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Afford Anything | Get Smarter With Money
Sahil Bloom: Which of the Five Wealth Types Are You Neglecting?
01:26:33
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- [00:00]
Paula Pant
Think about how you spend an average day. Would the 10 year old version of yourself be impressed? And would the 90 year old version of yourself be jealous? To answer those questions and to give us that wide lens view on not just our lives, but on five types of wealth, we are joined today by investor and entrepreneur Sahil Bloom. Sahil is the founder and managing partner of an early stage venture fund that invests in over 60 startups. His newsletter, the Curiosity Chronicle, is read by more than 1 million people and he shares with us today how he optimizes not just for financial wealth, but for wealth across a variety of domains. Welcome to the Afford Anything podcast, the show that understands you can afford anything, but not everything. Every choice carries a trade off and that applies not just to your money, but to your time, focus and energy. This show covers five financial psychology, increasing your income, investing, real estate and entrepreneurship. It's double I fire. Today's episode takes a wide lens view of that letter F financial psychology by expanding our definition of wealth. I'm your host Paula Pant. I trained in economic reporting at Columbia and I help you understand money so you can build all types of wealth. Let's welcome Sahil to the show.
- [01:22]
Sahil Bloom
Thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be here.
- [01:24]
Paula Pant
Oh, well, thank you for being here. But speaking of being places, Sahil, how often do you see your parents?
- [01:31]
Sahil Bloom
That's a great opening question. I see my parents several times a month now.
- [01:35]
Paula Pant
Oh, that is a major change because there was once a time when you thought you would only see them probably 15 times in total before they pass away. Tell us about that.
- [01:47]
Sahil Bloom
Yeah, the real turning point, the real inflection point in my life was a single conversation that I had with an old friend. I was living in California at the time. My wife and I were there. My family and I had grown up on the east coast, out here in the New York, Boston area. And I was seeing my parents about once a year. Covid had happened. Life had happened. We had built our whole life out on the west coast. I had taken a job there. I was chasing financial success, I was chasing career success. All of these things that we're told we're supposed to chase. And along the way, I had really grown distant from the people that I was closest to. My parents, my sister, all on the east coast. And I went out for a drink with an old friend in May of 2021 and we sat down and he asked me how I was doing. And I told him that it had started to get difficult being as far away from my parents, as we were very close with my parents growing up. And it had come to the time when I saw the chinks in the armor, if you will, in their health. They were getting to an age in their mid-60s where things start to happen. You start seeing parents of friends have health, things happen. I'd to see my parents slow down. And so it had started to become difficult being so far away. My friend asked, how old are they? And I said, they're in their mid-60s. And he said, how often do you see them? I said, about once a year. And he just looked at me and said, okay, so you're going to see your parents 15 more times before they die. And I remember feeling like I had been punched in the gut. The idea that the amount of time you have left with the people you love most in the world is so finite, so countable, that you can literally put it on a few hands was just jarring to me. The next morning, I woke up and told my wife that I thought we needed to make a change. And within 45 days, I had left my job on the West Coast. We had sold our house in California and moved back to the east coast to live within driving distance of both of our sets of parents. And so now when I say that I get to see my parents several times a month, and they're such a huge part of my son's life, and I get to experience the joy that they have being grandparents and being so active in his life and get to be around them as much as I am. That is a representation of this entire idea of building a life around the things that matter to you most and taking actions to actually change the things that you don't like about where you're headed.
- [04:16]
Paula Pant
What that reminds me of is a famous blog post that Tim Urban put out, which I know you're acquainted with as well, in which he calculates not just the number of times that we'll see our parents before they pass away, but the number of books left to read in a life, even if you're young, Even if you're 30 or 40, if you read one book a year, the number of books that you're going to read throughout the course of your life is actually relatively slim. And it goes like that with almost anything that's countable.
- [04:51]
Sahil Bloom
It's a beautiful blog piece. If you haven't read it. It's called the Tail End. And it was, I think, the first time that anyone had articulated time in the context of moments or experiences, whether it was moments with the People you love most, or whether it was experiences like reading the book or going for a walk on the beach or eating your favorite ice cream or whatever those. And I assume it was the genesis of this old friend of mine. I'm sure he had read that piece and sort of had that articulated when he said this to me. So I'm very grateful to Tim, who is now actually a close friend, because I feel like Tim sort of changed my life in that way. Sam Harris, the philosopher, also has a beautiful articulation of this. He says that there is a last time for everything in life. There is going to be a last time that you do it. So all of the things that you love most dearly in the world, the moments you have with your children, the moments you have with your parents, with your siblings, with your best friends, your favorite peaceful moments, doing whatever it is that you love doing, there is going to be a last time that you get to do those. And I write about that. We don't appreciate time as our most precious asset. Time has this characteristic where you don't think about it at all. And then at the very end, it's the only thing you think about. It suddenly goes to the top of your awareness, but when it's too late, you can't do anything about it at that point. And so a big call to action is to consider these things, to actually ask yourself these questions earlier, shine a light on your path today, so that you can take actions to change it. And the example that we talked about of our own decision to move across the country is a perfect example of that. That number, 15 times before they die went from 15 to in the hundreds by taking a simple action, a drastic action, but a simple action. And so the lesson there is that you are actually much more in control than you think. It's very easy to sit in the passenger seat in your own life and to say, oh, well, these things happen. Health things happen. Life happens. I don't see my best friends as much. All of these things that we bemoan later on. But you are in control of taking a single action that can change many of those. You can text a friend and say, hey, let's go out for a lunch date once a month. You can make sure that you are the catalyst for getting your group of closest friends together once a year for that annual trip that has fallen by the wayside. You can make sure that your family comes together. You can spend those present moments with your kids while they're still young and they still want you to tuck them into bed at night. All of those things are within your control, but only if you first develop the awareness of just how finite and fleeting they are.
- [07:24]
Paula Pant
Right, because eventually there will be that last time that you tuck your kids into bed and you won't know when that last time is. It's only in hindsight that typically you don't even remember when that last time was.
- [07:35]
Sahil Bloom
This is probably the scariest thing in the world to me right now. I have a two and a half year old son. And not to get overly personal, but for several years my wife and I had struggled to conceive prior to my son being born. It was while we were living in California. I was making a lot of bad decisions, both internally and externally in my own life. Chasing a lot of the wrong things, drinking seven nights a week, not treating myself well, not being present with the people I loved most. And it was a strain on our life and we were struggling in that way. We made this big life change. We moved back to the east coast, I shifted my focus and started prioritizing the right things in my life and my wife got pregnant. Naturally. I'm not a particularly religious person, but it felt like one of those moments in life where God winked at you. The second we'd made this decision and made these changes, life came into alignment and everything fell into place, as it should. And now my wife and I have so much gratitude for the fact that we were able to have our son, that he's with us, that knock on wood, he's healthy and happy and I am so deeply aware of just how short this window of time is that we have with him, where for 10 years you are your child's favorite person in the entire world. You are literally everything to them. And then after that 10 years, they have other favorite people, they have best friends, they have girlfriends, boyfriends, partners, spouses, they have their own children. And you will never occupy that same place in their life. But for that 10 years, you are literally everything to them. And so I am so hyper aware and focused on during that 10 year window, making sure that we are present, making sure that we do give him our energy in that way so that we can just embrace it, so that we don't lose sight of the fact that it could be the last time on any given day that he wants us to tuck him into bed or do those things with him.
- [09:31]
Paula Pant
Well, if you've got 10 years and he's two and a half, that's a quarter over already.
- [09:35]
Sahil Bloom
I know. And that's the scariest part of It. Right. It's what makes these things so precious, though, is the fact that they are finite. There's this quote from one of my favorite movies, Troy, where Brad Pitt is playing Achilles, and he says that the gods envy us because we are mortal. And there's this whole thing of, like, wanting to be immortal in life, but the reality is that being mortal makes every moment more beautiful. And I think about that a lot. I mean, all of these things, the fact that they are so fleeting, is what makes them so beautiful.
- [10:07]
Paula Pant
I want to come back to that topic of mortality in a moment because it reminds me of memento mori, something that they used to say to Roman soldiers as they were being paraded down the street. But before we get to that, I want to relate your story to something else that you talked about. When you were in California, you were chasing money, you were drinking. And when this inflection point happened and you began that shift, you started interviewing people as a student of the human experience. And you interviewed a woman who said that in a very painful way. She learned that it's later than we think. Tell us about that.
- [10:49]
Sahil Bloom
Yeah. This is a woman named Alexis Lockhart who has now become a friend and someone that I admire in a variety of ways in life. But while I was on this whole journey and sort of shifting my life and trying to figure out what were the things that I wanted to center my life around, what was the true north, if you will, of where I wanted to go, I started by spending time with people, people from all walks of life, different experiences, to try to understand what were the common themes, what were the things that we all really want in life, that we're all trying to head towards. And fortunately, along that journey, I was writing a newsletter twice a week. And the thing about putting content out into the world is that it sort of becomes a magnet for people, for the ideas that you're sharing. And so I received this email in response to something I had written from a woman named Alexis Lockhart, who told me a story of tragic event in her own life, which was that her son Jackson, had been killed in a car accident just after his 20th birthday. And she wrote to me to tell me the story of the fact that she, for the longest time, had had an awareness that the amount of time we have with people in our lives is fleeting. And it had always been a theme in how she had thought about her life. And what it meant was that every single moment she had with her children, she really cherished. And so she said that just before he was killed, they had had this party for him for his birthday and they had really celebrated him even though he was too old for this type of party. They really embraced it and were really present in the moment. And so she's able to have this clear eyed wisdom despite this indescribably tragic event that had befallen her. She didn't have regrets about the way that she had lived, about the way that she had loved him. And there was so much beauty in that. And she shared that line, which is from one of my favorite songs, Guy Lombardo. The song is it's later than you think and it says, enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself. It's later than you think. So for all these moments in life, that line, I think is something that has echoed through and is very common in the book, is to just remember that it's later than you think.
- [12:57]
Paula Pant
But what do we do with that information in the context of the fact that we still have to put groceries on the table, fill our tanks with gas, keep the lights on? I mean, many of the people who are listening to this are pursuing financial independence because they don't want to spend 60 hours a week at the office. But there is still that gap between the portfolio that they need in order to be able to have time, freedom and where they are today.
- [13:27]
Sahil Bloom
I think there's a few things here. So first off, this is the fundamental tension of life, which is the tension between ambition and presence. Meaning presence is those moments with the people right now where you are, where you're sitting and ambition is the things that you want to do. It's the fact that we do want to go and build financial freedom, financial independence. We might want to go build a big company or go make more money because we're grounded in our purpose and we're working on things that we really care about. Finding your balance across that tension point is the question in life that you need to wrestle with. But the point is that you need to ask yourself that question. It can't just be something that you default into because the default ends up being spending way too much time on the external pursuits, the chase for more and not enough time on the presence and those moments with the people you care about. Once you ask yourself the question and you develop the awareness, you find a more happy medium between the two. But if you don't ask the question, you default into the chase for more. Because it is the societal definition, it's the way that we measure ourselves in the world. So it's a very important thing to actually ask yourself that along the journey. The second thing I'll say is if you have an actual awareness of the time piece as you are pursuing your goals and your ambitions, you will have a clear eye towards why you are doing that. The fact that you are trying to build that freedom for later. That you are going to go create a world where you do have more time freedom later in your life. Most people just say that. They say the word later gets thrown around all the time. Say I'll spend more time with my kids later. I'll have more time for my health later. I'll spend more time with my friends later. I'll ground myself in my purpose later. And the sad thing is that later just becomes another word for never. Because those things won't exist in the same way later. Your kids aren't going to be five later. Your friends won't be there later. Your health won't be there later. All of those things will not exist in the same way later. So later becomes another word for never. Unless you are clear eyed enough about the awareness all along the way. Unless you are so grounded in understanding why you are doing those things so that you're designing them into your life slowly as you continue to progress.
- [15:42]
Paula Pant
You said asking yourself the question is important. But there are actually a few questions that we should be asking ourselves. And to get into what those questions are, let's first establish a framework that you have for measuring different types of wealth. Because you talked about how we chase what we quantify. So why not quantify wealth in a manner that's not strictly financial?
- [16:03]
Sahil Bloom
Yeah. Peter Drucker, the management theorist, once said what gets measured gets managed. And that idea is that the thing that you can measure ends up being the thing that you narrowly focus on, the thing that you sort of myopically hone in on in your own life. That has historically been money. Simply because it is so measurable, you can put a single number and apply it to your life worth. That is who you are as a human. And that is how we measure ourselves against people and against ourselves. It creates a very unhealthy dynamic. As we know. When you get into this comparison game, the keeping up with the Joneses phenomenon of these symbols of money that you're trying to accumulate and it doesn't lead to the happy fulfilling life that we think up to a point. Money is very conducive to happiness because it reduces our fundamental burdens and stresses. It enables us to spend time on things that we care about beyond that point. These other areas of life are what drive lasting happiness and Fulfillment. We actually know that the science is very clear. Relationships, your health, being grounded in your purpose, curiosity, clarity of mind. These are the things that actually drive a happy, fulfilling existence. But what we think is that chasing more money is going to get us to that end. And for a lot of people, you get to that end and you realize, oops, didn't work. I made the wrong choices along the way. It's too late. The whole goal with my mission more broadly in life, is to help people ask these questions earlier so that they can ground and measure their life around the things that are actually contributing to a healthy, wealthy existence. Money is one of those. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying money is nothing. I'm simply saying it can't be the only thing. There are five types of wealth. Money is one of them, financial wealth. The others are time wealth, social wealth, mental wealth, and physical wealth. So time wealth is what we've talked about. It's how you spend your time, who you spend it with, the ability to choose. Social wealth is your depth and breadth of connection to the world around you. It's the people that you surround yourself with. Mental wealth is your curiosity, your purpose, your growth, your ability to create space, to wrestle with the bigger questions in your life. And then physical wealth is your health and vitality. It's your ability to actually enjoy the other types of wealth because you're healthy enough to do it. So measuring yourself across that broader picture is a very good way to think about what you are building towards in your own life. If you are doing extraordinarily well on financial wealth, but you have none of the others, life is not going to be particularly fulfilling. I mean, what good is having a yacht and a private jet if you're alone on it? What good is having all the money in the world if you can't move around because you're so unhealthy or overweight? All of these things need to be built in concert as you think about building a lasting, durable, fulfilling life.
- [18:58]
Paula Pant
So how do we check in with ourselves and measure ourselves in all of these verticals? We've talked about time wealth. So let's just start with what is the key question that we should be asking ourselves to assess whether or not we have a healthy time net worth?
- [19:14]
Sahil Bloom
I offer a sort of assessment tool. I call it the Wealth Score, which is a really nice way to just think about where you are as a baseline across all of these areas. You can actually go to wealthscorequiz.com and take an online version of It. So it's sort of a circle that fills in across these different areas to give you a sense of what your baseline is. And it'll give you a score from 0 to 100. And you can use that as your life net worth, if you will.
- [19:40]
Paula Pant
What are some examples of some of the questions?
- [19:42]
Sahil Bloom
Each type of wealth has five statements. You answer for each statement, from strongly disagree to strongly agree. So under time wealth, one of the questions is I am in control of my calendar and priorities. That is a very essential piece of time wealth. If you don't feel like you are in control, you could be making $10 million a year. But if you have zero control over how you're spending your time, the meetings you're in, the things you're thinking about, you are not very time wealthy. I have plenty of friends who are like that. Tremendous financial wealth. But if they have to answer a phone call from an angry client at 11pm on a Sunday night, they don't have a lot of time wealth. By the definition that we're talking about across each of these areas, it has statements like that that will allow you to think clearly about whether you are building and whether you have that type of wealth in your life. What that does is once you measure the right thing is it allows you to make clear decisions about changes and opportunities in your life. I'll give you an example. Let's say that you were to come and offer me $25 million to go and take a new job in Omaha, Nebraska. Nothing against Omaha, but I don't live there. On the surface in the traditional definition of wealth, that sounds like a hell yes opportunity. You're going to pay me an extraordinary amount of money to go take this job. I would just say yes and go jump at it. Now, let's think about the new definition of wealth that I'm proposing. Yes, it's a big win for financial wealth, but let's say that I'm going to have to work 80 to 100 hours a week on things I don't like doing, travel 300 nights out of the year and be living in Omaha, Nebraska. Okay, well, now I need to think about it a little bit differently because financial wealth was one that's a clear win. But time wealth going to go way down because I'm not going to have any time social wealth. I don't know anyone in Omaha, Nebraska. I'm going to be living far away from my family. I don't have friends there. Big hit to that mental wealth. You're telling me I'm going To work on things that I hate, that's a pretty big hit. And physical wealth. If I'm working 80 to 100 hours a week, I just probably am not going to have time to do the things that I want to do. Plus, it's really cold there in the winter, so I probably won't be able to be outside much. So a decision that previously looked like a slam dunk in terms of the old scoreboard now looks like a slam dunk in the other direction on the new scoreboard. It sounds like an absolutely not decision. So having a sense of the overall picture of where your life, where you're trying to build towards, allows you to make clear decisions across all of these. As you're measuring stick, can you talk.
- [22:15]
Paula Pant
About how in different seasons of life and in different life circumstances, your weighting of one of these five categories, whether it be social or physical, might be heavier than your weighting in some of these other categories, that all five are not going to be 20% equally, 20% across the board at all times.
- [22:36]
Sahil Bloom
This is a brilliant question that you raise, and I would argue it's one of the most important questions when you think about this, because one of the ideas that I bring up is that your life has seasons and what you prioritize and focus on during any one season will change during your 20s and 30s. It is a fantastic time to prioritize and focus on financial wealth, building a foundation that you can compound off of, that you can scale over the rest of your life. We know, and I'm sure you've had plenty of guests on this and talked about this, that money invested early is better than money invested late simply because if you look at the equation of how compounding works, it is returns to the power of time. Time is the exponent. So that is the thing that really matters. That means that that early season of your life is a great time stacking those chips. As you get older, if you have young kids, if you have other considerations later in life, those focuses can change. You may want to prioritize social wealth when your children are really young, being present during those years. You may want to prioritize your physical wealth in your 40s. As you start to feel the deterioration that happens as you get older. What you focus on can shift during any one period. But the point is that you don't allow any one area to completely turn off or atrophy. The analogy that I use is that typically we've been told that these areas of our life exist on, on, off switches. There's this Concept that's called the four burners theory, that you can only really have like one burner on full at a time or maybe two on sort of half and everything else is off. I just fundamentally disagree with that because all of these areas exist on a dimmer switch and you can take the one or two tiny actions that compound toward the future. The exact same way that we think about investing in financial wealth where we say it doesn't matter if all you have is $10 to invest per week. Invest $10 a week because it's better than zero. Because anything above zero compounds. That applies to all of these other areas of life. It's better to go for a 15 minute walk every day than to do nothing for your physical wealth. That will compound positively because anything above zero compounds. It's better to text the friend to let them know you're thinking about them. Even though you're focused on financial wealth, you're not going to see them as much as you want. Send the text, call your parents. The five minute thing that you do when you're truly present compounds positively in those relationships. So this whole narrative of things needing to be on or off is dangerous because it tells you that optimal is more important than beneficial. And sometimes you just need to do the thing that is beneficial, the tiny thing that is going to compound positively in your life.
- [25:18]
Paula Pant
So rather than all or nothing thinking, it's be intentional about which areas are in growth mode versus which areas are in maintenance mode.
- [25:25]
Sahil Bloom
Perfectly said. And I think that, I mean for most people, as I said, the 20s and early 30s are a great time to be in growth mode. On the financial side, you're building that financial foundation, you're building your experience, you're trading time for networks, for money, for knowledge, for experience, for all of those things. After that, you're going to be in a much better place to work smart on those things because you have experience and knowledge and networks and money. And so now you can deploy those strategically into the right opportunities that maybe have the 10 or 100x outcomes and then you have the freedom as a result, you have more time freedom as a result of that to reinvest in some of these other areas of your life. But thinking about that full picture is what allows you to both measure and then decide and then also proactively design where you are trying to head.
- [26:14]
Paula Pant
What should a person do? Let's say there's somebody who's listening to this right now who is 50 years old and up until this point in their life they didn't focus A whole lot on their finances, Right. And So now they're 50. They're staring at possibly a negative net worth. They don't have a huge income. They're listening to this and thinking, well, it's too late for me to have spent my 20s and 30s doing that. What should they prioritize?
- [26:38]
Sahil Bloom
I think there's a few things here. So first off, I would take the assessment and get a sense for where you stand today. There are millions of people in the United States and all around the world who, by a traditional definition of wealth, feel like they haven't done well in life. And by a new definition, they are doing quite well. One of my dearest friends has a degree from the same university as me, Stanford. He went to Stanford, got a great degree, decided that he wanted to move back home after that, played professional baseball, moved back home. He's now a gym teacher and coaches high school sports teams. By the traditional definition of success and wealth, he's not doing very well. He went and got a Stanford degree and now is probably making 50 or 60 thousand dollars a year, which, don't get me wrong, it's not bad. But he's not killing the game in the financial sense. But then you look at the other areas of his life. He lives within walking distance of both his parents and his wife's parents. He has two beautiful, healthy children. He is super fit and gets to be outside every single day, which he loves doing, goes hiking all the time, plays a ton of sports, loves what he does for work, loves working with kids, loves all the coaching that he does. The other pieces of how you think about a wealthy life, he is doing incredibly well. And he is significantly happier and more fulfilled than a lot of my friends who are making several million dollars a year doing something that they hate. And so the first answer to your question is that I would look at the assessment and see where you think you stand on the bigger picture of life. Because there is a hopeful message for a lot of people here who feel in the traditional sense that they have not done well, when in fact they are doing quite well when they would actually really look at it. The second piece here is just to say that the old Chinese proverb is very correct, which says that the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time was today. And that is how I would think about it if I had not. If I woke up and I was 50 years old and I was not in the place I wanted to be financially, the actions that you take today are the only actions that you can control and that matters. And the first thing I would do is develop a very clear sense of the gap between my current cash inflows and my current cash outflows. I think that that gap is your most powerful asset as a financial wealth building tool. Because what that means is you can take that gap and invest it into things that we're going to compound for your future. But you have to create that gap. And sometimes that isn't fun. When you're in your 20s and you're trying to create that gap, that means living below your means. That means saying no to things that you previously would have wanted to do. When your friends invite you out, or when the concert tickets or movies or whatever those things are, you sometimes have to say no to those to create a gap so that you have that, that you can stack in your 50s. The exact same principle applies. It is grow your cash inflows as your skills build, manage your expenses so that they don't grow as fast as your income does, and then invest the difference that is hopefully growing over time into things they compound.
- [29:35]
Paula Pant
Given that not just our time, but our energy, our attention, our cognitive bandwidth is limited, focusing on any one given category necessarily has to come at the expense of another. The more time that we spend focusing on the financial category of wealth, the less that we can spend on social or on physical. For example, how do we, particularly for somebody who's in their 40s or 50s or 60s, who's facing that curtailed time, how do we know if we are making the right trade offs? In other words, how do we inoculate ourselves against perspective? Regret?
- [30:12]
Sahil Bloom
The overthinker's dilemma is that you think you need to make the perfect decision in any one moment. And the reality is that there's no such thing as the perfect decision. You just have to make a decision and then make it right with the actions that follow it. Most successful people in the world don't make perfect decisions. They just make decisions very quickly and then they take action after that to make the decision right. I've heard that phrase before, like make the decision, then make it right. And I've always really liked that. The point in terms of what you decide to focus on is that it should be in line with the things that you actually care about. Not what I care about, not what you care about, but what the person actually cares about. So that requires a level of reflection. It requires actually sitting down and thinking, what do I want my ideal life to look like at age 80? Let's say I'm 50, let's say I'm 60. What do I want my day to look like at age 80? How do I want to feel? Where do I want to be? Who do I want to be surrounded by? What do I want to be thinking about? What do I want to be doing? What do I want to be eating? All of the questions really visualize what that life should look like. Then think about what are the actions today to go and create that future end. And when you go ask people that, I asked thousands of people that question over the last three, four years and basically everyone says some variation of four commonalities, time, people, purpose and health and the degrees to which people are focused on different ones in there change. But really those four things appear for everyone. Money is an enabler to some of those for sure, but it is rarely an end in and of itself around them. But asking yourself that question and really clarifying what that end looks like for you will make very clear what you need to do in the present to go and build towards it.
- [32:00]
Paula Pant
And when it comes, you mentioned again asking yourself that question. So when it comes to those key questions in each domain, one of the questions for the physical domain on the topic of being 80 is will you be able to dance on your 80th birthday?
- [32:14]
Sahil Bloom
Yeah, this is one of my favorite ideas is this idea of like mental time travel. It's very hard to see the bigger picture in your life on a daily basis because you live in first person mode. You live so zoomed in in the weeds of your life, the day to day stimulus and response, the craziness, the urgency, everything that's hitting in your life. And we rarely take the time to zoom out and think about the bigger picture. And so that question, will I be dancing at my 80th birthday party? It clarifies a whole lot about what you're doing today, your actions in the physical wealth domain. If you were to zoom forward in time to your 80th birthday, are the actions that you are taking today enabling you to live in a future where you are able to go get out on the dance floor with all of your family, loved ones and friends on your 80th birthday. And if not, you can start changing that today. There's nothing stopping you from going out for the 10 or 15 minute walk today. Everyone can find time for a 10 or 15 minute walk, but what happens is we live in a culture, in a society and social media has made this worse where you are told that if you're not doing the fancy complex routine, you shouldn't do anything. I don't have time for an hour at the gym, so I'm just not going to do anything today. That type of thinking is what leads us down this negative spiral because you start to think that it has to be optimal for it to be beneficial and it's not true. And ambitious people and high achievers are the worst at this because in their mind they're like, well, if I'm not able to do the hour of focused work, I shouldn't do the work. If I'm not able to eat the perfect meal, I shouldn't just have the junk food. If I'm not able to do the hour workout, I shouldn't work out at all. If I don't have an hour of time for my partner or spouse, then it doesn't even matter. I should just keep working. And the tiny things Again, goes back to my earlier point, the tiny things compound positively in your life, but you have to have the mindset shift to enable that.
- [34:09]
Paula Pant
Do you remember Judy Blume? She wrote children's books. She wrote Are youe There God? It's Me, Margaret. She wrote Super Fudge and Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. Well, I wanted to learn about writing from Judy Blume. Not necessarily because I want to write the same types of books, but because writing is this transferable skill that helps in pretty much any career. How could being a better writer possibly hurt you? And so I watched her class on Masterclass and one of the comments that she made was that she is careful never to be an adult who is writing two children. Rather, when she's writing, she is writing from the perspective of a child. She's going back into having those eyes again. That was a valuable lesson because it speaks to empathy. You know, for anyone in any type of business. It speaks to seeing the perspective that your customer, your client, your reader, your protagonist is seeing. Now. If you want to access more insights like this, check out masterclass. It's the only streaming platform where you can learn and grow with over 200 of the world's best. So you can learn how to invest in the stock market with Ray Dalio. You can learn leadership from Howard Schultz or Whitney Wolf Hurd. You can learn from the best to become your best. And it's just $10 a month billed annually and every new membership comes with a 30 day money back guarantee. Right now our listeners get an additional 15% off any annual membership@masterclass.com afford. That's 15% off@masterclass.com afford masterclass.com afford afford small business owners. State Farm is there with small business insurance to fit your specific needs. Whether you're starting a new venture or growing an existing one, State Farm helps you choose the right coverage to protect what matters most. Working with a local State Farm agent helps you understand your coverage options, offering local support to help you achieve your goals. Focus on turning your passion into a thriving business, knowing your insurance can change as your business grows. State Farm here to help you succeed with your business. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there Isn't it great to clean up your home after the holiday hustle? Just declutter, Take a deep breath. Spring's almost here. I know it still feels like winter, but spring is right around the corner. So whether you're tidying up or clearing out, or whether you just want some new looks for the new year, Wayfair has everything that you need for your home and it's within your budget. Now I just got a couple of new items from Wayfair. You've heard me talk about the shelves that I have from them, which are great for storage and organization. But I also, to get me through this winter, got a weighted blanket from them. I wanted the heaviest one possible, so I got a 22 pound weighted blanket with a bright orange cover. It's fantastic. And you can get any kind of home essential whether you want items for your kitchen, for meal prep, for food storage, appliances, tableware. Maybe you want something for your bathroom, bath, linens, towels, things for your vanity. Maybe you want more storage closet, organization, seating, lighting, art, rugs, entry tables. Literally anything that you want for your home. There's something for every style and there's fast and free delivery even on the big stuff. So give your home the refresh it needs with wayfair. Head to wayfair.com right now. That's W A Y F A I R.com Wayfair Every style, every home. We've talked about the time domain, the social domain, the physical domain and the financial domain. We haven't quite touched on the purpose domain yet. Can you talk about how to even assess whether or not the work that we're doing is aligned with our purpose or the life that we're living is aligned with our purpose? I believe the question for that is what would your 10 year old self say about your life today?
- [38:16]
Sahil Bloom
Yeah, I love again, it goes back to this idea of mental time travel and I've often thought that there was this interesting perspective that was created both by your younger self and your older self on where you are today. So make decisions that both your 10 year old self and your 80 year old self would be proud of idea being. Your 10 year old self would probably tell you to have some fun. Your 80 year old self would tell you to invest in things that compound for the future. And somewhere in between is the life well lived. Your 10 year old self is curious. Your 10 year old self pursues things that they're interested in. Your 10 year old self is grounded in that curiosity and sort of wonder for the world. But we lose that over the course of our lives. A big reason is because we do not have the space in our life to pursue our curiosity. We don't have the space to think about the bigger picture questions, what we really care about, what we want to focus on, where we are headed, whether we are connected to something on a higher order, or whether we're just constantly in this cycle of stimulus and response. I think the idea that your purpose has to be your work is one of the worst lies you've been told. Western culture in particular has propagated that idea that you have to love your work, otherwise you're doing something wrong. That you have to be grounded in purpose every single day when you go to work. And it's just a complete load of nonsense because that is a rarity. The number of people that truly love what they do every single day show up and feel like it's their purpose and that this is what they're meant to do is few and far between. And telling people that they need to do that is just a recipe for feeling unhappy. What you do need to do is connect to your purpose while you are at work. I'll tell you the distinction. I interviewed a man who works at a factory. He puts together widgets on an assembly line basically for eight to ten hours a day. Doesn't like his job, works manual labor, basically doing a monotonous task over and over again every single day. But his purpose, as he defines it, is to be the father that he never had. To provide for his boys in the way that he didn't feel his father did. And to be the type of father that he wants to be every single day when he goes to work, he connects to that purpose. He says, I am doing this in service of my higher order purpose, which is to be a provider for my sons. So every day when he goes to work, he has real energy for the work. Despite the fact that he doesn't like it, despite the fact that the work itself is not his purpose. He connects to something that is, that is where most of us can find the gold in life, it is by recognizing what our higher order calling is, what the thing is that we truly feel connected to, and then finding the energy in our work to align the two, to feel that connection between the two. So if your purpose is to be the best mother or father you can be, if your purpose is to be a light in your community, to provide value for people in the community, to give back to your church group, to be the brother that you want to be, whatever that is, whatever that higher order purpose is, learn to connect your work to that. But it doesn't have to be that your purpose is found in your work.
- [41:28]
Paula Pant
So what you're describing right now is a construct in which work is a means to an end, rather than an end in itself. But what about for the people who have dreams, goals, ambitions? You want to build a business, you want to write a book, you want to have a career as an actor or a comedian? Right? All of those are considered career ambitions, but they're also just quite genuine.
- [41:52]
Sahil Bloom
I think that's wonderful if you can find that. I mean, look, I'm sitting here, I feel very grounded in my purpose when I get to do things like this. I define my purpose as creating positive ripples in the world. And I think I can do that on the level that we're interacting on, which is sharing ideas with the world. The book content, things that I put out that now reach millions of people every single week, that feels very grounded in my purpose. I also feel I can do that on a family level by the way that I interact with people in my family can create a ripple where they are able to be uplifted, to go and interact a little bit better in the world. You can find your purpose in your work. I'm just saying that you don't have to in order to feel fulfilled, in order to feel happy. I also think that it is okay to allow things that you are passionate about to remain as hobbies and passions. You don't have to monetize or make every hobby or passion into your job. That is another thing that you've been told that we live in this, like social media. Monetize. The side hustle culture where I had recently an interaction with a young woman who loves dance. She does a lot of like, traditional dance. And she was asking me like, do you think I should monetize it? I really love it. Maybe I could make some money from it. And my advice to her was no, because scientifically we actually know that the second you start monetizing something that you love you're going to love it less. The Stanford Marker Experiment was this famous experiment done at Stanford in the believe 1970s, where they went into a school with a bunch of children and they saw children that really enjoyed drawing. And they gave half of them a reward for the drawing. And then the other half just were drawing with no reward. They came back 10 days later and the kids who had been given a reward for the drawing actually didn't want to draw. They had lost intrinsic motivation after receiving a reward for doing it, where the other kids continued to love drawing just as much. And so it's scientific evidence for the fact that actually monetizing that passion or hobby or excitement or interest is potentially a way to make yourself enjoy it less.
- [43:58]
Paula Pant
There's a joke actually about a man who. He's at his home and a bunch of noisy, rowdy teenagers are walking down the street. They're coming home from school and they're clanging on mailboxes and they're just being really rowdy. And he wants them to stop. But rather than go out and yell at them, he goes out and says, hey, I love that percussion. I'll pay you a dollar every time you do it. And so he pays them a dollar. And that goes on for about a week or two. And then he goes back out there and says, you know what, my money is tight. I can only afford to pay you a quarter for that. And the kids say, we used to make a dollar for it. We're not gonna do it for a measly quarter. And so they stopped.
- [44:39]
Sahil Bloom
I love that. That's fantastic. That's perfect.
- [44:42]
Paula Pant
So what you're talking about, it feels like Elizabeth Gilbert talks about not burdening your art by forcing it to pay your bills. There are echoes of this even from people who have engaged in work that they find meaningful. You worked in private equity. How do you survive long days at a job that isn't your calling?
- [45:01]
Sahil Bloom
I think that the answer is found in the story that I told you of the factory worker, which is find a way to connect it to something more meaningful to you in your 20s and 30s. When you are working long hours in something that may not be something you like, your higher order purpose can be as simple as I am building a foundation for the rest of my life. And whether that's financial or knowledge and experience. Even more importantly, I say this to young people all the time. I have probably thousands of people who have emailed me over the last couple of years with this basically some version of this same question saying, I really don't like my job, I'm thinking of leaving. And they've been there for six months and my guidance is always the same, which is not liking your job is not necessarily a reason to leave. There's plenty of reasons to leave a job. That's not usually one of them. If you've only been there for six months because you can learn a lot from a job you don't like, you are learning a. You're learning what you don't like doing, which is very valuable. Data point and insight. And you are also picking up data points on things you do enjoy doing, even if the macro is stuff that you don't. There are little micro tasks during the day that you are enjoying, which is a super helpful insight as well. And you're building learnings, you're building experience, you're building insights. You're becoming more resilient because you're doing something you don't like. There's a whole lot of value you are getting from the thing. But every day, if you show up and your energy and your attitude is, oh, I don't like doing this, you are not going to perform on a top 10% level. Guarantee it. It's almost impossible. The only way to guarantee that you make a lot of money in life is to perform at a top 10% level at everything you do. If you do that, I can guarantee you will make a lot of money in your life. It's just very hard to keep someone down that consistently is a top performer at the thing they're doing. They find a way to expose new opportunities, they get pulled into things, you get accelerated, whatever it is. And so connecting every day at the thing that you might not like, connecting that to the idea that I am building a foundation for the rest of my life, that I am building something, there's a muscle that's being built, there's an experience set, there's an insight, there's something that I'm doing that's connected outside on the bigger picture from what I'm actually doing on the day to day. That is a really important concept that I think carries a lot of power.
- [47:15]
Paula Pant
Work for knowledge, work for skills.
- [47:17]
Sahil Bloom
Yeah. I mean, when you're young, if there's anyone out there that's in their 20s or 30s, it's like when you are young, the only thing you have is time. You don't have money, knowledge, networks, experience, wisdom. You have none of those things. All you have is time. And so you have to trade your time to get those things. And then once you have those things you are in a much better position because now you can deploy them into the right opportunities to get the incredible outcomes in your life. But saying the narrative or the meme that's out there of like, oh, work smart, not hard. You can't work smart before you have networks and experience and money and knowledge and wisdom. You can't because you don't before you have smarts. Exactly. You don't have the smarts. How are you gonna work smart? You're just gonna, you're actually just gonna be working dumb and saying, oh, I'm working smart. Like you're actually just being lazy. So when people say that, they're like, well, I'm working smart, not hard. You're 22. I'm like, no, you're just lazy. You just procrastinate. You're just not doing the thing. You have to go do the thing in order to be able to work smart later. I feel like I learned that from my dad. It feels old fashioned to say that now, but it's just true now.
- [48:21]
Paula Pant
Does that translate when you leave not just that job, but that entire industry? You've made an industry shift. What skills turned out to be irrelevant and what skills were transferable to any broad application?
- [48:36]
Sahil Bloom
Yeah, I would say the vast majority of the skills were transferable. There are very few jobs in the world that are so hyper specific in the skills that you build that they're not transferable. I'm sure there are some like within scientific domains or maybe like within coding domains if you were to like completely shift. But the bigger picture on the skills you're building is often like some combination of IQ and eq. And the EQ is definitely transferable across every domain. And most of the IQ tends to be like analysis and critical thinking and you know, decision making and decision making under asymmetric information. Like those kind of things apply to any industry that you're in. For me in particular, I was working at a private equity fund. Great firm, great people, learning a ton. The biggest thing with the investing world is just learning to make decisions with imperfect information and learning to distill a whole lot of complex data into a simple story that you can tell to your investors, to the teams, to employees of the company. Like, you have to be a great storyteller. That is basically what I do now for a living. I tell stories, I distill ideas that I'm experiencing, that I'm learning, that I'm reading about. And I try to construct a clear story that people will connect with, that they're able to take and run with in their life. So that is very transferable and applies across every domain. And I think that zooming out what that means is your focus needs to be on the sort of meta skills, if you will, like the big picture overarching meta skills that you're learning in the job. So it might not be the very specific skill of like Excel analysis, but the meta skill of storytelling, which is what we're really doing, is very transferable or the meta skill of salesmanship. Sales is very transferable. When you are working in any job, sales is a key part of it. I don't care if you're on the sales team or not. If you are working at a company, you have to sell yourself. You have to sell your vision, you have to sell your ideas, you're selling your leadership style to the people you're working with to your bosses. Like that is all sales and a lot of life is sales. That is a meta skill that applies across everything that you're doing. When you're in the dating market, you're trying to meet a partner. That is sales. You are selling yourself to prospective mates out in the world. Sales is a very, very key meta skill across all of life. This episode brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Shifting a little money here, a little there, hoping it all works out well? With the name your price tool from Progressive you can get a better budgeter and potentially lower your insurance bill too. You tell Progressive what you want to pay for car insurance and they'll help find you options within your budget. Try it today@progressive.com progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates price and coverage match limited by state law not available in all states.
- [51:34]
Paula Pant
I can say to my new Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, hey, find a keto.
- [51:39]
Sahil Bloom
Friendly restaurant nearby and text it to Beth and Steve.
- [51:41]
Paula Pant
And it does without me lifting a finger so I can get in more squats anywhere I can.
- [51:46]
Sahil Bloom
1, 2, 3. Will that be cash or credit?
- [51:51]
Paula Pant
Credit.
- [51:52]
Sahil Bloom
4 Galaxy S25 Ultra the AI companion that does the heavy lifting so you can do you get yours@samsung.com compatible with select apps. Requires Google Gemini account. Results may vary based on input. Check responses for accuracy.
- [52:12]
Paula Pant
We've been talking for a while about these big picture ideas, these very big ideas. What action should a person take after listening to this episode? What specific actions should a person implement into their life to make sure that they are pursuing all five types of wealth in a way that is weighted to their particular season of life?
- [52:33]
Sahil Bloom
Yeah, so each section has A guide at the end of the section. So for each type of wealth, there's a guide that has real clear, science backed strategies for actually building that type of wealth. The first one that I would tell anyone to go and do is from the Time wealth section. And it's an idea that I call my energy calendar. And basically it's a way for thinking about where you are seeing your energy flow during the course of a week, where you are getting energy and where you're seeing your energy drained. Idea being when you spend time on things that are lifting you up, things that are creating energy in your life, spending time on or with people that are lifting your energy up, that is where you are going to get the best results in life. You're going to feel better, you're going to lean into those things, you're going to pursue them with great energy and attitude. But getting a perspective on what those are is really important. So the actual exercise anyone can do is take a look at your calendar. At the end of a Monday workday, color code everything according to whether it created energy, meaning you felt good, it lifted you up either during or after. Mark that green. If it was neutral, kind of just felt baseline, mark it yellow. And if it drained you, you felt physically drained afterwards or during market red. Do that for a full week. And then on the weekend, look at the calendar from the week and look for trends. What were the types of activities or the people who were creating energy versus the types of things that were draining energy in your life? That will give you a very clear starting picture for where you want to be spending more of your time versus less of your time. You're not going to be able to make your calendar entirely green, probably ever. It's wishful thinking, but you can make slight tweaks here and there over longer periods of time to make the ratio of green to red significantly better. And when you do that, your life will improve. You will be spending time on things that are lifting you up, you will feel considerably different and you'll be able to allocate energy to the things that really matter, the things that you care about, the things that are driving you towards that North Star, that true north in your life.
- [54:34]
Paula Pant
That's perfect for an assessment of time. Because truly time is not the limiting factor so much as energy. Energy, attention, cognitive bandwidth is the real limitation. What is the action step in the social domain?
- [54:47]
Sahil Bloom
There could be several. I think the most important starting point for people with social wealth is to create what I would call a relationship map. This is a 2x2 matrix. So for any of my analysis forward, people that are listening out there, you love a good two by two. This is basically a way to look at your existing relationships on the basis of how healthy they are and how frequent they are. So it's a 2x2 that has the frequency of a relationship, how much you see the person or how much you interact with them on one axis, and then how healthy the relationship is, from demeaning all the way to supportive on the other axis. And what you want to do is sort of map the core relationships in your life, the people that are within your circle, call it 10 to 20 people on that map on that two by two to get a sense for where are your opportunities. People that are really supportive and that really create energy in your life, but that you're not interacting with enough. And where are the danger spots? The people who are either demeaning or sort of ambivalent. Sometimes demeaning, sometimes supportive, which is very dangerous. Where are you interacting too much with people like that? And from that perspective, you can then take actions to say, okay, I'm going to try to lean into some of these relationships that are really lifting me up, that are really allowing me to think bigger and lean away from the ones that are really harming the quality of your life. The rationale around all of that is there is scientific evidence that the people you surround yourself with determine your outcomes. The Pygmalion effect is this behavioral phenomenon that finds that we rise to the level of the expectations people around us have for us. So if you are surrounding yourself with people who think well of you, who lift you up, who encourage you to think bigger, who tell you you're capable of more, you will rise to the level of those expectations. But similarly, if you're surrounded by people who do the opposite, you will fall to the level of those expectations. So making and taking clear actions to fill your energy cup with people who are lifting you up and to surround yourself with that and to not allow the people who are draining you to occupy so much of your space and energy is a really healthy way to change your life.
- [57:06]
Paula Pant
And that plays to the concept of what is it? Goals and anti goals.
- [57:10]
Sahil Bloom
There's this framing for kind of planning your life around both goals and anti goals. Goals, we all know these are like where you're trying to go. It's the summit of the mountain. Anti goals is a really interesting concept in that it is the inverse. So it is. Charlie Munger said, all I want to know is where I'm going To die. So I'll never go there. And it's that idea. Anti goals are your ability to avoid where you're going to die. So if the summit of the mountain is the goal, the anti goal is the thing that you are unwilling to sacrifice in pursuit of that goal. So getting to the summit is the goal. The anti goal might be dying or the anti goal might be losing your toes to frostbite along the way. An example from your professional career would be, let's say my goal is to become CEO of the company. Well, my anti goal is spending 300 nights out of the year away from my family or losing my health because of the stress and the work. I want to achieve the goal, but not if it means having those anti goals become real. Establishing that in your mind and having a clear perspective on what the anti goals are associated with any goal that you set for yourself is a really important concept.
- [58:19]
Paula Pant
Right. And so this is where having that, that Pygmalion effect, that supportive community comes in. Because you don't want the human equivalent of an anti goal in your life. You don't want the people who are detracting.
- [58:30]
Sahil Bloom
Yeah. You would not be willing to achieve some incredible financial success if it meant that you were having to be surrounded by people that you felt were shady characters.
- [58:40]
Paula Pant
Right.
- [58:40]
Sahil Bloom
I don't want to summit some mountain if it means that I have to be surrounded by people who are doing illegal things or who are critical of me or who are demeaning me or saying things to me or my family. Like, it's just, it's not a sacrifice that I'm willing to make in pursuit of these goals.
- [58:56]
Paula Pant
Right.
- [58:56]
Sahil Bloom
And being very clear on what those sacrifices are that you are willing to make is important.
- [59:01]
Paula Pant
Right. This actually is reminding me of two things. I was actually just complaining to a friend yesterday about how right now I happen to be in a season of my life where I want to work on the weekends. That's what I choose to do willingly and happily. And so I'm going to the gym every day. I still call my parents at least once a week. Right. Like I've got all of those things in balance. But I want to have a productive weekend. And I have certain people in my life who give me grief for that who basically make me feel as though I shouldn't be. And it just an example of, of an anti goal. It's a detractor. Here's this energy that I want to put forth and because it doesn't fit their definition of what I quote unquote, should be doing. It fits into their preconceived framework of you're spending too much time on your work.
- [59:52]
Sahil Bloom
I think Taylor Swift said, the worst people in the world are people who make you feel bad about things you're excited about. I always thought that was so true. Exact example, you're excited about something, you're leaning into something, you have energy for it, you're interested. And for someone to come and say, like, you shouldn't do that.
- [60:08]
Paula Pant
Right?
- [60:08]
Sahil Bloom
Why do you. I don't need that energy in my life. And we've all experienced that. It's the idea that, like, pursuing your goals is often not good for your social life because there will be people who you lose along that journey. I've written about this before, that Loneliness is a tax on personal transformation. Periods of loneliness are a tax on personal transformation, meaning they are often a cost of entry for the transformation you are trying to create in your life. Because you are growing and changing. You are working hard on something that you care about. You're pushing yourself forward. That means you are changing and your previous environment is not. You have literally moved away from your previous environment. And so you start to have these periods of time where you no longer speak the same language as the people that you previously interacted with. They can't understand you because they don't get why you're doing the things you're doing, what you're doing, and why you care about them so much. So you have this period, this long period where you're like, I have yet to attract the new people into my world, the people where I'm going, but I've left the old safety net. And that manifests as these periods of loneliness. It's the lonely chapter in your life. I think about that all the time. And entrepreneurs experience it all the time.
- [61:24]
Paula Pant
Right.
- [61:25]
Sahil Bloom
Entrepreneurship is a lonely journey. You are on a path, and it sounds so sexy when you get to talk about it later, once it's succeeded and everything's working out. But during the actual journey, it can be very, very lonely. Learning to embrace that as sort of part of the journey, I have personally found to be a helpful mindset shift.
- [61:43]
Paula Pant
I was thinking about entrepreneurs when you were describing that exercise for assessing your time freedom. Because when you ask the question of how much control do I have over my calendar? I have complete control over my calendar, and I am also busy. And so those two things are not necessarily at odds with each other. They're not mutually exclusive. You can be simultaneously busy, but have a high degree of autonomy and control.
- [62:07]
Sahil Bloom
Yeah, you Got to choose which is great. The goal is not to have zero stress, right? The goal is to have stress about things that actually matter to you. If you have stress and you're, because you are ambitious and there's a gap between where you are and where you want to end up and it's about things you care about, that's a great source of stress. That is actually meaningful stress. The whole point is for it to be meaningful stress, not things that are silly and self incurred. And that gets a lot. We lose sight of that a lot. I also think the whole idea of balance has been hijacked. And you're told that like to have balance every single day has to be this perfect balance of like I work out and then I have family time and then I have my work time and then I have my personal development time and then I have meditation. You know, it's like every day has to be balanced. That is so far from reality. The reality of how it works is that you want balance in the macro, not in the micro. You're going to have periods of time where you're sprinting on things where you want want to be heads down all weekend because you're working on something you care about that's meaningful, that is not balanced. That is a season of unbalance in pursuit of a future season of balance. And all you need to think about is it's okay for me to be unbalanced now because I know that I'm going to zoom out and I have an eye towards building that balance later. I have an awareness of that. So I'm going to be able to lean into the balance when I have it. I am very much in a season of unbalance right now. I'm traveling 30 out of the next 35 days. I don't want to do that. I'm not joyous about being away from my son or my wife all that much. But it is part of a pursuit that really matters to me. I really want to share these ideas with the world because I think they're impactful. And so I'm going to do that with the knowledge that I'm going to follow it with a season of balance. And that is the important piece that when we zoom out we can look at our year in quarters, treat it like a public company. It's okay to have a quarter of real focus and craziness where you head down and you're unbalanced as long as you start thinking about in the bigger picture, some of the quarters are more balanced, right?
- [64:07]
Paula Pant
And seasons are A perfect analogy because you don't have four seasons in a day. As we're recording this, there's a massive snowstorm outside. We're in a season of winter and it's going to last for a few months.
- [64:18]
Sahil Bloom
Yeah, it's not going to be 70 and sunny later today, Right, Exactly.
- [64:22]
Paula Pant
We've talked about time, we've talked about social, you know, we've talked about some of those exercises. What about for purpose?
- [64:30]
Sahil Bloom
In the section on mental wealth, I frame up an approach for thinking about your purpose, which leverages the ancient Japanese concept of ikigai. It's this idea of basically finding your higher calling, if you will. Like, I come from a half Indian background and there's this idea in ancient Indian culture of dharma, which is your sacred duty. And the whole point is that it doesn't have to be grand or ambitious or impressive to anyone else, it just has to be yours. And asking yourself what you love doing, asking yourself what the world needs from you and the world needs is a really interesting question. Because world doesn't have to be world on a global scale. It is your world as you define it. Your world could be your family. What does your family need from you right now? Your world could be your community, it could be your country, it could be the world. But defining that and asking yourself those questions is the exercise there for starting to think about, what are the things that I want to be focusing on, where am I going to feel more connected to this higher order purpose?
- [65:38]
Paula Pant
And what is the exercise then for the two remaining categories, physical and financial.
- [65:42]
Sahil Bloom
So within physical wealth, there are a handful of tools that you can use to start actually building a life of physical wealth. The one that I sort of propose is to do like a 30 day sprint, like a 30 day challenge. And we lay out three levels of it. So there's a starter level, which is bronze, there's a silver and then there's a gold level. And they obviously sort of graduate up in terms of the difficulty. But the basics within the bronze level are basically three things. There's three pillars of physical wealth, if you will. It's movement, nutrition and recovery. So for movement, move your body for 30 minutes a day. Doesn't have to be anything fancy. You don't have to do some like crazy regime. It could be walking, jogging, biking, dancing, whatever you like doing, just move for 30 minutes a day. Within nutrition, try to have 80% of your meals come from whole unprocessed foods. 80%. So say like 17 out of 21 meals in a week and then Recovery, Just try to sleep seven hours a night. You don't have to be perfect, doesn't have to be like blue light blocking glasses. Start there as a baseline. If you can do that for 30 straight days, you are well on your way. You get 90% of the benefit from just doing the boring basics. And that's an important concept that the world of social media will feed you the most complex, insane answers and solutions because that's what gets clicks. But the reality is that the boring basics in all of these areas work. And I can't sell you an ebook that says, hey, move your body for 30 minutes a day, but it really does just work. I can't sell you an ebook that says, like, eat whole, unprocessed foods, but it works. So while those things may not get clicks, we can rely on them. And they have sort of the Lindy effect in that they've lasted over generations for a reason, because they are effective within financial wealth. The exercise that I would love everyone to go through is to clearly define what a life of enough looks like to them. The word enough is at the core of how I think about financial wealth. Expectations are your single greatest financial liability. If your expectations rise faster than your assets, you will never feel wealthy, you will never be rich, because you'll just be chasing whatever more you're convincing yourself will lead to your future happiness. Clearly defining what your enough life looks like is the way that you create a rational, clear baseline upon which you can measure yourself.
- [68:09]
Paula Pant
Right. Kurt Vonnegut has that famous story. Yes, absolutely famous. Would you like to tell it?
- [68:14]
Sahil Bloom
Yeah. Yeah. So Kurt Vonnegut wrote this poem in the New Yorker about a visit that he and his friend Joseph Heller, the author of Catch 22, made to this billionaire's house in the Hamptons. The way he tells it is that the two of them are at this billionaire's house at this party, and Vonnegut turns to Heller and says, joe, how does it feel that just yesterday the owner of this home made more money than your bestselling book, Catch 22 made in its entire lifetime? And Heller replies, yes, but I've got something that he'll never have. And Vonnegut says, oh, yeah? Well, what's that? And he replies, the knowledge that I've got enough. And that is as beautiful an articulation as I can imagine. Apropos for Vonnegut, but just a perfect example of exactly that. The beauty of enough is everything in life. Never let the quest for more distract you from the beauty of enough.
- [69:12]
Paula Pant
Often we define enough as In a point in time analysis, how do we handle the reality that enough changes over the course of our life?
- [69:21]
Sahil Bloom
Enough will change. The best thing that you can hope for is for that change to be a conscious and semi rational one rather than a subconscious irrational one. Most people, if you don't clearly define it, that version of enough will be this mirage. You never articulate what it is. You get there and it's disappeared to 3 to 5x what it was today. There's this famous study Michael Norton at Harvard Business School conducted where he asked a group of high net worth individuals worth anywhere from a million dollars up through hundreds of millions how happy they were on a scale of 1 to 10. Then he asked how much more money it would take for them to be at a 10 across the board, whether they were worth a million dollars or 100 million. They all said 3 to 5x as much as they currently have. Crazy makes absolutely no sense, defies logic, but it's a perfect example of the fact that enough has just disappeared and reappeared 3-5x from where you are today. We need to make it conscious, we need to make it rational. And you only do that by clearly articulating what that life actually looks like. Where are you? What are you doing? Who are you with? Where do you live? It doesn't have to be Spartan either. I mean, my enough life might have two houses because I love entertaining and being able to bring together family and friends for experiences. It's not saying that your enough life has to be some like very basic life, but clearly articulating what it looks like so that as you approach it and as you have it, you have more of an appreciation for it and you're able to slowly adjust it upward grounded in something else. Not just the pursuit of more is the point. So as you pursue more, as you pursue expanding upon that definition, it should be grounded in your purpose. It should be grounded in your ambition to continue to grow and learn and achieve. Not in I need to make x more million dollars.
- [71:15]
Paula Pant
Right. It should be rooted to components of your life rather than an arbitrary number.
- [71:20]
Sahil Bloom
Yes, I want to build more so that I can create more meaningful experiences with people that I love. I want to build more because I feel so strongly that this business that I'm creating can change the world or can impact these communities or can do X, Y or Z. But it needs to be grounded in those other things, not in the pursuit of more money. Right.
- [71:39]
Paula Pant
I have one final question for you and I promised at the beginning of this interview that we would touch back on Memento Mori. And so this is where we touch back on that. Can you describe the significance of that and how as the afford anything community is digesting this information, how do we carry that forward into our day to day lives?
- [72:02]
Sahil Bloom
So Memento Mori is this ancient Roman tradition where the military hero, upon returning from battle would be paraded through the streets of adoring fans. People would be plotting them through the streets on this golden chariot and they had this practice of placing one person behind the conquering hero who would just whisper in their ear the entire time, memento mori, which means, remember thou art mortal. Remember you must die. The whole idea was to remind the person of the fact that they were not a God, that they were going to die. Because these adoring fans and all of this adulation could lead to that sensation of immortality. It's dangerous. That idea applied to our lives is a very powerful one. Recognizing and reminding yourself on a regular basis of your own mortality is what allows you to live in the present. It's what allows you to give your energy to the things you truly care about. Some people have taken it as far as creating these Memento Mori calendars. Ryan Holiday, the famous sort of modern day Stoic philosopher, has this calendar that he's created that you can go buy.
- [73:09]
Paula Pant
Your life in weeks.
- [73:10]
Sahil Bloom
Yeah, your life in weeks. And it's 52 rows across for one year. There's a row across and then there's columns that go all the way down for like an 80 year life. And you fill it in so you can see how much time has passed and how much on average time you have remaining.
- [73:22]
Paula Pant
I think it goes to what, a 90 or 100 maybe for how long your lifespan is. I have one of these. Tim Urban from Wait, but why? Also sells it.
- [73:30]
Sahil Bloom
Oh, does he? Okay, yeah, yeah. It is not intended to be morbid as most people take it. I think the first time I showed it to my mom, she took it as very morbid. It is intended to be inspiring, that it should inspire action in the present. This knowledge that you're immortal, this knowledge that your time is passing should inspire you to action. It should call you to action. And I have found it to be incredibly inspiring in my own life. It is what has sparked me to create the changes that we've created in our life. It's what's inspired my wife and I to be as present as I feel we're able to be with our son. It's what's inspired me to put so much energy towards sharing these messages, is that I Want more people to be called to these ideas, to be called to question what truly matters to them, rather than default into what society has told them matters.
- [74:14]
Paula Pant
Right. When you fill out the calendar, when I got it, I had to order a gigantic Sharpie just to cross off all of the previous weeks of my life because there were so many that are already gone.
- [74:29]
Sahil Bloom
It's scary. Yeah, it's scary when you look at it. And I have a caption on it that just says, this is what my Memento Mori calendar looks like today. Go. Right, Yesterday I turned 34, so I'm pretty young still. But the calendar is a stark reminder.
- [74:43]
Paula Pant
And as you go through and you fill in one square at a time for every week, you really see those weeks tick by. I know some people who they'll color in sections. This color section is childhood and this color section is college. And this color section was my 20s. But it certainly puts that all. It frames that all in a very stark way. And it goes back to one of the themes that you were talking about earlier, how you're life is an overall picture, but each day is a pixel. Really? In Momento Mori, each week is a pixel.
- [75:16]
Sahil Bloom
Yeah, absolutely. And creating an awareness of those pixels is what allows you to build the life that you want.
- [75:22]
Paula Pant
Right. Well, thank you for spending this time with us. Where can people find you if they'd like to know more?
- [75:27]
Sahil Bloom
Thank you so much for having me. You can find me ahillbloom on any of the major platforms. Then the book is available in stores everywhere, Amazon, local bookstores, and you can find out more@the5typesofwealth.com.
- [75:41]
Paula Pant
Thank you. Sahil, what are three key takeaways that we got from this conversation? Key takeaway number one. Wealth extends far beyond money. True wealth encompasses five domains. There's financial wealth, yes, but there's also time wealth, social wealth, mental wealth, and physical wealth. The research is very clear that money has an enormous correlation with happiness up to a certain threshold. And after that threshold, it starts producing diminishing returns. Essentially, money can't make you happy, but a lack of money can make you unhappy. And so money, up to a point, is essential for reducing stress and creating options. But beyond that threshold, your relationships, your health, your purpose and your control over your time become much bigger drivers of happiness. Measuring yourself across all all five of these areas gives you a more complete picture of a well lived life.
- [76:39]
Sahil Bloom
There are five types of wealth. Money is one of them, financial wealth. The others are time wealth, social wealth, mental wealth, and physical wealth. So time wealth is what we've talked about. It's how you spend your time, who you spend it with. The ability to choose social wealth is your depth and breadth of connection to the world around you. It's the people that you surround yourself with. Mental wealth is your curiosity, your purpose, your growth, your ability to create space, to wrestle with the bigger questions in your life. And then physical wealth is your health and vitality. It's your ability to actually enjoy the other types of wealth because you're healthy enough to do it. So measuring yourself across that broader picture is a very good way to think about what you are building towards in your own life. If you are doing extraordinarily well on financial wealth, but you have none of the others, life is not going to be particularly fulfilling. I mean, what good is having a yacht and a private jet if you're alone on it? What good is having all the money in the world if you can't move around because you're so unhealthy or overweight? All of these things need to be built in concert as you think about building a lasting, durable, fulfilling life.
- [77:52]
Paula Pant
And so that is key takeaway number one. Key takeaway number two. Later often becomes never. Do not postpone important aspects of life with promises of later, because later can quickly become too late. Kids grow up, parents and grandparents age. Health starts to fade. I mean, maybe right now you can go hiking in the Himalayas, but are you going to be able to do that when you are in your 80s? I hope so. I hope you're in good enough shape to scale Himalayan peaks in your 80s. But it's possible that there's a window of time for that. And that window's not going to be around forever. So be aware of this tug of war between chasing goals and being present, because it can be really easy to drift towards external achievements and miss the present moment.
- [78:44]
Sahil Bloom
Most people just say that. They say the word later gets thrown around all the time. Say, I'll spend more time with my kids later. I'll have more time for my health later. I'll spend more time with my friends later. I'll ground myself in my purpose later. And the sad thing is that later just becomes another word for never. Because those things won't exist in the same way later. Your kids aren't going to be five later. Your friends won't be there later, your health won't be there later.
- [79:08]
Paula Pant
So that is key takeaway number two. Finally, key takeaway number three. Define your Enough. Everyone has a different definition of how much is enough. And you need to know what yours looks like what is enough for you. What's enough? In your financial life, this helps you avoid the endless treadmill of wanting more. Now, if you don't have a defined target, expectations often tend to rise along with income. And so that's the hedonic treadmill, right? That's the perpetual dissatisfaction, regardless of how much you have. So ground your definition of enough in components of your life in the lifestyle that you want to live, rather than in arbitrary numbers.
- [79:54]
Sahil Bloom
Expectations are your single greatest financial liability. If your expectations rise faster than your assets, you will never feel wealthy, you will never be rich, because you'll just be chasing whatever more you're convincing yourself will lead to your future happiness. Clearly, defining what your enough life looks like is the way that you create a rational, clear baseline upon which you can measure yourself.
- [80:21]
Paula Pant
Those are three key takeaways from this conversation with Sahil Bloom. His newsletter, by the way, the Curiosity Chronicle, is absolutely fantastic. He has over a million subscribers. Highly encourage you to check that out. I'm so impressed by what he does. His book on the five types of wealth is a foundational staple for anyone who is interested in financial independence and living a better life. Living a more complete, whole, multifaceted life. Big thanks to Sahil for coming on the show today. Before we wrap up today's episode, I want to share something important with you. If you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you've heard me talk about our flagship course, your first rental property tonight, Friday, February 21st. Tonight at midnight marks a significant turning point for YFRP because for the past six years we've offered something pretty unique in the world of real estate education. Which is for the past six years, we've offered lifetime access to our premium LIVE support system at no additional cost. So what does this mean? We have two components in our course. There's the on demand component where we have video lessons with transcripts and quizzes and spreadsheets and worksheets and all of that on demand educational material. And that is not changing. That's there for every student for life forever. But in addition to the on demand pieces, we also have this LIVE component where we offer really high touch support to our students. So we're talking live weekly study halls. These are led by our teaching assistants who are all alumni from the course, successful alumni from the course. In our study halls, every week live, we get together and go through the homework and go through the lessons, right? So that's live help. And then we also have bi weekly mastermind calls with active investors and we have monthly office hours with me. Up until now, we've offered all of that lifetime access for free forever to everyone who has ever enrolled. And so for all of our existing students, all of our alumni, they're all grandfathered in. So everyone gets free support for life. But after we close out this cohort, that model is going to change because providing this level of just high touch, ongoing support isn't sustainable to do it for free forever. So new students, anybody who enrolls after February 2025 new students will have to pay an annual membership fee in order to access this live premium support. But if you enroll today, because today is the last day that this course is available for this cohort, if you enroll today, you're grandfathered in, which means you lock in lifetime access to all of our premium support features at no additional cost ever. So you lock in the premium tier for life, you'll be grandfathered in for free forever, just like all of our existing students are, all of our alumni are. Now, we've resisted making this change for a long time. We've been in operation YFRP, your first rental property, has been in operation for six years. We've had more than 3,000 students come through our program. So it requires a lot of resources to provide that level of support. That's why even though we've wanted to keep this free for everyone forever, we have to change to a membership model after this. And so this is your opportunity to get grandfathered in and lock in lifetime access to premium support for free forever. And the deadline is tonight at midnight. So if you've been on the fence, if you've been thinking about joining yfrp, this is truly, it's your last opportunity to get the complete package, meaning both our comprehensive curriculum and lifetime access to our premium support system without any recurring fees. So it's a very good deal. So if you've been thinking about it, if you're on the fence, I would really encourage you to enroll before the midnight deadline. You can do so by going to affordanything.com enrollment. That's affordanything.com enroll. Thank you so much for listening, as always. If you enjoyed today's episode, please share it with your friends, your family, your neighbors, your colleagues, your siblings, your cousins. I guess that's redundant because I already said the word family, but you, you get what I'm saying. Share this with the people in your life. That's the single most important way to spread the message of financial health and to spread the message of the five types of wealth you can chat about today's episode with members of our community at affordanything. Com Community, thank you so much for tuning in. I'm Paula Pant. This is the Afford Anything podcast, and I'll meet you in the next episode.