Warum Alex Business liebt

0:00What is it that you're taking in enjoyment from, then? The one step deeper than this, there is something that you're optimizing for. >> I love the reward. What reward? The micro rewards I get every day. Like >> Of operating a business. Of all things business-related. >> Yep. So, I love writing the book about business. I love talking to my editor about what we're changing. Oh, that's a really way better way to say it, right? Or I like tweeting about the thoughts that we have. I love doing discussions like this cuz I talk about my favorite topic, which is business, >> [laughter]

0:26>> for the most part. Um like and I actually am pretty averse to punishment. I've learned that about me. Like I do not like it. And when I say punishment in the formal sense, like things you don't like, right? And so like I avoid them like the plague. I don't do them. And so I just do as many of the things I can that reward me as frequently as possible. But from the outside to a lot of people that looks like punishment. Right.

0:49Yes. Interesting. How can someone uh cut through societal expectations, the ways they've dealt with past trauma, expectations from parents, all of the things that aren't their thing? Yeah. How can somebody, because what you've done, again, axiomatically, a priori, this is the thing I want to optimize for. How do people find the thing that they want to optimize for? I don't have a thing, Alex. That's [ __ ] great for you with your business. It just happens to be something else that's at the intersection of making a [ __ ] ton of money.

1:17>> Yeah. How do I find my thing? >> lucky with that. That that just happened to be the intersection. Cuz if I loved knitting and I didn't like business, that's a whole separate cuz like you can turn knitting into a business, but like if I only like knitting, then there's a way to make a living from that. But to to to get to the person who's like uh how do I find my thing? Um I'm a big fan of being directionally correct rather than absolutely correct. And so I think what happens is most people are trying to find the perfect answer when they have no perspective from which to make a judgment. They're trying to find the perfect thing to do when they haven't done anything. So, how would you have perspective to make a judgment?

1:50Like if you try a lot of things in the beginning, which you have to know what your inputs and outputs are, decrease your action threshold enough with either a cheese or a cat, whatever you need. Most people have more cats than they have cheese in the beginning. So, use the cat to start running towards something. And the thing is is the rat, it's so simple. It's like there's cheese here. But, what you really just need to know is that there's cheese out there. And there's a cat behind me for sure. And so, if I just go anywhere away from the cat, I will have a higher likelihood of getting closer to the cheese. Not that I will find it, but I will get closer to it. And I think it's And I've lived my life through a series of rapid iterations, not trying to pick the right thing. Because I just like Even when I was starting my first business, I I was between frozen yogurt, test prep, and a gym. Those are the three businesses that I was I was choosing between.

2:35>> Makes complete sense, yeah. >> [laughter] >> It's all a lot of things that I like, right? You know? And so, so I was choosing between those things. And like, why were those the things? I was like, well, I was pretty good at taking tests in college. So, I get that. I like frozen yogurt. And [laughter] I I mean, it sounds simple, but like I was like, everybody likes something, right? And I actually didn't know that I was going to like business. That's the crazy thing. Cuz also, hey, when you and I were younger, Instagram wasn't there. You took like None of this [ __ ] existed. And entrepreneurship wasn't cool yet. And so, I just hated my job a lot. And I hated where I lived a lot. And so, I was like, well, I will just not be here. So, cat, don't know what city I'm going to go to, but just not this city. Yeah. I went across the furthest place from Baltimore, which is California. And then I was like, okay, well, what do I hate doing? Well, let me not do that, which is, you know, sitting on meetings all day and doing whatever, you know, doing grunt work for [ __ ] that I felt like was meaningless. And instead, I was like, I'll do fitness, cuz I like fitness. And I was like, at the very least, I'll do something I enjoy, which I liked fitness at the time. And if you're like, well, I don't like doing anything. Well, it's like, well, then that's impossible.

3:38Because your brain is wired to be rewarded for things. And so, you are doing things that reward you. That's why you do them. Like, everything we do is because we've been rewarded for doing things like that in the past. And we project the same activities, and we predict that doing things like we did in the past that rewarded us will reward us again in the future. That's where our behavior comes from. And so, it's like, "Okay, well, what is rewarded you in the past? Where's the cat? Go the opposite way." Yeah. So, the the reverse role model is something similar, but you're you're almost taking this into a lifestyle perspective. So, the reverse role model is if you live in a town or you grow up somewhere, and there's no one around you like the sort of person that you want to be like, but there are tons of people like the person you don't want to be like, you can say, "There's a way marker. I don't want his relationship with gambling. I don't want the way that he handles his finances. I don't want the way that him and his wife communicate with each other." It's like, "Okay, there we go."

4:26Warren Buffett among us says, "Like an amazing amount of success has been achieved by not trying to be smart, but avoiding being stupid." So, there's your way markers there, but what you're saying is that this is almost like a abstracted lifestyle version of this. These are all of the things that I hate to do. What's the opposite of that? Yeah. And the challenge of I don't know precisely what the exact thing is, therefore I can't move toward it, is one of mine, which is perfectionism is procrastination masquerading as quality control.

4:58>> I was just saying it's it's a it's a it's a it's a fallacy. It's a it's a decision-making fallacy. It's the same It's This is why investor frames can be so useful. Like, if you're looking for the perfect investment, you won't find one. There's always downsides. Every Every investment has risk, right? And so, using that frame, you're like, "Well, there's all these paths. Which one do I choose?" It's like, "Well, you have The one thing that's guaranteed is if you keep the money, it will go down in value, cuz it'll inflate, right? So, not investing is the only way you're guaranteed to not get a return on your investment. Is that the fact that inflation exists, do you think that's a useful motivating force for business people? You know, you could imagine a different form of world economics where, you know, like embedded growth obligations weren't there, and like, whatever, you know, inflation didn't happen.

5:40Do you think that that sort of motivates people to actually be like, "Oh, [ __ ] Like, I need to I need to do something with this money. I can't just sit sit and leave it in the bank." >> I think it'd have motivated investors. Yes. More Yeah. Yeah. But I mean the the business people would just like probably keep more coins in there in their vault and just keep transacting. Is that Scrooge McDuck? Yeah, they'd be less likely to they'd be less likely to deploy capital faster. Mhm. Cuz if you feel like there's a cost of capital that's higher for keeping it like letting it sit there, then you have a higher urgency to do something with it. If you have less urgency, then you only do it when you know it's going to crash.

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