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- [00:00]
Sahil Bloom
The things that I do in the morning now are really focused on creative work, writing. That's when I feel most creative. So, like, this book got basically written from like 5am to 8am over the course of three years. To me, in order to be able to write and be creative at 5, I needed to like get up at 4 and it was the ice bath was like the biggest thing for me.
- [00:18]
Cody Sanchez
Welcome back to the Big Deal podcast. This is Cody Sanchez and this podcast is for those of you who want to change your life and make a dent on the world. Oh, okay. Today we have somebody on who is going to tell us how do we actually achieve the things we want out of life this year? How do we use research, data and studies in order to create frameworks that make us able to live the life that we want by our actions every single day? We're going to steal habits from my friend Sahil Bloom, who is a an author of the brand new book Five Types of Wealth. He is also a former private equity investor. He has millions of followers online and he's known for one thing really interesting in my mind, which is taking frameworks from some of the best minds out there and applying them to everyday life. These frameworks led him to get mentors like Tim Cook, you know, famously of Apple, running the joint. Also another friend of mine, Arthur Brooks from Harvard, who famously wrote a book with Oprah. And so Sahil has this unique ability with his sort of private equity like mind to go out into the world, pull together how high performers use data and frameworks in order to make our lives better. And when he talks about wealth, it's not just the same way we typically do. On this podcast, we're not talking about just money, but we're talking about living an extensive life. So I think you guys will really enjoy this conversation. This is so applicable and so tactical for hitting your goals in 2025. Let's get into it. Okay. I want to start out with a concept that you got in front of millions of people and kind of changed how I think about life, actually. And I think for a ton of people on on Twitter, it was the same thing. Which is your idea of time billionaire. You talk about that a little bit.
- [01:58]
Sahil Bloom
Y. The first time I came across this was, I think it was on the Tim Ferriss show podcast. An investor named Graham Duncan, who is a very successful investor, talked about this idea of the time billionaire. And as I went through the whole book research process, I spoke to Graham and he basically said that during his career as an investor, he would interview hundreds of young people that were coming and joining his firm. And they all had the same goal, which was to one day become billionaires, dollar billionaires, to go make a billion dollars. And what he said was that they were all billionaires in one very important way. They were time billionaires. They quite literally had billions of seconds left in their life. A billion seconds is roughly 30 years. So, like, when you're 20, you have maybe 2 billion seconds left. When you're 50, you have a billion seconds. And that idea is a really important one because what it implies is that time is your most precious asset. It is quite literally the only thing that you can't get back. And yet, as young people in particular, we never think about our time. We basically live in this world where time is nothing to us. We think we're immortal. And then at the very end, it's the only thing that you think about. But it's too late. It's gone at that point. And so the call to action around that idea of the time billionaire is to recognize that that time is your most precious asset, to become aware of it. And the question that I go and ask people, especially young people, is, would you trade lives with Warren Buffett? He's worth $130 billion. He has access to anyone in the world. He reads and learns for a living. He flies around on private jets, does all these fancy things. But you wouldn't trade lives with him because he's 95 years old. There's no way you would agree to trade the amount of time you have left for all of the money in the world. So you know in the back of your mind that time has incalculable value. And yet, on a daily basis, how much time are you wasting sitting on your phone, scrolling around, worrying about other people, stressing over dumb things, comparing yourself to others, all of these stupid things that we do when time is the only thing that matters in the end.
- [04:04]
Cody Sanchez
That's so good. You had this visual, I remember, from back in the day, where you basically have, you know, a father and a son. And you see the flip, right? So from the father taking care of the son to the son taking care of the father. And it was so poignant, which is what I like about a lot of your frameworks and the book is you put these visuals to them, too, where it's kind of like a kick in the gut. You're like, all right, Sahil, copy. I got it. Like, no more scrolling. Take it easy. But I really like that you also said this, this quote that I loved, which was, every single thing you do today is something that your 90 year old self will wish they could go back and do. The good old days are happening right now. I was wondering for you, since most people never think about time, you think about it a lot. When did that flip and why?
- [04:50]
Sahil Bloom
In 2021, I had a single conversation that changed my life. I was out for a drink with an old friend and we were just catching up and he was asking how I was doing. And I had spent the last seven years of my life rising through the ranks in the finance world. I was working 80 to 100 hours a week. I was making more and more and thinking that that was how I was going to reach the land of success and happiness. And a lot of other areas of my life had started to suffer. Namely, I was living very far away from my parents, 3,000 miles away, and they were getting older. And so my friend asked how I was doing in this moment, and I said that it had started to get tough being so far away from my parents. They had started to show chinks in their armor, if you will. They were mortal. And he asked how old they were, And I said, mid-60s. And he said, how often do you see them? And I said, maybe once a year. And he looked me in the face and just 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. I mean, the idea that the amount of time you have left with the people that you love most in this world is so finite, so countable, that you can put it onto a few hands shook me to my core. And in that moment, I recognized that something had to change. That if we didn't make a change, I was going to wake up one day and wonder what the fuck I just did with my life. And that was the spark of this entire journey of starting to recognize and appreciate time and starting to realize that you are actually much more in control of your time than you think. And the next day, we made a decision. My wife and I had a candid conversation, and within 45 days, I had left my job. We'd sold our house in California and moved across the country to live closer to my parents. And so we took that number 15 and turned it into now it's in the hundreds. I see my parents multiple times a month. You are much more in control of these things than you think, but only if you develop an awareness of just how important they are.
- [06:57]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah. You know what's interesting, too Is like, we talk a lot, obviously. And I think a lot of times people write books and they talk about this stuff, and they're like, but do you live it? You know? And one of the things you're really good about is when we go back and forth, you're like, you're kind of working a lot. Like, are you sure you want to do that? You're hanging out with Chris very much. And so I think it's also cool that you. You know, if somebody's listening to this, it's like, yes, you can internalize all this, but then also find yourself a couple buddies that'll keep you honest. And it seems like you've done that really well, and you've surrounded yourself with these interesting people that kind of have the same perspective to too. One thought I had about that was, I saw this other video of yours that I had never seen before. And I don't know if we've talked about it, but you kind of have this theory on phones and how to not have them ruin your daily life. Do you know what I'm talking about and what video I'm talking about?
- [07:46]
Sahil Bloom
Not having them. Not having them in front of you when you're with people.
- [07:50]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah.
- [07:50]
Sahil Bloom
Yeah.
- [07:50]
Cody Sanchez
What is it? Is this database or is this a Sahel base?
- [07:53]
Sahil Bloom
No, no, there is. So there is scientific evidence that if I have my phone out on the table, even face down, while we're having a conversation, you and I experience less feelings of connection after that interaction than if I don't have my phone out in front of us.
- [08:10]
Cody Sanchez
What about an iPad?
- [08:12]
Sahil Bloom
I'm sure it's the exact same effect. I mean, the. The phone, because of the. The feeling that we know we get from it, which is it draws our attention as we're interacting. If I have this out in front of us, you are experiencing me as being less present in that conversation, which makes sense, because as soon as it lights up, you see, like, my eyes jump to it, because that's what it's built to do. These things are literally designed to grab at your attention. They have entire teams of people that are dedicated to making them addicting. And so the phone has become this drug in our lives that we know it's pulling your attention away from the things that really matter, the people that are sitting in front of you. And so when we talk about these things, we talk about cultivating these relationships, the people that you have around you that keep you honest on this stuff. So much of it, things like that, it's going back to the basics of how we operate as humans where we can have a face to face interaction and really importantly, where you have people in your circle who are willing to tell you the truth. I think about this all the time that like, friends are great, but a lot of friends will just pat you on the back and like cheer you on when things are going well. Which, don't get me wrong, great, we need some cheerleaders in our lives. But more than cheerleaders, I need some people that are willing to hold me to account when I'm not living up to the things that I say I want to live up to. My wife is a huge truth teller in my life. I know that Chris is for you willing to tell us the truth when we're not, but you need friends like that too. Like, I need friends who are willing to tell me when I am working on things that really don't make sense for me to work on when I'm getting involved in opportunities that don't really have the upside or aren't really down in my zone of genius. You need those truth tellers in your life if you want to continue to grow.
- [09:52]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah, it's true. Well, you and I kind of had that happen anyway because you were like, listen, this thing that we were working on, which was this company, you're like, it's just not going to. It's not going to be big enough for us. And like, we had to have a tough conversation, you know, But I think because we had that tough conversation, like, we're better friends.
- [10:07]
Sahil Bloom
Absolutely. And that's.
- [10:08]
Cody Sanchez
And by the way, most people will never do that. They'll just shove it down inside and then they'll have resentment and then at some point, you know, they kind of talk behind backs about other people because you never get it out.
- [10:17]
Sahil Bloom
I learned this from you, actually. And it's been, it's becoming core mental model in my own life, which is when you avoid a hard conversation, you are taking on a debt that you have to repay with interest at a date in the future. Time does not heal anything when it comes to relationships. So you have to make those minor repairs along the way. Otherwise you're just going to have major repairs to make in the future. I've always thought that that metaphor for thinking about hard conversations works. It might just be that you and I have finance minds. So we think in like the debt terms. But it makes sense to me. I'm like, it is literally a debt you are going to have to repay one way or another, and it's just going to get worse. So Having the hard conversation now is the smartest move for the future.
- [10:58]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah, it's so true. And I think a lot of times too, you know, when, when people today have difficult conversations that they want to have, a lot of times they'll just avoid it for. They'll lose a friendship over it. Like, I remember I had one instance with a girlfriend of mine and she just didn't want to get on the phone and didn't want to ever talk about it. And our relationship to this today, to this day, has never been repaired because of it. And so I think that's really normal when we have a society where young people are not actually engaging face to face anymore. We're texting back and forth, you know, we're, we're on social media, we're sending memes. That's the communication methods. We sort of lost the ability to do the crucial conversations thing. Like back when you were in finance, didn't they make you read crucial conversations?
- [11:41]
Sahil Bloom
We didn't read it, but I know the principles.
- [11:43]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah, yeah, they made us read it at Vanguard because we're more touchy feeling.
- [11:46]
Sahil Bloom
Although it is like, I mean, even in, even in the world of finance now, I think that the art of hard conversations has been lost. And I found it time and time again in my finance career that like, every single time you avoided a hard conversation with a management team that you'd invested in, it ended poorly. It was bad because you were just delaying something that needed to happen along the way. And so I also think that, like, there are hacks that make hard conversations easier. If you have a hard conversation with someone, going for a walk with them while you have the hard conversation is scientifically proven to improve that conversation. When you walk alongside someone and when your gait is matching with someone, you actually feel a closer level of connection with them scientifically. And so it makes the hard conversation easier. It makes you feel more connected to the person, they feel more open to you. It also reduces the uncomfortable feeling of making direct eye contact during a hard conversation, which makes it easier to do. So if you have, like, if you need to have a hard conversation with your partner, go for a walk. If you need to have a hard conversation with a colleague or someone that works on your team, go for a walk and do it. It makes it significantly easier, so you won't want to avoid it.
- [12:53]
Cody Sanchez
I love that my team is also now never going to want to go for a walk with me. It's like, it's always up.
- [12:58]
Sahil Bloom
It's like being taken out back. It's like taking Old Yeller out back. Hey, we got to go for a walk around the block.
- [13:02]
Cody Sanchez
Exactly. Oh, that's funny. You know, it kind of like, makes me think about something with you that I think is really interesting too. You are probably one of the more disciplined, disciplined humans I've. I've met. You do crazy ice baths at like 3 in the morning, nonstop. When you have to, like, hammer the ice on the east coast, it's wild. But if you had to pick like one habit that you do every morning, what is it and why?
- [13:27]
Sahil Bloom
I. Let's see. I am very. I've always been very disciplined and routine oriented. I probably have some level of undiagnosed OCD that makes me that way. Like, I have always loved the show Dexter because I love. Not that he's a serial killer. I should probably caveat that I'm not a serial killer. I guess if I was, I wouldn't admit it. But I've always loved that character because he is so methodical about his routines. And there's something that, like, I have always found comfort in my routines. For me, my mornings have always been about priming myself for the day. I've always liked that idea of, like, how do you prime yourself for the things you're gonna do? The things that I do in the morning now are really focused on creative work, writing. That's when I feel most creative. So, like, this book got basically written from like 5am to 8am over the course of three years. And to me, in order to be able to write and be creative at five, I needed to, like, get up at four. And it was. The ice bath was like the biggest thing for me. And it was not about the trend and about the social media.
- [14:28]
Cody Sanchez
You were doing it before it was cool.
- [14:30]
Sahil Bloom
I was doing it before it was cool.
- [14:31]
Cody Sanchez
Give you some credit.
- [14:32]
Sahil Bloom
And I have been. I've continued to do it now that it's not as cool anymore. By the way, like, that was a trend. 2021 and 2022. It was a great way to get likes on social media now. Like, the people that are ice bathing now are, like, real. Oh, geez.
- [14:43]
Cody Sanchez
Still like it. I don't post it on social media because I don't need, you know, my. My ladies all over the Internet. But, like, it's. It does wake you up.
- [14:50]
Sahil Bloom
It definitely wakes you up and it makes you feel like a badass. And nothing bad has ever come from feeling like a badass. Because when you feel like a bad ass, when you feel like a savage, when you feel like a Winner that has ripple effects into everything that you do. The way that you engage with the world is different. Which is why I always say there's no such thing as a loser who wakes up at 5am and works out. It has nothing to do with working out. It just has to do with the fact that when you do a hard thing to start the day, if you can convince yourself to do that over and over and over again, you start to interact with the world differently. You rewire your brain to recognize that you are capable of taking an action and creating an outcome. And when you do that, you start to operate better in every area of your life.
- [15:31]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah, such a good point. You know, I'm pretty disciplined in some areas. But you and Chris are so disciplined physically, like it's just a different level. Probably because you were basically a pro athlete. Were you pro now? You were college, right? Yeah, baseball.
- [15:44]
Sahil Bloom
You're selling yourself short.
- [15:45]
Cody Sanchez
Well, thanks.
- [15:46]
Sahil Bloom
This morning, this morning I woke. So I wake up every day at 4am it's just my habit. And by the way, that's not me being a hard O saying I don't sleep, I go to bed at like 8. I literally live like an 80 or 90 year old man. So when I say this like wisdom from old people, I sort of am like, yeah, I'm kind of an old soul at heart. But I Woke up at 4 and I had a text from you already that I replied to and you were like, why are you up? And I was like, why are you up? Don't ask me that question.
- [16:12]
Cody Sanchez
Well, I think, you know what I've struggled with sometimes that maybe people can relate to is physically I have a different discipline indicator than I do professionally. Like there's very little work wise I'm not going to do if I say I'm going to do it. I don't know why, I'm just geared that way. But do you have A, do you have the tool you use to make habits stick for you? Do you have a rule?
- [16:33]
Sahil Bloom
Yeah, I have something that I call my ABC system when it comes to habits. And the idea here is that with any habit you are trying to build, you create an A goal, a B goal and a C goal. The A goal is your best case. That is the like best version of the thing during any given day. The B goal is sort of a baseline case and then the C goal is the minimum viable version of it. So for an example, if you were going to try to create a like workout habit, your A goal might be to go to the gym for an hour. On a given day, your B goal might be 30 minutes and your C goal might be to just like take a 15 minute walk. So the whole idea is on any given day, if you feel great, you go nail your A goal. If you feel just okay, do the B goal. And on days when you just feel like crap and you don't want to do it, you have to convince yourself to just do the C goal. And the whole idea there is that anything above zero compounds. We know that financially, right? Like, we know that if we put away $10, that's better than putting away zero. The exact same thing applies to all of these areas of your life. So if you can just convince yourself on those bad days to just do something, it's better than doing nothing. But the hard mindset shift there is for ambitious people in particular, they think that unless it's optimal, it's not going to be beneficial. And that's just not true. Doing a 15 minute walk is better than doing nothing. Doing the like 10 minutes of focus work is better than doing nothing. So it doesn't have to be that you have the four hour deep work routine or the like perfect, you know, morning routine or the perfect diet. Just do the little bit that actually stacks up and compounds.
- [18:09]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah, you know, directionally. I think that's how I set most of my goals too. It's like every single day is there directional forward movement as opposed to do we hit, you know, do we hit our mile goal every single day in a marathon? Like, that doesn't really matter to me. It's like, am I moving in the right direction on the same path and is momentum forward? So, so I think that's, that's interesting. You know, I remember a billion years ago, I like saw a picture of you on Twitter and I was like, oh, that's Sahil and that's Tim Cook. Like, what, what? Like how does he know the CEO of Apple? And then I realized this is a thing about you. Like, you sort of have this ability, I think, to get really big powerful people to, quote, unquote, mentor you without being annoying. Right. And I think of people today are like, I want a big mentor, or how could I get somebody like Tim Cook to care about me? How did that relationship start? Tell that story.
- [18:58]
Sahil Bloom
Yeah, so I met Tim for the first time in 2014 when I first started working. I just graduated from Stanford and I took a job working in private equity. I was going to work 80 to 100 hour weeks and that was the job. That's what it was going to be. And so I knew if I wanted to work out I was going to have to go early in the morning. And that meant getting to the Equinox in Palo Alto at 4:45 in the morning every single day. And that meant I had to get up at 3:45 and like wake myself up and be at the gym at 4:45. It turns out that there aren't that many people that are willing to get to the gym at 4:45. So there was a group of like eight of us that would show up every single day at that time, like waiting for them to open the door and you would talk to those people because you were with them every single day. So six months go by and I'm like talking to all these people early in the morning and I was having a conversation with one guy and I walk away and someone comes up to me and is like, do you know who that is, that guy you were just talking to? I was like, I don't know, that's the guy, like one of the guys that's here. And he goes, that's Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple. And I was like, oh shit. Because I've probably been saying the dumbest stuff to this guy for the last six months. And look, I wasn't in tech so it wasn't close to the space. I didn't know who he was because he didn't, like, he didn't look how he looks on stage. And he was the relatively new CEO at the time. He was not nearly the level of prominence that he is today, but for six months I interacted with him on a daily basis and was just normal, right? Like I wasn't looking for something because I didn't know who he was. And I'm not like a big transaction guy, so that's just not how I'm wired. After figuring out who he was, we happened to be having a conversation about something I'd seen related to Apple and I decided I was going to send it to him as a follow up. And so I guessed his email address and sent it to him. And he replied right away and was like, you know, made some funny comment about if I was as good at other things as I, you know, at like investing as I am at guessing email addresses. Then he's like, he's excited to back me or whatever, like he was just making a joke. And I sort of took that opportunity as a way to get together with him, try to like, you know, pick his brain, whatever you want to call it, and it ended up sparking what has been an incredible relationship and mentorship. He's been an unbelievable supporter on my journey. He was one of the big drivers of me deciding to leave the path I was on and go down this kind of crazy path. You know, a lot of people don't know. His story is really one of like carving his own path. He was on a very stable track in the, you know, executive management training program at IBM. Long career there. People stay on those paths, they're great. And he decided to step off that and took this job at Compaq, which was a computer startup, like weird little computer startup. And Steve Jobs was looking for someone to hire and saw his resume and like saw the IBM track and was like, oh, weird big company guy, probably not a fit. Then saw that he had taken this job at this little startup and was like, maybe this guy's actually different than a big company guy because he made this weird decision, this pattern interrupt and and so decided to talk to him. And then the rest was history. He's created trillions of dollars of value. And so I think his map of like doing the thing that he was pulled towards energy wise, even when it didn't really make sense, ended up informing him. Sort of like giving me some of the courage to go and do this. You know, he's the first blurb on the back of the book now, so he's been an incredible supporter on the journey. But it was like truly engineered serendipity in the sense of it was very lucky that I met someone like that, but it was luck that was engineered by the fact that I was waking up at 3:45 every single day for a long time.
- [22:35]
Cody Sanchez
What if 2025 wasn't just a year of grind, but a year of ownership and flow? That's the idea behind my first ever three day virtual event this February. It's not just a conference, it's a movement and it starts with you. Over three information packed days, we're going to tackle everything you need to take control. From finding the perfect business to negotiating killer deals, to building the mindset of a true owner. This isn't just a theory. We're bringing in laser coaching on real deal and sharing the exact strategies to spot opportunities everywhere. Here's the thing. This isn't about me. It's about owner nation. A collective of driven, unstoppable individuals ready to rewrite their futures. This is your movement and your moment to connect with others who are fighting for the same goal. Freedom through ownership. No one else is doing this. We've never done it before, and I think it's the first of its kind. So it's your shot to be part of something bigger when it comes to ownership. Visit the link in the description to save your seat and let's make 2025 the year we own it together. Yeah, I also think, I think like, a mixture of, like, common competency and desire is really rare. And I think not a lot of people realize that, you know, the. The average person overestimates, I think, how intelligent a lot of people are at the top, and they underestimate how much consistent work over time is the actual path to success. I mean, Tim Cook is probably an outlier, but most of us don't know how to code. You know, most of us don't know how to create something incredibly unique and differentiated like an Apple. But if we show up at the gym, if we show up every day in private equity, that's actually super rare, which is fascinating to me.
- [24:06]
Sahil Bloom
I also didn't want anything. And that, like, in this modern day and age, like, I have this perspective that networking is dead because it implies a transaction that is not conducive to building real relationships. The number of people over those years that I've known Tim that I saw come up to him the first time and be like, hey, I want to pitch you on this startup. Or like, hey, job at Apple, whatever. The thing is, you have to recognize that people in high positions, their entire life is spent with people coming with their hand out to them. That's their entire life. You are starting to experience that more as you achieve more and more success. You see it, but you can't imagine what that's like for someone like a Tim Cook. His entire life is someone coming with their handout. So honestly, the fact that for six months we interacted when I truly didn't know who he was, built up a base of interactions where he could tell, like, I didn't want anything. I've never. I don't. The number of times I've ever asked him about something about Apple in my life, I don't even know if I ever have, because I don't care. I'm not looking for a job. I don't want something from him. You know, like, it is just a genuine desire to learn. I love. I mean, he has access to incredible people. He has incredible stories, insights, wisdom. That's what I want. I want to learn from being around these incredible people, understand what makes them tick. And frankly, for someone like that, and I still think about this, he still does it. He is The CEO of one of the largest companies in the world. And he wakes up at 3:45 every single day and goes and works out baffling, works harder than any employee that he has working under him. I can't imagine having to work for him and knowing that like no matter what I do, I'm not going to work as hard as my boss, not be as focused, not be as driven. It is remarkable. And so we have a lot to learn from people like that, but it comes from being genuine. It comes from actually authentically wanting to create value with no expectation of return.
- [25:54]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah. You know, but I think you've done that a few different times. And so I think it's, it's an interesting thing for people to take away, which is like, how do you get a. You know, the book is amazing. It's right here. I don't know if we can see it on the screen. The Five Types of Wealth. And I remember when you were showing me the different covers, I like the one you landed on.
- [26:12]
Sahil Bloom
My wife was involved in the design process, which was great.
- [26:15]
Cody Sanchez
I didn't know that actually she's a.
- [26:17]
Sahil Bloom
Designer, so it was great.
- [26:17]
Cody Sanchez
Oh right, a gap, right?
- [26:19]
Sahil Bloom
Yeah, she was a gap.
- [26:20]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah. You have Tim Cook, Andrew Huberman, Mel Robbins, Arthur Brooks, Gary Vaynerchuk, to name a few. And you know, as I was thinking about the book and going through it, there were a lot of ways I could go and I, I want to talk about a lot of the frameworks because I think that's one of the things you're maybe most unique at in the world, which is like, it does seem like you're obsessed with learning. You're like, how do I optimize my life to have this very wealthy life with a broad spectrum definition, but simultaneously do it in the most efficient and effective way possible. But I wanted to start before I got to some of your frameworks with like, what is your favorite story of the book? Like what's your favorite thing to talk about in there?
- [26:59]
Sahil Bloom
I was surprised in the writing process by how much it ended up being a story about the human experience. When I set out, when I, frankly, when I signed the original book deal, I thought it was going to be a like rather standard sort of framework, like simple framework self improvement book where you just have the like one framework and then you basically like, sort of just like build it out for 200 pages and it becomes one of those books that people say like, well this could have been a 10 page blog. And it ended up taking this right turn where the Human stories were what called me. And telling the stories of some of the people who have experienced wealth in all these different ways in their life. The people that reached out to me, the people I went and spent time with, that ended up being the most powerful thing. And you know, in particular, there's a woman named Alexis Lockhart who reached out to me basically right at the end of my book writing process to tell me her story of a tragic event that had happened in her life. And the, the wisdom that it had inspired and instilled in her that I think ended up sort of like pulling together the whole heart of the book. And I feel like that is unique because as you read it, you will see yourself in one of the human stories. And that's what really makes ideas stick. And so even when I think about sharing frameworks now, I think that frameworks are made so much more powerful by a real human story to connect to around them rather than just being a big idea.
- [28:30]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah, it's a good point. Yeah. Like for instance, tell me about the bees and your son. I like that story.
- [28:37]
Sahil Bloom
Oh yeah. So I. This past, I guess this was like in May of this past year, we were outside and my wife was like, we were playing. I have a two year old at the time and we're playing and my wife was like, there's a bunch of bees around. Like, I'm gonna take Roman inside. Makes me nervous. And so we walk inside and I look out at this tree and I see like a bunch of movement around it and I'm like looking, looking, looking. And then I kind of have this holy shit moment of like that that entire tree is bees. So I go out and look and it is this enormous hive. And so I end up going down this rabbit hole and I sort of live tweeted this rabbit hole of trying to figure out what was going on and how to get rid of this enormous infestation of bees. Because I know nothing about bees. I'm not much of like a handyman either. And so like, I'm definitely not going to try to like take this down myself. So I'm like googling, you know, you know, exterminators, trying to figure it out, realize it's honeybees. Then I'm like learning about honeybees and the principle. There was like sort of a combination of a lot of things. I talk about one, being curiosity and being able to sort of go down the rabbit hole like that. As we're going, I'm like trying to explain to my 2 year old the type of bees. It is. And all these things. And then also just like a reminder that the most interesting content in the world is like, journey based content. We often think that these kind of like, engineered moments are the thing that really drives content. But people want to hear about a human journey. They want to hear about, like a real experience, something you're. You're kind of engaged in, in real time. And so whenever anyone comes and it's like, how can I start my content journey? I really do think that the Gary Vaynerchuk, like, old school model of, like, documenting is the way to do it.
- [30:21]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah. It's also more fun because you're not engineering things. You're literally living your life and then reflecting on it, which is, I think, how most of us got started. Like, I remember the first piece of content I went out that went viral. I was talking about a laundromat. And like, I literally was like, nobody's really going to be interested in this, but I think this is weird and we should talk about it. And then, lo and behold, it becomes this, this sort of. It has a mind of its own. But I think what I took away from that story from you is like, if you're curious about something and can become obsessed about something, it takes on a life of its own. That mixture of, like, curiosity and obsession can lead to just about anything you want in the world.
- [30:54]
Sahil Bloom
And the coolest thing about that story, which you will love in particular, is so it turned out it was 50,000 honeybees that had formed this hive. And so we had to get a honeybee keeper to come take them away, because you can't kill bee, you can't kill honeybees. And you shouldn't. They're incredible for the environment. So anyone out there, and a guy comes, a local who makes local honey, and he takes the bees away. And I end up posting about him and his business. He sold out a year's worth of his honey on the back of this thread that had gone viral and has been like, gifting us honeycomb and raw honey as a result ever since and has become a friend. So Larry the beekeeper. Shout out to Larry in Queens.
- [31:33]
Cody Sanchez
God, you know, I love a boring business. I just, I had to get like, one in. You know, you have also said PSA. This is from a Reddit post that you reposted PSA. 20 years from now, the only people who will remember that you worked late are your kids. Now you're a dad, you have a son. How do you mesh that belief with. I've also Heard you say before that you have to earn your seat at the table every day. How do you mesh achieving big things with actually being there for your kids and the people that you love?
- [32:06]
Sahil Bloom
Yeah, there are a few realities that need to be considered here. And this tension that we're going to talk about, the tension between presence and ambition is, I would argue, the fundamental tension of being an adult as a parent. Here's one truth. For 10 years, you are your child's favorite person in the entire world. And after that, they have new favorite people, they have friends, best friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, partners, spouses, children of their own. And you will never occupy that same place in their world. But for those 10 years, you are literally everything to them. And unfortunately, that 10 year period also coincides with the time when you are told professionally that you should be chasing every single version of more that the world hands you to. It's when you are hustling the most, it's when you're traveling the most. It's when you're building the most. And so that creates a real tension between your desire to be present during that magic window of time with your kids and your ambition to go and create things, to go and build something. How you navigate that tension is how you navigate your life with your kids. I have wrestled with it and I share this in the book in the following way, which is your children need to understand the why, why you are doing the things you are doing. That is how you navigate this tension. Well, because what kids do is if you do not tell them the why of why you are excited about the things you're doing, why you are passionate about them, why they matter to you, they fill it with the worst answer, which is that you don't care about them, that you don't want to be around, that dad's never around, that mom's never around. When the reality is you are being driven by a purpose, you are called to something. Whether that purpose is building a huge business, or whether it's providing for the family, or whether it's taking care of people, whether it's impacting the world, whatever that purpose is, that is the real why. And you need to make sure they understand that. And that answer is really informed by my own experience with my father. My dad is extraordinarily hard working and driven. He was a professor, researcher, works extremely hard. To this day, he's 70 years old. And my entire childhood, I remember very clearly him working very hard on things he cared about and me always knowing why he was working hard on those Things, always knowing that when he was gone, I knew why he was gone, what he was doing, the talk he was giving, the research he was doing, and I knew why it mattered to him. So as a result, I felt like I was a part of that mission that he was on. I felt like I was on the journey with him. It wasn't that he was gone and I was here. It was that I was a part of it. And so I always say that to parents, young parents, make sure that your kids understand why you are doing things. Embrace that tension, navigate it in the way that you see fit, but make sure your children are on that journey with you so that it's not an us versus them, so that it's all of you together.
- [35:07]
Cody Sanchez
There was some sort of societal shift where historically we used to work together with our families, we used to take over family businesses, we used to actually hire our family members. And that was the norm for most of human history. Right. It would actually be bizarre. Bizarre if we did not in some way shape or form work with and alongside our family. And then, you know, maybe two generations ago, three max, that changed. And then it became nepotism to hire people in your family. And then it became actually bad for the next generation to pass things down for them. And I'm not sure we weren't told a lie about that. You know, I work with my father now. He actually works with. With my company in some ways. My. I was my brother's first job out of college. My mom's worked with me before, and. And now my husband and I work together. And, you know, Elizabet and you worked on the book cover design together as well. So I think there's something really beautiful about. I. I don't have kids, so I can't speak to that. But allowing your family to come along for the ride, it's like, how can you expect them to be happy for you and your accomplishments if they don't know what they are, if they don't understand them, and if they can't touch them, see, see them and feel them? So. So when it comes to. To parenting, just to stick on this for one more minute. When it comes to parenting, what habits or rituals do you have with your son in order for you to have real quality time, even though you are traveling all the time?
- [36:25]
Sahil Bloom
Yeah. I really try to understand and very clearly establish an awareness of the difference between time and energy. And this is a really important mindset shift for all areas of life, but definitely for your relationships. And the difference here is I can spend an hour with you. But if I'm sitting there on my phone, worried about emails, responding to texts, looking at Instagram, you are not going to feel my presence in any way and we are not going to feel connected in any way. It's similar to what we were saying earlier about having the phone on the table. Kids are the exact same way. They're no different. If you have your phone out in front of them while you're supposedly spending time with them that hour, they are not going to feel any connection. But 10 minutes of truly present energy when they are the only person in the world to you can last for hours and hours in their mind. And so that is really what I try to focus on. It is, I may not. I may be in a season of my life where I am unbalanced, where I am like all hands on deck, charging, focused. Right now I am in one of those, trying to go out and spread the message of this book, which is very important to me. But when I'm there, I am going to be tuned off of everything else and it's going to be there. Like I'm in. My favorite thing in the world with my two and a half year old boy is like roughhousing. I can't be on my phone while I do that, right? Like, he wants to wrestle, he wants to like get thrown around, get tossed up in the air, all of those things. And so it is the most beautiful thing because it forces you to tune, to turn off in a, in a very real way. But that same principle applies to all of your relationships. I mean, if you're like, you know, supposedly having quality time with your partner and you're sitting there thinking about a million other things on your phone. The way to think about your phone is frankly, just like it is allowing a million people to be there with you while you're sitting with the one person and you would know if they were actually sitting in the room, that you weren't having quality time with this person. But it's the exact same thing. It's just in the form of a technology. And so finding a way to actually separate from it. For me, I actually have to have it in a different room. Like, I can't have my phone in front of me when my son's there. If I want to be present, it needs to be in my office, in another room so that I can be there. I had a. I haven't shared this, but I had a moment recently. I was in my office focusing on something and my son barges through the door and he's two and a half. So he starts just creating chaos in my office. I'm trying to focus on something. He starts, like, throwing stuff. He's jumping up on the couch, like throwing books on the ground. And I started having this enormously negative thought pattern of like, why is he doing this? So annoying. I'm trying to focus. Doesn't he realize I'm working? And I snapped myself back to four years ago when my wife and I were struggling to conceive. And we had been struggling for a year or two. And I prayed every single night that we would one day have a healthy child. And then here I was in that moment complaining about the very thing that I had prayed for. And it was a reminder to me that sometimes the things you pray for become the things that you complain about if you let them. Sometimes you are literally living your prayers, but you're not recognizing in the moment. You're not allowing yourself to zoom out and appreciate that in the moment. So finding those moments to pause and just bask in gratitude and force yourself to zoom out when you catch yourself doing that, holding yourself to the fire, I just think is so important in life.
- [39:56]
Cody Sanchez
It's beautiful. Hard too.
- [39:58]
Sahil Bloom
Very hard.
- [39:59]
Cody Sanchez
What. What do you do when you get in those negative thought patterns? You know, when you start to get annoyed if you want to zoom out? Is there a mental exercise you use for that?
- [40:10]
Sahil Bloom
I think it's the pause and breathe. It's, it's. It requires a level of self awareness in moments to be able to hold yourself to the fire. Like, you need to be able to tell yourself the truth. We talked about having truth tellers that can say that to you. But in a lot of moments in life, you're not going to have that person there in your ear. You have to be that person in your own ear. And it means you have to be self critical enough to do that. I do think that, like in the modern day, on social media in particular, there's been this whole trend of give yourself some grace, give yourself a little bit of grace. And while I agree that occasionally we need to give ourselves a little bit of grace, I think for most people, we actually need to hold ourselves to the fire. More often than not, I think we give ourselves too much grace. And look, maybe that's a harsh take, but I just think it's true. I think most of the time you need to hold yourself to the fire a little bit and your life will improve.
- [41:04]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah, I want to talk really quickly about some of the frameworks I've stolen from you. To make my life better, easier, simpler, a little richer and wealthier. You kind of popularized this idea for me around razors, like a rule of thumb that simplifies decision making. But you have quite a few of them. Can you explain what it is and what are some of your favorites and how do you use them?
- [41:26]
Sahil Bloom
Yeah, so the idea of a razor comes from philosophy originally. It's. It's something that allows you to shave away possible explanations and get to the heart of something. So the best way to say it is what you said. It's a rule of thumb that simplifies decision making. The most famous razor, which is probably my favorite one, is Occam's Razor, which is the idea that the simplest possible explanation is often the best one. So this is for all the conspiracy theorists out there, I'm sorry, but Occam's Razor typically will say that if there is some, you know, crazy thing happening, and we want to say that the government is doing some whole, like, crazy back end, you know, crazy thing, the simplest explanation is like, no, it's just the obvious thing that is happening. The government is not particularly competent. If you have ever flown, you have seen the government in action with the tsa, or if you've ever gone to try to get a new license, you have seen it at the dmv. That's the government. But all jokes aside on that, Occam's Razor is amazing because it's all about the idea that simple is beautiful. And so whenever you have a simple explanation for something, or a very complex one, that will require a lot of assumptions to be true, usually the simple one is correct. Another one of my favorites for the world of the Internet is Hanlon's razor, which says that you should never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity or ignorance. So the second you are in an argument with someone and you start saying like, oh, this person is malicious in their actions or in their intent, Sometimes it is just ignorance or stupidity. And a lot of the time it's just ignorance or stupidity that will save you from a whole lot of heartaches and headaches in life.
- [43:07]
Cody Sanchez
You know what the other one, it's not a razor, but you sometimes send it to me when I'm pissed off about something on the Internet is I think you should talk about the spotlight effect.
- [43:17]
Sahil Bloom
There are two big mistakes in life. Worrying about what other people think about you and believing that other people think about you in the first place. The reality is no one is thinking about you. Everyone is just going through life worried about themselves. The spotlight effect is this behavioral phenomenon whereby we overestimate the degree to which other people are noticing or observing our actions and behaviors. Basically, we think everyone is looking at us when they're not. Everyone is just worried about themselves. Call it the zoom phenomenon, because when you're on a zoom chat, you're so worried about how you look, and then you go look at the statistics, and 90% of the time, people are just looking at themselves. So literally no one is looking at you. You are the only one looking at yourself. And that is true for life. And understanding the spotlight effect is the key to unlocking your own capabilities, because you will be more willing to put yourself out there. There's so much hidden talent in the world that is not putting itself out there for fear of judgment from failure. You. You're not actually afraid of failure. You're afraid of what other people will think of you if you fail. But no one's thinking about you.
- [44:27]
Cody Sanchez
No. And it lasts. I mean, now that we have a bunch of people on the Internet, what I have realized is that even when you are literally the talk of the Internet, it lasts 24 hours a week, max. I mean, most. A lot of our friends have been huge, you know, scandals, issues, whatever, and then they're gone. It's like a week later. Nobody cares about it. And so. But I understand why people worry, because I was talking to a friend of ours, Sri, and Sree was just getting ridiculed on the Internet for, I don't know, being Indian and pro humans, basically. And Sree's about the nicest guy in the world, super competent. And I remember when this started happening to him, I reached out to him. I'm like, hey, man, how you doing? Like, I know how this goes, because it's happened to me. Not to that degree, because that was a whole different thing with politics involved, but you've had it happen, too. The first time it happened to me, I felt like. It felt like when you are scared about something physically happening to you, there's almost a visceral response that your body has that's like, oh, my God, everybody's talking about me online. And it is this. You almost have to overcome it and then realize actually, nobody really cares. It was a split second. It's really easy to engage, and then you're not worth it. But I understand why people worry, because you can hear about the spotlight effect, and then when the spotlight is even slightly upon you, everything goes out the window.
- [45:49]
Sahil Bloom
It's very true. It's also just a reminder. I Think it instills in you a sense of humility the first time that happens, because you realize one very sad thing about the world, which is a line from Billions, that's one of my favorite lines. Paul Giamatti's character says it to acts in the first episode. He says, make no mistake, they might be cheering for you now, but they are dying to boo. And those things, when they happen, people come out of the woodwork to boo and get really excited about booing. And it's a reminder that a harsh truth of life is that most people don't want to see you be successful. There are a lot of people out there who say they want you to be successful until you get up to the point where you're more successful than them, and then they're the first ones ready to try to tear you back down. And so to the point that we made at the very beginning on, like, finding your people that will truly support you and really, genuinely want to see you win, they are few and far between, and you need to cherish those people, and you need to be that to someone else. And so that's like when you send a text to the person when they're going through that. People never forget who was there for them when shit hit the fan when they were down. And it doesn't mean you flew there. And you have to be there and give advice and do all sorts of things. It's literally just texting someone to say, hey, I'm with you. These fires are happening in LA right now. Sending a text to the person to say, like, I'm with you, goes so far and is so impactful in the way that you interact with the world. And all of this comes to this idea of social wealth, which is like, there is clear scientific evidence that the people you surround yourself with determine your outcomes. The Pygmalion effect says that we rise to the level of expectations that others have for us in our circle. So if you are surrounded by people who think you are capable of more, who believe in you, who are telling you to think bigger, who are pushing you to grow, you will rise to the level of those expectations. So what better reason to choose wisely about the people that you have in your circle, the people that you are surrounding yourself with, the people you are gifting your precious energy in your life.
- [48:01]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah, it's a really important part you talk about in the book, and I love that study because it's wild. Do you want to talk? I know you talk about it in the book. You want to break down the study.
- [48:09]
Sahil Bloom
Yeah. The Harvard Study of Adult Development is this incredible longitudinal study that was done over the course of 85 plus years. They tracked the lives of 1300 original participants and then all of their descendants. So like about 2,000 plus people. And they found that the single greatest predictor of physical health at age 80 was relationship satisfaction at age 50. Not your cholesterol, not your blood pressure, not your smoking or drinking habits. How you felt about your relationships determined your physical health outcomes, how you aged over your course of your life. And so we know, scientifically, we know that relationships are the key to living a good life, a happy, healthy life. Every single person, you go and ask them, what do you want your ideal day to look like at age 80? No one says alone. Everyone says, surrounded by love. Right? You got your partner, you maybe want, kids, grandkids, your friends. That's what we all want. And yet, when you ask them what they're doing today, very few are investing in that future. You know, to invest in financial wealth, you know that if you want to be rich when you're older, you have to invest every single day. But if you want to have rich relationships, you have to do the same. You have to send the text to the friend. You have to make sure that you are the reason that your group of friends is getting together. You have to spend time with your parents or your partner or your children. These things don't just magically appear out of thin air. You have to invest in them the same way that you do in your financial wealth.
- [49:35]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah, that's why I think it's interesting. I mean, you have a lot of, you have a lot of different reasons why you focused on the, the actual five levels to wealth here. But I think I want people to read the actual book, but talk high level about. You spent a ton of time researching what are the things that matter? What, what creates a wealthy life. Why did you choose these five? What are they? And how is that going to impact somebody's life?
- [50:00]
Sahil Bloom
Yeah. When I went on this journey after that conversation that I had with the friend that we talked about earlier and made this big change in my life, I went on a multi year journey to try to understand what were the things that contributed to a truly happy, healthy, fulfilling wealthy life. And the realization there was that the scoreboard is fundamentally broken. Peter Drucker, the famous management theorist, said, what gets measured gets managed. So the thing that you can measure ends up being the thing that you focus on. It's the thing that you narrowly, myopically hone in on and optimize around. Money is extremely measurable. So it becomes the thing that we narrowly focus on. And the truth is that money is a part of living a truly wealthy life, but it is just a part. There are all of these other things that we sort of know in the back of our mind matter, but we don't have a way to measure them. We don't have a way to think about them in the same way. And so as a result, we don't manage them. We don't actually think about investing in them in the same way. That is what I'm trying to change. And so as I came to this idea, this thesis, I went and talked to thousands of people and basically did two things. One, I went to much older people who had lived long lives and talked to them about the advice they would have for their younger selves and how they felt about living a good life. And then I went and talked to younger people and asked what they wanted when they were 80, what did they want their life to look like? This question of what does your ideal day look like? And the thing that you find is that we all want the same thing and it has very little to do with money. Money is kind of an enabler, but not an end in and of itself. And it was four things. It was time, people, purpose and health. We want time, freedom, freedom to choose. We want to feel free people. We want to be surrounded by love, purpose. We want to feel like we know what we are doing every day, that there is some reason that we are doing these things. And then health. We want to feel good of mind and body. Money, again, was an enabler to those things, but not an end in and of itself. It was a tool, but not the goal, if you will. And that was how I really came to this idea and this construct of thinking about this new scoreboard, a new way to measure your life across the broader set of pillars that contribute to building a good life. And the thesis is that if you measure the right things, you will take the right actions and you will create the right outcomes. If you measure the wrong things, if you're just measuring for the battle of money, you may win that battle, but you will lose the war of the broader picture of your life. So we need to measure for the full war. We need to measure for the entire picture of what we're doing. And then we'll make the right decisions and we'll create the right outcomes.
- [52:42]
Cody Sanchez
Do you think young Sahil Young Finance bro Sawhill would struggle with talking about love? Did you Talk about love back then.
- [52:49]
Sahil Bloom
To talk about love when I was young, Finance, bro. I, I viewed a lot of things as a distraction to the important thing, which was making money. I was so narrowly focused on external affirmations, you know, And I have this thing in the book, this thing that I call the status test, the bot status test, where you ask yourself when you're about to buy something, would I buy this if I couldn't tell anyone that I had it? If I couldn't post it on Instagram, if I couldn't show anyone, like, would I buy this watch? Would I buy this car if no one knew about it except me? Usually the answer is no. And what you realize when you start to think about that question is you are living a lot of your life for the benefit and pleasure of other people, which is kind of a crazy thing to think about. Like, how much of my life am I actually living for other people rather than for myself? And so I think that a lot of my life, my whole mental model for life was like, I am going to wake up one day when I have X million dollars and feel happy. And every time I would get to that number and it would have disappeared and it would be some other number. And we have studies to say this. Michael Norton, this Harvard Business School professor, went and interviewed high net worth individuals, people worth anywhere from a million on through 100 million plus. And he asked them, how happy are you on a scale of 1 to 10? So they answered, and then he said, how much more money would you need to be at a 10 across the board? Whether they were worth a million or a hundred million, everyone said 2 to 5x as much. It didn't matter what level they were at, which makes no sense. So we know it's not about some arbitrary number. It is about understanding your definition of enough. Where do you actually need to get to? What does your life look like where you are truly fulfilled? It's not going to be the money, it's going to be what that enables in your actual life in these other areas. I think I really would have struggled with that. That being said, and I need to make this clear, I am by no means saying that money doesn't matter. I am not telling anyone that they should go and, you know, give up their worldly possessions and live in the Himalayas as a monk. If you want to do that, by all means, go do it. I just won't be joining you. I like money. I like being able to afford things. I like having money. I am just saying that it can't be the only thing that you focus on that you need to invest in these other areas in some way, shape or form across the entirety of your life. There may be seasons of your life when financial wealth is your primary focus. And one of the key concepts in the book is the idea of seasons. The idea that what you prioritize or focus on during any one season can and should change. Your 20s and 30s are a great time to prioritize building a financial foundation for the rest of your life. You talk about this all the time. The fact that you can invest money early and it will compound and grow for the rest of your life, Incredible. You should do that. That's a great season. But when your kids are five, it may be a great season for you to prioritize your relationship with your kids and sort of be in more maintenance mode from a financial wealth building standpoint if you make that decision. But the point around all of this is it's up to you. You don't need to accept the default definition of success that the world hands you. You get to create your own. And the truth is you will never feel successful unless you create your own definition of success.
- [56:11]
Cody Sanchez
You've got to do that. And you know, other people aren't going to like it. I think that's the other part that's true. I mean, you know this. I'm terrible at responding to text messages. Why? Because I try to not have my phone on me all the time. Otherwise I get distracted and I have a specific agenda and goal for the day. And so if I let even people I love and adore distract me from that goal, then that means I gotta work longer, I gotta stay later. I can't have dinner with my husband. My husband and my dinner every night is priority. And so, you know, I think for, for somebody listening, if they're like, all right, this makes sense. I've seen you personally sacrifice a bunch of career progression things that you could do. You know, at one point you were raising a big fund and you were going to build another asset management business, which we've both done before. And then you were like, no, actually I'm not going to do that right now. I'm going to think and I'm going to be with, with my son. Do you have a cost benefit analysis or a framework you use to decide, okay, this is a goal for me or this is an anti goal?
- [57:06]
Sahil Bloom
Yeah, I, I think it's really important what you just said, which is like, there are trade offs that you have to make. There are sacrifices along the way. And I have explicitly said no to a number of opportunities where I could make more money because I know what they would require is me being pulled away from this time freedom that I have with my son primarily during this window of time when I'm playing such a special role in his life. That doesn't mean that I'm not going to go all out for those things when he's 8 years old and spending more time in school or 12 or whenever maybe when he leaves the house when he's, you know, graduates from high school, I lean into a bunch of these opportunities. What you decide in the current season does not preclude you from changing in the future season. And look, we made this decision in a very real way when it comes to my wife's path. My wife was on a high powered designer track, rising through the ranks in a very competitive industry, doing great. And when our son was born, she made the decision that she wanted to truly prioritize being a mom during these early years of his life. Where we live in the northeast and in a lot of coastal cities. That was a weird decision. She still gets comments from other moms in town saying, you're just a mom.
- [58:19]
Cody Sanchez
Oh, gross.
- [58:20]
Sahil Bloom
And we hate it because it's. I think it's the most important job in the world. I think it's remarkable the energy that she puts towards it and the impact it has on our relationship with our son and on his development. But, but her ability to say, this is one season of life and I'm going to really be immersed in being a mom during this season. And that doesn't mean that I'm not going to go back and be a designer in the next season. When he's in school and I have more time and he's not home all the time, I can go do that and I have the freedom to make that decision as I so choose. That is a really empowering way to think about your life because it's a reminder that there's no such thing as a one way door. All of these are two way doors. You can walk back through them and you can go back and prioritize these other things again. And we need to recognize that more in life.
- [59:08]
Cody Sanchez
Yeah. You also have some interesting takes on being married and how to treat your wife. In a world where there's a lot of tension between men and women these days. There's tension with traditional, non traditional roles. There's tension with. God, I'm on Twitter too much lately. But you know, with, with how people feel about women in Relationships and should you have them? You know, when you think about your partnership, she's beautiful, you know, smart, very supportive of you. How did you decide that she was the one? And how do you also think husbands should up. Should show up for wives these days?
- [59:43]
Sahil Bloom
So before I got married, my mom asked me how I knew Elizabeth, my wife, was the one. And I told her it was because I loved doing nothing with her. And the realization there is that most of life is just sitting around doing nothing. It's sitting on the couch, hanging out, watching shows, really doing nothing. But you create this impression that life is all about these crazy honeymoon moments. It's about the fancy date nights out, the Instagram moments. It's the impression that social media creates for what your life looks like. But the reality is that life is those moments of nothing. So when you find someone that you just love doing nothing with, that is your person. That is the person that you want to go and build a life with. And I was very lucky in the fact that I met my wife when she was 14. I was 15 years old when we met.
- [60:38]
Cody Sanchez
Good clarification. Also given Twitter these days, same age range.
- [60:41]
Sahil Bloom
Yeah, yeah, sorry. Yes. I was 15, she was 14, and we met in a high school computer lab. And the strength that gets built in you when you have grown across different seasons of life, she has been very consistent throughout all of those seasons. Actually, as a human, I have not. I was not a person that I am proud of for many of those years, but the fact that she has seen me through all of that, that.
- [61:08]
Cody Sanchez
She'S dating that whole time.
- [61:09]
Sahil Bloom
We were dating that whole time.
- [61:10]
Cody Sanchez
Wait, since you guys were 14 and 15?
- [61:12]
Sahil Bloom
Yeah, she was. I guess when we started dating, she was technically 15. I was 16. Wow.
- [61:17]
Cody Sanchez
I didn't know that.
- [61:18]
Sahil Bloom
Yeah. Yeah. You know, Chris and I met for seven years. I did.
- [61:21]
Cody Sanchez
When we were 11 and 12, but we. We had a break. Fascinating.
- [61:25]
Sahil Bloom
Yeah. Yeah. We. She has seen me through some dark times in my life and a lot of times when I was focusing on all the wrong things. And she has really been like, a ballast for my ship. And I just think today, as I think about our relationship, especially as I think about my son, one of the highest callings as a father to me, like, one of the things I hope for is I want to know that if I drop dead tomorrow, that my son is going to have an amazing life. And I feel that so strongly. And it is the most amazing feeling in the world to just know that, like, my son would have an incredible life because his mom loves him more than anything in the entire world. And I want my son to know that. And so when I think about that, I always think like, you can't teach your kids anything. You have to embody the things you want them to learn. So if I want my son to treat my wife like a queen, I better damn well treat my wife like a queen. If I want my son to embrace the idea of delayed gratification, he better see me doing hard things for the benefit of something in the future. Every single thing that you want your kids, that you want the people around you to learn, you have to embody those things. And so our relationship, I just think that all of this, like, every single thing that I am doing, that I'm working on, it is us, that we are doing it. She might not be on the COVID of the book, but you go look at the dedication. It's on the first page. She's in there. And none of this would be possible without her and without my son and the clarifying force that he has been in my life.
- [63:10]
Cody Sanchez
I love that. Yeah. And also, I think, you know, today, young people, I think, like, there's like, a loss of hope or something. You know, they think that men like you don't exist. They think that women maybe like your. Your wife, don't exist. And they think that because they've had a lot of shallow interactions, that that is the only thing that exists in marriage. And maybe because so many marriages end po. That that's all that exists. So I think it's really beautiful to share that, because I find the same thing with my husband. Don't get me wrong, we. We definitely have fights. You know, we have our moments a hundred percent. But I truly believe that a happy marriage is. Is better and more important than a big bank account. And I think your book is a really good representation of it doesn't have to be and. Or it doesn't have to be, or it can be and. But, man, if you had to choose one, you probably choose the relationship.
- [64:02]
Sahil Bloom
Yeah. And it. I personally think that having an incredible marriage is the biggest cheat code for making a lot of money in life. Yeah. There is something incredible about feeling like you have a house full of love behind you as you pursue your ambitions and as you try to go and build something to make money. And look, I have no desire to be a rich guy by myself. The Forbes top 10 richest people in the world have 13 divorces among them, last time I checked. I have zero desire to be really rich, but have broken relationships with my children who knows how many there are out there like that. And so the whole point is we want to build this full, comprehensively wealthy life. We want to make a lot of money. No doubt. I think it's great. You can. You can afford incredible experiences with people. You can build incredible things. But you have to remember why you are doing that. It's not for the sake of the money. It's for the things that you're going to be able to be able to create on the back of it. And that's really what this book is about. It's about defining what matters to you and then going and taking action to build your life around those things.
- [65:06]
Cody Sanchez
So good. I want to end with two questions, but I love this quote from your grandfather. You're very close to your family. I'm too. That said, the worst decisions in life are made when you allow your head to talk you into something when your gut already said no. Is that something that you live by today?
- [65:22]
Sahil Bloom
I try to. I don't always. And a lot of the things I write, post, talk about videos are sort of reminders to self at times where I will post something on Twitter when I have experienced a time when I have not lived by it and reminding myself. And I realize if I'm reminding myself, there's millions of people out there that need that same reminder as I do. My grandfather was an extraordinarily wise man and I feel so much love for him because when my my my mom is Indian, my father is white from the Bronx, New York, and when my dad wanted to marry my mom, his father was not accepting of it and told him he had to choose between my mom and his family. And my dad walked out the door and never saw his family again. And to this day, I never met my dad's parents. He has three siblings I never met. I have first cousins out there somewhere that I never met. He truly rejected the common convention and walked his own path with everything in him. And I imagine it was one of the hardest decisions he's ever made, or maybe the easiest because he knew that this amazing now they've been married 42 years, they have a incredible loving relationship. I cannot imagine my parents not together. But the thing that instilled this love in me for my grandfather was when my mom brought my dad to meet her family, they were initially not super excited about their daughter marrying an American. And my grandfather asked my dad, well, how do your parents feel about it? And my dad said, well, interesting story there. And after that moment, my grandfather ended up taking my dad in as, like, another son. You know, if someone was willing to leave their entire family to be with his daughter, I think he realized that that person was okay in his book. And I just saw that love and that legacy of love trickle through my family. And the way that my grandfather supported my dad, the way that my dad supported me throughout my whole life, and that has meant more than anything else in the world. And my grandfather's wisdom continues to run through me. I mean, I have a. I have a piece of paper on my desk that is one of his most important pieces of wisdom that says you'll achieve more by being consistently reliable than by being occasionally extraordinary. And I think about that every single day. Just show up and do the work. It's hard to bet against the person who just keeps showing up.
- [68:02]
Cody Sanchez
Do you think you can change your life in a year?
- [68:05]
Sahil Bloom
Absolutely. I think most people. I think Bill Gates was the one who said most people overestimate what they can do in a day and underestimate what they can do in 10 years. I kind of disagree. Sorry, Bill. I think most people overestimate what they can do in a day and underestimate what they can do in one year. You are one year of focus away from people calling you lucky, from people saying, oh, she just got lucky, or he just got lucky. One year of focus, One year of asking the right questions, one year of clear intentions, one year of focused daily actions. You can change your entire life.
- [68:46]
Cody Sanchez
So good. Well, I hope everybody picks up this book. I don't say that very often, actually, as you know, because we're buddies. But I think it's really important the five types of wealth that we talk so much about money. But damn, I'm doing you guys a disservice if at the end of the day, you have a big bank account and that's all you got. And so I'm really glad you wrote the book. Sahilbloom.com Sahil Bloom on all the socials, anywhere else you want to send people. And it comes out February 4th.
- [69:11]
Sahil Bloom
February 4th. Available everywhere. And pick it up at your local bookstore. Let's go support some local businesses.
- [69:17]
Cody Sanchez
That's right. Small business, baby. Although if you have to buy it on Amazon and still support Sahil, I'm okay with it, too. But let's go with. Let's go with local first. Sahil, you're the man. Thanks so much for being there.
- [69:25]
Sahil Bloom
Thank.