 But I think from the mental model from the crypto world is proof of work and just showing how much effort you have put in really helps other people just step up and help. And if you put 500 hours into this, I can show up and put in one like I saw that over and over again. And it helps you kind of, you know, for early in the journey, people like I now will carry that forward. It's like, I know if I put in the work, help will be there when I need it. This is Started to Store Fund. Today's guest is Eric Jorgensen, author of the book, The Almanac of Naval Ravikant, A Guide to Wealth and Happiness. Now, if you're not in the tech world, you might be forgiven for not knowing the name Naval Ravikant. But to millions of people around the world, his teachings on business, investing, and life philosophy are the gold standard. Naval's story is an inspiration to many, from being a first-generation immigrant to the U.S., founding a successful business, to becoming an early-stage investor in companies like Uber, Twitter, and Postmates. The problem was that Naval's musings were scattered across many platforms. So Eric set out to solve that and consolidate them into one collective body of work. After jokingly floating the idea out to his Twitter followers, the response he received was overwhelming. He even got the blessing of Naval himself. And thus, without truly knowing when he was in for, Eric set about writing the book, that as Tim Ferriss describes, in the forward, no less, will give you a good taste of what the cocktail of bullets looks like in Naval's head. So listen in as we cover everything from how the process took Eric way longer to finish than he ever could have predicted, how he's found that other people are more willing to help you if you first shown that you've put in the work, and how he got his book published with a little help from Tucker Max. Yes, that, Tucker Max. Now, back to the episode. All right, everyone, welcome to the podcast on today's show. We have Eric Jorgensen who wrote this amazing book that I have right here, one of my all time favorites for people who know me. You guys know I don't really buy hardcover books anymore, but this is one of those you have to do. You have to pick it up. Eric, thanks for so much for joining the podcast. Thanks, Diego. This is going to be fun. Tell me a little bit about the book, man. What made you want to go ahead and I don't know if you're an author. I don't know if you've released several books, but what made you want to take a step into this journey? No, this is my first real book. I've definitely been writing a long time. I've done a blog. I've done a mini book that I just tossed up on Amazon, but this is the first real book start to finish. Honestly, the thing that I think made it happen was just that I was publicly committed to doing it and felt like I had a unique opportunity from the very beginning. This was a little bit of like, I don't even know if I jumped off a cliff so much as fell and was like, I guess we're learning to fly. Here we go. I love that. How long have you been either ingesting some of Neval's thoughts or following him in that content? Yeah, I've been following Neval for 10 years probably. I mean, when I was in Michigan, I didn't know much about the valley. I just kind of knew I wanted to get into the startup world and had the entrepreneurship bug and the first legit valley real people that I met were like, dude, go read all of Paul Graham and go read all of the adventure hacks and following Neval. Because he was just getting started with some of the blogging and building Angel List at the time. I was like, okay. So he's kind of introduced to me as this icon of the valley and so he's like a cultural setter and that was where I started, but it's been probably more than 10 years since then. So I've just been like following on Twitter and listening to talks and trying to learn what I could from him. And so over those years, I've learned a lot and I've been recommending him and following him. So I felt like I was on a pretty good, I just had accumulated this sort of base of knowledge and respect for all of the things. I have a lot of overlapping interests. I have a lot of sci-fi and futurism and education and crypto and wealth and happiness on a very principle level. And he's like built and invested in successful companies and those are all just things I'm interested in learning more about. So it came together pretty naturally. That's awesome. Yeah, that's one thing for me. I mean, we went to White Combinator probably in 2015. And then this is when Paul had just finished. You know, this is when Paul was kind of out of it. And so to get time with him was like, you had to basically write an algorithm because he was there like once the entire, the entire cohort, like the entire season, I guess you could call it. And it was this thing where like everyone's itching to talk to Paul because yeah, you're totally right. These people are known to people wondering Paul Graham is obviously the founder of White Combinator. And I think a lot of our listeners know that but a lot of sort of our entry points into the philosophies of these individuals is their blog and Paul in particular writes so much about literally everything. I mean, from growth to coding to you name it. You name it. He's got a really interesting view like no other on it. And I think he's all follow suit. Yeah, no, I love Paul Graham's blog. Amazing. Watching him unpack ideas is really cool in person. And you're also terrified because you're like, this is a bad idea. He's definitely not going to hold back. So this is going to be interesting. I think most people probably know Naval. And this is kind of good and bad. This is really interesting because I think in Silicon Valley, we get like super we got we have our heroes and they're kind of ours right like the world doesn't know about them like they could be sitting courtside at an NBA game, and nobody will know who they are. And that's actually why I love some of these individuals, because they're icons but no one knows who they are and it's really nice or the majority of people. That was on the Joe Rogan podcast and I think that's that might have been a place where he got a lot of following as it but but then again it's hard to find them right he has a podcast but he's not he's not out there he's not like verified even on Instagram he's not in a place where people are. Did that make it hard to write the book that that like how did you go about dissecting all of his information everywhere. Yeah, I mean that that's kind of what made me want to write the book, just because it's interesting like you and I at least are really deep in like the podcast world and the Twitter world and those like feel like huge places, but they're really not like that mainstream in the scheme of things like most people don't listen to podcasts I think and like not everybody's on Twitter certainly at least not to the to the degree that they would automatically know who Naval is and down that like tech Twitter rabbit hole. And I think, you know, some of these ideas I just over and over again would recommend them to friends or family members or whatever like well here's what Naval had said about that or here's what I learned about this. And people don't, if they're not podcast people if they're not Twitter people that there's no access to those ideas and they're like they're kind of like yes or whatever. I want to take this stuff that's like shared in this kind of niche format almost and like this ephemeral format right because like tweets just disappear after you know not very long and podcast discoverability is let's call it unsolved. But everybody knows what to do with a book and books can like stay around forever and they're giftable and they're hand offable and they're you know they sit on a shelf until you need them or they kind of meet you where they are. And it's just, you know, it's such a timeless format and it's a more universal format and I just really wanted to, you know, take these ideas that were so valuable to me and bring them into a little bit more of a of something timeless it taught me a lot about about those ideas like I got to study them I got to curate them I got to, you know, do this giant kind of conceptual jigsaw puzzle from all these different ideas and all these different formats. And that was instructive for me I got a lot out of it myself and I learned what it's like to, you know, publish a book and have this out there and learned a lot in that process and created this product for people and I'm getting, you know, a lot of a lot of gratitude and appreciation for this like public service basically so it's been rewarding internally and externally as well. I certainly thank you I mean for me it's it's an instant top three in my entire I read a lot I mean I read as much as I possibly can specifically around like, I would call it this realm I'm not really a fiction or you know murder mystery type of guy I kind of state right I saw you I saw you 50 books a year that's right yeah it's no joke yeah it's no joke and it's a combination of a lot obviously we audio books sometimes to that makes it easier usually when I work out and stuff. And I wanted to ask you what was your first step in doing this and so was it getting to the publisher was it getting the ball on board was it Tim Ferriss was it all of the above. Yeah, interesting. It's a good question because I think the like order of operations is helpful and instructive and like I found myself getting stuck when I was working on the wrong thing at the wrong time or worried about the wrong thing at the wrong time and I would like lose energy or momentum or something like that and, and have to kind of figure out what the right next step was, because like I said my first book, you know this is discovering kind of as we go. So the first thing I did was just get this, you know, basically get Neval's approval that or at least vague support of the project, you know, and that happened like on Twitter the instant I put the idea out you know I had this kernel of an idea, and tweeted out like hey, does anybody want me to write like the book of Nevalage. And, and like, even if it was, you know, just to my followers, I was kind of like, yeah, okay, like, maybe it's an idea maybe it's not but Neval retweeted it and so I woke up to find that like 5000 people were like, yes, please give us this and Neval, it was kind of in tacit support of the idea and like, hey man, I'm happy to give you any, you know, resources and projects that you need to like get this done and old tweets and whatever else and I was like, like, oh well, that's what I mean of like I fell off the cliff. I was like, I got to do this now. You know, I'm publicly committed. I have a unique opportunity and, and, you know, Neval has kind of said go for it. And so I can't like, can't turn that down. And I would have had a hard time putting as much energy into it if I didn't know that he was supportive at least right like I wouldn't have done it if he did not want, or at least under like be willing to go along with that. This felt, you know, more contentious, I guess, than that I would have had an appetite for. But once he was, you know, supportive, I got this full Twitter export of all his, his history of tweets was like 20,000 tweets. And I just started reading, combing through and like, kind of sorting and categorizing and curating and did a few passes of that and then collected all the other resources so that's interviews, blog posts, you know, essays, podcasts, anything that I could find articles written about him. Talks that he'd given interviews, and it was almost 100 sources all told, I mean, across everything that that he has shared over the years. And there was a lot of just, you know, pulling out themes and breaking things down and trying to figure out kind of what the right ideas are to couple what the right themes are how to organize everything and order them. And so really, I mean, the first two years of work probably was just churning on this manuscript and getting better and better and smoothing and sanding and getting the pieces all in the right place until it read smoothly and quickly. And then I went to some peer readers and reviewers and just, you know, sent a manuscript isn't friends the first version of the manuscript is huge was like 600 pages was a little more. Poor Charlie's almanac. And so there's a lot of hard edits that had to happen there, which the bonus stuff is all up on the website now so I felt better about that but they were like painstaking cuts when I had to make them. It's pretty amazing. I mean, like as I was reading the book, there's a part of me that I was like, there's been a lot of thought put into this and for people who don't have the book yet but should for sure get it. It's basically it's almost like there's a tweet. There's a paragraph and there's an and then there's an example of that tweet right so it's like some really great one line or call it a bumper sticker and then there's a little bit more around that like capsizing the idea, and then there's like the action of that. And that's so well done to me over and over and over in the book I kept picking up on these themes and I had never and I think most people think about putting tweets in a book, but the synthesis of that idea, and then how you elaborate on it after super well done. I mean I was like, this is really good because it hits you with the idea from multiple angles which I think is important, especially in today's world where we're just so so fixated on like moving on moving on. Yeah, I'm really glad to hear you say that because I was, it wasn't obvious to me that it would be clear how hard that was to get right you know it's kind of like just standing and standing and standing until it all reads smoothly and all the ideas kind of flow together and the right things are coupled exactly what we're saying of like, here's the example here's the aphorism here's the, you know, here's all of the kind of ways to implement it. But you know all of these ideas are out there, you know there's there's nothing in this book that wasn't already public information. Sure. And so the value from my perspective was really that I had to make them make it a comprehensive, fully kind of explained version of the idea from what was out there, and make it feel like a new experience, even though, you know, a lot of people reading it had listened to the podcast before but it's very different to listen to a one hour podcast and go through all of these ideas versus look at like a 10 year body of work and pull out the very best articulation of each idea and group it with its fellow ideas and just be sure you show kind of the fullness of each one of these like kernels. Yeah, it was hard work and took a lot of took a lot of passes of just like loading it all into your head and making the little connections and you know just that's why it took three years to reach a quality bar that I was happy with. And so once you have the manuscript at that point you're just shopping it to publishers is that your next step or what like when when do you get the forward on like when does that happen. Just walk us through sort of the operation there. Yeah, that that happened very late. And so I think, you know, one thing that I kind of learned through this is, you know when you have proof of work, like people are willing to show up and help. And so when I had tweeted like hey I think I've got a finished manuscript here and I've been through, you know, three years and hundreds of hours of work and, you know, I've had peer reviewers and I've had everything. Then I tweeted that not entirely sure what my neck I knew I needed to work with a publisher or some combination of professionals to get it designed and proofread and, and, you know, up for sale but I wasn't sure how I was going to do it and as soon as I tweeted that Tucker Max replied I was like, Hey, you've been following this project for a long time. We'd love to help you out at scribe. Like, let's talk about this. And I was like, Oh, perfect. And so scribe media is the basically help authors go from from manuscripts to published finished book or to help people who don't want to sit and write their own full manuscript they have a process that they will do interviews and just pull your ideas out of you and help you structure them into a book and publish that book for you with like a relatively small time investment. This is really, really cool process but they have incredible designers incredible copy editors and proofreaders and it's a really like well-honed process and they published like dozens of books a year, but it's almost a publisher for self publishing. And so like, it's not like the, you know, penguin process where they give you a loan and then they get it back it's like you pay everything upfront you pay for the service, but then you, you know, you retain your rights and they're just there to kind of help you get over the finish line. And so that was a really, really helpful kind of set of experts to have because there's a lot of steps that go into that that like self teaching each one of those is tricky, or even going to find the talent and hire each one of those people yourself is tricky. So that was a really kind of key piece of that process. And then just like that lends a level of professionalism. And so the forward was a really kind of late piece to fall in. And I think it happened just because of all of the other proof of work that was there. This project, you know, Tim and of all have been friends for a long time. And this is a free, you know, the book is available for free online. The digital versions are free on the website. And so it's a non traditional arrangement on a whole bunch of different fronts. Yeah, that's super amazing. I mean, I kind of I do real estate development and a lot of it. Yeah, I used to be in startup and now in real estate development. It's kind of like that. It's like, it's really annoying, frankly, to some extent, you know, I'm still struggling with the reality of it. The reality is, is I think summed up in the book in a really nice way where there's an arrow of time and then there's like a dot dot dot dot and the dots are empty and the dots represent actions actions actions actions and then toward the end it's like half a result and then result. That's basically the life I live. And it's one of these things where I saw it in the book it's on page 183 and I was like this, this is the old I don't have any tattoos but if I were to get a tattoo, it would be this because this is the constant reminder for me of what it's got to do entrepreneurship right it's like you do it. Yeah, that's a jack butcher original illustration right there he did all the illustrations for the book is amazing talent but I'm something about seeing those those ideas visualized, you're like, oh God that's so true. And I'm only on the second or third empty day not so I got a ways to go. Amazing. Have you met any of these people in person, or was it was a lot of this just via. I don't even know. So you were working on the book. I don't know what happens toward the end of the book, I mean I obviously we're deep and cove it at some point but are you meeting a lot of the people in person and coordinate everything or No, I have I met. I have since met Jack like he came through town and we got some barbecue and got to hang out but basically the book was done by then almost everything has been, you know, remote and working through email. I, the whole process I never even talked to the ball live is just back and forth through through a few emails here and there and keep them up to date on progress. But I think from the mental model from the crypto world is proof of work and just showing how much effort you have put in really helps other people. Yeah, feel like they just step up and help and like man you've been if you put 100 like if you put 500 hours into this I can show up and put in one like I saw that over and over again and I love that. It's a it helps you kind of you know for early in the journey people like I now will carry that forward it's like I know if I put in the work help will be there when I need it. Yeah, that's so true. And then of course the hardest part to any book right so once is three years is over. You have to put it out into the world and so which is a whole nother. I think probably the hardest part I would imagine the way I got the book was I saw it on product hunt. And obviously I followed him on it's like oh done I'm in and I think I even commented right away being like hey is this available and audible and I'm so glad it isn't actually you know for people listening audio books are wonderful. And I would say 90% of the time I'm an audio book fan. This is one of the books you for sure want to buy. Read it my whole book you can kind of see it there's like notes everywhere it's just stars and Oh nice stuff and I'm like I share that with my wife you know a lot of these things are super appropriate for what we're both going through as like founders of our companies. But what was that like just obviously just launching it getting it out into the world. It's hard and that is a thing that books are you know I had written a blog for a long time and blogs are tough in that you have to force yourself to publish imperfect things quickly but also you've got that mental valve of like but I can always update it. And this is so different and it's like at one moment it's just kind of like stamped in time and it goes and you can't change it. It's actually another I wouldn't have predicted it but it's another reason I was really grateful to have scribe and have kind of a third party like running my publishing timeline, almost, because they're like, okay like here is a threshold here's a Rubicon like once you cross it you can't go back and so like lock the content or go forward okay lock the design okay go forward. And so they really pushed me to set a pace and I felt like I was on a little bit of a conveyor belt that would have been like really hard, you know it was gentle and it was understanding and it was. I didn't get to set the pace, but there was somebody who was kind of like, you know coaxing you along a little bit and like showing you the next step. I think that you know once you're invested so far, it feels good to kind of keep taking those steps. But yeah, launch is hard and it's not something you know like with a company there's not so much a big launch as just a little iterative thing and books are just one of those things that still kind of has like a launch and everything that goes with it so it's tough to tough to put it out there but I was also priming over with excitement to share this with people. I was really confident I believe deeply that people are going to love this book and get something out of it and you know all the good feedback and all the early readers and everything. Give me a lot of confidence to just like, I can't wait to put this in people's hands and see the changes and hear how people react and what they get out of it. You know it's funny man I want it's a great book to for me even the podcasting and talking to people like you talking to founders who are in a similar situation that I'm in. It's it's therapy, it's really just therapy and this book is the best form of it because it's so uplifting it's so like oh you know what I'm like Paul Graham says a startup like eating glass every day right and a part of that is for sure true like a part of that some days are not that fun and books like this are the little things that just keep us going right the little things that we need to say oh. Naval knows what I'm talking about Eric knows what I'm talking about Tim Ferriss that's what I'm talking about we're good we're just we're just in the moment right now and it's it just goes back I just play over my head like action action action action and then the results come way later. Yeah, one of my that was one of my favorite ideas as like in patients with action patients with results, like anything you're doing that's compounding just over and over again you got to remind yourself that that's, you know, that that's how it works. I love it and what's next for you now so are you hooked on it is this like the is this is this like you got the bug now to do more of this type of content or you're going to create something of your own what's what's the next thing you want to work on. I got I got a few ideas and a few things that I'm working on. I don't want to like rush into another book. There's a lot of ideas from this book that I feel like deserve deeper exploration that I'm like really excited to keep working on. So I think that in particular the one that stuck with me was as both like a really interesting true idea but also that is like that there's at least another layer or two to kind of unpack and keep developing and keep pushing on the ideas is and that's finding a position of leverage. And so, you know, looking at leverage and looking at the kind of what Neval says the three broad classes of leverage are just capital and labor and product. I would add tools to that and I think he does kind of in some of the postscript that he does around the how to get rich tweets or, but there is, there's a lot to explore there and I think leverage is an idea, like on the importance level of compounding. That's like one of those things that absolutely like increasingly governs the outcomes that we see or determines them and it's not super well understood and it's super early and it's increasingly true with the more the marginal cost of replicating things like podcasts and media and code goes down, and the stronger and more powerful that tools get they become longer levers and so leverage is becoming increasingly important. And so there's a lot to explore on that so I'm doing some some reading and some writing around around those ideas. And I don't know exactly what that's going to turn into. I do like that a lot. I mean, I think it's I've noticed this a lot with founders even more I think more specifically my wife. For some reason we very rarely as humans escape the first thing we ever did right we don't look at ourselves to have any leverage in fact we're just kind of like I have this crazy idea I need money you're the person with all the leverage can you help me. And, you know, I see this all the time even start founders who have done two or three or four. They very rarely realized that they're the whole piece that they need to start understanding how much leverage they actually have. And I don't know if it's an ego thing or I don't know if it's just like, it's almost one of these things when you're, once you're a founder you have no money, you know you're very cognizant of every single penny and very few founders ever let that go it like sticks with them for the rest of their life or like they won't use the dishwasher type of and you're like what do you do and like you don't need we're past this leverage is similar I've seen it a lot where they don't understand the leverage they have and you know I don't know how to unpack that but I see it a lot and it's unfortunate because I'm like no you're the talent like you're everything you're the whole thing here and people want to get on board with you. Yeah, that's exactly kind of what I want to keep digging at and unpack the way I've been thinking about it is it like we all start as flatlanders, you know, we're all just like standing on equal ground. Yeah, and if you if you imagine like a leverage mountain and so like you get a little bump of a few levers and then it gets higher and then it gets higher until you have like, you know, people like Jeff Bezos are standing on just like a giant mountain of levers, and there's different types of levers like capital and labor and and product and tools and all of those there's like the four different faces of the of the mountain. And I think kind of what you're saying where people get stuck is, is they have like they focus on one or where they have some talent or some awareness. And there's usually a bottleneck in some other and so they like, they're like, Oh, I can't get money and so I can't get this tool and this tool would get me this product and the product would unlock everything they're focused on the product and not thinking about how they can maybe use like labor to get the money to get them tools to get and so like the interplay of all of those things so that they grow together evenly. Is a really interesting kind of way to think about the different types of leverage available and how people can inventory the leverage that they have going for them or not and look for different bottlenecks in different places and look for trade offs in different places so that they can keep their energy focused on, you know, eventually the game just becomes building and applying more leverage and and that is those people are playing a different game than the people who are just trying to work the things in front of them. It's a very, it's a lens that I'm kind of building over the world to try to explain more and more of this. I love that I remember when I first got into real estate development I had no business being in real estate development in the traditional sense I mean I'd never done it before it wasn't like I had a track record. It was basically the first step into doing this I just sat down and I wrote down who I was I was like okay, what have I done before. What are my levers is really what the exercise I was doing right and I wrote down everything like I'm like I'm Latino maybe that'll help maybe that's a lever right and I think all of these little things are actually levers, frankly like if you're tall, maybe that's a lever for you like there are levers that are just intrinsic to you and who you are and your charisma but but the thing that I did was I was like okay I have from a product at me as a product like if you wanted to give me money you'd have no reason to do that there's no track record there's nothing right and so I said okay because I'm zero like I just ranked these things like so my product lever let's call it was zero out of 10. However, I had done some things that people would admire and so me as a human was maybe like let's call it a five out of 10 so I said okay that's some leverage, but the ultimate leverage is how I package this real estate deal. And because I'm a five and I have no reputation. I have this product has to be a 10 it has right and so it made me just focus on building that lever. And sure enough, that's the thing people bought into. And obviously over time kind of to your point, the other levers start to grow right and so now I have some track record now it's easier, easier and quotes on the next project easier for you with your next project, right because you have some cred. But it was really this, this weird exercise of like I just need to be honest with who I am. And here we go. And you know things come out of it that you that but I don't, I didn't expect around. And there's some levers I, I, you know, I didn't know necessarily know I had, I went to school for civil engineering as an example, turns out being an engineer in real estate development is really actually pretty key as it relates to you not being able to get screwed by some engineers who you know like to like to use words that I'm, they don't think I understand but it turns out I do. And I just say this as a point of reference where we ourselves before we decide to embark on something crazy like for you, maybe here with the book or whatever. There are things that you've done in your lifetime that you've written off as like I'll never use that again. And those things actually end up surprising, at least me, and being some levers for future growth and it was, it's really nice to witness because I think in our 20s, at least for me I was so focused on everything I do has to be so purposeful to this end. And, you know, going to friends weddings wasn't in that equation and therefore I didn't go and it was like what am I doing right I wasn't living. And then I realized like okay, you know I had to take a take a step back and say these are these are things that are more important in my development and I need to start leaning into them more. Absolutely. Yeah, that's that's one of the kind of the key questions I feel left with after creating the book and readers talk to me about after they've read it is, you know, Naval kind of started learning the skills of happiness later in life after he achieved all these like material successes, and kind of the core question is like how much can you overlap those like how if he could do it again. Would he have been happier throughout the whole time that he was like very aggressively building a company and investing and you know you see that pattern a lot in in biographies and stuff like that and I think you know we. It's possible certainly to like choose more happiness while we are more aggressively building, but it's a tough thing and, you know, I studied the happiness piece of this almost by accident I wouldn't have sought out set out to write a book about happiness from where I was it wasn't what I was focused on. I'm really glad that I had the opportunity to sit with all of these ideas and kind of get pushed and have a context to study them because I think, I think you can, you can carry more happiness through anything that you're doing and that's, you know, one of the one of the secrets of it and hopefully, you know, that's, you know, we're all able to like be a little more fulfilled and wholesome throughout like all of our, all of the different stages of life and not be so like, you know, I'm choosing to only, you know, work and not be happy and not work on my family and not work on my relationships and my friends throughout, you know, the whole some specific periods of our lives just because we think sacrificing those things is necessary. Yeah, that's so true it's such a myth I learned that the hard way actually because I literally spent all my 20s just being like that guy. I was like 31 and I realized, could I insert happiness into my life somehow here and it turns out you can, and when you do it changes everything I mean it just changes your perspective you're, you're better to be around. I'm excited about your ideas you're you're also more focused because, and I say this cryptically in a way where I think as people and startup. We don't let happiness in, and it sounds dumb right but I think we do a really good job at saying life is suffering. I'm not supposed to have fun. Gary V goes over this all the time being like I ate dog shit for you know 10 years and this is a. It's not exactly the truth like I think you can do it while being happy and just being aware of the moments and chasing moments that make you happy and in some way I think if you're not happy, doing the everyday thing like working on your product and maybe that product isn't you're doing it for the wrong reasons right and and I think that's okay to like that realization of maybe I'm just doing this for money is a good realization to have like maybe you should chase impact. You let happiness in by default. Yeah, I'm not sure I'm not sure where the idea that we have to feel unhappy in order to look productive or feel productive comes from, but I think it's, you know, it's maybe especially true in the startup world where you're trying to signal to, you know, investors or investors or employees or, you know, your team like I'm working really hard and you can tell because I'm frowning and my eyebrows are down and like I'm focused on this thing. And I still have that instinct I still, you know, you know, and you still like push people away so that you can focus on work because you feel like that's what you have to do. And I think it's you know I have definitely in retrospect lost friendships because I did they were just wise enough to see that you could be happy and kind and working hard all at the same time and like I just wasn't, you know, maybe mature enough to get that at the time. I'm learning I'm grown. Yeah, well this I did the book in some way because I'm and we can wrap on this but did the book in some way teach you that because like in real estate development there's a cadence that is painful if you're used to app development or or sass right I mean you're like I'm waiting on the city to get me an approval which you know as an entrepreneur with that mindset. It's numbing it's depressing it's there's nothing you can do other than sit and wait and hopefully go do other things like start a podcast or read a book. And so did you learn that is book making similar where there's this cadence where it's on the designer until I get it back and so you're just kind of you kind of hands a little bit yeah. This is my hobby you know I could get a day job and other projects I got plenty to work on and so there's there's times here. There's definitely times where you're waiting on other people to just like do their, their work which I'm perfectly happy to you know one of the one of the graces about this project is I gave myself you know there's no deadline there's a timeline I didn't know if it was going to take I thought it was going to take six months when I first started it took three years so there's a more scope of work and a longer timeline than I expected but it's my first book and I had no reason to expect that it was going to take six months but I did because that's how it goes. There's times when like you just have to power through the work, but there's also times is I think with anything creative where I think of it like the dust settling like you need to let the dust settle before you can see clearly again. No action. No action is going to make the dust settle faster, you know you just have to leave the room, go do something else, you know, take your mind off it focus on your happiness go to the gym, you know whenever work on another project and you know I hope that I it's easy to see these lessons now is they were challenging and to just have context on them in the moment but I and I hope to carry some of those forward on on whatever I do next and you know, learn a little bit each time. I love it well I'll be watching I'm a fan I love it this book is amazing honestly top easily top three for me. Thank you. Yeah, no I mean next level really really well done everything about it the tweets just the way it's composed the art, the whole bit tell everyone where they can find you I know you're big on Twitter. Yes, I spent a lot of time on Twitter, the website for the book is an evolvement act calm my emails there if you want to reach out I'm easy to get a hold of. Yeah I mean this this book is a huge huge team effort you know my name's on the cover but you know, scribe was incredibly helpful Jack butchers illustrations are amazing you know there's a whole team behind anything like this and of course you know all credit really goes to the ball like I tried to I tried to hang the art in a beautiful way but like he created all of it and this is his life's work and life's wisdom accrued that he has freely shared with the world and you know he's got a lot of great ideas and things that didn't make it into the book so you can you know, follow him and learn from him yourself and see what what you get that I left behind. I love it brother well thank you we're going to do a giveaway with the book to so we're going to be giving will put together an Instagram real and do a giveaway for our listeners. Because I think everyone should have this book. It's that good. So thank you brother I appreciate it. I'm glad to hear I do think anybody can get one life changing idea out of it that was that was the bar and I think we achieved it thanks for having me.