#410 Excellent Advice for Living

On his 68th birthday, Kevin Kelly began to write down for his young adult children some things he had learned about life that he wished he had known earlier. Kelly’s timeless advice covers an astonishing range, from right living to setting ambitious goals, optimizing generosity, and cultivating compassion. Excellent Advice for Living is the ideal companion for anyone seeking to navigate life with grace and creativity: Episode sponsors: Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud ⁠⁠⁠by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save time and money.⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ramp.com Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta.⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort⁠⁠⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠Find out how increased security leads to more customers by going to Vanta⁠⁠⁠. Tell them David from Founders sent you and you'll get $1000 off. Collateral⁠⁠ transforms your complex ideas into compelling narratives. Collateral crafts institutional grade marketing collateral for private equity, private credit, real estate, venture capital, family offices, hedge funds, oil & gas companies, and all kinds of corporations. Storytelling is one of the highest forms of leverage and you should invest heavily in it. You can do that by going to ⁠⁠https://collateral.com Some of my favorite quotes from the episode: 1. Choose to believe that the entire universe is conspiring behind your back to make you a success. 2. Mastering the view through the eyes of others will unlock many doors. 3. If you can avoid seeking the approval of others your power is limitless. 4. The reward for good work is more work. 5. Don’t be the best. Be the only. 6. The urgent is a tyrant. The important should be your king. 7. Find smart people who will disagree with you. 8. The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. 9. The most counterintuitive truth of the universe is that the more you give to others the more you'll get. 10. Life gets better as you replace transactions with relationships. 11. Courtesy costs nothing. 12. Life lessons will be presented to you in the order they are needed. 13. Cultivate an allergy to average. 14. If you repeated what you did today 365 more times would you be where you want to be next year? 15. If you are alive that means you still have lessons to learn. 16. Master something. Through mastery of one thing you'll command a viewpoint to steadily find where your bliss is. 17. Trust is earned in drops and lost in buckets. 18. First, always ask for what you want. Works in relationships, business, life. 19. If nobody else does what you do you won't need a resume. 20. How to apologize: quickly, specifically, sincerely. 21. You choose to be lucky by believing that any setbacks are just temporary. 22. The best way to advise people is to find out what they really want to do and then advise them to do it. 23. It is certain that 99% of the stuff you are anxious about won't happen. 24. What is important is not what happened to you but what you did about what happened to you. 25. Your golden ticket is being able to see things from other people's point of view. 26. Pay attention to who you are around when you feel best. Be with them more often. 27. To get your message across follow this formula: simplify, simplify, simplify, then exaggerate. 28. You will thrive more when you promote what you love rather than bash what you hate. 29. To be interesting just tell your own story with uncommon honesty. 30. When you truly think for yourself your conclusions will not be predictable. 31. Don’t measure your life with someone else’s ruler. 32. For maximum results focus on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems. 33. Pay attention to what you pay attention to.

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  On my 68th birthday, I decided to give my young adult children some advice. I am not a frequent advice giver, but soon I was able to write down 68 bits. To my surprise, I had more to say than I thought. So for the next several years, I wrote down a batch of advice on my birthday and shared it with my family and friends. They wanted more. I kept going until I had about 450 bits of advice I wish I'd known when I was younger. I am primarily channeling the wisdom of the ages. I'm offering advice that I've heard from others, or timeless knowledge repeated from the past, or a modern aphorism that matched my own experience. I think of these bits as seeds because each one of them could easily be expanded into a long essay. Indeed, I have spent most of my time writing by compressing these substantial lessons

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  into as compact and treatable forms as possible. You are encouraged to expand these seeds as you read to fill your own situation. If you find these proverbs align with your experience, share them with someone younger than yourself. That is an excerpt from the book I'm going to talk to you about today, which is Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier. And it was written by Kevin Kelly. I was not planning to make an episode on this book. I randomly discovered this book from one of my friend's Instagram stories. I immediately bought it, downloaded it to my Kindle, and then read the entire thing in one sitting. And so I just want to run through the bits of advice that I highlighted. And then if anything came to mind, I made notes on it. And I'll share those with you as well. The first maxim or aphorism that he has here is,

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  "Being enthusiastic is worth 25 IQ points." The next one is, "Listening well is a superpower." While listening to someone you love, keep asking them, "Is there more?" until there is no more. I actually think there's a lot of these pieces of advice that he gives that work for both your personal and your work relationships. I think that one works for work as well. This one definitely works for work. "Always demand a deadline because it weeds out the extraneous and the ordinary." A deadline prevents you from trying to make it perfect. So you have to make it different. Different is better. That is so important. It's actually one of the main points in Ed Catmull, who's the co-founder of Pixar. He wrote this great autobiography called Creativity, Inc. And what he noticed, he says, "Without a deadline, people can always justify more

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  time and more money in the name of making it better. There must be a cut-by date." What is also fascinating is what Christopher Nolan said about this. "A deadline is often a creative accelerator, not a creative killer, because it forces decisions." Christopher Nolan says his creative process ramps up exponentially when he knows the deadline is real, and that this pressure helps you make decisions. The next one. "When you forgive others, they may not notice, but you will heal. Forgiveness is not something we do for others. It's a gift to ourselves." Next one. "Don't measure your life with someone else's ruler." So when I read that, what popped to my mind is my favorite people that I've met that

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  are like this, they're all playing an infinite game in their own way. They're not measuring their life with someone else's ruler. They've found the game they want to play. They want to play the game forever, and they insist on playing the game their own way. So when I read this, two people popped to my mind: Michael Dell and James Dyson. Read both of their autobiographies. It's very obvious they had no interest in ever measuring their life with someone else's ruler. The next bit of wisdom makes me think of Buffett and Munger. "Collecting things benefits you only if you display your collection prominently and share it in joy with others. The opposite of this is hoarding." I'm rereading the 700-page biography of Warren Buffett right now called Snowball, and it is amazing, even from a very young age, how Buffett thought of himself as a teacher.

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  And I love this idea. He collected a lot of information. He synthesized that information. He added his own input and perspective on that information. And then he spent an enormous amount of time sharing that knowledge and information with others. He was collecting valuable information. And then he displayed that collection prominently, mainly through his shareholder letters, but also through his talks. "In joy with others." Another one. "Taking a break is not a sign of weakness, but a sign of strength." Another one, you don't have to attend every argument you're invited to. The next one is related to that. Why, it's kind of an exercise in futility. You can't reason someone out of a notion they didn't reason themselves into. The next one is one of my favorite ones. Gratitude will unlock all other virtues and is something you can get better at. I think it was Rick Rubin in one of the books that I read on him where he said,

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  "You should practice gratitude like a daily prayer." And another thing that Rick Rubin would say in both those books too is like, "Hey, if we're gonna do something, we might as well aim for greatness." I think the next bit of wisdom from Kevin Kelly kind of echoes that. "The advantage of a ridiculously ambitious goal is that it sets the bar very high. So even if your effort falls short, it may exceed an ordinary success." This one, I know is true because I experience it all the time. The best way to learn anything is to try to teach what you know. There's so many times where I'm, I hear myself talking about a part of the book and I have to stop myself and say, "Wait a minute, I don't think I actually understand this. I need to go back to that." And then by trying to explain what I learned from reading to somebody else, I actually understand it deeper. The best way to learn anything is to try to teach what you know.

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  Whenever you have a choice between being right or being kind, be kind. No exceptions. Don't confuse kindness with weakness. Next one, "The best way to get to a yes in a negotiation is to truly understand what yes means for the other party." So before I sit down to talk to you, I obviously read and reread and reread and reread the highlights over and over again. And the note I left myself, probably the fourth or fifth time through reading these highlights, was so a lot of the great advice that he has in this book is really just understanding how other people view things and the benefit of looking at it from their perspective and not being self-absorbed. He has a lot of different ways to say exactly that. The best way to get to understand somebody, the best way to get what you want,

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  the best way to build a relationship is to put yourself in other people's shoes. If you're in a negotiation, understand what yes means for the other party. Next one, "Recipe for greatness. Become a teeny bit better than you were last year and repeat that every year." Here's another one, "Whenever you can't decide which path to take, pick the one that produces change." Another great one, "Choose not to be outraged today." Kevin Kelly talks a lot about the importance of your habits. This is the very first time he mentions that habit is far more dependable than inspiration. Make progress by making habits. Don't focus on getting into shape. Focus on becoming the kind of person who never misses a workout. Rockefeller had a great metaphor on this. He says, "Habits are like ropes. We spin a rope every day and finally it's too thick to break."

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  "The ropes of habit either lead us to the peak or lead us to the trough." "Bad habits are easy to develop but difficult to sever." "Good habits are difficult to develop, but they are easy to maintain." This next one is really important. Find smart people who will disagree with you. One of my smartest friends, he's developed a habit. Let me link these two together. He's developed a habit with me where he will just reiterate advice from founders back to me. So the other day, he called me because he noticed that I was trying to take an easy route on something that was important. And all he did to change my mind, and really to change my behavior on this, was he quoted Napoleon and Lyndon Johnson from Robert Caro's biographies on him. And he said, "If you do everything, you will win."

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  The conversation lasted maybe 60 seconds, maybe 90 seconds. It's like, "All right, I got it. I got it." And I hung up the phone and I took the harder, better route. The route I should have taken to begin with. And that wouldn't have happened if I didn't find smart people that will disagree with me. This one I love and I don't think I've heard before. The rule of three in conversation. To get to the real reason, ask a person to go deeper than what they just said. Then again, and then once more. The third time's answer is the one that's closest to the truth. And then here's one on the importance of having dogged persistence. Pros make as many mistakes as amateurs. They just learn how to gracefully recover from their mistakes. The next one is one of my favorite things I've ever heard Kevin Kelly say, and I think about it all the time.

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  "Don't be the best, be the only." To me, the next one is the importance of just being a higher agency person than most people are. Everyone is shy. Other people are waiting for you to introduce yourself to them. They are waiting for you to send them an email. They are waiting for you to ask them on a date. Go ahead. Another one. "The more you are interested in others, the more interesting they'll find you." To be interesting, be interested. Don't take it personally when someone turns you down. Assume they are like you, busy, occupied, distracted. Try again later. It's amazing how often a second try works. Then he goes back to the importance of habit. The purpose of a habit is to remove that action from self-negotiation. You no longer expend energy deciding whether to do it. You just do it.

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  I heard Kobe Bryant talk about this one time where he would lay out his training program in writing for the summer before the summer started. And he said, "The reason it's important to have it in writing is because it's so difficult. It is natural that when you come to a difficult part, you start to try to negotiate with yourself." He's like, "Oh, what if I did this?" Or, "Oh, I could just skip this." And he's like, "Nope. No negotiating. We wrote it down and we're sticking to it." There's several pieces of advice that Kevin Kelly has in the book about having high expectations for yourself and others. "You lead by letting others know what you expect of them, which may exceed what they themselves expect." That reminds me of one of my favorite quotes I ever heard from Steve Jobs. He says, "Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected."

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  Next one, "If you ask for someone's feedback, you'll get a critic. But instead, if you ask for advice, you'll get a partner." Next one, "The golden rule will never fail you. It is the foundation of all other virtues." And I'm sure this is not what Kevin Kelly meant, but Rockefeller's business partner, Henry Flagler, had a sign that he kept on his desk that said, "Do unto others as they would do unto you, and do it first." The next piece of advice is very, again, Rick Rubin-esque. "To make something good, just do it. To make something great, just redo it, redo it, redo it. The secret to making fine things is in remaking them." And then when Kevin said earlier that a lot of this is just advice that has been repeated through the ages.

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  So many of the greatest thinkers talk about the importance of walking. It says, "Expand your mind by thinking with your feet on a walk or with your hand in a notebook. Think outside of your brain." I love this. This is excellent advice. "At first, buy the absolute cheapest tools you can find. Upgrade the ones that you use a lot. If you wind up using some tool for a job, buy the very best you can afford." When Kevin Kelly is saying to use the very best tools you can, that makes me think of the presenting sponsor of this podcast, Ramp. I spend a lot of time with the founders of Ramp, and they have a relentless dedication to improving their product and their company. Nearly every conversation we have centers around their obsession with crafting

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  a high-quality product and using the latest technology to constantly create better experiences for their customers. Ramp has one of the most talented technical teams in finance, and they use rapid relentless iteration to make their product better every day. In the last year, Ramp has shipped over 300 new features. Ramp is completely committed to using AI to make a better experience for their customers and to automate as much of your business's finances as possible. Many of the fastest-growing and most innovative companies in the world are running their business on Ramp. Make sure you go to ramp.com to learn how they can help your business save time and money. Let AI chase your receipts and close your books so you can use your time and energy building great things for your customers.

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  Because at the end of the day, that is what this is all about, building a product or service that makes someone else's life better. Get started today by going to ramp.com. Here's another one that made me think of Steve Jobs again. He says, "Act like you belong there." There's advice that Nolan Bushnell, who is the founder of Atari, and Steve Jobs' mentor, gave Steve Jobs when Steve was just 19. He says, "I taught him that if you act like you can do something, then it will work. I told him, 'Pretend to be completely in control, and people will assume that you are.'" And this next one makes me think of Charlie Munger. "Nothing elevates a person higher than taking responsibility for their mistakes. If you mess up, fess up." It's astounding how powerful this ownership is. Munger would talk about over and over again. Do not deny your mistakes. Don't externalize them. Don't wallow in them.

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  You need to acknowledge them bluntly and then use them as fuel to improve your decision-making. And he found it valuable to admit it plainly and even harshly to yourself. He says that he likes when people admit that they were complete stupid horses asses. Kevin Kelly goes back to this idea of letting go of things, of not holding grudges or hatred. You're just poisoning yourself and not the other person. Hatred is a curse that does not affect the hated. It only poisons the hater. Release a grudge as if it were a poison. This is excellent advice for anybody trying to make a great product. You can obsess about your customers or you can obsess about beating the competition. Both work, but of the two, obsessing about your customers will take you further. And so I love this idea of asking which of these two options will actually take you further.

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  This is something that Jeff Bezos would talk about over and over again. His view on this is obvious. He says that customer obsession takes you farther than competitor obsession because it compounds into a moat, pushes you to invent proactively and keeps you oriented towards durable needs instead of reactive, copycat behavior. And so for a lot of these, I would run these ideas through my own personal AI called Sage. I've told you about this before, but I have all my notes, all my highlights and all my transcripts in this database and I just have my own personal AI assistant that's just trained on that and only that. And so I'm constantly asking questions as I read or I'm preparing for the podcast. And this idea that these new ideas are fragile and you have to create an environment to protect them or you'll kill them before they can develop is something that reappears over and over again. So this is what Kevin Kelly says about this. Separate the process of creating from improving.

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  You can't write and edit or sculpt and polish or make and analyze at the same time. If you do, the editor stops the creator. While you invent, don't select. While you sketch, don't inspect. While you write the first draft, don't reflect. At the start, the creator mind must be unleashed from judgment. And so I was able to pull a bunch of these ideas from some of these podcasts I did, you know, seven, eight years ago. There's the value of keeping track of everything that you're doing. And so there's this guy named Charles Ketering. He was a great inventor, founder and overall polymath. And he says, "Ideas grow very much like plants. When the shoots first come through the ground, they are quite tender and vulnerable. The proper care is very important." Ed Catmull, I already referenced him, founder of Pixar, he says, "Originality is fragile

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  and in its first moments, it's often far from pretty. It is vulnerable and incomplete and they need, these ideas need nurturing in the form of time and patience so they can grow." Henry Ford had a metaphor for this. He calls it the maternity ward. That you need to treat a new program like a baby that must be locked up and protected until it can walk on its own. And then David Ogilvy said, "Ideas are magical, but they're fragile seeds that require protecting." Anything on the cutting edge needs to be constantly fought for and defended. New ideas are fragile, and new ideas need friends. Next piece of advice, if you're not falling down occasionally, you're just coasting. This next one reminds me of Henry Ford's great aphorism that money comes naturally as a result of service.

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  Kevin Kelly writes, "Perhaps the most counterintuitive truth of the universe is that the more you give to others, the more you'll get. Understanding this is the beginning of wisdom." Next one, keep showing up. 99% of success is just showing up. Steve Jobs says, "I'm convinced about half of what separates successful entrepreneurs from non-successful ones is pure perseverance." Next one, friends are better than money. Almost anything money can do, friends can do better. Next one, forgiveness is accepting the apology you will never get. See how many times he talks about this over and over again? About freeing yourself of this burden? I think this is tied to the wisdom that you get when you're, you have a lot more experience and you're much older, like Kevin Kelly is, because he also says, "Before you're old, attend as many funerals as you can bear and listen.

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  Nobody talks about the departed's achievements. The only thing people will remember is what kind of person you were while you were achieving." I just did, I just talked to John Mackey, who's the founder of Whole Foods, for my new show, which is on my other podcast feed. It's called David Center. If you don't already follow it, whatever you're listening to this, just search for David Center, and you can listen to this conversation with me and John Mackey, which I think was fascinating. But after we finished the conversation, John gave me some advice. He said, "David, when you're my age, you're not thinking about the 5,000th Whole Foods store. You think about the relationships you have with other people." This next one is just absolutely excellent. "Anything real begins with the fiction of what could be. Imagination is therefore the most potent force in the universe, and you can get better at it.

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  It's the one skill in life that benefits from ignoring what everyone else knows."

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  It's amazing how many of these pieces of advice other entrepreneurs agree with and have arrived at the same conclusion. When crises strike, don't waste them. No problems, no progress. Michael Dell told me in the episode I did with him and on the David Center feed. In our conversation, he says, if you don't have a crisis, make one. You get people excited, motivated, and you drive the necessary change that you need in your business. Next one, when you get invited to do something in the future, ask yourself, would I do this tomorrow? Not too many promises will pass that immediacy filter. So I told you I was reading this book on Warren Buffett and he was, he liked to keep his calendar very clear. So they give an example, like, let's say you want to see Buffett next week. He'd say, call me the day before. And here we have Kevin Kelly saying, when you get invited to do something in the future, ask yourself, would I do this tomorrow?

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  Next one, don't say anything about someone in an email you would not be comfortable saying to them directly because eventually it will reach them. This goes back to habits and actions. You are what you do, not what you say, not what you believe, not how you vote, but what you spend your time on. This is Steve Jobs' favorite quote was actually from Aristotle, who said, Aristotle once said, "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit." Most of what's in the book, I've heard in like one form or another before. This one is very new to me. I've never heard this one before. Rule of seven in research. You can find out anything if you're willing to go to seven levels. If the first source you ask doesn't know, ask them who you should ask next and so on down the line. If you're willing to go to the seventh source, you almost always get your answer.

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  This one I just forwarded to a friend that was dealing with somebody that was being quite nasty with them. And I said, when someone is nasty, hateful, or mean towards you, treat their behavior like an affliction or illness they have. That makes it easier to have empathy towards them, which can soften the conflict. This one is about the benefit of naivete. Experience is overrated. Most breakthrough accomplishments were done by people doing them for the first time. Therefore, when hiring, hire for aptitude and attitude and then train for skills. This is how you apologize. Quickly, specifically, sincerely. Don't ruin an apology with an excuse.

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  For the next one, the note I have is 100 times longer than the actual maxim, "Pay attention to incentives." The note is just this quote from Charlie Munger that I absolutely love. Charlie says, "I think I've been in the top 5% of my age cohort almost all my adult life in understanding the power of incentives, and yet I've always underestimated that power. Never a year passes that I don't get some surprise that pushes a little further my appreciation of the incentive's superpower. This maxim is a wise guide to a great and simple precaution in life. Never, ever, think about something else when you should be thinking about the power of incentives. Perhaps the most important rule in management is get the incentives right." This one is great and could lead you to an unexpected career. "The thing that made you weird as a kid could make you great as an adult if you don't lose it."

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  For me, this was reading all the time when I was a kid. "Master something. Through mastery of one thing, you'll command a viewpoint to steadily find where your bliss is. You are never too young to wonder, 'Why am I still doing this?'" You need to have an excellent answer. These are just great. "Life gets better as you replace transactions with relationships. The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing." "To build strong children, reinforce their sense of belonging to a family by articulating exactly what it is that makes your family distinctive. They should say with pride, 'Our family does X.'" More great interpersonal advice.

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  "Outlaw the word 'you' during domestic arguments." This too is excellent. I think, if you looked at all my notes, I think excellent, or this is excellent, is the one that just reappears over and over again. "Over the long term, the future is decided by optimists. To be an optimist, you don't have to ignore the multitude of problems that we create. You just imagine how much our ability to solve problems improves."

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  Focus on the important. I love this piece of advice. Focus on the important. The urgent is a tyrant. The important should be your king. And then again, he goes back to the importance of being kind, of looking at things through other people's perspectives. Don't reserve your kindest praise for a person until their eulogy. Tell them while they are alive when it makes a difference to them. Write it in a letter so they can keep it. That's great. Fear is fueled by a lack of imagination. The anecdote to fear is not bravery. It looks more like imagination. This is one that me and my friends repeat over and over again. I think a lot of people playing an infinite game in their own way would agree with it. The reward for good work is more work.

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  Back to the importance of being kind in your dealings with other people. The foundation of maturity. Just because it's not your fault doesn't mean it's not your responsibility. Don't aim to have others like you. Aim to have them respect you. This is something that's going to come over and over again, and you see in every single biography. To get to one good idea, you've probably gone through hundreds, if not thousands, of bad ideas. Kevin Kelly writes, "A multitude of bad ideas is necessary for one good idea." Back to kindness. Compliment people behind their back. It'll come back to you. Back to the importance of focus and deadlines. You don't need more time because you already have all the time you will ever get. You need more focus. The foolish person winds up doing at the end what the smart person does at the beginning.

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  Everyone's time is finite and shrinking. The highest leverage you can get with your money is to buy someone else's time. Hire and outsource when you can. Your best response to an insult is, "You're probably right." Often, they are. Be strict with yourself for giving of others. The reverse is hell for everyone. Fear makes people do stupid things. If you can avoid seeking the approval of others, your power is limitless. Your passions should fit you exactly, but your purpose in life should exceed you. Work for something much larger than yourself.

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  Show me your calendar and I will tell you your priorities. Tell me who your friends are and I'll tell you where you're going.

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  Work to become, not to acquire. Contemplating the weaknesses of others is easy. Contemplating the weaknesses in yourself is hard, but it pays a much higher reward.

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  You will complete your mission in life when you figure out what your mission in life is. Your purpose is to discover your purpose. This is not a paradox. This is the way.

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  Calm is contagious. Be calm to help others. Passion, persistence, belief and ingenuity are required to invent new things. Qualities that the poor and young often have in abundance. Stay hungry. Ignore what others may be thinking of you because they are not thinking of you. Writing down one thing you are grateful for each day is the cheapest possible therapy ever.

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  If you meet a jerk, ignore them. If you meet jerks everywhere, every day, look deeper into yourself. I love that one. And this one, this next one, I'm gonna have to read twice. This is gold. It is much easier to change how you think by changing your behavior than it is to change your behavior by changing how you think. Act out the change that you seek. It is much easier to change how you think by changing your behavior than it is to change your behavior by changing how you think. Act out the change that you seek. Don't worry how or where you begin. As long as you keep moving, your success will arrive far from where you started. The work on a worthy project is endless. It is infinite. You cannot limit the work, so you must limit your hours, your time, not the work is the only thing that you can manage.

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  To transcend the influence of your heroes, copy them shamelessly like a student until you get them out of your system. This is the way of all masters. All of the great prizes in life, in wealth, relationships or knowledge, come from the magic of compounding interest by amplifying small, steady gains. Bad things can happen fast, but almost all good things happen slowly. Be a good ancestor. Do something a future generation will thank you for. People cannot remember more than three points from a speech, the best illustration of this. The perfect illustration of this actually is Steve Jobs commencement speech, which is available on YouTube. Highly recommend you watch it.

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  To be remarkable, read books. I put this, I put this one in there selfishly. Finite games are played to win or lose. Infinite games are played to keep the game going. Seek out infinite games because they yield unlimited rewards. To succeed, get other people to pay you. To become wealthy, help other people to succeed. Cultivate an allergy to average. About 99% of the time, the right time is right now. Be frugal in all things, except in your passions. This next one reminds me of this idea from Charlie Munger. It may be the most important idea Charlie Munger had, or at least the one that's most important to me, which is find a simple idea and take it seriously.

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  Kevin Kelly writes, "Take one simple thing, almost anything, but take it extremely seriously as if it were the only thing in the world. By taking it seriously, you'll light up the sky." Know secrets. You are much better off delivering unwelcome news to someone or yourself directly. A secret is rarely unknown, which means inevitably someone else will share it. Meanwhile, the secret corrodes all who hold it. Figure out what time of day you are most productive and protect that time period. Greatness is incompatible with optimizing in the short term. To achieve greatness requires a long view. The greatest teacher is called doing. Courtesy costs nothing. The consistency of your endeavors,

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  exercise, companionship, work, is more important than the quantity. Nothing beats small things done every day, which is way more important than what we do occasionally. Efficiency is highly overrated. Goofing off is highly underrated. Regularly scheduled Sabbaths, Sabbaticals, vacations, breaks, aimless walks, and time off are essential for top performance of any kind.

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  Don't aim for better ways to get through your tasks as quickly as possible. Instead, aim for better tasks that you never want to stop doing. When you have good news and bad news, give the bad news first because we remember how things end more than how they begin. So elevate the ending with good news. Here's three things that you need. Number one, the ability to not give up something until it works. Number two, the ability to give up something that does not work. Number three, and trust in other people to help you distinguish between the two. Ask anyone you admire their lucky breaks happen on a detour from their main goal. So embrace detours. Life is not a straight line for anyone.

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  You'll get 10 times better results by elevating good behavior rather than punishing bad behavior. Spend as much time crafting the subject line of an email as the message itself because the subject line is often the only thing people read. And that's actually a very old idea from a lot of the great copywriters. David Ogilvy, Claude Hopkins, this is what David Ogilvy said about this. I think this applies to so much more than email too. Says, "The headline is the most important element in most ads. On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent 80 cents out of your dollar. If you haven't done some selling in your headline, you have wasted 80% of your money. A change in headline can make a difference of 10 to 1 in sales.

• 28:39Speaker 00

  I never write fewer than 16 headlines for a single ad." And since we're talking about ways to increase sales, I have to tell you about two great tools that you should be using for your business. The first one is Vanta. Vanta helps your company automate compliance, manage risk, and build trust. You can think of Vanta as your always on AI-powered security expert that can scale with you. Vanta automates compliance, continuously monitors your controls, and gives you a single source of truth for compliance and risk. So whether you're a fast-growing startup like Cursor or an enterprise company like Snowflake, Vanta fits easily into your existing workflows so you can keep growing a company that your customers can trust. This is very important because many companies will not sign Unless you're certified and this is causing you to lose out on sales.

• 29:24Speaker 00

  That is why the average Vanta customer reports a 526% return on investment after becoming a Vanta customer. Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure faster and with less effort. If you go to vanta.com/founders, you will get $1,000 off. That is vanta.com/founders. The next tool I want to tell you about is Collateral. Collateral helps you improve the way that your company tells its own story. Collateral transforms your complex ideas into compelling narratives. Collateral crafts institutional-grade marketing collateral for all types of companies. By using Collateral, you can improve the way that your company tells its own story. Storytelling is one of the highest forms of leverage and you should invest heavily in it, and you can do that by going to collateral.com.

• 30:09Speaker 00

  This one's good. Denying or deflecting a compliment is rude. Accept it with thanks even if you believe it is not deserved. When you have some success, the feeling of being an imposter can be real. Who am I fooling? But when you create things that only you, with your unique talents and experience, can do, then you are absolutely not an imposter. You are ordained. It is your destiny to work on things that only you can do. Make others feel they are important. Constantly search for overlapping areas of agreement and dwell there. Disagreements will appear to be edge cases. Miraculous things can be accomplished if you give it 10 years.

• 30:49Speaker 00

  A long game will compound small gains that will be able to overcome even big mistakes. That's a great line. A long game will compound small gains that will be able to overcome even big mistakes. A wise man said, before you speak, let your words pass through three gates. At the first gate, ask yourself, is it true? At the second gate, ask, is it necessary? At the third gate, ask, is it kind? The only productive way to answer, what should I do now? Is to first answer, who should I become? Most articles and stories are improved significantly if you delete the first page of the manuscript. Start with the action.

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  Getting cheated occasionally is a small price for trusting the best of everyone because when you trust the best in others, they generally treat you better.

• 31:42Speaker 00

  When you are stuck, explain your problem to others. Often simply laying out a problem will present a solution. Make explaining the problem part of your troubleshooting process. This is why I think Munger said that even if you're not seeking advice, it is useful to be able to organize your thoughts with someone that you trust and admire. Your time and space are limited. Remove, give away, throw out anything that no longer gives you joy in order to make room for those that do. This goes back to not measuring your life with someone else's ruler. Do not compare your inside to someone else's outside. Don't bother fighting the old, just build the new. This is what Buckminster Fuller said. You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

• 32:26Speaker 00

  Do more of what looks like work to others, but it's play for you. It's a great question to ask yourself. If you repeated what you did today 365 more times, would you be where you want to be next year? Pay attention to what you pay attention to. For maximum results, focus on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems. Reading to your children regularly is the best school they will ever get. It doesn't matter how many people don't appreciate your work. The only thing that counts is how many do. When you truly think for yourself, your conclusions will not be predictable. I read that sentence right before and then read it after. I had this, this long, like three hour conversation with the founder of Shopify,

• 33:11Speaker 00

  Tobey Luque. The conversation was recorded for my other podcast. That was exactly my experience talking to Toby. I can't remember another conversation where if you ask him a question, it's nearly impossible to predict what his answer will be. And I think it's because he truly thinks for himself. When you truly think for yourself, your conclusions will not be predictable. You can really change someone's life for the better simply by offering words of encouragement. My favorite example from history of this is a young Henry Ford meeting his idol, an older Thomas Edison. Henry Ford's explaining his idea to build mass produced a car that has an internal combustion engine. And when Ford was finished, says Edison banged a fist on the table so hard that the dishes around him jumped and said, Young man, that's the thing, keep at it.

• 33:53Speaker 00

  And Henry Ford said those few words helped him persevere through many years of struggle that came after that conversation. For every good thing you love, ask yourself what your proper dose is. The trick to making wise decisions is to evaluate your choices as if you were looking back 25 years from today. What would your future self think? To be interesting, just tell your own story with uncommon honesty. This next idea I believe with everything. I think the world has enough critics that we need more evangelists. You will thrive more when you promote what you love rather than bash what you hate. Life is short, focus on the good stuff. To get your message across, follow this formula used by ad writers everywhere. Simplify, simplify, simplify, then exaggerate.

• 34:38Speaker 00

  Pay attention to who you're around when you feel best. Be with them more often. And again, he goes back to the importance of looking at things through other people's perspectives. Your golden ticket is being able to see things from other people's point of view. This shift enables heartfelt empathy. It also allows you to persuade others and it is key to great design. Mastering the view through the eyes of others will unlock so many doors. That is a great thought. Mastering the view through the eyes of others will unlock so many doors. If we all threw our troubles into a pile and we saw everyone else's problems, we would immediately grab ours back. You can't change your past, but you can change your story about it.

• 35:20Speaker 00

  What is important is not what happened to you, but what you did about what happened to you. To earn dignity with your flaws, own up to them and make sure you push on things that matter.

• 35:32Speaker 00

  Worry is ineffective. It is certain that 99% of the stuff you're anxious about will not happen. The best way to advise people is to find out what they really want to do and then advise them to do it. You choose to be lucky by believing that any setbacks are just temporary. If nobody else does what you do, you won't need a resume. First, always ask for what you want. This works in relationships, business, and life. Trust is earned in drops and lost in buckets. Unwavering honesty will help seal in trust. An honest friend is someone who wants nothing at all from you. Being curious about another person's view is the most powerful way to change their view.

• 36:16Speaker 00

  The natural state of all possessions is to need repair and maintenance. What you own will eventually own you. Choose selectively. It's really fascinating. I had lunch with Sam Zell before he died. He told me exactly this. He's like, what you own eventually owns you. And so even though he's one of the wealthiest people on the planet, he didn't own a lot of things. He had his place in Chicago, his compound in Malibu. That's the word he used, by the way. And his plane. Everything else, he said, he rented. This goes back to the importance of taking a break from your normal schedule so that you could tap into the ideas that are in your subconscious. Commit to doing no work for one day a week. Call it a Sabbath or not. Use that day for resting, recharging, and cultivating the most important things in life. Counterintuitively, this Sabbath will prove to be your most productive act all week. This is one of my favorite lines in the entire book.

• 37:01Speaker 00

  Choose to believe that the entire universe is conspiring behind your back to make you a success. And then this is the perfect place to end. Life lessons will be presented to you in the order they are needed. Everything you need to master the lesson is within you. Once you have truly learned a lesson, you will be presented with the next one. If you are alive, that means you still have lessons to learn.