What advice would you give to people that are in their 30s or entering their 30s about how to operate in life?
I think it's really situational.
I don't think there's a user's manual.
I think there's some best practices and I don't think it's that much different than in your 20s.
The first is very primal.
I think every person in their 20s and 30s should lift heavy weights and run long distances in their brain and in the gym.
Push yourself really hard.
When you're in your 20s and 30s, you don't even realize.
How old are you?
34.
Okay, so you look like a beast.
And in 20 years, you're just going to look back on how strong you were and just marvel at it.
And you're going to wish as strong as you were that you even push yourself harder.
I rode crew.
It was such a valuable part of my life I did at the age of 19.
And I remember in the midst of a race, it's a 2,000-meter race.
I remember not being able to feel my legs starting to black out and having to concentrate on not blacking out from exhaustion my and the the oxygen or the air going down my esophagus was on fire tastes like blood and metal in your throat yeah and that was at 800 meters and you'd go 2000 and that ability just when you think just when you think you can't take any more That means you're about a third of the way to your limits as a human, as a species.
Learning that as a young man or woman is a blessing.
Because what it means is you have the confidence that when things are hard physically emotionally mentally, you realize, oh my God, I could take so much more and still be fine.
And when I worked, my first job was at Morgan Stanley, an investment bank.
And I was undereducated relative to my peer group, not because I didn't go to a great school.
I went to UCLA, but I spent the majority of my five years there making bongs out of household items and watching Planet of the Apes.
So I wasn't as skilled as my peer group.
So I decided every Tuesday morning I was going to come into work and I wasn't going to leave till Wednesday night.
And I'm like, I can do that.
I'm physically really strong.
I'm mentally really strong.
And it sent a signal to the rest of the organization that I came to play.
Develop that kind of grit and strength emotionally, physically and intellectually in your 20s and 30s.
You're capable of it.
You're just going to look back on that era and just marvel at how out of fucking control strong you are, both mentally and physically.
Two, get to a city if you can.
And that sounds very practical or rote.
But you'd rather be good in a big city than great in a small city.
Before you collect dogs and kids.
You know, being in a city is like playing tennis with Roger Federer and Nadal.
When you play with people much better than you, your game gets much better.
You're playing against the best when you're in the city.
Find, create as many opportunities to find a mate.
Now, what do I mean by that?
Get out as often as possible, accept invitations, force yourself to go out, force yourself to meet strangers.
Develop the skills.
Start whenever you're waiting in line at starbucks.
Talk to the person in front of you, talk to the person behind you.
Develop the skills to begin opening and establishing relationships.
And it's uncomfortable and it means getting used to rejection.
And, by the way, the only thing i can guarantee you in life is rejection, and the only thing i can guarantee a lot of, if you want to be successful, is a ton of rejection.
Being an entrepreneur just means you're willing to take out a big spoon and eat shit all the time.
Talking people into working for you, talking clients into engaging you, talking investors into investing and having 90 plus percent of them saying no.
And the same is true with successful mating.
The most important decision you'll make in your 20s and 30s is where you live, where you work, what industry you're going to.
It's who you decide to partner with, specifically who you decide to ultimately have kids with.
And I have close friends who are monstrously successful by every external metric and they don't have great lives because they don't have real partners in their spouses.
And I have other friends who struggle economically and it's hard but everything's a little easier for them because they have a real partner.
And the way you punch above your weight class and find a great mate you know emotionally intellectually, from a value standpoint sexually, is you give yourself as many opportunities as possible.
And my story is I met my partner, who I had kids with, at the Raleigh Hotel at the pool at the Raleigh Hotel in South Beach about 17 years ago.
It was the middle of the day and I walked in and I think it's important to do this.
I walked in and I saw someone I was really attracted to and I said I'm gonna talk to this person before I leave.
And I promised myself and I went up in the full light of midday sun, when she was sitting with another guy and another girl, and opened.
And without the aid of alcohol, that is not easy.
That is not easy.
And fast forward, my oldest son's middle name is Raleigh.
Nothing wonderful is gonna happen to you unless you take an uncomfortable risk.
So get good at taking them.
Get good at sending blind emails to LinkedIn contacts to ask them for coffee, to see if they'll talk to you about that industry.
Reach out to people.
Tell them you admire them.
Try and become friends with them.
You're an interesting guy.
I was just thinking to myself, I'd love to know this guy.
Does he live in London?
He just seems very cool.
Get comfortable taking those sorts of risks.
Get comfortable with rejection.
Nothing wonderful will happen to you unless you take an uncomfortable risk.
The most important thing you can find in your life, in your 20s and 30s, is something that you're good at, so that you can start building a base around economic security.
But the real key is to find a great partner.
And that is going to be a function of liquidity.
How many great partners, potential great partners you approach.
And unfortunately the far left, of which I'm a part, has counseled men that if you start talking to a woman at work and you express any sort of interest, it means you're toxic.
No, it doesn't.
If you don't know the difference between expressing interest and having coffee with someone and harassing them, you've got much bigger problems.
A third of relationships begin at work.
I'm not suggesting anyone should ever abuse their power.
I'm not suggesting you shouldn't be very careful that you're ever leveraging power or making anyone uncomfortable.
But for God's sakes, go up and talk to strangers.
There's nothing wrong with that.
And if you approach a strange woman and try and get a conversation going and she's not interested, you're both going to be fine.
You're both going to be fine.
And what I see is a generation of men who don't take care of themselves physically and become so isolated that the idea of talking to a strange woman is so alien and uncomfortable to them.
They'd just rather stay home and do something else.
And I don't want to stereotype all introverts as leading to bad places.
That's not true at all.
But the majority of men you talk to.
They want to be financially successful and they want to have a great partner at some point.
And that is a function of your willingness to put yourself in uncomfortable situations.
So anyway, get mentally and physically strong.
Take economic responsibility for your household.
Get out of the house as much as possible.
Try and find things where you're building something in the agency of others.
Every day you should be around strangers.
Every day.
I don't care if it's work.
I don't care if it's church.
I don't care if it's nonprofit, a softball league, the gym, classes, whatever it is.
You need to be around a massive number of strangers and finding reasons to bump off of them and find economic and personal and platonic opportunities as often as possible.
We are a social species.
Get to a city.
Get around a lot of people.
Get out there every day.
Start making money and become really strong.
You should be able to walk into any room at your age and think if shit got real, I can kill and eat everybody or outrun them.
One or the other.
One or the other.
Now I'm at the point where I can do neither.
I'm not strong and my knees are going.
But anyways, at your age, it should be one or both.
You could pay someone to kill everybody or come in.
There you go.
That would be your solution.
There you go.
Yeah.
What's happening, people?
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Peace.
