ENUm but I I I love this criticism because it's like oh you just you got to find a different show or you got to find a different thing cuz like entrepreneurs don't want to be told what to do. I've never met an entrepreneur. It's like give me a list. It's a it's a profession for people that don't don't take direction very well. Exactly. You have an insane high tolerance for crazy people. and I just finished rereading Jim Simons, founder of Renaance Technologies, uh really creator of a magic money machine is really about the guy. it doesn't matter. He's like if there's a single good idea in your pile of force manure, like he'll find it. Like he will go through You know you're built usually you have a lot of variance in the beginning and then they get more successful and they kind of they make them corporations make the mistake of like no we need like to out of there. You embrace that. You you the way you put it to me when we were talking about this is like Y Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um yeah, I I I actually think LLMs and and the latest advancement in AI kind of have have created an excellent framing on this. Um and and sort of to talk about the sort of high temperature notion. So in LLMs you can basically tune up the temperature and if you tune up the temperature um you know it it basically start hallucinating. So um you know the bad thing with the hallucination of course is you have no idea what's true or not. But there is spurs of vocational brilliance that comes out of there and the truly new ideas that come out of there. So the criticism of the current generation LMS is they're not very creative and that's ultimately because we've kind of turned down the temperature on them and we've safety trained them to the point where we keep them within the guardrails. So there is a way when you train these things uh to be highly creative but batch it crazy and that's just turning up the temperature. I think it's the same thing. Filmmakers like athletes 100%. And so so this point then is that um what I truly believe the very best musicians do um and the most creative people do is they are not afraid of throwing out ideas even terrible ones and it's in even the most terrible one there may be a nugget. Uh you and I we talked about this over breakfast where um you know there was a person who sort of gave some bad advice to you. Um but sometimes even you know the the the insight be behind the advice sort of the question behind the question can lead to some really interesting things. And so um what I've come to do realize is most people want conformity uh and they value sort of a reliable consistency of you know uh giving x amount of impact per seconds or minute or you know uh x uh truthfulness um you know over x percent they have some sort of heruristics for what is valuable person uh from a business context or what whatever sort of context you're judging it on but certainly in a business con concept this conformity you want to sort of put people about this person is good and they're always good um but you know what I'm more interested in these days is I'm interested in this idea I've never heard about before um and um I find it with with you know some people um you know that um even in an hours's long conversation um with the best people in the world where I've learned the most it may be 55 minutes of that conversation that honestly was you know completely worthless not that interesting for me uh but then there's a a spur-ofthe- moment 2 three minutes of brilliance which I never heard before which will deeply and profoundly impact my life those are my people that's what I'm interested in and I've come to learn that uh most people don't like to be around those But I love it. Um, and I think it's, uh, you know, such a rewarding and interesting thing. And I've I've, um, I'm looking forward to spending more time with those people in the coming decade. Um, and it's it's sort of one of those things that I've I've sort of want to do more of um, and learn more from. the any new idea. No, no, no, no, no. Like, no, we're not doing that. That's too risky. Like, you can't build a car. Like, we're a tiny little, you know, island. And he goes, "Daniel Duck gives me the same exact advice where he will say something, I will say no." And he goes, "But did you even try?" And I go, and then he goes, "It's related to his ability if you actually analyze his willingness to go into all these different industries where he doesn't know anything about the industry." Yeah. Yeah. I'm not "This sucks. I don't I remember one time they like it was in a private room Oh no. Yeah. Yeah. I I would say uh you know I'm not proud proud of her sneaking out um sometimes on that. But but look I mean at at at at the end of the day um I I think that that's less about sort of being um protecting my time um and more sort of about protecting um unique and novel ideas and how rare they are. Um, and and and and by the way, we'll we'll hopefully get into that, but I I uh I think less about sort of a a lot of entrepreneurs seem to be um obsessed about time. I'm I'm really not. I'm I'm I'm more obsessed about energy management. Well, I I mean, you know, you you constantly hear this thing about all these uh you know, you're supposed to wake up at 4:00 a.m. in the morning. You're supposed to do all these things, etc. It's like first and foremost there's no rule. Like um I know a lot of successful people as I'm sure you do too. It's like some of them wake up at, you know, noon, some of them wake up at 4:00 a.m. It's like you can do a lot of different things. Yeah. But the other thing is about sort of you're supposed to pack every like uh you're supposed to have meetings every 15 minutes and like a 15-minute increments is better than the 30 minute increments. So on and so forth. Look, it might work for you. Um, and and for some people it might be like the absolute best thing. Um, I I've become more obsessed about sort of managing my energy. Um, because like if you have time but you have no energy, you're not going to accomplish anything anyway. Well, it's about finding out um what gives you energy, right, to begin with uh and what drains energy. And um it's about finding out which time during the day um you're most productive. Um it is again innately about understanding yourself. Um and what the whole world tries to do is get you to conform to their schedule. Oh, we have an 8 a.m. morning meeting because that's when you get into the office or you're supposed to do this and that and all these other things again in a big corporations. And it's about conformity to like the average or to to an okay standard instead of going for excellence. and what truly truly is unique and I think the truly truly unique thing is you got to just figure out what works for you and you got to do more of that and that's um more about energy management I believe and it's so much more about like even before this thing I think both you and I we went and worked out right you know that that gives me energy it's what's going to sustain the rest of my day I used to not do workouts at all because I thought I don't have time there's no productivity I used to go for the worst um productivity thing I did was I was at one point doing these 15inute naps. I don't know if you've heard about this exercise. No, Oh, it's like polyphasic. Yeah. Okay. uh 15minute increments and holy … I was like completely suicidal for like weeks afterwards. It was like not a great thing at all. But the point being is um you know it's about sort of finding that energy management uh for yourself. I I think certainly there's common wisdom around sort of what an average good sleep should look like, etc. But the reality is there are some people that will work on 6 hours of sleep and they'll do just fine and may even be more productive that way. and then I'm reading James James Dyson's first autobiography and you know guy made one of the most successful career uh companies in all of all time. He's still doing it at 76 years old and he goes I need a hell of a lot of sleep 10 hours a night or my entire next day is ruined. I'm like, "Wait a minute. This guy built he's a single shareholder of a multi multi multi-billion dollar company, built some of the best products in the world, and he's sleeping 10 hours a day. There are no you just said there are no rules." What what's giving I know hanging out with crazy people gives you energy right? for for um Exactly. but he goes uh out of everyone I know And this was actually related to a conversation that we had at your house which is fascinating. Um because again I know you don't like public agilation. I'm still going to do it because I think it's fascinating where it's like everybody focuses on Spotify which is marvelous achievement that very few people on the planet are capable have been able to experience and yet they like also because it's not really talked about. like all this other success that you're having outside of this too because you have this like you're very curious about things and now you have a network and knowledge and resources that you can actually impact and try to make the world a better place and you're not going after easy … by any means which I also admire about you goes back to the impact over happiness thing. And so we're talking about this and I'm like were you because usually true interest is revealed early. So if we go and look at your life story just like people are like oh what hobbies do you have? I'm like I like to read. And like what else? I'm like, I like to read." That's it. And it's like I was like that when I was five. I didn't I wasn't like at 5 years old. What's a good hobby for my future self-development? It's like, "No, I just like reading. I like books better than people in general." Um, and so you see that in your early life, like you're starting companies and you didn't even know it was a company. It's just like trying to do something. like you must have been interested in like investing forever." And you're like, taught yourself. You weren't interested at all and now you're essentially world class at it in a very short amount of time and this is just the face again. You just did the same face. But like explain how like you think about this where it's like I always say learning is not memorizing information. Learning is changing your behavior. Yeah. sort of these two concepts we talked about. Um my whole journey is one of selfmastery and and finding out uh how I can become the best version of myself. Um and meanwhile what gives me energy is solving problems. Um you know and and as you say um I think this is revealed early. Uh like I loved I didn't know it was companies but I loved like sorting out problems for other people. I've been doing my entire life whether it's relationship advice whether it's all these other things. And this is why I think these conversations are important to have because like you are the personality type that I've read about. It's just like now instead of reading about you when you're 80 or dead, you're like in the middle of it. So it's very fascinating to me because I'm like trying to balance like my understanding of this through reading with like an actual person where it's just like most of the people they're not like I'm starting a company for company's sake. They're just like what you said. I like solving problems. That that's it. That's that's all. Like so if you look at like the video games I actually think what kind of video games you like is a a pretty good revealer of your things too. like I wasn't um playing any kind of first person shooter games or anything that some of it but not much. Most of what I was playing was uh strategy games um you know civilization business strategy game I played every tycoon game of how to run businesses uh better in you know so those were sort of my favorite games um you know growing up and Sim City was amazing. Uh But sometimes like They're like what? this is the best game in the world. It's never ending. It's not like sports where like you you can get better with time. You can solve problems. You can build your own world. If you think about what we were doing in the computer with Sim City, it's like oh I'll put a highway there. That's like I'm I'm the we're world builders. You get to control like who's around you, what your what like what are the rules in the world that happens, what's the outcome of the people in the world. Yeah. And you get to make and hopefully you're doing it for like benevolent and good reasons where I do think like And he's just like, Yep. how can I make a car cheaper?" Sure as hell can't put in by hand. So, we've got to learn how to massproduce something we don't know how to do yet. And that took him, you know, decade and a half of failure or whatever. And then what happens is didn't start the company to make money, but he made millions of people's lives better. He changed the geography of, you know, the world for God's sake. That that's 100% how I think about it. And I think this is the beauty of capitalism, right? Um because ultimately uh at the end there has to be someone willing to pay for what you're doing and the the reason for them to pay is obviously you're solving a problem for them and the better you're solving that problem or the bigger the problem is that you're solving for people the more valuable it becomes. the more comes back to you. Was that the I keep saying you think like basos. So there's a great line uh same thing where um he says I'm read reading his shareholder letters for the fourth time and it's like these are so good and so clear and concise. I should read them every year. And I was like I feel like I just read them and I looked it up. I haven't read them since the end of 2022. But there's all these stories in Bezos's early career where people in Amazon would come to him with a huge problem. They thought maybe they get fired and they he got excited. Cuz he's like, "Oh, great. Like we had a problem we didn't even know. If we solve this, our company gets even more valuable." right? 100%. But I think it comes from from solving problems and and um and and and and so yeah I mean like I get excited today you you sort of asked like about the other stuff that I get focused on. It's I don't focus so much about the solution. I focus on the problem. I try to find really interesting problems that um and and figuring out even if there's like a five or 10% chance of solving that problem and I know that would be huge for humanity or society if we figure it out then it's amazing like that gets me fired up and and the intricacies of solving that problem because it's often times very very complex because it's not like other people don't know that this problem exists. Uh there's probably even a lot of people that would agree that if we could figure it out, that would be really valuable. Um but um you know, I I find this all the time and and you said it yourself. It's like sometimes they're really small, these problems. Sometimes they're gigantic and and sort of earthshatteringly different. Um it's everything around, you know, life extension to um you know, um just walking into a store um and you see things you don't like in the store. Well, those are problems. Uh if you could do those things better, you could probably build a business. And and so um the the biggest thing, however, is that people have this misconception about what what um innovation is and they somehow think that they got to try to figure out something entirely new. But the history of the world is we build on other people's ideas. Um so an innovation is actually taking two or more things that were already wellknown and putting it together in a new way. It's really what it is. And so for me the most interesting thing it's like laying a puzzle or anything else is like I get to sit around and um because of the meeting so many billion people I get to listen to problems uh all all around me all the time and I try to um distill and figure out okay well this person said this thing but what what if you actually articulate the problem like this instead uh okay well what does that mean and what does that unlock and and that for me is just um It's so much fun and I couldn't imagine you know not spending every single day doing this and you know we we we started this journey by telling my story that I didn't have to work and that's why I started Spotify because I love music and and I wanted to figure out a way where consumers got what they wanted and creators were able to get paid by doing what they love to do. Um and that's really the genesis of the story. Um but but even today you know I'm thinking about this and I said if even if you remove all the money even from the beginning uh even in the middle and even now uh there's no way I wouldn't do this uh and spend mo much of my awaken time thinking about this stuff um just sort of like for me this is impact and this is what leads to happiness uh in my life story It's remarkable also like when I'm listening to this series that was uh created in 2021, how much you guys are talking about AI and how early you were and you understood the impact which is like you kind of saw clearly like where we're going. Uh but you said something that I didn't actually understand because the way I think about technology is like technology is just a better way to do something, right? And you're like at Spotify though, like at the very beginning it's like I think you nailed it. You're like the decisions that were made have to do with the DNA of the founder because we're the only ones there. Yeah. What does that mean? Yeah. to break them. I think most of us you can't even describe why you're doing what you're doing at the time. And what I mean by that is like you you hinted on this earlier. It's like it's so easy to kill new ideas, right? The arrow on the side of no, we can't do this. It's it's amazing to me how many times this comes up in all these biographies where it's just like this a skill you have to learn and a lot of it is like being comfortable with the the the messiness of the creative product process. But it's also entrepreneurs by definition impatient, Yeah. Yeah. Um, I think Neco is like an example of this. I met your co-founder on it and I was like, "Oh, like this is cool." Like who made the machines? It's just like Yeah. I don't know if stealth is the right word, but from the idea to the first time the customer happened, it was what, like six years or something or four years? Yeah. And it's like, okay, that's an insane level. That's an understanding like we're t tackling one something that's Yeah. Yeah. And he it's such a like it's not it's kind of a bland read, right? God bless his heart. But like it's just him going through like little Wikipedia pages or like my his version of like Wikipedia pages about like what this inventor did, how he did it, and what the result was. And then you see him take these ideas from like 1700 or whatever. And I was like, "Oh, I'll just take like that little piece out here and I'll combine it with this piece." And then what's what's the new technology today that enables me to solve this problem that didn't exist a few years ago? So you have this patience, right? You have this desire to solve problems. It's almost like it sounded like to me and maybe you could disagree with me like you're sounding like you see a giant puzzle. That you're trying to figure out now. You have uh like you can you have more resources you can be patient like you couldn't have done neco 20 when you were 23. Right. Yeah. like Spotify is the high like if you compare your competitors like it's just in a class by itself. So it's obviously very important to you. Well well there there's so many strands of quality, right? Um um it it there's both um sort of the distinction of taste whether taste is subjective or objective. You can go so many ways with this question, but um the way I think about quality um is um I I think so much of your early life um certainly in my case was the formulation of just trying to go for more. And the further I've gotten uh I've realized um and and it's about everything, right? You mass more stuff. uh you mess uh you try to do um you know more things at the same time. You you try to do all of these things um at the same time. And the further you go, you realize that um it it it really is about sort of ultimately this very simplistic tribe thing, less is more. And and the older I get, I feel it more and more. Um you know, we talked about it with friends. Um, I think most people uh start out thinking having more friends is better, but I think more people are happier with fewer but better friends than many friends. Um, and and so I think quality is ultimately this sort of notion around um focusing um distilling uh getting to the essence. Uh we we can even talk about like quality in communication is often trimming things down and saying less things, right? Um why is it for instance that when we're talking about very hard things, most people's instant reaction is just to try to add more complexity to the issue instead of just simplifying it. They're just trying to um be courageous and just trying to say the thing right out loud. the older I get, the more my instinct is towards turning towards that. And I'm reminded even if we go back to investing because like part of why I sort of liked investing has nothing to do with money. It started with uh honestly this fact that all of a sudden I had more money than I knew what to do with and I sort of didn't want to just hand it off to a bank and and uh without understanding anything about it. But what sort of got me deeper curious about it is uh I realized that investing is is actually more about um learning about your temperament than it is about the specific action that you're doing. Your temperament actually it's it's more about being in line with your temperament than than not or which game you're picking needs to be suited to you and your circumstances and how you want to play this than anything else. And so again we come back to philosophy. Um and so uh one of the concepts um uh is obviously around um that Mer talks about coming back to Mer reference again is it's diversification right and and he calls it somewhat simplified diversification because the common wisdom of course is in theory diversification is is the best thing you can do but the truly greatest people um financially if that's the only yard stick you use typically do completely the opposite of that which is they have often times only one asset maybe they'll have two or three but they certainly don't have more than that and they just go for that there's a realization you have right cuz like I read something you read a line and you're like okay let me filter that through like how I would say it so I I do this all the time where like I'll take notes on all the books that I read and then I'll reread them I'll just jot it down it's like what's occurring there can I put it into one sentence and one thing I stumbled upon about this was that sometimes the uh Nick Sleep has this great quote where he's like the best investors are not investors at all. They're entrepreneurs never sold. And me and you have talked about this, the fact that there's a lot of people that have like sold way too early and they're like lauded. And it's like what if you just didn't do that everything else you did like you if you just didn't sell. Uh the so Nick Sleep talks about this is like and in other books it's like if Sam Walton didn't give away the stock in Walmart to his kids before it appreciated you know you have one of the largest fortunes by a single person ever for the ownership the the concentration of ownership in Walmart and he's just like I doing because I love to do it and spending time doing anything else would be an absolute distraction. And Nick Sleeve talks about this because he's by this idea. If you look at financial history, it's like he talked about a firm, a financial firm one day where they're like, "Okay, uh, we owned IBM in the 1950s." And I didn't know till I read Michael Dell's autobiography, right? Because IBM was it's like they're the most powerful and wealthiest company in the world when me and you were born. Okay. I went n like We owned IBM in the 1950s and we sold and they're having this conversation in the 1970s and the leadership of the financial firm is like how do we avoid not doing this? That one they they said if we just held that it would have uh the gain would have been more than all the assets we have in our management. like we can't do this. So they made the same mistake. And Buffett obviously greatest investor of all time. He met Walt Disney. He went and talked to Walt Disney in like the 60s right? I sold this thing. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. But but but I think you're on to something important um which is this notion around just um innately focusing um and and solving problems day by day builds quality, right? Um and and and so uh quality for me is is less. Quality for me is uh focus. Quality for me is improving day by day. Um all of these things build quality and quality is rare. Um, quality in people is rare, quality in ideas is rare, and we tend to make these things binary. Um, and u, we talked about it with people. Like I'd rather have that person that has one good idea in um, in an entire hour and the rest is crap than someone who has, you know, 10 decent ideas, but nothing is amazing. So that sort of differential equation between the 1% versus the rest is is so important and it's so important to understand and I think it's it's we again take it literally uh and we know about it because we can explain it in hindsight but we don't know when it's happening. So what is that qualitative process? What defines quality as it's happening before you can see it objectively from the outside. Those things are interesting and um I'm more and more drawn towards that um it is um for me at least very much looking at the people um in it um and looking at how they build judgment over time, the sort of feedback loop they create, the curiosity that they have about this and the obsession they have about trying to achieve the impossible. And for me, the impossible is something that's perfect. It's never going to exist. The whole universe is this thing where the only thing we've learned, we keep debating all these things about the universe, but the only thing we know is it's not static. It moves. It cannot by definition be like this one thing. It's just constantly expanding or contrasting or it's moving. It's it's um so so perfection just doesn't exist. But the aspiration towards perfection uh is a remarkable thing. I mean, I love Japan for this reason, right? like you you find these amazing individuals that literally spend their entire life. I was um in Japan maybe 10 days ago or something and I I I was in one of these temples u with a tea master who literally all he's done uh for the past uh I've asked him for the past 34 years is perfecting how to make tea. That's it. Nothing else. Uh and yes, the tea is amazing, but it's not just that. It's just seeing that obsession about quality, seeing that obsession about being not even 1% but like.1% or point.1% in something. And I think feel like you you you sort of asked about AI and all these things and and we can talk about art too but like uh for me like that is going to be even rarer like average is going to be possible to do even better than average is going to be possible to do with AI. But but that sort of thing about this guy doing this for 30 years just becoming the very very best about what they do or even what I find incredibly inspiring about you is just the relentlessness every single day towards the long term. It's it's like as you say, it's the paradox about the long-term um um mindedness uh but the obsession on the daily basis u and against conventional odds against all these other things because I I I would imagine I don't know but I would imagine like when you started uh founders probably not many people knew who you were. Nobody, Yeah. Mhm. And now I look back like there's no way I would do that today. But somehow that person Yeah. who I now greatly appreciate a lot that he did. I feels like a different person. Yeah. Yeah. But I just cannot believe that I did that. And I'm just like that's the thing I'm most more mo most proud of than anything else. Just like I had to do this. I was willing to like drive Uber if I had to 10 bar. Do literally whatever. I was like just I give me enough time. I'll figure it out now. I didn't think it was going to take half a decade to figure out. You have a ton of stories with Spotify with that. Yeah. The issue that I'm having now and in general is that I feel a lot of pressure because like I'm trying to change not just my life but like literally the trajectory of like my entire family and I feel very guilty when I don't work to the point where like out and off and not working and I feel like this is like almost like a compulsion like I don't have control over it. Sure. Um I do feel the same thing of course. Um but I'm I'm back to sort of time versus energy management and um I don't know about you, but I feel like the greatest ideas I've had comes from the most weird and wonderful places where I expected nothing out of it. So quite often when I do take some time off, I come back with like two or three some entirely new insights that just wouldn't have come if I just kept grinding in that thing by just changing a scenery. Uh being in a different frame of mind, uh pausing, giving um you know it's it's in the creative process, you know, um the greatest artists talk about some of the greatest songs literally take five minutes to write. Which is amazing, right? But some songs are the ones you like work on it. Um you put it in a drawer and six months later totally unbeknownst to you it clicks. You're not even working on that thing. It just sort of like oh that's it. And they go back and they do the song and it's like the greatest song ever. Um there is not one path to greatness. Um there's many. Um, and I feel like the that's that's why I'm so obsessively focused on energy. Yeah. Yeah. Is that what you mean? but but I feel so much of it should be more guided by trying to understand ourselves more um intimately. Right? So, I I don't know if you've you've heard of this, but um going back to sleep, there there's been this kind of thing around um more recently, which I was surprised. One of my my 10-year-old daughter told me about this is around um um that um actually, you know, um she she sort of said like we have this idea that of 8 hours and and she actually mentioned instead that um uh the real notion is um that we kind of did it almost like fasting. um like Ramadan is you know how it is based on the sun sometimes it could be 6 hours sometime it could be 12 hours so it used to be the sleep was actually in two periods uh so you didn't sleep one consecutive thing you sort of had a um 3 4 hours sleep uh and then you know you woke up and then you had another 3 4 hours sleep again and so much of that was based on light um and you know maybe it was driven by other things that were happening in our life too and for Nordic what it actually meant uh going back as as late as the you know 18th century before we started having electric lights and candles and all these things is guided by lights. So we keep thinking it's the static thing but it's actually again driven by the environment around us and so much um of this sort of innate knowledge about listening to ourselves understanding um our um innate personality understanding hunger like I can tell you as someone I've I've gained in periods of my life like um 40 lbs um in my worst negotiations etc. And and one of the problems I have now is that I literally don't know when I'm hungry because I ruined that sort of natural feeling in my body of of understanding when I'm hungry and when I'm not hungry. Um so um you know huge part of losing weight for me over the past few years was just really kind of innately starting to listening to my body again and like starting to figure out what satiation means because for me for instance I don't feel it until 20 minutes after. So like if if if I didn't like sort of eye what I should eat, I would just keep eating way more than I should. Um and so much of me has just been portion sizing of like understanding, okay, well that's probably going to be enough. And it doesn't feel like enough at that moment because I ruined my body, but 20 minutes later I understand it. And so I'm just trying to sort of again convey this sort of thing about understanding who you are, choosing the game you're playing and realizing that there's life is not one game, but it's a thousand games. And there's this brilliant quote um by this guy calledWame Opia that it's another one of those things. Well, I'm probably going to ruin the exact one. So So maybe you can read it. Yeah. And and for me, uh realizing that, um it it's just been eye opening, right? Uh it's another one that's on my wall. Uh because I feel like quite often when I'm talking to people, um and and they're talking and trying to get life advice, they're not playing their game. they're playing someone else's game. Uh they're certainly not playing the game they want to be playing, but they somehow think that life is just one game where actually so much is about choosing the the right game for you. Um and so um yeah, I keep coming back to that like energy management is the same thing. You got to like uh create the environment around you that you want to do. You got to choose your game. Um, and when you do that and you start understanding that, you start becoming superhuman in your ability to get things done. I I was I'm more comfortable with who I am um than I was 20 years ago. I was still very much my whole life I've been a searcher. I've been um you know uh when I was really young in my teens I went to every possible religious meetup you could be uh I went to everything uh I went to Har Krishna centers I went to to um you know um [Music] Jewish centers um you know mosques I went everything and I try to learn as much as possible because I I truly believe not enough people are are like I I've always been surprised urpris why more people aren't interested in where we come from and what the purpose is of life for me those are sort of some of the greatest questions that and so your inner monologue gets less harsh. You're pretty damn eloquent. Listen, I've listened to all your episode or all your interviews and I did this before we were friends and I every time something comes out I was like, "Oh, I got to watch that." You're you're very you're not giving yourself enough credit. Like you are a very clear communicator. like thank you. Um but but it's really a work product. Like I I wish there was more recorded stuff on my myself when I was like and what I mean by that is like as you've grown from, you know, a kid in the projects. Even if you had early success to now being, you know, one of the most successful entrepreneurs on the planet, which I know, don't do the face, I think yes and no. Um, so I I feel different in in the same way a 40-year-old would feel different than a 10-year-old would do. I feel different in um I'm a product of all the experiences of my life and obviously I've been incredibly fortunate to uh I was counting the other day I've been to like 130 countries or something in my life. I've seen so many cultures, so many people. I have friends all over the world. All of that has shaped me into who I am. um I don't feel difference because innately many of the things the drive the long-termness the obsession the um um this sort of willingness on the paradox of winning on the one hand but then also trying to truly find a win-win um and work with people to try to find a win-win which is really important to me um uh has always been there uh and it's always been these things and like you said, you know, you kind of look back at uh yourself a few years back when you started off and saying, "Wow, how did I do this?" Um and and you're amazed at that. I can feel the same way about young Daniel. I can feel myself about the young Daniel that worked every weekend um um you know non-stop 247 sacrificed so many things so many summers so many other things um you know I had a blast doing so but I didn't have a normal upbringing uh just because I was so obsessed about learning so obsessed about making it um and and it put me in the position of where I am today Um, and I actually feel like I owe that guy to keep pushing myself, right? Because there's so many things, there's so many demands of my time, so many things that tells me to to sort of downshift gear uh into an easier gear because life would be a lot more comfortable that way. This is not a comfortable thing. you're a hell of inspiring. One other question for you. Um I'm obsessed with Game of Thrones to an unhealthy degree. Um I rewatch the series all the time. I've read all the books. I read the encyclopedia. I'll read the family histories because I do think like like you can learn a lot from human nature in fiction and and my job and my obsession requires me to 99% of my reading is non-fiction and I don't I want to read more fiction and I I came across something recently because I'm going through Jeff Bezos shareholders again and then I read like what was my interpretation of this in the past and then I came across something that was fascinating. There's a there's a story in the prequels of Game of Thrones He wind up dying in the war that he didn't want to got his remains, buried him and then put him in a grave with only one word on his tombstone and that one word was loyal. So hopefully you don't you 100 years from now when you do have a tombstone, if there was only going to be one word on that tombstone, what would you want it to be? Um I I don't think too much anymore. I used to think a lot about how other people saw me or see me. Um, I don't do that anymore. Um, so I would I would choose more of a self-reflective uh one. Um um and I wish um only one thing um on my tombstone future one. It feels absurd talking about it, but uh would be that um he lived. That's a great one. That's a great way to end it. Daniel, I'm thankful for your time. Thankful for your friendship. You're one of the people I most admire and uh I really appreciate you doing this. Yeah, of course. Wouldn't happen any either way. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please remember to subscribe wherever you're listening and leave a review. And make sure you listen to my other podcast founders. For almost a decade, I've obsessively read over 400 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs searching for ideas that you can use in your work. Most of the guests you hear on this show first found me through Founders.