The Top 0.1% Of Ideas I've Stumbled Upon On The Internet | My First Million

Well, let's do it. So part two.

Okay, here's part two with George.

If you wanted the business ideas, we did that five banger business ideas.

That was amazing. I got like goosebumps from it.

This is part two, we're going to do some of your frameworks.

The biggest one, I think the one that went the most viral is about high agency.

You did a thread about one idea.

I think you framed it like one idea that has impacted my life the most is the concept of high agency.

Can you talk about what is high agency, why it matters and how you spot people with high agency?

So high agency is something I've probably thought about for six to seven years.

It's one of those topics when you search it, it's quite difficult to find online, which is why I then just started writing about it to scratch my own itch.

And the way I would describe high agency is if you was stuck in a third world prison cell and had to call somebody to break you out, who would you call?

And that's probably the most high agency person that you know.

So I mean, thought experiment time now, who do you guys think of when I ask that question?

My friend, Jack Smith. That's a tough one.

I feel like I would just go for the richest person I know because I'm like, the money is going to be the most valuable tool versus like I'm a guy who's going to break me out of my cell.

So Steve Barland answered that question with Prince William, which I think is not allowed.

So it can't be somebody who's like a royal family member, but it has to be purely on merit.

Well, you know what the meme you have in the tweet, I think is a great visual of this.

So Sam, I don't know if you've seen the tweet, but he basically has a- Is that the one where he tells you like, if someone says something's impossible, a high agency person will think, well, that's just a story you've told.

Now I'm going to overcome it versus a low agency person will be like, oh, that story is true.

I think that's a clue in it, but I'm talking about the very first picture that he has in the tweet is basically two guys stranded on an island.

One guy, and they have these like pieces of wood basically that they have from the island.

One guy is using the wood to spell help.

So that somebody, if somebody flies over, or a boat sees help, that they'll come save him.

And the other guy just made a boat out of the wood.

And the high agency is the guy who'll make the boat out of the wood.

And most people just put out a sign for help and they're kind of the victim and they're looking for somebody to come and rescue them.

I guess if I had to trim it that like, I think what's the advert for high agency that we spoke about last time would be high agency people or low agency people, are they happening to life or is life happening to them?

It's a spectrum, right?

Like the circumstances, there's different things that go on, but you could immediately plot that x y axis in your head of people that you know of people that are like happening to life and people that life's happening to that.

Hey, real quick, you know, one of the cool parts about what we're doing is that people have reached out and told me that they've built actual million-dollar businesses, made their first million, off an idea they heard on the show.

That is crazy. That's wild.

That's why we want to do the show.

And we want to see more of that.

One of the questions we get asked over and over again is, is there some kind of idea database or spreadsheet where we list out all the different business ideas that we've talked about?

Well, the answer is finally yes.

The fine folks at HubSpot have dug through the archive and pulled out 50 plus business ideas and put them into a business idea database.

It's totally free. Go to clickhubspot.com slash MFM and get the database for you.

All right. Now back to the show.

And so why does the idea of high agency matter so much to you?

You said you've been thinking about it for six or seven years.

That's probably longer than your longest relationship.

Tell me why you have had such a long relationship with this concept.

I think it's the most under discussed personality trait and it's the most probably important personality trait.

And this most similar concept that I've seen online is, have you seen Paul Graham's relentlessly resourceful?

Yeah, well, he just says, like, I've created YC.

I've now seen thousands of founders.

And if I think about the trait that is most valuable in founders, it's not intelligence.

It's not charisma. It's not, you know, engineering prowess.

It's the best founders are relentlessly resourceful.

And that phrase and he also says, like, can you describe, you know, a test is, would you describe this person as an animal?

Would you say, yeah, he's an animal.

And if you can say, man, that guy's an absolute animal or she's an animal when it comes to this, that's the sign of a winner.

And I think that's the output of a high agency person.

How do you describe them?

They're basically, they're an animal.

Yes. And he has a great bit in there of inverting it, which was what would be the opposite?

And it would be hapless, which is probably a good case of life happening to them.

And I think there's a few, there's a four kind of tenants, I would say, why high agency is probably not a sticky idea as much as it could be because it kind of has four ideas in it, which is one, locus of control.

So I have control. Two, intentionalism.

So they've thought about the direction that they want to go in.

Three, resourcefulness, which is incapable of getting the outcome.

And then four, high bias fraction, which is they've already fucking started the thing before these even listens to this podcast, they just constantly moving.

So those four things. And that's, I think it's not changeable.

It's sort of like telling people they should have started a business before they had children.

It's like, dude, like, we don't, I don't like talking about that because like, you can't fucking change that like you are what you are.

You know what I mean? It's not particularly fun to talk about because I think that you have that scale already set.

I disagree, I think. Go on.

Tell me, change my mind.

There's definitely some truth to what you say.

And also that's quite high agency reply.

Right. There's definitely some truth to what you say in that.

I think there is a little bit of a genetic component to it.

But theoretically, I think you could make somebody, you could reduce somebody's agency.

Therefore, if you can reduce somebody's agency, you could also increase their agency.

It's probably like muscle building.

There's a genetic like component to it, but I still think everybody can increase or decrease their agency, depending on the inputs that they put into the system.

I had a tweet once that went kind of viral about this where I said, one small poker tell for if an employee is going to be great is if they're willing to spend money out of their own pocket to move faster.

They're not doing it to impress you or to take one for the team.

And it's not the money that matters.

It's that this person simply cannot stand being blocked or slowed down.

Sharks die if they stop swimming.

And I said this because we hired this woman in our business and she is so good.

We've promoted her two times already in probably two years.

She now basically runs a huge part of the business and she's awesome.

And one of the things that I noticed is that not the not the spending money part, I noticed we'll be talking about an idea and it looks like she's not listening because she'll start like typing on her computer.

And then I'm like, yes, just send that over to me.

She's like, I just did. I'm like, what?

And she will literally do it before the words are done out of my mouth.

And she cannot help but taking action.

Like her bias for action is so high that it's almost annoying.

It's so high that you're like, Hey, can we just stop?

Can we just talk first before you go finish the thing?

But on balance, it is so much more valuable to have somebody who's that high action because they just get more done that she's like 12 people.

She is literally like an entire team herself, because she will make decisions very quickly.

She'll immediately implement it and then she'll fix whatever's broken so quickly before the other person has even gotten out of bed.

And I think that that's a it's a trait that I that I now look for in hiring as well.

But you said something that's interesting.

You said it can be taught.

So how do you develop high agency?

And it from Twitch has a flow chart.

That's really cool. I was like, literally a question by question by question of how to develop somebody's agency with time.

I think I would use the midwit meme algorithm of how would I make somebody low agency and then avoid that.

So if I was to make somebody lower in agency, I would make them hyper general.

I would use no deadlines.

I would not break things down into step by step instructions.

So I would go through the list of how to make somebody low agency first and foremost, and go through that.

I'd say it's much easier to spot in other people as well.

So I look at who are the most high agency people that you know, and then trying to reverse engineer the values and behaviors they have, then trying to analyze yourself because it loops back to the first episode where self analysis is not that useful.

In terms of the job interview questions as well, Sean, like one of my favorite ones that I've told a few founders and they go, this is awesome, of asking for weird teenage hobbies because if they can go against the crowd when they're a teenager, so much easier as an adult.

It's tough, but it's easier.

And I have one founder who voiced my mind the other day and goes, I pre screen all candidates with that.

And it's like the best quality filter of potential people, of potential high-dangier people.

We on this podcast is the question I ask a bunch is I say, you're awesome.

Like I'm so inspired by this right now.

Well, if I had met you or I've been able to observe you when you were 12, 13 years old, what would I have seen?

Would I have had any clues that you would become this kind of outlier type of person?

A couple of people have said some pretty interesting answers.

So Jess Ma who came on and Jess Ma is a super impressive entrepreneur.

I think Paul Graham had said like, you know, the five most impressive or if you had to bet on five people in YC, it would have been like Sam Altman and the Colissans and like Jess Ma was one of the five.

And she said like, she's like, yeah, basically I was kind of a runt in school.

I wasn't that good at class.

I kind of got picked on and I was weird.

But I created like I liked gaming and I basically created a server farm for my favorite game.

I started charging for it and I was making basically like tens of thousands of dollars renting out server space for this game back when I was, you know, 14 years old.

And we had Said Bulkie come on this guy's built basically a billion dollar bootstrapped business, which is so unfathomable to be able to do.

And somebody told me that, you know, they go ask Said about when he was a teenager and he hacked his school's system so he could just change his grade.

Like he was willing to do the work to hack into his school system to like be able to change his grade versus just study for the thing and get a good grade.

And guess what? That's also a guy who basically like found other growth hacks along the way to grow his business incredibly fast without needing any capital.

I was with the guy this weekend and he's a friend and he told this story.

He's a new friend though, but he told the story about how he got in trouble when he was a kid because he built this thing that allowed him to remote control a streetlight near his home.

And then he goes on like a few hours later to talk about his new business idea.

And I remember like him getting in trouble for controlling the streetlight near his house and how his mom like grounded him for three weeks.

And I'm like, I'm in. And by the way, YC has a one page application.

And in there, so every question in the YC application has to have earned its right to be there.

If you're on the one page, there's only like seven questions.

One of the seven questions is tell us about a real world system that you've hacked for your benefit, right?

That not literally hacked, but like any real, any system in the real world that you have sort of gamed in order to do it because business is a high predictor of relentlessly resourceful as we talked about.

George, what's the answer for you?

Like, did you have weird teenage hobbies?

Yeah, my, it might not translate as well to an American audience, but my dad bet me I couldn't do 10 kickups with a soccer ball.

And puberty just hit. So testosterone is an assistant.

By the way, like so a juggle with a soccer ball.

Okay, gotcha. So my dad bet me I couldn't do that.

10 pounds. And testosterone just hit like first bit of armpit hair.

And I remember thinking, fuck that guy.

I'll prove him wrong. So I trained and I trained and I trained and he didn't call parenting hack, by the way, he didn't try and push me to do it.

He just bet me wherever I could do it.

And he made sure that he had to see me do it.

Anyway, I ended up doing it.

And then I kept doing it more and more.

And I ended up being added as advert for a FIFA World Cup.

I used to tour around doing tricks with different staniomes held like three unofficial world records for different tricks and things like that.

So then ultimately, I decided I wanted to lose my virginity.

So I stopped doing it. But it was really fun.

Did it work giving it up?

Still trying, but some day soon.

Tends to work out that way.

Sam, what about you? Did you have weird teenage hobbies?

Yeah, I basically like small predictable things like I had an eBay store when I was 12, or I remember in fourth grade or predictable.

Well, yeah, like, I mean, things that I think you would expect me to do knowing me.

I also like in fourth grade, when I when we had to pick a book to do a book report on I did how to win friends and influence people like I was like a weirdo.

Like I like I enjoyed the stuff that I like now back when I was 12 years old.

You're like, you're like, listen, I'm class.

Dale Carnegie said that your own name is the most beautiful word in the English language.

So say it with me. You know what I mean?

Like, I was into like that.

Were you into anything?

You know, when I first heard this, I felt really bad because I was like, I didn't couldn't think of anything special that I did.

Monish Pabrai was on the episode and he basically said there's a golden period he studied like I went to his house.

He's got this whole wall of books on science and brain chemistry and all that neuroscience and he was basically like there's a like a golden decade basically between the ages of sort of like 10 and about 19 years old where the brain is optimal for specialization during that time.

And so if you look at the people who are great programmers, they usually started programming very early on or great musicians like age six, he composed his first thing.

It's like, wow, this is insane.

And I felt really bad because I was like, oh, shit, like too late for me.

Right. Like, what am I supposed to do now?

I was just kind of a normal kid picking boogers and in junior high, like I didn't do that.

But then I started thinking about it more and I'm really thinking like, was there anything?

And the one thing I did think of was a unique experience I had was like, I was really into improv early on.

I didn't do it a ton, but I did go to like our Texas state kind of finals with like group improv.

It's basically me and my buddy and we were group improv, which is kind of a podcast without a microphone.

Right. Like, that's what two people doing improv back and forth is.

And then I was in a couple of movies as a kid.

And so I kind of was doing this acting improv performing thing.

I think if there's anything, that's what it was.

But I wasn't a lemonade stand kind of like eBay flipper type of guy.

The only other weird one I did was I used to play this game NBA 2K, which is common.

But the uncommon thing was I never played the game.

So I didn't go in and I wasn't like dunking and shooting and like all I did is I played franchise mode and I would simulate.

I was basically only a general manager.

So I would simulate the season, then I would do the draft.

I would scout all the prospects.

So you wouldn't actually play like the press the buttons.

It wasn't intentional.

Like I thought, okay, first I'm going to build this great team.

And so I was just like a CEO basically.

I was like free agency and trades and scouting and finding diamonds in the rough.

But I got so addicted to that I never ended up playing with any of those players.

I would just simulate. I would just do that for like ten years and there I was basically a fantasy GM, which I guess is kind of like, that's kind of what being a like a CEO or a business person is.

Like you're just doing that part.

You're not actually doing the work.

So but my honest answer was like, I was not like elite at any of those things.

Whereas I think the people who really excel, they tend to show that brilliance early on and become like oddly good at something their obsession takes over them.

I don't think I personally had that.

I love it. Do you want me to give you the rest of the chest for the high agency people and you can see who in your life, you know, yeah, weird teenage hobbies.

What else you got? Energy distortion field.

So if you meet with them when you're tired and defeated, you leave the room ready to run a marathon or a treadmill with max incline.

A low agency people do the opposite.

So this is the kind of idea of treadmill friends afterwards you've got so much energy, you need to go on a treadmill, you can't sleep.

Then you have like sofa friends who you need to lie down after hanging out with them.

Who's like the treadmill friends in your guy's life that comes to mind?

Sam's like that for me. My buddy, Sully is like that.

Like I can't, I can't hang out with Sully and literally our hangout tends to be we walk for like four hours talking because we almost have to burn off the energy that's like the excitement of the ideas and the stories that we're sharing while we're doing it.

That's how this podcast got created.

It was on a four hour walk with him and I was like, you know what I really want?

It was like hour through.

I was like, you know what I really want to do?

It's not a company. I want to create a podcast.

I want to beat Tim Ferriss.

I want to wake up and have a be in a million people's ear balls.

And that was like a thing that came to me when I worked myself into that state.

Ben is kind of like that.

My business partner Ben where he's like, I could just, I probably do call Ben, I think eight times a day on average, you know, so we just talk eight times in a day, which now that I say it sounds very weird, but it feels very normal.

If I didn't have kids, it'd probably be 20 times a day.

Who are yours, George? Who are yours?

Probably three. Chris, Williamson from Modern Wisdom, we're like just out all night.

We can just go and go and go.

And you guys are both similar, like where Chris is like an, you know, in a good way.

He's like an academic where like he just like learns and then just teaches.

And I like, you know, I feel that way listening to his podcast.

So who's the second one?

David Senra from Founders.

Like he's just fucking, if espresso was a human being, the big game fucking Senra.

So that guy, I'd add on that.

And then the third one, my old boss, Steve Bartlett, who runs the Diver CEO podcast.

I remember when Steve was running the business, he'd have an office in Manchester, London, New York, and I'd work in the Manchester office.

And Steve was maybe there a court of the time in that office.

And what business is this?

Is this this? This was back at his marketing agency, Social Check.

Yeah. And I would open the door and I'd know if Steve was in that day without seeing him, just off the energy in the room of everybody else's vibe.

So those, those three would be my three.

That's a great compliment.

How'd you get the job, by the way?

Why did you join social chain?

He had a unique angle that essentially the UK, you mentioned earlier the UK is the sixth largest economy in the world.

It's not. London's the sixth largest economy in the world.

And then there's a very, very poor list of cities and towns attached to it.

So he based himself in Manchester and just market himself well and just sucked up all the talent that was in Manchester, which is, which is where I was.

Hey, so you're listening to a business podcast, which means you're probably like business and you like podcasts.

And because of that, I've got another business podcast you need to check out.

It's called Marketing Made Simple.

And its host is Dr. JJ Peterson.

Again, marketing made simple.

Marketing made simple brings you practical tips to make your marketing easy and more importantly, make it work.

One of the episodes that I think you need to check out, it's called Get Your Audience From Don't Care to Buy Now with Better Copy.

And he basically just breaks down all the biggest mistakes that most marketers make when it comes to their audience in respect to copy, which is obviously a topic I love and I talk all about.

So you guys need to check it out.

Marketing made simple.

You can get it wherever you find your podcasts.

Do you want the next one?

Yeah, keep going. You can never guess their opinions.

So it was the boxer that writes poetry, the advertiser obsessed with the history of war, the beauty queen who reads Nietzsche.

If their beliefs don't line up with their stereotypes, they have exercised agency.

So when you give them an opinion on ABC, do they fit in a box?

Or do they often surprise you that they've fought things through?

Right. Anybody who pop up?

Which we're saying is basically they're non-cliché.

So like we just had Jack Smith on the podcast.

I think Jack is one of these type of independent thinkers where he's like a successful, smart, tech guy, you know, almost like has like a more of an engineer's brain.

But then he came on and was talking about this like woo woo energy system, healing and healing through energy using colors in a screw in a room that he sat in and how it cured his like whatever.

I'm like, Jack, you're too smart for this.

And I never know how he's going to reply to certain stuff.

Right. Like, I'll explain something to him and I'm like, I think you're going to be too smart to believe this, but you're open to learning more.

That's that's wild to me.

Or even what he's going to do his next move, right?

Silicon Valley, you sell your company.

There's two paths. I think they take you to a room and they're like, Hey, here's two boxes.

Would you like to become a VC?

The vest, the vest is under this box.

Or you're a founder and you're now your next thing is going to be AI health care or whatever.

Like it's like cliche. Whereas Jack, after he sold his company, he's like spent a year in his garage building like the most ergonomic chair he could think of.

It's like, you couldn't you couldn't guess what the guy's going to do next.

He was total non-cliché in that sense.

I like it. The next one, immigrant mentality.

If they move from their hometown, that's a good sign.

If they move from their home country, that's an even greater sign because it takes agency to spot you in the wrong place, resourcefulness to operationalize a move and a growth mindset to start from zero in a new location.

Dude, that's a great point.

That's a great point. And I've moved around to like nine different countries.

So I think I win. And that's kind of like what you're saying about America about, you know, sometimes we started out as a country of immigrants.

And that's maybe one of the reasons why we kind of have outplayed our coverage a little bit.

Yeah. Yeah. What's the Keith Reboit?

It's like the people you hire are the company you build.

So the same thing for countries.

It's like if the initial seed population was a bunch of crazy risk takers who were willing to get on a boat and go to a new land to like establish it from scratch, you're going to create a population of, you know, people who have that same mentality.

The way I've thought about America, the way I've narrowed it down is if you look at what makes human beings special, if you have one human being in a jungle, it's the one of the worst animals ever.

And we're just going to get destroyed.

If you put 500 of us, we've just introduced a master predator that the world's that forest, that jungle has never seen before, because we can cooperate.

And America is that on steroids.

Because when you go there, the enthusiasm, the energy, the agency, sometimes the IQ isn't there.

I'd probably argue Osbrit might be slightly smart, or no offense.

However, you've got those things, it means you could have an idea.

It's like, yeah, great idea.

Let's do it. By just the bias to optimism, the bias to action.

Whereas you have the Brit who's, I don't think that'll work because of ABC.

That's why America's the best, because you can cooperate faster than any country, my opinion.

But the Doritos Locos Taco did not come from pessimism.

All right, that's only an that is a uniquely American idea.

You would never that idea could not have been born in any other country.

I love it. Last two, last two, they send you niche content.

So low agency people look at the social engagement of content before dealing its quality.

High agency people just look at the content.

They spot upcoming trends very early.

And the final one means to your face, but nice behind your back.

So the social incentives is to be nice to people's face, even gossip behind their backs.

Whereas the high agency people, they do the opposite.

Where'd you get that one from?

One of my friends, Lewis, who's just, I know that he'll just say the, the honest thing to my face all the fucking time.

And it's so useful to have a friend like that.

Whereas the low agency, basically whenever someone's going against incentives, oh, the agency that requires to go against incentives, I've written this, I often don't go against incentives.

And even though I know incentives, I know agency, I still fall for it.

It's the Daniel Kahneman thing at the start of the conversation.

So to go against the social incentives of pain, I'll say a rude thing to your face that you need social pain.

And also when you're not there, there's no benefit.

Actually, all the benefits to cost it behind your back to do the opposite and swim upstream.

You need agency. You're very philosophical, which I think is cool.

And it's almost like you have a business just to justify the read, just to pay just to give you an excuse to spend time reading and thinking all day.

You're like your own patron, basically.

You're like, cool. Can I fund myself to sit in a room and, and think of ideas and then invert them and then think about them again and then, you know, write them down and share them with the world?

Like, do you do even like capitalism?

I love, well, I love compressing ideas.

So which is why that I like advertising, because I can use that skill that I have to compress things down.

I always love Daniel Schwarzenegger's biography where he made all his money for real estate.

So he could do whatever the fuck he wanted with his acting career.

And I think it's slightly underrated doing that.

Sam, did you know I offered to invest in George's business and I was like, I'll invest fair terms.

I'll blow this thing up.

We grow this baby like crazy.

And he was like, that's all good.

But there's one problem.

If this grows, I'm going to have to, like, it's going to suck me more towards that.

And I actually want to be all in the business of ideas.

I don't want this to become, you know, bigger and more.

Which made you want it so much more.

That made me respect him so much more, right?

And I was like, again, it's that's a high agency thing to do, right?

To be able to, can you say no to money?

Like, can you say no to money?

Might be like another thing to just add on your list.

How many times have you said no to money?

I've told the story of the podcast before, but you may not have heard it.

The highest agency moment of my life was I was in sixth grade, I think.

I got put in detention after school.

And our detention was you go to the lunch room, school's out, everybody leaves.

It's just the 20 kids who got in trouble that day.

You have to sit in silence and do nothing.

And they see they see you kind of like every other chair diagonal so that you can't really, you can talk to somebody, but you, it's not very easy to, you can't whisper.

You have to be a little bit loud.

And it's me and it's the weirdest kid in our school.

There's a kid who had hair down to his waist.

And he always wore these like weird tattered shirts.

And he was just a weirdo.

And I saw, and people used to pick on him.

And so I'm sitting there and I'm kind of a bully.

And I wanted to pick on him a little bit.

And I just want to mess with him.

I was bored, right? I'm in D hall.

You have two hours to do nothing.

And I see on the floor of the lunch room, there's like a grape that was like from lunch hours earlier.

And it's like nasty. It's on the floor of a kid's lunch room.

And it's like got hair on it, whatever.

And I just whispered to him.

And I was just like, yo, I'll give you a dollar if you eat that grape.

He looks down. He's like a dollar.

And I was like, yeah. And then he reaches down and I'm like, Oh my god, he's fell for, he's going for it.

This is insane. He picks it up.

And he eats the grape. And I'm like grossed out.

My mind is blown. I can't believe you do it.

I'm like, all right, deal's a deal.

I get out my wallet. I take a dollar.

I handed to him. And then he took the dollar and he ate it.

I could not believe it. Damn.

This was like 22 years ago or something.

I still remember it vividly.

And I just thought that was the biggest no fucks given moment I have ever, probably still to this day in my life of like, you know, F you, F your money, F the grape, I am going to like, he just ate the dollar.

I couldn't believe it. No upside in it.

But he sent an absolute message to my core.

I love that. That's ridiculous.

Where do you want to go from here, Sean?

You got a couple other cool like lifestyle things you do.

So do you want to talk about the Kale phone?

Because I think this is like something that might be helpful for people.

What is the Kale phone method that you do?

Yeah. So again, talking about sticky ideas.

So let me pull it up. So I've got them here.

Actually, I have my cocaine phone and I have my Kale phone.

So I ended up in, I wrote about this and then I ended up on Fox news where it was like Trump, Biden, and then George map cocaine, Kale phone.

And essentially what I realized is there's two things that are presented to you in modern society as people get more and more addicted to their phones.

There's one, be a phone monkey and just be on your phone all day and deal with the cortisol and all the stress and mental fatigue that everyone's facing is option one.

Option two is just give up on the phone, put it away for a week, have the digital detox and benefits of that are yeah, you feel mentally clear, you feel incredible, you're coming up with creative ideas.

But if your mom goes to hospital, how's she going to get hold of you?

Or if you're out and about and you need an Uber, like, fuck, I can't get an Uber.

Or if I want to use Apple notes to write down ideas, I can't do that.

So I realized that that what society presented was either the smartphone addict or the phone list Luddite and actually the somewhere in between, which is the cocaine and Kale phone.

So the Kale phone is like all serotonin apps that make you feel good.

So audible notes, Uber, Google Maps, stuff that you need for necessities as well, maybe an emergency number for your mom, wife, business partner, if they need to get a hold of you.

So you have that piece of mind when you're not on your cocaine phone, that they can still get a hold of me worst case scenario somebody dies, then cocaine phone, everything, Slack, WhatsApp, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, let's go crazy, put the cocaine phone in the drawer, check it when you need to check it, then use the Kale phone when you're out and about for a walk.

Single best thing I've probably done for like my mental health and everybody who tries it or a lot of people who try it right to me and go, this is a game changer.

What is the actual other phone?

Is it just an Android phone?

What did you do for the other phone?

Is it just two iPhones? Just another iPhone.

But do you have your SIM cards?

How do you do the number?

Yeah, I have two SIM cards.

So I have a different number in the Kale phone than the cocaine phone.

Got it. Okay. Only drawback is that they basically have to have a second phone line and people have to know to reach you there when you need it.

But it's only your mom, wife, maybe.

I dance the only people who really need that.

And it's just for the peace of mind that most of the time they would, and the only time they go do is when somebody's at hospital, but it's having that peace of mind that therefore I don't need to check the cocaine phone for that incident.

Sean, let me ask you a question.

Be honest about this and I'll answer it and I'll be honest too.

Do your parents still pay for your cell phone bill?

I pay them back. All right.

My dad tells me the amount.

It's a family plan. We've been on it for a long time.

This is safe, dude. Can I change it with keeping my number?

That's too much work. Save.

I am also on my family plan.

And so George, when you're talking about getting a new cell phone, I'm like, shut up to everybody who's on their family plan right now.

Shut up to everybody whose dad is paying their phone bill.

It's all we have. That's our last connection.

That's the last cord that gets cut between you and your parents is the phone plan.

I don't even know how to read.

I've never gotten like a, like I've always had a call my mother like, hey, my phone broke.

I'm going to go buy one. We tell AD&T they got to put it on like the plan.

So when you sold the hustle, she didn't go get you a fucking phone plate.

She carried on going. It's not a money thing.

Fair play. Well, there we go.

It's not fair play. I don't know.

I don't think you're using that word like I think it should be used.

Especially if you text your mom saying I need to get a cocaine phone.

It's probably not going to go down too well as well.

I thought Sean, I thought you would have also been on yours.

Yeah, for sure. Dude, my wife feels it's like almost like a sign of disrespect that I didn't create like a new family plan with us as the core family unit.

And I'm like, look, it's just a, it's just a hassle.

Okay. I'm not, don't read more into it than what it is.

I'm just lazy. Okay. There's this episode on like, like, DeGeneres where she's asking Bill Gates, like, let's see if you know how much a gallon of milk costs.

Like, because you're so out of touch.

And so when you talk to me about a cell phone plan, I'm like, I don't know, five bucks, 100 bucks.

That's like $23. Say with the phone plan, I'm like, I don't know a thousand.

I don't know. I have no idea.

So George, are there any drawbacks or like in practice?

Let's say I wanted to go do this.

Because the idea is really sticky.

It's really viral. Even if you never did it, it's just like sounds cool.

But you actually, let me verify, you actually live this way.

Before you answer, I gotta run.

I gotta run. I'll leave my, I'll leave all my stuff up.

I had a 130. I'll see you soon.

So you actually live this way.

You actually have the two phones.

Yeah. I've done it for three and a bit years.

And whenever I doubt it, so I've had incidents where I've lost one phone or had an issue with signal in a certain country.

And when you go back to that lifestyle of waking up and downloading social media as your first input into your brain or messaging apps, you, you realize, you only realize it by a contrast of how destructive I think it that is for the crate, particularly for people who are creative people or ideas people, like downloading whatever the worst loose headline is and be

into your consciousness.

And particularly if you then use your phone as your alarm clock as well.

It's, I think it's, I've experienced it by contrast.

It's so toxic. I can't deal with it.

I want to ask you about Lee Kuan Yew, somebody who's been on my list of people I want to go deep dive into.

Sounds like you've read a bit about him or studied him a little bit.

What is the learnings from Lee Kuan Yew?

So Lee Kuan Yew was the leader of Singapore.

During his reign, he went, he took Singapore from essentially being a third world country with a lot of problems.

And you've got China and Japan on your doorstep, which historically not the friendliest people to have on your doorstep.

And obviously part of the British rule, part of the British empire, went from there to one of the best financial hubs in the world.

But he ran the country like a CEO.

And one of my favorite anecdotes about Lee Kuan Yew is how he used to obsess about the airport onboarding experience.

And it's interesting, you see, you see such obvious ideas and startups and you go, why don't countries just take this, the onboarding experience of the conversion rate optimization of a landing page or a website or an advert versus the, when you arrive at the airport, what's the airport like?

What are the cues like the immigration cues like?

What are the bathrooms like?

How clean are things? What's the first few miles from the airport to the city?

Lee Kuan Yew used to obsess over everything, would be changing the rooms, would be cleaning things up, would be inspecting regularly, seeing how quick things were because he knew that that is talented people coming for the first time and divide us this incredibly well.

You go there for the first time and you go, oh, wow, they've looked at everybody else's onboarding experience and 5x this.

Immediately having those magic moments, like designing Facebook or designing Asana within within the first few minutes of entering and leaving the airport because it's the foot, you're going to think it's like a stand-up comedian.

The first thing is you arrive and the last thing is you leave.

So he used to obsess over that.

And I remember I went to Austin airport and as you go up to get an Uber, you've got to go for like three different car parks and your phone signal goes out and you're sweating.

I remember thinking to myself, I'd, you're treated like a criminal.

If you try to get an Uber in an American airport, you're treated like a criminal.

It's like, oh, if you're going to do a drug deal, then go to the third parking garage, fourth floor, behind the fence, that's where you can go get picked up if you're going to be an asshole.

Yeah. I remember, I remember like being there going, Lee Kuan Yew would fucking hate this.

And I remember going, that's a wit.

I go, I've been nobody, people have thought of walking through Austin airport.

So Lee Kuan Yew is rolling over in his grave right now.

So that's interesting because I remember when I was in my teens, I went to the Singapore, we went to Singapore and this, if you haven't been to Singapore in airport, it's like a mall.

It's like an experience.

Like they have like a fitness facility.

They have like a movie theater.

There's like, it is just a beautiful place.

Everything is clean. There's tons of comfortable seating.

It is not like a pain the way that most airport experiences are.

And I remember just noting that and being like, oh, that's weird.

Why is Singapore's airport so good?

So it's very interesting that he thought about it as a first impression onboarding experience.

Now, like, is that just a cool story?

Did that pay off in some way?

Like, did the immigration rate go up or like, what changed from that?

Or what are the things that he did to actually like, you know, turn the country around?

You know, what were the big levers that he pulled?

So onboarding is one. What really worked?

A trotting talented immigration is the single biggest, the single biggest thing from my understanding of Singapore's story that they did.

And part of that, obviously, is the onboarding.

And if you look at it, Singapore has essentially no natural resources.

So it's not blessed with Saudi Arabia's oil or like LA's beauty necessarily, but just attracting as many talented immigrants, the specifics around the economics as well.

I don't know as much on but around taxation and things like that.

But it's just a wild case study.

I know Charlie Munger is obsessed with Lee Kuan Yew.

He has the story of Lee Kuan Yew.

We were talking about mating earlier.

Lee Kuan Yew, rather than marrying the hottest girl in his class, picked the only girl in his class that performed better than him.

And he was the most like elite university at Singapore.

He married the lady who's the only one who was smarter than him.

So very odd peculiar individual.

There's another thing he did was around air conditioning, right?

Didn't he do like an ace, a big push for ace, having AC in the country?

Yeah, I saw that recently.

I think he was supposed to peter levels on Twitter that was breaking that down.

Yeah, he was obsessed with getting air conditioning because he was convinced it was key to the economic success.

Yeah, like he was basically, so there was an interview with him.

I'm reading an article now from Vox.

So basically, there's an interview with him and he said, was there anything else besides multicultural tolerance that enabled Singapore success?

And his answer was air conditioning.

Air conditioning was a most important invention for us.

And basically, I think that if you look at countries like, you know, my parents, they grew up in India, and India is so hot that during the day, during like your brain's most kind of productive hours, they take like a three hour period where you just stay inside, you just try to sleep.

And you're even even, you can't even try to sleep because it's like so hot.

So you're just like laying in a cot with like, you know, fan trying to cool down because you can't be outside.

You can't really be productive in thinking right now.

You just have to wait out the heat.

You know, my assistant is in the Philippines.

And one of the things that she always talks about is like, they would have these heat waves.

And it's like super hard for her to work.

Because she flipped her schedule.

She works in the evening, her time, which is daytime, my time.

And I was like, man, is that really inconvenient for you?

Like, how, how does that work for your lifestyle?

She's like, well, you know, of course, it takes some adjusting.

But one of the big things is I don't have to deal with the heat because I sleep during the day when it's really hot.

And I wake up in the evening when it's cooler.

And that's when I work. And I feel better that way.

It's also, by the way, why so many great engineers come from like the Nordic regions, because those are places where it's like too cold to go outside, too dark to go to, it's like dark all the time.

And so they just stay inside the program.

And they just code on computers, because there's not really better options out there.

And they developed this like amazing engineering talent because during their formative years, they just stay inside a bunch of time.

And what's the best thing to do when you're inside is like play on the computer, play video games.

And, you know, learn to learn to program.

Just second and third all the consequences everywhere you look.

Crazy. Exactly. Exactly.

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Now, back to the pod. Do you have any other of the key frameworks that really, I don't know, shifted the way you think or you keep seeing pop up that you don't think most people appreciate?

I'd say there's two. One is probably mine and yours favorite meme, Char, of the midwit meme, which just refuses to die.

It's like a fine wine. It gets better with age.

And realizing how often that being the guy in the middle over the years.

And then trying to come up with solutions to not be the guy in the middle and then realizing- Do you have any canonical examples of the midwit meme of you in the middle that you could think of?

Like just personal attacks on your psyche?

Yes. One was when I started to get really obsessed with sleep around like 2021.

And I'd have everything sleep optimized.

Matthew Walker had just been on Joe Rogan.

So I've got the 10 step checklist routine.

I've got the supplements.

I've got everything. And I'm there doing the whole like two hour wind down routine, no screens before bed, red light glasses on and brushing my teeth in the dark.

And my girlfriend at the time comes in and like hits the lights like minutes before bed like blinds me.

So I'm completely blinded.

I like getting out. I like the first row we ever had was that I was like, what are you doing?

And I was sat there in bed.

So she's a mid, of course, the like on the left or on the right.

She's immediately fallen asleep within two minutes without doing any of the shit I was doing.

I'm stuck there for an hour afterwards like shaking with adrenaline about how angry slash blitz I was.

And I realized, oh shit, a lot of sleep, for example, I had a phase of insomnia and a lot of sleep is the more you think about sleep, the more pressure you put on sleep, the worse the sleep is, which is why a lot of these, if I was, if I was the CMO of whoop or aura, the one thing I would suggest them to do, like coming in as a product thing would be to never allow you to know the next

day's score. Because this, this is actually probably one of the most toxic things I think we'll see for sleep, but people checking their sleep as well as going to sleep thinking about what score they're going to get is the opposite of what you want.

That's literally creating an insomniac cycle versus a week later having a summary of the previous week when you're detaching the results probably useful, but the next day is particularly bad.

So that's a midway area.

That's a great one. I think one of the studies about what makes people unhappy or depressed or suicidal, like one of the strongest signals is this idea of rumination, which is like almost like a obsessive thought loop about yourself and your thoughts.

And so once you get in that thought loop, it is very, very difficult to get out.

It's also why one of the easiest hacks to feeling better about yourself is to simply just go help other people.

Like it is the over focus on yourself and your own condition is what creates your own poor conditions.

And you know, it's the same reason my trainer says this thing.

He goes, whatever you feel you lack, that's exactly what you got to give.

You feel you lack respect, you got disrespected, go give respect.

You feel like you lack money, go give money.

And literally just flipping the mindset of like, I lack to like, I have enough so I can give, I have enough so I can give.

And I can give. And I can give.

And then ask yourself why?

What isn't that person does the values that they have, the behaviors that they have?

And you can then see. We spoke at the first episode about it's so hard to see in yourself but it's so easy to see in other people.

So you're kind of hacking the self-awareness bias of like you trying to bruminate and improve yourself is probably mid-wit wasted effort.

But looking at other people you can see immediately.

And then you can try and get your values that way.

And then he flips the experiment around and goes, if you have to shore your life, you can get your values that way.

And you can get your values that way.

[Mastering High Agency: Frameworks for Personal and Professional Excellence]-[The Top 0.1% Of Ideas I've Stumbled Upon On The Internet]

📋 Summary

The High Agency Framework: A Blueprint for Personal Excellence

Defining High Agency

Identifying and Cultivating Agency

Systems and Strategies for Success

Overcoming the "Midwit" Trap

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript