25 Years Of Founder WISDOM In 55 Minutes (ft. Jason Fried)

My job as a founder, it's to inject risk into the business. You can get away with certain things that other people simply can't because you own the dangless. All right, today's episode, we're going to talk about things that interest us. One thing that I tweeted out the other day, I wasn't surprised by this result, but it still made me sad. I tweeted out, I said, if you could guarantee a 7.5% real return for the rest of your life every year, guaranteed. But you can't invest in any individual stocks forever. However, you can start your own business. And I think I even said you can, but you can only invest $10,000 into that business. Or you can invest actively, you can't really buy the index, but you can invest actively and do whatever you want. Some days, maybe, or some years, maybe you'll get plus 50%, some years, you're going to get minus 50%. Which would you choose? Option A or B, 40% of my $300,000 selected option B. And you replied and you said option A all day easy. What did you select that? Well, to get 7.5%, like with no effort and you're guaranteed, it's a no-brainer. It's an absolutely no-brainer for me. Now, I've got a business, I have a lot of risk in my own business, so that might be part of it as well. Like, I have all the risk there. So let me ask you this, were you intending this to be like someone who's 21 years old, straight out of school, never invested before, has nothing else going on? Or is it just like at any point in your life? I think at any point in your life, that's still the right decision. I still turn that switch on in a second. Yeah. That's a ridiculous return. In a good way. In a consistent return, the way that would compound over time would be fantastic. And there's nothing boring about that. That's an incredible, I mean, it's boring, actually, but also an incredible thing. So yeah, would you think that the survey was going to produce?

作为创始人，我的工作就是为企业注入风险。因为你拥有这家公司，所以你可以做一些别人根本无法做的事情。今天的节目，我们会讨论一些我们感兴趣的话题。我前几天发了一条推特，结果虽然不意外，但是还是让我感到难过。我在推特上写道，如果你可以每年保证获得7.5%的实际回报，且一辈子都能保证这个回报，但你不能投资任何单个股票。然而，你可以创办自己的公司，你只能向公司投资1万美元，或者你可以主动投资，不能购买指数基金，但可以进行任何你想要的投资。有些年也许会赚50%，有些年会亏50%。你会选择哪个选项？A还是B，有40%中的30万人选择B。而你回答说毫无疑问选择A。为什么你会选择A呢？因为7.5%的回报，且几乎不用付出任何努力，并且是有保障的，对于我来说无疑是最佳选择。我已经有自己的公司，承担了很大的风险，这也可能是部分原因。我想问你，这个调查是针对21岁刚毕业，从未投资过、没有其他收入来源的人，还是适用于任何人生阶段的人呢？我认为在任何人生阶段，这都是正确的选择。我会毫不犹豫地选择这个选项。7.5%的回报是极其优厚的，以这种稳定的方式复利增长将会非常出色。其实，这虽然无聊，但也是一件令人兴奋的事情。你认为这个调查结果会怎样呢？

Did you were you surprised by the ratio or? I'm surprised that the average Joe, I mean, in my followers, are probably above the average Joe in terms of income, maybe IQ, maybe not, I don't know. But for their, they're typically a higher ed. For sure. They're up there. They're very good. Like I would imagine it's a high educated coastal crowd. And so anyway, I would have thought that they would have seen the fallacy that they probably can't beat all the others, particularly the other people who have a much better advantage. And so the idea that although everyone else fails at getting this return, I in my little office in part time with just me can somehow beat all the others. And I thought that that was shocking to me, that they thought that they were exceptional at that. That's what I was surprised at.

你是否对这个比例感到惊讶？我是有点惊讶的，因为我的关注者中大概收入水平都高于普通大众，也许智商也高，也许没有，我不确定。但他们通常受教育程度很高，确实是。他们非常优秀。我会认为他们大多是受过高等教育的沿海人群。所以，我本以为他们会看出自己可能不能比其他人更有优势，尤其是那些明显具有更大优势的人。因此，尽管所有其他人都在获取这种回报上失败了，但他们居然认为自己可以在兼职办公、单打独斗的情况下击败所有其他人，这对我来说是很令人震惊的。他们认为自己很特殊，这让我感到非常意外。

Yeah. Well, that's pretty common. I think everyone thinks they're exceptional in some way. I mean, the thing people don't take into consideration is risk. So like they might go, well, if I just buy an video or Apple or whatever, Shopify, and the thing is in the short term, you almost certainly can. Over the next two or three years, you get lucky, pick one, pick a winner. But the rest of your life, that's the question. All right. Let's take a quick break. I got to tell you, you've ever seen those Coachella posters where it's got all the artists' names and you're like, oh my God, wow, they got, you know, Fred again and Skrillex. And that's what the HubSpot inbound conference looks like. Just listen to the speaker list that they have. I don't know how they pulled this off, but listen to this. Ryan Reynolds, Serena Williams, Cara Swisher, Matt Wolfe, Darmesh, they got Brian Halligan. They got tons of good speakers at HubSpot. Inbound, it's coming up. It's September 18th to the 20th. It's live in Boston. And it's where you go if you want to learn marketing sales, AI trends. You want to know where the puck is going so that you can be there before everybody else. Tons of great talks on stage where you're going to learn sales strategies, improving marketing tactics, but also the networking where you get to meet other people and understand what are other people in the industry doing, how are other people getting ahead. So check it out. Go to inbound.com to see the lineup and grab your tickets today.

对啊，这很常见。我觉得每个人都觉得自己在某方面很特别。我的意思是，大多数人没有考虑到风险。例如，他们可能会想，如果我买了一个视频或者苹果、Shopify股票之类的东西，短期内几乎肯定能盈利。接下来两三年，你可能会幸运，选一个赢家。但你一生中剩下的时间呢？这才是问题所在。 好了，我们暂时休息一下。我得告诉你，你有没有看过那些Coachella音乐节的海报，上面有所有艺术家的名字，你会感叹，哦天啊，他们竟然请到了Fred Again和Skrillex。HubSpot的Inbound大会也是这么牛。看看他们的演讲嘉宾名单，我不知道他们是怎么做到的，但听听这个阵容：Ryan Reynolds、Serena Williams、Cara Swisher、Matt Wolfe、Darmesh，还有Brian Halligan。HubSpot真是请到了很多重量级的嘉宾。这场Inbound大会将在9月18日至20日在波士顿直播。如果你想学习营销销售、AI趋势，想知道未来的方向，赶在别人前面做到位，那么你一定要参加。大会上有很多精彩的演讲，你可以学习销售战略、提高营销技巧，还可以与业内其他人交流，了解其他人是怎么做的，他们是如何取得领先的。所以，赶紧去inbound.com查看详细信息并购买门票吧。

So here's what I've done lately. I've been spending time in New York because I've got family here. And I called email, then did call outreach, and I randomly met a bunch of people who work at hedge funds. And I'm like, hey, I'm not like a competitor. You don't ever have to worry about me. I'm just a passionate, interested person. Can I just see your office? And just sit at your computer and you just show me your software? And I just want to see what you do all day. And you go to some of these offices and I would have thought they were like Wolfle Wall Street, where it's like buzzing and like the phones are ringing. It's really just a bunch. It's pretty quiet. And it's usually just like a bunch of nerds like looking at a computer screen, but they got like four screens and they've got like incredibly complicated software. And the average show is getting paid hundreds of thousands, sometimes tens of millions of dollars to be good at this one thing. And then I think about like, how is like Bobby Lee in whatever Missouri where I'm from on his Robinhood app, possibly going to have like an edge on all these resources. And these people with all these resources, they're still not that good. You know, I talked to a guy who worked at Bridgewater recently and I was like Bridgewater, I've run up Ray Dalio, aren't you guys like the best? He's like, sometimes we're the best, but the last 15 years we've sucked. We've underperformed the market. And I'm like, that's insane that 1500 employees, tens of billions or hundreds of billions that are assets, you all paid like the best there is. You still can't beat it. And so that kind of like, that's kind of where I'm coming from. Yeah, it's also like Vegas. You go to Vegas and you're on a hot streak for 30 minutes. And the longer you play, the less you're going to win, you're going to lose. You're going to lose. The house is going to win over the long term.

最近我在做些什么呢？因为家人在纽约，所以我一直在这里待着。我通过邮件和电话联系了一些人，后来偶然遇到了在对冲基金工作的一群人。我就告诉他们，我不是竞争对手，你们不用担心。我只是对这行很有兴趣。能不能让我看看你们的办公室？能不能让我坐在你们的电脑前，给我演示一下你们的软件？我就是想看看你们一天到晚都在做些什么。 走进这些办公室才发现，原本以为会像电影《华尔街之狼》一样，电话不断，气氛很热闹，其实里面非常安静。大多是一些宅男对着电脑屏幕，不过他们的屏幕可是有四个之多，软件也复杂得令人难以置信。而这些人做得好的话，年薪都是几十万，有时甚至上千万美元。然后我就想到，像在密苏里州的Bobby Lee，用Robinhood应用程序，怎么可能在这么多资源的对手面前占有优势？而且，这些拥有大量资源的人，有时表现还很一般。 最近我和一个在桥水基金工作的人聊了一下，我提到Ray Dalio，说你们不是最强的吗？他说，有时我们是最强的，但过去15年，我们表现很差，跑输市场。我简直无法相信，1500名员工，管理着几百亿到几千亿美元的资产，拿着最高的薪水，居然还做不到更好。这就是我的感受。 这就像是拉斯维加斯。你在拉斯维加斯可能会有30分钟的好运，但玩得越久，赢的概率就越小，最终你还是会输。赌场才是长期赢家。

So people, I think, have this idea of short-term performance in the market feeling like, I can do this forever. Just like in Vegas, you can't do that forever and you will begin to lose and the same thing is true in the market. So yeah, lock it in. What's this thing about loosening the grip on the stick? Oh, yeah. So I got a drum set recently. I used to kind of want to play drums. I kind of did for a little bit. I stopped for many years and I kind of just picked it up recently. My office is a bit of a mess. So I got to find a better place for it. But right now it's in the corner. And as I've been playing, I learned this very quick lesson. And actually, it's true when I try to learn how to play guitar. I say try again, because I'm not very good at these things, but I enjoy them. Is when you're new at something, you tend to hold things too tightly. Like I hold the drum stick too tightly. I hold the neck of the guitar too tightly. And anyone who's played any instrument will understand kind of where I'm getting. What are I coming from here? I used to play drums. I know what you're talking about. Okay. So you hold this stick really, really hard. And then you fatigue faster. You don't have as much articulation on the stick. You can't get certain ghost notes and tones out of things because you're always hitting too hard and too firmly and you just, there's no finesse. And it kind of dawned on me recently that this is very, very true for most things in life. I think especially business, I kind of, some ways I feel silly, always bringing this back to business.

所以，我觉得人们有一种在市场中短期表现的想法，觉得自己可以永远这样下去。就像在拉斯维加斯，你不可能永远赢下去，最终你会开始输。在市场中也是同样的道理。所以，是的，得锁定收益。这是关于放松握棒的事，对吧？哦，对。我最近买了一套鼓。我过去有点想学打鼓，学了一段时间，但停了很多年，最近又开始玩了。我的办公室有点乱，所以我要找一个更好的地方放它。但目前它放在角落里。在打鼓时，我很快学到了一课。其实，当我学吉他时也有同感。我再次说是“尝试”，因为我不太擅长这些东西，但我很享受。当你是新手时，你往往会握得太紧。比如我握鼓棒太紧，我握吉他颈也太紧。任何玩过乐器的人都会理解我的意思。你说的是这个对吗？我曾经打过鼓，我知道你在说什么。好的。所以你握住鼓棒非常用力，这样你会更快疲劳，不能灵活操作鼓棒，你无法打出某些柔和的音符和音调，因为你总是用力过猛、握得太紧，无法展现精妙的技巧。这让我最近意识到，这在生活中的很多事情上都非常适用。我觉得在生意上尤其如此，有时候我觉得自己总是把话题扯回到生意上，有点傻。

Anyway, I realized that like by simply loosening my grip a bit, by lightening up, you end up having better control. You end up playing better. You end up working better. You can do it longer. And you allow other things to happen that weren't possible when you're gripping so tightly. I think this is true for business. I think when you're starting a business, you have a really tight grip on things typically. And it's best at some point to loosen up a little bit and let the rest of the organization expand into itself versus you trying to control every last thing. And I run into a lot of entrepreneurs who I think have not learned how to let go of the stick. I think that that's also a young man's thing to do. Like you learn this with age. What are you saying? What are you trying to say? Well, what I'm saying is you have a couple of decades of experience and so do I. And I think that as I'm getting older, which I'm not old, but neither are you. I'm learning it is okay to loosen up. And that's what they say a lot about men. They say, oh, well, she used to be intense, but he's mellowed out.

无论如何，我意识到，通过稍微放松一下自己的控制，放轻松一点，你反而会有更好的掌控。你会弹得更好，工作得更好，能做得更长久。而且你还会让一些在你紧抓不放的时候不可能发生的事情变得可能。我认为这对商业也同样适用。当你开始一个事业时，通常会非常紧张地控制每件事。但在某些时刻，最好稍微放松一下，让整个组织能够自行扩展，而不是你试图控制每一个细节。我遇到过很多创业者，他们还没有学会如何放手。我认为这也像是年轻人常做的事。这是随着岁月增长才学到的。 你在说什么？你想表达什么？ 我想说的是，你有几十年的经验，我也是。随着年龄的增长，我在学习放松一点的道理。尽管我们都不算老，但这是个过程。人们常说，男人会变得更沉稳，他们说，“他以前很紧张，但现在平和不少。”

He's mellowed out. And that's usually what they're referring to. Yes, that's a good point. Yeah, the mellowing out. It's nice though in a different realm of something to find a metaphor. And in my head now, I am kind of thinking about this, like loosen up your grip a little bit. Wait, what parts of life? Well, I'd say business. I would say also like with my kids a little bit. I would say there's a way where I kind of wanted them to do certain things a certain way. And it just creates this conflict. Like they're their own people. I'm my own person. And I want to encourage them to do certain things in a certain way, but I also got to loosen up a little bit around that and let them find their own way. And that's something I kind of learned pretty early in parenting. So there's a lot of things, but I just in general, I just feel better when I'm not gripping things so tightly. And when I look out there, on Twitter or anywhere, LinkedIn or whatever, and I'm looking at these like business stories, there's just I'm reading a lot of grip. I'm reading a lot of tension that people are trying to over optimize and paying attention to every last little thing in a way where I feel like just loosen up a little bit, like pay attention to a few things that matter and let it let things just be a little bit more.

他变得更温和了。通常他们就是在说这个。是的，这是个好观点。是的，变得更温和。虽然在另一种境界中找到一个比喻也不错。现在我的脑子里在想着这些，就像是放松一点，不要抓得太紧。 等等，哪些方面的生活？嗯，我会说包括生意上。我也会说在孩子身上也是。我曾经希望他们以某种特定的方式做某些事情，这会引起冲突。他们是独立的个体，我也是独立的个体。我希望鼓励他们用某种方式做事，但我也得在这方面放松些，让他们找到自己的路。这是我在育儿早期学到的一些东西。 所以有很多方面，但总体来说，我发现自己在不那么紧抓某些事情时，感觉更好。当我在推特上或其他地方、LinkedIn之类的平台上看这些生意故事时，我读到很多紧张感。我看到人们试图过度优化，每一个小细节都在关注。我觉得可以放松一点，只关注一些重要的事情，让其他的事自然一些。

The best example that I've experienced this in my real life is arguing with people. And so before it was like every word that I like when I learned to talk, it was like it was fight was the first was the first thing that came out. You know, like my early words where I wanted to fight. And so if I met someone with a different political perspective, it was you're wrong for these reasons that you're really stupid for that. When I lived in San Francisco, I was I was significantly more combative than I am nowadays as I I've been lucky that I was raised in Missouri and that I lived in San Francisco, lived in New York, lived in Texas. And that has shaped me a bit politically, but also that it bleeds to other points of life, which is like instead of someone saying something when someone says something that I disagree with, it's more so instead of fighting it's, well, why do you feel that way? That's a really interesting perspective. Tell me more about why you feel that way. And I think I don't know if this is just a clickbait thing, but Keanu Reeves had this quote where he was like, I used to argue with people. Now I never argue. You could say one plus one equals five and I'll say, well, I hope you have a really good day. And and that's a little bit about how how it's been where I just want to argue a bit less.

我在现实生活中经历的最好例子就是与人争论。以前，我学会说话时，每个词汇似乎都是为了争斗。你知道，我早期的语言表达中充满了斗争。所以，当我遇到一个持不同政治观点的人时，我会说，你错了，原因是这些，你真的很愚蠢。当我住在旧金山时，我比现在好斗得多。我很幸运，我在密苏里州长大，还住过旧金山、纽约和德克萨斯，这些经历不仅在政治上塑造了我，也影响了我生活的其他方面。现在，当有人说出我不同意的话时，我不再想着争斗，而是问：你为什么这样想？这是一个非常有趣的观点。告诉我你为什么有这种感觉。我不知道这是不是故意引起关注，但基努·里维斯曾说过一句话：我以前喜欢和人争论，现在我从不争论。你说一加一等于五，我会说："希望你今天过得好。" 这有点像我现在的样子，我只想少争论一些。

And I'll still catch myself arguing, but Dale Carnegie in this book, How to Win Influence, to how to end friends, win friends and influence people. He's got many famous lines, but one of the famous teachings is basically just don't argue with people because you know, party typically walks away happy or satisfied. And so loosening the grip for me is arguing less where it's, I'm not even going to judge you. And I'm just going to I can recognize that you think this way and I think this way. And it's cool. It's a great example actually. I hadn't thought about that, but that's another great example of just like holding on. It's not even holding on too tightly to a perspective because you can have a perspective that you really believe in, but it's it's, you know, it's like don't clench where you're not even able to listen. Now, I think the point about like being too grippy is you're you're you're it's like you're spring under tension. And if someone says something to you that you disagree with, like you're going to boom, expand and like explode, right, which is kind of what an argument can be versus just already taking some of the tension out of that spring and just like bouncing with it and listening versus exploding out of it. I think that's a big difference.

我仍会发现自己在争论，但戴尔·卡耐基在他的书《如何赢得友谊和影响他人》中有一条著名的教导，即不要与人争论，因为通常情况下，争论的双方都不会感到快乐或满足。因此，对我来说，减少争论就是放松一些，不去评判你，只是认可你有你的看法，我有我的看法，这样挺好的。其实，这真是一个很好的例子。我之前没想到这一点，但这确实是一个很好的例子，说明不要太紧抓某个观点。你当然可以有自己的观点，但不要紧抓到无法倾听他人的程度。 这种放松的关键在于你不会像受压的弹簧，一旦有人说了你不同意的话，你就立刻“砰”地反弹，爆发出来，这就像争论一样。相反，提前释放一些紧张，让自己能随着它弹跳，倾听对方的观点，而不是爆发。我觉得这是一个很大的区别。

Have you ever read there's there's this term I'll have to figure out what the term is, but there's this term where astronauts go to space and they see the earth from far away. And many of them have reported to have a life changing perspective where they think to themselves. The fact that we're fighting over religion is ridiculous. The fact that we're fighting over borders is ridiculous. Now let's zoom down to the smaller things. The fact that we're fighting over someone saying something rude to us is absolutely crazy because we're all just a bunch of monkeys on this like floating thing and it's like with cars and like, yeah, and we see like this this abyss and then we're just a silly blue thing in the middle of it. And and and it's like a lot of astronauts say it changes their perspective and it mellows them out. And I think that when I read about that years ago, it kind of helped me calm down a little bit more to where you think not the stuff that I thought mattered doesn't matter.

你有没有听说过一个术语，我得找找具体是什么，但这个术语描述的是宇航员去太空，远远地看到地球后，他们的观念会发生彻底的变化。他们会觉得为了宗教争吵是多么荒谬，为了边界争吵也是多么荒谬。让我们把视角缩小到更小的事情上，为了别人对自己说了一句不礼貌的话而争吵简直更是疯狂。因为我们都是漂浮在宇宙中、类似猴子一样的生物，这个星球上有汽车什么的，我们看到的只是无垠的深空，而我们只是中间一个不起眼的蓝色小球。很多宇航员都说这种体验改变了他们的视角，让他们变得更加平和。我多年前读到这个时，也让我自己更冷静一些，觉得原本认为重要的东西其实没那么重要。

For example, I remember when COVID happened and I was like, we're never going to concerts ever again. And then three years later, I'm like, fuck that. I forgot all about that. Do you know what I mean? Totally. Have you, have you, to that point about astronauts, have you read that great passage from Carl Sagan, the pale blue dot? What's he say? No, I mean, it's one of the most beautiful. I'm not going to say it because I want you to read it. I want you to have the experience of it. Sure, it's a paragraph. It is one of the most beautiful passages of ever right, but it's it's exactly kind of what you were talking about with the astronauts like looking back at the earth. It's all about all the things that have ever happened.

比如说，我记得当新冠疫情发生时，我想，我们再也不会去看演唱会了。然而三年后，我完全忘记了这回事。你明白我的意思吗？完全明白。你提到宇航员的那个话题时，有没有读过卡尔·萨根写的关于“暗淡蓝点”的精彩段落？他说什么？不，我想让你自己去读一读，这是我读过的最美的段落之一。我不打算说出来，因为我希望你自己去体验。好，它只有一个段落。它是最美的段落之一，正好与你谈论的有关宇航员回望地球的主题契合，谈论的是所有曾经发生过的事情。

I'm going to really generalize here because I want you to read the words, but all the things that have ever happened, every leader, every religion, every point of view, every argument, every whatever, right? Beautifully and beautiful prose happened on this speck of dust, basically. I think he calls it like a moat of dust. It's such a beautiful passage and it brings tears to my eyes. And I try to read it a few times a year because it's so right. It's so spot on right. And it's exactly what you're talking about in the most beautiful poetic way, which is all the stuff that we're worried about, all these things like very few of those things matter. Although, of course, they matter in your day to day life.

我这里要非常笼统地表达，因为我想让你理解这些话，但所有发生过的事情，每一个领导者，每一种宗教，每一种观点，每一次争论，每一个“什么什么”，对吧？所有这些美丽而优美的文字都发生在这粒灰尘上，基本上是这样。我想他称之为尘埃微粒。这个段落如此美丽，它让我眼眶湿润。我每年都会读几遍，因为它真的是太对了。这正是你所谈论的，以最美丽的诗意方式表达了出来，我们所担心的所有这些事情，其中很少有真的重要。虽然在你的日常生活中它们当然是重要的。

So like, they're real for you, but they really don't matter that much. And it's just a good reminder that, you know, all the things we're just so fired up about. Cares. Well, it's a paradox of like caring by not caring. Why do you not like comparing this stuff to business? And afterwards, I'll tell you my reason why I think it's good. Yes. So this is an undeveloped thought of mine that's been sort of on my mind. I don't know if it's a good idea or not. So just run with me here. I'm going to kind of. This is undeveloped. It seems like every great lesson is then applied to business by someone.

所以说，这些事情对你来说是真实的，但实际上它们并没有那么重要。这只是一个很好的提醒，让你知道，我们为之激动的所有事情，谁在乎呢？这有点像是不在乎而关心的悖论。你为什么不喜欢把这些事情和商业比较？之后，我会告诉你为什么我觉得这样做是有好处的。是的，这是我一个还没有完全成型的想法，一直在我脑海中。我不知道这是不是一个好主意。所以，跟我一起想一下吧。这还没有完全成型。看起来每一个伟大的教训都会被某人应用到商业中。

So for example, a Navy SEAL learns all the stuff in the military and they come and they like then consult for companies about how to like run teams or some great coach. Coach is a great team. And then they come and they bring it to the business world. It's always like bringing it to the business world. And I'm like, what does the business world deserve? The best lessons from things that are completely unrelated in many ways to business. But why does it always come to the business world? And the main reason is why, in my opinion, is because the business world pays for that advice. It's not that it deserves the advice. It's not even that it's advice that's applicable, but that it pays for the advice.

举个例子，比如一名海豹突击队队员学习了军队中的所有知识，他们之后会来为企业提供咨询，比如如何管理团队或者一些优秀的教练是如何带队的。然后他们把这些经验带到商业世界。这种现象总是把一切带到商业世界。我在想，商业世界为什么值得从这些与商业在很多方面毫不相关的领域中借鉴最佳的经验？为什么总是要应用在商业世界？我认为主要原因是因为商业世界会为这些建议买单。并不是因为他们值得这些建议，也不是这些建议一定适用，而仅仅是因为他们愿意付钱。

And the way I've been thinking about it is not as this shining beacon on a hill that business deserves all the greatest things, but actually as the drain. That all these ideas drain down through business because business sort of just is willing to pay for it and listen to it and sort of have this sort of insecure in a way. So like it wants to listen to the Navy SEALs. It wants to listen to the great AA coach. It wants to listen because it's insecure in its own way. And also there's this sense of like these other places and people they know better than us. So we're going to just bow down for their advice. And I don't know, again, this is a little bit unformed, but it's something that just bugs me a little bit.

我对这件事的看法不是认为企业像山顶上的明灯，理应得到一切美好的东西，反而把它看作是一个排水口。各种想法通过企业被吸收下来，因为企业愿意花钱购买这些想法，并倾听这些观点，甚至有些不自信。企业想要听取海豹突击队的建议，想要听取优秀的戒酒互助会教练的看法，因为它自身有些不安。另外，还有一种感觉是，其他地方和人比我们懂得多，因此我们会对他们的建议俯首称臣。我不知道，这个想法还不成熟，但总让我有点困扰。

I don't know. Does that make any sense or is it just a weird idea? No, it makes sense. But my argument would be instead of the image that you've had, you just painted is you've painted an upside down triangle with all of this beautiful stuff draining down into this bad thing. Thank you. I would turn that turn that upside down and say it all is going up to this amazing thing. And here's why, because I think that whether you like capitalism or don't like capitalism, you cannot deny that it's here to stay. At worst, it's here to stay in the lifetime of everyone who's alive. Maybe America will change, maybe, maybe the rest of the majority of the world will change.

我不知道。这有道理吗，还是只是个奇怪的想法？不，这有道理。但我的观点是，你刚刚描绘的不是你想象的那种图景，而是你画了一幅倒三角形，所有美好的东西都流向了这个坏的东西。谢谢。我会把这个图形倒过来说，这一切都汇聚成一件美好的事。原因是，我认为无论你喜欢还是不喜欢资本主义，你都不能否认它是一个长期存在的现象。在最坏的情况下，在目前所有在世的人的一生中，它都会继续存在。也许美国会改变，也许世界大多数地方会改变。

But I wouldn't bet on that happening anytime soon. Therefore, I think that capitalism and thus business building is the most practical way to manifest a dream or a reality. And oftentimes you could say, well, what about art? And I would agree with that. But at the end of the day, you're still making stuff that people want, and you're still selling tickets. You're still trying to make some type of money off of your art so you can continue doing it. Or you're just going to have a rich person who funds you. So you are able to do it. And so my opinion, business is the most practical way to actually kick a dent in the world or to manifest a vision. And so I think a business as a very like I'm very passionate about it being a little bit of a spiritual journey of like turning dreams into reality. That's an optimistic point of view, which I do understand. Here's my question. If this thing called business is absorbing all of these lessons from all of these other realms, right? And they're all like either filtering down or filtering out, but they're filtering too. And maybe I'm wrong about this. But why aren't the Navy seals asking CEOs for advice? Why? Sometimes they are if you look at like, I don't maybe they are like Jack Walsh's book, Six Sigma, like a lot of different types of organizations outside of business like view that book. I don't really like that book, but they view it as like the rules of the game. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I might be uninformed in a sense of like what who the military is listening to and who you know, force teams are. But there's something it's like you would imagine this, this, this entity, this business thing that has absorbed everything would then be the definitive source of this wisdom. But I wonder, is it a one way street or is it a two way street? And it seems very one way. I think they're more right than you are wrong. That's for sure. It's definitely more one way. Yeah. No, I just wanted to give, I just wanted to give one example, but I was yeah, frankly, that's a nitpick example. Totally. I don't know. Again, I don't know if this is a good idea or not. It's just it's been sort of floating in my head for a bit. So it's fun to air these things out.

但我不认为这很快就会发生。因此，我认为资本主义以及建立企业是实现梦想或现实的最实际方法。你可能会说，那艺术怎么办？对此我同意。但归根结底，你还是在制作人们想要的东西，并且你还在卖票。你还在尝试从你的艺术中赚取一定的钱，这样你才能继续做下去。否则你就需要靠一个富有的人资助你，让你能够继续这样做。所以在我看来，做生意是实际在世界上留下一些印记或实现愿景的最实际方法。因此，我对商业有一种强烈的热情，我认为它有点像是一段将梦想变为现实的精神旅程。这是一种乐观的观点，我能理解。这里是我的问题：这个被称为“商业”的东西从所有其他领域吸收了这么多的经验，对吧？它们要么向下传递，要么向外传递，但它们也在过滤。也许我错了，但为什么海军海豹突击队不去问CEO们的建议呢？为什么呢？有时候他们确实会，比如你看杰克·韦尔奇的《六西格玛》这本书，很多非商业的组织都把这本书视为游戏规则。我不太喜欢这本书，但他们把它视为一种规则。好吧，是的，我可能在某种程度上对军队听谁的意见和某些强力团队听谁的意见不太了解。但有一点，你应该想象这个吸收了所有东西的商业实体应该是这种智慧的最终来源。但我在想，这是单向的还是双向的？而且看起来非常像单向的。我认为，他们比你认为的要正确。这绝对是单向的。是的。我只是想举一个例子，但坦白说，这只是一个鸡蛋里挑骨头的例子。我不知道，我不知道这是不是个好主意，只是这些想法在我脑中飘了一段时间，所以说出来会很有趣。

What was more fun early days or late days of the company? Oh man, that's a really good question. They're very fun in very different ways. So I mean, it's a bit of a cop out, but it's true. But they're fun in different ways. What's exciting about the early days is there's a certain energy that you can never capture again, which is the the there's so much more unknown. Like you're, you're starting from zero and you're building something and you don't know where it's going to be and where it's going to go and what's possible and what isn't and how long it's going to last and all those things. Now, you don't know how long it's ever going to last in a sense. But there's this there's this hope there's this possibility. There's this birth and you know, it's like boom, we're out in the world and here we are and this is an incredible thing. And that's super fun. And then you get a lot of new attention and you're kind of burst on the scene and that's exciting, really exciting.

公司成立初期和后期哪个阶段更有趣？哦，伙计，这真是个好问题。两个阶段都非常有趣，但方式截然不同。所以这有点像是逃避回答，但的确如此。初期有趣之处在于有一种你再也无法捕捉到的特殊能量。因为有太多未知的东西。比如你从零开始，构建某个东西，你不知道它将会发展成什么样，不知道可能性和限制是什么，不知道会持续多久等等。现在，其实你永远都不知道它会持续多久。但初期有一种希望，有一种可能性，有一种新生，就像“轰！”一声，我们出现在世上，这是件令人难以置信的事情。而这非常有趣。然后你会获得很多新的关注，你突然出现在公众视野中，这真的非常激动人心。

I think what's what's hard actually is the middle. We've gotten to a place now being having done this for 25 years. It's become really fun again in a different way. But I would say like 15 years in is a different story. Because that at that point, it's like we've been doing this for a while. I don't know how much longer it's going to last. Like you're kind of in this sort of maintenance thing. Were you big enough at 15 years where you're like like payroll is not an issue? Like were you out of like any type of outside pressure where it was like things are fine. So it's like I feel weird that I'm complaining, but this feels weird. Yeah. And I'm not really complaining about it. But yeah, yeah, it's more like, you know, Scott Scott Belzky wrote a book called the messy middle. Yeah, great. I've not read the book actually, but I understand the idea of it. And it's kind of what I'm trying to get at, which is like the middle of it is like, what do we want to be now? And where do we want to go now? And are we going to be a big company? Are we going to stay a small company? There's all these opportunities that are surrounding us now and swirling around us versus when you're starting, you're just like, you're just going, you're just moving. Then you just play it place where you're like kind of evaluating. And now we're in this place where we're just sort of mellowed in a sense to your point, although we're actually getting very ambitious again, because we have this sense of like, we've been doing this so long now that like, if we took some crazy bets or made place some crazy bets and it just totally all fell apart, like, I don't want that to happen. But I'd be okay with that too. Like we're at a place where it's like, we've done plenty and we've had an incredible run. And if it all ended with a bang, because we tried some crazy stuff that didn't work, like, I'd be okay with that too.

我认为真正困难的是中间阶段。我们现在已经做了25年了，到了一个全新的并且很有趣的阶段。但如果回到15年前，那时候的感觉就不同了。因为在那个时候，你会觉得我们已经做了这么久了，不知道还能持续多久。你进入了一种维持状态。到了15年那会儿，你会发现薪水等问题已经不像以前那样是个问题了，也没有什么外部压力，所以感觉一切都挺好的。但同时又觉得向别人抱怨好像不太合适，但这确实感觉有点怪异。其实我也不是在抱怨，就是那种感觉。Scott Belzky写了一本叫《混乱的中间》的书，我虽然没读过，但理解他在讲什么。这就是我想表达的，中间阶段让人感到迷茫，我们现在该成为什么样子呢？我们未来要去哪里？我们要成长为一个大公司，还是保持小公司的状态？我们周围有太多机会，当初创业时，你只是不断前进，而现在你开始评估各种选择。我们现在有点进入了一种平和的状态，但同时我们又重新变得有野心，因为我们做了这么久，就算我们冒了一些大的风险，最终全盘皆输，我也能接受这种结果。虽然我不希望这种情况发生，但如果真的因为尝试一些疯狂的想法而失败，那我也能坦然接受。我们已经做了很多，也有过很棒的经历。如果最后以轰轰烈烈的方式结束，因为一些大胆的尝试失败了，那我也觉得没什么。

So I feel like I'm at that place now, what I wouldn't have been at 15 years, if that makes any sense. What's your sense? I mean, you started a bunch of stuff. My sense is that, so none of my things have been as big as yours, but they've been big enough where we've had dozens or 50, 60 employees. And we got outside of the existential crisis moment where it's like, things are working. And everyone talks about focus. Focus is a very common thing. And it's something I firmly believe in. But as someone who likes to make things, for my skill set, a company outside, like maybe, let's say, 3 million in revenue or maybe maybe 5 million in revenue, I've noticed consistently, a 5 million in revenue and like 15 employees, something like that, I'm like, I don't know what to do with my hands. Like, I'm just sitting here, like, what do I do? I feel useless. And I feel like, sometimes a general behind the scenes just pointing.

所以我觉得自己现在到了一个境界，而这个境界是我15年前不可能达到的，你明白我的意思吗？你怎么感觉？我是说，你开始了很多事情。而我的感觉是，虽然我的项目没有你的那么大，但也足够大了，我们有几十或者五六十个员工。我们已经度过了那种存在危机的时刻，也就是说，事情在顺利进行。每个人都在谈论专注，专注是一个非常常见的话题，而且我坚信这一点。但是，作为一个喜欢创造东西的人，对于我的技能来说，当一家公司收入达到300万美元，或者也许是500万美元，员工数量大概是15人的时候，我总是一种茫然的感觉。我不知道该做什么，只能坐在那里，感觉手足无措。我感觉自己像是一个在幕后指挥的将军。

And I've noticed something that I really dislike, but I think it's normal is a company ebbs and flows. And I've noticed that this ebb and flow carries over to the rest of my life where I just had a child and I'm like, I'm in this quiet time for a moment where I have to be present, whereas there's other times where you're dating or something like that. And you're like, I'm in, I'm in more mode a little bit where it's like, it's actually constantly or like, I'm on top of my game and I got to be a top my game. Same with business where it's like, we're launching this new thing, we're out fighting with the troops, we're in the trenches. And then there's other times, sometimes this, I think can last for years, maybe, where it's just like, we're just doing the same thing over and over and over again. And that period can be a little depressing, even though everything is going well, it's a very saddening period because you lack action.

我注意到了一件让我非常不喜欢的事情，但我认为这很正常，公司总是有起伏。而我也发现这种起伏会影响到我的其他生活方面。比如，我刚刚有了小孩，现在正处于一个需要安静、需要专注的时刻。但也有其他时候，比如你在约会或者做其他事情的时候，你会觉得自己充满活力，状态很不错，觉得必须保持最佳状态。就像在公司一样，有时我们会有一个新项目要推出，要全力以赴，像在战斗中一样。而有些时候，这种状态可能持续多年，我们只是不断重复同样的事情。尽管一切进展顺利，但这段时光会让人感到有些压抑，因为缺乏行动让人感到很沮丧。

It's basically like, what they say with a lot of great investors, I think Manish said this on our papaya on our last podcast, he was like, if you can watch paint dry, you're going to be a good investor. The problem with that for a lot of entrepreneurs or a lot of like go-getters is that's a really sad place to be in. Even though everything is going well, it's really uncomfortable to be in that feeling. And so have you guys had a lot of, have you had a lot where you're like, man, I just kind of unfortunately have to do nothing for maybe years? Yeah, I can totally identify with that.

基本上，就像很多优秀投资者所说的，我记得Manish在我们上次播客的节目中提到的，他说，如果你能耐心地看油漆干，你就会成为一名优秀的投资者。很多创业者或者充满干劲的人面临的问题是，这种状态真的很令人沮丧。尽管一切进展顺利，但那种感觉非常让人不安。所以你们有没有经历过那种情况，就是你不得不无奈地什么都不做，可能会持续几年？是的，我完全能理解这种感受。

And I think what you're getting at with entrepreneurs is that what you're describing is in the early days, you are very important as a founder. Then there's a point where you build an organization and then the organization is able to, in some ways, in a good way, run without you to some degree. And at that point, you kind of feel a little bit less valuable to your own thing that you made. It's a good thing, but for you, it's a good thing because it means there's some stability and you're not the bottleneck and you're not the only person that matters here anymore, obviously.

我觉得你想表达的是，对于企业家来说，在公司的早期阶段，作为创始人你非常重要。但在某个时刻，你建立了一个组织，这个组织在某种程度上能够很好地独立运作，而不再完全依赖于你。在这个时候，你可能会感觉自己对自己创立的事物变得没那么重要了。这其实是件好事，因为这意味着你的公司有了一定的稳定性，你不再是公司的瓶颈，你也不再是唯一重要的人。

But for you personally, it feels a little bit like you've become detached from this thing that you made. And you're now further away, typically from like the creation phase and now you're more in the maintenance phase of something and you're dealing with internal politics and personalities and hiring and you've got some great people who just left and now you're going to find new people and the culture's changing. And that's a pretty tumultuous, turbulent time for a founder. And I've gone through that many times and it comes and it goes.

但是对你个人来说，感觉好像你和你创造的这个东西有点脱节了。你现在通常离初创阶段更远了，更多是在维护阶段，处理内部政治、人际关系和招聘问题。你有一些很棒的人才刚刚离开，你还得找新人，公司的文化也在改变。对一个创始人来说，这是一个相当动荡不安的时期。我经历过很多次，这种情况时有发生。

What I've found is that what I kind of discovered actually recently is that my job as the founder, I'm still a founder. I still started this company, I'm still in it 25 years. My job as a founder, what I've realized is it's to inject risk into the business. Most people, everyone, pretty much at your company, job is to manage risk to some degree, to keep their job, to not push too hard or too far ultimately, you can get away with certain things that other people simply can't because you own the damn place. You are the original person.

我最近发现了一个新认识，作为创始人，我仍然肩负着创始人的责任。尽管我已经在这家公司工作了25年，但作为创始人的职责，是在业务中引入风险。而大多数人在公司中的职责都是在一定程度上管理风险，确保他们的职位，不会过分冒险。但是，由于我是创始人，我可以做一些其他人不能做的事情，因为这家公司是我的，我是最初的那个人。

So, what I've found a lot more joy and excitement in is revisiting this idea of injecting risk. By the way, I don't think you could change that. I think for a long time, I was like, why aren't these people taking risks? I got a force of and I'm like, there you go. It's impossible. That's impossible to change. Even if you hire great CEO to replace you with CEO, like they just don't have that. They might be an incredible CEO, great executive, executing things, trains are on time, incredible. But there's that thing that's present in a founder simply because they were there from the beginning that they have an extra ounce of, it's not even that they're not better. They just have an extra ounce of latitude that allows them to take risks that nobody's going to say no to.

所以，我发现重新注入风险的这个理念让我感到更多的快乐和兴奋。顺便说一句，我认为这个是改变不了的。很长时间以来，我一直在想，为什么这些人不冒险？最后我恍然大悟，这根本没办法改变。即使你聘请了一位优秀的CEO来代替你，这位CEO可能会是一个很棒的领导者，执行力很强，事情按时完成，非常了不起。但是，他们缺少了创始人独有的一点特质，因为创始人从一开始就在，公司给予他们更多的自由，这种自由让他们能够冒险，而且没有人会说不。

Maybe if you have a board, maybe someone's going to say no, but they'll still give you more latitude than a hired hand, basically in a sense. So, my sense is the way I found to return to this sort of flow versus the the ab is like, is to inject more risk, which for us means we're going to build a lot more products. Like this year, we're going to do four products. We're going to begin. We're about to start working on two products simultaneously, which we've never done before. We've never built two things at the same time.

也许如果你有一个董事会，可能有人会反对，但总体来说，他们还是会给你比普通员工更多的自由。所以，我的感觉是，我找到了一种方法，可以在这种流程中重新找到平衡，这种方法就是增加更多的风险。对于我们来说，这意味着我们将开发更多的产品。比如说，今年我们计划开发四个产品。我们即将开始同时开发两个产品，这是我们以前从未做过的，我们从未同时开发过两个产品。

And like this, there's a lot of stuff going on. We got different models. We got once. We got SaaS. We got all these things. We're going to do multiple versions of multiple things and different business models. And we're going to we're really off balance in a really healthy way at the moment. Because like we're doing a bunch of new stuff and that gets me excited now. It makes some people internally nervous, understandably so. It's like, well, this is different now. We're kind of off balance a little bit trying new things. But that's how I have to run the business. Otherwise, I will become bored. And at that point, it won't serve me or the business well if I'm in charge and I'm bored. That's not a good thing. For my professional life or for my main company, that's like the main nine to five thing.

就这样，有很多事情在发生。我们有不同的模式，比如一次性的、SaaS（软件即服务）等等。我们将会做多个版本的多个项目，还有不同的商业模式。目前我们有点失衡，但却是以一种非常健康的方式。因为我们在尝试很多新东西，这让我现在很兴奋。当然，这让公司内部的一些人感到紧张，这可以理解。这是因为，现在我们是在尝试新东西，有点不稳。但我必须这样经营公司，否则我会觉得无聊。如果我无聊了，那对我和公司都不好。作为我的主业，这就像我每天九到五的工作一样重要。

For Hampton, I've not I do injectorist, but I have a CEO. And so I try to I have to like respect. I got to respect that relationship. And so yes, on my nights and weekends, I created a new website for fun. I created this website called Sam's list. It's samselist.co. Nice. And the reason I did it was I tweeted out like who's gotten accountant that they love because I just needed an accountant for something. Got like 300 replies. And I was like, wait, something's interesting here because this tweet got so many bookmarks, like a lot of people bookmark it. And someone was like, oh, I'm saving this for later to find an accountant. So I was like, this is interesting. So I spent a few months calling every accountant on the list, finding out how much they charged, what services they provide, what services they don't provide, who the ideal client is, who isn't the ideal client, whatever. And then I created a website called Samselist, where I reviewed or I like put all the information from all of my research for all these accountants, created this website. I think I got 8000 people to come in the first week. And then I started figuring out how to monetize it. And so this month, the first month that's been live, it's May 22nd when we're filming this, I think it's done 20,000 this month. And the $20,000 that I've made from that is more dopamine than let's say a million dollars a month or $2 million a month that I've gotten from other things. It's a total rush. And I love it. Why is it? Why do you think that? Why do you think that's so exciting for you?

对Hampton来说，我并不是一个注射师，但我是一个CEO。因此，我必须尊重这种关系。所以，是的，在我的夜晚和周末，我为了好玩创建了一个新网站。我创建了一个叫做"Sam's List"的网站，网址是samselist.co。这个想法的起源是我在推特上发了一条推文，问大家有没有推荐的好会计师，因为我需要一个会计师。结果收到了大约300条回复。我觉得有意思的是，这条推文被很多人收藏，有人留言说他们会保存这条推文以后找会计师用。所以我觉得很有趣，于是花了几个月时间联系了名单上的每一位会计师，了解他们的收费、提供的服务、不提供的服务、理想客户是谁、非理想客户是谁等等。然后，我创建了这个名为"Sam's List"的网站，把所有的研究信息汇集到网站上。在第一个星期，我的网站吸引了8000名访问者。接着，我开始研究如何从中赚钱。这个月是网站上线的第一个月，我们在5月22日拍摄这段视频的时候，它已经赚了2万美元。而这2万美元带来的多巴胺的快感，比我从其他事情中每月赚取百万元或两百万元的感觉还要强烈。这真是一种极大的刺激，我非常喜欢这种感觉。为什么会觉得这么兴奋呢？你认为为什么会让你这么兴奋呢？

It's a total rush because what started it's so fun. It's so fun for things that start as silly jokes, like just stupid. Like the logo that we have is a calculator that has three numbers and a Q, and it looks like Clippy. It looks like Clippy from Microsoft, like waving at you. It looks like Mickey Mouse. And I just used chat GBTS. I said make a logo that looks like Clippy, but it's a calculator. And it's so fun to take silly, jokey stuff and turn it into real things that actually solve problems. And I find that to be almost like part trolling, part like shit eating grin, like scheming. Like I love that like, isn't it? Would it be hilarious if we made this a thing? And then actually seeing it become a thing, I find to be so exciting. I also think that when you're when you have a silly idea, even if it's like a serious idea, and you start seeing customers truly like it, that's a very invigorating feeling. It's the best. And we had this internal say, we don't say it that much. We've I've said it before, and we kind of try to feel it, which is that cool wears off, but useful never does. And what you've made is something that's useful. And that is one of the most beautiful things I think you can do for humanity is to make something useful. And to have fun with it and to screw around and not like take it so seriously, this is going back to the thing. Your your grip is loose on this. You know, you're having fun with it. Yes, Chad GPT to make a logo and you're goofing around. The name is just your name. It's like, it's just have some fun. And it's a reminder that that's what this should always be like as much as possible.

这真是令人兴奋，因为一开始就很有趣。把一些原本无聊的笑话做成实物，比如我们有一个计算器的标志，上面有三个数字和一个Q，看起来像Clippy（微软的虚拟助手），像在向你挥手，又像米老鼠。而我只是用了Chat GPTS，说“做一个像Clippy的计算器标志”。把这些愚蠢的玩笑变成真正能解决问题的东西，真是太有趣了。我觉得这有点像搞恶作剧，一边奸笑一边策划。那种“如果我们把这个做成一个东西，会不会很好笑”的感觉，看到它真的变成现实，我觉得特别令人兴奋。 我还认为，当你有一个看似愚蠢的想法，即使是严肃的想法，看到顾客真的喜欢它，那种感觉非常振奋。这是最棒的。我们内部有一句话，虽然不常说，但我们确实说过，并且试图去体会，那就是：酷炫会消退，但有用永远不会。而你所创造的东西是有用的，这我认为是你为人类能做的最美好的事情之一，就是创造有用的东西。同时还要玩乐，不要太过严肃地对待。这又回到了前面说的，你们对这件事情抱得很轻松，你们在享受过程中的乐趣，是的，用Chat GPT做个标志，随便玩玩。名字也只是随便取的，就是要乐在其中。这提醒我们，尽可能地保持这样的心态。

It is totally valuable to do hard things. Absolutely. But not everything should be hard. There should be plenty of easy things in your life too. Things that flow, things that you have fun doing, things that don't feel hard. You don't need to pile up and collect only hard things. And so while some of your business ideas might be harder to pull off for other reasons, this one is so lighthearted and easy, it's healthy. It's good for you. And you rediscover like why you do this sort of stuff. And it's also fun. I think there's something probably I'm guessing. There's something probably in this that like, you're like, I did this by myself. Yeah, that's like the feeling of accomplishment. And I can still I can still do something by myself, like really by myself. And that's useful is very rewarding and hard to come by sometimes when we all think we need to have partners and co-founders and teams and stuff to pull things off.

做难事是非常有价值的，绝对没错。但是，并不是所有事情都应该是困难的。生活中也应该有很多轻松的事情，事情顺利进行，让你乐在其中，不感觉困难。你不需要堆积和收集只要困难的事情。所以，尽管有些业务想法可能因为各种原因更难实现，但这个想法非常轻松愉快，对你健康有益。它能让你重新发现自己为什么要做这些事，而且还很有趣。我猜想有一点可能是你会觉得，这是我自己一个人完成的，是那种成就感的感觉。我仍然可以完全独立完成一些事情，而这在我们都认为需要合作伙伴、联合创始人和团队来完成事情的时候，是很难得的，也是非常有益的。

Do you and your partner get along like beautifully? We get along really well. We're not like, we're friends, but we don't see each other very often. We live in the same town and we don't see each other. I see them once every, I don't know, couple months. We're very good partners. And we're friendly, but we just don't we don't hang out like our families don't hang out. It's not that we wouldn't enjoy it. We just like, we just don't. There was a there was a study where they looked at the most common reasons why couples get divorced. The most common reason was contempt and the most common the most common reason for divorce was contempt. The most common reason for staying together was you admired the other person. I hadn't heard that, but it resonates like resentment is just bad. And I think a lot of business partners resent each other actually. I think you've been in business with others. I'm assuming. Yeah, I've got the most I've had bad relationships. I'm currently in a very harmonious relationship with my co-founder Joe that I could see lasting a lifetime. What feels different about it? So when we first started together, we invested in startups together and we had a great time and he previously helped me with my old company, the hustle. I cold emailed them and he was like, Hey, if you're in New York tomorrow, just stop by the office and we could talk. And I was like, yeah, I'll be there. And I like flew out there and like hung out with them. And that's how we became friends. And then we invested in startups together. And then I was like, I took like a really formal conversation with them. I was like, Joe, I love working with you. Something I did with my wife early in our relationship when we were like thinking like, Hey, is this something that we want to like make real and like get married and have a family? And I sat down with my wife and I was like, let's just like walk through our life values. And like what type of life do we want to have? And let's see if like they kind of align. And that's okay if things change eventually. But let's just say, let's just see if the direction is similar. And so I sat down with Joe and we said, Hey, let's just outline like what sacrifices are you willing to make? What sacrifices are you not willing to make? What's a perfect day look like for you? What are you driven by? And like, for example, for me, I was like, you know, I'm driven by ego. Like it bothers me that people think I'm not good enough. So like I always want to prove that I'm as good as I think I am. Or I'm driven by money. I was like, I work only 40 hours a week. I don't really want to work more than that. I'm not willing to sacrifice traveling. I'm not going to like get out of my house often if I have a family. And he like named all of his things. And we looked at the all the things and we're like, how much money do you want to have? How much money do I want to have? We looked at all of the things and we're like, for everything that is agreed upon, awesome. For everything that's not agreed upon. Do we think that that's like a deal breaker? And we they weren't. And we were like, cool, we like did a really good job of being very honest upfront about our wishes. And now it's much easier to address like any issues we have because it's like, hey, you he'll be like, Hey, we got to get this done. And I was like, yeah, but I but he'll be like, but you told me that you don't want to like grind on a Saturday. So I'm not even gonna ask you. It's all good. We agreed to this, things like that. And that makes the relationship really nice. Is that we respect one another and we had those conversations super early on.

你和你的伙伴相处得怎么样？我们相处得非常好。我们是朋友，但并不常见面。虽然住在同一个城镇，但我大概每几个月才见他一次。我们是很好的合作伙伴，并且互相友好，只是我们的家庭并不会经常在一起聚会。并不是说我们不喜欢这样，只是我们没有这样做过。 有一项研究调查了夫妻离婚的最常见原因，结果显示最常见的离婚原因是轻蔑。另一方面，维持婚姻的最常见原因是对另一方的欣赏。我之前没听说过这个，但觉得很有道理。怨恨确实很糟糕，我认为很多商业伙伴实际上也会彼此怨恨。我猜你可能也有过这样的经历。是的，我确实有过不好的合作关系，但目前我和我的联合创始人Joe的关系非常和谐，我觉得这份合作关系可以持续一生。 你觉得这次的合作有什么不同？一开始我们一起投资创业公司，合作得非常愉快。他之前还帮过我的旧公司The Hustle。我当时给他发了一封冷邮件，他回复说如果你明天在纽约的话，可以来办公室聊聊。我就真的飞到纽约见了他，我们就这样成了朋友。然后我们一起投资创业公司，我正式地和他说，Joe，我很喜欢和你合作。这和我妻子在我们初期决定是否认真对待关系、结婚、组建家庭时做的事情类似。我和妻子坐下来，讨论我们的人生价值观，以及我们想要过什么样的生活，看看是否一致，即使以后会有变化也没关系。于是我和Joe也坐下来，谈论我们愿意做出哪些牺牲，不愿意做出哪些牺牲，理想的一天是什么样的，驱动力是什么。 比如说，我告诉他，我受自尊心驱动，我讨厌别人觉得我不够好，所以我总是想证明自己的能力。我还说自己受金钱驱动，我每周只想工作40小时，不愿意牺牲旅行时间，如果有家庭的话也不想经常出差。他也列出了他的想法。我们把这些都列出来，看看是否一致，一致的部分很好，对不一致的部分我们评价是否是关键问题。结果这些不一致都不是关键问题。我们一开始就非常诚实地表达了自己的愿望，这让以后解决问题变得容易多了。 现在，如果出现问题，比如他会说，我们需要完成某个任务，我会说，好的，但他会记得我不愿意在周六加班，然后就不会要求我，这样很好。我们彼此尊重，并且在刚开始时就进行了这些重要的对话。

Do you feel like the list or the conversations you had about that? Turn out to be true? Like, are those really the things that that you guys share together? Or was that sort of what you imagined you would share? Yeah, for example, for the money, let's just do the money one. That's a really easy one. We actually shared each other's personal finances with each other. And interesting. Yeah, we were like super transparent. We're like, here's all of our finances. What matter? Like, I would like to go here one day. Where would you like to go? It's like, all right, well, to go there, we're going to be like, let's say that my goal is less than your goal. Let's hit your goal then. And if we need to hit your goal, here's maybe what the numbers would need to look like. And here's what we'd have to make. So like that, you know, is that like something we both agree upon? Do you want to be like, we were very transparent with each other. That's wild. I mean, this is, I know we, you and I were talking on Twitter a little bit about like, how I'm super uncomfortable talking about money. And you're like sharing your personal finances with your founder and kind of it's interesting. Wait, you don't do that with your partner. You don't do that with your partner? Like, well, you guys, your guys, finances are probably so tied together. But you know, they are tied together. I mean, yeah, basically all of our, you know, essentially the vast majority of our net worth is tied in our business. So we know what our distributions are and all that stuff. But yeah, we don't, I mean, we don't talk about that ever. But it's interesting. Like, also like, you're Midwesterner. I'm a Midwestern nerd. Like, I feel like my thing is like, don't talk about it. I don't know why like, it's ingrained in me. Were you, were you like at a one point or did you change or?

你觉得你列出来的清单或者你们谈论的那些事情，结果都成真了吗？比如说，那些真的是你们共同分享的东西，还是只是你们想象中的会分享的东西？比如说，把金钱作为例子，这是一个很简单的例子。我们实际上分享了彼此的个人财务，我们非常透明地分享了所有的财务状况。比如说，我想去某个地方，你想去哪里？那么，如果我要实现这个目标，而你的目标比我的更高，那么我们就先达成你的目标。要达到你的目标，我们的财务状况可能需要达到某个标准，我们需要赚多少钱等。这是我们是否都同意的？我们彼此非常透明，这很疯狂。我知道你和我在推特上谈论过我对谈论金钱非常不舒服，而你却与创始人分享了个人财务，这很有意思。你不和你的伴侣分享这些吗？你们的财务状况可能已经完全捆绑在一起了。但我们的确是这样，基本上我们的大部分净资产都在我们的业务中，我们知道我们的分红情况等等。但我们从来不谈这些。不过这真的很有趣。你是中西部人，我也是中西部人，我觉得我本能地不想谈论这些。我也不知道为什么会这样，这是生来就有的。但你呢？你有没有改变过，或者你一直都这样吗？

I was always open about it because I saw my family like that. And I was like, that's so unhelpful for me because you're not telling me you're not giving me a roadmap. You're not, I don't have anything to strive for because I don't even know what's possible. My father owned a produce brokerage company, which like, it's like a small business, but they sell like, let's just say over the course of his 30 year 20 year career, he sold like a 150 million dollars worth of onions. But like, I'm like, how much is a lot of money? Is a lot of money like 50 grand a year or like $300,000 a year? Like, I have no, I have no clue about this. And so I, and I always regretted that that they weren't open with me. And so I was like, I'm just going to be open about it.

我一直对此事坦诚，因为我看到我的家人就是那样的。而我觉得，这对我没有帮助，因为你们没有告诉我，没有给我一个明确的方向。我没有任何追求的目标，因为我甚至不知道什么是可能的。我父亲经营了一家农产品经纪公司，这算是一个小生意，但在他30年或者20年的职业生涯中，他卖出了大约1.5亿美元的洋葱。然而，我却不知道，什么才算是很多钱？一年赚5万美元是很多吗，还是一年赚30万美元才算多？对此我完全没有概念。所以，我一直为他们对我不够坦诚而感到遗憾。因此，我决定自己要对此事坦诚。

It's switching by my folks never talked about money. I don't still to this day, don't know if they're middle class wealthy. I don't, I don't really know your kitty bee. Do you really, you have no idea. That's weird. Do you support them? I have supported them. I gave them a big chunk of money at one point, but they like, regretfully took it. They didn't really want it. Then I don't think they needed it. And I think I'm going to get it back when they passed. Like, they're not going to use it, you know, they've always been very frugal. We don't talk about it. My dad was an entrepreneur, worked for himself, like a small business owner.

我的父母从来没谈过钱的事。我到现在都不知道他们算是中产阶级还是富有。我真的不知道。这很奇怪吗？你有资助他们吗？我确实帮助过他们，一次性给过他们一大笔钱，但他们不太愿意接受，不是真的想要。我觉得他们可能不需要这些钱，而且我想他们去世后我可能会拿回这笔钱，因为他们一直很节俭。我们从来不谈钱的事。我爸爸是个企业家，自雇，像是小企业主那样。

He was a trader. So he traded stocks on his own. He wasn't a broke. I think he started out as a broker for a little bit, but then he was on his own individual investor, basically. I think he did well for a while. He didn't do well for a while. I think, you know, that's, that's a tough road in a lot of ways. He wasn't a day trader, but there wasn't anything we couldn't have, but we also didn't strive for anything that we couldn't afford. It just, I don't really know. Parents have always been careful with this. So I kind of absorbed that like, just don't really talk about it. And it didn't limit me though. It's not like, I just felt like we were, everything was sort of fine as how it felt to me.

他曾是个交易员，所以他自己做股票交易。他不是经纪人。我想他一开始做过一段时间的经纪人，但后来基本上就是个独立投资者。我觉得他有一段时间表现不错，但也有一段时间表现得不太好。你知道的，这条路在很多方面都挺艰难的。他不是短线交易员，但我们也没什么买不起的东西，同时我们也不追求买不起的东西。我真的不太清楚。父母一直很谨慎，所以我大概也继承了这种态度，就是对钱不怎么谈论。这并没有限制我，我觉得一切都还挺好的。

What are you going to do? What are you going to do with your kids? I struggle with this. Like my parents never really talked about it. We don't talk about it, but we certainly act differently than my parents are growing up. You know, we own a few homes, you know, we've a couple of nice things. So it's like, it's, it's, it's kind of obvious that like, we can afford things and do things. But we just don't, we haven't talked about it. I think that's, that's an incredibly Midwestern and a, incredibly more traditional older set of values. My family had very Midwestern values. And I think a lot of those values are great. Hard work, don't complain.

你要怎么办？你打算如何处理你孩子们的事情？我对此感到困惑。我父母从来没有真正谈论过这些。我们也没怎么谈论过，但我们的行为确实和我父母那时候不一样。比如说，我们有几套房子，还有一些不错的东西。所以显而易见，我们有能力买东西、做事情。但是我们从来没有谈论过这个问题。我认为这是一种非常典型的中西部（美国）和非常传统的老一辈价值观。我的家庭有着非常典型的中西部价值观。我觉得很多这些价值观都很好，比如勤奋工作，不抱怨。

Don't, don't make people work for you. like a, like, I remember going to like a restaurant and like we ordered a pizza and they brought us like a chicken salad and I'm like, we're not going to steal. We're not going to inconvenience you. Whatever. Just giving it, like, I'll delete that. yeah Yeah. That's like the attitude. I never sent a dish back in my life. Not in a million years. Not ever, ever, ever. Not in a million years. Yeah. And so like, I actually think some of those values are great. I think there's many other values that are like, I don't like using this word because it's too loaded, but toxic, bad.

"不要，让别人为你干活。比如，我记得去餐馆的时候，我们点了一份披萨，但他们给我们端上来一份鸡肉沙拉。我当时想，我们不会偷东西，也不会让你们为难的。随便吧，我就删掉这些句子。对对，这就是态度。我这辈子从来没送回过一道菜，根本没想过要这么做。对，有些价值观我觉得还是很好的，但有些价值观我觉得就像有毒一样，不好。"

There are a lot of values that are bad. For example, I think the stoicism that Midwesterners tend to have that you definitely have, I think that it's gotten you to where you wanted to go in a traditional success perspective, but also like not being transparent with certain people. I think I just don't want my family to be left wanting more when I'm gone in the sense of like, I wish that they were more open with me. For example, I've not seen photos of my family really when they were younger or like, I don't have any your parents. I mean, yeah, my parents, my parents were young. I'm like, and I don't even know their grandparents's name. I don't know. I had to do 23 of me because I'm like, I want to ask them what my heritage was. They would just go, we're white. I'm like, yeah.

有很多价值观是不好的。比如，我认为中西部人普遍具有的坚忍精神——你也肯定有这种精神——从传统成功的角度来看，这确实让你达到了目标，但同时也导致你在某些人面前不够坦率。我不希望我的家人在我去世后觉得我对他们不够开放。举个例子，我几乎没有看到过家人年轻时的照片，我根本不了解你的父母。准确地说，是我的父母——我不知道他们年轻时的样子，我甚至不知道他们祖父母的名字。我不得不去做基因测试来了解我的血统，因为当我问他们的时候，他们只会说：“我们是白人。” 我想知道更多。

Yeah. Okay. But what flavor? Like, come on, I need some more. And so or I had to do ancestry.com in order to understand like who my grandparents were. Like, what are you guys hiding? And I turns out I found out that an uncle is actually my grandmother was married previously. And I'm like, why don't you guys tell me this? And they're like, oh, we didn't want to bring it up. You know, like little things like little things like that. And I'm like, that's weird. Just like, just discuss it. Just just tell me. Yeah. Right. That's weird. So anyway, I think that is actually bad though. And I pray that I don't fall into that into that trap.

好的。那……但是味道是什么样的？拜托，我需要更多信息。所以，我不得不去做ancestry.com的家庭树测试来弄清楚我祖父母是谁。你们究竟在隐瞒什么？结果发现，我的一个叔叔原来是我祖母之前婚姻中的孩子。我问他们为什么不告诉我，他们说：“哦，我们不想提起这些事。”像这样的小事我都觉得很奇怪，为什么不直接说呢？对吧，这很奇怪。不管怎样，我觉得这样做其实是不好的，我希望自己不要陷入这样的境地。

And so that's why with my family, I've been overly transparent with a lot of things. And I just think that that like lightens, lightens things up a little bit. I admire that actually. And this is something I actually also admire about David. I'm sure you wouldn't mind me telling you this. David used to when we were in Chicago, when we had an office, he used to drive to work in like incredibly fancy cars. Yeah. And my Midwestern sensibility is like, dude, don't do that. He's like, why not? I'm like, my sense was like, it just it sends a weird message. He's like, what's the message? I mean, everyone knows like, everyone here who works, like they know we're doing well. Like, why would I hide that from me? I agree with you on that one, by the way. And I it's so funny because he's right. Have you seen the big Lebowski? He goes, you're not wrong, dude. You're just an asshole. That's a damn thing. So in my mind, I'm like, but I still struggle with it just because of how I was raised and how I was brought up and the imagined messages, like the whole point is like, I'm imagining that everyone's looking at that and going, what an asshole.

所以，这就是为什么我对我的家人一直都非常透明。我觉得这让很多事情变得轻松一些。事实上，我很佩服这一点。这也是我佩服大卫的地方之一。我相信他说出来他也不会介意。以前我们在芝加哥有办公室的时候，大卫总是开着非常豪华的车去上班。而我的中西部传统观念会觉得，兄弟，别这样做。他会说，为什么不可以？我则觉得这样会传达一种奇怪的信息。他会问，什么信息？我会说，大家都知道我们公司做得不错，为什么要隐藏呢？其实，我也同意他的观点。很搞笑的是，他确实没错。你看过《大保龄离奇事件》吗？里面有一句台词：“你没错，哥们，但你真是个混蛋。” 这简直是说到点子上了。所以在我脑海中，我仍在困惑，因为我的成长背景和我被培养的方式导致我脑补了别人会怎么看——比如大家看到豪华车会觉得，这人真是个混蛋。

It's like, most people probably don't care. They don't care. They know this. They know the score. They're fine with it. And if they're not, that's their problem. Like David's point is like, if they have a problem with me driving a nice car, that's their problem. It's not my problem. Like, I've earned this. I enjoy this car. I buy this car because I like the car. I'm not going to hide the car. And he's right. But I just have a hard time with it still, not anymore with him. This is like way back in the early, early years. But it still is something that's in there. There's a residual like struggle with that degree of honesty around money in a similar way that people like, you know, in a merry like, who'd you vote for?

这就好比，大多数人可能根本不在意。他们不在意。他们知道这一点。他们知道现状。他们对此很满意。如果不满意，那是他们的问题。就像David的观点一样，如果他们对我开好车有意见，那是他们的问题，不是我的问题。我赚到了这辆车的钱，我喜欢这辆车，所以买了这辆车。我不会因为别人的意见而隐藏这辆车。他的看法是对的。但对我来说，我还是有点难以接受这种情况，不过他对这种情况已经不再介意。这是很多年前早期的事情了，但这个问题依然存在，和人们谈论钱的态度有点类似，就好比问他们："你投票给谁了？"

Like, I don't talk about who I vote for. Same. I think just Rock has a great bit on that. It's so funny. Like when I see someone with a political bumper sticker on their car, I'm like, you're insane. You're a crazy person. Yeah. And they're probably like, why? I like this guy or I like that guy or I like hers. Like, why am I have to have to hide my point of view? And they're right too. You know, so deep down, your point of view is healthier. I still have a hard time with it, not and that's probably my problem.

就像，我不会谈论我投票给谁。对，我也是。我觉得Rock有一个很棒的段子，真的很搞笑。当我看到有人在车上贴政治标签时，我会想，你是疯了吗？你是个疯子。而他们可能会想：为什么？我喜欢这个人或那个女人，为什么我就得隐藏我的观点呢？他们说得也对。所以，内心深处，你的观点其实是更健康的。我依然觉得这很难接受，可能这是我的问题。

Or maybe it's not. I don't really know. I don't really know. It's very interesting. Do you want to change or do you not care? Well, I think the truth is my kids have a, or at least my son who's older, my daughter's five. She doesn't recognize any of the stuff. Yeah. But my son does. And my son's really into like, it seems to be into expensive things. He like has this craving for expensive things. So I mean, he's got to know what's going on to some degree. He's not an idiot. Do I want to sit him down and go, Hey, son, we've got this and we've got that.

也许并不是这样。我真的不知道。我真的不知道。这非常有趣。你想改变还是无所谓？嗯，我想事实是我的孩子们，或者至少是我年长的儿子，我的女儿才五岁。她不太理解这些事情。但我的儿子理解。他似乎很喜欢昂贵的东西，他对昂贵的东西有一种渴望。所以，我的意思是，他多少还是知道一些情况的。他不是个傻子。我想坐下来跟他说：“嘿，儿子，我们有这个，我们有那个。”

And they're like, that isn't how I would handle it. It'd be more like, I've worked hard. Here's what we have. We have some things we're going to enjoy. These things we share, these things with friends. This is not just our stuff. And that's kind of how I treat, for example, the house thing, when I renovate a nice old house and I make it better, like, it's our house, but it's also all of our friends house that free people are free to stay there as much as they want, visit as much as I have this property in Wisconsin, this old farm house, 160 acres, it's beautiful piece of land. I've been working on it for years. My friends use it more than I use it. I don't use it anymore. I'm not even around there.

他们会说，这不是我会处理事情的方式。我的处理方式更像是：我努力工作，这是我们共同创造的成果。有些东西我们要一起享受，这些东西我们会和朋友们分享，这不仅仅是我们的东西。这也是我对待房子的态度，比如我翻新了一栋漂亮的老房子，让它变得更好，这不仅是我们的家，也是我们所有朋友的家，任何朋友都可以随意来住、来访。同样，我在威斯康星有一块地产，一座老农舍，160英亩美丽的土地。我多年一直在打理它，但我的朋友们用它的频率比我还高。我现在几乎不怎么用了，我甚至不怎么在那边。

My friends can just go up there whenever they want and use it. So it's about like, we're fortunate, clearly fortunate and lucky, and a big part of this is you want to share these things. You're not fortunate if you hoard the things, then there's something I think kind of wrong about it, in my point of view. So share as much as you can, share these experiences with other people, and we're fortunate. That's kind of how I left it at this point. I don't know. We'll see. The thing that I tell my friends and family is I try to let them know. And this is something that I couldn't grasp earlier on in my career. I refused to admit this one thing, which was luck is real. And it has played such an important part of any type of financial, like just meeting the woman who you're spending your life with.

我的朋友们可以随时去那儿使用它。因此，这不仅仅是运气的问题，我们显然是幸运的，有一个重要部分是你想分享这些东西。如果你把这些东西都囤积起来，那就不叫幸运，我认为这样做有点不对。所以尽可能多地分享，把这些体验和别人分享，我们是幸运的。目前，我的想法就是这样。我不知道，让我们走着瞧吧。我告诉朋友和家人的事情是，我设法让他们明白。这是我在职业生涯早期无法理解的事情。我拒绝承认的一个事情是——运气是真实存在的，而且在任何类型的财务方面起到了非常重要的作用，就像你遇到了一个你愿意共度一生的女人一样。

Like, just the fact that we are in the same place at the same time, luck is such a bigger component than I ever would have been willing to admit years ago. And I think that what I'll explain to my children is like, look, I worked hard, but I frankly didn't work harder than many other people. I'm smart, but I'm not that much smarter, if at all, than the average person. The truth is, is that I worked hard, I had a skill, but I got like 50% of luck was like, was like part of that, or maybe even more than 50%. Luck is such a huge, huge component. And I hope that I can put that on my family to realize that luck was real. It just happened to work out because some timing thing worked out. Like, let's say you started a business and you surged during COVID. You're like, dude, I just kicked ass because something I had nothing in, which I did, our business killed it during COVID. I'm like, I didn't know that was going to happen. That was just total luck. Or you know what I mean? Like things like that. It's absolutely real. And I need and I hope my family will understand that 100% with you. And I think it's way more than 50%. I mean, all the way back to you didn't choose your parents. You didn't choose anything. All right. You didn't choose your mind. How did you become the kind of person who is the way you are? Like, there's a million inputs, a billion inputs that you don't know about all the things.

意思翻译成中文： 有时候我们在同一个地方、同一个时间，这样的巧合就会让我意识到运气比我多年以前愿意承认的要重要得多。我会告诉我的孩子们，我确实很努力，但老实说，很多人也一样努力，我并没有更努力。我很聪明，但我并没有比一般人聪明多少。事实是，我努力工作，有一定的技能，但其中大约50%甚至更多靠的是运气。运气是一个非常非常重要的因素。我希望我的家人能够理解，运气是真实存在的。比如说，如果你在新冠疫情期间创办了一家公司并大获成功，你会觉得："兄弟，我简直太牛了"。但实际上，那并不是你能控制的，而是运气使然。我们的公司在疫情期间业绩非常好，但我并不知道会发生这种事，这纯粹是运气。类似的事情也有很多，完全真实存在。我希望我的家人能完全理解这一点。运气的重要性远超过50%。从你没有选择你的父母开始，没有选择你的任何东西。你没有选择你的头脑，你是如何成为现在这样的人的？有无数种因素，你不知道的所有事情都有可能影响你。

What is it? I don't regret too strong a word, but one of the things I regret most in my career is getting on stage at startup school. So this is like, why combinators startup school years ago. I forget when I was invited to speak. I was only invited once because I was pretty anti-raising money. Yeah. I thought you were like the opposite of their ethos. I was, but Paul was kind enough to ask me to come up on stage and give a talk. But you and Paul seem quite similar to be honest. Well, I appreciate that. I mean, I have a lot of admiration for his ability to put ideas together and think things through what he's built. But he invited me to the stage and there was a question from the audience about luck. Someone was like, do you believe in luck? I'm like, hell no. I don't believe in luck. Wow. And I was such a prick. How old were you? Early, mid-20s, mid-20s, I think it was. And I was just such a prick, but a young punk prick, you know, kind of like, and it's so embarrassing. But a lot of things are you look back on like poetry, you wrote in college, like, oh my God, I wrote that or whatever. Like whatever it is. And you just realize that's part of growing up is totally misunderstanding the world and your position in it. And then hopefully, hopefully, you get to the place in your world where you develop a bit more and you have some self-reflection and you can call yourself out of the bullshit that you thought. But also like, that's who you were at the time and that's that.

这是什么？我不认为“后悔”这个词过于强烈，但在我的职业生涯中，我最遗憾的事情之一就是在创业学校上台。这是多年前的事情，当时是 Y Combinator 的创业学校。我忘记了我什么时候被邀请去演讲，我只被邀请过一次，因为我当时非常反对筹资。是的，我那时确实和他们的理念完全相反。但保罗还是很友好地请我上台发表演讲。不过，说实话，我觉得你和保罗其实挺相似的。嗯，我很感激听到这个。我非常钦佩他把想法组合在一起并深思熟虑的能力以及他所创建的东西。但他邀请我上台，当时观众提了一个关于运气的问题。有人问，你相信运气吗？我说，绝对不信。我不相信运气。哇，那时候我真是个混蛋。你当时多大了？二十出头，二十出中吧。当时我真是个混蛋，一个年轻的混蛋，你知道吗？回想起来真的很尴尬。但很多事情都是这样，比如你大学时写的诗，回头看时会觉得天啊，我居然写过这个或者别的什么东西。你会意识到，这都是成长的一部分，完全误解了世界和自己在其中的位置。然后希望，希望你能在自己的世界中发展得更成熟一点，有一些自我反省，并能识别出自己曾经的无稽之谈。但这也正是当时的你，过去的事情就过去了。

Last thing I wanted to ask you about was this staying off versus staying up. You said, imagine all the things you felt you were falling behind on if you didn't learn about them last year. But it really have mattered if you started today instead. Watch out for the trap of must know now. What's that mean? Right now, this is like in the AI world we're in right now. Everyone's throwing like in my 4U feed in Twitter, it's like 10 things you got to know or you're falling behind. It's like, this, this, this, this, everyone's falling behind. Meanwhile, this thing is brand new and moving fast with any human can pay attention. Like, I just keep seeing these stories about like, if you don't know this and they're doing that and if you're not on top of this, it's like, no, it probably doesn't matter that much. And all the things that if you would have read that feed a year ago that you were supposed to know, it wouldn't have mattered that much if you didn't. Most things, some things would be handy to know, but like, it probably wouldn't matter that much if you started now instead or waited a year in some cases.

我最后想问你的是关于避免和坚持的问题。你说，想象一下，如果你去年没有了解某些事情，你会感觉落后了多少。但如果你今天才开始学习这些东西，真的有那么重要吗？要注意“必须现在就知道”的陷阱。这是什么意思呢？现在，在我们所处的人工智能世界里，所有人都在推特等平台上发布比如"你必须知道的10件事，否则你会落后"这样的内容。每个人都在说这个、那个，好像所有人都在落后。与此同时，这些东西都是全新的，以任何一个人的能力都很难完全跟上。我总是看到这些故事，说如果你不知道这个，他们就在做那个，如果你跟不上这些就完了。其实，不一定有那么重要。一年前那些你所谓必须知道的信息，如果你没去了解，也没多大关系。大多数事情，有些知道了固然很好，但如果你今天才开始，或者有时甚至再等一年开始，也没多大区别。

One of the things I was doing for a while, I'm not doing it anymore, but I should go back to doing it again. This is actually easier to do during the pandemic was to go back. And so, so today is, is May 22nd, 2024 is to go back and all the podcasts I listened to and listen to May 22nd, 2023. So listen to podcasts that are year old. And during the pandemic, it was great because you hear all these experts talking about this and talking about that and everyone's so certain of everything. And you go back and listen to like, man, we were so wrong about so many things and so many of the things we were worried about never happened anyway.

有一段时间我在做一件事，虽然现在没做了，但我觉得应该重新开始做。其实在疫情期间做这件事更容易一些。我会回顾我听过的所有播客，把时间调回到一年前，比如今天是2024年5月22日，我就会去听2023年5月22日的播客。在疫情期间这很有趣，因为你会听到各种专家谈论这个谈论那个，每个人都对一切事情非常自信。回头再听，你会发现我们在很多事情上都错得离谱，而且当时担心的很多事情根本没有发生。

And this political issue and that political issue, and if this guy gets in office, this is going to happen, if they get in office, this is going to happen. Turns out very, very few things actually happened. And it's really a nice exercise to go back and listen to old podcasts and old interviews of substance and realize that like, there's some stuff that was right, some stuff that was wrong. But man, the sense of urgency in these podcasts is so misplaced because most things don't need to happen right now. You don't need to be up on this right now and you shouldn't feel bad about not being on the cutting edge of X, Y or Z, especially an edge that is recutting itself and resharpening itself every few months.

这个政治问题，那个政治问题，还有如果这个人上台，会发生什么事情，如果另外一个人上台，又会发生什么事情。结果实际上，真正发生的事情少之又少。而回头去听一些旧的播客和有深度的采访，发现有些预测是对的，有些是错的，但感到惊讶的是，当时人们的紧迫感是如此不合理。大多数事情并不需要马上发生，你也不需要立刻掌握这些信息。特别是对于那些不断自我更新和调整的领域，你没有跟上最新进展也不应该感到难过。

So that's what I'm saying. I try to stay a bit out of things. I don't want to be on the edge of things. I like what things settle in a little bit more before I really start to dig in. Do you read any biographies? A few. I've read a few. I really love the idea of biographies. I have a hard time reading long books. Yeah. And most of the biographies tend to be very long. I've got like a limit where it's like 500 pages or less. But I'll do a long one every once in a while. But I read a fair bit, not because I'm in a competition. It's just an hour and night is typically a book a week. And I read a lot of biographies. I like business biographies. I love history.

所以这就是我的意思。我尽量保持一点距离，不想总是站在风口浪尖上。我喜欢等事情稍微稳定下来再深入了解。你读传记吗？读过一些。我很喜欢传记这个题材，但我很难读完长篇幅的书。是的，而且大多数传记 tend to be 很长。我一般只读500页以下的书，不过偶尔也会读一本长篇的。但我还是读了不少书，不是因为我在比赛。而是每晚读一个小时，一周就能读完一本书。我读了很多传记，特别是商业传记。我喜欢历史。

So a lot of the World War II leaders, a lot of the American like titans of industry, a lot of just random people. I love biographies. And I have this process of what I do. I've got this spreadsheet where if I only read on Kindle and anytime I see something interesting, I highlight it. And at the end of the book, I'll like insert, I'll create a timeline. Here's where they're born. Here's where they died. And then anything that I highlighted that happened in this year, that happened in this year. And then what I do is I go to this website called newspapers.com. Newspapers.com has archived pretty much every newspaper ever back into it back until like the 1600s. And what I like to do is let's say I read this biography about Ted Turner. Ted Turner is the guy who started CNN. He was a fascinating guy to me. Or let's actually explain owner in the United States. Biggest one. Yeah.

所以我非常喜欢传记类书籍，不仅是关于二战领导人的，还有一些美国商业巨头，甚至是一些普通人的传记。我有一套自己的读书方法。我在Kindle上读书，看到有趣的内容就会做标记。读完书后，我会把这些标记整理在一个电子表格里，制作一条时间线——从他们出生到去世的时间，以及期间发生的值得注意的事件。然后，我会访问一个叫newspapers.com的网站，这个网站几乎收录了从1600年代以来的所有报纸。如果我读了一本关于泰德·特纳的传记——泰德·特纳是创办CNN的人，一个我觉得非常有趣的人——我就会去这个网站查找相关的报纸报道。

And he's done a lot of fascinating things. And the reason why I used newspapers.com is I like to go back to my Kindle and my spreadsheet. And I see, all right, in this year, he decided that he wanted to buy land. You know, I'm going to go read a newspaper article that wrote about him during that period. And I want to see what he said about his interests, why he's doing it. And like, did he say it? Like, for example, maybe he'll say like one day I hope to own like 5,000 acres turns out he owns millions and millions and millions of acres.

他做了很多令人着迷的事情。而我使用 newspapers.com 的原因是，我喜欢回到我的 Kindle 和电子表格中查看。我看到，好的，在这一年，他决定要买地。我会去读一篇那段时间写关于他的报纸文章，看看他说了什么，为什么对这感兴趣。例如，也许他说过有一天希望拥有 5000 英亩的土地，结果他现在拥有了几百万英亩的土地。

And so I like to read what the predictions were as well as what the people were saying about the person at the time. So you don't get revisionist history. And what you notice when you do this is there's often times that you'll read a biography and you'll think this was obvious that this person was going to do this or there are who wouldn't have predicted that this was going to happen. And or here's another example. World War II, Churchill was like basically he was like the world's going to end. Like we are going to die. The world's over. We felt that way during COVID. But if you read a lot of history, there's been many times where we have felt this exact same feeling.

所以，我喜欢阅读那些预测以及当时人们对那个人的评价，这样你就不会受到修正主义历史的影响。你会注意到，当你这样做时，你通常会在读传记时觉得某些事情是显而易见的，比如这个人注定会做某件事，或者谁不会预测到某个结果的发生。再举一个例子，二战时，丘吉尔基本上觉得世界要结束了，我们都要完蛋了，世界末日要来了。我们在新冠疫情期间也有类似的感觉。但如果你读了很多历史，你会发现，我们有很多次都经历过这种相同的感觉。

And we had this exact same prediction. You know, I remember I recently read JFK's book and like with the Cuban Missile Crisis, it was like the world's over. And I go into newspaper.com and I'll go and read what the predictions are. And what you notice is that people are wrong more than they're right. And so what you're saying about things moving too fast, I read Henry Ford's biography about cars or Henry Ford's biography. And so I got interested in cars and I went and read like what people were saying in 1912 when the Model T was coming out.

我们也有过完全相同的预测。我记得我最近读了肯尼迪总统关于古巴导弹危机的书，当时仿佛世界末日要来了。我还会去阅读旧报纸，看看当时的预测是什么。你会发现，人们预测错误的次数比正确的次数更多。所以你说事情发展太快了，我读了亨利·福特的传记，了解了汽车的发展。我还特意去看了1912年Model T上市时人们的评论。

And like the predictions are just ridiculous. And it's so funny that you don't reiterate at your point, you don't actually have to be that fast to pounce on certain things. It's really quite fascinating to put this in perspective. The Ford came out with the Model T I think in 1912 or 1916. So the internet right now is something like 30 years old. So that is basically like how old would you say the internet is or like the modern Ed Day internet? The commercial internet. Yeah, like 95, 96 is when like, you know, really Mozilla or Netscape kind of came out and really kind of made it happen. It's basically basically it's older than that because it's a research thing. Yeah, commercially.

而且那些预测真的很荒谬。最搞笑的是你不必多次重申这一点，其实你不需要那么快就抓住某些东西。把事情放在这个角度来看真的很有趣。福特在1912年或1916年推出了T型车。而现在互联网大概有30年历史左右。那么你会说互联网有多老呢？或者说现代互联网？商业互联网？是的，大概在1995年到1996年之间，比如Mozilla或者Netscape出来并真正推动了互联网的发展。实际上它比这还要老，因为它最初是一个研究项目。是的，商业上来说。

Yeah, 35 years. Let's say it's basically like a car company in 1940. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. And so what's really fascinating is to like read all these biographies and use newspaper.com. It's one of my favorite things to use and to see what are interesting predictions and how have they come true because I already know the answer. But I want to know what were they saying at the time. And so that's my version of what you do with 2023's podcast. I love that. I didn't know that site existed too. That's fascinating. There's an X account I follow called like pessimists archive. I love that one. It's a great one to follow and just, you know, like, and the thing is, the thing that's a little bit interesting about right now, the time we're in, is that there's so many people saying so many things all wearing the expert uniform.

是啊，35年了。可以说，这就像1940年的一家汽车公司。你明白我的意思吗？对。所以真正有趣的是，读那些传记并使用newspaper.com。这是我最喜欢用的东西之一，可以看看那些有趣的预测，以及这些预测是如何应验的，因为我已经知道答案了。但我想知道他们当时是怎么说的。这是我对待2023年播客的方式。我喜欢这样。我之前都不知道有这个网站，太有意思了。我还关注了一个叫“悲观者档案”的X账户，我特别喜欢，它是一个很棒的关注点。你知道，现在这个时代有点特别的地方在于，有太多人穿着专家的外衣在说各种各样的话。

Some people are experts like there are experts in this world, but many people act replay as one based on just their ability to communicate on platforms. And there's just so much certainty layered into their suggestions and requirements and requests and demands. But it's just it's very healthy to go. Every time you see that, every time there's like a you must, I always buy, I haven't go probably not. Like the more forward they are about being certain and right about something, sort of the less interested I am in the short term. And I'd rather just sort of stand back and see how it all plays out.

有些人确实是专家，就像这个世界上有真正的专家一样，但很多人只是因为他们能在平台上交流，就表现得像专家一样。而且在他们的建议、要求和请求中，充满了确定性。但这样的时候，你应该多想一想。每次看到这种情况的时候，当有人说“你必须”时，我总是想“可能未必”。他们越是坚信自己是对的，我就越不在短期内对他们感兴趣。我更愿意站在一旁，看事情如何发展。

And at the end of the day, you know, there's plenty of opportunity in a lot of different areas. You don't need to just pounce on everything as it's happening. And in many cases, it's best to wait a little bit and see how things settle out. I mean, I just think about like with AI, like all the companies that began to implement AI stuff early on. And then open AI is just like wipe them out in a lot of ways for a lot of different reasons. And when you build on other people's platforms, you're very, very much at risk of things changing, tectonic plates shifting very quickly.

总的来说，你知道，在很多不同领域有大量的机会。你不需要一下子就抓住所有正在发生的事情。在很多情况下，最好是稍微等一下，观察一下事情是怎么发展的。我想到人工智能，很多公司在早期开始实施AI技术，然后OpenAI在很多方面和因很多原因迅速击败了它们。当你依赖别人的平台时，你会面临很大的风险，因为情况可能会迅速变化，就像地壳板块移动一样。

You might have been better off waiting and seeing how things shake out. So anyway, who knows? I wanted you to come on here and just talk because I've read your work for years. I've been a fan of yours for years. I've seen you do a bunch of interviews. And I just wanted someone told me this guy named Dylan just said, you should just ask people what's interesting to them. And that's what I wanted to do with you, because you're an interesting person. And I respect your opinion on so many things.

你本可以等一等，看看事情如何发展，这样可能会更好。无论如何，谁知道呢？我希望你能到这里来谈谈，因为我多年来一直在阅读你的作品。我已经是你的粉丝很多年了。我也看过你做的很多采访。有人告诉我，有个叫迪伦的人说，你应该问问人们对什么感兴趣。我想对你做的就是这样，因为你是一个有趣的人。我对你在很多事情上的看法都很尊重。

And so I appreciate you just coming on and just riffing with me and just telling me what's intriguing to you. And it's been a lot of it's been very valuable for me just to see how you think and what grabs your attention. Well, thanks for the invitation. It was really fun. And as I mentioned earlier, I just I want to make useful things. And hopefully this is a useful conversation for us and for anyone listening. So thanks for inviting me. It was a real pleasure. All right. That's the pod.

非常感谢你来参加，和我一起聊聊天，告诉我你觉得有趣的事情。对我来说，这非常宝贵，让我看到你的想法和关注点。谢谢你的邀请，这次谈话真的很有趣。正如我之前提到的，我希望能做一些有用的事情，希望这次对话对我们和那些收听的人来说都是有价值的。再次感谢你的邀请，这真是一次愉快的经历。好了，这次节目就到这里。