✨ Simulate your life 1000 times
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What you need to know
✨ Simulate your life 1000 times
🐓 Bet the farm to win big
🚂 Jump off the bandwagon
What's your ceiling?
My First Million, Episode 295, 5 Questions that Will Change Your Life
You saved 1 hour 14 mins
Life is pretty crazy. One decision can change everything. What career you choose, who you choose to marry, where you choose to live. The list goes on. You could live drastically different lives depending on the paths you choose to take.
If you were to simulate your life 1000 times, what do you think the ceiling is and what do you think the floor is?
In other words, are there a few little things that if they broke the wrong way, you would be working at a McDonalds in Missouri right now
Or a few breaks where if you’d broken the right way you’d be worth $100B, the richest man in the world
Do you think you ended up what your average is?
Ben Wilson
Let’s set the ground rules. The ground rules are the same genetics and the same family and country.
The more interesting question is how far off the peak am I?
I’m pretty far off the peak to be honest with you
Shaan Puri
Why it matters: Sure, this is a thought provoking exercise. But so what? If you’re a pessimist, you’re probably thinking ‘Why couldn’t my life have played out differently?’. Well, we’re not pessimists at Podup. We’re optimists. You can’t change the decisions you’ve made in the past but you can change the decisions you can make now and in the future. You can positively change your life and that of those around you.
Between the lines: Let’s take this a step further. Score your life out of 10, with 1 being your floor and 10 being your ceiling. Then ask yourself ‘What do I need to do to improve my score by 1?’. Put together a list of ideas, prioritise the ones that will have the highest impact and highest likelihood of success, and then follow through on them.
Me? I’d score my life an 8 (focusing just on my career). I’m CMO of a digital health startup and work with some incredibly talented people. My floor would be a mid level manager at a big corporate. My ceiling would be a $10M exit by the age of 30. So, how do I get to a 9? Get more folk like you reading and sharing Podup. If you know of anyone who would enjoy this, please ask them to subscribe: https://podup.beehiiv.com/subscribe
Listen here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/my-first-million/id1469759170?i=1000555575465
Bet with conviction
Acquired, Season 10, Episode 5, Nvidia: The GPU Company (1993-2006)
You saved 2 hour 4 mins
Jensen Huang co-founded the 8th most valuable company in the world. He currently serves as President and CEO of Nvidia and is renowned for taking high risk, high conviction bets. Bets that have created over $600B of value in the public markets.
He boldly chose not to power the Xbox 360, citing low margins and detracting focus, and prioritised scientific computing instead. It ended up being a great move, but at the time it meant a lot of gaming revenue going away, with many questioning Jensen’s decision making.
Nvidia spent tonnes of resources investing in this new high powered computing segment for scientific researchers
You’re a little bit like, ok Jensen, do you really know what you’re doing here?
David Rosenthal
Was Jensen betting the farm on scientific computing?
The answer is yes, and that is also the bull case
It turns out scientific computing would be so much more
Ben Gilbert
Why it matters: Betting the farm helps you to win big. Concentrated bets have been the cornerstone of success for Jensen and Nvidia. The same goes for the most renowned investor of all time, Warren Buffet. In 2016, Berkshire Hathaway began buying Apple’s stock and amassed a 5% ownership by mid-2018. That has since ballooned to 47% of Berkshire’s total portfolio (a whopping $157B as of 31/12/2021).
Between the lines: 96% of poker games are won by going all in. Ok, I made that one up. But if you treated gambling.com as gospel, then “going all in is inevitable”. To become truly great as an entrepreneur, an investor, or in your career, you have to have high conviction when an opportunity arises for outsized returns.
Listen here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/acquired/id1050462261?i=1000555420398
Be contrarian
My First Million, Episode 297, 5 Big Ideas with Greg Isenberg
You saved 1 hour 24 mins
Playbooks are great. You can move 10X faster by up-skilling quickly and leveraging other people’s learnings. Buuuuut, they don’t always translate well for your industry or business. An even bigger but, they aren’t always right.
What’s one narrative that you think actually you should be going counter to that narrative
Mine would be two things
Inside crypto there’s a narrative that all this innovation is happening. The next protocol. The next token.
I’m pretty sure that if you just buy three or four things like Bitcoin, ETH, I’d put Luna in there now, just buy those three and chill
Either all of crypto is gonna work and those will work amazingly or crypto is not gonna work and no matter what you did, if those fail, if those don’t go up dramatically in value, none of this shit will work
Buying two or three tokens and chilling on those is probably the best investment of the next 10-15 years, it’s going to outperform everything during that time
Going deeper down the rabbit hole and learning more is actually going to fuck your returns versus just buying just the main ones and holding without thinking about it
Shaan Puri
Another is angel investing. It doesn’t make much sense anymore and I say this as someone who angel invests
The valuations are so high, if I think about that same money going into one of those boring cashflow businesses, it’s so much better for your life
Are you sure you shouldn’t just buy some random website that’s already producing profit and that would pay itself off in 2 years or less and now you own this cashflowing asset
I’m pretty sure that’s going to do better over a 10 year period rather than a basket of angel investments
Shaan Puri
Why it matters: You can get an edge over others by taking a different path. Sometimes that path is less trodden, more precarious, and filled with greater unknowns. With anything in life, there’s usually a strong correlation between the effort required to succeed and the fruits of your labour.
Between the lines: Are there areas of your life where you’re the blind following the blind? Think about the tried and tested advice that you’re following right now and question it. You may find it’s not what it’s all cracked up to be.
My contrarian view is that 99% of partnerships are poisonous. Incentives are often not aligned and a lot of compromise is made to make both parties somewhat happy. In the end, the partnership goals do not align with either parties own objectives and a shit load of time, effort and focus is lost.
I’m on the hunt for other counter narratives - if you have any of your own, reply with your own contrarian views.
Listen here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/my-first-million/id1469759170?i=1000555810380