What You Can't See Until You Hit Your Number

0:00On our last podcast, I asked you what words you would leave to the world if all your work was erased from history. Some people liked what you had to say. Uh, I'll change the premise. Alex, you regularly talk to the 85year-old version of yourself, Solomon, the one who's already lived everything and is at the very end.

0:23This question is for him and the answer is for you and everyone else. Solomon, what do you understand now that you couldn't see when you hadn't hit your number? The easy answer to that question would be that, you know, it wasn't worth it or, you know, you were going to accomplish it anyways because you're the person who is the accomplishment. like those would be the I would say like the answers that people would applaud and be happy for.

1:04But for me like specific numbers did change my behavior. And so I would say outcomes, accomplishments, material success, it is meaningless if it changes nothing about your life. If it changes your dayto-day, then there was a purpose for it. And I tend to try and define my goals almost exclusively by what will this change about my life?

1:34And so if it doesn't change my life, then I likely won't make it a goal of mine. And so right now I have I don't have a tremendous amount of insight on it because I'm actively in pursuit of the things that I've wanted and the things that I have achieved up to this point I also wanted and in achieving them the things that I thought would happen have.

2:06And so I never set out on the journey that I have to somehow reach some magical nirvana. I never expected that. And so that's not what's happened. Um I expected that I would become more useful and help more people as I gained more skills and leverage. And that's been true. Um and I'm good with it.

2:34Um, and so I would say that I have not had a magical revelation. I would say it's been largely that the things that I hoped would be true came true. Do you suspect 85-year-old Alex will care so much about being valuable? Uh, yes. I just think that value will change. It's just that the way that I will be valuable might change. That said, typically um Arthur Brooks talks about this um where basically there's there's these two kind of mountains in life where the first you know mountain is basically all based on fluid intelligence. It's just like how how sharp are you? How good is your memory?

3:17Like and a lot of achievements in basically the the domains that require the most fluid intelligence is like mathematics. And so like after you're like 30 like no one has ever gotten a Nobel Prize. That's like all of it is in teens and 20s which is like everyone's peak and after that they just go down. you just don't have the processing power. >> H >> um and then there's these different career paths that like they peak later and later and later and the career path that has the latest peak that basically doesn't really have an end is historians. And so uh the people who have the largest contexts of just pattern recognition and so you look at like the Warren Buffets and like they're they're studyers of huge amounts of data and they synthesize decisions, right?

3:56And I would say that the role that I'm currently in and that I continue to move more in that direction of is is translating um things to the masses, which is pattern, teaching, explaining, breaking things down. And those are skills that get better as you get older, not worse. And so I would see an 85-year-old version of myself as having more proof than I currently do, having more track record. Um, I would say that there's a like I'm I'm very open to change. Like I think there's there's a lot of people will see snippets on the internet and make a caricature in their mind of what the rest of this person's reality is. And that's just the nature of the internet. It's short form and that's fine. But as a result, I will get questions that are like this, which is basically to this caricature of me, which is not reality. Like I have very strong beliefs loosely held. If there's new information, I will change. If the day my kid is born, I want to do nothing else but hang out with the kid, I will do that. Why? Cuz I can.

5:06>> Like I optimized for freedom for a long period of time, which is like, how can I maximize my optionality? I do think that there are times when you choose to actively go against optionality in order to make commitments to have dependencies, right? Like having a family removes optionality, but I don't see that as bad. It's a you want to like you want to have options but not to always just have options. You want to be able to have options so that you can select the option that you want.

5:33And so I think this is probably one of the big issues that this might be the most valuable piece of the podcast for young people. So let me just make this point right now. I would say the youth of at least the western world is obsessed with the idea of independence, freedom and optionality. They want to do it their way and have all options open. They never want to get tied down. They don't want to commit to a career. They don't want to commit to anything. And it's because like I don't I don't know if something's going to change. But the optionality that we earn, it's like just making a ton of money but never spending it. If you die at the end of your life with a big pile of money, never having spent it, you wasted your life. It's like the ant that saves for winter and saves its entire life but never actually eats this big breadcrumb and then they're gone. And so options are like money which is that the only time that they have value is when they are spent, when they are used. And so in the short term you'll have those options but you need to like the part of growing up is making commitments which is eliminating alternatives which means you make you walk through oneway doors knowing that you can't walk back and like I see that as a big sign of maturity as you've taken these steps because you've decided and decaderee right the loudness to cut off you cut off options because you say this is more meaningful to me and it's because people are unwilling to make trades like all dec like there are no solutions there are only trade-offs so like you will sacrifice novelty for loyalty when you get married that's a trade and at some point it will be worth it more for you to have loyalty than novelty in your life right um and so there are many trades like this that we have to make but the ultimate trade is the one that we don't make when you basically get neither thing that you want because you sit on the sideline with your big stack of money, your big stack of options, never having used in them because some doors also do close because at a certain point you do lose options by not committing.

7:35>> Right? >> If you were a girl and you want to wait for your options, if you're 60, the likely that you're going to be able to have kids is very low. If you didn't have kids by the time you're 60, I'm using that as an extreme example here because I don't feel like dealing with it. Um, then you're probably not going to have kids. And it's because that option is now gone for you. And so some options have an expiration date on them. And so sometimes we just have to decide and realize that we will not get everything in life. And I think that is that is probably one of the biggest things of I would say like what has changed about me from a maturity perspective is realizing that you cannot have it all and like very viscerally like if you want a house that has a mountain view and is on the beach and is also secluded but walking distance from grocery stores and shops and shopping.

8:22You can't because you can't be in the mountains and then also have the the the shopping malls and all this stuff and you can't be on the beach but also have the mountain view. It doesn't like these things these things sit separately. And if you want to also have uh the beach but also have skiing like there there is no place that has those things. And so we want everything and are unwilling to sacrifice anything and as a result get nothing.

8:49And I would say that's probably the biggest thing that has changed as I've gotten older is that I'm willing to make trades. Beautiful. If you like this video and you're a business owner who wants to break through your current revenue ceiling, I distilled every lesson from scaling 10 businesses past 10 million and three businesses past 100 million into a completely free scaling road map that I've used to go from 0 to 1, 0 to 10, and 0 to 100 plus. And so you can click here and you can check it out.

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