#731 - Warren Buffett Was Right: The Wrong City Will Beat You Every Time

Warren Buffett was right when he said, "When a good manager meets a bad business, the bad business wins." In the same way, when a talented person meets the wrong city, the wrong city wins. You just can't power through everything. The whole world now is even divided into environments that are not only bad for you accidentally, but they're engineered to destroy you in the long run. Sometimes when you retreat, you end up winning more than if you continued to fight. It's a weird rule. It's kind of like chess. You sacrifice to win. You know, Warren Buffett proved this. Everyone said you couldn't become a top investor unless you lived in New York City. And he's like, "Ah, you know, I'm leaving here. I'm doing good enough." And he went to Omaha, Nebraska, and he became bigger than pretty much any investor in human history. Here in my garage, remember, you will never outperform your environment. Change cities or countries quicker. Welcome to the Tylo. I wanted to go deeper on this. I tweeted this the other day and it went super viral like 10 times more than normal and it's something I've talked about on some other episodes, but I wanted to basically explain a little deeper with more nuance and detail and I'll talk about there's some other things I want to talk about on today's episode. But you know, first thing that I will tell you is that Warren Buffett was right when he said when a good manager meets a bad business, the bad business wins. meaning a great CEO will be defeated if he tries to step into a horrible business. So there's this thought in the world that you know talent can solve everything and if you're really skilled and really self-disciplined and good willpower and proficient in what you do that all of a sudden you know the environment doesn't matter anybody you know Leaka the famous CE CEO or or you know Steve Jobs or you know Tim Cook they could step into any business and turn it around and the answer is not really right so in the same way when a talented person meets the wrong city, the wrong city wins. When a talented person meets the wrong country, the wrong country wins. You can't outperform the environment in which you are in the long term. So, just, you know, to be clear, in the short term, I've seen people overcome their environment, you know, cuz willpower is somewhat finite. One of my mentors is a guy, Professor Balmeister from I think he's from Yale or Stanford, I forget where he teaches now, but you know, he wrote a book, the kind of definitive work called Willpower. And in that book, he talks about some simple things to understand like the reason people struggle with midnight snacks is because your brain runs out of glucose by the end of the day. Since you have less energy, you have less energy to put into willpower. And so once again, a disciplined person in the morning or even the afternoon can withstand a bad environment where it's filled with junk uh full of junky food. But even the most skilled and disciplined professional athlete, if they know down in the kitchen's full of all their favorite junk food, like in the long run, slowly but surely, that bad food environment will end up winning. So, the best thing to do, throw out I I have my maid sometimes anytime I go into a new city, uh, new hotel, I'm like, first thing you do, throw out everything. Throw out everything out of that little mini fridge that could tempt me, you know? So, very important that you not think and and I just see a lot of entrepreneurs cuz entrepreneurs pride themselves on having tremendous willpower that they can just power through everything. You just can't. It's like and the the problem in the modern world is that essentially profit there's a profit motive to things that are attractive in the short term but fatal in the long term whether it's food junk food you mean there's a great book on this called salt sugar and fat by Michael Moss which is just it's an insane book on the science of food and how these food scientists at these candy and you know at these big general mills and all these huge companies how they engineer with taste tests. For example, something like Oreos or Pringles, junk food, like you don't get tired of them. That's because they've on a chemical basis altered it so that it bypasses your satisfaction sati satiation impulse. Like blueberries, you can't overdose on blueberries because they don't have the chemical compound that bypasses the satiation part of your taste. So eventually you get sick of eating blueberries. But Oreos are not like that. There used to be even that one te that one commercial that would say you can't just take one. I think it was like a potato chip or whatever. And that's because there's a science to making humans eat more and more and more. So that's that's just an example where the whole world now is even divided into environments that are not only bad for you accidentally, but they're engineered to destroy you in the long run. In the short run though, you'll spend more money with them. And I think that there's a lot of cities like that, too. There's a lot of countries, you know. I think that there's a lot of places I've lived that seem awesome in the short term, but then once I'm there for a while, I'm like, wait a second, this is all glitter and glam. You know, there's nothing to it. So, I think that, for example, if you're broke and you're listening to this, you should live in a different city than if you're already wealthy. If you're broke, you should do a temporary jump start in a city. That could be New York, Miami, London, Dubai, like money-making hubs of the world, right? I think that's logical. You go there, you jumpst start your network, you get around people that are high ambition. And so, in the short term, that environment can be good. But for people who already have a lot of money, I think it's deadly because being in those hyper ambitious places tricks your brain into thinking you should never turn your ambition off. And is interesting. I was looking back today through emails from Dr. David Bus, one of my mentors, and it's fascinating email he sent me. It's like from 2 years ago for some reason. I just saw it, you know, today when I was searching. It was an unread Gmail he had sent me. And he was talking about like greed and how much money we're on we're evolved to make. And he said we evolved in environments where you could get to the top of the status hierarchy. Like most of our we don't realize it's we're so lost in history that we don't understand if you go back even 100 years ago almost everybody on earth had grown up in a small town or a small village or a farm. Traditionally, your last 10,000 generations of ancestors grew up in villages of about 150 people. And so, a man could get to the top and stop. He could feel like he won. You know, you become the mayor of the town or the chief of the town and you're at the top and you don't have to keep striving anymore, right? But if you live in Manhattan or Los Angeles, it's much bigger than a teeny Tribe. And odds are, no matter how much you make, you're not even close to being number one in that city. You could be number one in that city in Manhattan and some you know and Elon Musk moves in and all a sudden. So we've been hijacked by environments especially people who are already financially successful environment is tricking you into continuing to work when really how we're built is to achieve a net worth goal and then kind of stop and retire and then you do other things, right? You maintain but you also mentor other people. You have your kids, stuff like that. And so you can see this ancestral mismatch is the technical term. You can see this playing out in the world now, right? There's an ancestral mismatch. Men are making a ton of money and then not settling down ever because their mind is fooled by the ancestral mismatch and just keeps going, "Oh, it's not enough. I only have, you know, 10 million or 1 million or 100 million and I got to make more." But at some point, you have to realize that we weren't built for that. And so you're there going to be a lot of long-term negative repercussions from continual striving for men as especially for men. Women compete on other status hierarchies. Look, youthful looks. That's why the cosmetic industry is 9 to1 dominated customers being female versus men. Men don't really compete along youthful looks. It's not the core driver of male of males being attractive, but women it is. males being attractive is like where do they sit in the status hierarchy the status like like the old uh Pacino Scarface movie you know where he was talking to his friend he said Manolo and he said first you get the money then you get the power then you get the woman he was saying that's how America operates what he was really defining is like status hierarchy and that's somewhat true for a man first you get money then you get power I would say first you you get money then you get status then the status gives you power and then men often use it to get the woman. But the even if you look at the movie Scarface, like he didn't know when to say enough is enough. He should have just stopped when he was a big enough drug dealer to not totally attract the government and and his competitors to attack him, you know. So, um it's uh yeah, anyway, very important um that we go deep, you know, in our minds as men. We go deep in our minds about why we do what we do and when to stop. So if a smart man meets the wrong environment that's overly ambitious, he'll become too ambitious and lose himself in the neverending striving. You know, in the neverending striving. So be very careful, my friend. Be very careful. I see people destroying themselves real quick. Okay, next thing. So where are the places? As I said, a general pattern would be when you're not making enough, move to big cities. When you are making enough, leave them. That's a that's a good mental framework. That's a good mental framework. I I have seen too many guys and even myself like you. We don't understand. Nobody teaches this stuff. I feel like I'm the only person on earth unless you're reading scientific literature, which most people aren't. So, go deep into knowing what phase you are in the money-making game. like are you close to a reasonable amount of wealth? Then start exiting the overly ambitious places. You'll be fine. You know, Warren Buffett proved this. Everyone said you couldn't become a top investor unless you lived in um you know, New York City. And he's like, ah. He lived a little bit in the big city. And he said, you know, I'm leaving here. I know how to make I'm doing good enough. And he went to Omaha, Nebraska. And he became the biggest of all bigger bigger than pretty much any investor in human history. So that's a good example of he changed his environment. He didn't want to be in that completely ruthless New York City money mindset and he ended up winning just as much. That's the good news is is sometimes when you retreat you end up winning more than if you had continued to to fight. It's a it's a weird rule. It's kind of like chess, you know. Sometimes you you gambit or you exchange a piece, you lose seemingly lose, but you do it to win. you sacrifice to win. So Buffett sacrificed seemingly the better strategy of being in a big city to pursue other things which brings up another subject you know as we talk about this exiting cities. Um, so or not necessarily for some of you it's entering cities. Some of you are in too small an environment. You're not making any money. You're completely broke. You you need to go to the big city. There's a good book on this by Steven Johnson called where good ideas come from. And it's fascinating book and it talks about there's an actual mathematical equation and that mathematical equation is all about um the it's like a neural network you know the more neural connections you have the more creativity the more power the more wealth building ideas come. So bigger cities have this neural network there's more people you bump shoulders in. And it's kind of like that six degrees of separation concept where you're only 6° away from any person on Earth, right? You're only six degrees. You could meet the president of United States if a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend made an introduction. Like that's the network, that neural network. And you see more of that in cities because you're just bumping into people. So cities are for jumpstarting your wealth. And then a lot of times you slowly exit them. So, you know, where should you exit to? I I think, you know, there's this perpetual conflict for humans. We have a sense of place, which is the place you were born, place you were raised. I spent a lot of my life in San Diego, California when I was a little kid and in Raleigh, North Carolina. And and I when I go back to that places, I do feel a sense of home. And so, you always have that conflict versus the logical non-emotional place that makes the most sense to live. Now, to be clear, the one good thing about staying around where you grew up is you have your best chance at your truest friends, right? Your truest friends are the people you usually knew from childhood or teenage years. So, the the only real advantage, but there's ways around that. If you make enough money, you can employ your friends and they can move with you. You can fly your family and stuff like that. So, I think humans stratify into different personality types. I think there's really high serotonin driven humans. Serotonin is kind of like a calming uh hormone. It's like a settled down and happy content. And I think there are people who just do better staying where they were born. My remedy for that or my happy, you know, median is to keep more than one place that I live and one of them being in a place that I grew up with my old friends and one of them in a place that I came up with logically. Like Jeff Bezos did this. Like he was not born in Seattle, Washington where he lives now. He did a logical like spreadsheet pros and cons list of every city in America. He looked at every factor like how many non-stop flights there were and the tax benefits of the state and whether he had employees he could poach from his competitors. And when he did all the math, he came up with like, oh, I should live in damn Seattle. And and it was a good choice. He didn't grow up there. And you know it's a tax-free state Washington state and and he Microsoft was there so he could coach a lot of employees. So when you think about the people who have done a lot they were very purposeful in where they lived. As I said you know if you have enough money you can stay in your hometown where your friends are and you can have one city like that one place that's very strategic. Now, I think and this brings up a kind of a different subject. It's what are you optimizing your life for? And there's this new phrase, you see it on Twitter, it's like maxing. So, there's like looks maxing where you're trying to a man's trying to make his face as pretty as possible. They do all this jaw stuff to get a strong jawline. Then there's people who are happiness maxing, right? There's a lot of people who talk growing up, if you watch movies, it's all about like love maxing. Like the the point of life is love and all you need in life like the Beatles would sing, you know, all you need is love. So they were love maxers, right? That was free love. The 60s and '7s was telling you the best thing to optimize was around loving everybody. And then you know at different times in history there was like patriotic maxing like World War I all these different countries regions World War II they saw themselves as the the center of the universe and they maximized for their national pride right that was nationalistic whether it was Germany or France or England or Russia in the world wars they saw themselves as the you know maximize for the nation and I've thought a lot about this it's like what is the one thing you should maximize for I I mean I I think I've answered this before. It's the good life, which is the four subpillars, health, wealth, love, happiness. But that's kind of a tricky answer I give cuz it's really four things. I I think if I was a bedding man, okay, and I had to optimize only for one thing, I think I'd optimize for what I call flow maxing. So flow is there's a famous book by Male Cheek sent me high on my top 100 books everyone should read. flow. He kind of defines it as like do the things you do where time flies and it feels like, you know, time is gone and it's effortless. It's Albert Einstein said, you know, when you're on a date with a woman you find really attractive, an hour seems like a minute. And when you're on a date with someone you aren't attracted to, like 1 hour seems like one year. So he that's how he explained at some point, you know, this theory of relativity of time and space. But what are the things you do that don't feel like work? Like what is that flow? You know, for me, sometimes when I'm doing even a podcast or talking or doing a live call, I feel like I'm in flow, right? So where there's places when I go to my farm, sometimes um I'll feel I get that feeling of flow. Time flies. You know, there's certain friends of mine like my friend Hermon when we when we hang out, it's like we could talk for 6 hours and it just went by effortlessly. So I I think one of the things humans should do is is ask yourself not necessarily what makes you fall in love the most, what makes you wealthiest, but optimize for flow. Because a lot of the things you want in life like health, wealth, love, happiness, they actually naturally come when you're flow maxing. When you're maxing maximizing for the feeling of flow and so for me now, like where do I feel most in flow? I don't feel that much for example in flow when I go to Miami. I do for like 3 days or New York I feel like out of flow. Southern California a little better. San Diego probably more feel like in flow. But I also Scandinavia whenever I land in Scandinavia I'm always like why do I ever leave this place? I like that place for various reasons. So everybody when you're trying to figure out where you should live the environment you you got to go there. And you got to go, by the way, for more more than once. Like, you got to go for like a year. That's what I recommend. Go for a year, right? So, you go for a year. And I don't mean for a whole year. I mean you go like four times in one year to see the different seasons to see how it overall vibes with you, right? And I don't think you can figure out where you like in one trip, but usually over one year. Joel sin farmer used to get tell me he used to say Ty when you buy a new farm never build a house for the first year wait for all four seasons to go see where the floods are see where the wind comes from you know in the spring see where the heat settles in the summer see in the fall where the cool the frost goes see where the snow banks see where it floods and then build your house after a year that's kind of how I feel like you try a couple places you can logically think through what those places might be like Jeff Bezos did but really optimized for flow. There's places I've been to like Dubai reminds me of Manhattan. I don't really feel in flow. Like time doesn't fly. Sometimes it feels like it it gets worse. Like I'm like, why am I here? I'm counting down the days till I leave, right? And like I said, some of that's genetic. Some people have higher dopamine. So anywhere they go after, you know, 3 weeks, they want to go move. And some people don't experience that. But this flow optimization, flow maxing is really something you can apply to everything like books. You know, people always think that I just read self-help, self-development books, right? Cuz they see me as a self-help guy, but really I don't. I don't read them. When I'm reading those books, I find myself being like, "Oh, am I at the end of this book yet?" Whereas I what I really like is biographies and textbooks. Like I'm by far the most in flow when I'm reading a textbook or a biography. I just got this new biography of it's called The Man Who Invented TV. It's the story of there used to be a TV show if you remember called I Love Lucy with Lucille Ball and this Cuban guy named Desi Ares. Anyway, people don't realize like Desi Ares is the guy who really made TV popular and he made that show I Love Lucy even though he played like the the secondary main character, you know, the supporting actor. And uh anyway, when I was read I like I'm in flow when I read biographies and so I know some people who love self-help books and and I I you know self-help books are not horrible. It's not like I hate them, but I'm just not in as much flow. So I like to best chance of reading more and sticking to it is going back to what I said at the beginning is you got to understand the environment. You have to switch like I said, you know, switch cities, switch countries. You also can switch the types of books you read. You know, I think um you got to ask yourself romantically like who do you feel in flow with? Sometimes men date women because they're beautiful, but they don't really feel in flow when they're with that woman, right? you're just she's there. She's like a trophy. She's pretty, but you don't want to spend you don't want to be there that much. You're like, you take her somewhere, but then you don't want to be alone and have a conversation. So, like that's why I said if you optimize for flow in the city you live in, the country you live in, the books you read, the person you date. I think it also matters in the industry you try to make money. I had a guy I was live. I've been going live quite a bit. If you've been following me, just doing a lot of Q&As's and just sharing what's on my mind. And I did one and guys said, "What do you think about the sneaker resale business? I have a friend who made a lot of money with sneakers." And I told I told him I told him I was like, "That's the wrong way to think about it. There's money in anything you can think of. There's money in pillows. There's money in carpets. There's money in supplements. There's money in water bottles. There's money in makeup. There's money in, you know, shaving tech." Like so you would never you should not pick how you make money cuz you read an article that this guy made a lot of money in that. You should pick an industry to make money where you feel the most in flow where time flies. And you see that with the people who made the most money. They they were in industries that they could put in a lot of hours because it didn't feel like they were working. You know, didn't feel like they were working. They enjoyed it. They gified it, so to speak. So another way to think about flow is like where does it feel like you're winning the game? Like it's a game. Humans are built for games. If you study there's a historical no author named historical fiction named James Mitchner. He's one of the most famous writers of historical fiction and he writes about times where there was no books. And he wrote a book about the you know the Caribbean about the Tyino Indians and the Arawak and all these tribes that existed before there was even written words. And those tribes had had games. So games is pretty innate to humans, right? If you and you see apps that make a lot of money, you know, I was looking at a Turkish app studio that's making that's doing 38 million a month. They've got like 10 apps in the app store. They sell stuff, you know, it's seven bucks a month. They've got I don't know, they have one that's like data cleaner or anonymous VPNs and all this stuff. But the the the my takeaway there, it's like when I look at all the ways to make money, okay, if you enjoy building software, which a lot of people do, especially introverts, like there's money in weird things you wouldn't think make money. I saw this app that's called Picture This where you take a picture and it tells you what the tree is or what the plant is. I heard they're doing 8 million a month. And so that's a kind of business nowadays. You don't really have to pick your industry based on how much money you're going to make. I had a guy, one of my executive assistants, I asked him because he had been in college for an engineer, like an electrical engineer or something. And I said, "Why did you do that?" And he goes, "Well, I Googled the highest income professions and you know, electrical engineer or something came out at the highest." So I picked I was like, "What a horrible way to live your life." Like what if you don't like engineering then you're you've literally created hell on earth for yourself. So if you that's why I don't like the phrase do what you love right love is different from flow. There's things that can be like Kobe Bryant used to say the best he would feel in flow when he had a task to do that was super hard utilized all of his innate skills and practiced skills but was accomplishable like wasn't impossible. That's why a lot of men are like I was talking to a dude private client his goal is to have a minimum of 25 billion net worth and I was thinking this guy doesn't understand the Kobe Bryant rule. He's not going to be in flow because your goals if they're hard but unattainable will torture you forever. I was like this is I mean imagine you don't want to be a human who would make a billion dollars and then be sad cuz you had set a goal of 25 billion. So going back to you know doing what you love. I don't like that phrase because doing what you love, you can fall out of love. But the things that bring me flow, they still bring flow for me now. I used to like to read books when I'm a little kid. I still feel in flow. I like talking and learning from really genius people. Here I am decades later from a little kid. I still like learning from geniuses. So, and then I have another friend, you know, he fills in flow when he lives in the same house in San Diego, married his high school sweetheart, guys. feel like he fills in flow in a more sedentary kind of high serotonin way than me. So, it's extremely important that you go deep down the rabbit hole of, you know, exploring the cities that bring you flow, the the countries that bring you flow, the time of the day. You know, a lot of people bring up what time is the best time to wake up. Well, for sure there's sleep phenotypes and some people and it's hardcoded in DNA that some people are more night owls than others. I mean, I don't think anybody should stay up till 4:00 in the morning really if you mess up your circadian rhythm that much. But there are some people that, you know, do really good going to bed at 8:00 and there are some people that do better going midnight. I think within reason there's genetic phenotypes on how and and by the way, when you study history, that makes sense. Like in the village, you wanted some dudes, you wanted the village to be perpetually have somebody on alert 24 hours so a neighboring enemy tribe couldn't come in and kill you. I just watched that movie Apocalyptto. Amazing movie. Mel Gibson movie. One of the better movies that everyone forgot about. And I think it was nominated for three Academy Awards. But you know, the opening of the movie, I won't give away the whole movie, but a village that wasn't paying attention. They had no guards at night was attacked. And so the reason there's sleep phenotypes, they theorize, is that that way, you know, a night hour would be up and then a super early riser would would take their place at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning. And so you got to really focus in every area of your life. What brings you flow? What time going to bed brings you optimal flow where it feels natural, effortless, but what time waking up? You know, if you get in tune with your body, you can feel those differences. You know now there's one disclaimer I'd give to all this. There are people through trauma or bad genetics who feel in flow with the wrong dysfunctional person for example or the wrong you know there's a you probably have a friend whenever there's two choices they're gonna their intuition tells them to take the wrong one. You can actually have pockets of your brain have brain damage that one's around judgment. Like I have a friend, it's like if two women are in love with him, he'll be like, "Oh, I really this is the one that I feel attracted to." And it's always like the worst personality one that ends up bringing him long-term pain. So there's also people who are super attracted to, you know, dysfunctional business partners, dysfunctional employees. So the one caveat is before you start flowmaxing by your intuition, you got to look if you have any traumatic responses to your to your upbringing, your childhood that has messed up your sense of judgment. That for sure can happen. And now there's these advanced tests you can take. They're like five like5 or $10,000. You go to like Beverly Hills and they'll scan your brain. They can even see there's people who have, you know, having a bad sense of direction. We always laugh at those people. That's actually they can see it under like an fMRI machine where you can see brain like somebody got hit in the head. You know how when little kids fall and hit their head and we go oh they recover so well. Not always. I mean they might live but sometimes kids get permanent damage. And so the one thing about flow that I would like there's people I was watching a like an Instagram video was like a mosh pit whereas all these kind of I don't know how to say it. not incel guys, but kind of guys that are at the periphery of society and they were all moshing in a pit and like all wearing black and everybody's like swinging their arms and p and there's some people who feel in flow when they like listening to crazy heavy metal and like punching, you know, jumping into mosh pits. I would say those people in general have some type of a mental disorder that they might feel in flow but it's not the correct accurate response to the environment. So just you got to know yourself. Everybody has some PTSD problem from childhood, some major trauma that threw off your sense of flow. But that's for a whole another conversation cuz now it gets more complicated. It's like, okay, Tai, should we trust being in flow or should we be suspicious of what makes us in flow? And I think you got to use like prudence wisdom, you know, if you feel in flow around a bunch of serial killers, like this is somewhat problematic, like why are you fascinated by Jeffrey Dalmer? Now, I could give a counterargument to my counterargument, which would be, you know, men evolved to be in gangs, tribes. So some of the stuff that society considers dysfunctional might be functional in other environments. So these are pretty complex questions and I'm I'm I want to open up your mind for you to think through them on your own. You know, the point of this podcast and this show is is to really like get you going down the rabbit hole in your own mind of self-actualization and self-awareness. Like are you a person that can trust your feeling of flow? Like I feel like the feeling of flow I have when I'm on my farm is not like a dysfunctional feeling of flow. It's probably more naturalistic actually. Now there's an interesting approach you can do which is called Lindy. L I N D Y. Lindy essentially means when you don't know what to do trust the oldest thing that humans used to do. So if you don't know if you should even get married and have kids then the Lindy kind of framework would be like well humans have traditionally had kids. all your ancestor had kids or you wouldn't be here. So when in doubt, you know, have kids. So that's kind of this Lindy axiom or framework. And so you can do that with cities like humans in general haven't lived in cities for most of our ancestors that had 30 million people, but sometimes they lived in cities that were 100,000 people. So you that's a good it's not always true. Like humans didn't always wash their hands. It's definitely better to wash your hands. So, it's not 100% but it's a good they call them razors like Oak's razor like a Lindy razor when you're not sure what to do. So, I think you know reading or learning is a pretty lindy compliant um rule of life. Humans for the last 10,000 generations that learn things faster than other humans definitely thrived and survived. You know, that's why I said, by the way, at the beginning of this episode, you moving cities is a very ancient thing because sometimes people like, oh, people were just moving a lot because of modern airplanes and the ease with which we can move. That's not true at all. Humans have been moving since, you know, the bearing straight migrations, since the African migrations, the Middle Eastern migrations, the Viking migrations. Moving is actually extremely important. Extremely important. So, I want you to understand that, you know, a lot of the things that I'm recommending now, humans didn't read textbooks 10,000 years ago, but they listen to the wisdom of their elders, which is somewhat what a textbook is, you know. So, moving migrating cities to change your life, is a pretty lindy adhering action to take. Lots of people, I mean, nobody is really from the place that they live. like 99% of humans are migrants at some level. Maybe, you know, not out of the continent, but out of very few people, if you went back 100 generations, do you live in the same place? I I've I saw a cool video of a guy in England who still lives in the same village as like this prehistoric I don't know how old DNA they found something thousands of years old. So there are times where humans still live in the same environment where their 100 generation grandfather lived, but that's not necessarily the norm. There was mass migrations. And by the way, the people who didn't migrate went extinct a lot. So sometimes migration is actually the physical migration. Changing cities and countries is sometimes the only way to survive. If you look in World War II, people who didn't migrate out died, you know, in all areas, not just Germany, not just to Eastern Europe, but you see it in France, you see it all over the place. And so, you know, um, don't be afraid of doing lindy things. Don't be afraid of doing lindy things. That could be having a kid. Don't be afraid of lendy things like moving from where you grew up. Try to take people with you if you can, but don't be afraid of trying to make your way in the world financially. That's a lindy thing. Men did that. Vikings left their villages in Norway and Iceland to go find money. The Vikings basically lived on poor farmland. The rich people, the rich predecessors of the Vikings stayed in Germany that had the fertile farmland and they had a lot of not money but the equivalent of money back then. They had food, shelter, water that they could trade and barter. The Vikings didn't. So, the young Viking men are like, "Yep, let's get in this plane. Let's I mean, let's get in this boat. Let's go to Newfoundland, Canada, or let's go down the Danube River, or let's go down the Vulga River." And they got into the Ukraine and all these places. So, that's a men going on a quest when they're have no resources, aka money. That's a pretty lindy thing that I don't think is a I don't think that's a dysfunctional response to the environment. You know, I don't think it's a dysfunctional I think it's probably functional. It's probably the right move. But I also think that there's lindy examples, ancient examples of people who could never say enough is enough. A good example would be in Napoleon and Bonapart. Like he should have heard this podcast because you know he could never say enough is enough. He was the first trillionaire. He controlled Western Europe, Southern Europe. He even conquered Moscow at one point for a second. And um you know that's there were people just saying, "Hey, you're a hero. Stop." But he shouldn't have gone into Russia. That's the classic mistake. You know, like the Princess Bride movie, never have a land war in Asia. Like never invade Russia unless it's June or something, July, cuz it gets too cold and you can't feed your your your horses and your men. And so anyway, a lot of people begged him to stop doing that, but he, you know, and he justified it. Remember, Napoleon theoretically in his conscious mind, he said he was doing this to bring democracy around the world. He wasn't necessarily he started out in kind of almost a socialistic revolution. The French Revolution was like down with the royalty and all that. And yeah, but in the long run, um, in the long run, he didn't understand the principle of this video that when an overly ambitious man meets a harsh world, the harsh world wins. No matter if you're Napoleon and you have the largest army in the world and and you know, the best men, the he was the best at artillery. Eventually, you lose, right? Eventually, you lose. The English Empire. I'm reading a Pulitzer Prizewinning book called The British Are Comeing. I think that's the name. It's fascinating book. You know, it was the classic mistakes that the English made when they were on top of the world, right? They could never say enough is enough with their colonies. So, not only did they own, you know, what we now call America, the United States, but they kept going and they dominated and they won battles in the Caribbean. And then they, you know, there was the 7-year war, the French and Indian War where they fought in uh Canada and they conquered a lot of Canada. And so it was this neverending ambition because the environment had changed because essentially the British had better boats and better seammanship. And and so they basically had unsatiable ambition. And that's what I was saying at the very beginning of this is like a man should have a maximum net worth goal and a minimum. You shouldn't be insatiable. People that are insatiable. Occasionally you win. Like Genghask Khan was pretty insatiable. But eventually he got sick and then he died on his trip back home. And if you look at, you know, Alexander the Great, he was insatiable and he kept going into India. And you know, he just he went too far away out of his skill set, out of his environment. He beat the Persian Empire and kept going, you know, if he and that's why he died at 32. So Jordan Belelfford, the the real guy behind the Wolf of Wall Street, he once told me, he said, "Ty, you know, he was making hundreds of millions a month at one point, and he's like, and this is in the 80s or whatever. Think how much money that is in today's dollars." He said, "Man, if I had just I could have made half as much and it would have all been legal, but he just had that unending ambition." And that unending ambition when you don't know when to stop, when you don't just say know when to say, you know what, I'm making enough. I'm making 100 million a month. That's pretty good. when you say, "No, I should be making 200." And that, by the way, is one of the bad things about living in the wrong city. Cuz there's, remember, if you take a city like London, people who move there generally move there for financial reasons, make more money, and then when you surround yourself with people who are all super ambitious, but maybe they're in a different stage of their wealth, then it's going to cue your brain to not stop, right? And it just gets into this never-ending game of not stopping. And there there's a good principle called optimal stopping. And it if you look at there's the math, you know, they used to call it the secretary problem and stuff, but but ultimately optimal stopping essentially means when you're searching for something, you don't want to stop searching too quick and you don't want to stop searching too late. If you graph it out, it's like a curve, right? It's like the fishing frontier curve like a you know and then you but somewhere when you have for example no net worth then you're in trouble when you have no money but then when you try to make more money and you never stop all of a sudden you encounter more aggressive competitors and that's why they don't so the winner paradoxes they don't talk about that in the news like for example I was given an example Napoleon Russia you know when he was not quite as ambitious He hadn't made everybody his enemy. At one point, the Zar of Russia was the was the friend of Napoleon, the ally. But if you become insatiable with your ambition and money, all the sudden the other really smart dudes on the top of the food chain are going to try to take you out. It could be a lawsuit, could be a false accusation. There's all kinds of ways other wealthy men keep people from competing with them. So, optimal stopping also is strategic to not be shot in the face. You know, the the founder of Cash App, I think he became a billionaire and then I just saw in the news not too long ago, a year ago, he got stabbed in the heart in at first they thought it was a homeless person in San Francisco, but I think it turned out to be some other business guy. So there's an example like where's the optimal point on the efficient frontier of trying to build your net worth because at some point more money becomes more problems and the marginal return shrinks to almost nothing. You know what was the point of Napoleon trying to conquer Russia? You know, he wasn't going to stop this. You know, he said he wanted to bring democracy to the world. You're not going to bring instant democracy to a place as large as Russia that's so big, you know, that and they had surfs and all this kind of stuff. Surfed them for 500 years. It was a lot easier to conquer little Italy or Austria or something like that. Then Russia's basically the largest geographical place. So you you got to start thinking like this in these efficient frontiers versus absolutes. When I talk to guys about how much money they want to make, they usually just have like they I always know dudes are lost because they'll have a round number. Never say, "Oh, I want to be worth a h 100red million." I'm like, "Well, that means you haven't thought about it very well. Why would why a 100red million?" Like what's what's that means you haven't calculated? Cuz a calculator rarely returns an exact number. you should really optimize. Okay, first off, optimize which part of the world are you happy in? Okay, which part of the world are you happiest in? Let's say it's Latin America. Then you can look at the statistics to be in the top 1% of wealth in Brazil. You need to have made you need a $400,000 net worth. That's all you got to figure out how to make 400 grand in cash or crypto and live in Brazil and you pretty much should be able to assuming you have can maintain a little bit of income beyond that you should stay in the 1% of Brazil for life and so will your children. If you want to live in if you want to be in the top 1% in Dubai, you have to have 16 million liquid net worth and the United States 6 million depending on which city. It's higher in some cities. If you want to be in the top 1% of Beverly Hills, you probably need 160 million. So, you know, once you understand once you understand the environment that you're okay living in, because some people are like, "Hell yeah, I'm good with living in Wenocitis, Argentina or Brazil or Colombia." Then you only need 400K. So then your ambition, you know, can just be like, "All right, I'm going to make 4 to 800,000 and then I'm going to go do the other things that define humans." What are the other things that define humans? I mean having children, reproducing art, science, other things that don't necessarily you can't monetize. So you don't necessarily retire but you reduce time and you begin to spend it mentoring other people, building allies, being a passive investor and stuff versus a active person. So that's why I said it's very important to pick your city because if you want to live in Dubai and raise your family there and you're an ambitious person, you're not going to feel good till you're at least at 16 million. You know that which is a pain in the ass. It's much harder to make 16 million than 400,000. Especially now in the internet world, it's like anybody can make 400 grand, you know, in a couple years or less if they just pay attention and have minimum skill set, just a decent skill set. But not everybody can make 16 million. You know what I mean? And some people just don't have the genes, the drive to be worth 16 million. There's a genetic component, too, which is a whole another podcast. I don't have time to I'll do that on another episode. But I think there's genetic limitations. I mean, look, there's genetic limitations on sports. Why wouldn't there be genetic limitations on money making? there's genetic limitations on, you know, um things like basketball, things like physics. Okay. So, but on the flip side, we think there's no genetic side to making money or or career, but there is. Everything has constraints on this or there's not one thing that doesn't have constraints on this earth. Now, I do agree a lot of people have limiting beliefs, so they think they're more constrained than they are. You know, there's a lot of people, hell yeah, it's like, you know, I'm stuck. I could only make 80 grand. Like, a lot of those people could make a mill. So, I I think there are most of the world underestimates how much they could make. But there is a subset of people who, you know, who and more people who follow me that are some of them more ambitious people are definitely overestimating the statistical odds that they can make their number. When I see somebody like, "Oh, I want to be worth 500 million minimum." I'm like, I don't know. I've gotten to know you. I don't think you I don't think you're a $500 million guy. Just like if you told me, "Oh, I'm 5'4 and I want to be a professional basketball player." I'll be like, "Nah, that's theoretically you could do it. It's happened once or twice in history." But it's bad odds. So, don't play that poker hand. Play the best poker hand that this world's dealt you. And some of it's constrained by things at birth, the genetic side. and other things are constrained by, you know, the environment. Your physical health is a big one. If you want to be worth 500 million, you're going to have to have a wacky energy level. You know, you're going to compete around how much energy you have, how much you can do before you feel tired. And there's a that's a physical constraint. So, everybody listen, you have this journey you have to go on, which is that's where I I really am a fan of self-awareness. It's like, who am I? let me not underestimate myself and but also let me not overestimate myself. You know, wouldn't you say the same to your child that they like, oh look, I'm gonna be a pro volleyball player. You got a daughter and she's 5'1. She's 160 cm. You're like, ah, there's better games you can play than that one that you have a better chance of optimizing for success. So, we it's funny how we we say that when it comes to sports, but when it comes to money, it's almost like, oh, no, anybody can make money if that. No, I mean anybody can make money. I think I could take someone with below average IQ and get them to a million dollar net worth in their life, maybe more. But I don't think I they could become a billionaire. I don't think anybody could do that. Just like I don't think somebody who's 3'11 could ever play pro basketball in the NBA, no matter what. It's just you're competing with people who have too much of a head start. So know thyself, know the competition, know your genetics, know your environmental strengths, your environmental weaknesses. Like for me, I can hang around bars. I used to own clubs. I for some reason have no addiction to alcohol. So, you know, I'm somebody who can be around an alcoholic environment. It just it has like almost no chance of affecting me. It still hasn't done. And I own clubs for years. But so, occasionally there's people that can break the rules of needing to stay in a perfect environment, but that's rare. And I'm not like that in everything. Like environment does affect me too. That's why I have, you know, three different homes. I'm happiest when I'm, you know, on my farm. Got the best social life when I'm in Scandinavia, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, and I am I make the most money when I'm in a US city. So, that's why I say you can rotate, too. By the way, if you're like a little confused and what do I do? Well, rotate. It's pretty normal. I was reading this one of the first autobiographies of a Native American. I forget what was it. Chief Blackhawk or something. He wrote a book. This is back I think he was born in the 1600s, but he was around in the 1700s. And he had reminiscence about his childhood. And he they rotated in the spring. They were in one part of I think they were in kind of the Illinois region of the United States. And but they rotated like it was pretty happy life. So I don't think a rotation so that you can get the best of a big city or the best of a farm or the best of a smaller part of the world. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. In fact, to me, the best thing about the modern world is you literally can travel larger distances. Now, that's the one advantage. So, you could live in a big city and you could live on a farm and you could live in Europe or South America or Asia. Do it on what I call slow rotation. Don't move too fast around or the jet lag will affect you. But you know, like I said, this black sheep blackhawk had this super slow rotation that 6 month 5 months out of the year they were in one part and then they went when it got hot they went up the top of the mountains, the highland, followed the grass with the buffalo. So you know humans, you can if you're self-aware, you can think this game through. I'll tell you that you can think this game through on how to structure your life so that you can stay in flow so you can be in some big cities where you make maximum money but you can also be in some peaceful places too. That's a good goal for net worth. Make enough money that you could have two different places you rotate between slowly but surely can read your kids will be smarter for it. They'll be happier for like it's a ultimate win-win. You know what I mean? It's a true win-win. So, by the way, those of you listening, if you're more advanced, you're want to scale your net worth 1 to 10 million, 10 million to 100 million, scale the business. On a separate note, if you go to 18strategies.com, you should go buy that system that I put out. It's an online system. You can follow it. It's a membersonly password protected site. And but you should go. It's the 18 strategies to scale. And this, by the way, it's not really for beginners, but you could watch it if you were making your first 100K a year, but this is more for those of you listening that are doing a million plus. Just go to 18 strategies.com and just sign. It's not very expensive. I forget it's under 1,000 bucks and it's worth it. Got a money back guarantee. I lay out 18 strategies that if you really want to maximize your net worth, no matter where you live, and I'm not saying this will make everybody a 100 million or a billion. I'm just saying this is to maximize net worth. Go to 18 strategies. If you can master these 18 strategies, beware of people who say, "Oh, yeah, you can make a lot of money in just with three simple things you need to know." No. Like Einstein said, you should make things simple as possible, but not oversimplify. So, I'm not going to oversimplify. This is a real system that I've learned in the trenches building big businesses and as well as, you know, being in business with guys on the Forbes list. I I can tell you there's a set of strategies you're going to need. So, do yourself a favor, go to 18strategies.com. Um, get the members access and go through those. You can go through them in 18 days. Do one a day. If you can implement those 18, you will hit if you actually learn and implement my 18 strategies. I think, and this is, you know, me being cocky, but I think it's the best set of frameworks to maximize your net worth I've ever seen in any book, textbook, talk, podcast. I think it's better than all of them. It It's very It's scientifically validated. And so, for those of you who are already doing a mill, but you're plateaued or you're already doing 10 mil a year in sales, but you're plateaued, this is how you unblock yourself. It's easy to get blocked in this world. So, it's this stepbystep advanced strategies. That's why I call it 18 strategies, right? It's not like the 67 steps is more like a guide for life in general. This is specifically for 18 strategies to scaling your income, net worth, revenue, right? All those things. If you can implement these 18, I'm telling you, you'll one day meet me and give me a hug. Like my second mentor, Mike Sandbag said, he said, "Ty, if you listen to me, one day you'll hug my neck." You know, one day you'll hug my neck. that that's how these 18 strategies are. I just recorded a new one on mass hiring, how to scale correctly, the art and science of hiring. Even in AI world, it's going to matter who helps you run the business and build the business. Your net worth is very, you know, wealth requires allies. Those are can be staff, those could be contractors, those can be employees, it's going to be business partners. It's a very important one of the 18 strategies. It's it's one I just recorded. Man, I I wish I could go back in time and buy this program myself to save yourself a couple decades of trial and error. You know, say always try to ask yourself what's the most I can learn in life without having to go through the pain of trial and error myself. How can I learn that a fire is hot without falling into it and getting thirdderee burns? That's really where the smartest people on earth simulate through others experience so that they cut their learning curve in half. You know, I get it. Put in half the work, make twice the money. So, 18 strategies, shameless plug, go there. For those of you who want to work with me privately, I've got a whole system where I work with people. If you, this is for pretty much, you got to be doing about 10 million plus a year in revenue. Go to my just go to privatementor.com. privatemementor.com. And you can book a time to talk first. You talk to my right-hand man. He qualifies just to make sure I get fuz because or else too many people will go there. private mentor.com and if you want to work with me directly oneonone I've been doing that since 2013. A lot of the big social influencers you see online like I've been mentoring them some of them for many years some of them are billionaires now pretty famous one. So private mentor.com that is the portal to working with me directly. Okay so thanks everybody I appreciate it. By the way, if you want to do me a favor at any time, go to tylopz.com/trustpilot. If I've helped you out ever in the past, one of my courses, one of my podcasts, one of my videos, and you got a minute, if you'd mind going to tyopz.com/trustpilot, it'll redirect you to Trustpilot's website. Just leave me an honest review. I don't incentivize them with money or anything I want. Just you can leave an honest, good, bad, ugly. Trustpilot. Anyway, leave a like, a follow, a review here on the platform so the mic stuff will pop up in the algorithm and I'll see you on the next