achieve this thing.
And I think an example of this is just there's a lot of miserable billionaires from what I
Red and
That should tell you a lot. Yeah, exactly.
Maybe uh
Second to last question.
I'm curious if there's anything recently you're focused on, I've been thinking a lot about that you've maybe changed your mind about, or it's kinda changed the way you think about the world.
The last um two years I had my two oldest boys go off to college. Um
twenty twenty two and then twenty twenty four.
And that really hit me hard. I I it it you would think that I would have been preparing for that for eighteen years for each of them.
But for some reason.
It just really
hit me really, really hard. And
I think it was
A real
uh wake up call of mortality, I guess, and to realize that
Nothing goes on forever. And you know, these wonderful people that I had lived with for each for eighteen years were no
No longer gonna
really be a part of my daily life. And um
And and that really set me off on a journey of
A lot of spiritual work, um, doing a lot of
meditating and
working with some gurus and
And it's been it's been really profound and
And and it's and it's
put me a lot closer in touch with the things I'm
that really mattered to me and
And given me I've I've given myself more permission to spend time
doing those things then
than the kind of normal external world type things. So
That that was that was a pretty profound change for me.
And the and the spirit
Spiritual journey is a

Arguably.
Really the important journey. Um
If it and and this could be a longer conversation, but
Um and and maybe you have the luxury of doing that journey, you know, as you get older or something, but um
But it's been it's been a
A really profound, profound journey.
I'm excited to see what insights come out of this part of your life.
Final question before we get to our very exciting lightning round.
We have this segment on the podcast I call Failure Corner.
Where
People come on this podcast, they show all these wins. Oh, I have this
amazing Pun that's killing and I teach at Stanford. I've launched all these things, all these students are so great.
Life's amazing.
Nothing ever goes wrong.
When in reality
It does.
And those stories often aren't told.
So I'm curious if there's a story you could share of time you failed in your career and if you learned something from that experience, what you learned.
Yeah, I'll I'll tell a couple of stories. So um when I was in high school, I wrestled
And I cut a lot of weight to make the varsity team and I

In the best mental.
Place'cause of cutting weight. But anyway.
I lost a big match my junior year.
And I quit and I never I never wrestled again. And that haunted me. So that I
First of all, that was a failure.
A big failure for me.
And it really haunted me. And so
I kind of
After that.
was g made a promise to myself that I wasn't gonna have that happen again.
When I went to college
I've
I try to roll crew.
I failed.
Year after year trying to make the team, trying to make the boat.
Um
Eventually had some
Yeah.
Real success.
My senior year, but prior to that
Just failure after failure.
And then at Alpine, I mean we we um
We lost money on our first fund.
Uh we
had real trouble during the recession.
Um we
you know, we made a lot of I think five of my first eight investments ever made in my life.
I lost money.
Um, and that in venture world that's one thing, but in private equity that's a whole different
uh ratio which is not not a good ratio at all.
Um
You know, when I first started teaching, um, wasn't wasn't good at teaching.
Uh
Yeah, what w had a lot of insecurities.
was I was really young when I started and
I didn't feel like I had really anything to share with the students and
I I I think that showed up and I
It took it took me a long time to kind of figure that out. So
I I I I guess my
Almost my entire
Track record is one that starts with
things not going well and then just
Over a long period of time of
Chip it's away.
Looks like a success on paper.
But
Any time in that
early in the process would look like an abject failure. So
I'm
Quite familiar with
failure in the form of setbacks. I think the ultimate failure, though, was the wrestling one where I just quit.
That was that was really the only one I would characterize as a failure. The other ones
because I kept going and staying with it.
Turned out to to work out.
Well, um with a lot of stars and bruises, but um the failure would have been quitting.
I love that this circles back to your core advice of
Stick with it.
most things is that are important or uh take a long time and there's a lot of suffering involved. Yeah.
Something I wanted to ask. I just I can't help but ask at this point,'cause it I think a lot of people are wondering this. Just like when do you quit?
When should you quit something? Cause some things are just not worth it.
Is there any advice there you could share?
Yes, for sure. I I think the time to quit is when you can no longer
see the vision and re and you can no longer really believe the vision.
And and then when that happens for a long period of time.
Or wouldn't be maybe you're no longer even excited about the vision. Um, some somewhere in there, I think
You the excited one you have to be a little careful of because in the dark days it's exciting is not the word you're gonna use, but at least like in in in our company
For the first ten years.
It was not going well, but
Each time I could start to
We'd we'd make fewer mistakes, we'd start to see something working.
We do one really good deal in this fund. We start to learn from that. We get one really good hire. We learn from that.
We would
Um, you know, little by little start to see these green shoots.
And um
And I have this
Unbelievable uh
There's an unbelievable statement. I didn't write it. Uh Dan and Shepeath wrote it.
In their book Switch, you know, which is
Scale your bright spots, you know, find what's working and do more of that.
And as you start to progress, like for me, for example, in Alpine
Almost all the time, we always had at least a small glimmer of a bright spot, and then we'd scale that. And then we'd continue forward and we find some more, and we'd scale those.
And over time
All those bright spots became our business. That became what we did. That became our
Strategy. That became how we hired people. That became where we recruited from. That became
You know, all those bright spots just started to magnify until
the you know, the entire entire business was pretty much a bright spot. So but it but it took time
Because we had to
We had a
figure out where those were and we had to do a lot of things wrong to to
figure out where the where the bright spots were.
Graham, is there anything else that
you wanted to share or you think is important to leave listeners with before we get to our very exciting lightning round.
I I mean I think I think what I would say is just
In general, you know, you you got you got one life.
You get one shot.
And
So take the time to really figure out answer the question.
What does a wonderful, amazing, incredible life look like?
Just get as clear as you possibly can on that. No matter how
crazy or aspirational it seems.
Write it down. Write down that thing is write down that thing that
would make this life amazing.
And write it down for your life, your career, your relationships, your friends, your body, your spirituality, your
financial situation and just
The first
The first magic is just knowing what you want. And I'd say
Ninety percent of people never even know what they want. So
Take the time to do that and then more
The more clear you are on that, the more
um invested you are in that, the more likely you are to make it come true.
What I love about that is
You don't have to do this thing, just
Step one is understand what it could be if you Exactly.
If you if you could do that.
And it's like almost like understand where your Google directions could take you if you turned off autopilot. Right.
Oh man. Okay. Well with that Graham we reached our very exciting lightning round. Are you ready? Let's do it.
First question, what are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most to other people?
So in the in the uh

sort of realm of a lot of the topic we've been talking about. Um
Which is your internal and external game.
I love the book um Untethered Soul and I love the book
Don't believe everything you think. They have very similar themes, but they come at it differently.
But I think
Both of those will really
Change your perspective. Um
If you if you read them and then
A very, very practical book that's
probably the book I've read more than any other book is How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, which was written in like nineteen thirty.
But it is absolutely
There's no other book like it. There's a reason that people are still recommending it a hundred years after it's written, so
It's uh it's definitely worth worth checking out.
Yeah. That book I still think about it often.
Even though I read it like thirty years ago at this point.
I love that recommendation and it's like it's like a very s
old book to read, but uh you have to get past the fact that it was written a long time ago.
Okay, next question. Do you have a favorite recent movie or TV show you've really enjoyed?
I w I for the first time watched the movie Where the Crawdad Sing and uh
I just loved it. Um
It was
It's kind of a
Romantic comedy or not r not comedy, sorry, romantic
Uh
Love story meets
Murder mystery meets coming of age.
And uh
It was just it really, really touched me. Then I
I probably read the book as well, so I I love that.
Do you have a favorite product you recently discovered that you really love?
I've a really big
fan of sleep. Uh, I I I think it makes a massive difference in your life. And that's a whole other topic. We could
go down another time, but uh so I have
I have two things
A few things that have helped me on that. So if you if you saw me sleeping, I have
Earplugs, I have a noise machine.
I have a sleep mask and then I have uh
chili pad that goes on my bed to keep the bed cool.
And um
I sleep great. All those things really help the the the earplugs and mask and noise machine kind of
Allow you to not hear the ambient noise and then the
There's a lot of research actually on the
temperature at which you want to sleep in this and your your body goes up and down throughout the night. So this
chili pad that goes under your mattress, um
There's a whole bunch of
versions of that.
And and and
That that helps a lot.
Uh I also sleep with an eye mask and
My wife and I rotate the earplugs'cause someone has to pay attention to the baby. There you go.
And this chili pad, is this like the eighth sleep, or is this like a like in just a cold bag? Well no. I you know, so I actually bought the eighth sleep and it was too much. Like
It would
It would turn on and off and I would wake up and
And then it would track my sleep and then I'd start to freak out'cause it told me I wasn't sleeping well. So
I actually returned it and I got a really simple one called Uler.
And it just turns on and off. There's no
timing or it's there's no like
Any any weird functional functionality so it
And it was a lot cheaper and it works better for me, so
That that everyone used their own thing, uh, but that that one worked better for me.
Okay, next question. Two more questions.
Do you have a favorite life motto that you often think about that you find useful in work or in life?
I love this quote uh that is kind of sums up a lot of what we talked about in the podcast. It's by um Howard Thurman.
And he says, Don't ask what the world needs, ask instead.
What makes you come alive.
Because what the world needs most is for you to come alive.
And I think that just talks about
It's really about you coming alive. That's the most important thing. And
That is gonna have so much positive exhaust.
in the world and and things from that will come that you can't even imagine right now.
I was thinking of that quote as you were describing your philosophy.
Final question.
I feel like a lot of people might be listening to this being like
I came here for
one of the most legendary private equity investors of all time. And uh you don't talk about private equity at all. So let me just use this opportunity to ask you just a question here.
What is it that you
What do you look for in a company that you want to buy that maybe other people don't? Is there some insight you could share?
Yeah. Well I I I I'm happy to talk about private equity, by the way. It's just I
Um we we talk about. We'll do another episode on that. This could be a whole podcast episode, I understand. Really happy to talk about that. Um
So I I'll I'll say like more I'll I'll I'll answer the question more like what's
a little bit of a different philosophy that we have. So
When we were um coming out of the recession and I hired this coach, we looked at all of our companies and we were looking for like where did we make our most money and what was most consistent trend and like
We looked at valuation, growth rates, capital structure, geography.
industry. We cut the data every way you could imagine and
We had these three companies that kept
showing up on all these
List
that um there were three of our top performers, but they didn't seem to really have anything in common.
And then we're like, Well
They have one thing in common, which is they
started off really badly, so badly in fact that we put our own
person from Alpine in to go run the company and then they ended up becoming our best companies. So we said
Wait a second, maybe that's the highly correlated thing is us putting our own team in place and even upstream of that, maybe just having an incredible management team.
So
That was
foundational and we and we now we put our own leadership team in a hundred percent of the time.
And not only that, but we have spent an enormous amount of time
Trying to build a program to help
People who
are in their late twenties, early thirties, you know, learn how to become CEOs.
And that's been foundational. So
The
Thing that
We probably
believed to be true that not that many people agree with us on is that the
The management team is really where we think
All the alpha comes from.
You can't get the industry wrong because if you hire the best management team in the world to run a typewriter business, you're gonna lose money. So you you can't be wrong on the industry.
But you also don't have to be
perfect on the industry. You you have to have a good enough industry.
And then a world class management team and we found that to be
uh a really good formula um for consistent returns and
We've uh and it's way more fun because you
You're literally in a board meeting with someone that is
on your side of the table because you're you hired them and put them in and so you're
you're building the company together and they're um
They're bringing a lot of the similar values and so it's it's been a
A real differentiator for us.
Uh I have so many questions, but I'm gonna cut then cut it off there. We could do another episode going deep on all this.
Graham, this was amazing. I think
We're gonna be helping a lot of people with what they want to do with their lives and nothing else.
Give'em a little opportunity to break it out of autopilot, at least for a little bit.
Two final questions.
Where can folks find you online if they want to maybe follow up, ask maybe some other questions that they are thinking as they hear this? And then how can listeners be useful to you?
My website's grandweaver.com.
I have a blog on there as well as a lot of videos and different things. Um
And then on
Instagram and TikTok, I'm Graham C Weaver, and then I'm on LinkedIn, I'm Graham Weaver, and on YouTube, I think I'm Graham C Weaver.
So Graham C Weaver will pretty much get you any of uh on all those channels.
How can listeners be helpful? Um
I would say I'd love to hear from you. You know, so my uh best way to reach me is
Gramweaverblog.com.
And
Tell me.
What's on your mind. I I may not respond a a hundred percent, but I will read
All the all the emails and
And then if you're interested, subscribe to my blog. So uh go to my website, grandweaver.com.
And I I have a blog where I talk about a lot of the topics that we're talking about today.
Amazing. Graham, thank you so much for being here. Thank you, Lenny.
Bye, everyone.
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