Sahil Bloom (19:03)

I'm in Westchester, New York, just outside New York City.

Scott Galloway (19:06)

Nice. So, in your debut book titled the Five Types of Wealth, a transformative guide to design your dream life, you write about 55 types of wealth Time wealth, social wealth, mental wealth, physical wealth, and financial wealth. Can you break these down for us?

Sahil Bloom (19:21)

Absolutely. Time wealth is all about freedom to choose how you spend your time, who you spend it with, where you spend it, when you trade it for Other things. It's fundamentally about an awareness of the precious nature of time, of time as your most precious asset. Social wealth is all about your relationships. These are the people that you love, the depth of a few close relationships, and then the breadth, the connection to something bigger than yourself. Mental wealth is about purpose. It's about growth. It's about creating the space necessary in your life to engage and wrestle with some of those bigger unanswerable questions in the world, whether through religion, solitude, spirituality, meditation. Physical wealth is about taking the controllable actions on a daily basis to fight the natural decay and atrophy that your body goes through with aging. It's all about your health and vitality. And then financial wealth, as I talk about it, is what you think of net worth money, but with the specific nuance of really focusing in on your definition of enough, what it means to have enough, to wrestle with the idea that your expectations are really your single greatest financial liability. If your expectations rise faster than your assets, you will never feel wealthy.

Scott Galloway (20:38)

You talk about this term or you use the term arrival fallacy. Why is it important for everyone to understand and what is it?

Sahil Bloom (20:46)

The arrival fallacy is this common psychological phenomenon that we've all experienced in one form or another in our life. It is the idea that we prop up these specific achievements, goals or destinations as the point when we will feel we have arrived. You know, it could be the promotion, it could be the title, it could be the bonus, the pay raise, whatever. The thing is, we tell ourselves that once we get to X, we are going to feel that feeling of happiness and contentment that will be durable. And unfortunately, it is a fallacy, meaning you get to it, you feel that sort of momentary dopamine infused euphoria, and then you immediately reset to some new arrival that you need some new height, some new summit.

Scott Galloway (21:29)

You also talk a little bit about this term liferaiser. What did you mean by that?

Sahil Bloom (21:34)

The idea of a life raiser is to have a single identity defining statement or rule that allows you to literally cut through the noise at different points in your life. So, so the term razor broadly used is from philosophy. And it's an idea of having a rule of thumb that allows you to simplify decision making. Occam's razor is kind of the most famous one that most people know. It says that the simplest possible explanation is often the best one. The idea of a life razor is to have a similar simple rule that allows you to navigate whatever chaos or opportunities come. It is a statement, say a single thing that you could say to help you navigate those situations. An example would be Mark Randolph, the CEO of Netflix, who often talks about the fact that he had a rule to never skip a Tuesday dinner with his wife. He had a hard rule when he founded Netflix. Originally, he was the first CEO of the company that at Tuesday at 5pm, no matter what was happening at the company, he would leave work and go have dinner with his wife. And that was an identity defining rule, meaning it had ripple effects into every other area. It meant that he created these boundaries in his life, that while he was pursuing all these professional aspirations, navigating the chaos of founding a technology company, he still put his family and his relationships first. That empowered other people to do the same. It had all of these ripple effects in his life and it meant something in terms of how his ideal self showed up in the world. So having a similar rule like that, that is your life raiser, it's that single point of focus that helps you navigate through the chaos in life.

Scott Galloway (23:08)

Life. It strikes me when we go back to the different forms of wealth, time, social, mental, physical and financial, that you can't have it all. You can have it all, just not at once. And that is, I found that my time, social, mental and physical wealth took a backseat when I was younger in an attempt to establish financial wealth or at least establish the trajectory. And then once I achieved financial wealth wealth, I was able to go back and work on the previous four. So I don't think anyone's going to argue with you around the different types of wealth as you define them. You know, the trick is finding the balance and knowing when to trade off one for the other. Have you given any thought to the fulcrum between the five of these?

Sahil Bloom (23:52)

Absolutely. And exactly what you said relates to something that I talk about and write about often, which is your life has seasons and what you prioritize or focus on during any one season will change. So your 20s and early 30s are an incredible time to focus on building financial wealth because we know compounding, it's going to compound for the rest of our journey. It's a great time to focus there. That being said, the traditional wisdom around these different types of wealth is that they exist on these on, off switches and that to turn on financial wealth all the way, you have to turn off the others. And the unfortunate thing with that mindset is that a lot of these things will atrophy and die if you don't invest in them at all. You know, it's sort of like thinking about, you know, when you look At a chart of compounding. Yes, you know, 1% per day, everyone likes to show that chart. It gets you to 37x after a year. The unfortunate thing is the negative 1% per day, which effectively zeros you out after a year. And that is really the risk that people run by living with that on off switch mindset. And so what I like to do, the mindset shift that I talk about in the book, is these areas all exist on a dimmer switch. And just because you have one turned all the way up, that might be financial wealth in your 20s and 30s, does not mean the other ones should be turned completely off. You can still do the tiny little investment on a daily basis that compounds positively because anything above zero compounds in the direction that you're heading. So if you think about it just tactically for your relationships, as an example, even while you're focusing on your financial wealth and on building your career, sending the one text to your parent to just let them know you were thinking about them, making the phone call, planning that one extra trip, getting together with the old friend for the coffee, or gathering the group for the one annual trip, those are things that compound positively in that domain that don't take a whole lot of effort. The dimmer switch can be turned down without it zeroing you out.

Scott Galloway (25:45)

I really like that. You know, I think about you don't need to call your mom every day. I mean, ideally you can and should, but if you're working exceptionally hard, if you only have time to call her once a week, that one call becomes much more important and has a higher roi. I say this because in order to achieve financial security, I traded off a lot of those things and I did try to be home for dinner or at least bath time. I sound like I'm self conscious, which I am, but I like the notion that even if you take it down to 10 or 20% debt is infinitely better than taking it down to zero. Any specific thoughts about managing the relationship with your partner as you're trying to kind of not go all in, but go mostly in on establishing financial wealth?

Sahil Bloom (26:36)

There are similar principles I would say, to sort of the analog to texting or calling your mom once a week that you can leverage in your romantic relationship. So while you are are chasing that purpose of building the big company or going all in on your financial wealth, making sure that you create a regular cadence for proper kind of zoom out conversations with your partner. This entrepreneur named Brad Feld had this concept called the Life Dinner, which I love. It's the idea of Doing a once a month regular cadence date where you get together to actually talk about some of the bigger picture things in each of your lives and in your relationship. So talk about some of the challenges, some of the opportunities, the things you're excited about, the things you're stressed about, but creating a regular cadence around it. Because what happens in life is when things get stressful, when you have a young child in the house, or when you're chasing some financial goal, you forget to do that. And so your ongoing communication just becomes this sort of two ships in the night, you know, little things here and there, and you forget to zoom out and talk about some of those bigger picture questions that actually contribute to true growth in a relationship. So I've always thought that was a really helpful framing for thinking about that.

Scott Galloway (27:45)

That and you talked about, when you were talking about social wealth, you talked about front row people. What was the Harvard Study of Adult Development? And why do you consider it the most impactful study of the of the last hundred years?

Sahil Bloom (28:00)

The Harvard Study of Adult Development is this incredible longitudinal study that was conducted over the course of 85 plus years. They followed the lives of 1300 original participants, plus another 700 or so direct descendants. And what they found was rather remarkable. They found that the single greatest predictor of physical health at age 80 was relationship satisfaction at age 50. It wasn't how their cholesterol was their blood pressure, it wasn't their smoking or drinking habits. It was how they felt about their relationships that contributed to their healthy aging. So we know scientifically that the strength of our relationships actually determines our health and happiness in our life. And yet, when you ask people what they're investing in on a daily basis, relationships are one of the first things that fall by the wayside. We don't think to invest in relationships in the same way that we think to invest in a financial asset. We know putting $100 away in the S&P 500 is going to compound and grow into our future. Exact same principle applies to your relationships. And you need to have that mindset shift to do it. The concept of front row people is a sort of visualization and representation of that fact. This concept of closing your eyes and thinking about at your own funeral, who are going to be the people that sit down in the front row? Who are those people that occupy that incredibly special cherished space in your life? And are you recognizing those people on a daily basis? Are you showing up for them? Are you being a front row person to someone else?

Scott Galloway (29:29)

You also talk about insights that you've gathered from couples who have been married 40 plus years. What are some of those insights?

Sahil Bloom (29:37)

I love talking to older people about their kind of wisdom from from their lives. And the reason I find it so powerful is just because, you know, they have the earned wisdom that none of us have. And so I went and talked to couples that have been married for, you know, 500 total years across all of them and a few of the ones that I thought jumped out number one was never keep score in love. Just the idea of in relationships living with a quid pro quo mindset is a recipe for disaster. It's not always going to be 5050 in a relationship. Sometimes it's going to be 90, 10, sometimes it's going to be 10 90. But the important thing is that it always adds up to 100. And then one of the other ones that I absolutely loved was just the idea of never involve a non professional third party in your relationship conflict because you will forget about the thing, but they never will. So telling your mother or mother in law, sister whoever about the relationship conflict that you are having is often a recipe for a struggle down the line because you will hear about it from them a year or two later, even once you've completely moved past the thing.

Scott Galloway (30:52)

We'll be right back. Support for today's show comes from HubSpot. It takes a lot to grow your business. You've got to attract audiences, score leads, manage all the channels. It's a lot of long days and late nights, but with Breeze HubSpot's new AI tools, it's never been easier to be a marketer and crush your goals fast. Which means pretty soon your company will have a lot to celebrate. Like 110% more leads in just 12 months. Visit HubSpot.com marketers to learn more.

Sahil Bloom (31:26)

My dad works in B2B marketing. He came by my school for career day and said he was a big roas man. Then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend. My friends still laugh at me to this day. Not everyone gets B2B, but with LinkedIn you'll be able to reach people who do get a hundred dollar credit on your next ad campaign. Go to LinkedIn.com results to claim your credit. That's LinkedIn.com results. Terms and conditions apply. LinkedIn the place to be to be.

Scott Galloway (31:57)

Support for Propg comes from Domo. Some businesses thrive on data. But sometimes all of those numbers can seem like a maze to sift through. What if you could simp ask your data a question and Get a quick answer back questions like how are sales this quarter? Or how's the new marketing campaign performing? Or what does the overall health of the company look like? With Domo's AI and data product platform, you can get answers right away. Packed with charts, graphics and actionable information, Domo simplifies data exploration and analysis, intelligently guiding you at every turn. Domo says that anyone across your team can use it to easily prepare, analyze, visualize, automate and distribute data using simple natural language. And while you can maximize every minute with Domo's AI agents, it can go way beyond productivity. It's designed to transform your processes, helping you make smarter and faster decisions to drive real growth. All powered by Domo's trust, flexibility and years of expertise in data and AI innovation. Some of the world's best companies rely on Domo to make smarter decisions. See how Domo can help help transform yours. Learn more@AI.domo.com that's AI.domo.com what is earned status and how is it different from sort of the more traditional views on status?

Sahil Bloom (33:16)

Status is an interesting topic because it's very easy to demonize. And at the end of the day, we are status seeking creatures and there's actually nothing wrong with that. Status is a very smart way of organizing as a society and frankly, it has helped us in many ways as humans to navigate all of the changes that we've endured over the thousands of years. The point though is you want to chase and play the right kind of status games the way that we typically think of accumulating status. And when you think about status, the way I think about it is what you're looking for is the respect and admiration of others. You want to kind of stack up and have their respect and admiration. The way that people typically today try to do that is through acquired status symbols. It's through the watch, it's the car, it's the, you know, fancy club membership, it's the, you know, expensive bottles of wine. And we think that those are going to confer this lasting respect and admiration upon us. And unfortunately they don't, you know, otherwise lottery winners would be held in the highest possible regard among society because they have a whole lot of those status symbols. The reality is that real status has to be earned. It is built through these hard won treasures, these things that require long periods of time to build things like a healthy fit physique, things like deep, meaningful relationships with the people that you love, things like building a meaningful business, creating a whole bunch of value, creating jobs, those are the things that actually confer upon us the lasting, durable respect and admiration that we want. And so the question and the test that I always try to ask is what I call the bot status test. Before buying something, you ask yourself, would I buy this thing if I couldn't tell anyone about it? If I couldn't take a picture of it, if I couldn't show it to anyone else, would I still want the thing? And usually that'll cut through the noise of whether you're doing it as an attempt at bot status or if it is something that truly provides utility and happiness in your life.

Scott Galloway (35:09)

And the part of the book that I think will probably stand out the most people or be the most read or reread Will V. You have a list of what you call mental health hacks that you wish you knew at the age of 22. Share some of your favorites.

Sahil Bloom (35:23)

Yeah, this is a collaboration with Susan Cain, who is, for those who don't know, an incredible multi time number one New York Times bestselling author. She wrote the book Quiet, which is one of the most famous books of all time, written about the power of introverts in an extroverted world. And a few of my favorites from that collaboration. Number one was your purpose in life does not have to be related to what you do for work. Your purpose in life does not have to be grand or ambitious. Your purpose in life simply has to be yours. And in a lot of ways this is a statement that has rang true throughout history. If we, if we trace this back in history, the Bhagavad Gita, famous Hindu epic, talks about the idea of Dharma. It's the idea of your sacred duty that is your purpose. And it was that exact statement that it doesn't have to be impressive to anyone else, it just has to be yours. To me, that is such an empowering idea for your mental wealth because you recognize that you actually don't need to impress others with the things you're doing. You don't need to trying to be impact, you know, a billion lives or do this grand amazing things make make a billion dollars, whatever the thing is, your purpose could be as simple as providing for the people that you love, showing up in the way that you want to in the world in a way that you feel like you didn't have in your life. That is such a powerful and empowering notion to me.

Scott Galloway (36:44)

That is nice. You also talk about the Feynman technique.

Sahil Bloom (36:50)

So Richard Feynman was an American theoretical physicist, won the Nobel Prize in, I believe, quantum electrodynamics and what he was known for was the fact that he was able to simplify complex topics. He was able to teach them in terms that anyone could understand. And that was really the mark of true genius that he had was his ability to do that. The concept of the Feynman technique is that the most powerful way to learn anything is to teach it to others. You cannot teach something to others if you don't truly understand it yourself. And the actual operationalization of this idea is as you are attempting to learn something new, the first thing you need to do is default to trying to teach it to someone else. And ideally teach it to someone else who is uninitiated, needed, sort of explain it to a five year old, if you will. So you're learning a concept, you go try to explain it to someone who doesn't understand that. You will immediately know where there were gaps in your understanding or knowledge because the other person will expose them through the points where they're getting confused. That ends up being the places where you need to study more. Fill in those gaps and you'll kind of have this natural iterative process between teaching and learning that will lead you to a true depth of understanding on any topic.

Scott Galloway (38:03)

Topic what are the three pillars of physical wealth that you break down in your book?

Sahil Bloom (38:08)

I talk about the three pillars of physical wealth as movement, nutrition and recovery. And the reason I think it's so important to identify these pillars is because we live in a social media age where you, you are bombarded by complex, sexy information when it comes to your physical health. You know, you are being convinced that unless you are willing to do the Brian Johnson and spend millions of dollars a year on your health health, that you're not going to be able to get healthy. And unfortunately for a beginner, that type of information is really intimidating and scary and it actually impedes starting. It halts you from starting because you view it as such an intimidating pursuit. The reality is that level one of the physical wealth video game, if you will, is very, very simple across those three pillars. Move your body for 30 minutes a day. Don't care if it's walking, jogging, hiking, biking, running, rowing, whatever you like doing. Move your body for 30 minutes a day. Day nutrition. Eat whole unprocessed foods at 80% of your meals. That's 17 out of 21 meals during the week. And then recovery, just try to sleep seven hours a night. If you can do those three things, you are probably getting at 80% of the value in this domain and you're getting ahead of the vast majority of people. Very, very simple and super cost effective. You don't have to do the crazy complex regimen to get there.

Scott Galloway (39:25)

Finally, the last type of wealth, financial wealth. What can you or what can people do to build financial wealth? What does the research say about the connection between money and happiness?

Sahil Bloom (39:35)

The research on money and happiness is actually rather clear at this point. The numbers vary. And, you know, we've all seen the famous Kahneman study that said $70,000 a year above that, you're no longer getting happier. And it's an old study and it's been disputed in various forms. And, you know, more recent things by Matthew Killingsworth have said something more like 200, 300,000. The reality is that all of those numbers are inherently flawed because they are applying an average to the population. And you know, as I think it was Nassim Taleb once said, you should never cross a river if it's four feet deep on average, because in different places it's going to be much deeper than that. And, you know, if you live in New York City, the number is going to be very different than Omaha, Nebraska. The point though, of all of that research is above a certain level, there are very diminishing returns to incremental money. The incremental happiness gains that you have are going to come from these other types of wealth. And so the pursuit of money that we get patterned into in those early years where there is a direct correlation between money and happiness sort of becomes our default setting that we continue chasing. Arthur Brooks talks about this as us being sort of like mice and we ring the bell and we think we're going to get the cheese. And you pattern that in the early years of your life, and then you continue chasing it, thinking that the cheese is going to be there later in life, only to realize far too late that it wasn't. And that you pursued all of these things, you made all this money, but you have three broken marriages and four kids who don't talk to you. You think you won the game, you got patted on the back the whole way, but you're kind of wondering, was this a game that I really cared to win?

Scott Galloway (41:09)

And doing this research, what did you uncover that sort of affected the way you approach your own life?

Sahil Bloom (41:14)

I mean, I completely changed my life on this journey. I was chasing the very traditional definitions of success for the first seven years of my career. I was rising through the ranks in the world of investing a private equity fund. And I had a single conversation with an old friend that fundamentally changed my life. I went out for a drink. He asked me how I was doing. And I told him that it had started to get tough living so far away from my parents on the east coast. I lived 3,000 miles away. They're getting older, health, things, things coming up. And he asked how old they were. I said mid-60s. He asked how often I saw them. I said about once a year at that point. And he just looked at me and said, said, okay, so you're going to see your parents 15 more times before they die. And I just remember feeling like I had been punched in the gut. The idea that the amount of time you have left with the people that you love most in the world is that finite and countable just shook me to the core. And within 45 days, my wife and I had sold our house in California. I left my job and we had moved across the country to live closer to our families. And, and that was the start of this entire journey because it reminded me of one important fact, which is you are in much more control of your time than you think. That number 15 is now in the hundreds. I see my parents several times a month. They're a huge part of my son, their grandson's life. We spend so much time with our families. And that idea that you can actually control time is such an empowering notion. It's such a realization that the way that we've been measuring the way that we've been measuring our success in these games can change and you can take action to change it.

Scott Galloway (42:56)

Sahil Bloom is an investor, entrepreneur and writer known for his newsletter the Curiosity Chronicle. He's the owner of SRB holdings and the managing partner of SRB Ventures, an early stage investment fund. His debut book, the Five Types of Wealth A Transformative Guide to Design youn Dream Life, is out next week. He joins us from his home in Westchester where he is living close to his family. Sahil really enjoyed this conversation. Thanks for your. Thanks for your time today.

Sahil Bloom (43:24)

Thank you for having me.

Scott Galloway (43:36)

Algebra of Happiness. The last question reminded me just how fleeting your time is or a couple of these questions in our interview with Sahil. It's just crazy. As you age, time is really asymptotic or it falls off a cliff. It's kind of going too slow when you're a kid or it goes too slow. When my kids were kids, I thought that was painful when they were babies and toddlers. Then it hits a nice cadence and then when they hit 12 or 13, it just falls off a cliff. One they don't want to spend as Much time with you, you. And then all of a sudden, it dawns on you that they're going to be gone soon. And I had somebody today ask me, a CNN anchor. I'm going to start a podcast. Can you give me, you know, some thoughts? I'm like, well, the thing I can tell you is the power of now. And that is just between the time it takes to think, decide you want to do a podcast, and all the planning and strategy, cut out most of that and just get a mic, some podcast equipment, hire a producer, and start now. And the first one's gonna suck and make the second one a little bit better. Just Mr. Beast it. I feel the same way now. And I've gotten so much better at this about now with my kids. Oh, my gosh, I have a weekend alone with my 14 year old. Let's take the Eurostar to Paris and go see a PSG game. And I'm privileged in that I can afford it. But you know what? It's not that expensive. The hardest part isn't the money. The hardest stuff is now. Like, sure, you can get tickets on the US Star that aren't that expensive. You can find an Airbnb, you can get shitty seats. And by the way, the great thing about a 14 year old is there are no shitty seats. I remember getting bad seats to an Arsenal game and I was all pissed off because I think of myself as being important and my son looked at me and was like, this is amazing. Look at how high up we are. So kids just want to be with you. They just want to do really crazy things. So if you're living, I don't know, in Buckhead or somewhere, and you think, okay, we haven't been to the aquarium in Atlanta. When should we go? We should go now. What are we doing this weekend? Now you are going to look back on these moments and you are going to treasure them. So this is what I want you to do. I want you to shrink the time in between deciding you'd like to do something and it's a good idea and starting to plan it. And I want you to skip the planning stage and move right to doing it. Would this be fun? Would you like to do this? Well, we're going to do this. When are we going to do this? We're going to do it now. This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez. Our intern is Dan Shalon. Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the Prophecy Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you on Saturday for no Mercy, no malice as read by George Hahn. And please follow our prophecy. Markets pod wherever you get your pods for new episodes every Monday and Thursday.