WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.000 Now some people have said that my approach or view on friendships is transactional, extreme, 2 00:00:08.000 --> 00:00:08.400 whatever. 3 00:00:10.800 --> 00:00:13.120 And I'll say, sure, you're right. 4 00:00:14.880 --> 00:00:20.880 And I don't see friendship as a binary term, meaning it's not that we are friends or not friends, 5 00:00:20.880 --> 00:00:24.800 it's how good a friends are we. To define friendship, the opposite of friend would be an enemy 6 00:00:24.800 --> 00:00:31.120 or a rival. Someone who doesn't root for me, they actively try and destroy my efforts. They try 7 00:00:31.120 --> 00:00:35.920 and get me to be emotional rather than make logical decisions. And they try and distract me from 8 00:00:35.920 --> 00:00:41.440 my ultimate goal. And for many of you, some of your friends fit that description now. I understand 9 00:00:41.440 --> 00:00:46.480 that people are human and people make mistakes. But if you want the one strike, not three strike, 10 00:00:46.480 --> 00:00:50.880 one way ticket out of my friendship, you only have to do one thing. You have to not root for me. 11 00:00:50.880 --> 00:00:57.280 Meaning you actively resent either explicitly or implicitly when I win. If you resent me winning, 12 00:00:57.280 --> 00:01:01.440 why are you here? Like the reason they're still there is because there's a chance that your 13 00:01:01.440 --> 00:01:05.920 success will benefit them. But while you're succeeding, they'll still try and destroy it in case 14 00:01:05.920 --> 00:01:10.320 they can bring you down. It's fucked up, but it's true. So the reverse of that would be somebody who 15 00:01:11.040 --> 00:01:16.400 roots for you in front of you and most specifically behind your back, real talk, that's one of the 16 00:01:16.400 --> 00:01:22.080 hardest things out there, especially amongst guys where it's very alpha competitive. As soon as your 17 00:01:22.080 --> 00:01:28.640 status starts to raise within the group, you, by comparison, make everyone else worse. So it's in 18 00:01:28.640 --> 00:01:34.320 their best interest to make you less of a threat to them by diminishing your status. The things like 19 00:01:34.320 --> 00:01:37.680 talk in mind your back, trying to distract you, make you emotional, make you feel guilty about the 20 00:01:37.680 --> 00:01:41.280 things that you're doing, take you away, try and label you with old labels that are your old 21 00:01:41.280 --> 00:01:44.640 identity, not aligned with the things that you want to do later. And the thing is is like, I don't 22 00:01:44.640 --> 00:01:48.160 think these are bad people to be clear. I don't even think there's good or bad people anyways. The 23 00:01:48.160 --> 00:01:54.000 question is just, are they going to help me towards my long-term goal? Are they not? If it's more 24 00:01:54.000 --> 00:01:58.240 likely, they've earned a spot. They're paying their rent for my time and attention. If they're not 25 00:01:58.240 --> 00:02:01.520 more likely to help me hit my goal, then for me, the question is, is the relationship more important 26 00:02:01.520 --> 00:02:06.080 than my goal? And that's a decision for you. I made my goal my most important thing because I 27 00:02:06.080 --> 00:02:11.360 believe that if I achieved that goal, I would feel better about myself, my identity associated with it, 28 00:02:11.360 --> 00:02:15.600 and I think that there would be a new level of friends who would unlock as I got to that new level. 29 00:02:15.600 --> 00:02:20.560 And for me, up to this point, that has been true. I'm not trying to achieve a common life goal, 30 00:02:20.560 --> 00:02:25.440 and so it would make sense that my views would be more extreme than other people's. I also think 31 00:02:25.440 --> 00:02:30.000 that some of these views become compounded when you have increasing demands for your time. If that's 32 00:02:30.000 --> 00:02:33.600 not real for you right now, if you don't have people vying for every minute of your day right now, 33 00:02:33.600 --> 00:02:37.440 then what I'm saying might not be relevant for you, but for the people who do have people vying 34 00:02:37.520 --> 00:02:41.600 for every minute of their day, it might make more sense. There's a reason LeBron says no new friends. 35 00:02:47.200 --> 00:02:50.480 He's decided like he doesn't need any friends or he doesn't trust anyone new, and that's fine. 36 00:02:51.040 --> 00:02:55.120 That works for him. He has a rare life. It would make sense that he has rare rules. 37 00:02:55.120 --> 00:03:07.840 The biggest issue that I've had with friendships in general is that people project what they believe 38 00:03:07.840 --> 00:03:14.480 friendships should look like in their minds onto our relationship. For me, I am transactional. 39 00:03:14.480 --> 00:03:18.320 This is going to probably piss a lot of people off. The pros of this relationship should outweigh 40 00:03:18.320 --> 00:03:22.480 the cons, and if people are like, I can't believe you'd say that, we probably wouldn't be friends, 41 00:03:22.480 --> 00:03:25.280 and that's okay. You'll probably be friends with people who don't have that definition. 42 00:03:25.280 --> 00:03:30.240 But for me, that means that my life is better off with you in it. You helped me achieve my goal. 43 00:03:30.240 --> 00:03:33.920 You root for me along the way. If you think about everything you do as an investor, 44 00:03:33.920 --> 00:03:38.480 you invest time and energy into a relationship with the hopes of getting some sort of positive return. 45 00:03:38.480 --> 00:03:44.480 You spend that time no matter what, and the people who build the best relationships, 46 00:03:44.480 --> 00:03:48.720 the best networks are the ones who invest in relationships that yield the highest returns. 47 00:03:48.800 --> 00:03:52.480 In terms of exchange, I believe in a bun in exchange, which is if both of us feel like we're getting 48 00:03:52.480 --> 00:03:56.480 the better end of the deal, then this relationship will continue at infinitum. It's going to keep going. 49 00:03:56.480 --> 00:04:00.800 You would have no reason to end it. Where you get into trouble is the types of relationships 50 00:04:00.800 --> 00:04:05.040 that you're wondering should I keep these? You probably already know you shouldn't, and I love this 51 00:04:05.040 --> 00:04:08.960 little framework for decision making. When you're faced between a hard thing and the easy thing, 52 00:04:08.960 --> 00:04:13.200 and you're not sure what to do, you should do the hard thing because if the easy thing were the 53 00:04:13.200 --> 00:04:17.040 right thing to do, you would have already done it. One of the hardest things about pursuing your dreams 54 00:04:17.040 --> 00:04:21.840 and pursuing your goals is that a lot of the people that are in your life right now will not support 55 00:04:21.840 --> 00:04:26.400 the future version of you that you need to become in order to accomplish those goals. People don't 56 00:04:26.400 --> 00:04:33.840 actually want the best for you. They want the version of you that best serves them. Now, the closer 57 00:04:33.840 --> 00:04:39.040 they are to you in terms of long-term alignment, the more likely those two versions of you will 58 00:04:39.040 --> 00:04:45.680 intersect, which is often why often, not always, why family and your spouse should hopefully be the 59 00:04:45.680 --> 00:04:51.120 most aligned with you because long-term, their best interest is often aligned with your best interest. 60 00:04:51.120 --> 00:04:55.360 I think the spouse is like the eighth degree of what the most extreme friends should look like. 61 00:04:55.360 --> 00:05:00.480 That is the best friend you have for life, which means they should root for you harder than anyone else. 62 00:05:00.480 --> 00:05:06.080 They should never resent your success, the biggest, strongest ally you have, and then the friends 63 00:05:06.080 --> 00:05:12.560 you have are just non-sexualized versions of that core ally you have. There's a lot of statements 64 00:05:12.560 --> 00:05:17.280 that friends will make to try and keep you where you're at. They'll say, you've changed, 65 00:05:17.280 --> 00:05:20.800 and they'll phrase it in a way that makes it feel like you're doing something wrong by changing. 66 00:05:20.800 --> 00:05:25.200 All you have to do is look back at them and say, you're right, and you haven't. That carries almost 67 00:05:25.200 --> 00:05:30.000 an equal way back to them because some people want to stay the same. Come on, and that's okay. 68 00:05:30.000 --> 00:05:34.160 That's been my recurring theme with friendships is just accepting them for what they are and saying, 69 00:05:34.160 --> 00:05:39.600 that's okay. Things have changed. Good. That's what growth is. You can't grow and stay the same. 70 00:05:39.600 --> 00:05:44.480 And if we want to grow as entrepreneurs, then we have to expect change. And I think Tupac embodies 71 00:05:44.480 --> 00:05:49.200 this transition between friends really well. And he said, just because you lost me as a friend, 72 00:05:49.200 --> 00:05:52.960 doesn't mean you gained me as an enemy. I'm bigger than that. I still want to see you eat, 73 00:05:52.960 --> 00:05:57.360 just not at my table. I don't wish you ill. I want you to succeed, and I want you to do all the 74 00:05:57.360 --> 00:06:01.440 things you want to do in your life. It's just that your vision for your life doesn't merge with my 75 00:06:01.440 --> 00:06:07.600 vision for my life. It's the same thing as having an ex-girlfriend or an ex-boyfriend. You had a season 76 00:06:07.600 --> 00:06:10.960 together. It doesn't mean you don't honor the season, and all of a sudden start destroying 77 00:06:10.960 --> 00:06:14.960 the memory. Appreciate the fact that you had a season. Understand that seasons by their very nature 78 00:06:14.960 --> 00:06:18.720 end. We both contribute to another, and then we found out that we wanted different things, 79 00:06:18.720 --> 00:06:22.880 which is great. That's the whole point of learning. The thing is, is a lot of people have these 80 00:06:22.880 --> 00:06:27.360 precepts of what a friend should be. We're going to be friends for life. How many 85-year-olds do you 81 00:06:27.360 --> 00:06:30.880 know who are friends with the same people their whole life? Not many. And if they are, they've got 82 00:06:30.880 --> 00:06:36.960 like one. It's not common, but it is okay, in my opinion, to have seasons of friends. We're friends 83 00:06:36.960 --> 00:06:41.440 for the season, and then we had train tracks that aligned, and then we found out we had train tracks 84 00:06:41.440 --> 00:06:45.440 that diverted. Coma, and that's okay. Have you ever had somebody who's like, I was just trying to help 85 00:06:45.440 --> 00:06:49.840 in that person just like, made your life ten times harder? That is not help. That is destruction, 86 00:06:49.840 --> 00:06:53.040 but true help comes from someone who comes into your life, and all of a sudden everything gets 87 00:06:53.040 --> 00:06:57.520 easier. That is help. That is a friend. That is somebody who's an ally. Let me give you a little 88 00:06:57.600 --> 00:07:00.880 frame shift around burning bridges, because people love using that friend's like, you don't want to 89 00:07:00.880 --> 00:07:04.160 burn bridges. Remember where you came from? You can consider it burning a bridge, but you could 90 00:07:04.160 --> 00:07:07.760 also consider it pruning a tree in order for the tree to grow. You only have certain amount of 91 00:07:07.760 --> 00:07:12.640 sunlight, water, and minerals in the soil. The healthiest thing for the tree is to prune it, cut the 92 00:07:12.640 --> 00:07:17.040 branch off, and that may seem uncomfortable for many of you, but again, there's the hard thing, 93 00:07:17.040 --> 00:07:20.480 and the easy thing, and if you're making the decision, you already know the right thing is probably 94 00:07:20.480 --> 00:07:25.760 the hard one. So if you encounter somebody that's not aligned with the vision of your life, and it 95 00:07:25.840 --> 00:07:29.520 used to be your old life, they want to go to clubs every night, they want to drink on Sundays, 96 00:07:29.520 --> 00:07:33.680 do the bar crawls, and now it's coming in conflict. They're losing a friend, so they want to keep 97 00:07:33.680 --> 00:07:38.720 you there, and that's okay. Don't hate them for wanting that. It's just that it no longer aligns 98 00:07:38.720 --> 00:07:42.640 anymore. I think there's really two directions for these types of friendships. Number one is that 99 00:07:42.640 --> 00:07:47.280 if you decrease the frequency of communication with someone, over time you get fewer and fewer invites 100 00:07:47.280 --> 00:07:53.440 than it kind of fizzles. That's how most friendships or loose acquaintances end. The very hand select 101 00:07:53.440 --> 00:07:58.240 few of times where you have family or like super close homies, whatever you want to call it. I 102 00:07:59.120 --> 00:08:03.520 have one framework for having really hard conversations, but I stole from Layla. Keep the other 103 00:08:03.520 --> 00:08:07.520 person as a human being at the forefront of the conversation rather than being right. If I 104 00:08:07.520 --> 00:08:12.320 remind myself every time I go into hard conversations that way, it's amazing how much better of a 105 00:08:12.320 --> 00:08:18.000 conversation I have, and accepting responsibility for the fact that like, hey, I've changed, and that's 106 00:08:18.000 --> 00:08:22.240 not on you. That's on me. If it means that we're not hanging out as much anymore, again, it doesn't 107 00:08:22.240 --> 00:08:26.560 mean that you have me as an enemy, common, and that's okay. I think that you can have friends who 108 00:08:26.560 --> 00:08:31.760 aren't necessarily pursuing greatness as long as they're helping you pursue yours. That's the bridge 109 00:08:31.760 --> 00:08:38.320 in my opinion. I like to be inspired by the people that I'm around. I want to admire something in 110 00:08:38.320 --> 00:08:45.440 every friend that I have. I have a very close friend of mine who is an FBI agent. Every time I talk 111 00:08:45.440 --> 00:08:50.000 to him, he's got like new stories of things that he's doing, and for me, the benefit I get from 112 00:08:50.000 --> 00:08:54.640 the relationship is that it gives me an escape from the day-to-day business stuff that I'm dealing with. 113 00:08:54.640 --> 00:08:59.760 He benefits in no way from the status, from the followers, because he does no way to financially 114 00:08:59.760 --> 00:09:04.240 benefit. He's an FBI agent. But what we both mutually appreciate about one another is that we've both 115 00:09:04.240 --> 00:09:09.040 been committed to being excellent at our craft. I just want people who are as passionate about their 116 00:09:09.040 --> 00:09:14.240 art as I am, who root for me to make the best painting possible. That's what I'm really going for. 117 00:09:14.240 --> 00:09:20.400 At the end of the day, it's just like, does this person make me better? If they don't, then why are you here?