A Transformative Guide to Design Your Dream Life — with Sahil Bloom

Summary

Summary of "A Transformative Guide to Design Your Dream Life — with Sahil Bloom"

Episode: A Transformative Guide to Design Your Dream Life — with Sahil Bloom
Release Date: January 30, 2025
Podcast: The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway
Host: Scott Galloway
Guest: Sahil Bloom, Investor, Entrepreneur, and Author of "Five Types of Wealth: A Transformative Guide to Design Your Dream Life"

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Introduction

In this compelling episode of The Prof G Pod, host Scott Galloway engages in an insightful conversation with Sahil Bloom, a renowned investor, entrepreneur, and author. Sahil shares his expertise from his debut book, "Five Types of Wealth: A Transformative Guide to Design Your Dream Life," delving into the multifaceted nature of wealth beyond mere financial success.

Breaking Down the Five Types of Wealth

Timestamp [19:21] Sahil Bloom:

Sahil introduces the five types of wealth outlined in his book:

1. Time Wealth:
   Emphasizes the freedom to choose how one spends their time. It's about valuing time as the most precious asset and being aware of its finite nature.

2. Social Wealth:
   Focuses on relationships and connections. It highlights the importance of both deep, close relationships and broad connections that tie individuals to a larger community.

3. Mental Wealth:
   Centers on purpose and personal growth. It involves creating space to engage with life's bigger questions through activities like meditation, spirituality, or solitary reflection.

4. Physical Wealth:
   Relates to maintaining health and vitality. It's about daily controllable actions that combat aging and promote physical well-being.

5. Financial Wealth:
   Goes beyond net worth, urging individuals to define what "enough" means for themselves. Sahil points out that rising expectations can become a financial liability if they outpace actual assets.

Understanding the Arrival Fallacy

Timestamp [20:38] Sahil Bloom:

Scott and Sahil discuss the concept of the Arrival Fallacy, a psychological phenomenon where individuals believe that achieving specific goals or milestones will bring lasting happiness. Sahil explains:

"The arrival fallacy is this common psychological phenomenon... once you get to X, you are going to feel that feeling of happiness and contentment that will be durable." ([20:46])

However, achieving these goals often leads to only momentary satisfaction, with individuals quickly resetting their ambitions for the next milestone.

Life Raisers: Simplifying Decision-Making

Timestamp [21:29] Sahil Bloom:

Sahil introduces the concept of Life Raisers, inspired by Occam's Razor. A Life Raiser is a simple, identity-defining rule that helps navigate life's complexities. For example:

"Mark Randolph... had a rule to never skip a Tuesday dinner with his wife... creating these boundaries in his life, he still put his family and relationships first." ([21:34])

This practice fosters meaningful relationships amidst professional chaos.

Balancing the Five Types of Wealth

Timestamp [23:08] Sahil Bloom:

Scott shares his personal experience of prioritizing financial wealth in his younger years, often at the expense of time, social, mental, and physical wealth. Sahil responds by emphasizing the importance of treating the different types of wealth as dimmer switches rather than on/off switches:

"These areas all exist on a dimmer switch... you can still do the tiny little investment on a daily basis that compounds positively." ([25:45])

This approach allows individuals to nurture multiple aspects of their lives without completely neglecting any single area.

Managing Relationships While Pursuing Financial Goals

Timestamp [26:36] Sahil Bloom:

Sahil provides strategies for maintaining healthy relationships while striving for financial success. He highlights the practice of Life Dinners:

"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." ([27:08])

Regular, meaningful conversations help prevent relationships from becoming mere afterthoughts amidst life's stresses.

The Harvard Study of Adult Development

Timestamp [27:45] Sahil Bloom:

Sahil references the Harvard Study of Adult Development, a longitudinal study spanning over 85 years, which found that the strongest predictor of physical health at age 80 was relationship satisfaction at age 50. He underscores:

"The single greatest predictor of physical health at age 80 was relationship satisfaction at age 50." ([28:00])

This finding reinforces the critical role of social wealth in long-term well-being.

Insights from Couples Married Over 40 Years

Timestamp [29:37] Sahil Bloom:

Drawing from conversations with long-term married couples, Sahil shares valuable insights:

1. Never Keep Score in Love:
   Relationships should not operate on a quid pro quo basis. Instead, contributions should balance out over time, even if uneven in the short term.

2. Avoid Involving Third Parties in Conflicts:
   Bringing non-professionals into relationship disputes can exacerbate issues, as others may not understand the nuances and could influence the relationship negatively over time.

Earned Status vs. Acquired Status

Timestamp [33:16] Sahil Bloom:

Sahil distinguishes between Earned Status and Acquired Status:

• Acquired Status:
  Gained through visible status symbols like luxury cars, expensive watches, or exclusive memberships. These are superficial and do not confer lasting respect.

• Earned Status:
  Derived from meaningful achievements such as building a business, maintaining deep relationships, or contributing to society. This type of status is sustainable and genuinely respected.

He proposes the Bot Status Test to discern the authenticity of one's pursuits:

"Before buying something, you ask yourself, would I buy this thing if I couldn't tell anyone about it?" ([35:09])

This test helps filter out actions taken solely for superficial status gains.

Mental Health Hacks for a Fulfilling Life

Timestamp [35:23] Sahil Bloom:

Collaborating with Susan Cain, author of Quiet, Sahil shares mental health strategies:

1. Purpose Beyond Work:
   Your life's purpose doesn't need to be grand; it simply needs to be personal and meaningful to you.

2. Feynman Technique:
   Named after physicist Richard Feynman, this technique involves teaching a concept to someone else to ensure comprehensive understanding. Explaining complex ideas in simple terms reveals gaps in knowledge, fostering deeper learning.

The Three Pillars of Physical Wealth

Timestamp [38:08] Sahil Bloom:

Sahil outlines the foundational elements of physical wealth:

1. Movement:
   Engage in at least 30 minutes of physical activity daily, whether it's walking, jogging, cycling, or any preferred exercise.

2. Nutrition:
   Consume whole, unprocessed foods for approximately 80% of meals to maintain optimal health.

3. Recovery:
   Prioritize getting seven hours of sleep each night to allow the body to recuperate.

These simple, cost-effective practices can yield significant health benefits without overwhelming complexity.

Building Financial Wealth and Its Connection to Happiness

Timestamp [39:35] Sahil Bloom:

Sahil discusses the nuanced relationship between money and happiness:

• Threshold Effect:
  Research suggests that beyond a certain income level, additional money yields diminishing returns in happiness. While early studies like Kahneman's indicated $70,000 as a tipping point, more recent research points to higher figures, acknowledging variations across different regions and lifestyles.

• Limiting Expectations:
  To truly feel wealthy, individuals must define personal notions of "enough" rather than perpetually escalating their financial goals.

Sahil shares his personal transformation:

"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." ([41:14])

This pivotal decision was driven by the realization of time's finite nature and the importance of familial relationships over relentless financial pursuits.

Conclusion

Scott Galloway and Sahil Bloom wrap up the conversation by reiterating the importance of a balanced approach to wealth. Sahil emphasizes that true fulfillment stems from nurturing all five types of wealth, allowing each to complement rather than compete with the others. This holistic perspective encourages individuals to design their dream lives with intention and mindfulness.

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Notable Quotes:

• Sahil Bloom on Arrival Fallacy:
  "Once you get to X, you are going to feel that feeling of happiness and contentment that will be durable." ([20:46])

• Sahil Bloom on Life Raisers:
  "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." ([21:34])

• Sahil Bloom on Earned Status:
  "Real status has to be earned...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." ([34:00])

• Sahil Bloom on Financial Wealth:
  "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." ([39:35])

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This episode offers a profound exploration of what it means to live a wealthy and fulfilling life, encouraging listeners to redefine their perceptions of success and prioritize holistic well-being.

Transcript

[Scott Galloway]

Support for Propg comes from Crescent Family Office as an entrepreneur, you spend a lot of time and energy building your business, and chances are you've been so busy there hasn't been a ton of time to think about preparing for an exit. Tax Strategies and Wealth Management. Crescent is here to help wealth creators and families like yours streamline complexity and invest for the future. Crescent was built by Entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs with financial advisory teams who embrace their fiduciary duty to place the client's interests first. You can learn how to optimize your life by scheduling a call with a crescent [e-mail] we are not clients of Crescent. There are no material conflicts other than this paid endorsement. All investing involves risks, including loss of principal. Nerds Support for the show comes from NerdWallet. When it comes to finding the best financial products, have you ever wished someone would do the heavy lifting for you? Take all that research off your plate? Well, with NerdWallet's 2025 Best of Award, that wish has come true. The nerds in NerdWallet are on it. They have already reviewed more than 1100 financial products like credit card saving accounts and more in order to highlight and bring you the best of the best. Check out the 2025 Best of Awards [e-mail] awards.

[Sahil Bloom]

It's time to review the highlights. I'm joined by my co anchor Snoop.

[Scott Galloway]

Hey, what up doe snoop?

[Sahil Bloom]

Number one has to be getting iPhone 16 with Apple Intelligence AT T Mobile. Yeah, you should hustle down to T Mobile like a dog chasing a squirrel chasing a nut. Number two at T mobile families can switch and save 20% on plans plus streaming services versus the other big guys. What a deal.

[Scott Galloway]

Y'all giving it away too fast.

[Sahil Bloom]

T Mobile slow down. Head to T mobile.com and get iPhone 16 on them. Yeah, you can save on wireless and streaming versus the other big guys. @t mobile.com/apple intelligence requires iOS 18.1 or later.

[Scott Galloway]

Episode 334334 is the area code covering southeastern Alabama. 1934 Alcatraz opened as a federal prison. True story. I have a friend who has sex three to four times a week, works out every day and reads at least two books a week. And all this guy ever does is bitch about prison. Go, go go. Welcome to the 334th episode of the Prop G Pod. What's happening? The dog is back in the incredible city of London. That's right where the sun has decided to go on vacation. The sun has decided to take fall winter And I would imagine spring off, I did have a wonderful weekend. Let's bring this back to me. What are the wonderful things about London? One, it's a great city. Two, Premier League football, maybe that's number one. Three, probably first and foremost, that's actually a broad one, is proximity to the continent. So what did I do with my 14 year old this weekend? We went to Pancras. San Pancras train station, which is literally 10 minutes from my house. Got on the Eurostar, which is lovely. Which is lovely. And I mean zoomed at like 330 kilometers per hour. I love public infrastructure. I say raise taxes and just build shit that the public can use. Gare du Nord. Two hours and 21 minutes later and then boom, in our hotel, we went to the Notre Dame. Jesus Christ. I believe that God hangs out there now. Oh my God. Oh, my God. We're sitting in line for 70 minutes with every tourist from everywhere, including myself. Wow. Wow. Notre to the Dom. Jesus Christ. Seriously. But more importantly, stayed at a beautiful hotel, went to the pool with my son. Because when you have a son, you always gotta go to the pool. You always gotta go to the pool, full stop. Gotta check out the pool. That's how we evaluate hotels, is by the pool. Then we went upstairs to this fancy Tony restaurant and had light apps, which was delightful. And then the highlight of the trip, we went to the PSG game. 20 minutes to the stadium. Boom. Parking wasn't that bad. Into the stadium. Amazing fans. We saw them. Tie rins. Great game, fantastic fans. It was raining, but the stadium is designed really well, so we didn't get rained on. And then boom, back to the hotel in just like 22 minutes. What a wonderful, wonderful city. Anyways, that's what I'm doing. Today we speak with Sahil Bloom, an investor, entrepreneur and writer known for his newsletter, the Curiosity Chronicle. That's kind of an interesting name, the Curiosity Crown. That sounds like it should be on pbs. We discussed with Sahil his latest book, the five types of a transformative guide to design your dream life. Okay, moving on to a shakeup in the AI world. Oh, my God. What are we going to talk about? This is kind of the business story of the week. Deepseek, a Chinese startup that's just over a year old, sent shockwaves through the global tech markets with an AI model that's as powerful as OpenAI's ChatGPT or Google's Gemini. But it was built with just a fraction of the usual resources. Deepseek R1 was trained using just 2,000 Nvidia chips and 6 million in computing power. That's about 10 times less than what Meta spent on building its latest AI technology. Why does this matter? This signals a major shift, maybe even a paradigm shift in AI development. Less money and fewer chips equals more players, right? The market essentially has been rewarding investment over innovation, and the small number of players have been running away with it. Specifically the ones that have the capital to deploy basically the defense budget of China, which is the capital on their balance sheets and how much they are spending on developing these data centers, buying Nvidia GPUs. I mean, just this staggering investment here, and then all of a sudden comes this innovation where the chips are speaking to each other in a more efficient way, as opposed to traditional models that had to be trained in a house where all appliances and all lights are on at the same time. This just said, we figured out a way that you only have to have the lights on in the room you're in and is consuming a fraction of the processing power and the energy, if you will. Deepseek just proved it's no longer a game dominated by US tech giants. And this is essentially the market has said, again, maybe we overestimated investment versus innovation, but there's more to the story. Deepseek didn't just develop this tech, they open sourced it. That means they shared the underlying code for others to build on. While open sourced AI accelerates innovation, it does come with serious risks. Many experts argue that US companies shouldn't open source their technologies because they could be exploited to spread disinformation or even create autonomous weapons. This has essentially given the Chinese, you could argue, sort of open source the opportunity to catch up and even blow by this. And this has so many kind of second order effects. First off, not only did chip stocks fall or the AI stocks fall, and we'll talk more about that, but the second order effects was that there had been an equally vicious runup of energy stocks. Because the choking point in what we thought was going to be an energy hungry AI world, you saw Constellation Energy, you saw all these energy stocks skyrocket. They had a significant drawdown because maybe energy isn't going to be as scarce as we had originally thought because of the fact that AI may not be quite as power hungry as we'd originally anticipated. This is really shaking up global markets. I wouldn't say investors are panicking, but there's definitely been a drawdown. Nvidia shares plummeted 17% on Monday after Deepseek debuted its AI system. Wiping out. Get the 600 billion in market value. This marked Nvidia's worst trading day since the pandemic crash in 2020. Now having said that requires some context here. That takes them all the way back to where the stock was in October. And when stocks run up like this, it is like a balloon inflating. And if it becomes more and more inflated, slash overinflated, the smallest scratch can pop the balloon. And I think that in addition to this news, it's likely that these stocks had had such incredible run ups that the market was looking for kind of any excuse or any slight brush of the balloon to pop, if you will. But still, this gives you a sense also of how scary it is to have markets as concentrated, because at $600 billion you have essentially wiped out the value of a smaller stock market. I mean, that's the value of the entire global auto industry, sans Tesla. And this is what happens when markets are allowed to get too concentrated. The other second order effect I find fascinating. Son fascinado. Okay, what's French and what's French and fast? What's fascinating in French? I don't know. But anyways, effectively you have this argument for global trade and that is what would have happened if we had continued to ship Nvidia chips to China. Would they have been as motivated to figure out a workaround here that would have resulted in, in what is probably. I mean, this is just. I'm blown away. I'm blown away. But at the same time, this kind of is following where most markets evolve to and that is eventually over time, everything goes Android and iOS. What do I mean by that? Scott? What do you mean by that? What's going on? You're on a train, you're in the channel, you're underneath water, you're going 320 kilometers per hour. It's time to put on your thinking cap. You have peace, do some deep breathing and then really bring us some blue flame clarity here. Essentially every market bifurcates into Walmart or Tiffany and that is as a species. The easiest way to process information is zeros and ones. And we've essentially based all innovation or computing on binary code. 0 and 1. Why? It is easy to understand. Yes and no. It's easy to understand. I'm interested in you. I'm not interested in you. I'm friend, I'm foe. Right, so we distill everything down to a basic binary decision framework. That is the fastest way to make decisions. It is the fastest way to process information. So the entire consumer World bifurcates into a binary set of decisions. Do I want the most stuff at the lowest price? Okay, that's Amazon. Okay, that's Walmart. Okay, that's Costco. Do I want something more artisanal, that's special, that has self expressive benefit, that makes me feel as if I'm in the company of God. By the way, the reason why we buy luxury goods is one, it makes us more attractive to potential mates. When I have a Porsche, it says I'm a baller. When I'm a member of Maison Estelle or the New Crane Club or Che Margaux. I just went there last week. Oh my God, talk about a lot of hot people. Jesus Christ. I mean, come on, where do those people come up? They're like those warlocks or whatever they are. Where do they come from? Do they just descend from the ground at like 9pm and go to these members only clubs in New York anyway? 0 and 1, right? The 1, the artisanal stuff, self expressive benefit. And 2 and 2, making you more attractive to mates makes you feel closer to God. The mesh in a Bottega Veneta bag, the slope on the back of a Range Rover makes you feel like it stills you in the presence of something. Why do we do that? Why do we slow down and find inspiration and spirituality as if we're closer to God? It's because the majority of the great artisanal work throughout history has been sequestered in mosques, temples and churches. When you go into St. Peter's Cathedral you're like, oh my God. You see the Pieta? Is that what it's called? You think Jesus Christ. Maybe God does hang out here. Or God. Maybe Jesus Christ does hang out here. Maybe they're both together. Maybe it's a father son basketball tournament. By the way, by far the best moment I've ever had. Ever had. One of the top moments I've ever had was father son basketball game. Eighth grade, Gulf Stream. Daddy had practice in the backyard with his son. Boom. Steals the ball, break away, dish off to his son. Three, two, one. Scores the layup. Eighth grade wins. Hello. My son has never been less embarrassed of me in his life. Anyway, back to me. You have churches and mosques where we got used to seeing these incredible works of artisanship such that when we see these really beautiful things, it does still us. It makes us feel more spiritual, makes us feel maybe this is all worthwhile or maybe there's some. Maybe I'm going to go hang out with my parents and my old dog or something. Like that. But this is the one. That's the one. The zero is the low cost. Everything is bifurcating the zero one. Now the question is, I would offer, I would posit, I would argue is the following, Is AI going the same way of all retail and all consumer markets? Are we going to have a zero layer, super inexpensive open source build on things? And then are we going to have the Tiffany and the artisanship? And that is companies will still spend a great deal of money on a massive amount of compute, super sophisticated LLMs that do more sophisticated, artisanal, difficult work. In that we're essentially going where every market is going. And that is we're going Android. You can get a free phone with a great operating system for free essentially if you go Android or iOS where the cost of a phone will command 3 months average salary of a Hungarian. So I don't know if this is the end of kind of AI as we know it or these companies. There is a risk here and that is when you have the magnificent 10 representing 27% of the S and P and now the S and p, or the US market represents 50% of global value of 13% of the global economy kind of wrapped up or at least led by a small number of companies. And if one sneezes, the entire fucking thing might catch a cold. And that is the world might, or the world economy might get pneumonia if there's a serious drawdown in these stocks. I also think it reflects some of our arrogance that people like me have been out there saying we're all AI who's doing anything important around AI. And China said, I know China's core competence, they're exercising here. China's core competence, supply chain and number two, IP theft. They basically steal the plans of the IP and the plans, the architectural plans of a cell tower from Siemens and instead of building it for $200,000, they offer it for 40,000. The majority of people think espionage is some good looking guy killing another agent and then banging the foreign agent or the double agent and then rolling around in an Aston Martin. No, that's not espionage. Espionage is the following. It's, it's an overweight guy who's the personal assistant to some attache or some senior executive at Google who gets proprietary information on their new LLM or their new search algorithm, puts it on a thumb drive and then gives it to his handler and then they ship it to Beijing. The majority of espionage right now isn't about killing spies or state secrets. It's about corporate espionage. This is economic warfare. Think about how few wars there are really, when you think about it, relative to the economic warfare that takes place every day. So number one, confidence of China is in fact supply chain. Number two is IP theft or specifically espionage. By the way. That's not unusual. If you want to grow your economy faster than 5% a year, you have to engage in massive theft, which is what we did during the 19th century when we stole European textile and manufacturing technology and littered the eastern seaboard with these factories where we could take advantage of our abundant resources. We even kidnapped artisans and people could operate this machinery. So IP theft is not unique to China. They're just doing it better than us and we're pissed off about it. This is kind of the ultimate example, right? They took our open source, they sort of borrowed it. So it's not really theft. Call it IP leasing. And they said, I know we can come up with more for less. We did a workaround, not because you wouldn't ship us those fancy American chips. And we have figured out potentially a way to have the Walmart of AI. This will rock the markets. But I would argue, I would argue this is a natural evolution where we're bifurcating into zeros and ones or Walmart and Tiffany. We'll be right back for our conversation with Sahil Bloom. Support for Prop Tea comes from 1-800-Flowers. Valentine's Day is coming up and you can let that someone in your life know just how special they are with the help of 1-800-FLowers.com. they offer beautiful, high quality bouquets. And this year, you can get double the roses for free. When you buy one dozen from 1-800-flowers, they'll double your bouquet to two dozen roses. Of course, roses are a classic, sweet way to say I love you. And 1-800-FLowers lets you share that message without breaking the bank. All of their roses are picked at their peak, cared for every step of the way and shipped fresh to ensure lasting beauty. Our producer Claire ordered from 1-800-Flowers and she thought they were just wonderful. Her partner was just so delighted, so delighted. Strengthen the relationship. Their bouquets are selling fast and you can lock in your order today. Win their heart this Valentine's Day at 1800-flowers.com. to claim your double your roses offer, go to 1-800-flowers.com profg. That's 1-800flowers.com profg. Support for the show comes from Vanta. Trust isn't just earned, it's demanded. Whether you're a startup founder navigating your first audit or a seasoned security professional scaling your GRC program. Proving your commitment to security has never been more critical or more complex. That's where Vanta comes in. Businesses use Vanta to establish trust by automating compliance needs across over 35 frameworks, including SoC2 and ISO 27001. They also centralize security workflows, complete questionnaires up to five times faster, and proactively manage vendor risk. Vanta not only saves you time, it can also save you money. A new IDC white paper found that Vanta customers achieve $535,000 per year in benefits, and the platform pays for itself in just three months. Join over 9,000 global companies, including Atlassian, Quora and Factory, who use Vanta to manage risk and prove security in real time. For a limited time, our audiences get $1,000 off [e-mail] profg that's V-A-N-ProP G for $1,000 off. Support for the show comes from the Fundrise Innovation Fund. Think of the five biggest names in AI today. How many of those companies do you own shares of? Probably not many. Maybe one, maybe two. Why is that? Because the open AIs and anthropics of the world are still private. That means unless you're an employee or a vc, you're out of luck. So it isn't hard to see why venture capital has been one of the most prized asset classes in the world. But unless you're worth eight or nine figures, you likely don't have access to these funds. The Fundrise Innovation Fund is different. It's already raised more than $150 million. It holds a portfolio of pre IPO tech companies that are valued at tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars. And most importantly, it's open to investors of all sizes. Visit fundrise.com propg to check out the Innovation Funds portfolio and start investing today. Relevant disclaimers can be found at the end of the show [e-mail] innovation welcome back. Here's our conversation with Sahil Bloom, an investor, entrepreneur and writer known for his newsletter the Curiosity Chronicle. Sahil, where does this podcast find you?

[Sahil Bloom]

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

[Scott Galloway]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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

[Sahil Bloom]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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[Scott Galloway]

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[Sahil Bloom]

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]

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]

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]

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

[Sahil Bloom]

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]

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

[Sahil Bloom]

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]

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]

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]

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

[Sahil Bloom]

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]

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]

Thank you for having me.

[Scott Galloway]

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.