├── readme.md ├── extract_people.ipynb └── transcript_housel_perell.txt /readme.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | # Mixtral-8x7B-Instruct-v0.1 Information Extraction 2 | 3 | This repo includes a notebook which shows how to use Mixtral to extract people's names from a text file and return the names as json. 4 | 5 | It validates the response to be valid json using `pydantic`. 6 | 7 | In my experiments so far Mixtral returns valid json in 100 % of the cases. Sometimes it also returns some prose together with the json, but this is easily filtered by something like `.split('\n\n')`. 8 | 9 | By the way, the text used is from this video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o84GXnrHdgg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o84GXnrHdgg). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /extract_people.ipynb: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | { 2 | "cells": [ 3 | { 4 | "cell_type": "markdown", 5 | "id": "caca1232", 6 | "metadata": {}, 7 | "source": [ 8 | "# Extract structured data from text as JSON using an LLM\n", 9 | "\n", 10 | "LLMs are much more than just mere chatbots.\n", 11 | "\n", 12 | "Recently, I got interested in using LLMs for something else than just getting information from them directly. I stumbled upon a [repo](https://github.com/abacaj/openhermes-function-calling) from [Anton Bacaj](https://twitter.com/abacaj), where he gets a fine-tuned version of Mistral's 7b model to mimic the \"function calling\" API from OpenAI. \n", 13 | "\n", 14 | "[mistral.ai](https://mistral.ai) - the (real) open-source AI company from France - recently released their new open source \"mixture of experts (MoE)\" large language model, called \"Mixtral 8x7b\". [Here](https://huggingface.co/blog/moe) is a great overview of what MoE's are.\n", 15 | "\n", 16 | "It got me thinking about what I can use LLMs for that's a little bit more interesting than just chatting with them or using them as code assistants. \n", 17 | "\n", 18 | "One idea was to extract structured data from unstructured text, like podcast transcripts. \n", 19 | "\n", 20 | "In this notebook, I'll walk you through how to extract people's names from podcast transcripts and validate the result based on a JSON schema using `pydantic`. " 21 | ] 22 | }, 23 | { 24 | "cell_type": "markdown", 25 | "id": "bdec8e8f", 26 | "metadata": {}, 27 | "source": [ 28 | "## Imports and Environment Variables" 29 | ] 30 | }, 31 | { 32 | "cell_type": "code", 33 | "execution_count": 15, 34 | "id": "65f96682", 35 | "metadata": {}, 36 | "outputs": [], 37 | "source": [ 38 | "from tqdm import tqdm\n", 39 | "from time import sleep\n", 40 | "import json\n", 41 | "import os\n", 42 | "from pydantic import BaseModel\n", 43 | "from typing import List" 44 | ] 45 | }, 46 | { 47 | "cell_type": "markdown", 48 | "id": "00263a46", 49 | "metadata": {}, 50 | "source": [ 51 | "We will access Mixtral 8x7b through the API from [together.ai](https://together.ai). I read my API credentials in as environment variables." 52 | ] 53 | }, 54 | { 55 | "cell_type": "code", 56 | "execution_count": 14, 57 | "id": "bf61bf80", 58 | "metadata": {}, 59 | "outputs": [], 60 | "source": [ 61 | "sessionKey = os.environ['TOGETHER_SESSION_KEY']\n", 62 | "auth = os.environ['TOGETHER_AUTH']" 63 | ] 64 | }, 65 | { 66 | "cell_type": "markdown", 67 | "id": "8cf4021e", 68 | "metadata": {}, 69 | "source": [ 70 | "## Query LLM Function" 71 | ] 72 | }, 73 | { 74 | "cell_type": "markdown", 75 | "id": "568c9b13", 76 | "metadata": {}, 77 | "source": [ 78 | "This is the function that calls th model through [together.ai](https://together.ai/)'s API with the prompt and returns the response as JSON. \n", 79 | "\n", 80 | "I bet I could optimize the whole idea further by tuning the `temperature` and other parameters, but it works for now. " 81 | ] 82 | }, 83 | { 84 | "cell_type": "code", 85 | "execution_count": 9, 86 | "id": "82d9a2ee", 87 | "metadata": {}, 88 | "outputs": [], 89 | "source": [ 90 | "def query_mistral(prompt):\n", 91 | " import requests\n", 92 | " endpoint = 'https://api.together.xyz/inference'\n", 93 | " res = requests.post(endpoint, json={\n", 94 | " \"model\": \"mistralai/Mixtral-8x7B-Instruct-v0.1\",\n", 95 | " \"max_tokens\": 512,\n", 96 | " \"prompt\": f\"[INST] {prompt} [/INST]\",\n", 97 | " \"request_type\": \"language-model-inference\",\n", 98 | " \"temperature\": 0.7,\n", 99 | " \"top_p\": 0.7,\n", 100 | " \"top_k\": 50,\n", 101 | " \"repetition_penalty\": 1,\n", 102 | " \"stop\": [\n", 103 | " \"[/INST]\",\n", 104 | " \"\"\n", 105 | " ],\n", 106 | " \"negative_prompt\": \"\",\n", 107 | " \"sessionKey\": sessionKey\n", 108 | " }, headers={\n", 109 | " \"Authorization\": f\"Bearer {auth}\",\n", 110 | " })\n", 111 | " return res.json()" 112 | ] 113 | }, 114 | { 115 | "cell_type": "code", 116 | "execution_count": 10, 117 | "id": "23c8895f", 118 | "metadata": {}, 119 | "outputs": [], 120 | "source": [ 121 | "with open(\"transcript_housel_perell.txt\", \"r\") as f:\n", 122 | " transcript = f.read()" 123 | ] 124 | }, 125 | { 126 | "cell_type": "markdown", 127 | "id": "0cd8e381", 128 | "metadata": {}, 129 | "source": [ 130 | "## Output Validation for Pydantic" 131 | ] 132 | }, 133 | { 134 | "cell_type": "markdown", 135 | "id": "a457c5ba", 136 | "metadata": {}, 137 | "source": [ 138 | "I want to use `pydantic` to validate the returned JSON. That's why I implement a simple `pydantic` class here to validate the returned JSON against. \n", 139 | "\n", 140 | "I know that you can serialize the json schema from a pydantic model directly and put it in the LLM prompt, but it actually didn't work so well for me. I think I have to look further into it. " 141 | ] 142 | }, 143 | { 144 | "cell_type": "code", 145 | "execution_count": 11, 146 | "id": "c49e8cf6", 147 | "metadata": {}, 148 | "outputs": [], 149 | "source": [ 150 | "class Person(BaseModel):\n", 151 | " name: str\n", 152 | "\n", 153 | "class People(BaseModel):\n", 154 | " names: List[Person]" 155 | ] 156 | }, 157 | { 158 | "cell_type": "markdown", 159 | "id": "b17ed56d", 160 | "metadata": {}, 161 | "source": [ 162 | "## Prompt and Main Loop" 163 | ] 164 | }, 165 | { 166 | "cell_type": "markdown", 167 | "id": "a3ccd57e", 168 | "metadata": {}, 169 | "source": [ 170 | "Below is the main code block. I loop over the text file in blocks of 16384 characters and extract the people's names as JSON. \n", 171 | "\n", 172 | "Then I validate them against my `People` model from above and if it's valid, I will put it in my `result` list. \n", 173 | "\n", 174 | "There are clever things you could do to handle invalid JSON, like calling the LLM again or asking the LLM to turn the invalid JSON string into valid JSON, but once more, it works for now.\n", 175 | "\n", 176 | "I also track the error rate for non-valid JSON here. But using Mixtral I never got non-valid JSON. It may only return more than just the JSON string, but that's easily fixed with the `.split()` call." 177 | ] 178 | }, 179 | { 180 | "cell_type": "code", 181 | "execution_count": 18, 182 | "id": "1793cbb3", 183 | "metadata": {}, 184 | "outputs": [], 185 | "source": [ 186 | "def get_prompt(text):\n", 187 | " return f\"\"\"Given the following text, identify all the people's names mentioned and return them in a valid JSON format. \n", 188 | "\n", 189 | " Text: '{text}' \n", 190 | "\n", 191 | " Please extract the names and format them in JSON like this: \n", 192 | "\n", 193 | " {{\"names\": [{{\"name\": \"Name1\"}}, {{\"name\": \"Name2\"}}, ...]}}.\n", 194 | "\n", 195 | " Answer only with the json string, nothing else. This is very important!\n", 196 | " \n", 197 | " \"\"\"" 198 | ] 199 | }, 200 | { 201 | "cell_type": "code", 202 | "execution_count": 19, 203 | "id": "b833060a", 204 | "metadata": {}, 205 | "outputs": [ 206 | { 207 | "name": "stderr", 208 | "output_type": "stream", 209 | "text": [ 210 | "100%|██████████| 9/9 [00:26<00:00, 2.95s/it]" 211 | ] 212 | }, 213 | { 214 | "name": "stdout", 215 | "output_type": "stream", 216 | "text": [ 217 | "Error rate: 0.0\n" 218 | ] 219 | }, 220 | { 221 | "name": "stderr", 222 | "output_type": "stream", 223 | "text": [ 224 | "\n" 225 | ] 226 | } 227 | ], 228 | "source": [ 229 | "result = []\n", 230 | "error = 0\n", 231 | "block_size = 16384\n", 232 | "for i in tqdm(range(0, len(transcript), block_size)):\n", 233 | " prompt = get_prompt(transcript[i:i+block_size])\n", 234 | "\n", 235 | " # get the output text and split it at the first double newline to get only the returned json string\n", 236 | " outp = query_mistral(prompt)[\"output\"][\"choices\"][0][\"text\"].split(\"\\n\\n\")[0]\n", 237 | "\n", 238 | " # validate the returned json string and if it's valid then append it to the result list\n", 239 | " try:\n", 240 | " People.model_validate_json(outp)\n", 241 | " result.append(json.loads(outp))\n", 242 | " except:\n", 243 | " print(\"Invalid json\")\n", 244 | " print(outp)\n", 245 | " error = error + 1 \n", 246 | " sleep(1) # to avoid rate limiting\n", 247 | "\n", 248 | "print(f\"JSON Error rate: {error/len(result)}\")\n" 249 | ] 250 | }, 251 | { 252 | "cell_type": "markdown", 253 | "id": "c100e80b", 254 | "metadata": {}, 255 | "source": [ 256 | "## Result" 257 | ] 258 | }, 259 | { 260 | "cell_type": "code", 261 | "execution_count": 20, 262 | "id": "6be690a5", 263 | "metadata": {}, 264 | "outputs": [ 265 | { 266 | "data": { 267 | "text/plain": [ 268 | "[{'name': 'People'},\n", 269 | " {'name': 'you'},\n", 270 | " {'name': 'Michael Lewis'},\n", 271 | " {'name': 'Bethany McLean'},\n", 272 | " {'name': 'Joe Weisenthal'},\n", 273 | " {'name': 'Motley Fool'},\n", 274 | " {'name': 'The Molly Fool'},\n", 275 | " {'name': 'ting'},\n", 276 | " {'name': 'Marshall McLuhan'},\n", 277 | " {'name': 'Bill Clinton'},\n", 278 | " {'name': 'Keith Rabois'},\n", 279 | " {'name': 'Marc Andreessen'},\n", 280 | " {'name': 'Frederick Lewis Allen'},\n", 281 | " {'name': 'Winston Churchill'},\n", 282 | " {'name': 'John Maynard Keynes'},\n", 283 | " {'name': 'David McCullough'},\n", 284 | " {'name': 'LeBron James'},\n", 285 | " {'name': 'Barry Ritholtz'},\n", 286 | " {'name': 'Mark Twain'},\n", 287 | " {'name': 'Bill Bonner'},\n", 288 | " {'name': 'Felix Salmon'},\n", 289 | " {'name': 'Robert Curson'},\n", 290 | " {'name': 'ny lawyer'},\n", 291 | " {'name': 'Steve Jobs'},\n", 292 | " {'name': 'Warren Buffett'},\n", 293 | " {'name': 'Howard Marks'},\n", 294 | " {'name': 'Kafka'},\n", 295 | " {'name': 'Tom Stoppard'},\n", 296 | " {'name': 'Ken Burns'},\n", 297 | " {'name': 'Rick Burns'},\n", 298 | " {'name': 'Bezos'},\n", 299 | " {'name': 'Will'},\n", 300 | " {'name': 'Stephen Pressfield'},\n", 301 | " {'name': \"Patrick O'Shaughnessy\"},\n", 302 | " {'name': 'Tim Ferriss'},\n", 303 | " {'name': 'Charlie Munger'},\n", 304 | " {'name': 'Nassim Taleb'},\n", 305 | " {'name': 'Marcus Aurelius'},\n", 306 | " {'name': 'Aaron Haspel'},\n", 307 | " {'name': \"Beto O'Rourke\"},\n", 308 | " {'name': 'Kevin Kelly'},\n", 309 | " {'name': 'Larry King'},\n", 310 | " {'name': 'Bill Bryson'},\n", 311 | " {'name': 'Lyndon Johnson'},\n", 312 | " {'name': 'Robert Caro'},\n", 313 | " {'name': 'Gary Provost'},\n", 314 | " {'name': 'Morgan'},\n", 315 | " {'name': 'Jerry'},\n", 316 | " {'name': 'Cameron Diaz'},\n", 317 | " {'name': 'Mike Moritz'},\n", 318 | " {'name': 'Charlie Rose'}]" 319 | ] 320 | }, 321 | "execution_count": 20, 322 | "metadata": {}, 323 | "output_type": "execute_result" 324 | } 325 | ], 326 | "source": [ 327 | "# flatten result\n", 328 | "flat_result = [name for r in result for name in r[\"names\"]]\n", 329 | "\n", 330 | "# deduplicate the result\n", 331 | "seen = set()\n", 332 | "deduplicated_data = [f for f in flat_result if f['name'] not in seen and not seen.add(f['name'])]\n", 333 | "deduplicated_data" 334 | ] 335 | }, 336 | { 337 | "cell_type": "markdown", 338 | "id": "3b353996", 339 | "metadata": {}, 340 | "source": [ 341 | "Of course there are some errors in the extracted names (Hello \"ny lawyer\" or \"ting\") and The Motley Fool was recognized as a person, but all in all, it works. And it's actually straightforward to get Mixtral to adhere to the JSON schema. \n", 342 | "\n", 343 | "You can find a Github repo with the notebook [here](https://github.com/vacmar01/mixtral_data_extraction)." 344 | ] 345 | }, 346 | { 347 | "cell_type": "markdown", 348 | "id": "6b8f60b7", 349 | "metadata": {}, 350 | "source": [] 351 | } 352 | ], 353 | "metadata": { 354 | "kernelspec": { 355 | "display_name": "Python 3 (ipykernel)", 356 | "language": "python", 357 | "name": "python3" 358 | }, 359 | "language_info": { 360 | "codemirror_mode": { 361 | "name": "ipython", 362 | "version": 3 363 | }, 364 | "file_extension": ".py", 365 | "mimetype": "text/x-python", 366 | "name": "python", 367 | "nbconvert_exporter": "python", 368 | "pygments_lexer": "ipython3", 369 | "version": "3.10.6" 370 | } 371 | }, 372 | "nbformat": 4, 373 | "nbformat_minor": 5 374 | } 375 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /transcript_housel_perell.txt: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | People don't remember books, they remember 2 | sentences. When you told me that, and I remember 3 | 4 | you did tell me that, I was like, that's it. 5 | So much of good writing is not what you say, 6 | 7 | it's how you say it. Everywhere you look, 8 | it's best story wins. It's not the best idea, 9 | 10 | it's not the right answer, it's the best story. 11 | Gets people nodding their heads. Are there 12 | 13 | mantras that you think about as you're trying 14 | to write a story? Leave out the parts that 15 | 16 | readers tend to skip. It's a tongue in cheek 17 | quote, but it's like, it's so true. When you're 18 | 19 | writing, you should pretend that every word 20 | costs you a hundred dollars. Oh, that's right. 21 | 22 | And when you're doing that, you'll be like, 23 | do I need this word? Do I need this sentence? 24 | 25 | The major lesson of doing this podcast so 26 | far has just been everything works, but you 27 | 28 | need to just be really, really, really, really, 29 | really good at whatever it is that you do. 30 | 31 | How has your writing changed since you moved 32 | here? My writing hasn't changed at all in 33 | 34 | 17 years. Nothing. Nothing. I don't want, 35 | and I think that's, and it's not to say that 36 | 37 | there's no improvement, but I don't want to 38 | be like, this was one of the lessons for when 39 | 40 | I started writing Psychology of Money. I wanted 41 | to like reinvent myself. 42 | 43 | And I was like, oh, like I always write blog 44 | posts, but now I got to write a book with 45 | 46 | a capital B. Yeah. And I got to write long 47 | chapters. And I had no experience doing that. 48 | 49 | And I shouldn't have just pretended that that 50 | was the same thing as blogging. Right. Because 51 | 52 | it's not. It's a totally different thing. 53 | So then I just owned, like, I'm a blogger. 54 | 55 | And I'm, I have a skill at writing 1500 word 56 | blog posts. And I'm not going to try to break 57 | 58 | that. I'm just going to own that in the book. 59 | So they're going to be short chapters. They're 60 | 61 | going to be blog length chapters. Like each 62 | chapter is a long blog. Yeah. That's kind 63 | 64 | of how I feel about it. 65 | That also made the process more digestible. 66 | 67 | Because if you sit down and you're like, I'm 68 | going to write a 75, 000 word book. It's really 69 | 70 | daunting if you think about it like that. 71 | But if you're like, okay, I need 20 long blog 72 | 73 | posts, even if it's the same thing, it's a 74 | lot more digested. It's you look at it and 75 | 76 | you're like, okay, I can do this. 77 | I can tackle, I can knock that out. Are there 78 | 79 | writers who have done a good job transitioning 80 | formats like that? Because even Seth Godin, 81 | 82 | Seth Godin has an amazing blog, but his books 83 | are these mini blogs, just like what he writes 84 | 85 | every day. It's like people have these lanes 86 | and they get really good at They have their 87 | 88 | hammer, and they get good at looking for the, 89 | for those sorts of nails, and then their books 90 | 91 | are exactly what they write normally. 92 | I'm trying to think of someone who can, who 93 | 94 | has really done both. And a lot of the really 95 | good book authors, Bethany McLean, Michael 96 | 97 | Lewis, all those people, a lot of times they 98 | write for magazines. Both those authors I 99 | 100 | mentioned have written for Vanity Fair. Yep. 101 | And when they write a magazine piece, It's 102 | 103 | a book chapter. 104 | It's a long book chapter and in fact several 105 | 106 | Michael Lewis books like Boomerang have been 107 | based off of Vanity Fair pieces that he wrote. 108 | 109 | So even those people who are like, oh, they 110 | write books and they write online It's actually 111 | 112 | like what they're writing online is kind of 113 | very similar to what they would write in the 114 | 115 | book It's just online you get one chapter 116 | and a book is ten of them and so I'm trying 117 | 118 | to think of people who have you know, who 119 | can write really good 400 word blog posts 120 | 121 | and And a great 75, 000 word book in a long 122 | form book format. 123 | 124 | I'm sure they exist, but I actually think 125 | it's great that people kind of own what they 126 | 127 | do. Um, remember 10, 15 years ago when Joe 128 | Weisenthal was writing a lot at Business Insider, 129 | 130 | he was literally doing 10 blog posts a day. 131 | And his blog posts would be a chart and three 132 | 133 | sentences. And that was his, that was, that 134 | would be his blog post. 135 | 136 | And he was, he was the best in the world at 137 | that. And like, could Joe write a 75, 000 138 | 139 | word book? Probably. And it would probably 140 | be great. But I think so many people just 141 | 142 | own that format. Like, what are you good at? 143 | Just do that. And don't pretend like you have 144 | 145 | to be somebody else. Have there been moments 146 | in your career where you feel like you've... 147 | 148 | You've wanted to be somebody else, you've 149 | tried to be somebody else, and you've said 150 | 151 | I'm not that person, I'm not going to do that 152 | anymore. I tried it with Psychology of Money. 153 | 154 | When I set out to write Psychology of Money, 155 | I said I'm going to write a new book from 156 | 157 | scratch. It's going to be 10 chapters, each 158 | chapter is going to be 6, 000 words. 159 | 160 | That's what I set out to write, which would 161 | be a pretty normal, structured, long, uh, 162 | 163 | non fiction book. And I started writing it, 164 | and I wrote two shitty chapters. Neither of 165 | 166 | which made it into the book. They were both 167 | 6, 000 words. And I sent it to a couple friends 168 | 169 | of mine whose opinions I really value. And 170 | all of them independently, and I'm glad they 171 | 172 | did this, they wrote back and they said, What 173 | is this? 174 | 175 | This is not you. Who wrote this? This is not 176 | good at all. And it was because I had gained, 177 | 178 | what I liked doing, was writing a 1500 word 179 | blog. And you can think in your mind, Okay, 180 | 181 | I'm good at 1, 500 word blogs. I'm just going 182 | to start doing 6, 000 word chapters, and you 183 | 184 | can think like, oh, how hard can it be? It's 185 | a completely different thing. 186 | 187 | Completely different. It's the equivalent 188 | of like, you're really skilled at jazz music, 189 | 190 | and then you're like, I could do heavy metal. 191 | It's music. It's the same thing, right? Like, 192 | 193 | that's so different. So when I tried to do 194 | that, it was, and what I did is pretty foreseeable. 195 | 196 | I just rambled. And rambled and rambled and 197 | rambled and rambled. 198 | 199 | And I was like, I gotta get to 6, 000 words. 200 | Throw in a couple more examples. Throw in 201 | 202 | a couple more stories. How can I just extend 203 | this idea? And so in the end, it was, you 204 | 205 | know, what I was really wanted to do is just 206 | be like, what's the point that I'm trying 207 | 208 | to make in that chapter? Make that point, 209 | wrap it up, move to the next chapter. 210 | 211 | Wait, but explain this to me. How about how 212 | all this happened in Psychology of Money, 213 | 214 | which are both longer pieces. What happens 215 | there? Is it that they're, that idea, a long 216 | 217 | idea is now ready and you can just go there? 218 | And sometimes you can do that, but now when 219 | 220 | you need to write like 12 of those, that's 221 | when it really breaks down? 222 | 223 | Well, the blog post Psychology of Money, that 224 | was, that was the origin of the book. It was 225 | 226 | like 10, 000 words, right? But yes, and it 227 | was broken up into nine, I think it was 19. 228 | 229 | Little segments in the blog post, how this 230 | all happened, which is kind of about, it's 231 | 232 | just, I think it's 6, 000 words on the history 233 | of the U S economy that was all broken up 234 | 235 | into about 10 different time periods. 236 | So even within that blog, there's like 10 237 | 238 | mini blogs within there, the psychology of 239 | money blog post. I, that too was kind of based 240 | 241 | off of, I was like, okay, what articles have 242 | I written in the past? How can I basically 243 | 244 | condense those points? So each, each point 245 | would have been about 500 words, something 246 | 247 | like that. 248 | And so, so even when it is a long form. It's 249 | 250 | very, it's broken up into little bits. How 251 | about in the piece that you wrote about your 252 | 253 | friend who passed, uh, the one when you were 254 | skiing, that one was a little bit different. 255 | 256 | That was probably about 3, 000 words or so, 257 | so it's not that long. And since that was 258 | 259 | a very clear, there's one story to tell, uh, 260 | you know, that, that came out a little bit 261 | 262 | more, but even within that, thinking about 263 | it, that's really broken up into three pieces. 264 | 265 | It's like, here's our background, here's what 266 | happened during the avalanche, and here's 267 | 268 | what I learned from it. And it's like three 269 | distinct sections. Yeah. In terms of writing 270 | 271 | really good stories, is that something that 272 | you've worked on? Is that something that you 273 | 274 | feel is just very intuitive? I'm sure you're 275 | thinking about it all the time, but how have 276 | 277 | you gone about improving that? 278 | I think it was, it was, you know, if you write 279 | 280 | online, the, the hardest part and the best 281 | part is that if you write something bad, People 282 | 283 | will tell you in no uncertain terms how bad 284 | it was. Like the feedback, you, you need a 285 | 286 | thick skin, but if, but the feedback is so 287 | great that you are constantly learning. So 288 | 289 | if you're publishing every day and you're 290 | getting feedback on that every day, and you 291 | 292 | do that for years or decades, you'll, you 293 | are forced to see what works and what doesn't 294 | 295 | work. 296 | And so I, you know, if you were, I, I've always 297 | 298 | been a finance writer and particularly back 299 | in the day, I was very much, I was writing 300 | 301 | about the stock market every day. This was 302 | Motley Fool. Yes. Three, three articles a 303 | 304 | day. That's like. What's 700 a year? Uh, I 305 | think I was in the Mollie Fool for nine years 306 | 307 | and I wrote 3, 500 articles when I was there. 308 | So whatever that works out to, it was a lot 309 | 310 | and getting, and getting critical feedback 311 | by hundreds of readers on every single one 312 | 313 | of them. And I realized that if you want to 314 | stick out as a writer, it's competitive. There's 315 | 316 | a lot of other writers out there writing about 317 | finance, that if you are just writing. 318 | 319 | As a data person, you're, you're not, you're, 320 | you're, you're never going to stick out. If 321 | 322 | you write, Oh, the Dow went up a hundred points 323 | and here's the stock, you're, you're never 324 | 325 | going to stick out. There's 10, 000 other 326 | people doing that. So it's like, okay, well, 327 | 328 | if you can tell a story about finance, you 329 | might actually stick out a little bit because 330 | 331 | a lot of the other data writing was. 332 | Boring too. It's just like charts and numbers 333 | 334 | and it's just not really, but if you can tell 335 | a story, that's how you stick out in finance. 336 | 337 | So I started realizing like that's, that's 338 | the way to survive as a writer. If I want 339 | 340 | to, it was never about like, how can I get 341 | better? It was literally just like, how can 342 | 343 | I keep my job? 344 | How can I survive as a writer that I need 345 | 346 | to start telling stories about things. And 347 | I also thought it was just more interesting 348 | 349 | for me. I enjoyed it more. I was not going 350 | to enjoy a job where I just woke up and just 351 | 352 | lived inside of Excel and dumped charts on 353 | the page. But if I could get in the minds 354 | 355 | of people. 356 | Then I was really excited. And from a investing 357 | 358 | perspective, I was never that interested in 359 | picking stocks. I was never interested in 360 | 361 | doing, you know, uh, discounted cashflow analysis. 362 | I just wanted to figure out what was going 363 | 364 | on inside of people's heads. It was just like, 365 | how are you, like, what are you thinking? 366 | 367 | How are you making decisions? And so that 368 | lent itself to telling stories versus doing 369 | 370 | analysis. So it was those two things. It was 371 | just more interesting. And I thought it was 372 | 373 | a way to survive as a writer. Did you, Read 374 | and write a lot as a kid? Virtually zero. 375 | 376 | So when did that change? Well, I started as 377 | a writer for The Motley Fool out of desperation. 378 | 379 | This is 2008. Yeah, I started technically 380 | in 2007, but the economy was already starting 381 | 382 | to crack by then. Got it. And so if you were 383 | a finance major, if you're looking for a job 384 | 385 | in an investment bank, forget about it. By 386 | summer of 2007, everything was shutting down. 387 | 388 | I was interning for a private equity firm 389 | in summer 2007, and everything started cracking. 390 | 391 | Cracking, which in hindsight, we didn't know 392 | at the time, but in hindsight, that was like 393 | 394 | the preamble of the financial crisis in 2007. 395 | So I needed a job and, um, in 2007 and virtually 396 | 397 | no one was hiring. And I had a friend at the 398 | time who was a writer for the Motley Fool. 399 | 400 | And he said, Hey, you're looking for a job. 401 | You're interested in investing. Like they'll 402 | 403 | do it. And I remember thinking, Hey, it was, 404 | I don't believe this anymore, but at the time 405 | 406 | I really felt like it was. Humiliating that 407 | like I'm, I'm a writer, I want to be a hedge 408 | 409 | fund manager and now I'm a journalist. It 410 | was, I, I really viewed it as like, ah, this 411 | 412 | is like, I don't know how this feels, but 413 | I need a job. 414 | 415 | So I thought, okay, I'll do this for six months 416 | until I can find a job at a hedge fund, become 417 | 418 | a trader at a hedge fund. But I, I, I didn't, 419 | and it was, it was not enjoyable at first. 420 | 421 | It felt the first year felt just like a job. 422 | Like I'm just doing this for a paycheck. I 423 | 424 | can crank out a couple of words, but then 425 | I started really enjoying it. 426 | 427 | I think it was once I started telling stories. 428 | Versus like, let me just do some analysis 429 | 430 | about the stock. Once I started telling stories, 431 | I was like, Oh, this is kind of fun. Actually, 432 | 433 | I kind of enjoy it. And then I really started 434 | enjoying it. It took probably five years before 435 | 436 | it was like. Oh, this is what I do. 437 | This is not just a, you know, a temporary 438 | 439 | stop until I find another career. This is 440 | what I'm going to do. That probably took five 441 | 442 | years. Was there like a post, a comment, a 443 | moment where you were like, I got game? Um, 444 | 445 | my very first, I had been at the Molly Fool 446 | for like a month at this point and it's late 447 | 448 | 2007 and I wrote an article and I'm so embarrassed 449 | to say this because I would never use this 450 | 451 | title anymore. 452 | The article is titled the impending destruction 453 | 454 | of the US economy, which at the time, I think 455 | at the time, I honestly didn't know how much, 456 | 457 | how many people were reading. I didn't really 458 | think about that. That kind of headline is 459 | 460 | going to get people's attention, but it was 461 | late 2007. So the economy hadn't collapsed 462 | 463 | yet, but it was definitely starting to weaken. 464 | So I think that got to a lot of people, a 465 | 466 | lot of people were like, yes, that's how I 467 | feel too. But, um, and in hindsight, actually, 468 | 469 | I think my analysis was totally wrong. Like 470 | the economy did collapse one year later, but 471 | 472 | not for the, like, not for the reasons that 473 | I'd, that I foresaw, but that was the one, 474 | 475 | it got a lot of attention and other press 476 | outlets picked it up and stuff. 477 | 478 | And I'd been there for a month. So that was 479 | kind of a point where I was like, oh, this 480 | 481 | actually is. It's kind of neat. I'm not just 482 | writing into an echo chamber here. Yeah. And 483 | 484 | as you were getting started in your writing, 485 | who were you looking up to? I think the honest 486 | 487 | answer is during that first year, nobody. 488 | You just needed to get stuff done. I just 489 | 490 | needed, I just needed a job. I needed to work. 491 | It was not like, oh, cause like I said, I 492 | 493 | was not a reader or a writer during that, 494 | but definitely not. I was an economics major 495 | 496 | in college, which is just like, as long as 497 | you can write your name on the top of the 498 | 499 | test, that's all they ask out of you. 500 | So I'd really never written anything when 501 | 502 | I started as a writer for The Motley Fool. 503 | And I remember my mom, who's been so supportive 504 | 505 | of everything in my life, I called her and 506 | I said, Oh mom, I got a job as a writer. And 507 | 508 | she went. Morgan, like, do you, do you know 509 | how to write? Like, what are, like, what are 510 | 511 | you doing here? 512 | And I remember being so disappointed. I remember 513 | 514 | just being like, oh, you're, because she was 515 | right. It's like I really had no, no business 516 | 517 | doing it. Um, so I really didn't have any 518 | writing heroes that I looked up to. Because 519 | 520 | I would casually read here and there, but 521 | really not that much. I, I do now, but when 522 | 523 | I started I was not much of a reader either. 524 | How do you read now? I read a lot less than 525 | 526 | I used to. I definitely went through a period. 527 | Five or ten years ago where I was like reading 528 | 529 | for sport. It was just like how many books 530 | can I read per month? Yeah, and it was just 531 | 532 | a game and I think I liked telling people. 533 | Oh, I read nine books last month But then 534 | 535 | you look back and you're like you're just 536 | doing it for the numbers Because when you 537 | 538 | blow through books that quickly, you're not 539 | thinking about it You're not reading a book 540 | 541 | and then like, you know, meditating on what 542 | you've just read and thinking about the points. 543 | 544 | You're not stopping a chapter and being like, 545 | oh, how does that apply to me? You're just 546 | 547 | like, how can I get through it as fast as 548 | I can? So I stopped doing that. So now I read 549 | 550 | maybe one, sometimes two books a month. But 551 | I read intentionally slower and a lot of times 552 | 553 | I'll read a chapter or even I'll read a paragraph 554 | and I'll be, I'll stop and be like, ah, let 555 | 556 | me think about that. 557 | Is that true? Yeah, I think it's true. How 558 | 559 | does that apply to other people? Oh, I think 560 | that reminds me of this other thing. It's 561 | 562 | funny. I've gone through the same transition. 563 | I feel like also early when you haven't read 564 | 565 | a lot, you're just getting started. A book 566 | can just shake your world view, you know, 567 | 568 | it's quake books, people call them. 569 | And like, I remember I read Marshall McLuhan's 570 | 571 | Understanding Media, and I was like, Oh my 572 | goodness, this is an entirely new way to think, 573 | 574 | and then I sort of read all around it, and 575 | I feel like I spent five to eight years just 576 | 577 | reading and reading and reading, and just 578 | basically building up the receptors in my 579 | 580 | brain for new information. 581 | But then I kind of got to a place where it's 582 | 583 | like, I don't really need new receptors. I 584 | sort of know what I'm doing with my career, 585 | 586 | I know what my interests are, and now I'm 587 | just kind of slowly trying to take one aspect 588 | 589 | of my worldview and really deepen it, another 590 | aspect of my worldview and really deepen it. 591 | 592 | And now I just, I don't read for sport anymore 593 | at all, but I used to do like an entire Saturday 594 | 595 | Sunday where I'd do like an audiobook. Read 596 | most of one. I would read another hardcover, 597 | 598 | and it was like just like what you said It 599 | was like I got my gym routine. I got my reading 600 | 601 | routine, and I'm gonna be disciplined and 602 | dedicated about this I remember I remember 603 | 604 | I read I heard one time that when Bill Clinton 605 | was in college There was one summer where 606 | 607 | he read a book a day for the entire summer 608 | Geez, I never really thinking that I'm being 609 | 610 | like god. 611 | That's amazing. That's why he's so smart That's 612 | 613 | why he's like so and now I look back at it, 614 | and it's like no That's that's reading for 615 | 616 | sport and I guarantee you He didn't learn 617 | that much that summer. That's the irony of 618 | 619 | it. But I don't regret it. I think it's good 620 | to go through that. And maybe that process, 621 | 622 | because I think a lot of people do that in 623 | their like early to mid twenties, the reading 624 | 625 | for sport period. 626 | And actually what might be happening is you're 627 | 628 | like training yourself to read. I think so. 629 | I think that's what it is. So now that I read 630 | 631 | much slower, but I think you pick up some 632 | reading skills when you just get, just bury 633 | 634 | yourself in the words. I think you also, I 635 | mean I remember I had an internship In college 636 | 637 | at this company called skiff, there was a 638 | travel news and data company. 639 | 640 | And I had been in university and my university 641 | wasn't super rigorous. And now I'm in New 642 | 643 | York city in Manhattan at like a real startup. 644 | And I just realized. In that summer that I 645 | 646 | knew nothing. I say that with no humility 647 | at all. Like I just knew nothing. I had nothing 648 | 649 | to value. Or nothing to offer the world. 650 | I had nothing of value to give. I just didn't 651 | 652 | know anything. And so I remember coming back 653 | to school and I found Stratechery, I found 654 | 655 | Keith Rabois stuff. I found Marc Andreessen. 656 | I was like, okay, I'm going to learn all about 657 | 658 | startups. And I just read and I read and I 659 | read. And I feel like I had to go through 660 | 661 | this explore exploit type thing. 662 | Where I had to figure out, okay, what am I 663 | 664 | even interested in? And so a lot of the reading 665 | maybe wasn't about learning stuff, but just 666 | 667 | trying to figure out what do I want to be 668 | reading in the future. And now I feel like 669 | 670 | I can walk into a bookstore and just say, 671 | okay, I know exactly what sections I like, 672 | 673 | I know exactly what authors I'm looking for, 674 | and I know exactly these little circles of 675 | 676 | interest for me. 677 | I feel like, too, another skill that I picked 678 | 679 | up from that is just being able to skim a 680 | little bit more effectively. So there's a 681 | 682 | lot of times, even the great books that I 683 | really love, sometimes you're reading, even 684 | 685 | sometimes an entire chapter and just be like, 686 | this isn't working for me. Let's move on to 687 | 688 | the next. 689 | But even within a chapter, you can be reading 690 | 691 | and you just kind of tell like, uh, that paragraph's 692 | not relevant. Ooh, this is a good one. Just 693 | 694 | kind of skimming like that. And I think that's 695 | an important skill that you pick up during 696 | 697 | that period. How did you find Frederick Lewis 698 | Allen's work and how has it impacted you? 699 | 700 | I don't know where I first heard of Frederick 701 | Lewis Allen. I don't, I can't think of the 702 | 703 | moment when it was because he's pretty obscure. 704 | Yeah. He was a, he was a historian, did most 705 | 706 | of his writing. in the 1930s through 1950s. 707 | And he's my favorite historian and one of 708 | 709 | my favorite writers. He wrote three books. 710 | One is, one is on the 1920s, one's on the 711 | 712 | 1930s, and one is How America Changed from 713 | 1900 to 1950. Yeah. Uh, he's just so good. 714 | 715 | What I think, what I really love about him 716 | is that most historians, almost all historians, 717 | 718 | Write about the big figures, the presidents, 719 | the generals, the entrepreneurs. Frederick 720 | 721 | Louis Allen writes about average people. 722 | He's just like, what was life like for the 723 | 724 | average middle class American in the 1920s? 725 | And it's just so, you can just relate to it 726 | 727 | so much better than if you're reading about 728 | Winston Churchill or something. Right. That's 729 | 730 | what he's so good about. And, um, a lot of 731 | that historic writing, even if we're talking 732 | 733 | a hundred years ago, like not that long ago. 734 | A lot of it's hard to read, it's dense, it's 735 | 736 | very formal, it's, but Frederick Louis Allen 737 | is like a, a chatty writer. You feel like 738 | 739 | it's easy to read. I feel like in 1930, he 740 | was writing like somebody would write in the 741 | 742 | 2010s, which is pretty rare. A lot of those 743 | books, you're like, Oh, this, this book written 744 | 745 | in 1920, even if it's a famous writer. 746 | Ernest Hemingway or something. You pick it 747 | 748 | up and you're like, this is just not how people 749 | write anymore. It's, it's good in its own 750 | 751 | way, but Frederick Lewis Allen is just very 752 | readable, which is so rare for that period. 753 | 754 | Is he a good storyteller or was it more the 755 | data and the facts? It's both. It's both. 756 | 757 | He gets these data and facts about what life 758 | was like back then, but it's, it's easy to 759 | 760 | read. 761 | I'll tell you the opposite of that. If anyone 762 | 763 | has ever read, read John Maynard Keynes, you 764 | can't, you can't do it. You try to read one 765 | 766 | paragraph and you're like, uh, my, uh, I've 767 | no, I read, I understand what these, like, 768 | 769 | I know what that word is, but I have no idea 770 | what you're saying here. It's not readable 771 | 772 | at all. 773 | Frederick Lewis Allen was the opposite of 774 | 775 | that. One of the coolest things that I remember 776 | is we were talking at this point, half a decade 777 | 778 | ago, and we were talking about something that 779 | was going on with how unemployment rates were 780 | 781 | calculated in America. You were just like, 782 | dude, just go on the St. Louis Federal Reserve 783 | 784 | website and just start playing around with 785 | FRED data, and you'll realize that there's 786 | 787 | so much BS out there, and you will find so 788 | many things and learn so many things by just 789 | 790 | like skipping around on the site. 791 | And that was a great piece of advice. Fred, 792 | 793 | it's called FRED, which stands for Federal 794 | Reserve Economic Data. Okay. Um, it has literally 795 | 796 | thousands, I forget the exact number, but 797 | it's thousands, maybe even tens of thousands 798 | 799 | of data points on the U. S. economy. Everything 800 | you can think of, like how many chickens were 801 | 802 | harvested in this county in Kentucky. 803 | And it'll have that data, it'll have a chart 804 | 805 | with that data going back to the 1920s. It's 806 | like the most obscure you can think of anything. 807 | 808 | And it's a really good tool to like manipulate 809 | data so you can see. Um, you can be like, 810 | 811 | all right, GDP divide and then like divide 812 | that by the population of California. 813 | 814 | You can get like any statistic you want, which 815 | is really good, but then you realize you can 816 | 817 | get any statistic you want. What do you want 818 | to prove? There's enough data there that you 819 | 820 | can prove it and find anything that you want. 821 | And so it's an amazing tool. I think it's 822 | 823 | a great, it's a great public resource. 824 | It's all free of course and it's just very 825 | 826 | usable. You don't need to be an economist 827 | to figure out what you're doing. Anyone can 828 | 829 | just go in there and type in unemployment 830 | rate and it'll show you. Every different kind 831 | 832 | of unemployment rate broken out by gender, 833 | age, education type, going back to, in some 834 | 835 | cases, the 1920s. 836 | It's a great, it's a great piece. Are there 837 | 838 | other tools like that that you like to use? 839 | The one that really sticks out, when I used 840 | 841 | to live in Washington, D. C., I used to go 842 | to the Library of Congress a lot. And they 843 | 844 | have, it used to be just on microfilm, but 845 | now it's all digitized. Every edition. of 846 | 847 | many, many newspapers going back to literally 848 | the 1700s. 849 | 850 | And I just think it was the coolest. So I 851 | used to go in there and just kill time and 852 | 853 | be like, without any objective, I would just 854 | go in there and be like, I'm going to read 855 | 856 | the New York Times from a random day in 1922. 857 | And I loved every second of that. It was so 858 | 859 | cool. Even the most benign things of just 860 | like, there would be an advertisement for 861 | 862 | like women's coats. 863 | And you're like, wow, like a high end women's 864 | 865 | coat in 1922 across. 19 or whatever it was. 866 | This is all these little things. But it's 867 | 868 | also so interesting to read history when there's 869 | no hindsight bias. And when you read a newspaper 870 | 871 | from 1922, they didn't know what was going 872 | to happen in 1923. They didn't know how it 873 | 874 | was going to happen in 1929. 875 | So you really get to see, like, what was going 876 | 877 | through people's heads at that time. Which, 878 | every history book, That's written with hindsight 879 | 880 | bias shapes the story. When you know how the 881 | story ends, it shapes how you write about 882 | 883 | it. So I love reading that kind of history 884 | when there's no inherent hindsight bias involved. 885 | 886 | Yeah, I was watching an interview with David 887 | McCullough and he was talking about writing 888 | 889 | his book about the Brooklyn Bridge. And He 890 | was asked what is the key to writing good 891 | 892 | history, and he said exactly this, he said 893 | a great historian will have you reading it, 894 | 895 | remembering, feeling that the people who are 896 | experiencing that moment didn't know how history 897 | 898 | was going to pan out. 899 | And it's really fascinating if you're talking, 900 | 901 | if you're reading about a period, like, In 902 | the middle of the Great Depression or the 903 | 904 | middle of World War II when they did not know 905 | how it was gonna end. We know how it ends 906 | 907 | now, right? And every book written about the 908 | Great Depression knows that it did end. 909 | 910 | But in 1932, they didn't know that it was 911 | gonna end. Mm-Hmm. . And you realize there's 912 | 913 | all these, um, alternative histories that 914 | could have happened. Like we think of, uh, 915 | 916 | dictatorships and autocracies kind of as in, 917 | in a very negative light today, as, as we 918 | 919 | should. Mm-Hmm. in 1932, they by and large 920 | didn't. And when that was the fascists, when 921 | 922 | fascism was sweeping through Europe, a lot 923 | of Americans were like. 924 | 925 | We should give it a shot too. And when you 926 | are in the depths of the depression and unemployment 927 | 928 | rate is 25 percent and the stock market fell 929 | 91%, a lot of people who would never consider 930 | 931 | that in 1922 are like, Capitalism broke, let's 932 | give something else a shot. And so when you 933 | 934 | read how serious they were about it, and these 935 | were smart, educated people, it's pretty shocking. 936 | 937 | And the only reason that they were saying 938 | that is because they did not know that it 939 | 940 | was going to end. In their view, it might 941 | not ever end. This might be truly the end 942 | 943 | of America, so we might as well try something 944 | else. Wow. Are there mantras that you think 945 | 946 | about as you're trying to write a story? I 947 | think one that comes to mind that is always 948 | 949 | like a little bird on my shoulder chirping 950 | away is What's your point? 951 | 952 | Make the point and get out of the way. Like, 953 | it's easy to underestimate how impatient readers 954 | 955 | are. And I see it with myself. Not just in 956 | writing, but watching TV and watching movies. 957 | 958 | It's just like, what's the point? Get to the 959 | point. What's, what's the point? My, my wife 960 | 961 | is the most impatient TV watcher. So if there's 962 | a great series, like, Oh, like my friend told 963 | 964 | me this is the best series, we gotta watch 965 | it. 966 | 967 | We'll start watching the first five minutes 968 | of the first episode and she'll be like, bored, 969 | 970 | moving on. Just got like you got to catch 971 | people's attention. She's extreme like that 972 | 973 | in TV, but I think most people are like that 974 | for writing. You got five seconds to catch 975 | 976 | somebody's attention. If you didn't catch 977 | them with the headline and you didn't catch 978 | 979 | them in the first two sentences, they're done. 980 | They're gone. A lot of the reason why online 981 | 982 | writing became snappy, snappier than print 983 | writing, is because with online writing came 984 | 985 | a lot of tools where you could track and see 986 | how far down the page the readers made it. 987 | 988 | Yep. Which you can't do that in a paper book 989 | or in a paper newspaper. So once these publications 990 | 991 | started realizing, Hey, we thought this piece 992 | was really good, and a lot of people clicked 993 | 994 | on it, but the average reader made it to the 995 | third sentence before they closed the tab. 996 | 997 | Right? Then you, or you can really track it, 998 | you're like, oh, they actually made it down 999 | 1000 | to 60% and then, and then they dropped off 1001 | completely. Well, what happened at 60%? Oh, 1002 | 1003 | you're clearly rambling, and as soon as you 1004 | started rambling for three seconds, they're 1005 | 1006 | gone. They're out. How often when you're writing, 1007 | do you feel like you have the story? 1008 | 1009 | And then you need to find the point versus 1010 | have the point and then start looking for 1011 | 1012 | the story or is it just like this epiphany 1013 | that you have, you write it in a sentence, 1014 | 1015 | you email it to yourself and you run from 1016 | there. I think it's always the first. I find 1017 | 1018 | the story. Is that right? Always. And then 1019 | you're like, how can I, what's the lesson 1020 | 1021 | here that I could apply to something broader? 1022 | And I can't think of one time when it's been 1023 | 1024 | the former. What? When it's like, oh, I want 1025 | to write an article about competitive advantages 1026 | 1027 | and I need to find a good story that fits 1028 | that. It's always, it's every single time 1029 | 1030 | it's been the latter. You're so good at it. 1031 | I mean, I just off the top of my head, I think 1032 | 1033 | of so many Morgan stories that you just nailed. 1034 | I love the Steamboat Willie one with Walt 1035 | 1036 | Disney. Oh yeah, yeah. Well, so Walt Disney 1037 | was, when he was a cartoonist, early in his 1038 | 1039 | career when he was a cartoonist, um, he was 1040 | very good at making cartoons and they were 1041 | 1042 | very popular. And, but he had no business 1043 | sense whatsoever and all the cartoons he was 1044 | 1045 | making were not. 1046 | He was not making any money. So there's a 1047 | 1048 | period when he had made all these cartoons, 1049 | all these like cartoon shorts, and he was 1050 | 1051 | on the verge of bankruptcy. It wasn't working. 1052 | And then Steamboat Willie completely changed 1053 | 1054 | everything. It was, no, it wasn't Steamboat 1055 | Willie. It was Snow White. Snow White completely 1056 | 1057 | and utterly changed everything. 1058 | And like by several orders of magnitude, it 1059 | 1060 | was bigger financially than everything else 1061 | he had ever made. So at that point in his 1062 | 1063 | career, he had made. Dozens of cartoon short 1064 | movies, and none of them mattered except for 1065 | 1066 | Snow White. And that was the movie, he made 1067 | so much money from that, that he built a new 1068 | 1069 | studio, and hired a bunch of people, and paid 1070 | off a bunch of debts that were about to put 1071 | 1072 | him into bankruptcy. 1073 | So I use that as an example of Tales. Like, 1074 | 1075 | he had made, I don't know, 30 movies, and 1076 | only one of them mattered. And that is like 1077 | 1078 | a distribution that applies to so many things 1079 | in life. Of, if you do 30 things, 29 of them 1080 | 1081 | are going to be irrelevant, or 29 of them 1082 | are going to be failures. And one of them, 1083 | 1084 | hopefully, if you're good, will completely 1085 | change everything. 1086 | 1087 | How does that show up in your writing? Oh, 1088 | I mean, of the, you know, I bet at this point 1089 | 1090 | it's... Pushing 4, 000 blog posts. I think 1091 | I'm really proud of like 10 of them. Oh, wow. 1092 | 1093 | That's probably true. Maybe 20. One a year? 1094 | Yeah, yeah. No, I always said that. You know, 1095 | 1096 | I write a lot less than I used to. But even 1097 | at The Motley Fool when I was writing three 1098 | 1099 | articles a day. 1100 | So, you know, several hundred a year. I'd 1101 | 1102 | be proud of five. And I think, I think, I 1103 | think if you do that ratio, that's pretty 1104 | 1105 | good. If you can come up with one thing per 1106 | year that you're like, Um, this is good. I'm 1107 | 1108 | really proud. And even within that, I can 1109 | think of one. per decade, where I'm like, 1110 | 1111 | that was, that's, that was what I would really 1112 | want to hang my hat on. 1113 | 1114 | So it's never going to be the case, but I 1115 | think it's true for musicians and whatnot. 1116 | 1117 | And it's true. I always use the example, Stephen 1118 | King has written like 50 books and the huge 1119 | 1120 | majority of his fame and I bet his income 1121 | come from like three of them. Yeah. So even 1122 | 1123 | the very top writers, Mark Twain is like this 1124 | too. 1125 | 1126 | The Ken Burns documentary on Mark Twain is 1127 | so great. He wrote so many books. That sucked 1128 | 1129 | and nobody cared about and nobody paid any 1130 | attention to and you've never heard of them 1131 | 1132 | because it never became famous But as long 1133 | as you have Huck Finn that you can throw in 1134 | 1135 | there and Tom Sawyer to throw that none of 1136 | it matters Yeah, how do you feel about that 1137 | 1138 | now about to publish a second book that's 1139 | coming out? 1140 | 1141 | Does that scare you or is like hey, this might 1142 | be a flop scares the hell out of me Yeah, 1143 | 1144 | I but I think you have to accept that as a 1145 | writer that if you're gonna write several 1146 | 1147 | books if you are very lucky If you're extremely 1148 | lucky, one of them will be great. And I don't 1149 | 1150 | think there's any exceptions to that. 1151 | Michael Lewis falls into that. There's a lot 1152 | 1153 | of Michael Lewis books that I bet even Michael 1154 | Lewis fans have barely ever heard of. Uh, 1155 | 1156 | The New New Thing. Most people have never 1157 | heard of it. Even some of his more recent 1158 | 1159 | books, The Fifth Risk. Yeah. And The Undoing 1160 | Project. Um, I'm sure they're great books. 1161 | 1162 | Well written, very insightful. 1163 | But it's never going to be the case at everything 1164 | 1165 | you do. How many games has LeBron James lost? 1166 | In his career. Like, like a lot, a ton of 1167 | 1168 | games. So no matter what you're doing, your 1169 | hit rate's never going to be anywhere remotely 1170 | 1171 | close to 100%. Is it worth trying to get it 1172 | up? Or do you think that you're making real 1173 | 1174 | sacrifices by trying to get it up? 1175 | Or is it just like, you can't even think about 1176 | 1177 | how to increase your hit rate, it's a fool's 1178 | errand to even try to go for it? I think it's 1179 | 1180 | probably closer to the latter. Yeah. I mean, 1181 | it's not to say you can't do anything. You 1182 | 1183 | shouldn't just throw crap at the wall and 1184 | see what sticks. But you got to be prepared 1185 | 1186 | for the fact that there's going to be a lot 1187 | of losing in this and that's hard That's hard 1188 | 1189 | to do particularly for new writers when they're 1190 | like, I just started a blog I'm just gonna 1191 | 1192 | see how it works and I wrote ten posts and 1193 | like people hated eight of them Yeah, that's 1194 | 1195 | actually a pretty good ratio, you know, but 1196 | that's that's hard for people to stomach Tell 1197 | 1198 | me about your office that you write in here. 1199 | You always write in there, right? Yeah, and 1200 | 1201 | I travel a lot for work, but I can't I can't 1202 | write anywhere else but here. You can't? Can't 1203 | 1204 | do it. Can't do it. Really? Even in a hotel 1205 | room by myself, perfectly quiet. I can't. 1206 | 1207 | I just can't do it. I don't, I don't really 1208 | know why it is. I think, because I'm not that 1209 | 1210 | sentimental of a person, I don't know what 1211 | it is, but I, I write everything just from, 1212 | 1213 | from this office down the hallway here, yeah. 1214 | So tell me about the office. Uh, it's small. 1215 | 1216 | Besides your perfect bookshelf. I walked in, 1217 | it was all perfect hardcovers and you were 1218 | 1219 | like, every, it's like a perfect line on the 1220 | shelf. It's really deliberate. I'm, I'm, I'm, 1221 | 1222 | I'm very, I'm very precise about my bookshelf. 1223 | What matters in a home office. Yes. Yes. Um, 1224 | 1225 | I like it. 1226 | It's where I do. I spend the majority of my 1227 | 1228 | life in that office. Cause even, you know, 1229 | I, I don't write that often. There may be 1230 | 1231 | one day a week that I'm actually typing words 1232 | out and the rest of it is just kind of unstructured, 1233 | 1234 | hanging out, reading, thinking, talking to 1235 | friends. And that's where the real work happens. 1236 | 1237 | But actually typing is a pretty, it's was 1238 | one day a week now. And the rest of the time 1239 | 1240 | it's. Scroll on Twitter, watching a YouTube. 1241 | I was just watching a YouTube documentary 1242 | 1243 | about FTX that just came out. And it's a lot 1244 | of just unstructured wandering, which is what 1245 | 1246 | I like doing, and it all, it's all in that 1247 | room. 1248 | 1249 | Oh, wow. What do you do? Kick your feet up? 1250 | Drink coffee? That's it. Feet on the desk, 1251 | 1252 | hang out. Smoke a cigar? Drink coffee. Drink 1253 | coffee. Uh, interesting. I didn't realize 1254 | 1255 | that you only typed one day a week. Yeah, 1256 | it used to be, you know, I was at the Motley 1257 | 1258 | Fool's every day, every single day. Um, because 1259 | I was publishing every single day. 1260 | 1261 | But now I publish about once a week. And normally 1262 | it's like, okay, it's Monday. Like, alright, 1263 | 1264 | like, I gotta think of something to write. 1265 | Well, what am I thinking about? Oh, I kinda 1266 | 1267 | had this idea, like, I don't know if that's 1268 | developed enough. Well, I was thinking about 1269 | 1270 | this other thing. Oh, that might, let's see 1271 | where that runs. 1272 | 1273 | Like, oh, let me think about this idea. Okay, 1274 | now I'm gonna go for a walk. And I'm thinking 1275 | 1276 | about the, oh, it kind of reminds me of this 1277 | other idea. And oh, remember I read that book 1278 | 1279 | a couple years ago? I think that has an example 1280 | that I could tie in here. And it's usually 1281 | 1282 | like two days of that. And then it's um, one 1283 | day of writing. 1284 | 1285 | I'll knock it all out in one day. And then 1286 | I'll usually sit on it for a day and kind 1287 | 1288 | of stare at it. It might change a sentence 1289 | or two and then, and then hit publish. Okay. 1290 | 1291 | There's a lot there. So when you're out walking, 1292 | you talking to yourself, you thinking to yourself, 1293 | 1294 | like walk me through that process. 1295 | I'm listening to music or listening to a podcast, 1296 | 1297 | but it's really common that on a walk, I'll 1298 | send myself 15 emails and I, it's an email 1299 | 1300 | that I sent to myself with just a note in 1301 | the subject line. Uh, and it'll be like, Oh, 1302 | 1303 | you know, I, Oh, like I'll remember I read 1304 | this book five years ago and has this example. 1305 | 1306 | And I forget what the example is, but I'll 1307 | write like, Oh, this was the book. Like, I 1308 | 1309 | think there was something about the guy who 1310 | did X, Y, and Z. And I'll just send that email 1311 | 1312 | to myself. And all those ideas come to me 1313 | while I'm walking. It'll never come to me 1314 | 1315 | when I'm sitting at my desk. So you're just 1316 | standing at the street corner, you're just 1317 | 1318 | typing? 1319 | Yes, yes. Looking down? And it's usually, 1320 | 1321 | it's usually, sometimes the emails will be 1322 | two words to myself. Just a little reminder 1323 | 1324 | to think about this thing. What was your recent 1325 | one? What did I write recently? Um, uh, a 1326 | 1327 | few laws about getting rich. Yeah. Yeah, That 1328 | one crushed. Yeah, thanks. So how did that 1329 | 1330 | piece come about? 1331 | Uh, I was on the treadmill upstairs here, 1332 | 1333 | in my gym upstairs. And um, This is always 1334 | how it is. It's never when you sit down and 1335 | 1336 | try to force creativity. It's always walking 1337 | or on the treadmill or in the shower or something. 1338 | 1339 | I remember being on the treadmill and I remember 1340 | stopping and sending myself an email called 1341 | 1342 | Laws of Getting Rich. 1343 | And I had no idea where I was going to go, 1344 | 1345 | but I remember just thinking like, Oh, that'd 1346 | be a good, that'd be a good title. Let's do 1347 | 1348 | something with that. And so it just started 1349 | with the title, but no idea of where it was 1350 | 1351 | going to go. And then I think when I started 1352 | writing that, it was kind of like ideas on 1353 | 1354 | how to get rich. 1355 | But then I, very quickly, I was like, nah, 1356 | 1357 | this is not, not going to work. So then it 1358 | was like, uh, well, I just started jotting 1359 | 1360 | down ideas. And I noticed that a lot of them 1361 | were like negative. They were like, oh, here's 1362 | 1363 | like the downside of getting rich, which seems 1364 | like the craziest idea. Like downside of getting 1365 | 1366 | rich. 1367 | Tiny violin bullshit is this, but I realized 1368 | 1369 | like once you start putting them together, 1370 | it's like, oh, it's like, oh, that's actually 1371 | 1372 | like a common theme that might be kind of 1373 | a unique article, right? What are people who 1374 | 1375 | want to get rich or do get rich? What are 1376 | they overlooking? What are some of the more 1377 | 1378 | subtle downsides of wealth? 1379 | And so after, after that treadmill, there 1380 | 1381 | was probably a walk or two where I just started 1382 | throwing, you know, piece and ideas together. 1383 | 1384 | How long are your walks? Um, 20 minutes, 30 1385 | minutes, something like that. And if I'm, 1386 | 1387 | if I'm really trying to think of an idea, 1388 | it'll be two or three a day. And then I, I 1389 | 1390 | run every other day, usually for an hour. 1391 | Um, so that's, that's more time of just kind 1392 | 1393 | of, it's the same as walking, just throwing 1394 | some ideas around. Tell me about your business 1395 | 1396 | model, speaking, collaborative fun, books, 1397 | like how do you think through that? Yeah, 1398 | 1399 | a couple different, you know, avenues of it. 1400 | Um, Collaborative Fund I've been at for seven 1401 | 1402 | years. 1403 | So that's, that's great. That's kind of, I've 1404 | 1405 | always felt like that's kind of my core, my 1406 | home base. Speaking is something that I picked 1407 | 1408 | up in 2016. It was the first time that I got 1409 | paid for speaking. Um, that has become a big 1410 | 1411 | thing of what I do, speaking at conferences, 1412 | books was something that I never in a million 1413 | 1414 | years thought would be a thing, but now has 1415 | become the biggest driver of, of the business 1416 | 1417 | of what I do. 1418 | And then I'm on the board of directors at 1419 | 1420 | Markel. This is another thing that's kind 1421 | of like, if I look at my career, those are 1422 | 1423 | the pieces, the different, different elements. 1424 | So walk me through the business of speaking, 1425 | 1426 | the business of books. The business of speaking, 1427 | I remember it was 2010. I was at a conference 1428 | 1429 | in Vancouver. 1430 | Um, I was, I was just a guest at a conference. 1431 | 1432 | I was just in the audience. And I saw Barry 1433 | Ritholtz speak. And I had been reading Barry 1434 | 1435 | Ritholtz for a while, but I never met him. 1436 | And it was, it was the first financial conference 1437 | 1438 | that I'd ever been to. And I watched Barry 1439 | get up on stage and just absolutely own the 1440 | 1441 | 500 people in the audience. 1442 | Just had them, just crushed it. And I remember 1443 | 1444 | sitting in the back and being like, I want 1445 | to do that. That sounds like a cool thing 1446 | 1447 | to do. And I had no idea how much he got paid, 1448 | I still don't. But I remember being like, 1449 | 1450 | you can get paid to do that? Like that's, 1451 | I want to do that. It was not like I'm going 1452 | 1453 | to do this anytime soon, but it was like, 1454 | that seems like a really cool thing to do. 1455 | 1456 | So when I was at the Molly Fool, I did a couple 1457 | of talks when I was at the Molly Fool for 1458 | 1459 | pretty big audiences, three, four hundred 1460 | people. completely scared out of my mind, 1461 | 1462 | literally like not sleeping the night before, 1463 | drenched in sweat as I was walking up to stage, 1464 | 1465 | just so, so scared. But I actually kind of 1466 | liked it. 1467 | 1468 | It was actually kind of fun. Like I actually 1469 | enjoyed it. And then, um, the first time I 1470 | 1471 | got paid to talk was 2016. It was at the University 1472 | of Arizona. Yeah. And so, and then it kind 1473 | 1474 | of grew from there. I think 2018 was the first 1475 | year that. First time I did international 1476 | 1477 | stuff, I went to South Africa and Australia, 1478 | uh, and India. 1479 | 1480 | And it kinda, it kinda just took off from 1481 | there. It definitely kinda snowballs. Once 1482 | 1483 | event planners know that you, that you're 1484 | a speaker, it kinda just snowballs from there. 1485 | 1486 | And how do you think about the relationship 1487 | between writing and speaking? Well, definitely 1488 | 1489 | what I speak about is what I write about. 1490 | And a lot of, like, the stories that I might 1491 | 1492 | tell on a blog is just a story that I will 1493 | narrate on stage. And, and, and the, you know, 1494 | 1495 | most of the talks I give are three or four 1496 | short stories. Usually the stories have nothing 1497 | 1498 | to do with investing, but have a very clear 1499 | Financial takeaway embedded in them. 1500 | 1501 | Which is kind of the structure of my writing. 1502 | What makes a good public talk? So much, what 1503 | 1504 | I always try to do is when I give a talk on 1505 | stage 90 percent of the words I've memorized 1506 | 1507 | and is effectively verbatim from the previous 1508 | talk. And 10 percent I will intentionally 1509 | 1510 | Adlib, because it's very obvious if you are 1511 | just doing 100 percent memorized words, it's, 1512 | 1513 | it's, you realize the skill that actors have 1514 | because to, uh, speak memorized words and 1515 | 1516 | memorize and not sound like a robot, it's 1517 | very, very hard to do. 1518 | 1519 | So that's why like actors are so incredibly 1520 | talented because they can memorize the words 1521 | 1522 | and come off as like, they're just spitting 1523 | them out, uh, adlib. And so I, I always intentionally 1524 | 1525 | 10, maybe even sometimes 20%. I'm just kind 1526 | of making it up as I go. But that's within 1527 | 1528 | a very structured talk in which I've memorized 1529 | at least 80 percent of the words I'm saying 1530 | 1531 | verbatim. 1532 | I'm always, this is one of the core things 1533 | 1534 | we talk about in Rite of Passage. I'm always 1535 | amazed at how speaking can so quickly add 1536 | 1537 | structure to thought and how good the mind 1538 | is at compressing ideas in speech. So, if 1539 | 1540 | you give your average person 3, 000 words 1541 | and they have a 3, 000 word essay. You're 1542 | 1543 | like, Hey, condense this to 500 words. 1544 | They're like, come again. Yeah, I can't do 1545 | 1546 | that. If somebody has a five minute talk and 1547 | you're like, okay, hey, say what you just 1548 | 1549 | said, but now say it to like Uncle Joe in 1550 | like 20 seconds. They're actually pretty good 1551 | 1552 | at doing that. And there's something natural 1553 | and intuitive about speech in terms of your 1554 | 1555 | ability to compress and distill an idea that 1556 | I really like tapping into. 1557 | 1558 | One thing I really love about speaking too. 1559 | Um, I, I read recently that Mark Twain used 1560 | 1561 | to read his work out loud to his family and 1562 | he would watch their emotional reactions and 1563 | 1564 | when he could tell that his wife and kids 1565 | were getting bored, he'd be like, Oh, got 1566 | 1567 | to cut that section. And when his wife and 1568 | kids would like lean forward in their seat, 1569 | 1570 | he'd be like, Oh, I'm onto something here. 1571 | And I think it's very similar when you're 1572 | 1573 | giving a talk on stage where the audience, 1574 | you can really tell when you're boring them 1575 | 1576 | and you can tell when you've got their attention 1577 | and you don't get that feedback when you write. 1578 | 1579 | So there's a lot, there's been several times, 1580 | I can't think of specific examples, but I 1581 | 1582 | can remember times when I could tell, oh, 1583 | this portion of my speech I've given before, 1584 | 1585 | everyone looks bored when I say this, this 1586 | portion, I can literally see eyeballs, like 1587 | 1588 | pupils increasing when I say this, this thing. 1589 | So you, that kind of feedback you don't get 1590 | 1591 | when you're writing, that's really valuable 1592 | when you speak. Mm hmm. Um, how are you going 1593 | 1594 | to teach your kids to write? I don't know 1595 | if I will, because I don't want, nobody taught 1596 | 1597 | me to write. And if they pushed me to do it, 1598 | I absolutely would have rebelled. 1599 | 1600 | Interesting. So it was such a serendipitous 1601 | discovery for me, this career path. It was 1602 | 1603 | never planned. And like I said, when I started 1604 | doing it, I was actually like embarrassed 1605 | 1606 | about it. I didn't want to become a writer. 1607 | And I think that's a very healthy way to enter 1608 | 1609 | a field. I think particularly if someone pushes 1610 | you into it, if your parents say, here's how 1611 | 1612 | to do it, and here's why you should do it, 1613 | like you rebel. 1614 | 1615 | The other thing is that if, you know, I think 1616 | a lot of my writing was just figuring it out 1617 | 1618 | through trial and error. And I don't think 1619 | you can, It's hard to sit down and say like 1620 | 1621 | here's the structure of it and definitely 1622 | early on in my writing if I go back and look 1623 | 1624 | at what I wrote The Motley Fool in 2008, 2009, 1625 | I was always experimenting with different 1626 | 1627 | voices and different styles and before I kind 1628 | of settled on whatever the voice and style 1629 | 1630 | is now. 1631 | But I think if someone tried to say, here's 1632 | 1633 | how to do it, I never would have experimented 1634 | with different things before I finally found 1635 | 1636 | out my own one. Tell me about those experiments. 1637 | I think it was a lot of it is when I did start 1638 | 1639 | reading a lot. Probably after I had been a 1640 | writer for a year or two is when I got big 1641 | 1642 | into reading. 1643 | I would read, um, you know, a guy named Bill 1644 | 1645 | Bonner who works for, um, he wrote a newsletter 1646 | called the Daily Reckonings, his financial 1647 | 1648 | newsletter. And I just thought his voice was 1649 | so good. What about it? It was so short and 1650 | 1651 | snappy. And you could like, you could just 1652 | sense the emotion in it, even if it was just 1653 | 1654 | a, it was just a digital newsletter. 1655 | So there are periods where I tried to write 1656 | 1657 | like him and like, it didn't work, but I just, 1658 | I would experiment with it. Michael Lewis 1659 | 1660 | has been a lot, uh, Felix Salmon, if people 1661 | remember him, he was a writer for Reuters. 1662 | 1663 | I remember trying to copy his. style. I think 1664 | that's a really healthy way to find your own 1665 | 1666 | is just like, who do you look up to? 1667 | Like try to do that. And I bet if you were 1668 | 1669 | to look at my style today, I bet if I wanted 1670 | to, I could piece it apart and be like, Oh, 1671 | 1672 | actually that I learned from Felix Salmon 1673 | that I learned from Bill Bonner that I learned 1674 | 1675 | from Bethany McLean. And like, it's, it's 1676 | all, you're just a big mix of the people who 1677 | 1678 | you've looked up to over the years. 1679 | Can you share some of those lessons that come 1680 | 1681 | to mind of Bethany or Felix Salmon? Are there 1682 | any? Felix Samuels was always very blunt and 1683 | 1684 | to the point. No pussyfooting around. Whatever 1685 | his point was, he was just going to slam it 1686 | 1687 | in your face and hit period. Yeah. That was, 1688 | I think, really clear because a lot of other 1689 | 1690 | authors are just like, they're just going 1691 | to mosey into it. 1692 | 1693 | Yeah. Felix Samuels was just like, when you 1694 | read his piece, there's no, there's, there's 1695 | 1696 | no mistaking what the point he's trying to 1697 | make. Right. That was really powerful. Robert 1698 | 1699 | Curson, Michael Lewis was all just storytelling. 1700 | It's just like, you gotta, you gotta draw 1701 | 1702 | in emotion by telling somebody's story. 1703 | Bethany McLean, I think, is one of the greatest 1704 | 1705 | writers of our time. And because she is as 1706 | smart as any hedge fund manager, any banker, 1707 | 1708 | any lawyer, and she's as good of a writer 1709 | as name whoever you want. And like those together, 1710 | 1711 | it's just like, she's just such a gem. It's 1712 | barely an exaggeration to say that she like 1713 | 1714 | single handedly cracked the Enron case. 1715 | And she was like in her late 20s at the time. 1716 | 1717 | And you look back at that and it's just astounding 1718 | and what the Enron management did to her kind 1719 | 1720 | of like trying to Scare her out of writing 1721 | these stories. She was a writer for fortune 1722 | 1723 | at the time and she was piecing together that 1724 | this company that everybody loved Enron she 1725 | 1726 | was piecing it together and being like none 1727 | of this makes sense You know, this is a big 1728 | 1729 | thing that for a certain kind of writing that 1730 | I think really leads to quality is the courage 1731 | 1732 | to see something with your own eyes and to 1733 | trust it. 1734 | 1735 | Yeah. When everything that you're reading 1736 | from somebody else says the opposite of what 1737 | 1738 | you're just looking at. And, And you ever 1739 | see those studies of, they're the three lines. 1740 | 1741 | And everyone in the classroom is like, Oh, 1742 | this line is the longest one, and it's not 1743 | 1744 | the longest one. And it's like, this line 1745 | is the longest one. 1746 | 1747 | And a lot of people will be persuaded by what 1748 | other people are thinking. Yeah. And they 1749 | 1750 | just won't trust what they see with their 1751 | own eyes and hear with their own ears. And 1752 | 1753 | I think for a certain kind of writing, like 1754 | what you're saying with Bethany, it just comes 1755 | 1756 | down to, no, I'm going to trust my senses 1757 | and to hell with what... 1758 | 1759 | The social world thinks there's gonna be, 1760 | it's gonna take some courage, but this is 1761 | 1762 | just what I'm seeing, and I'm gonna say what 1763 | I'm seeing, and there's a real simplicity 1764 | 1765 | about that, but actually with the way that 1766 | humans are so social and fearful at times 1767 | 1768 | about being excommunicated from the group, 1769 | it can be really hard to do. 1770 | 1771 | Yeah, and I don't want to put words in her 1772 | mouth, but I remember a story that she told 1773 | 1774 | that was something along the lines of. She 1775 | would sit down to interview the CEO and CFO 1776 | 1777 | of Enron before the company collapsed. And 1778 | they would say something along the lines of 1779 | 1780 | like, Little girl, you have no idea what you're 1781 | doing here. 1782 | 1783 | Like kind of take it and to have the courage 1784 | to be like, No, I'm going to publish this. 1785 | 1786 | I'm going to do it. Is, is so incredible. 1787 | The other thing she does so well is that she 1788 | 1789 | has the financial and accounting skills to 1790 | piece all this together, but she also perfectly 1791 | 1792 | understood and wrote about the personalities 1793 | of Ken Lay and Andrew Fastow, the management 1794 | 1795 | of Enron. 1796 | Have you been surprised by the popularity 1797 | 1798 | of audiobooks? Oh, it completely blows me 1799 | away. The audiobook version of Psychology 1800 | 1801 | of Money outsells the physical version two 1802 | to one. And never in a million years would 1803 | 1804 | I have thought that because I'm not an audiobook 1805 | guy. I think everyone just assumes that how, 1806 | 1807 | how I consume content is how other people 1808 | are going to consume content too. 1809 | 1810 | Right. Um, but it's, it's not the case. There 1811 | are so many people who don't have the time 1812 | 1813 | to sit down and read a book, but they'll listen 1814 | to an audiobook on their commute. Or at the 1815 | 1816 | gym, or while they're doing dishes, while 1817 | they're cooking dinner, then they have the 1818 | 1819 | time to listen. So that's been, it's been 1820 | the biggest growth by far of the book industry 1821 | 1822 | over the last 10 years, and it's explosive. 1823 | Um, and, you know, it's, it's growing by the 1824 | 1825 | year. It's bigger this year than it was last 1826 | year. It's huge. It's not only, it's not this 1827 | 1828 | little bit player. What's interesting is that 1829 | when Kindle came out, I don't know, 10, 15 1830 | 1831 | years ago, I remember thinking, The physical 1832 | book industry is gone. Why would anyone buy 1833 | 1834 | a physical book if you can read it on Kindle? 1835 | That was my view at the time. And Kindle is, 1836 | 1837 | I mean, it's not tiny, but it's a pretty insignificant 1838 | portion of the whole book industry. But audio 1839 | 1840 | is enormous. The margins are low on audiobooks 1841 | though, right? Doesn't Amazon or Audible take 1842 | 1843 | like 70%? It's a lot. It's a lot. You would 1844 | think that they would be higher margins because 1845 | 1846 | there's no physical inventory. 1847 | But that gets made up by the higher, higher 1848 | 1849 | fees on that end. Is that a monopoly thing, 1850 | you think? I, I don't have the skill to have 1851 | 1852 | a, an opinion on that. But when you see the 1853 | numbers, it's, it makes you rise an eyebrow. 1854 | 1855 | Interesting. Interesting. International. You've 1856 | crushed internationally. Yeah. What of, so 1857 | 1858 | Psychology Money just passed 4 million copies 1859 | sold. 1860 | 1861 | And I think at least a million and a half 1862 | of those. Or outside of the United States, 1863 | 1864 | maybe more, maybe 2 million of those are outside 1865 | of the United States. So from your first 1 1866 | 1867 | million copies, I'm not sure that this is 1868 | totally accurate, but I did some back of the 1869 | 1870 | napkin. 440, 000 international, 250, 000 paperback, 1871 | 75, 000 e book, 200, 000 audio. 1872 | 1873 | Does that sound about right? Sounds right, 1874 | sure, yeah. Interesting. Yeah. If I had thought 1875 | 1876 | of the makeup when it published, I would have 1877 | thought it would be 98 percent physical. One 1878 | 1879 | percent audio, one percent Kindle. That's 1880 | what I would have thought, but it's nothing 1881 | 1882 | remotely close. And also never in a million 1883 | years thought about international, what that 1884 | 1885 | would be. 1886 | Um, it's, it is true that the U. S. book market 1887 | 1888 | is, even in per capita terms, bigger than 1889 | almost any other market. Americans read a 1890 | 1891 | lot. Oh wow. Versus other countries, but there's 1892 | obviously a lot of other people out in the 1893 | 1894 | world. Yeah, totally. You read a lot of interviews. 1895 | Yeah, that's a big thing that stands out from 1896 | 1897 | your end notes compared to other ones. 1898 | And I think that's where you get all the good 1899 | 1900 | stuff, is when you sit down like this and 1901 | you start prying into someone, you start getting 1902 | 1903 | their story. That's like, all of the information 1904 | is a commodity. All the numbers are a commodity. 1905 | 1906 | He's just like, what's the story that you 1907 | can get? That's where you really learn a lot 1908 | 1909 | of the stuff. 1910 | And so many people have been, so many big, 1911 | 1912 | famous, successful people have been so generous 1913 | with interviews. Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett, 1914 | 1915 | all these people have given great, amazing 1916 | interviews that you can learn so much from. 1917 | 1918 | Everyone knows the famous Steve Jobs commencement 1919 | speech at Stanford. Of course. If that's the 1920 | 1921 | only thing that you ever read of Steve Jobs, 1922 | you'll learn like the majority of what you 1923 | 1924 | need to know, of what you need to learn from 1925 | Steve Jobs is given there. 1926 | 1927 | So a lot of these interviews or similar formats 1928 | are just like, they're just gold mines of 1929 | 1930 | information. And I think it's also, what I've 1931 | tried to do too, is I think it's really important 1932 | 1933 | as an author. To rather than you, the author, 1934 | trying to be the credible resource to quote 1935 | 1936 | other people, quote people who are more qualified 1937 | than you. 1938 | 1939 | And a lot of authors don't want to do this. 1940 | They want to be like, no, I just, I don't 1941 | 1942 | want to, you know, give the spotlight to somebody 1943 | else. I want to be the one who's speaking 1944 | 1945 | on the page. And I've always been the opposite. 1946 | I just want to quote as many people as liberally 1947 | 1948 | as I can. Because if I say X, Y, and Z is 1949 | true, you might believe it. 1950 | 1951 | But if I says, according to Warren Buffett. 1952 | X, Y, and Z is true. You're gonna believe 1953 | 1954 | it. So I just, I try to quote these people 1955 | from their interviews as liberally as I can. 1956 | 1957 | Yeah, one of my favorite examples of when 1958 | you do this is in Selfish Writing when you're 1959 | 1960 | talking about the interview with Ritholtz 1961 | and Howard Marks. 1962 | 1963 | Yeah. Howard Marks just wrote his memos for 1964 | like 10 years and nobody Nobody read them. 1965 | 1966 | Nobody read them. And then Ritholtz was like, 1967 | what are you doing? And he said something 1968 | 1969 | to the effect of I'm just writing for myself 1970 | and I'm imagining you're sitting there reading 1971 | 1972 | the interview. You're like, ha, selfish writing. 1973 | That's what I do. Hey, this is actually a 1974 | 1975 | concept. So tell me about that. That's exactly 1976 | it. I mean, so Howard Marks, his memos are 1977 | 1978 | read by a zillion people and they turn them 1979 | into a book called the most important thing 1980 | 1981 | that's sold a zillion copies. Like Howard 1982 | Marks is he's a billionaire investor and he's 1983 | 1984 | a very talented, successful writer. 1985 | And he tells a story about when he started 1986 | 1987 | writing his memos, I think it was 1990. Nobody 1988 | read him. He would write his memos and send 1989 | 1990 | those clients and his clients back then he 1991 | was snail mailing them to his clients And 1992 | 1993 | he talked to his clients and they'd be like 1994 | I threw it away No, we don't and it didn't 1995 | 1996 | bother him the slightest because he was doing 1997 | these memos to crystallize his own thoughts 1998 | 1999 | They were for him. 2000 | They weren't for other people It was like 2001 | 2002 | his diary that he just happened to mail out 2003 | to other people and he talked about how doing 2004 | 2005 | that the process of writing would crystallize. 2006 | He would have these vague hunches, but then 2007 | 2008 | when he went down to write them, he would 2009 | really clarify like, Oh, that's, that's what 2010 | 2011 | I mean. 2012 | That's this feeling that I have when I put 2013 | 2014 | it into words. Either one of two things happens 2015 | when you put it into words, you either see 2016 | 2017 | how ridiculous it is. And you realize that 2018 | that gut feeling is just something that you 2019 | 2020 | want to be true, but it's actually not true. 2021 | Once you put it into words or you'll be like, 2022 | 2023 | Oh, that's what it is. 2024 | I kind of had this. Feeling this hunch, but 2025 | 2026 | now that's now it's clarified and I can do 2027 | something with it. So he was writing for himself 2028 | 2029 | And he did it for years and years before they 2030 | really started getting passed around and people 2031 | 2032 | were paying attention to them and I you know, 2033 | I um My version of that it was hopefully not 2034 | 2035 | that I write and nobody pays any attention 2036 | to it You know, that was true early on but 2037 | 2038 | I want to write for myself, too I feel like 2039 | everything I write these days including both 2040 | 2041 | of these books are just i'm trying to figure 2042 | out my own problems Trying to figure out my 2043 | 2044 | own life. 2045 | And I call it selfish writing because I want 2046 | 2047 | to be a selfless person, but in writing, you're 2048 | going to do your best work, and I'm going 2049 | 2050 | to have my best work if I'm just trying to 2051 | figure out my own problems and do things right 2052 | 2053 | in a style that I enjoy, about topics that 2054 | I find interesting. And I think know your 2055 | 2056 | audience turns very quickly into pander to 2057 | your audience. 2058 | 2059 | It's really hard to know when to stop and 2060 | when know your audience turns into pandering 2061 | 2062 | to them. And I never want to write something 2063 | where it's like, oh, I already know this, 2064 | 2065 | but I need to explain it to you. I only want 2066 | to write things that I don't know and I'm 2067 | 2068 | trying to figure out myself. You know what 2069 | I always think about? 2070 | 2071 | It's funny, I feel like this is really cool. 2072 | To do in music and totally encouraged, but 2073 | 2074 | not cool to do in writing. I always just one 2075 | of my favorite things about going to a live 2076 | 2077 | show is to just imagine what it is like. When 2078 | you're a musician and you just love your music. 2079 | 2080 | Yeah. Like, you have created a sound that 2081 | just gets you going and you're like, yes! 2082 | 2083 | But something about writing that isn't encouraged. 2084 | I, I, I always love, I know I'm onto something 2085 | 2086 | when I will write something. I don't think 2087 | anything I write is funny, but there's sometimes 2088 | 2089 | I'll write a sentence and I'll laugh out loud. 2090 | And that's when I know, if like, if I'm enjoying 2091 | 2092 | the piece so much that I'm gonna laugh at 2093 | what I just wrote, I'm like, this, that, that's 2094 | 2095 | when it's onto something. 2096 | Rather than being like, oh, other people will 2097 | 2098 | think that's funny. Be like, no, I think it's 2099 | funny. That's, that's when you know you're 2100 | 2101 | onto is when you like it. This is, it was, 2102 | I think it was Kafka. Kafka used to laugh 2103 | 2104 | so loudly that he would keep his neighbors 2105 | up. And it's not just humor, but Tom Stoppard, 2106 | 2107 | the comedian said, laughter is the sound of 2108 | comprehension. 2109 | 2110 | And so I think that you're laughing when you 2111 | have an epiphany too. And so when you're learning 2112 | 2113 | things and you're seeing. You're making these 2114 | connections and the connections just feel 2115 | 2116 | obvious. And they're like, you're laughing. 2117 | It's like, how didn't I know this? That is 2118 | 2119 | where the laughter comes from. So I think 2120 | the laughter comes as much from an epiphany 2121 | 2122 | as humor. 2123 | Yeah. Yeah. So I think it's just like a, like 2124 | 2125 | a chef of like, well, does the food taste 2126 | good to you? Like if it doesn't taste good 2127 | 2128 | to you, it's not gonna taste good to anybody 2129 | else. You might as well enjoy it. Yeah. The 2130 | 2131 | other thing that I think you and I both have 2132 | is like an extreme impatience. Like I think 2133 | 2134 | our brains are just like, go, go, go. 2135 | And one of the things I've been thinking a 2136 | 2137 | lot about. Is that right? Or thinking is, 2138 | is horizontal and writing is vertical. And 2139 | 2140 | so I'll tell you what I mean by that. Like, 2141 | if you're out on a walk, what are you doing? 2142 | 2143 | Like you're sort of making connections between 2144 | different things. Like the brain likes to 2145 | 2146 | skip. 2147 | I've done some meditation in my life. And 2148 | 2149 | like, what I find is I'm going from this topic 2150 | to this topic, to this topic. But what writing 2151 | 2152 | does, is it just like, In almost this torturous, 2153 | torturous way, it anchors me to an idea, and 2154 | 2155 | now I'm stuck on this idea, and all my brain 2156 | wants to do is just go, go, go, but I'm like 2157 | 2158 | trapped on the idea, and so all I can do is 2159 | go down, and what I find is, when I'm writing, 2160 | 2161 | I'm like perpetually frustrated, I'm angry, 2162 | I'm pissed off, I like wanna go do these other 2163 | 2164 | things, my brain is like, you cannot stay 2165 | this still, but I get to the end, it's been 2166 | 2167 | a few hours, or it's been a few weeks, I've 2168 | been working on a piece, and I'll, Go to the 2169 | 2170 | bar with a friend or I'll go to dinner with 2171 | a friend. 2172 | 2173 | I'll be talking about, Hey, this is what I'm 2174 | working on. And they're like, how do you know 2175 | 2176 | so much about this? And I'm like, Oh, I guess 2177 | I've, I've really thought through this because 2178 | 2179 | the writing has like anchored me to the topic. 2180 | And like in that pain, in that frustration, 2181 | 2182 | I've really done this like giant deep, deep, 2183 | deep, deep, deep, deep dive. 2184 | 2185 | And then I just come up for air and. I've 2186 | had a real shift without even realizing it. 2187 | 2188 | Yeah. No, that's good. Um, I, I, I always 2189 | feel like there's sometimes where I'll just 2190 | 2191 | get into themes. And it's like, even if it's 2192 | a different topic, you know, for, you know, 2193 | 2194 | when I was writing in 2008, I was writing 2195 | a lot about real estate and banks and whatnot. 2196 | 2197 | You just get into a theme. So if you're writing 2198 | different things, you're kind of like, usually 2199 | 2200 | every six to twelve months you're kind of 2201 | like in this kind of zone. For me, it's just 2202 | 2203 | been, I think, Behavioral finance has been 2204 | the big one, but that didn't come until five 2205 | 2206 | or seven years ago that I really got interested 2207 | in that, but that's how you can like drill 2208 | 2209 | down on topic two without being onto like 2210 | one specific topic, but it's like, yeah, it 2211 | 2212 | all kind of falls under this umbrella. 2213 | How are you thinking about the story or book? 2214 | 2215 | So you got psychology of money. Now you got 2216 | same as ever, like. How do you think about 2217 | 2218 | how your books play together? How are you 2219 | thinking about, I mean, everything from both 2220 | 2221 | books are basically exactly 200 pages worth 2222 | of content. It was all bound to the word count. 2223 | 2224 | I think psychology of money is 48, 000 words. 2225 | Same as Everest, 47, 500. It's almost the 2226 | 2227 | exact same word count. Did you try to go for 2228 | that? No, it was just kind of how it ended 2229 | 2230 | up. Yeah, I mean they're both, they're both 2231 | short books. Yeah. Then you sort of committed 2232 | 2233 | to the same sort of general title, uh, or 2234 | same general cover. 2235 | 2236 | Yes. Right, so they sort of play well together. 2237 | Same font, thank you. There's words for this, 2238 | 2239 | font. That's right. Ha ha ha. Font, not the 2240 | same title, same font. Um, do you think of 2241 | 2242 | them as sort of like sisters? Do you think 2243 | of them as... Stylistically, they're almost 2244 | 2245 | identical. They're both, they're, you know, 2246 | chapters are a little bit less than 2000 words 2247 | 2248 | each. 2249 | They're all, almost every chapter is a story 2250 | 2251 | that has nothing to do with the broader point 2252 | here, but it's a story to get a point across 2253 | 2254 | of like, this is how people think. And then 2255 | it goes into, okay, here's the lesson that 2256 | 2257 | we can take away from that. Stylistically, 2258 | they're identical. I really think of psychology 2259 | 2260 | of money as like the psychology of you, the 2261 | individual. 2262 | 2263 | And same as ever as the psychology of us, 2264 | the collective. Oh, like what is this? What 2265 | 2266 | does society keep doing over and over again? 2267 | I think that's how they're. different and 2268 | 2269 | psychology money is obviously a finance book 2270 | and same as ever is much broader. There's 2271 | 2272 | a lot that's about finance that's in there, 2273 | but it's broader topics. 2274 | 2275 | It's just how people behave and how they respond 2276 | to risk and greed and fear and those kinds 2277 | 2278 | of things. You know, one of your chapters 2279 | in here is trying too hard and the subtitle 2280 | 2281 | is there are no points awarded for difficulty. 2282 | Yeah. And I think this shows up in your writing. 2283 | 2284 | Like you refuse to write pieces that aren't 2285 | coming easily to you. 2286 | 2287 | You're just like, I'm not going to work on 2288 | this. You have that great line. Writing for 2289 | 2290 | others is hard and it shows, writing for yourself 2291 | is easy and it shows. And I think that one 2292 | 2293 | of the things, one of the ways that you stand 2294 | out as a writer is you're just like, I'm just 2295 | 2296 | going to follow the flow. And if there's no 2297 | flow, then we're done. 2298 | 2299 | We're done, because you know what, the idea 2300 | is probably not great. Yes. Every time I've 2301 | 2302 | started to write a piece, and it's from the 2303 | get go it's tough, I'm done. Just close it 2304 | 2305 | down, we'll try something else. If it's not 2306 | easy from the get go, From the first sentence, 2307 | 2308 | you're, you're done. We're done here. But 2309 | you still have moments of difficulty. 2310 | 2311 | Yeah, yeah. So how do those two things play 2312 | together? I think usually when I start writing, 2313 | 2314 | you can tell really quickly. At least when 2315 | you've been doing it for a long time, you 2316 | 2317 | can tell. After you've written a couple sentences, 2318 | you can be like, Oh yeah, this is really starting 2319 | 2320 | to click. Or you can just, you can just start 2321 | and you're like, this, this is not, I mean, 2322 | 2323 | it's almost like a first date, you can, first 2324 | date, you can tell, you can tell them five 2325 | 2326 | minutes, like that's not going to work. 2327 | This is not going to work here. So it's, it's 2328 | 2329 | when it's hard from the beginning, but there's 2330 | plenty of times when, you know, the first 2331 | 2332 | half is good and then it really starts struggling, 2333 | but you can usually fix that. Whereas if it's 2334 | 2335 | hard from the beginning, you really can't 2336 | fix that. Right, right. Let's do, uh, Let's 2337 | 2338 | play, I'm going to go through different chapters, 2339 | same as ever, and we're going to take out 2340 | 2341 | the writing lesson. 2342 | Uh, best story wins. We'll start with an easy 2343 | 2344 | one. Yeah. It's always the case that it's 2345 | not the best idea, it's not the right answer, 2346 | 2347 | it's not the correct answer, it's the best 2348 | story. Gets people nodding their heads. I'm 2349 | 2350 | a big fan of Ken Burns, who makes documentaries. 2351 | One of the things that's so amazing about 2352 | 2353 | Ken Burns is that... 2354 | There is very little, if any, new information 2355 | 2356 | in his documentaries. Everyone knows about 2357 | the Civil War. Everyone knows who fought, 2358 | 2359 | how it ended. Everyone knows the details of 2360 | the battles. What he did, better than anyone 2361 | 2362 | else who's ever existed, is told a good story 2363 | about it. And his other documentaries about 2364 | 2365 | Vietnam and World War II and everything that 2366 | he's done. 2367 | 2368 | He takes information that people already know. 2369 | And he tells a ridiculously good story about 2370 | 2371 | it. He has this interview where he talks about 2372 | how important music is in his documentaries. 2373 | 2374 | And he will literally change the script of 2375 | his music, so that a specific word that's 2376 | 2377 | being narrated matches up with a specific 2378 | beat of the background music. 2379 | 2380 | No way. And he will literally go through and 2381 | be like, we need to cut eight words out of 2382 | 2383 | the script, so that when the narrator says 2384 | this powerful word, there's a boom in the 2385 | 2386 | music behind it. Nobody else does that. No 2387 | other historian is doing that. But that's 2388 | 2389 | why, that's how he sticks out. And the craziest 2390 | statistic is that when his documentary on 2391 | 2392 | the Civil War came out in 1990, more Americans 2393 | watched it in 1990 than watched the Super 2394 | 2395 | Bowl. 2396 | And this is about a topic that is, everybody 2397 | 2398 | knows about. It's like the most documented 2399 | thing in American history. Everybody knows 2400 | 2401 | about the Civil War. But he tells a story 2402 | about, you can't, I, he, his, he came out 2403 | 2404 | with a documentary a year or two ago about 2405 | the Holocaust, and I watched most of it on 2406 | 2407 | a plane, and I, Cried half the time. 2408 | It's embarrassing to sing when you're on a 2409 | 2410 | plane. You're like 37 ages. He is so good 2411 | at just pulling at the, you can't, you can't 2412 | 2413 | feel. You can't help but feel the emotion 2414 | in his work because he's a storyteller. What 2415 | 2416 | is it about the New York one that you love 2417 | so much? The New York documentary is actually 2418 | 2419 | done by his brother, a guy named Rick Burns. 2420 | Oh, is that right? Ken Burns brother. It's 2421 | 2422 | a story about the law, the history of New 2423 | York City, starting from when it was first 2424 | 2425 | settled by the Dutch through modern times. 2426 | And it's, I think, 18 hours long. And it's 2427 | 2428 | the same thing. Very much. I, I don't know 2429 | what, what was in the drinking water in the 2430 | 2431 | Burns household growing up, but it's the same 2432 | thing. 2433 | 2434 | It's the emotion of it. It's the background 2435 | music. It's, it's, it was really incredible 2436 | 2437 | to me to watch this Ken Burns, uh, interview. 2438 | It was actually on the smart list podcast 2439 | 2440 | where he talks about this, where he talks 2441 | about how important music is to the documentaries, 2442 | 2443 | the background music that he's, that's, what's 2444 | really tugging at your emotions and getting 2445 | 2446 | you into this moment. 2447 | And I just think about it from the sense of 2448 | 2449 | Ken Burns is a historian, but there's literally 2450 | not another historian on the planet. Who's 2451 | 2452 | thinking about the storytelling as much as 2453 | he is. And that, that's why he's so popular. 2454 | 2455 | But that lesson applies to a lot of things. 2456 | Even like a product design. Like the famous 2457 | 2458 | Steve Jobs when he came out with the iPod. 2459 | Thousand songs in your pocket. He could have 2460 | 2461 | just said digital music, MP3 player, and it 2462 | would have come out, but no, no thousand songs 2463 | 2464 | in your pocket. Like you can relate to that. 2465 | You can feel that. So that's, I think it's 2466 | 2467 | in when, if you have a technical job. If you're 2468 | into finance or you're a, you're a code or 2469 | 2470 | whatever it would be, you think analytically. 2471 | And when you think analytically, you're just 2472 | 2473 | like, what's the right answer? If I find the 2474 | right answer, I win. And for almost everything 2475 | 2476 | in life, it's not the case. Even I would say 2477 | someone like Warren Buffett, like is he technically 2478 | 2479 | minded as a stock? Of course. But one of the 2480 | things that he's done so ridiculously well 2481 | 2482 | since he was in his 20s is he's so good at 2483 | explaining what he does. 2484 | 2485 | And why he's doing it that early on his career, 2486 | he had all of these rich people in Omaha who 2487 | 2488 | were like, he would, the Buffett would sit 2489 | them down and say, this is how I pick stocks 2490 | 2491 | and value investing. And they'd be like, I 2492 | buy it. Here's a million bucks. And he was 2493 | 2494 | able to raise money and hold onto money that 2495 | he would manage for other people because he 2496 | 2497 | was such a good storyteller. 2498 | And I think that's true through today. in 2499 | 2500 | his annual letters or when he goes on CNBC. 2501 | I think a lot of that done is for a strategic 2502 | 2503 | purpose of like, he tells such a good story 2504 | that people trust him because it all makes 2505 | 2506 | sense. It's so clearly explained in a folksy 2507 | manner that people just like, Oh, I get it. 2508 | 2509 | I'm going to give you my money and you just 2510 | go do your thing now. Bezos is the same way. 2511 | 2512 | I just saw his book in your office, and he 2513 | always has, it's day one at the bottom of 2514 | 2515 | every shareholder letter. And he has basically 2516 | said to his investors, hey, we're going to 2517 | 2518 | think really long term. And while so many 2519 | other companies have had to go quarter to 2520 | 2521 | quarter, he's just done a, been super consistent 2522 | about saying this, I'm going to run the company. 2523 | 2524 | And this is. One thing that I really have 2525 | appreciated about the investing finance industry 2526 | 2527 | is they figured out how to use writing to 2528 | attract capital, to get the right shareholders, 2529 | 2530 | to really align thinking and coordinate people, 2531 | and I feel like is very far ahead in terms 2532 | 2533 | of using the internet to to write and get 2534 | stuff done because of it. 2535 | 2536 | Yeah. And you can see why people would, if 2537 | they have the quote unquote, the right answer 2538 | 2539 | and they're not getting ahead, it's because 2540 | that you, that's not how you get people's 2541 | 2542 | attention. It's all just, it's always everywhere 2543 | you look, it's best story wins. You were talking 2544 | 2545 | about that Ken Burns anecdote, and that is 2546 | a great category of anecdote, which is insert 2547 | 2548 | great person. 2549 | What is something that they do that people 2550 | 2551 | who aren't in that field would be. astonished 2552 | that they do. So we do a fun one at rite of 2553 | 2554 | passage that is, that has really been a big 2555 | shift. So in our fifth cohort, we call us, 2556 | 2557 | this was the COVID cohort. So we were stuck 2558 | and we had this giant cohort. And that's really 2559 | 2560 | when things began to take off because no one 2561 | had anything to do. 2562 | 2563 | And so Will, who co founded the business with 2564 | me, we were chatting and we got to the end 2565 | 2566 | of a live session and we were sort of annoyed 2567 | with each other because he was trying to communicate 2568 | 2569 | something to me and I wasn't really getting 2570 | it because I was presenting it and we were 2571 | 2572 | like, ah, you know, we need to, we need to 2573 | come up with something. 2574 | 2575 | And one of us goes, you know what, let's just 2576 | start an iMessage thread and you'll just put 2577 | 2578 | your iMessage right at the bottom and you'll 2579 | present. And so now we go back and forth and 2580 | 2581 | we have like six people on iMessage. So if 2582 | there's something happening with slides or 2583 | 2584 | something happening with music, there's live 2585 | chat feeds that are getting streamed to me. 2586 | 2587 | And I'm just presenting and I have six people 2588 | on the team who are feeding me things. Hey, 2589 | 2590 | go faster, go slower. Hey, you need to gain 2591 | energy, lose energy. And then for. One of 2592 | 2593 | our more recent cohorts, we went from keynote 2594 | slides to pitch slides and on pitch. com you 2595 | 2596 | can live update speaker notes. So last night 2597 | I was teaching and Will had a sense, my co 2598 | 2599 | founder, had a sense that I just needed to 2600 | pause. 2601 | 2602 | And so I look at the speaker's notes and sort 2603 | of this teleprompter and he goes. pause in 2604 | 2605 | italics, which always means don't read it. 2606 | That's like a, yeah, that's a speaker note. 2607 | 2608 | Pause. Our students just need to chill. And 2609 | then just, he goes, wait five seconds. And 2610 | 2611 | I'm speaking and I'm like two seconds away 2612 | from it. 2613 | 2614 | And I just pause. I just wait. And it's all 2615 | just moving at the speed of the internet. 2616 | 2617 | And we'll get comments like, Hey, how do you 2618 | deliver presentations like this? And I'm like, 2619 | 2620 | Oh, we're doing things behind the scenes that 2621 | come from running 200 live sessions in the 2622 | 2623 | last five years. The pause is, the pause is 2624 | good. 2625 | 2626 | There's a lot of that for public speaking. 2627 | Yes. Everyone's intuition is like, I gotta 2628 | 2629 | speak, but like the pause is sometimes the 2630 | most important, powerful part of it. Just 2631 | 2632 | like let something, if you say something and 2633 | then pause, it gives the audience time to 2634 | 2635 | think about what you just said. Yeah. But 2636 | if you move on to the next topic, they're 2637 | 2638 | just like, Oh, I'm trying to keep up here. 2639 | That's good. Do you ever think about quitting? 2640 | 2641 | Oh, yeah. All the time. I was more worried 2642 | about getting fired. I was more worried that 2643 | 2644 | just I didn't have the skills to do this and 2645 | the economy was so weak and if I got laid 2646 | 2647 | off, nobody else was hiring. That was my fear 2648 | at the time, particularly early on when I 2649 | 2650 | was just like, I have no business doing this. 2651 | I'm not a writer. I really don't know what 2652 | 2653 | I'm talking about here. So you combine that 2654 | with the criticism, like deserved criticism 2655 | 2656 | that the readers were giving you the pieces. 2657 | Like that was a, I'm not going to say it was 2658 | 2659 | a stressful job. There's a lot of jobs that 2660 | are harder, but it was, it was not easy at 2661 | 2662 | the time. 2663 | What was the nature of the criticism? Uh, 2664 | 2665 | either you're wrong about the topic that you're 2666 | analyzing and half the time they were right. 2667 | 2668 | I was wrong. Or just the, the style sucks. 2669 | Didn't make any sense. I specifically remember 2670 | 2671 | this comment. This is probably 2008 or 2009. 2672 | Now forget the article, but it's back when 2673 | 2674 | we had comment sections and the comment was 2675 | to the effect of what is this writer even 2676 | 2677 | talking about? 2678 | I don't understand any of his points here. 2679 | 2680 | Like I got to the bottom of the article and 2681 | I have no idea what this article is about. 2682 | 2683 | I remember, I remember reading that comment 2684 | and being like, he's right. And that hurts. 2685 | 2686 | Like, I remember that was like a low day of 2687 | just like, what am I doing? I'm pretending 2688 | 2689 | to be a writer. 2690 | I have no idea what I'm doing here. That was 2691 | 2692 | hard. Yeah, of course. I think because the 2693 | barriers to entry are low in writing. Anybody 2694 | 2695 | can do it. Anyone can start a blog tomorrow, 2696 | which is a beautiful thing. That's a great 2697 | 2698 | thing. But it also means that a lot of people 2699 | who are doing it in a formalized way don't 2700 | 2701 | have a ton of experience. 2702 | Whereas if you are doing open heart surgery, 2703 | 2704 | You only, the first time you do it, you know 2705 | what you're doing. You've been trained. I 2706 | 2707 | hope so. You've been trained for probably 2708 | a decade at that point. To get to that point. 2709 | 2710 | Whereas anyone can just throw a blog together. 2711 | Which again, is great. Because you get so 2712 | 2713 | much content. 2714 | You can practice and what not. But it makes 2715 | 2716 | it so it's easy to start without really having 2717 | a good idea of what's going to work and what's 2718 | 2719 | not going to work. Probably a good thing that 2720 | you didn't publish your first book then for... 2721 | 2722 | What, 12 years after you started writing? 2723 | Uh, 14. I'd been a writer for 14 years before 2724 | 2725 | Psychology of Money came out. 2726 | And that was, that was, that was great. I 2727 | 2728 | look back, and we were talking about this 2729 | earlier with my wife. She says it was just 2730 | 2731 | laziness why I waited that long. I think that's 2732 | true. Um, and I'm so glad. If I had written 2733 | 2734 | this book in 2010, A, I, I could have. And 2735 | B, it would have sucked. It would not have 2736 | 2737 | been any good. 2738 | So I'm so glad I waited as long as I did. 2739 | 2740 | I was not in a hurry at all to get it out. 2741 | Along what axes did you improve the most as 2742 | 2743 | a writer and how? I think brevity and storytelling. 2744 | I think if I look 10 years ago, there were 2745 | 2746 | not as many stories or they weren't very good, 2747 | and I would just ramble. I would take a thousand 2748 | 2749 | words to what I would hopefully use a hundred 2750 | words now. 2751 | 2752 | So it's those two things, which to me, pers 2753 | for The reading that I like to do, that's 2754 | 2755 | what I like the most. I like stories and I 2756 | like people who get to the point. Brevity 2757 | 2758 | too doesn't necessarily mean that it's short, 2759 | it just means it's to the point. I always 2760 | 2761 | use Doris Kearns Goodwin as an example, the 2762 | presidential historian. 2763 | 2764 | She has written books that are 900 pages. 2765 | And every single word needs to be there. In 2766 | 2767 | 900 pages, there's not a single word of fluff. 2768 | So brevity doesn't mean short. It just means 2769 | 2770 | that there's no rambling. So I think that's, 2771 | that's what I've tried to improve the most. 2772 | 2773 | Of like, can I catch your attention with a 2774 | story? 2775 | 2776 | And can I make sure that I don't lose your 2777 | attention once I got it? What do you think 2778 | 2779 | you needed to learn in order to get brevity? 2780 | Uh, I think a lot of it was just thinking 2781 | 2782 | hard about what I like to read. And just kind 2783 | of like, oh, I really like this book. Well, 2784 | 2785 | what do I like about it? Well, it got to the 2786 | point. 2787 | 2788 | I was never bored. I kept turning every page 2789 | and I'm like, why did I do that? Well, because 2790 | 2791 | there's a great quote, I forget who said it, 2792 | but he says, when you're writing, leave out 2793 | 2794 | the parts that readers tend to skip. And I 2795 | think that's like, it's a tongue in cheek 2796 | 2797 | quote, but it's like, it's so true. And everyone 2798 | knows when you're reading an article or reading 2799 | 2800 | a book, parts you tend to skip. 2801 | You're just like, ah, this section's not doing 2802 | 2803 | it for me. Okay. So when you're writing, leave 2804 | that part out. Just don't do that. Just cut 2805 | 2806 | it out. And I think so it was, it was analyzing 2807 | what I like to read and trying to mimic it 2808 | 2809 | in my writing. And tell me about this Google 2810 | doc that you have of all the stuff that you've 2811 | 2812 | deleted and you have this giant Google doc 2813 | or something. 2814 | 2815 | Yeah. And it's now. It might be close to like 2816 | 100, 000 words, like the equivalent of two 2817 | 2818 | books of things. It's called Scrap Bits. It's 2819 | a Google doc called Scrap Bits. And it's things 2820 | 2821 | like when I'm writing an article or a lot 2822 | of it came from book writing, I would write 2823 | 2824 | a section, I'd write an anecdote, write four 2825 | or five paragraphs. 2826 | 2827 | And I would think like, Oh, that's pretty 2828 | good, but it doesn't fit here. I'm going to 2829 | 2830 | save it for later. And it's so often. It happens 2831 | so often that I'm writing something and I'm 2832 | 2833 | kind of stuck on the article and I'm like, 2834 | I can't think of, I can't think of the example 2835 | 2836 | here or the story that I'm like, Oh, I think 2837 | in scrap bits, there's actually this little 2838 | 2839 | anecdote that I can plug in here that I wrote 2840 | five years ago and it didn't work for that 2841 | 2842 | piece, but it works perfectly for this piece. 2843 | So I think saving that, you know, cutting 2844 | 2845 | room floor scraps is really important. You'll, 2846 | you'll be surprised how often you can recycle 2847 | 2848 | it. Do you write your books in Google Docs? 2849 | Yeah, we just have a giant Google Doc called 2850 | 2851 | same as ever and you're just like I have it 2852 | all there that you got the little chapters 2853 | 2854 | on the left side and I and I back it up in 2855 | about 17 locations because I'm so paranoid 2856 | 2857 | about losing it. 2858 | Oh, that's good. I can't imagine like being 2859 | 2860 | just about done with the book and then you 2861 | Lose it somehow. Your, your, your, your Gmail 2862 | 2863 | account gets hacked or something. There's 2864 | something uniquely horrible about losing something 2865 | 2866 | you've written. It's, it's terrible. I back 2867 | it up so much, particularly towards the end 2868 | 2869 | of the book. 2870 | I will back it up in multiple, multiple locations 2871 | 2872 | because I'm so paranoid about losing it. Oh, 2873 | here's a fun question. All right. Give me 2874 | 2875 | 10 chapter titles for your book, The Psychology 2876 | of Writing. Okay. And you're writing... Stephen 2877 | 2878 | Pressfield style book on writing. So what 2879 | are the ten chapters? How would you think 2880 | 2881 | of? 2882 | Alright, I don't know if I'm going to get 2883 | 2884 | to ten, but I'll spit some out. Cool. Number 2885 | one, what's your point? What are you trying 2886 | 2887 | to make? Number two, get to the point. Number 2888 | three, move on to the next point. There's 2889 | 2890 | a, there's a, I forget who wrote the book. 2891 | The book's title is Nobody Wants to Read Your 2892 | 2893 | Shit. 2894 | Stephen Pressfield. Is that Pressfield? Yeah. 2895 | 2896 | And it's true. Like even if you just read 2897 | the headline of that book, that lesson, nobody 2898 | 2899 | wants to read your shit. Yeah. Have that idea 2900 | in your mind the whole time and just be like, 2901 | 2902 | look, I also heard, I forget who said this, 2903 | but they're like, when you're writing, you 2904 | 2905 | should pretend that every word costs you 100. 2906 | Oh, that's right. And when you're doing that, 2907 | 2908 | you'll be like, do I need this word? Do I 2909 | need this sentence? Not, is this a good sentence? 2910 | 2911 | Just, do I need it? Do I need it? There are 2912 | a lot of good sentences that are like, oh, 2913 | 2914 | that's a well crafted sentence. Yeah, but 2915 | you don't need it. It's just rambling. I know 2916 | 2917 | it's a good sentence. 2918 | I know it's kind of clever, but you don't 2919 | 2920 | need it. Get rid of it. Yeah. And I think 2921 | if you do that, that would, that would definitely 2922 | 2923 | be in there. Um, selfish writing would be 2924 | a title because I think it would comply to 2925 | 2926 | most people. Write things that you want to 2927 | read in a style that you enjoy and don't think 2928 | 2929 | about anyone else. 2930 | The other reason that's good is that particularly 2931 | 2932 | when you're a young writer, if you're thinking 2933 | about the people who are gonna read this, 2934 | 2935 | you'll get nervous, you'll get shy, and you're 2936 | like, ah, I don't know if I'm brave enough 2937 | 2938 | to say that to other people. So, okay, just 2939 | live inside your own head. Just pretend this 2940 | 2941 | is a diary. 2942 | And then when you hit publish, don't think 2943 | 2944 | about it. That's, I think that's, that's really 2945 | the only way to do it. That would, that would 2946 | 2947 | be a big one. Best story wins would definitely 2948 | be right up in there. That would be good. 2949 | 2950 | Um, I, I always, I always, uh, when I'm reading 2951 | any book that makes me emotional, I'm Kind 2952 | 2953 | of an emotional person. 2954 | It's not that hard, but I know I always kind 2955 | 2956 | of stop and be like, what, what was the paragraph, 2957 | the word that got me to tear up here that 2958 | 2959 | like really tied all this together? And I'm 2960 | like, oh, that's, that's got, try to pay attention 2961 | 2962 | to those moments of like the, the really emotional, 2963 | like how did the author do this to me to bring 2964 | 2965 | me to this point? 2966 | Who's done that well? Uh, the Ken Burns documentary 2967 | 2968 | that I talked about, I, I like a lot of, uh, 2969 | military history, so a lot of, if you're reading 2970 | 2971 | about World War II or the Holocaust or whatever, 2972 | there's quite a bit of, I think the reason 2973 | 2974 | I like World War II history is that the widest 2975 | spectrum of emotions took place In that six 2976 | 2977 | year period that has ever existed, not just 2978 | the most amount of suffering, but the most 2979 | 2980 | amount of elation and joy and weight lifted 2981 | off your shoulders when the war wasn't like 2982 | 2983 | the whole spectrum of emotions, uh, took place 2984 | in an, in a, in a magnitude that was unprecedented 2985 | 2986 | and shoved it into the six year period. 2987 | So I like read, some people will like World 2988 | 2989 | War II cause they like, you know, I don't 2990 | know, military history, like military strategy. 2991 | 2992 | I just like. Thinking about and studying and 2993 | trying to think about what it would feel like 2994 | 2995 | to be in that vast range of emotions that 2996 | people felt like. In the vast range, everyone 2997 | 2998 | thinks about, of course you should, the suffering 2999 | and the pain that took place. 3000 | 3001 | But I think the happiest day... In all of 3002 | U. S. history, where everyone in the country 3003 | 3004 | was happier than they had ever been, was V 3005 | J Day in 1945, when Japan surrendered and 3006 | 3007 | the war was done. And the famous picture is 3008 | from Times Square. So like, there were a lot 3009 | 3010 | of emotions that took place in that period 3011 | that are just like... 3012 | 3013 | off the charts, happy and joyful. And so the 3014 | range of it is like, there's so much of that. 3015 | 3016 | Uh, when you're reading about the topic where 3017 | it's just like, it's an emotional rollercoaster. 3018 | 3019 | Is there a particular emotional frequency 3020 | that really resonates with you? Um, I think 3021 | 3022 | it's One of the things that sticks out, that's 3023 | a good lesson for a lot of things, is how 3024 | 3025 | resilient people are. 3026 | Mmm. So, the people who've been through some 3027 | 3028 | heavy shit, and then you realize how they 3029 | pulled their life back together and kept going. 3030 | 3031 | It's not that the scar was, was, was gone. 3032 | The scar is always there, but learning about 3033 | 3034 | resilience is, is really important. I think 3035 | there's a lot of good personal lessons in 3036 | 3037 | there of like, people can, people can adapt. 3038 | better than they think. And it's easy to extrapolate 3039 | 3040 | the, the, the hole that you're in and be like, 3041 | I'm in this dark pit of despair right now 3042 | 3043 | and it's going to be like that forever. But 3044 | a lot of those lessons are pretty telling 3045 | 3046 | about how people adapted after the war, even 3047 | the people who had really been through a tough 3048 | 3049 | experience. 3050 | I want to ask you the same question that you 3051 | 3052 | asked me to ask Steven Pressfield. How has 3053 | your writing improved through your entire 3054 | 3055 | life? Has it peaked or plateaued? I think 3056 | there's a chance. It's, well, I think it's 3057 | 3058 | plateaued. And I think it may have peaked. 3059 | Really? Maybe. I hope not. But I don't want 3060 | 3061 | to pretend like you can keep growing forever. 3062 | That would be great if you could. I think 3063 | 3064 | maybe if it's not improvement, it's just, 3065 | um, evolution. So I would, I would suspect 3066 | 3067 | that ten years from now I'll be writing in 3068 | a different voice. But it might not be better. 3069 | 3070 | It'd just be different. Mm hmm. And I think 3071 | everyone, when they write, they're just kind 3072 | 3073 | of, it's a reflection of who you are. 3074 | And I'll be a different person in 10 years. 3075 | 3076 | My kids will be older. I'll have different 3077 | desires. Uh, I'll be a different phase of 3078 | 3079 | life. So of course I'm going to write differently. 3080 | And the, my first article with Motley Fool 3081 | 3082 | that did well, the impending destruction of 3083 | the Osaka, I was 25 at the time. So I was 3084 | 3085 | like, I was naive and immature. 3086 | I would never write that today because I'm 3087 | 3088 | a different person. So it's just an evolution, 3089 | even if it's not improvement. You know, there 3090 | 3091 | is a real One sidedness almost dramatically 3092 | so way of writing that I had when I started 3093 | 3094 | that was like This is how the world is everybody 3095 | else is wrong. Here's my super same sort of 3096 | 3097 | you had impending destruction of the US economy 3098 | I wrote a piece called what the hell is going 3099 | 3100 | on? 3101 | All the universities are gonna die. It's all 3102 | 3103 | over. The whole thing is a sham And you really 3104 | get humbled by how incorrect some of your 3105 | 3106 | super bold predictions are when you start. 3107 | And you look back at that, you scratch your 3108 | 3109 | head a bit. You're like. Okay, the world is 3110 | a little bit more subtle than I gave it credit 3111 | 3112 | for. 3113 | I think that's, if you're, if you're writing 3114 | 3115 | for a living and you're always just trying 3116 | to analyze the world around you, and you're 3117 | 3118 | doing that 365 days a year, you don't have 3119 | to do it for that long of a period of time 3120 | 3121 | before you're just humbled about all these 3122 | things. Yeah. And then when you have, or you 3123 | 3124 | hear a big idea, you're like, eh, maybe. 3125 | Probably not. I don't know. The world's really 3126 | 3127 | nuanced and nobody has any idea what the hell's 3128 | going on. Yeah. Yeah. In what way do you find 3129 | 3130 | yourself analyzing the world? Like for me, 3131 | I am very attentive to like super details. 3132 | 3133 | I think, I think I'm the opposite. If you're 3134 | at the ground level, I'm 30, 000. For level 3135 | 3136 | always and the details like when I go to a 3137 | restaurant, I'm usually just hungry. 3138 | 3139 | That's all I'm paying attention to, but I'm 3140 | much more, you know, back to, you know, when 3141 | 3142 | I started as a, we were writing about finance, 3143 | everyone else was like, well, how much cash 3144 | 3145 | do they have on their balance sheet? What's 3146 | the PE ratio? And like, it was like, very 3147 | 3148 | detail oriented. And I was just, I was just 3149 | interested in like, well, like, what are people 3150 | 3151 | thinking? 3152 | How are they like, what's going through their 3153 | 3154 | heads? Are they, are they scared? Are they 3155 | overconfident? Just like a much higher level, 3156 | 3157 | broad view of how people think. So a lot of 3158 | the technical details of what's going on in 3159 | 3160 | the world, even outside of finance, so just 3161 | politics and social trends. I'm usually, I'm 3162 | 3163 | usually stuck at 30, 000 feet. 3164 | That's, that's where I like to hang out. Yeah, 3165 | 3166 | that's, that's, that's my, my, my, my cruising 3167 | altitude of just trying to overview. And I 3168 | 3169 | think a lot of that comes from the fact that. 3170 | The lower you get to the ground level, the 3171 | 3172 | harder it is to figure things out. If you're 3173 | trying to figure out like the extreme details 3174 | 3175 | of what other people are thinking about what 3176 | they're doing It's really difficult to do 3177 | 3178 | but I think at the 30, 000 foot level you 3179 | can try to put the pieces together a little 3180 | 3181 | bit Cleaner. 3182 | It's funny because when I look at the arc 3183 | 3184 | of your career, I feel like you start off 3185 | Doing that of what's happening now, very news 3186 | 3187 | oriented, and then psychology of money is, 3188 | like you're saying, the psychology of the 3189 | 3190 | individual, and this is much more the psychology 3191 | of societies and how societies function, and 3192 | 3193 | this is much more about stepping out, looking 3194 | at history, literally looking at a guide to 3195 | 3196 | what never changes, whereas what you're doing 3197 | at The Motley Fool is much more a guide to 3198 | 3199 | things that are changing. 3200 | Things that happen today. Right. That's really 3201 | 3202 | what it was. Yeah. So it's definitely, and 3203 | even when I was at The Motley Fool, I started 3204 | 3205 | moving. Thank you. away from that. There was 3206 | a period, a pretty distinct period in 2010. 3207 | 3208 | So I'd been at The Molly Fool for like three 3209 | years at that point. And I told the editors, 3210 | 3211 | my boss, who was a good friend of mine, I 3212 | was just like, I'm not, I'm not a stock picker. 3213 | 3214 | I'm a, I'm a big picture guy. And that's what 3215 | I want to write about. That's all I'm going 3216 | 3217 | to write about now. So it was 2010 when I 3218 | realized that 30, 000 feet was my, was my 3219 | 3220 | cruising altitude and I needed to stay there. 3221 | And I'm glad I, I'm glad I figured it out 3222 | 3223 | and put my foot down and just be like, this, 3224 | that's what I wanted to talk about. 3225 | 3226 | But I think a lot of that too was like, I 3227 | always felt like, and I still feel like a 3228 | 3229 | lot of the people who are picking individual 3230 | stocks and analyzing fine details about what's 3231 | 3232 | going on in politics, like I just thought 3233 | a lot of it was BS. And the track record was 3234 | 3235 | not great. So it wasn't that my track record 3236 | at figuring out the high level was necessarily 3237 | 3238 | better, but I was just like, this isn't, at 3239 | least for me, that's not interesting. 3240 | 3241 | And it's not interesting because I don't think 3242 | anyone has that much ability to do it well. 3243 | 3244 | And so that's why I wanted to get a much broader 3245 | sense of what was going on. In your acknowledgments 3246 | 3247 | of Same as Ever, you have a really nice line 3248 | where you say that writing is a social profession. 3249 | 3250 | What do you mean by that? 3251 | Just trying to observe your fellow humans 3252 | 3253 | and trying to figure out what, what's going 3254 | on. I think that's what, it's just the, the 3255 | 3256 | analysis and the survey of just what the hell 3257 | is going on out there. How do these people 3258 | 3259 | think? I always think it's interesting that 3260 | we only know about other people, what they've 3261 | 3262 | said and written down, which is maybe one 3263 | percent. 3264 | 3265 | If, if it's a fraction of one percent of what's 3266 | actually going through their heads. And so 3267 | 3268 | however complex and messy you think the world 3269 | is. It's a thousand times more messy if you 3270 | 3271 | give you if you it could actually go into 3272 | eight billion people's heads And see how they're 3273 | 3274 | justifying decisions what they're thinking 3275 | and look the one the the point zero zero one 3276 | 3277 | percent that they have verbalized And written 3278 | down is crazy enough. 3279 | 3280 | It's completely bonkers, but the spectrum 3281 | of what people think Is a thousand times wider 3282 | 3283 | than what, than the craziness that's actually 3284 | out there. So I think that's, that's an interesting 3285 | 3286 | thing of like just trying to figure out the, 3287 | how big the spectrum of crazy thoughts there 3288 | 3289 | is that goes through people's heads. 3290 | I think that's, that is true for me. You know, 3291 | 3292 | the, what I write about and verbalize is like, 3293 | The center of my thoughts and there's some 3294 | 3295 | crazy stuff over here and some crazy stuff 3296 | over here, but I'm only showing you this Center 3297 | 3298 | part. So I think attuning yourself to the 3299 | other Parts of how people make decisions and 3300 | 3301 | what they're thinking about is what's enjoyable 3302 | to me We danced around editing earlier, but 3303 | 3304 | we didn't really get into it. 3305 | How does that process happen for you sitting 3306 | 3307 | at the computer? Yeah Yeah, you just read 3308 | it over and over and over. No, I see, I almost 3309 | 3310 | do the opposite. I don't know if this is the 3311 | right thing to do. I don't know if this is, 3312 | 3313 | this is probably not good advice. But, pretty 3314 | much when I get to the bottom of the article, 3315 | 3316 | I just hit publish. 3317 | And I don't go back and read the whole thing 3318 | 3319 | again. But what I do do, is every sentence 3320 | that I type, After I type it, I'm like, all 3321 | 3322 | right, is that good? Let me read it again. 3323 | Is that good? Can I change this word? Oh, 3324 | 3325 | I might use, this is a better word here. So 3326 | it's like very, it's just like editing as 3327 | 3328 | I go. 3329 | Whereas I think, I think a lot of people will 3330 | 3331 | just like, let's just smash out a bunch of 3332 | words, and then we'll go back and edit each 3333 | 3334 | line. Where I'm like, no, let's just do every 3335 | line as carefully as we can. So by the time 3336 | 3337 | you get to the bottom, you're like, yep, okay, 3338 | it's good. We're done here. Wow. I've never 3339 | 3340 | met somebody who writes that good. 3341 | I don't know if it's good. I don't know if 3342 | 3343 | it's, it's probably terrible advice. It's 3344 | clearly working for you, so. I think here's 3345 | 3346 | why I think a lot of it too, is that. You 3347 | will never get to a point where you're like, 3348 | 3349 | great, doesn't need to be edited anymore, 3350 | this is perfect, hit publish. You will always 3351 | 3352 | be able to do another pass. 3353 | So because you can never be done, you might 3354 | 3355 | as well just come to a spot where you're like, 3356 | alright, good enough. I learned this a lot 3357 | 3358 | when I was, I was a columnist at the Wall 3359 | Street Journal for a couple years. That's 3360 | 3361 | right. And during that period, for a big publication 3362 | like that, six or seven editors would go through 3363 | 3364 | the piece that you wrote. 3365 | Wow. So I would write it. And then I would 3366 | 3367 | write it again and I would be like, in my 3368 | mind this is perfect. And I'd give it to another 3369 | 3370 | editor and they would be like, shh, shh. Okay, 3371 | and they would mark it up and then in their 3372 | 3373 | mind it would be perfect. And then they handed 3374 | it to another editor, and that editor would 3375 | 3376 | mark it up, and then in their mind it'd be 3377 | perfect. 3378 | 3379 | So everyone who took a... Stab at this when 3380 | they were done with their work, said, all 3381 | 3382 | right, this is perfect. And then the next 3383 | person would say, Nope, I'm gonna change 80% 3384 | 3385 | of this. So you're never get, there's, there's 3386 | no objective. This is not math where there's 3387 | 3388 | an objectively right answer. It's all just 3389 | like, whatever you think is perfect, somebody 3390 | 3391 | else will be able to slash to pieces. 3392 | So, you got to get to a point where at the 3393 | 3394 | bottom you're like, yep, that's, I think it's 3395 | good enough and I'm not going to drive myself 3396 | 3397 | crazy. Because you, you can. The hardest thing 3398 | about writing a book relative to a blog is 3399 | 3400 | that blogs can be changed after the fact. 3401 | Right. And there's plenty of times when after 3402 | 3403 | I publish a blog, someone will tell me, oh, 3404 | I got this wrong. 3405 | 3406 | There's a typo here. I misquoted this person. 3407 | You go and fix it. There's a book. Once you, 3408 | 3409 | once it goes to the printer, forever hold 3410 | your peace. That's very, you're, you're done 3411 | 3412 | here. And so, that's, you really got to get 3413 | to a point, like, you'll drive yourself crazy, 3414 | 3415 | particularly in the last few weeks before 3416 | it goes to the printer. 3417 | 3418 | And there's so many times, this for me, for 3419 | Sam as ever, this was about two months ago, 3420 | 3421 | of laying in bed and being like, oh, that 3422 | paragraph in chapter eight. Do I need, is 3423 | 3424 | that, is that right? I don't think that's 3425 | right. I need to go change. But you gotta 3426 | 3427 | get to a point where you're just like, it's 3428 | done. I've done my best, and I gotta let it 3429 | 3430 | go. 3431 | And I think I, for my writing, I try to let 3432 | 3433 | it go sooner than other people, for better 3434 | or worse. There's a lot in my blogs in particular, 3435 | 3436 | 'cause I don't have an editor too, it's just, 3437 | I'm a one man band here. Right. Almost every 3438 | 3439 | blog that I publish will have a typo in it 3440 | or, or several typos because I'm not going 3441 | 3442 | through with a fine tooth comb. 3443 | I kind of just get to the end and I say, all 3444 | 3445 | right, I've, I've done my best here. Let's 3446 | send it off to the wild. I'll tell you why. 3447 | 3448 | That would never work for me. And it is really 3449 | revealing, thinking through why, of how my 3450 | 3451 | brain works and how ideas flow for me. For 3452 | me, an epiphany, the seed of an idea, is an 3453 | 3454 | extremely emotional experience. 3455 | It is a, from my body, it is like this roar 3456 | 3457 | of like lion like energy that comes into my 3458 | brain and I just need to Get it out. And I 3459 | 3460 | speak it out and I just have to like, it's 3461 | like a dramatic experience. It's sort of like, 3462 | 3463 | if you're in a big fight with a significant 3464 | other, you say all these sorts of things that 3465 | 3466 | you don't mean to say, but like there's a 3467 | kernel of truth in there that is like really 3468 | 3469 | true. 3470 | And whatever that thing is. That would not 3471 | 3472 | have come out in like a sober state. Yes. 3473 | And so I feel like my first draft comes from 3474 | 3475 | there. And so if I were to get to a place 3476 | where I get to the bottom and then I publish 3477 | 3478 | it, it would be so far off. And so I need 3479 | to... You'd be cancelled the next day. Totally. 3480 | 3481 | Or just, I'd be cancelled or I'd just say 3482 | something ridiculous. 3483 | 3484 | And so then I need to get to a place where 3485 | I'm in a sober state and I just need to look 3486 | 3487 | it over. Because my first draft has... No 3488 | logic in it. It is just raw, unfiltered, animalistic, 3489 | 3490 | and I just need to step away and be in a sober 3491 | place because otherwise, yeah, I'll be canceled 3492 | 3493 | and that'll be the end of that. 3494 | So I feel like in terms of being the opposite 3495 | 3496 | of that, I feel like I truly write. One sentence 3497 | at a time in terms of I'll write a sentence 3498 | 3499 | and I'll stare at it and then I'll be like 3500 | okay and then I get up and like go do the 3501 | 3502 | dishes. Whereas I think a lot of writers truly 3503 | just like smash it all out in one go, whereas 3504 | 3505 | mine is just one sentence, go do something 3506 | else, another sentence, go do something else. 3507 | 3508 | Well, credit to you, your life really allows 3509 | you to do that. You know, you have, what's 3510 | 3511 | this line, there's a The secret to doing great 3512 | work is to always be a little bit underemployed. 3513 | 3514 | ICU is very underemployed. You sort of just 3515 | do one thing, you got a bunch of free time, 3516 | 3517 | and so you can do that. And I'm now beginning 3518 | to see how your schedule and the structure 3519 | 3520 | of your life is integrated with your And so 3521 | I've worked from home my entire career since 3522 | 3523 | 2007 before it was fashionable to do. 3524 | And I feel like that was so important because 3525 | 3526 | the secret to good writing is doing things 3527 | that don't look like writing. It's just kind 3528 | 3529 | of like sitting on the couch and thinking 3530 | about a topic. Going for a walk and thinking 3531 | 3532 | about a topic. Doesn't look like writing. 3533 | So if you're in an office, your boss won't 3534 | 3535 | let you do that. 3536 | Right. When you're in an office, your boss 3537 | 3538 | wants you sitting at your desk, hitting keys. 3539 | That's what work looks like. I feel like it 3540 | 3541 | took me a long time to convince my wife that 3542 | when I'm sitting on the couch in my sweatpants... 3543 | 3544 | Staring out the window. I'm working, working 3545 | real hard right now because it doesn't look 3546 | 3547 | like work. 3548 | But that's, that's where all the good ideas 3549 | 3550 | come from. And the thing that does look like 3551 | work, like actually typing is like the smallest 3552 | 3553 | part of the job. It's the, it's 2 percent 3554 | of what's actually taking place in that. So 3555 | 3556 | yeah, I couldn't imagine, you know, and bless 3557 | them. There's so many good ones who do this, 3558 | 3559 | but the people who are like. 3560 | Formal journalists working in an office, working 3561 | 3562 | for Reuters or Bloomberg or the New York Times, 3563 | like that's a very hard thing to do because 3564 | 3565 | I think you are required just by the culture 3566 | of the office to be hitting keys or talking 3567 | 3568 | on the phone at all time. And you can't necessarily 3569 | sit on a couch and just kind of daydream about 3570 | 3571 | the topic that you're writing about. 3572 | Yeah, good ideas can't be scheduled. Can't 3573 | 3574 | be scheduled. A lot of people disagree with 3575 | that. I know Ryan Holiday, great writer who 3576 | 3577 | I look up to, I think he's great. Uh, at least 3578 | a partial, if not a full rejoinder to that, 3579 | 3580 | in which he would say, no, like you can create 3581 | an environment that will foster creativity 3582 | 3583 | for me. 3584 | At least it's never the case. And if I were 3585 | 3586 | to be like, okay, at 10 30 on Monday, I have 3587 | a calendar thing in my calendar that says 3588 | 3589 | time to be creative. Like, forget about it. 3590 | It's always, most of my ideas will come on 3591 | 3592 | the weekends when I'm not even ready. Pretending 3593 | to work. I'll be going for a walk with my 3594 | 3595 | kids. 3596 | I'll be pushing them on the swings and I'll 3597 | 3598 | be like, Oh, I got it. Like, that's the idea. 3599 | Or if it's not on the weekends, it's like, 3600 | 3601 | like I said, it's on the treadmill. It's in 3602 | the shower. It's driving to the grocery store. 3603 | 3604 | There's so many times I'll be in the middle 3605 | of a conversation with my wife about something 3606 | 3607 | else. 3608 | It's not about work. I'll be in and I, and 3609 | 3610 | I'll stop her and I say, I'm sorry, I have 3611 | an idea I need to write down. And it's just 3612 | 3613 | like in the talking about where we're gonna 3614 | go on vacation next summer, I'll just get 3615 | 3616 | this idea about like, oh, laws of getting 3617 | rich. Whatever it is. It just kind of comes 3618 | 3619 | to you in these random periods. 3620 | And every time I've tried to force it, the 3621 | 3622 | ideas suck. They're always terrible. You know, 3623 | one of the weirdest things for me about writing 3624 | 3625 | and trying to cultivate a process. I need 3626 | to sleep a lot. So I did a writer's retreat 3627 | 3628 | this summer and I was alone for four or five 3629 | days and I was just cranking through ideas 3630 | 3631 | and what I would do is I would wake up at 3632 | like 6 30. 3633 | 3634 | Get some coffee, have some breakfast, write, 3635 | nap, write more, nap, go for some walks. I 3636 | 3637 | take like three naps in a day, go on like 3638 | two or three walks while I'm walking, sort 3639 | 3640 | of speaking to my phone, and I love the voice 3641 | transcription now with Whisper, the GPT technology. 3642 | 3643 | It's so good. And then I'll sit down for like. 3644 | An hour and a half to two and a half hours 3645 | 3646 | at a time, just crank stuff out. But like 3647 | the cognitive intensity of that experience, 3648 | 3649 | I just need to pass out. How often do you 3650 | feel like, you know, where you're going when 3651 | 3652 | you're working on a writing project, do you 3653 | feel like usually you have the idea and you 3654 | 3655 | just sort of go with it? 3656 | We talked about, sometimes I reject it, or 3657 | 3658 | do you feel like sometimes you sort of follow 3659 | these trails and you end up in these. Places 3660 | 3661 | that you never expected at the beginning. 3662 | I think it's always, every single time, the 3663 | 3664 | latter. Really? And when I start an article, 3665 | I have no idea where it's going to go. And 3666 | 3667 | a lot of times the reason I start it is because 3668 | I'm like, I want to learn about this topic. 3669 | 3670 | So I think this is, I think that's actually 3671 | pretty common. And a lot of people will think 3672 | 3673 | like, oh, this author wrote this book. And 3674 | they imagine that the author had all of that 3675 | 3676 | information in their head. And then they just 3677 | like regurgitated it on, onto the paper. Right. 3678 | 3679 | The process of writing is what teaches you. 3680 | And so all of, every one of these articles, 3681 | 3682 | when I start writing it, usually it starts 3683 | with, it often starts with this, a title, 3684 | 3685 | a headline. I remember, I specifically remember 3686 | having lunch with Patrick O'Shaughnessy in 3687 | 3688 | 2017. And he said, what are you working on? 3689 | And I said, I want to write a blog post called 3690 | 3691 | the psychology of money. 3692 | And he kind of said, what's it about? I'm 3693 | 3694 | like, I don't, I don't know, but that'd be 3695 | a cool, that'd be a cool title, right? Like 3696 | 3697 | it's a catchy title. I think it'd be good. 3698 | And so I had the, the title in my head, but 3699 | 3700 | I had no clue what was like, what am I going 3701 | to fill it out with? Like, I don't know. I'll 3702 | 3703 | figure that out later, but that's, that's 3704 | always how it works. 3705 | 3706 | And. And literally every single piece, when 3707 | you start writing it, you have no idea where 3708 | 3709 | it's going to go. And sometimes, where it 3710 | ends up is like, sometimes the opposite of 3711 | 3712 | what you thought. Because you start learning 3713 | about these topics and you're like, oh, my 3714 | 3715 | thesis was this, but as I learned more, it 3716 | turns out it's actually the opposite. 3717 | 3718 | But the opposite's pretty cool, so let's write 3719 | about that. So I think it's always, um, it's 3720 | 3721 | just a learning process for me. And that gets 3722 | back to selfish writing, too. Like, I'm just 3723 | 3724 | trying to figure out the world for myself. 3725 | And if I can tell a story that I like, written 3726 | 3727 | in a style that I like, I take a leap of faith 3728 | that other people might be interested in it, 3729 | 3730 | too. 3731 | Mm hmm. What's interesting about you is, you 3732 | 3733 | love sentences. You love sentences. I think 3734 | you remember sentences. I think you say, I 3735 | 3736 | write in sentences. Yeah. It seems like that 3737 | is your... Your thing that you're just so 3738 | 3739 | focused on is like, what is a great sentence? 3740 | Reading that, writing that, and it seems like 3741 | 3742 | that is like the atomic unit that you're orbiting 3743 | around. 3744 | 3745 | I think, even in books that you love and have 3746 | a profound impact on you. If someone said, 3747 | 3748 | Oh, tell me about that book. You probably 3749 | remember from the 70, 000 word book, you probably 3750 | 3751 | remember three or four sentences that you 3752 | can actually recite from heart. And those 3753 | 3754 | are the books that like meant something to 3755 | you. 3756 | 3757 | And I, I, for a long time, I gave you credit 3758 | for this, but you tell me you didn't come 3759 | 3760 | up with this phrase. I didn't come up with 3761 | this. People don't remember books. You can 3762 | 3763 | still give me credit for it. I, I, I'm just 3764 | going to keep doing it. I think what happened 3765 | 3766 | is that you did tell me it, but maybe you 3767 | were quoting somebody else. 3768 | 3769 | Okay. People don't remember books, they remember 3770 | sentences. When you told me that, and I remember 3771 | 3772 | you did tell me that, I was like, that's it. 3773 | That's, that's what it is. You remember sentences. 3774 | 3775 | So if you think of your writing, whether it's 3776 | a blog or a book, as just a collection of 3777 | 3778 | good sentences. Hey, that's like, that's kind 3779 | of obvious. 3780 | 3781 | Like, of course, that's what every book is, 3782 | a collection of sentences. But when you think 3783 | 3784 | about that, it really pushes you towards, 3785 | like, what I just wrote. Is that a good sentence? 3786 | 3787 | If it's not, let's get it out. Let's get another 3788 | one in there. And you always just want to 3789 | 3790 | make, I mean, this is another like obvious 3791 | statement, but it's a, it's, it's, it's had 3792 | 3793 | a big impact on me. 3794 | I've just, that sentence that I just wrote, 3795 | 3796 | would somebody highlight that in Kindle? Is 3797 | that a sentence worth highlighting? If not, 3798 | 3799 | like, let's move on. Like, let's try to get 3800 | the highest density of highlightable, memorable 3801 | 3802 | sentences in there. And if you can improve 3803 | that in density, even if you improve it by 3804 | 3805 | 10%, like, you're gonna zoom up the ladder 3806 | of the quality of the writing. 3807 | 3808 | You know what the number one highlighted book 3809 | is in Kindle history? 4 Hour Body. Is that 3810 | 3811 | right? Number one. And I think that's, I think 3812 | Tim is a great example of, uh, very quotable. 3813 | 3814 | Very quotable. If Munger, if Charlie Munger 3815 | wrote a book, You would highlight the whole 3816 | 3817 | thing. Because he is just a machine of one 3818 | liners. 3819 | 3820 | Yep. And if you, once you tie those one liners 3821 | together, you get beautiful writing. Mm hmm. 3822 | 3823 | Yeah. See, I love phrases. Never ending now. 3824 | It's kind of the same thing though. Yeah, 3825 | 3826 | well, I would say Close. I think that I like 3827 | the thing that you get in a phrase more than 3828 | 3829 | a sentence is it's it's less complete But 3830 | I think it's a little bit more catchy and 3831 | 3832 | there's more alliteration and like playing 3833 | with the words and I think that that I think 3834 | 3835 | it can be, yeah, it's slightly different, 3836 | and I'm trying to figure out what that speaks 3837 | 3838 | to, that I like one liners so much. 3839 | I don't know what it is, but maybe it's that 3840 | 3841 | I can get away with it not really making sense, 3842 | but being memorable. Like, there's something 3843 | 3844 | very artistic about it. I think it's, I think 3845 | it's, I think a lot of people like that. I 3846 | 3847 | heard this recently, I forget where I heard 3848 | it, but... Larry King, I didn't know this, 3849 | 3850 | but back in the 80s had a column, a newspaper 3851 | column. 3852 | 3853 | He, apparently back in the 80s, he did everything. 3854 | He was like TV host and journalist. And because 3855 | 3856 | he was so busy doing all the other things 3857 | he was doing, his weekly column was just a 3858 | 3859 | collection of random sentences. So the example 3860 | was like, he'd be like, and it was just someone 3861 | 3862 | recalling us. I'm sure this isn't like verbatim 3863 | what he wrote, but he'd be like, I really 3864 | 3865 | love Princess Diana's new hair. 3866 | And the next sentence would be like, I can't 3867 | 3868 | believe Ronald Reagan did this. It was just 3869 | a random collection of sentences of just random 3870 | 3871 | observations. And, but people love that. People 3872 | love a collection of good sentences. And the 3873 | 3874 | idea that, of course, if you can tie all that 3875 | together in a long form narrative, that's 3876 | 3877 | great too. 3878 | But a collection of great sentences is. I 3879 | 3880 | love it. One of my favorite Nassim Taleb books 3881 | is his least well known, it's called The Bed 3882 | 3883 | of Procrustance. So good. So good. It's a 3884 | collection of aphorisms. And people love that. 3885 | 3886 | Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. It's a collection 3887 | of aphorisms. People love short and snappy 3888 | 3889 | to the point. 3890 | And it's almost like, it's a form of poetry, 3891 | 3892 | and in poetry, like, you cannot reduce it 3893 | to what it's been. If you can get an idea 3894 | 3895 | reduced to one great sentence, that's, that's 3896 | a form of best story wins. Hey man, there's 3897 | 3898 | another book called Everything by Aaron Haspel, 3899 | and it's just like Beto Prokosty's. It is 3900 | 3901 | so fun to read. 3902 | I love flippin open books of aphorisms. You 3903 | 3904 | read it for like three, four minutes at a 3905 | time. Kevin Kelly's recent book. Yes! It's 3906 | 3907 | just a book of quotes, and it's lovely. It's 3908 | so good. The main thing is to keep the main 3909 | 3910 | thing the main thing. I say that all the time 3911 | now. Don't be the best, be the only. Yeah. 3912 | 3913 | Other people have explained that in ten thousand 3914 | words. 3915 | 3916 | And he's, he does it in, you know, eight or 3917 | whatever it is. And that's like, that's, that's 3918 | 3919 | the, that's what's really good. He has another 3920 | one like, enthusiasm is worth 40 IQ points. 3921 | 3922 | Yeah. He has another one. I'm sure he's making 3923 | this up, but he says, if you don't smoke before 3924 | 3925 | age 25, you will never start. And if you start 3926 | smoking before age 25, you will never quit. 3927 | 3928 | Like, I don't know if that's statistically 3929 | true, but just as a sentence, you're like, 3930 | 3931 | Oh, there's actually a lot of meaning in that 3932 | of just like the accumulation, compounding 3933 | 3934 | effect of habits. So he's, but that's another 3935 | example of, and I know when you turn something 3936 | 3937 | like that into a publisher. Most publishers 3938 | will say, can't do it. 3939 | 3940 | You need to tell a story that's got to be 3941 | connecting. These are all random points. How 3942 | 3943 | do they tie together? And my thought is always 3944 | like, no, they don't. I got a lot of that 3945 | 3946 | feedback from Psychology of Money. Every single 3947 | publisher in America turned it down. Every 3948 | 3949 | pub, and we sent it to every publisher. 3950 | Every single one of them rejected it. And 3951 | 3952 | the main reason why, there are lots of reasons 3953 | why, but the main one was, it's just a random 3954 | 3955 | collection of essays about money. There's 3956 | no connecting theme. And my response was like, 3957 | 3958 | yeah, that's what's good about it. It's just 3959 | like, rather than rambling on one topic, I 3960 | 3961 | would just want, like, I got these stories 3962 | and I think they're good. 3963 | 3964 | And I know that Chapter 7 doesn't relate to 3965 | Chapter 12 in the slightest. They're not connected 3966 | 3967 | at all. But I think they're both good. But 3968 | the publisher said, no, every chapter has 3969 | 3970 | to be about a connecting theme. And I thought 3971 | that was bonkers. I think it's the opposite. 3972 | 3973 | I think books like Kevin Kelly's, or Nassim 3974 | Taleb's, or to some extent, Psychology of 3975 | 3976 | Money. 3977 | Cover a wide range of things, but if it's 3978 | 3979 | good writing, people will like it. Yeah, I 3980 | mean, the major lesson of doing this podcast 3981 | 3982 | so far has just been everything works, but 3983 | you need to just be really, really, really, 3984 | 3985 | really, really good at whatever it is that 3986 | you do. I like that. Yeah. And in some ways 3987 | 3988 | that's obvious, but it's, it's easy to overlook. 3989 | But people are always like, hey, how should 3990 | 3991 | I do it? You can do whatever you want. Yeah. 3992 | But you gotta be really good. You gotta be 3993 | 3994 | really good at it. You gotta be really good 3995 | at it. Yeah, no, that, that's actually really 3996 | 3997 | good advice. Because there's a million ways 3998 | to write. It's an art. It's not a science. 3999 | 4000 | Yeah. 4001 | And like in every form of art, there's infinite 4002 | 4003 | number of ways to do it. As long as you're 4004 | good at it. What have you taken from Bill 4005 | 4006 | Bryson? He, uh, in a similar way. to Ken Burns, 4007 | writes about topics in which he is not discovering 4008 | 4009 | any new information. He's writing about topics 4010 | that have been written about by a million 4011 | 4012 | people before him who are more qualified and 4013 | understood the topic better than him. 4014 | 4015 | But he will, he's a better writer than everyone 4016 | else. So his most recent book is called The 4017 | 4018 | Body. It's an anatomy textbook where he starts 4019 | with the hair and he moves down to the toes 4020 | 4021 | and he talks about how the human body works. 4022 | And he goes into grand detail about How your 4023 | 4024 | gallbladder works and how your quadriceps 4025 | interact with different tendons and whatnot. 4026 | 4027 | But he tells it in such a captivating storytelling 4028 | fashion that it was like one of the books 4029 | 4030 | of the year when it came out. And that's when 4031 | you can take a topic that seems so dull and 4032 | 4033 | boring and that it's literally a textbook 4034 | of a topic and be like, Oh, I'm going to tell 4035 | 4036 | a good story about this. That's what he's 4037 | so good about. 4038 | 4039 | You know, what's really funny about this? 4040 | How many writers don't write because they 4041 | 4042 | think Everything that I would want to say 4043 | on this topic has already been said before. 4044 | 4045 | So much of good writing is not what you say, 4046 | it's how you say it. And the proof of this 4047 | 4048 | comes from your high school English class, 4049 | or your high school science class, whatever 4050 | 4051 | it is. 4052 | Our favorite teachers, they weren't there 4053 | 4054 | coming up with new information. Yeah. No, 4055 | they just had a way of communicating it that 4056 | 4057 | brought it to life and they made it fun or 4058 | they made it engaging or they created a moment 4059 | 4060 | of suspense and tension as you were sitting 4061 | there and you went from being bored to being 4062 | 4063 | mesmerized and that teacher really fired you 4064 | up but there's something about we start sitting 4065 | 4066 | down to write we're like Oh, I need to make 4067 | sure that none of these ideas have ever been 4068 | 4069 | shared before and people just drop themselves 4070 | out of the race before it begins. 4071 | 4072 | I would say it more forcefully and say, there 4073 | is nothing new to write about. Hmm. And everything 4074 | 4075 | has been written unless you're talking about 4076 | the news of today, but even that, it's like 4077 | 4078 | these, there's, there's nothing new. Everything 4079 | that needs to be said has been said before. 4080 | 4081 | It's not to say that we haven't discovered 4082 | every form of science or like there's no more 4083 | 4084 | innovation, but there's almost no new topics 4085 | to write about. 4086 | 4087 | Right. You're just writing about it in a slightly 4088 | different way than everyone who came before 4089 | 4090 | you. But there's a tremendous amount of Value 4091 | in that and and potential in that if you can 4092 | 4093 | tell a good story about something that is 4094 | up until that point been left to The textbooks 4095 | 4096 | the boring numbers and data that don't catch 4097 | people's attention. 4098 | 4099 | There's infinite opportunity in that you know 4100 | the other lesson from Bill Bryson is the way 4101 | 4102 | that you can expand and contract ideas In 4103 | this just magnificent way, right? He has what 4104 | 4105 | a short history of nearly everything. Yes. 4106 | We're just talking about the history of the 4107 | 4108 | universe. Literally the history of the universe 4109 | too. 4110 | 4111 | 1927. There's, there's, yes. I mean, he writes 4112 | about everything because his skill is writing. 4113 | 4114 | His skill is not astrophysics. His skill is 4115 | not 19, 1920s history. His skill is writing. 4116 | 4117 | And he could write about anything. He could 4118 | write about the history of a fireplace and 4119 | 4120 | it'd be a great book because he can just tell 4121 | a story. 4122 | 4123 | So that's, I think when that's your skill, 4124 | the opportunity for him is. Infinite. It's 4125 | 4126 | endless. Do you have a good way of thinking 4127 | about conclusions? I think the most important 4128 | 4129 | part of any article is probably the first 4130 | and the last sentence. The last sentence. 4131 | 4132 | Because the first sentence hooks you in, the 4133 | last sentence is how you, how you, the last 4134 | 4135 | feeling you're going to have with it. 4136 | So I try to, I try to think about that quite 4137 | 4138 | a bit, uh, in there. Uh, the very last sentence 4139 | in Psychology of Money is the title of the 4140 | 4141 | first chapter. So the title of the first chapter 4142 | is No One's Crazy, and the last sentence of 4143 | 4144 | Psychology of Money is No One's Crazy. So 4145 | that was intentional. I don't know if anyone 4146 | 4147 | noticed that or if it had any impact, but 4148 | that was, I think you should always put an 4149 | 4150 | excessive amount of thought, an abnormal amount 4151 | of thought into the first and last lines. 4152 | 4153 | Do you have any way of thinking about it, 4154 | or is it just like a very intuitive sense? 4155 | 4156 | Like, there's something there, right? Closing 4157 | the circle where it began. I'm going to open 4158 | 4159 | it somewhere, I'm going to close it somewhere, 4160 | and it's... It's going to be this circular... 4161 | 4162 | The worst that you could do, the absolute 4163 | worst writing, is that your last sentence 4164 | 4165 | is, in summary, comma, like that's, that's, 4166 | that's when you know you've, you've, you've 4167 | 4168 | lost it. 4169 | It should be some sort of emotional like, 4170 | 4171 | boom, just leaves right there. And it hits 4172 | you at the end of like, that's, that's what 4173 | 4174 | it is. Robert Caro writes to the last sentence. 4175 | So he knows what the last sentence is. And 4176 | 4177 | the entire book just leads, and leads, yeah. 4178 | He's, he's his own beast. He's a, he's an 4179 | 4180 | amazing writer. 4181 | And in such a different way from you, like, 4182 | 4183 | he's an obsessive researcher. Like, he's just 4184 | flipping through files, turning every page 4185 | 4186 | he always has. My favorite Robert Caro story 4187 | is when he was working on the research for 4188 | 4189 | one of his Lyndon Johnson books. I don't know 4190 | how many he's written, but he's interviewing 4191 | 4192 | Lyndon Johnson's old chauffeur. 4193 | And Robert Caro says, hey, when Lyndon Johnson 4194 | 4195 | was in the back of the car, what was he doing? 4196 | And the chauffeur says, I don't know, I wasn't 4197 | 4198 | paying any attention. A week later, Robert 4199 | Carroll says, hey, I gotta ask you again. 4200 | 4201 | When Lyndon was in the back of the car, what 4202 | did he do? The chauffeur says, I told you, 4203 | 4204 | I don't, I was never paying attention. 4205 | I was driving. I don't know what Lyndon was 4206 | 4207 | doing. Carroll asked him like five more times 4208 | at different interviews, what was he doing 4209 | 4210 | in the back seat? Finally, the chauffeur says, 4211 | okay, you know what? He would always talk 4212 | 4213 | to himself. Lyndon Johnson, whenever he's 4214 | in the back seat, he would talk to himself 4215 | 4216 | about how the day went. 4217 | And he'd literally say to himself, ah, Lyndon, 4218 | 4219 | at that event today, I said the wrong thing. 4220 | And I make sure you don't. And Robert Crowe 4221 | 4222 | was like, that's the most fascinating. But 4223 | he says he had to ask this person five or 4224 | 4225 | six times before he finally got to it. And 4226 | most interviewers after the first answer, 4227 | 4228 | they'd be like, all right, well, there's nothing 4229 | there. 4230 | 4231 | Move on. But when he had an intuition that 4232 | there was something to dig on, he would just 4233 | 4234 | keep chipping away at it until he finally 4235 | got to what he was looking for. I like this 4236 | 4237 | line that you have in, uh, Same as Ever right 4238 | at the beginning. It's none of the chapters 4239 | 4240 | are long and you're welcome for that. Yeah, 4241 | that's how I feel as a reader. 4242 | 4243 | I'm kind of saying that back to like selfish 4244 | writing. I'm saying that to myself. I don't 4245 | 4246 | like long chapters. People like getting to 4247 | the end of a chapter because it feels like 4248 | 4249 | they're making progress. They're kind of, 4250 | it's like in the video game. You're like, 4251 | 4252 | oh, I beat the next level. The person who 4253 | does this the best and who is just like shameless 4254 | 4255 | about, uh, short chapters is Eric Larson. 4256 | Who's written many, many books. His most recent 4257 | 4258 | famous one is um, Splendid in the Vial. Splendid 4259 | in the Vial about the London Blitz bombing. 4260 | 4261 | And some of his chapters are, are a paragraph. 4262 | You know, in his average book he'll only have 4263 | 4264 | like 150 chapters. Oh wow. But some of them, 4265 | most of them are a page or two. 4266 | 4267 | And it's just, it's almost impossible to put 4268 | the book down because you're making so much 4269 | 4270 | progress. And the opposite of that for a lot 4271 | of readers. You get to a chapter and you're 4272 | 4273 | like, oh, let me see how, oh, this chapter 4274 | is 40 pages. A lot of people would just be 4275 | 4276 | like, ah, you just feel like you have this 4277 | giant burden in front of you to try to plow 4278 | 4279 | through. 4280 | So if you can keep people going, keep them 4281 | 4282 | feeling on track, and keep them feeling like 4283 | they're, they're winning the next chapter, 4284 | 4285 | that's really important. And I think at the 4286 | micro level of like how long your paragraph 4287 | 4288 | is, it's kind of daunting when you see a page 4289 | and it's just a giant uninterrupted block 4290 | 4291 | of text. 4292 | Whereas if you can really make it just like, 4293 | 4294 | just break up your sentences. It's fine to 4295 | have if every paragraph is two sentences, 4296 | 4297 | but you just keep people going. It's a much 4298 | easier way to read and it's less daunting. 4299 | 4300 | And because it's less daunting, you're more 4301 | likely to keep the person on the page rather 4302 | 4303 | than being like, I don't have time for this. 4304 | I got to go do something else. Two nights 4305 | 4306 | ago, I picked up a 19th century commentary 4307 | and I looked at it and it was a big book and 4308 | 4309 | the way the pages were laid out was it had 4310 | the whole paragraph going all the way down 4311 | 4312 | and then on the same page the whole paragraph 4313 | going all the way down and across two pages 4314 | 4315 | so up and down four, the four times was all 4316 | one paragraph. 4317 | 4318 | It is so intimidating. It was. I was just 4319 | like. But also like for reader comprehension. 4320 | 4321 | The reader's not gonna, like the amount that 4322 | they're gonna absorb from that is so much 4323 | 4324 | less than if you broke that up. So a lot of 4325 | writers don't think about that. Just like 4326 | 4327 | what does the paragraph look like and how 4328 | do the sentences break up? 4329 | 4330 | The other thing is that if you have a standalone 4331 | sentence as a paragraph It sticks out more 4332 | 4333 | and you're like that's an important line. 4334 | Yeah, like the paragraph that preceded it 4335 | 4336 | I'm building up to this grand point that you 4337 | need to pay attention to right before I move 4338 | 4339 | on to the next I think a lot of writers underestimate 4340 | how the way that your paragraphs are broken 4341 | 4342 | up is actually a signal to your reader So 4343 | if you have paragraph Break paragraph break 4344 | 4345 | like sentence sentence sentence sentence and 4346 | all these super short paragraphs. 4347 | 4348 | You're actually Screaming to your reader. 4349 | I want you to skim this. I don't want you 4350 | 4351 | to take this seriously. Yes, and If you just 4352 | have these long choppy blocks It's just going 4353 | 4354 | to be too much, like overwhelming. And so 4355 | there's actually like, It's important to, 4356 | 4357 | to balance it out. There's a way to think 4358 | about this. 4359 | 4360 | And as you structure your paragraphs, you're 4361 | just telling your reader, This is how I want 4362 | 4363 | you to read my work. Yeah. And I don't think 4364 | a lot of writers think about that. I think, 4365 | 4366 | I think a varying length of your sentences 4367 | too. Of course. Some sentences will be three 4368 | 4369 | words. Others it's fine if they're 20 or 25 4370 | words. 4371 | 4372 | If every one of your sentences is 10 words, 4373 | it's very robotic and monotonous. You gotta, 4374 | 4375 | you gotta splice it up a bit. Bill Bryson 4376 | is really good at this, of having a really 4377 | 4378 | long, almost rambling sentence, followed by 4379 | a three word sentence. And that just, it makes 4380 | 4381 | it kind of like a musical form of writing, 4382 | of when there's like, there's a beat to it, 4383 | 4384 | that's really, that's really fun to read. 4385 | I'm working on a, uh, It's a fairly serious, 4386 | 4387 | heavy piece, and I have an 123 word sentence 4388 | that I think is frickin hilarious, just to 4389 | 4390 | like break it up. And part of it is just like, 4391 | I want to have fun as the writer, but I was 4392 | 4393 | like, how long can I make this sentence? And 4394 | it was just sort of going, going, going, it's 4395 | 4396 | all over the place. 4397 | And what's fun is, you sort of build up these 4398 | 4399 | short sentences before it, and then you can 4400 | just let it go. And when you have a long sentence 4401 | 4402 | like that, I even wrote it so that it would 4403 | have, be paced so it goes boom, boom, boom, 4404 | 4405 | boom, boom, boom, boom. And I feel like as 4406 | I've written more and more, I've given myself 4407 | 4408 | more and more liberty to just do something 4409 | because I'm, because it's going to make me 4410 | 4411 | laugh. 4412 | One thing that, like a sentence that sticks 4413 | 4414 | out, actually people remember sentences, I 4415 | forget what book this is, so I'm not going 4416 | 4417 | to give it accurate credit here, but it was 4418 | a book about D Day during World War II. And 4419 | 4420 | the two sentence that I remember, it was All 4421 | of the young men, it's talking about U. S. 4422 | 4423 | soldiers going into D Day, all of the young 4424 | men knew that they might die in battle. And 4425 | 4426 | the next sentence was, Most of them died in 4427 | battle. And it was, I remember that just like, 4428 | 4429 | so that just like, four words or whatever, 4430 | it's just like, you can create so much emotion 4431 | 4432 | with a super short sentence. It doesn't need 4433 | to be a long, rambling explanation. 4434 | 4435 | Just four or five words, you can really stop 4436 | the reader in their tracks. You ever heard 4437 | 4438 | this Gary Provost thing on sentences? No. 4439 | Alright, this is gonna be a little long, but 4440 | 4441 | I think it's, it's fun doing. So, my favorite 4442 | part of every Rite of Passage cohort is performing 4443 | 4444 | this, like I'm about to do. So, here we go. 4445 | Okay. This sentence has five words. Here are 4446 | 4447 | five more words. Five word sentences are fine, 4448 | but several together become monotonous. Listen 4449 | 4450 | to what is happening. The writing is getting 4451 | boring. The sound of it drones. It is like 4452 | 4453 | a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. 4454 | Now listen. I vary the sentence length and 4455 | 4456 | I create music. 4457 | Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant 4458 | 4459 | rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences, 4460 | and I use sentences of medium length. And 4461 | 4462 | sometimes, when I'm certain the reader is 4463 | rested, I will engage him with a sentence 4464 | 4465 | of considerable length. A sentence that burns 4466 | with energy and builds with all the impetus 4467 | 4468 | of a crescendo. 4469 | The roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals, 4470 | 4471 | sounds that say, Listen to this. It's so good. 4472 | It is important. So write with a combination 4473 | 4474 | of short, medium, and long sentences. Create 4475 | a sound that pleases the reader's ear. Don't 4476 | 4477 | just write words. Oh, that's brilliant. I 4478 | love it. Write music. That's so good! So good. 4479 | 4480 | And I don't know what to call that, but I 4481 | love it when people show what they're trying 4482 | 4483 | to say as they're making the point in the 4484 | same, the same thrust. Yeah, that's good. 4485 | 4486 | But the other thing that sticks out for me 4487 | is like what percentage of writers think that 4488 | 4489 | deeply about their work. Most of them are 4490 | just like, throw on some words together as 4491 | 4492 | much as they can. 4493 | But how many think about the art of it? Back 4494 | 4495 | to Ken Burns, like nobody thinks about the 4496 | music lining up with it. He's just the only 4497 | 4498 | one who puts in that much effort. How many 4499 | writers think about varying the length of 4500 | 4501 | their sentences? Like if you could just, there's 4502 | actually a tremendous amount of opportunity 4503 | 4504 | by just putting in a little bit more effort 4505 | than other people. 4506 | 4507 | Totally. That varier sentence length is the 4508 | number one piece of writing advice that I 4509 | 4510 | think about. If there's one thing that I think 4511 | about is just vary the thing that I'm doing. 4512 | 4513 | So the sentence length, the word length, the 4514 | paragraph length, and it's so simple and intuitive, 4515 | 4516 | but somehow it just sort of. 4517 | Mine would be brevity. Just getting to the 4518 | 4519 | point. What's your point? Tell me that point 4520 | and move on. Get me back to my day. I don't 4521 | 4522 | have time for your bullshit. That would be 4523 | mine. Yeah, exactly. No patience. No patience. 4524 | 4525 | You ever heard the Kanye line on Rick Rubin? 4526 | He's not a producer, he's a reducer. That's 4527 | 4528 | good. 4529 | That's really good. It's fun, right? I forget 4530 | 4531 | who says the advice of like improve your writing 4532 | by deleting every word. By deleting every 4533 | 4534 | other word. You've heard the The Ken Burns 4535 | Maple Syrup story. Yeah. So Ken Burns, I think, 4536 | 4537 | lives in New Hampshire or Vermont. Yeah. And 4538 | he said that it takes 40 gallons of sap to 4539 | 4540 | make one gallon of maple syrup. 4541 | And that's the same as for a video. That's 4542 | 4543 | the same as video and same as writing and 4544 | same as any communication, right? Like, this 4545 | 4546 | is like your scrap heap document. You know, 4547 | so much of good writing is just writing a 4548 | 4549 | lot, not having the pride to keep everything 4550 | and saying, And you know what? I'm going to 4551 | 4552 | go kill those darlings and I'm just going 4553 | to be left with. 4554 | 4555 | The stuff that's good hard to do hard to kill 4556 | your your darlings There was a there was another 4557 | 4558 | chapter in same as ever that the publisher 4559 | said and they were very polite about it But 4560 | 4561 | they said that chapter is not gonna work and 4562 | as soon as I said, I knew they were right 4563 | 4564 | But I had spent a lot of time on it I had 4565 | spent a lot of time crafting every sentence 4566 | 4567 | and it was hard to put it out of its misery 4568 | Maybe it'll be, it'll be resurrected in scrapped 4569 | 4570 | bits someday and I'll use it for something 4571 | else, but it's, it's really hard, it's easy 4572 | 4573 | to have sunk costs in writing and say, I've 4574 | spent a lot of time on this. 4575 | 4576 | Yeah, but the reader doesn't care how much 4577 | time you spent on it. Reader doesn't care 4578 | 4579 | how much angst it caused you. It's not good. 4580 | So get rid of it. They just don't care. I 4581 | 4582 | mean, I've, something I think a lot about 4583 | the paradox of creativity is Creative work 4584 | 4585 | is only done when the consumer feels like 4586 | it didn't take a lot of work. 4587 | 4588 | Yeah. Which means that they'll never appreciate 4589 | how much work it took. The other thing I think 4590 | 4591 | about is you never know what sentence took 4592 | the author an hour and which, which. Paragraph 4593 | 4594 | just fell out of their head. Ain't that right? 4595 | They all look the same, but sometimes, and 4596 | 4597 | it's not even the most profound, it's usually 4598 | not the most profound sentence, but there's 4599 | 4600 | one sentence in there that took 80 percent 4601 | of the time to make, to make that point. 4602 | 4603 | It's always, it's always like that. But as 4604 | a reader, you have no idea which one it was. 4605 | 4606 | Totally. I love this line where you talk about 4607 | Seinfeld. You have this graphic where you 4608 | 4609 | talk about different TV shows and the graphic 4610 | shows how TV shows when they end earlier, 4611 | 4612 | they tend to, the average season tends to 4613 | be rated much higher. 4614 | 4615 | Once you stick around a long time. Like The 4616 | Simpsons just goes and it's not rated well. 4617 | 4618 | The best show of the 1990s. It's still on 4619 | air. Most people don't even know they're still 4620 | 4621 | making it. And the ratings for the recent, 4622 | you know, decade are in the toilet. So that 4623 | 4624 | I always look at that and it's like you should 4625 | have quit while you're ahead like Seinfeld. 4626 | 4627 | Seinfeld was on top of the world when they 4628 | ended in 1998 and he said no we're done we're 4629 | 4630 | out of here. I know we're on top of the world 4631 | that's why we're quitting. And Jerry has this 4632 | 4633 | quote where he says the only way to know where 4634 | the top is is to experience the decline. And 4635 | 4636 | I have no interest in that. So when things, 4637 | when he was going parabolic, he said, that's 4638 | 4639 | the time to quit and quit while you're ahead. 4640 | I've always really admired that in athletes 4641 | 4642 | and business people, people who just remove 4643 | themselves from the system. I didn't realize 4644 | 4645 | this until recently, but Cameron Diaz did 4646 | that. She doesn't act anymore. Not because 4647 | 4648 | she can't. Of course she can. She just said, 4649 | I've had enough. I've achieved everything 4650 | 4651 | I wanted to. 4652 | I'm sure there's more to it. Maybe the downsides 4653 | 4654 | of acting, whatever it would be. But it's 4655 | so rare that people quit on their own terms. 4656 | 4657 | But I think it's fundamental to your happiness 4658 | because there's almost nothing else that's 4659 | 4660 | going to make you unhappier than being forced 4661 | out. Having your show canceled or the equivalent 4662 | 4663 | of that in your own career. 4664 | Yeah. It's gotta be really hard. So I've always 4665 | 4666 | really admired people who quit while they're 4667 | ahead and I hope I can do it someday. I feel 4668 | 4669 | like one thing that you are particularly good 4670 | at is just having a keen sense for whose feedback 4671 | 4672 | you're going to listen to and who's you're 4673 | going to ignore and reject. 4674 | 4675 | And I feel like you've just been very good 4676 | about saying, yeah, that person doesn't think 4677 | 4678 | this is right, but I disagree with them. You 4679 | know what? I got my own style and I've really 4680 | 4681 | watched you orbit into your own style and 4682 | lean into it more and more since we've gotten 4683 | 4684 | to know each other. I think, I think to some 4685 | extent though, I incorporate all the feedback. 4686 | 4687 | I'm a firm believer that you cannot take the 4688 | praise seriously if you ignore the criticism. 4689 | 4690 | And so unless you are rejecting. You have 4691 | to accept at least some of the criticism and 4692 | 4693 | that's hard to do and it's it's it's fun to 4694 | accept the praise But then if you reject if 4695 | 4696 | every time you have a critic you say I don't 4697 | know your time I'm like, no you should pay 4698 | 4699 | attention to some of it You have to learn 4700 | how to incorporate the phrase without it breaking 4701 | 4702 | who you are though But also feedback is a 4703 | giant power law like I have ten people in 4704 | 4705 | my life if they tell me something I listen. 4706 | They know. Yeah. They know, and their sense 4707 | 4708 | of where I'm at sometimes is far better than 4709 | where I am. But then really just thinking 4710 | 4711 | in concentric circles about this. Yeah. And 4712 | I think that as your style gets more and more 4713 | 4714 | distinct, I think it's important to have a 4715 | group of people whose feedback you really 4716 | 4717 | value, but know that, hey, the average person 4718 | might not like this, but that's the price 4719 | 4720 | I'm willing to pay so that. 4721 | The people who I'm trying to serve love this. 4722 | 4723 | Wasn't it Derek Thompson on, on this, on this 4724 | podcast who said, Find someone who cares about 4725 | 4726 | you and wants you to succeed and is willing 4727 | to give you critical advice. I think he phrased 4728 | 4729 | it differently, but I think that's really 4730 | true. Because the troll on Twitter doesn't 4731 | 4732 | want you to succeed. 4733 | They don't care. But your best friend wants 4734 | 4735 | you to succeed, but they're still willing 4736 | to tell you when you're wrong. And that's 4737 | 4738 | the person who you want to listen to. Amen. 4739 | You have a chapter, Wounds heal, scars last. 4740 | 4741 | What do you feel is a wound from your career 4742 | versus a scar? Oh gosh, great question. I 4743 | 4744 | don't know if I've, if I've started, if I've 4745 | thought a lot. 4746 | 4747 | I mean, most of the criticisms were wounds 4748 | because they healed. Particularly early on 4749 | 4750 | in my writing career, my wife used to walk 4751 | in the door and she would just look at my 4752 | 4753 | demeanor and she would say, bad comment today. 4754 | it would just eat away at me when there would 4755 | 4756 | be feedback on my blog. Me too, man. 4757 | Because I felt like my career was, was one 4758 | 4759 | criticism away from ending. It's how it felt 4760 | because it just felt like it was a fragile 4761 | 4762 | career and I had thinner skin back then when 4763 | I first started. So those, those are all, 4764 | 4765 | um, you know, wounds that healed. Scars that 4766 | lasted, I actually think starting my career 4767 | 4768 | in 2008 when the economy was a mess and it 4769 | was really like, If you lose this job, there's 4770 | 4771 | probably not another one for you. 4772 | That was actually really good in hindsight. 4773 | 4774 | Caused a lot of stress and anxiety. A lot 4775 | of nearly sleepless nights. But in hindsight, 4776 | 4777 | it was like, we really got to figure make 4778 | this thing work. This is not just a luxury. 4779 | 4780 | Oh, let's see if this writing job pans out. 4781 | Like, no, I got to take this real seriously. 4782 | 4783 | And I'm not going to think of this as just 4784 | like a temporary job of this like, oh, let's 4785 | 4786 | play around as a writer. 4787 | Like I got to find out how to become a professional 4788 | 4789 | writer and I got to do it right now. I mean, 4790 | one of the chapters in Same as Ever is about 4791 | 4792 | when the magic happens and it's about the 4793 | biggest innovations in society take place 4794 | 4795 | when the world is on fire during pandemics, 4796 | during wars. Shit gets real and the stakes 4797 | 4798 | are really high. 4799 | That's when people figure problems out. And 4800 | 4801 | I think starting your career in 2008 did that 4802 | for everybody. It was like, I got this job 4803 | 4804 | and there's not many others out there, so 4805 | I gotta, I gotta figure out how to make this 4806 | 4807 | work. That was, I think that's a, like being 4808 | scarred by that is actually really beneficial. 4809 | 4810 | That is something that's striking about talking 4811 | to you is for how long you've been writing 4812 | 4813 | and for how well you do it and how many books 4814 | you've sold. You talk about it like you've 4815 | 4816 | been doing this for a few years and you're 4817 | still in double A baseball. I think if you, 4818 | 4819 | if you don't, at the moment that you lose 4820 | that, you're done. 4821 | 4822 | You're finished. I mean, I tell a story in 4823 | Psychology of Money about Mike Moritz who 4824 | 4825 | runs Sequoia, the most successful VC firm 4826 | of all time. And they've been the best VC 4827 | 4828 | firm for 40 years. And Charlie Rose asked 4829 | him, he said, what's the secret to your success? 4830 | 4831 | And he said, we're always scared of going 4832 | out of business. 4833 | 4834 | And he says, we don't ever assume that the 4835 | success we had yesterday is gonna transfer 4836 | 4837 | to tomorrow. They wake up scared every day 4838 | and I think the moment you lose that it's, 4839 | 4840 | it's done. You can count the days to the end 4841 | of your career. And so I, yeah, I feel like 4842 | 4843 | I, part of it's just my personality. I'm a 4844 | worrier. 4845 | 4846 | I'm a worst case scenario guy. It's not that 4847 | healthy of a personality, but I've always 4848 | 4849 | been like that. So I think always realizing 4850 | that no matter what you've achieved in the 4851 | 4852 | past, you can be toast tomorrow or the next, 4853 | the next book you write can be garbage. Always 4854 | 4855 | remembering that kind of keeps you focused 4856 | on it. 4857 | 4858 | Keeps you in gear. Yeah, do you feel like 4859 | there's a stability and a longevity to your 4860 | 4861 | career writing books that you didn't have 4862 | writing articles? The funny thing is like, 4863 | 4864 | um, One of the reasons why I didn't write 4865 | psychology money for 14 years is I didn't 4866 | 4867 | see the point. I was like, I write online, 4868 | who cares if it's in between two pieces of 4869 | 4870 | cardboard? 4871 | What difference does it make? And now I realize 4872 | 4873 | that that's, that's not true. They're like 4874 | the, the format of a book makes it a distinctly 4875 | 4876 | different thing than just a blog. And so, 4877 | um, you know, I hope there's longevity in 4878 | 4879 | the style. I mean, just by the theme, same 4880 | as ever, it's like things that will always 4881 | 4882 | be true. 4883 | I never understood writers who wanted to write 4884 | 4885 | things that were constrained to a time period, 4886 | you know, writing about the best stocks to 4887 | 4888 | buy this year. Well, by definition, nobody 4889 | cares about that article next year or writing 4890 | 4891 | about, you know, a book about the top trends 4892 | of 1999. By 2001, no one's buying your book. 4893 | 4894 | So I've always been like, if it's not timeless 4895 | and why, why do you even doing it? It's so 4896 | 4897 | part of the reason is it's so hard to sell 4898 | books. People don't realize that the tail 4899 | 4900 | distribution of how hard it is to get someone 4901 | to pay 30 for content that they're used to 4902 | 4903 | getting for free is very, very difficult. 4904 | So if you're going to do it, give yourself 4905 | 4906 | a fighting chance. At writing something that 4907 | people might buy next year and 10 years from 4908 | 4909 | now and 50 years from now, like at least give 4910 | yourself the opportunity to get there. So 4911 | 4912 | I always want to write, if I write something 4913 | that's not going to be relevant in 10 years, 4914 | 4915 | I don't see the point in writing it at all. 4916 | So what moves the needle? In book sales? Yeah. 4917 | 4918 | I always say 90 percent of virality is luck. 4919 | If there's anything that takes off a blog 4920 | 4921 | post, a tweet, a book, a business, anything 4922 | that has just, you know, four standard deviation 4923 | 4924 | success. The more outlier the success, the 4925 | more luck played a role. And it's not that 4926 | 4927 | luck was all of it. 4928 | Of course in successful businesses or successful 4929 | 4930 | tweets or books, there's some skill in there. 4931 | But there's a lot of things that have to go 4932 | 4933 | right to have that extreme outlier success. 4934 | And I think the proof of that is that there 4935 | 4936 | are a lot of good books, great books that 4937 | didn't sell that much. And that's, that's 4938 | 4939 | what it is. 4940 | And there's a lot of books that sold a lot 4941 | 4942 | that aren't that good. And so that's, I think, 4943 | and it's true for music. It's true for tweets. 4944 | 4945 | It's, it's really unhealthy that if you experience 4946 | outsized success to say, I, I did all of that. 4947 | 4948 | That's, I achieved four standard deviation 4949 | success because I'm four standard deviation 4950 | 4951 | smarter than everyone else. 4952 | That's an utterly wrong mindset, uh, and a 4953 | 4954 | very dangerous mindset. Well, we had a fun 4955 | texting thread a few months ago where I texted 4956 | 4957 | you about, uh, author who had just spent a 4958 | bunch of money on marketing and you were just 4959 | 4960 | like, doesn't work, doesn't mean anything. 4961 | Dude, who cares? It's like. You know what 4962 | 4963 | my marketing strategy is? 4964 | Write a good book. Yeah, that's my marketing 4965 | 4966 | strategy. Jason Zweig in the Wall Street Journal 4967 | is about a week before Psychology Money came 4968 | 4969 | out and we were talking about marketing books 4970 | and he said, Morgan, if the book is good, 4971 | 4972 | you don't need to market it. And if the book 4973 | is bad, no amount of marketing is going to 4974 | 4975 | help. 4976 | And I think that's like 80 percent true. I 4977 | 4978 | like that though. But it's definitely, it's 4979 | definitely 80 percent true. It's not 100 percent 4980 | 4981 | true. I think there is marketing that works. 4982 | You need to give the book a push when it first 4983 | 4984 | comes out. You got to go on the podcast. You 4985 | got to get, you got to make the world aware 4986 | 4987 | of it. 4988 | But once they're aware of it, if it's good, 4989 | 4990 | it's going to go. And if it's bad, it's going 4991 | to die. And you just got to accept that that's 4992 | 4993 | what it is. Well, one way to think about it 4994 | is, how high is the pulpit that you're shouting 4995 | 4996 | from? Yeah. So marketing, you're just shouting 4997 | from a higher pulpit. And so you can reach 4998 | 4999 | more people. 5000 | But then the question is, do the people that 5001 | 5002 | you reach turn around and share it with two 5003 | other people? Or do they keep it to themselves? 5004 | 5005 | Yes. I mean, there's like nothing is good. 5006 | There's no marketing that's going to sell 5007 | 5008 | books other than word of mouth. For any significant 5009 | period of time. Like you can, you can go on 5010 | 5011 | a lot of podcasts and maybe get like a, an 5012 | excerpt in the New York Times or whatnot. 5013 | 5014 | Nothing is going to move the needle more than 5015 | every person who buys your book. Text three 5016 | 5017 | of their friends and say, you need to buy 5018 | this too. That's the only thing that, and 5019 | 5020 | that's the only thing that gives it the long 5021 | tail. If you, if you go on a lot of podcasts 5022 | 5023 | and you, you're on the Today Show or whatever, 5024 | you can sell a lot of books for a month. 5025 | 5026 | But if you want to keep selling books for 5027 | years, it has to have word of mouth, same 5028 | 5029 | for products, same for everything. The iPhone 5030 | sells, not because they have a good marketing, 5031 | 5032 | it sells because it's a good product that 5033 | people want to use. And when they buy it for 5034 | 5035 | the first time, they tell their siblings and 5036 | their parents and their friends, you should 5037 | 5038 | go buy this too. 5039 | Nothing works more than that. Yeah, you know, 5040 | 5041 | speaking of products, I feel like one of the 5042 | things that you do really well is you Think 5043 | 5044 | through what is the user experience of reading 5045 | my work and low friction. I want to make it 5046 | 5047 | fun I want it to be brief and you know, there's 5048 | other writers who would say to hell with it 5049 | 5050 | You know, this is it's art let it pour out 5051 | of your soul and stuff like that And I think 5052 | 5053 | that you really appreciate a good UX as a 5054 | reader. 5055 | 5056 | So you try to deliver a good UX as a writer 5057 | I'm just trying to have empathy for the reader 5058 | 5059 | And having experience as yourself as a reader. 5060 | I know what I like to write and I want to, 5061 | 5062 | I want to mimic that. I know what I don't 5063 | like to write and I want to stay away from 5064 | 5065 | that. So I think it's just respect, empathy 5066 | for the reader that pushes you in that direction. 5067 | 5068 | All right, Morgan, this was good fun. Thanks 5069 | so much for having me. Thanks for coming to 5070 | 5071 | my living room. 5072 | 5073 | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------