YouSaid · the spoken record

Jason Karp

lines on the record: 91
first: 2023-04-23
most recent: 2023-04-23
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Thank you. And I wish you the strength. And you've always been such a great companion to talk to. And I also really value how much work and research and preparation you did for this. It does not go unnoticed. And I'm so grateful for that. And I just wanted to tell your listeners that if you're feeling this at all, you know, Is a painful message for you because it's kind of like at odds with what you think is what's going to work. And for me, for so many years, I wanted to ignore it because it felt like it was at odds and it's not. You can actually do both. So thank you for allowing me to talk about this because I do hope, you know, to give some other people who have gone through what I go through, some freedom to be able to feel this.”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm certainly trying. I definitely feel much more in harmony with, I think, how my inner soul feels than I used to be. I'm not there yet and I'm not sure anyone ever gets there, but I'm certainly much more aware of what feels wrong. And am I doing something that feels at odds with where kind of my kind of, I know the word soul sounds very woo-woo, but like, you know, everyone kind of knows when something feels wrong or feels right. And like I didn't used to have that compass. Like I think I had such self-hatred and such desire to just like win in what I thought mattered that those like signals that were coming from me. I just would like bury them and like not listen to them. And they would kind of like try to like reach out and I would just be like, shut up. Like I don't care. You know, and now I'm listening. And I think now that I'm listening.”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so there's these kind of thoughts about experiences at a moment in time and what are those worth? And those are, there's no money for those things. And so it's those kind of thoughts that have really influenced me.”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That could be you. And you just see enough of this when you're like, wow, like Steve Jobs was 54 when he died. Like, that's not old, you know. And the way Elon Musk is living right now, like, I'm not optimistic on his longevity. And these things that we revere in society are tangible accomplishment things and not things that are the essence of what makes a good life worth living. And so I've just become much more observant in the last probably 10 years about how precious and short life can be and how there's many things, particularly experiences that are priceless. My son is nine. He is at that perfect age where he still adores his dad and he thinks it's really like our time is amazing. Like when he's 15 and he's a teenager and he thinks he'll think I'm lame and annoying and whatever, like I'll never get that time back no matter how much money I have.”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you know, I think you kind of have to find it. I've been very good at observing people over my life. And I've just observed enough people who are rich and miserable and enough people who are not rich and happy to recognize that there's a lot more to life than money and returns. And I've tried really hard to sort of be aware of how these intangible things that are the essence of life like relationships and love and connection, how they bring me joy and fulfillment. And I've also, and this is not fortunate, but you can read, you can learn this through reading. I've had a lot of death around me in the last 10 years. I've had many peers who are my age die. And two of them were two of my closest friends. And you just kind of realize life is short. And like, that could be.”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“She's just great. She's great. You know, I think spending more time with friends and family really helps. Laughter helps. I mean, very simple things that I just wasn't doing enough of are immensely or have been immensely valuable to me physical activity outside. Again, this is an evolutionary thing, like getting morning sunlight, getting afternoon sunlight, walking outside, being in nature. These are all things clinically proven to improve how you feel that are all based on simple evolutionary principles.”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To you that might help others? There's many different forms of meditation. I had a really hard time with some of the forms. Tara Brock has a lot of tips on how to do it well. Her last name is spelled B-R-A-C-H, by the way.”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I will add just for disclaimer, I'm not a doctor. This is my own personal anecdote to explore all of your own research online. There is a lot from very real published scientists. There's some great stuff on Tim Ferriss's podcast, some great stuff on Huberman's podcast about how the mechanisms of these work and how to be careful. Because to your point, there are ways to abuse these. There's ways to not use them. And they are very medically safe when used in the way that they are meant to be, but they can also be abused like any medication can be.”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Ketamine is another way that people can do it. That is fully legal. There's a lot of places it will do guided ketamine sessions. And that has been also very helpful for me in kind of, because my armor was so thick that it was very hard for me to penetrate like where these demons come from. And I've done, I don't know, thousands of hours of therapy. And I would say 15 hours of psychedelic work have done more for me than thousands of hours of talk therapy.”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Connections that used to be there reconnect. And in many instances, connections that weren't there connect and allow you to see yourself and to see where your proclivities and tendencies come from without judgment. And so your ego of the armor that we've all created, we all have armor from years and years of how we've grown up, the armor comes down and you sort of look at yourself without judgment and say, oh, this is why I care so much about what people think of me. Or this is why I'm so obsessed with performance. Or this is why I can't handle mediocrity. And you're able to look at it in a very clear, objective way without judgment. And it allows you to have compassion for yourself and it allows you to have acceptance without complacency. And then you don't feel the demons anymore. And so there's a lot of resources about what they call guided psychedelic therapy online.”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's some great resources online from Michael Pollen wrote a very famous book now, a New York Times bestseller called How to Change Your Mind. He chronicles his journey. Tim Ferris talks about this regularly. It is now legal in Portland, Oregon. It's legal in parts of Colorado. There's certain countries where you can do this. There's an underground community of this, but it is, you know, it's a very safe psilocybin, what they used to call magic mushrooms have been around for thousands of years used by indigenous communities. And I used to think it was kind of like horseshit for lack of a better term. And I had a few friends who also experienced significant trauma and told me about how it helped them. And it has a mechanism for your scientifically based listeners. It has a mechanism that's very well established, which is why they're beginning to legalize it now, that causes a flood of neurotransmitters in your brain that creates a level of plasticity in your brain where synaptic”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And they're all about reframing how much time we have left on the planet and what are we going to do with that and what do we want to be remembered for. And so a lot of contextualizing has helped me a lot. And just enforcing the kind of prompts and the hard questions about like why are we doing all this? And so, you know, that, and then for those who can do it, and it's also controversial and it's only legal in a few places now, psychedelic therapy has helped me more than anything of all the things I've done.”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of returns. And I've just been doing a lot of spiritual reading. Also, like I've read some books on people who are dying and what they think about when they're dying and what people say on their deathbeds. And not a single person ever has said, I wish I worked more. Like I wish I put up better returns. I wish I had more in my bank account. Once you die, that money isn't yours anymore. And there have been a couple books that have come out recently that have really caught my attention. You probably heard of them once called Die With Zero and one's called 4,000 Weeks.”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That they have it until they hear me talk about it. I've had a number of people come up to me and be like, oh my God, I realize like I have a lot of these same things. And I think there's some great resources now online. There's some great podcasts. There's some great therapists. There's a woman named Tara Brock who has a podcast. She wrote a book called Radical Acceptance. And she's like a therapist. And it was very hard for me to get into this stuff originally. I wasn't that spiritual of a person five years ago. But you kind of realize the human condition's been the same way for thousands of years. And a lot of what I'm dealing with is things that people have been struggling with and her teachings and some of what I learned is just having compassion for yourself, realizing that there are a lot of good people out there who can help you. And finally acknowledging like the end goal of why we're here is to be fulfilled. It's not to make a lot of money or to put up a bunch of points on the board or have a bunch of”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, the first thing I would say is make sure you have one or two people in your life that you can talk to about this, whether it's a therapist that you pay or whether it's a family member or your spouse or your partner. My wife has been amazing. I'm getting a little choked up because she's been so amazing for me. But I was so ashamed. I didn't really know who to talk to about it. And I think having someone that you can freely vent to and share is the first step. I think it's really important to realize that you're not alone. I thought I was very alone for a long time. And then I realized that a lot of people struggle the way I did. And a lot of people who are far more successful than I am or far more accomplished than I am also struggle with this stuff. And I think I thought I was kind of like a freak and learning that, and I hope that my story can help some of your listeners if they feel this. Because I think a lot of people don't fully know.”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To get out of this, yes, I was. It wasn't so veiled. I'm glad you picked up on it. I was really look, I was really tortured. And it was now that I've been in so much therapy and I've worked with, you know, I've done a lot of deep, deep introspection. I've also done a lot of psychedelic work on myself. And I had really significant trauma from this. And I happened to have this bizarre kind of balance where I have very high empathy. but I'm also like ruthlessly competitive and it's a terrible combination because I feel all the kind of pain of being judged and you know I think a lot of the best investors actually are slightly socio”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like, I never wanted that conversation because part of why we are here today in terms of how sick society is is because so much of the food industry has been driven by financial investors. And there are other variables and KPIs that are not profit”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Ratification principles that customers actually can perceive. So that was the first thing. And then sort of weird related way. I saw a lot of brands that had great values but had were parts of the investors were from funds. And their funds that were the investors in those businesses had five-year, seven-year time horizons. And those funds only would make money if those brands were sold. And so I saw very suboptimal behavior with a lot of brands that I respected because the investors were driving the mission and the investors themselves did not have a mission. And they either sold them too early or they corrupted the brands or they turned the brands into something it wasn't. And so I wanted to create a holding company structure for permanent capital so that we didn't have that incentive of having our investors basically say, you know what, you know, this healthy ingredient stuff and this sustainability stuff, like it sounds great, but you're not making money change.”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, well, there were a few interesting elements in that, in what you just said. The first, I would say I've learned so many interesting lessons from the Hugh experience. The most important thing I've learned with consumer products, particularly mission-driven consumer products where people respect or value or care about what's behind the brand, like why you do what you do and what made Hughes so special, is that my family, particularly my brother-in-law Jordan and I, were so unwavering in our discipline and approach of we will never use these ingredients even if they'll make us a lot more money and we will only do it this way and we had so many customers who could see that and they could see that no other brand was doing that because all these other brands had investors who were like, you know what use this shittier ingredient will make more money do it no one's going to notice it we never did that and I think having authentic values is one of those hard kind of deferred”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The reported Yes, I can't comment on the exact, but we did have outside investors who came in after the first many years that my family and I had created it. And they all had a substantial multifold return over only a few years. And so if you do this right, there is obviously a profit motive and benefit. But it's not something that's like a cash cow while you're doing it. And it's something that does require some deferred gratification because it's not nearly as profitable as selling jugs.”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And to be clear, I'm not just a philanthropist The outcome of Hugh, we sold Hugh two years ago to Mondelez, we didn't have a process, we weren't expecting to sell it, but we got a very, very large evaluation for that business.”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Current environment, what these things should cost. And so a bit of what we are doing is philanthropic because all public companies and most companies that have regular investors would never support what we're doing because we're effectively funding or subsidizing the future by doing things that are much better for people, much better for the planet, much better for animals. And that if you look at people's behaviors, they're choosing to spend money on these other things, which are immediate gratification things that are not necessarily helping themselves or other families. But it's easier and it's feeding that animal brain to do so.”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that you don't, you might know afterwards is like, okay, this is an amazing pizza bite. It just so happens that it's healthy. It just so happens that it has nutritionals of a meal, but it tastes like an amazing pizza bite. And so my focus at Humanco and our focus in terms of what we invest in and what we focus on are things that allow people to live a healthier life without sacrificing. Because if I have to, the only people who are going to eat the way that I had to eat when I was sick are the people that are literally like the most disciplined people you can find or they're people who are sick like me. Nobody wants to eat like that. And the problem is that it's very hard and much less profitable to do it this way currently. So I have intentionally chosen what I'll call bad business where we're using ingredients that are significantly more expensive. And I can't charge under the”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Boot has been an integral part of human culture for as long as we'd known about humanity. And it's supposed to bring people together. It's supposed to bring happiness. It's supposed to be nourishing. But it brings people joy. And all the foods I had to give up were the foods that made me happy, right? I had to give up ice cream. I had to give up chocolate. I had to give up pizza. I had to give up cookies. I had to give up bread. You know, like these are all the things that I loved as a kid. And so I wanted to focus on foods that bring people happiness, bring people joy and are foods that historically are associated with positive occasions. Except that most of the foods that people in this country sometimes call comfort foods are the ones that are filled with the most amount of crap, synthetic ingredients, highly processed shit, things that literally make you sick. And so I didn't want to create like a vegetable-based protein bar because nobody's going to eat that. And I'm very pragmatic about that. Like I want to create things that I want to eat that my kids want to eat.”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it's pretty simple, which is, and it comes back to your whole points about deferred gratification and impulse control, which is we have known as a society for probably 70 years that things like Twinkies are significantly less healthy than fruits and vegetables. And we've been teaching that in schools. We've been teaching that every chance we can from a public policy perspective for at least 60, 70 years. And yet we are the sickest and most diseased population in human history, despite knowing all this. And the reason is because of everything that we talked about in terms of most people can't control their impulses. And the food industry is out to make it harder for us, right? The food industry is effectively, it's like taking compulsive gamblers and forcing them to live in casinos. It's kind of like what the food industry is doing to us. And I noticed when I was sick and I had to give up all these foods that I loved. Food, if you study human culture.”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Shame kicked in. And over the next few months, I just felt absolute despair. And this sort of like everything I thought I wanted to do for 17 years did not produce this sort of result that I was hoping for in terms of fulfillment and happiness and what you call a bunch.”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then in 2015 was our peak year of Turbion where we won best new manager of the year, so basically best new hedge fund of the year. We had peaked at like $4.5 billion in assets. We had three 99th percentile returns in terms of alpha. I was like written up many times in the press as being this second coming whatever BS and at the awards ceremony for the new hedge fund of the year award right after I got the trophy I had this horrible empty feeling and I said to my wife I said I don't think I can do better than this like this is literally like winning the Oscar for what I had done for the last 17 years I'm like this is the pinnacle of what I thought can I do I have my own hedge fund it's very big I'm winning awards I just made an outrageous amount of money and I feel disgustingly hollow and then the real”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Starving. And I would get a lot of shame and guilt from people who I tried to talk about if I was going through some challenges. And that taught me a very bad lesson of like, it's not okay to talk about it. And if you're more fortunate, and of course I was super blessed with the family I was born into and the college I went to and the fact that I was born white and the fact that I had two parents and I understand all those things but there, you know, I had real suicidal depression multiple times. And I was too ashamed to seek help about it or to talk to people about it. And I always kind of thought like, well, if I got that next toy or that next accolade or that next victory, like maybe it'll go away. And so I was on this ascent in my hedge fund career where, you know, I went from smaller hedge fund to bigger hedge fund to bigger hedge fund and bigger job to finally starting my own hedge fund.”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you know, it happened to me many times over my career, you know, where I had these, you know, I've struggled with mental health and depression since I was probably 14 or 15. And it was really bad when I was sick the first time, when I was 23. I had like a few relapse periods along the way. And by the way, I was always very ashamed of this and didn't really talk about it because, you know, some of it was I wanted to feel strong and like macho and sort of classic patriarchal, you know, like alpha male. And some of it was also that I did have a lot of optical superficial success. And I had tried to be vulnerable a few times with some people who were the wrong people where I basically got the message of like, how dare you talk about that you're like sad when you have this and you have that and there's people who are”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“From these things than most people do. But everyone gets sick, as is clear from the data, is that it kind of like global warming for most people. It's like not a right now problem. You know, like you put on a little weight every year, you feel a little shittier every year. You start going to the doctor more every year, but like you don't like wake up and you're like going blind like I did. Like that doesn't happen to most people. And I think for my children is it's all about creating early habits because habits are really hard to change. And the other thing that very few people talk about, and I don't want to go too deep into this.”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, you know, I think we try our best to model good behavior to our children. You know, I think for me, because I was so sick and I felt so sick and I had, I mean, I literally thought I was dying when I was 23. That was such a terror and trauma for me that it was very clear and motivating that I never wanted to go back there. The problem for most of humanity, because I'm more like a canary in the coal mine where I just get sicker faster.”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Recognizable and got so much healthier. And there were multiple people in our firm who came in, you know, not so healthy and got much healthier and would come to me afterwards and say, not only do I look better, which is like the easy to observe part of it, they feel better. They sleep better. They actually perform better, which is like if you're a productivity person, like it's the most important part. Like you can read longer, you can absorb more, you can sleep less. And so I was really, really happy to help those people because that's a life skill.”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you Correct. Correct. There were multiple times that someone, we had a couple times where we had a new employee who didn't fully know the rules and they'd bring in like a box of frosted flakes and I just walk over and just throw it in the trash. And there'd be no discussion. People thought like I was insane and obviously I was insane. But it was in good humor. Like it wasn't like I was just like mean about it. And we had one particular analyst who was very unhealthy, very overweight. had a number of health issues. And I really don't try to push this on people unless they ask for it because, you know, I think for a lot of people, they have to want to get healthier. And, you know, he came to me one day and he basically said, like, I need to get healthier. Like I'm really, really unhealthy. And he looked really unhealthy. And over the course of, I mean, six, seven months, like he lost a staggering amount of weight and was like almost unread.”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Blackout Totally sensory deprivation room. We had a fun room that had a ping pong table, it had like video games. And then I allowed no processed junk food in the entire office. And we would have guests come in and ask for like a Coke or a diet coke. And we didn't even have packets of sugar.”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And research I read, the more hours I spend on Excel, the more hours I spend researching things, the more opportunities I'll uncover, the more alpha I'll generate, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so it's this sort of like, it's this MIDAS kind of myth of the more I work, the more I'll start turning things to gold kind of thing. And by the way, I have that proclivity, which is how I got sick in my 20s because I did the same shit, except I got really sick. In some ways, that was a blessing. And so I wanted to design a place that was conducive to staying healthy, both physically and mentally. I put a really nice gym in the office. I put a steam shower. I put a sauna, really good equipment. I put a meditation room and reading room in that has soundproof walls, no TV, no stimuli at all. You go in there, you meditate, you take a nap, or you read whatever.”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think Yeah, I mean, I had been in environments, you know, I think the investment business has historically valued intense hours, intense work ethic and like zero physical health or mental health benefits, right? You know, the ideas of like Buffet sitting around for 15 hours reading K's and Q's, drinking a Coca-Cola with his big gut or Charlie Munger with his Coke bottle glasses almost going blind from reading so much like Most of the best investors that we have prized historically don't really look healthy and probably aren't, to be honest. And so there has been this emphasis of like work as longer than anybody, read longer than anybody, you know, like, and I recognize because there is a linear in many instances, although it's not linear, it's a seduction, but there's the belief that like the more K's and Q's”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Afternoon, then in the morning. And so this is just something that is well documented, and I don't have any real hacks around this other than, you know, if you're going to be doing good creative thinking, do it in the morning, you know, big decisions, do it in the morning when you're fresh. Don't do anything late afternoon where it requires like really hard mental process.”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“By the end of the day, and I come home and my wife would say, When do you want to have dinner? What do you want to have for dinner? Where do you want to go for dinner? Like seemingly simple things. And I would just be like, I can't like just stop. And we used to get in like little arguments about it because she hasn't seen me all day. She fairly should be able to talk to her husband and ask simple questions. But I would be shocked. And I think it's just something important to remember. And they have some really crazy studies on this too, particularly with like court judges where court judges, when they've looked at the statistics of how many like guilty versus innocent verdicts are passed in the late afternoon versus in the morning. And like you never want to be like a 50-50 coin flip with a judge at four o'clock on a Friday. Like it is staggering. It's like statistically wildly significant that the judge's proclivity to be lenient is way worse in the late 19th century.”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, some people take it to the extreme. I'm sure you've heard Obama had the same exact outfit every day and Mark Zuckerberg did this. And I never went that far. And by the way, I have not been particularly good at many aspects of this. I still have far too much complexity in my life. And I've been desperately trying to reduce some of it. But I've noticed that mundane decisions that require decisions, I prefer making at night like, what am I going to wear the next day? I find it easier to just, because when I'm exhausted, I'm not making any real decisions. But like, what am I going to wear tomorrow? Like, that's easy. And then when I wake up, I don't have to think about it. And so I'm not taxing that part of my brain of like, oh, do I wear white or black? Do I wear these jeans or that jeans? And I kind of have been honest with my wife. It's been easier since I've been out of the hedge fund business. But when I was in the hedge fund business, you know, there were days I'd make 100 decisions in a day. And I would be just shocked.”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because what I've learned, and you've probably seen many books on this around willpower and executive function, it is like a muscle, like literally. And, you know, if you exert too much willpower over the day, so they also call it decision fatigue. But it drains. And at the end of the day, you'll notice that pastry looks a lot more enticing if you're starving and tired than it does when you're not. And I think the same thing goes with like compulsive gambling and bad investments and bad life decisions. Like it's all the same stuff.”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like, why do I feel triggered when somebody says something to me that makes me feel bad? Or, like, this isn't something that I should have been triggered by. Where's that coming from? Like, just kind of digging a little deeper and getting them to talk about it as kids and then getting them to not be ashamed about talking about, you know, things that maybe kids don't normally talk about. Like, I really feel left out or I really feel lonely or I really feel sad when such and such says something to me. And you say, okay, like, where do you think that's coming from? Why are you sad? And those are the kind of things where I'm trying to build like that muscle in them so that they can be more self-aware, which will allow them to solve problems and communicate better.”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Our dog would just eat as much chocolate as he could. As you know, chocolate is toxic to dogs, and he would kill himself. And when they're like, but I just want to eat that instead of that, you know, and I'm like, well, what's going to happen to you? And what are you going to feel like after? And I really try to teach them the golden rule, which is very difficult for children of like you're making them feel like X. How would you feel if they did that to you? And that concept of turning kind of the table and putting yourself and the other person's shoes is very difficult for young children. And sometimes we actually do role play where I'll take the role of them and I'll have them act out on me just so they can sort of see what it's like if the roles are reversed. But it's a lot of self-awareness. I think it's really recognizing like if I have a feeling, if I have an urge, if I have a tendency to do something, like where's it coming from? Because I think a lot of people don't actually think like, where's this coming from?”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Very difficult, and I've written down a lot of life lessons. You may remember, I've always been someone that used to write lessons because I made a ton of mistakes and still do over my life. And I noticed that I remembered them better if I wrote them down. And then when I would see patterns of my own mistakes occurring multiple times, I would realize there was something that was a little bit more kind of deep-seated or pathological. And then I would regularly review my lessons. And so I've taken a handful of those lessons and I've put them into a format for them that they can absorb. And I try to keep it pretty simple, like the concept of animal brain versus thinking brain. And I'll say like, what would our dog do?”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Been trying to teach my children this, and I think it is one of the greatest life skills that anyone can have. And they don't teach you this in school, which is really a shame. You know, like they're teaching all these children STEM today and programming and mathematics, and they're not teaching them basic life skills like executive function and divert gratification and emotional management and emotional awareness. And I think it's a real shame because I think these are the greatest predictors of life success. much more so than like how good of a programmer you are.”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, very much. Very much. And look, with investing, that's a noble pursuit. With living like a life, it's much more difficult because most of the corporations are out there to make money. And they are preying upon our instinctual impulses. And I don't know if it's pure malice. It is definitely pure capitalism. But most people aren't educated. Most people don't have the willpower. Most people, they're focused on convenience. And so it's much easier to pick up that twinkie or pick up that Danish in that street like food cart. Make some food at home”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which is your limbic system and your thinking brain, which is your prefrontal cortex, which is like the rational thinking part of you. Your animal brain is way stronger than your thinking brain. And your animal brain says, I want sugar, I want salt, I want fat, I want immediate gratification. And your thinking brain is like, yeah, we shouldn't do that. But most people don't have the willpower to deal with that. And that's an evolutionary impulse that in 300 years ago served as well. But today is a totally maladaptive response. And that's the same thing with investing and why the best investors are able to pause that because they're resisting the impulse, which is what creates the negative alpha. And they're able to delay that gratification.”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we would go days and days without food. Our bodies register glucose, which is a necessary nutrient for our whole body to function. So sugar, we find things like honey and fruit. And when we would find it, by the way, and you see this with animals, we would binge. If we found like a source of fresh fruit, we would binge, like to the point of disgust. And you see this with animals when they find like a bunch of fruit. They'll just eat it all. Because then they'll go like a week with nothing. And we would also do this with salt and we would also do this with fat. Sugar, salt, and fat are three of the most important nutrients we can have as animals. And we evolved to crave these things. And now the processed food industry has figured this out over the last 50, 60 years and has made it abundant. And so we are our kind of animal brain. I use this with my kids because I have to describe to them their impulses. I keep it in layman's terms in terms of what I call the animal brain or the lizard brain.”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Makes perfect sense, and I can actually translate it into alpha for investing, which is, again, all of this is evolutionary. The reason why deferred gratification works is because the instinctual impulse is to get gratified now, right? And so the more investors do something, right? If everybody is flocking towards GameStop because it's running up, and that is our herd mentality, which feels good. It creates dopamine and it's triggering our reward systems. Alpha can't come when everyone's doing the same thing by definition, right? And so by doing things, it's not that being subjecting yourself to pain is good investing. It's that recognizing something that will pay off later but is very hard for people to do now is what's the source of alpha because the instinctual impulse is to do what feels good now. And it's the same thing with food. When we were hunter games,”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The last hundred years that we figured out how to do. And by the way, this works with muscle building too. Like they call it muscle confusion. So people, when you want to really put on good gains, you want to do activities that are very different, which is why they advocate for you to get real robust, usable strength. You should not be like a marathon runner. You should not be someone that just runs linearly on a treadmill for an hour a day. You should do CrossFit. Then you should do treadmill. Then you should do tennis. Then you should do pickleball. Then you should do pushups. You thrive as a human being with your diet when you mix it up, with your exercise when you mix it up. And so I just think confusion is the easiest thing for people to remember to keep it practical.”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hyman does, and there's like too much information today. But I like to come up with very simple practical things for people to remember. So one of the things that you have to remember is your body has evolved to thrive on what I call confusion. So you want to confuse your body as often as you can. And by confusion, I mean random stressors, right? And this also goes back to Nassim Taleb's concept of anti-fragile, right? which is your body does poorly when it has the same inputs every day the same way so some days you want to fast some days you want to feast some days you want to exercise three hours other days you want to take it off some days you want a sauna some days you want a cold shower some days you want to do both but it's the confusion that lets your body thrive because that's how we evolved we never evolved with homogeneity and consistency ever that's only something”
2023-04-23 · We Study Billionaires · RWH026: Wealth & Health w/ Jason Karp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT