Your Under-Performer Friends Cost You $100K a Year | Bill Perkins

if you surround average performers with one underperformer it will decrease anybody in their radius of 25 ft by 15% oh man you're such an [ __ ] but you're my best friend but there's gold in there

and there's value as long as they have integrity his name is Bill Perkins he's worth hundreds of millions of dollars bestselling author and he's just a stud it turns out that being around other people social interaction friends or

otherwise actually decreases your happiness in the relay race of life you never know if you're the starter or the finisher you just run o that's good and he goes well is there any part of you

that thinks that because you've been investing in small businesses for this long small has infected your thinking how have the best people in any industry achieved something

incredible I want to share a quick business tip that I've been thinking a lot about lately it's eliminate automate delegate so if you do tasks in that order in your business it runs more smoothly I'm always looking for tools to

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description and use the code Cody for an exclusive discount just for y'all [Music] hi it's Cody Sanchez and this is the big deal podcast for those who don't only

just want to get rich but free and are actually willing to do the work to do it all right lucky for you guys today I got Bill Perkins one of my favorite humans in the world worth hundreds of millions

of dollars bestselling author to come and share some of his advice on underperformers and how to make sure you're surrounded by Pro performers this week I'm going to be on a little bit of

a rant and the rant is about the underperformers in your life that are costing you tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands a year we're going to ask if this quote is really real that is you are the average of The Five

People You surround yourself with and it turns out it's worse than that but before we get into the nitty-gritty of it all I think we're going to start with a contrarian idea maybe you'll love it

maybe you'll hate it Rachel what's the contrarian idea this week so the contrarian IDE idea actually comes from a tweet you wrote and it says personal growth hack be the dumbest one

in your friend group then move on when you're not and that that got some people pretty pretty feisty in the comment section so that's what we're working with today well listen I'm not trying to

tell people to not make friends or to cut your friends when you're done but I am here to tell you the things that nobody will because they actually work as opposed to sound PC I have very

little interest in being PC on the inter web because that's one of the beautiful Parts about Financial Freedom the truth of the matter is is as often as possible you can level up where you are the low

man on the totem pole to the people around you the faster you do that the faster you can steal somebody's 10,000 hours and then if you want to give back to the other people in your life which is a beautiful thing to do you do that

but you do that thoughtfully as opposed to turn out like Entourage Adrien grineer he was this famous actor and he brought along a bunch of idiots that essentially would funny for the show but

not so great for his career and I feel like that's what happens with a lot of us just because you started out with one group doesn't mean you should finish with them and it doesn't mean they're less than you it doesn't mean you're more than them it simply means that you

guys are moving at different speeds on a marathon and so as often as I can remember to tell myself that that I can still have love and respect for the people who aren't at my speed because I'm [ __ ] psycho and you guys probably

are too the more I achieve in life and the more you are going to achieve so that's what I mean but you know Twitter's ticked so you guys can write your angry comments too or you can make some money up to you I guess I have

another question for you though off of that have you ever been dropped in that situation where somebody felt like you were holding them back and like how did that conversation go and how did you handle it probably I'm sure actually

totally 100% I mean a couple times I can think of one when I got divorced uh basically all my friends dropped me the second I got divorced uh they all went with my husband uh who was in Dallas at

the time they were all sort of married couples the country club I didn't fit in anymore and it didn't feel great for sure but I we just weren't on the same path so at the end of the day I didn't really get upset at them I don't know if

they got upset with me I wish them nothing but well um but we went our separate ways and I don't think it has to be some big dramatic uh standoff in fact I think that's your ego talkinging if you think you need to explain to the

other person why you're Superior to them and no longer engaging you can just stop engaging so much um and I'm sure there have been people in my life where you know they've moved forward without me and it's just a natural progression it

doesn't have to have some emotional charge to it so you had a really good tweet and it was actually about Bill Perkins but I want to read the second part where you said um I took a deep

breath he's right you need to shed the [ __ ] or you'll never be truly big and you kind of talked about how that hurt you and I think that was just a very impactful thing that anybody who's

listening can can take a lot out of yeah true friends are the ones that tell you to do more not less this week I'm I'm on a rampage and the Rampage is about one thing do you guys remember this quote um

you are the average of The Five People You spend time with right oldie but a goodie it turns out that the truth is even more aggressive than that quote and so we thought we'd break down the numbers through the narrative and see

what it actually means because it turns out that if you hang out with underperformers they can cost you a 100,000 plus a year and ain't nobody got time for that so let's break this down a little bit oh and if you guys don't know

me I'm Cody I've been in private equity and investing for 13 plus years run contrarian thinking Media company and 20 plus what I call boring businesses that do nine figures in Revenue everything we

do here is to create more owners in a world of consumers all right now contrarian idea is how we start this I wrote this tweet which people hated on

the internet and said personal growth hack be the dumbest one in your friend group and then move on when you're not to which a bunch of people on the internet said Co are you telling us not to make friends do you just ditch people

you're terrible this is no way friendship should actually work and I thought let's pause on this as opposed to getting triggered based on emotions what do the numbers tell us and the

numbers are fascinating so there was a a research study that was actually conducted at a large tech company where the founders uh found some interesting statistics that has led to a lot of the

way workplace culture happens today this is how it went imagine this if you are in over performer and you are placed in a group of normal performers that over

performer will help increase the performance of everybody else by 15% so if you're buy a badass you turn into 15% more 15% more of a badass yourself now

the problem is if you sit next to an underperformer if an underperformer is sat within a 25t radius of a bunch of normal people like you and me they take

your performance down by 30 % so think about that for a second it's not only that you're the average of the five people who you surround yourself with it's that being around great people

increases you a bit being around not so great people decreases you 2x more than that so it turns out it's not just a mean tweet there's some reality here and uh the Dylan Miner who is a professor at

the Kellogg School basically referred to this as positive spillover which he says creates about 1 million in additional

annual profits you have over performers uh sit next to normal performers and can you imagine then that that means that there's probably double that in annual

drag on a company or on you and that's why I started thinking about it as this $100,000 Mark if we think about our goals and what we want to

achieve let's say that you make $100,000 a year right now and you sit next to a performer every single day how much do you lose potentially by sitting next to that performer well if it's dollar for

doller that basically means that you're losing $30,000 a year based on catching that energy from somebody who is not at your level now the question then becomes

what do you do about this right and we get that question all the time like so okay so you're just mean to people you move away from others and I don't think that's the answer I think you get in

rooms where other people's realities are your dreams I think about like this people know that sixpacks aren't contagious just because Tanner who's sitting here next to me might have one

of those doesn't mean that I just get it from hanging out with tan or more except that maybe it actually does because what happens and the studies seem to back this up is the more you hang around people who already do the activities

that for you are goals not habits the more likely you are for those goals to become habits and so you'll notice quickly if you're with a group of people who drink a lot what happens you drink a lot if you're with a group of people

that don't drink at all it'd be kind of weird if you were ham Le by yourself and so that Baseline activity just increases the likelihood of you going to succeed and we've all felt it you've been around

friends who have that positive push on you in your life the the thought that I then went to next was is more friends better right is more friends better and

should we then hang out with more people less people in our pursuit of quote unquote excellence and so I found this study uh by the British Journal of Psychology which is sure to trigger the internet

because it's kind of wild and it basically talks about something called ancestral verse modern Tendencies and ancestral Tendencies are basically

things like um humans are generally happier with lower population density meaning you know not in New York City they're probably happier in more open rural locations and that humans are tend

uh tend to be happier when they're around other people uh AK their friends more often so we're not very happy in huge City centers but we are a little bit happier when we're around our

friends more often makes sense right there's one issue though as someone climbs the intelligence curve okay they become more and more intelligent uh as measured by IQ it turns out that being

around other people social interaction friends or otherwise actually decreases your happiness and the reason I thought this was interesting is because I don't know if you like me have often been told

you should hang out with your friends more uh why are you working so much um you know you can kind of take it easy the weekends are for hanging out and not working and that's never really resonated with me because I'm so much

less interested in pickle ball and pottery than I am in building something and talking about it in fact I can't think of anything more atrocious than having to sit and listen to Somebody

talk about PTA meetings the weather what did you do this weekend it's probably the reason why I'm unemployable because if I had to come back into Corporate America on Monday morning and listen to that like I would end it all

um and what's fascinating I think is that when you hear these studies it removes this belief that uh there's a common narrative and that common narrative actually doesn't mean that

that's the truth and contrarian thinking we're always sort of striving for that what is the noise and what do the numbers tell us and so if you guys want to see the study we'll put it in the show show notes and you can send this to all your friends when they try to get

you to go out on Friday night and you can tell them no I'm too smart for this [ __ ] um okay the second thing I wanted to talk about is the next question then becomes okay

so if it's true that you're the average of The Five People You surround yourself with and if it's also true that being around people more often isn't necessarily A contributor to your

happiness or success then how do you how do you say no and how do you push people out uh that shouldn't be in your circle without being a jerk um and do it in a

way that doesn't leave people with a feeling from you that one makes the personal people please are inside if you want to die on the inside and also leads

to actual uh performance in your life and so I have this friend um Alex Orosi and we talk a lot and perhaps you're like me and I'm a people pleaser so I

will you know I'm a Latina I'm a woman I was in sales and it seemed like the easiest ways for me to get people to like me were just to say yes to things all the time and I felt a sense of guilt

deep in my gut anytime I I didn't say yes to people I had to come up with a lot of excuses sometimes I would lie um and I'd feel like I was letting people down constantly I don't know if you've

ever felt this same way turns out it's very common though that we are not used to in modern society saying no especially with a period at the end of it and so uh I thought I'd use some of

his advice to help you become your friendly neighborhood no dealer and basically we have a little accountability thing that we do and I told him I had this issue and so he said

I'm going to send you a screen shot of every time somebody asks something of me and I say no and you can just see all the ways that I say no and you can see how the interaction goes and he's like and I'd like you to do the same thing

shoot me a screenshot of when you say no and so I always send him screenshots now and I'm like how proud of me are you and the screenshots then align to a positive feeling AKA we get an endorphin rush we

have adrenaline we have these natural states which tell our body that the thing I'm doing right now is actually a good thing as opposed to that syn feeling you get when you usually tell people something no and you kind of wait

for their response and then you overe explain and so you know the the last text and I I had it here I thought was kind of interesting I basically from back in the day I had this woman reach out to me she used to work in one of my

businesses we didn't have the most positive interaction in in that last Endeavor and uh and she pinged me saying hey I've been seeing you all over social and I'd love to do XYZ thing to you or

for you um but you know so would you like to use my services which is funny to me one I think generally when you want something from somebody you should leave with a you should lead with a give

not an ask so if I was this woman I would have said hey uh looks like you're doing well in life haven't talked in a long time I provide this service here's this thing for free um you know if I can

ever do anything to help you let me know I'd love to talk about it more okay cool maybe I could get on board with that but like hey I've got an idea for you do you want to pay me for the idea I'm not that interested now typically I would give a

lot of excuses as to why but because Alex and I are working on this I just said no thank you period hope you're well exclamation point no

explanation no excuses and I tried to explain this to my dad afterwards so I called him and was like Dad I'm really trying to get good at this thing called saying no to people about stuff and he's like yeah that's great you know what you should do is just say no that doesn't

work for me or no I'm not interested in that moment I'm like absolutely not that is the wrong way to do it that thing where you say no that doesn't work for me no I'm not that interested in it then

opens the door you're leaving open a little wedge for somebody to come back to you and say hey um why aren't you interested why doesn't that work for you if I just say no thank you there's no

door there's no there's no crack in the door it's closed so why is it that more intelligent people don't actually like hanging out with other people all the time and have to learn how to say no continuously and I think it's a couple

different things as you get uh to the to the crazy end of the curve on intelligence there's also typically some aspect of being on the Spectrum which usually means like singular Focus which

I think makes a lot of sense I also think it's because the best performers have to narrow down their aperture as opposed to widen it to have unfair

levels of of success so if you think about it this way how have the best people uh in any industry achieved something incredible is it by doing what

is average normal or shallow absolutely not they go deep into one segment they they spend 80 hours working 90 hours working instead of 40 hours working and

typically when you do those things and you narrow your aperture the whole world doesn't quite understand and so it actually made sense to me I have a a deal that I did that I invested in a

company with a guy that uh ended up not being a good friend to have in my ecosystem and it came with a big huge price tag I lost a ton of money by not paying attention to the people that you

let into your sphere and instead of the six-pack transferring basically six figures transferred out and that is the cost of having people in your sphere that are not on your level and it's

often really expensive so what happened is I had bought a company from a partner and he used these two words that I

realized were dangerous and those are lifestyle investor um basically I realized too late that this guy was more interested in having a company serve him

than serving the company and was more interested in this elusive term passive income that I'm pretty convinced does not actually exist and so um he

basically I bought a company with him uh I put all up most of the capital for the company he put up the Sweat Equity the work the labor for the company and then I started watching it for a few months

and it worked out okay except as I started seeing the numbers um there seemed to be a few anomalies in there the numbers weren't exactly uh matching what I thought the company should be doing and as I started talking to him

what I realized is he was basically layering all these other costs inside of the business so instead of him actually operating the company had hired a VA first okay fine then he had hired an

operator to replace himself then he had hired a VA for his operator and so by this time about $20,000 worth of monthly costs in this business were being added and he really wasn't working in the

business but I was funding his lifestyle and this new additional operator and the teaching moment there I think it's that the best indicator of future behavor is

past behavior and so if you are around friends who already don't drink work out work hard it is likely that they are going to continue that behavior it is unlikely that that group of people is

going to 180 change the behavior that they currently do today and have done in their recent past but for some reason when we meet somebody and we start to do deals with them or we start to work with

them we don't necessarily look at their past Behavior they tell us things like this guy did which was yeah my past partner really didn't work out you know know it just he was too involved in everything and he wanted to know what's

going on inside of the business all all the time and he wouldn't just let me run with it what does that actually mean that red flag actually means the that he didn't report out well to his other partner uh that he was probably

underperforming and that this other partner just wanted to get more Intel which is exactly what happened to me so if you want to see somebody's future with you look at their past with somebody else and that's what I realized

with this with this friendship that became a partnership that became a six figure loss for me I think you know let's call this loss probably something

in the realm of 100,000 to 150,000 not counting how much time we spent on this deal and me having to parachute a bunch of people in there to actually fix this company and take it over now the

question then becomes how do you how do you move out a person like this from your life and we're going to get to that um in a little bit we're going to get to

this idea of how do you get somebody out of life let's say that you have a partner a friend a colleague like that whether it's somebody who think is

actually underperforming here's a number they're supposed to hit it it's not or what I think might be more Insidious which is the energy suck now um this partner that I had was really

underperforming in this business obviously I was scared to push him out or get rid of him in the company and um yet every time time I got on a phone

call with him or met with him I left the meeting depleted and just like frustrated almost every time and uh so I worked up the nerve and I finally

finally fired him probably like a year later than I should have and it got really ugly you know he was mad he was yelling he tried to sue me he threw a

fit he sent angry letters um but what actually happened in the one month following his departure we did our first million dollars in sales month and we

grew by like 175 176% the moral of story is when you think somebody is not a fit for you the truth is they probably haven't been a

fit for you for a very long time and so you should cut the ties early now there's two things I use to tell if I have one of those people in my life right now and that you can use to tell

if you have one of those people in your life how do you tell 15ers verse 30 percenters there's one thing I use called pay-per-view which B basically

means past people victim so if you find your friend always talking about people so um you know oh Sally did

this can you believe Bob did this yesterday well I you know yeah I found out about such and such if they're talking about people giant red flag they're probably not moving forward because they're more interested in

gossiping about those around them if they talk about their past a lot AKA Nostalgia well it used to be like this and do you remember back in the day we did this and do you remember this happened there what that means is

they're not looking to build in the future they're stuck in either their highlight reel or they're stuck in sort of their victim Circle which gets to the next point which is victim when it comes

to a victim this one's really easy it's they start talking about how something bad happened to them every time you get on the phone you realize you both start bitching about stuff almost immediately everybody has that friend where you

don't mean to but you just immedi Med start talking gossip as well you start actually talking about negative things in your life going on and it's just really easy to slip into victimhood and

complaint mode if those three things take up more than 20% of any conversation you should move on you can wish them love you can wish them light but you don't need to let them control

your future which is what you're doing for every moment of time you spend with humans who are in their pay-per-view mode now I want you to try something for me picture in your head

that friend or colleague that you know you kind of need to move on or you think you should there's that person that you're like ah I am they're probably not right for me you you have that human in your head right now all of us do we

typically at some point all have one person in our ecosystem that if you're a boss it's your employee that if you're an employee it's a colleague that if you're a friend it's maybe your

boyfriend or husband's friend and uh and I want you to picture them and then I want you to give them a ring this week or go to coffee with them or something this week and while you're there sit and

do one thing for me see how you feel see how you feel engaging with them in that current exact moment but more importantly how do you feel when you're done so typically by the time I'm done

with what I'll call an energy suck or a pay-per-view person I feel less inspired that I did at the start of the conversation I feel like I might need to go for a walk or get a coffee uh I feel

like I have performed in some way shape or form there's no fueled up there's I I feel a little depleted and that is going to be your instant signal that this is

an underperformer not an over performer for you now the important part here is like you know you're not a saint and they're not a devil and nobody's good or bad completely it's just relative context of where you're at and where

they're at and where you want to go and so I sort of think about it like a triangle if you're trying to get up here on the top of the triangle and your friends focused on being down here you it's not that they're worse than you or

better than you but at this moment you're outpacing them and you don't want to run a marathon at the rate that the lowest performer that you know goes you want to run it at your rate and let me

just tell you you know I have lived this in a lot of real ways but one of the other fast ways to know if you're with underperformers or

not is to get around really really big performers I thought I'd tell you a story about this guy uh his name is Bill Perkins I don't know if you've heard of him he's worth hundreds of millions of dollars he actually wrote that book die

with zero great book bestselling author um he's a hedge fund manager and a professional poker player and he's just a stud and um I met bill because we both

invested in a company called skyfi uh as a startup investment and we were both on a panel and we just jived and so we started talking and now Bill's much more successful than I am monetarily and so

um I was pretty def differential but he texted me one day and was like I want to talk to you about some of the stuff you're working on why don't you come out to my house I'm like all right that's cool so I me and my husband go out there

and um as we're driving you know we pull up it's like gate number one enter the code gate number two enter the code gate number three and if you have three gates you have a lot of money I've determined

by now so anyway we get over onto this massive compound it's overlooking this Lake It's like got multiple houses on it and I'm late so uh I'm typically late it's a terrible trait of mine I'm

stressed we're rushing to get to him so we pull up and I'm like I'm so sorry we're late you know we won't take up very much of your time we'll be in and out don't worry about it and he's like no I'm I'm here for you it's no problem

like yes but we won't take up most of much of your time and I'm like he's like stops me puts his hand out and he's like I'm here for you today for as much time as you'll give me and I kind of looked

at him like why so I'm like okay well let's sit down and talk and so we start sitting down and talking he's like tell me about what you're working on right now so I start prattling off all the stuff about contrarian thinking and all

these businesses we own and how I'm building this portfolio and I think I'm being pretty impressive to be honest I'm like nine

figures baby and here's like the 20 plus businesses we own and we get a 100 million views a month and I don't think there's anybody growing faster on these Varian platforms and he's like nodding

in his head he's super nice and then he kind of pauses and looks at me and he goes well is there any part of you that thinks that because you've been investing in small businesses for this

long small has infected your thinking and I kind of like I'm not sure what I do but I'm Tak it back and I'm like well you know I don't know what you mean by

that and he's like I think you could own the entire ecosystem of small business I think you have a once in a generational opportunity to do this and you're just not

trying and then we kept conversating and we we had a nice chat at the end of it but I couldn't get out of my head you know it was like that little Splinter lodged into your finger that you can't wiggle out and so I started talking to

my husband about it and I realized that because bill has let's say billions and I'm playing with Millions tens of millions and you know getting to nine

figures um he just sees the world differently than I am it's the difference between the person who makes their first 30 50 $100,000 and the one who makes their first million 10 and 100

million there's a Chasm as big as the Grand Canyon and that conversation changed a lot L for me because now every so often he'll send me a a he'll send me a a little text like this well he likes

WhatsApp and he'll just say so do you want to be a billionaire um and then he'll send me some article about somebody that's building something faster than I am and my point and Bill's

point is I think this you need friends who are so interested in seeing you succeed that they see you as larger than anything you could imagine yourself if

you don't have friends who want you to be bigger than they are and who in fact think that you are playing small when you play to your biggest dreams you need

to get new friends and it turns out this is actually harder to do than you would think uh I I have another couple of really successful friends and they basically said it turns out the 8020

rule paro's principle is real everywhere which means uh 80% of the results are driven by 20% of the things or in nature um just about everything has an 8020

principle and with friends it's the same thing 80% of the people you interact with are not going to want you to be 1 cent more successful than they are they

want you to be just below where they are and then you find the 20% and the 20% are so inspired by seeing you win because they know that it just means

that they can do more if you can do more that there's this abundance game as opposed to a scarcity mindset and so now I've started to look at my group of

friends and once you share a win once with somebody and they come back with oh hm you know you must be working a lot because you did that or wow that's a big

risk why are you taking that they're allowed one but they don't get two because the second that you have a friend give you two and say huh maybe

you should play smaller instead of why are you thinking so small is when you know the friend hasn't had your best interests and you need more friends whose response is that you are not doing

enough think about the last time somebody said that to you it's probably pretty rare Bill Perkins and I became friends because he was one of the few humans who

said you could be doing more stop settling for Less we don't need more humans in our life telling us why it's okay that we are not performing we do not need more humans telling us that we

are small incapable that it's not impossible but for you it is what we do need are more humans that push us to the next level and that's what I hope my rich friends can teach you because they

sure as [ __ ] push [Music] me go well one uh I was just talking about

like getting an assistant and that's a big thing that you've pushed on me and a lot of people right um why is that well I value your time and I don't think you value your time so you know I you

described some of the activities that you were doing and you were having to do and I was like if I ran a business would I put Cody in charge of filling up the gas tank worrying about whether

there's skim milk or oat milk or whatever milk you drink I wouldn't do that that would be kind of horrible running my business and you run many businesses and you're a very busy person and so I want you to value your time the

same way I value your time so good so a lot of people I think have friends that tell them the opposite of that all the time right they say why would you have somebody else do that um aren't you scared you know do you think you're

better than that when did your mindset shift to start giving yourself permission for even ideas like that I guess it was you know kind of through osmosis and seeing a lot of books that I've read about effective allocational

resources and so one of the things you have to effectively allocate is your own resource and I don't think people think of themselves that way as a resource for my family does do my does my family

think I should be working my hours doing that do my future kids think that I should be working that way no they want to maximize the return how about the Charities that I donate to they basically get a percentage of what I

earn right like I did I make this much this year this is my taxes this is a percent I ship it out I can tell you right now they're all sitting there I mean they don't know but they're thinking if they could have a lens like

no Bill Perkins don't work on that spend your neurons and your time working on this business or this multi-million dollar idea don't make the bed don't clean the sheets don't do whatever

please pay somebody to do that and so I have an obligation to others to effective allocate my time to my goals to my ambitions and so I don't look it

as like I'm better than somebody I just think that I'm better suited doing certain things and other people better suit suited doing other things and plus you know they get to save their money learn and move up the chain you know I

once sweat floors and waited tables and got fired from that job because I was terrible but yes you know it's so true I mean you um you talk about the the

allocation of resources and the time of Bill and the way I see your mind work sort of I can see you allocating it actively as we speak was that part of

you being a traitor part of you being a poker player was that really just from Reading other people's books and when was like the first moment that that changed you remember I it changed very

early on I think how much money do you think you made when it changed it I was broke you still thought that way yes because there were a lot of books out that were like invest in yourself invest in yourself invest in yourself yeah

right so when I buy somebody else's time to do the other things I'm making an investment in myself right and so it's kind of the question it's a little bit of arrogance too like if you give me four extra hours a day I'm going to kill

it right if you give me an extra hour a day I'm going to kill it like I'm going to make way more than the prevailing you know wage rate o over time and so

there's that belief right that kind of like optimistic delusional belief that I can kill it and I invested in myself and you know there's other books effective

allocation resources invest in yourself thinking Grow Rich these type of things had the thoughts like okay there's no way I'm supposed to be doing X Y and Z

when I have these Big Dreams these ideas this ability to analyze um this very fat world with lots of opportunities this is where I belong in the chain it's so good

yeah I remember vividly we were walking here and I think what happens when you have any sort of success and I've had some and you've had a lot is people sto telling you the things that you should

hear and um and you did such a cool favor to me which is you kind of looked at me after we had this in-depth conversation and you said uh huh do you think that investing in small businesses

for so long has infected your thinking to becoming small and I think a lot of people if you heard something like that they would immediately go defend attack and it was such a gift actually because

I heard that statement and I was like oh my God he's right and what a gift that I could then kind of level up a little bit higher um when you think about the people that you allow in your ecosystem because you get to gift them things like

that and the things they say to you probably also embed into your psyche how do you determine who's in Bill's friends group and who does Bill spend time with wow um you you know people have

different types of friends right in your friends groups um that I'm able to give value to one of the things is is that I have to be of value to some way either

the goofy Bill party bill go banana bill the analytic Bill the you know mediator kind of high integrity bill um so I have to be able to provide value to you because I don't want to be just sucking

from somebody else like I got to be a friend in order to have a friend so I look at that first and then the second thing is is I I look kind of f can I trust this person the

Integrity uh and then whatever wacky stuff is coming out like you know there's going to be gold in there right like you know when you're mining for gold or or lithium or whatever it's 1%

or 3% or 6% right like I think that's kind of true with like human beings right like we got all of stuff right but there's there's gold right and so you can have friends with that like oh man you're such an [ __ ] but you're my

best friend you know what I mean or you're such a whatever but there's gold in there and there's value as long as they have integrity and as long as they have trust is there a way that you test

for integrity unfortunately or fortunately you know I trust first I'm very generous and trusting first and then I have a

very big filter to like hm you know like okay you know and then depending on the level of breaches of Integrity towards me and or others you know you kind of

move out of those concentric circles right yeah and do you think is there somebody who for you when you meet with them they hit you with stuff like that statement you said to me like is there

somebody who every time you sit down with them you're like [ __ ] I should be doing bigger I should be doing more wow uh wow there there aren't the the

people I generally am the most delusional of my friends and I think I think that's a I think that's a requirement you know that that puts you in the arena doesn't mean you're going to succeed doesn't mean

you're going to you know swim upstream uh it just means you're in the arena and you're in the Stream and you're swimming and I I think I'm pretty delusional so I

have to look towards uh other missionaries and you know you can go to a Ted conference or you can hang around in an Austin and I sit down these people I'm like what am I doing with my life I've been slacking you know what I mean

like I feel like I'm slacking you know and they're they're they're out there here in Austin when you meet them and and thank God Austin is one of those places where it's just so dialed back everybody's just so I'm just a human you

can meet anybody talk to anybody and then you you find out they're working on the most interesting complex Visionary things and so I've kind of been looking at like these long-term Visionary guys

who like I don't know slim chance of success 20year outcome type goals and I'm thinking okay this is the big type of thinking I get inspiration from people around me but I unfortunately I

think I'm the most delusional actually my friend John Arnold he was the most successful Commodities Trader since the rice trading markets called in Rich and wanted to do uh philanthropy and he

wanted to have like analytical impactful philanthropy and he is attacking very very big problems s which are seemingly intractable like pension reform

education reform medical and Health Care reform prison reform these things that people may find hopeless or or or not

able to uh make any change and he has just a very methodical long range data driven Vision that he's executing on and so you know even though I might be doing

something different I can look at what John's doing and the type of problems he's tackling and the the dedication and the work and the small wins that he can

get to hopefully change the world and so you know that kind of changed my thinking into like what am I doing in these startups and what am I doing in businesses and then I went a long time

ago when I was divorced on a date and I was going on a lot of dates uh and I was coed to go on dates to discover what I liked and someone said to me a line I'll

never forget they were working in Banking and they were part of changing banking culture about reporting problems Etc and I was very very dismissive like oh my gosh that's never going to change

you're never going to change the culture and she said to me in the relay race of life you never know if you're the starter or the finisher you just run

that's good and I that hit me like a ton of bricks and I I stole that I use it all the time and so it's kind of like everybody has a part to play in life and so I may not cross the finish line line

but I can advance the cause and so I look at people who are like that right interesting yeah you know um we were talking about uh this study we found that

basically talks about um distance between Under and Over performers and the effect on the average mediate employee average mediate employee and so basically if you're around people who are bottom cortile what effect does it

have if you're around people that are top quartile what effect does it have and for the average person it actually seems like performance is contagious in some way shape or form which is fascinating from a company culture perspective because it tells us the

thing we know as Leaders which is if you have a cancer you've got to let it go correct and quickly um and uh and yet I hadn't thought about it that much in my personal life or friends and so that's the like the whole point of this episode

is US obsessing on what do you allow to be contagious but you have sort of an interesting perspective in that it doesn't seem to me like you let a lot of negative things become contagious to you

you have friends that are crazy Dan bazarian right you have friends that are are brilliant yes huge names um and you allow sort of varying parts of them into your life is there a way that you don't

allow the contagion to spread negatively I wouldn't say it's like a I have 100% filter right but what I say is what I try and do is is that everybody has something to offer yeah everybody has

and you have to mine right so you go from your first principles and try and stay you but also mind what's great about them right like I have brilliant friends with low

EQ I have high EQ friends that are not brilliant I have crazy friends that are just like hey when it's time for you to go crazy this is the crew this is the crew like not that crew this crew right

like and so you you you know I try and you know everybody's multifaceted right like I have many many many facets you have many many many facets and it's like each one of those can be improved upon

or need to be addressed or or or let loose at times and so I try and have that managerie and get that value out of it how often do you let people into your

your your sphere and ecosystem like are you around friends and family every single day is it a once a week occurrence do you prefer to be by yourself I'm I'm usually a home body uh

I'm around Lara all the time my wife she's the boat driver off camera yeah uh the the it it's tough because you know most of the you know

the things where I have an impact are are my brain right it's just kind of like think of email that whatever so you know as a knowledge worker uh even though I'm interacting

through devices to communicate people with people it's generally me and Solitude having the most impact you know um

but I I I generally people are easily let in when they have enthusiasm and enthusiasm in

their field and I just become fascinated and I want to learn and so I I I dig in and I want to know and I want know what makes them tick and why are they thinking this way and that's crazy I wouldn't do that why are you doing this

well you know and then you get this and then you that really draws me into people and I learn like what is it about their life their upbringing their nature

and their nurture that made this human this human you know that that put them on this quest in life and I just find a lot of people fascinating yeah you know

and so it's it's very easy that if you're AUST swear the human being uh you know I I can easily be fascinated by you if you're on some Quest even the quests that are going to

fail yeah like I think we overrate um failures versus bold attempts I mean you know overrate success versus bold attemps you know yeah well I mean we were talking about that because you've

helped me inspired me a lot to think bigger in my acquisition strategy and so we share back and forth bearing businesses and you'll say what do you think about this one I'm like I hate that model but I like this one aspect of it and I don't think I've ever seen a

model that I hate every aspect I'm always like [ __ ] that one thing's really really smart and like we should steal that component and that component so I can see the ore in the humans and the ideas and you're sort of like picking petals off the flower as opposed to the

whole thing um so that makes a lot of sense what about um maybe sort of my last question on this direction is um we and definitely I bet you spend a

ton of time working and You' built a ton of companies you've put operators into those companies like a few that we've one that we've invested in together um how do you decide who's going to be a

winner in your company and become part of one of your endeavors wow uh we have a saying it's always an HR problem right because people have brilliant ideas and they're like yeah we're going to do this and then we're going to have this person

do this and this and it's like okay now we got to go find out who's going to be the actual person executing who am I going to trust who's going to be a leader who's going to be able to bring in more people align them on the vision

and execute and that is like one of the hardest things to do um I've tapped networks and particularly here in Austin um you know for the one we we had you

know was the Uber Mafia and these are all exov Uber people who worked hard at Uber were you know senior have gone on in their own things but they know all these leaders I know this guy he's a

badass and this person this person I had like through talking to um one person ni he introduced me to like to 10 people

who may get the vision and and are qualified to run it far more qualified than I am right like generally you know I I think it was thinking Grow Rich that said you'd

rather invest in the efforts of have 1% of the efforts of 100% of 100 people than 100% of the efforts of one person even if that person is yourself now there's probably an education exception

right but you know I I took that to heart it's like oh I'd rather have brilliant people working for me than me trying to learn everything and be a fact

plus I just can't like the odds of me being the best guy for the job are extremely Slim Right or girl and so um going out tapping in networks

interviewing finding people of integrity and then you know using your network for the skills test and then just trust let you know you I don't know I'm always guessing a little bit but it's an

educated guess and then we just we're just going to find out yeah what about when you do it for companies that you for types of companies you haven't run before like you've put operators in tech companies that I've seen SAS companies

obviously in inside of your actual uh Commodities funds um is there a common thread or is there a different type of human you're looking for dependent on industry usually it's a self

self-motivated uh fire and forget missile like I'm always trying to Fire H fire fire and forget missiles like I just want to that's where I want to go I want to hit that target shoot it up in the air and they boom and they hit the

target I don't have to tell them I tell them what I want not how to do it right and so having had a hedge fund and

having you know uh Eric my CTO was like this guy selftaught taught him machine learning and OCR and built a whole model

uh for tracking LG ships in this display and we used it I was like okay this is a this is the type of person I want and so in your Universe of people that you run

into you're going to you're going to find them right you're going to see them and my goal is like to convince them to be on my vision and pay them and and just don't go right like and and you

know so that going back to friends like when I find a good person MH interesting Integrity Fun open

vulnerable I don't let go yeah you you have to scrape me off I'm like hey come on let's hang out let's go here let's go on the trip Lake come whatever let's talk like I try and like bring him into

the group right and so the same thing when you're running a company you'll find that star right that's like and you just know you just know you just know just like wait how'd you do this why why did that oh you you learn this and you

learn this thing to do and you're like this is the person do not let them go find places for them to be in charge yeah right and and these people when you go on externally their resume kind of

tells you that you kind of see that what type of person they are um so but you you bump into them both as friends and as as as like co-workers or or workers yeah my dad had a great saying that I

paraphrase kind of that the best predictor of future behavior is past Behavior kind of the opposite of what we say in finance right but it is true for humans usually what they've done in the past is some iteration of what they'll

do in the future not always and so you look at their past and then I think you can kind of predict the future in a lot of ways what about maybe last last thing

here you um are super giving and uh like I think last time I was at your house you guys weren't even here somebody else was throwing a birthday party for like Luke's part yeah it was Luke's party uh

speaking of a bunch of PayPal guys but it was um and so I texted you I'm like oh I just realized this party's at your house where are you I want to say hi you're like oh yeah we're in Asen have a great time like is that something you've

always been just upfront giving yeah I'm pretty I mean we're pretty generous and I think uh the best saying I had a friend who um no I have a friend his

name is Greg uh and he he crystallized it with this story he took his brother um he's he's done very well he took his brother skiing a ski trip and they had a

um hotel rooms and he wanted to pay the hotel rooms and his brother's like no no I can't let you pay he's like let me pay I make a lot of money he's no no no Greg I can't I can't let you pay he goes if I

own this house if I own this house and I invited you to stay okay would you be okay with that and he goes yeah you wouldn't pay me any money yeah I would be okay he goes if you owned it yeah I I

would be happy he says then save me the 3 million from buying it and let me buy the pay your bill for the hotel and his saying is is we buy stuff to give it away and it's true like I I didn't buy this boat so I can be on this boat by

myself I bought this boat to share memories with my friends I didn't buy this property to just sit out here like little Lord font in the castle it's a Memory Maker for me and my friends and

people that I meet and it's an adult playground where people exchange ideas and enjoy their ride here on Earth and so you know I try and find those people and invite them and then I'm like if I'm not hearing it's not a penny ass I'm

like whatever have have fun dude that's why I bought it you buy stuff to give it away a great line all right that's a rap