You want to be the Louis Vuitton of happiness. You want your happiness to be very expensive—that it takes a very, very big event, even bigger than all your NFTs getting stolen, for something to take it away. So, you have to decide the price of your happiness.

By the time January 1st rolls around, I don't have, like, unstarted adventures that I need to decide on ... If it was December 14th, and I was like, I really need to lose weight, I would start December 14th ... Inspiration is perishable; it expires. Inspiration's like an avocado; you want to strike while the avocado is still green. So, that's that's the first reason I don't do resolutions.

I think we live in a culture where you are supposed to be, sort of, like, ashamed of being happy in a way. It's a bigger status signal to be vulnerable about how depressed you are than open about how happy you are. You're obnoxious if you're happy and a vulnerable hero if you're sad.

Pretend we took all the money that existed, and we redistributed it out. Everybody got the same, let's say, $100,000 to start with. 10 years later, I think that most of the rich people would be rich again, because wealth-building is a skill, and it can be learned.

Things change. So, everything you see that you accept as normal, whether it's this computer that's on my desk... They used to not have laptops; there was one computer in a computer room ... It's very easy, when you look around the world, to just sort of accept that things are the way they are, and that's it ... You don't realize that, actually, things are changing all the time.

Interviews suck because interviews are like first dates. It's just two people looking at each other in the face and lying to each other. You're both trying to pretend you're perfect ... In reality, we both know that that's not true; you're two imperfect people trying to make a match.

If you want to get paid more, the way to do it in a startup is to win more market share; the way to do it in a big company... In reality, it is the internal perception that's going to matter way more than the external results.

Here's a mistake that I've noticed a lot of people make when it comes to business: They make big plans. And big plans aren't bad; they're just like a sneaky form of procrastination.

I think that everybody is using their imagination everyday, but you just don't recognize it, because when you're a kid, your imagination is about fun and possibilities and magical fantasy lands, and when you're an adult, your imagination is actually manifest as stress.

Validating an idea is really, really hard. I actually don't think you're ever going to get this clear signal ... It's just like a spectrum; you're just increasing your confidence level that there's a real there there, but you're never at 100% until many, many months in—too far in.

Naval Ravikant says it best. He says, 'You want to find the thing that feels like play to you and work to others.'

And because you enjoy doing it, you'll keep doing it. You can do it for a long period of time, even if you're not getting immediate results ... It's the things you're willing to do even without immediate results that lead to these big wins in the end.

My goal is not to... have a billion dollars. I want to have billionaire lifestyle. A billionaire lifestyle has a bunch of time.

The last option is a master, and a master hits a plateau, and it greets him like an old friend. A master says, 'Ah, Mr. Plateau. I thought I'd be seeing you soon.' Because a master knows that plateaus are inevitable; they're a part of the growth process. Why would you stress over the inevitable? That's like stressing out every time the sun goes down each day.

I think one of the biggest skills today for any business person is to correctly identify a vocal majority versus a vocal minority. If you just constantly let the vocal minority sway you're thinking, you're letting the bottom 1 or 2% of people sway your decision making just because they're very loud about it.

[Warren Buffet] goes, the best rule of this entire game in the stock market is that you don't have to play ... You really just have to sit and wait for the fat pitch ... You don't have to swing.

Work on something where you know you're the customer. Because if you're the customer for it, I guarantee you, on internet scale, that there are at least another hundred-thousand people that are just like you that have the same problem as you that feel the same way you do.

Instead of making a list, which is like a text format, I use the brain the way the brain actually works ... A brain is a more visual system ... When I think about what I want to do—my tasks, my goals, stuff like that—I don't make lists; I make scenes, like scenes in a movie.

People are like, 'Hey, you do a lot of public speaking. What's a tip to get better?' And this is what I always say: I say, don't think about what you need to say; first, start by imagining the reaction at the end.

The newsletter business, The Milk Road, was like, well, I'm just super curious about crypto; why don't I just follow my curiosity? If I want to be learning about the stuff, let me just make a business the byproduct of me being curious. That kind of became my mindset—let the business be the byproduct of the factory.

Your net worth, it's not a figment of your imagination, but it's sort of like a figment of your ego or a figment of your perceived sense of safety ... In reality, the stock market could go down, the crypto market could go down, it doesn't actually change my day-to-day lifestyle or comfort based on where I'm at.

Talk to customers, and the rule is don't make the mistake everybody does—don't pitch your product, and just wait for them to politely be like, 'Yeah, sounds really interesting. Let me know.' Because that's a false positive. You're only allowed to talk to them about their problem.

So, what's the difference between a reaction and a response. A reaction is what you do sort of right away; it's an impulsive thing ... Our response is what happens when we pause for a second, and we choose how we're going to respond. A reaction is typically not something you're choosing; a response is something you're choosing.

A confident person is confident as a byproduct of being adventurous. Let me tell you what I mean. Over time, I figured out that all I needed to do was focus on being adventurous—putting myself in new unfamiliar situations and going for it.

We are constantly imagining negative scenarios happening. This is very common in adults. And how do you feel when you imagine these things? You feel anxious, you feel stressed, you feel depressed. These are all code words for the same thing: fear, and fear only takes place in the imagination.

Sending voice notes in iMessage. I went from I've never sent a voice note, and I was like, why is this feature even here? ... I have gone all-in on voice notes. It's basically how I run my business. Now, I'm just sending voice notes all day to my team.

The Shaun Ellis question is you survey all your users, and you say 'If you could no longer use this product, would you feel not disappointed, somewhat disappointed, or very disappointed?' He says, if 40% of people say very disappointed, bang—you've got product-market fit.

The more adventurous you become, the more bulletproof you realize you are.... and the byproduct of that is confidence.

When you're in a small company, you're fighting the market, and when you're in a big company, you're basically competing against each other.

Everybody knows what stress is like when there's, like, a big hairy problem or something really big looming, but those aren't the real killers; the real killers are the silent, persistent stresses—the things you just live with day in and day out. They just eat at you. They become apart of you.

Any time you hear the word 'program' or 'committee,' just run the other way ... That's for things that are mature. And so, if you're working on an early idea, you don't really want to be baking up full programs just yet.

Most things in life, even if you're far off in your outcome, you're actually just only a small shift in your approach away, because that's what changes your trajectory.

There's two stories anytime something happens: There's the story that'll make you feel bad, and there's the story that'll make you feel good ... You gotta decide, which story am I going to roll with? Am I going to roll with the version of this that makes me feel really bad, or am I going to roll with the version of this that makes me feel good?

Marc Andreessen has a quote—something like, 'Product-market fit is like having sex; if you don't know if you have it, you're not having it.' Something like that; I love that one.

What are my anti-goals? I can often think about what I want, but sometimes it's very useful to think about what I don't want.

I've learned that the the best-performing teams are filled with people who are amazing in at least one area. So, you're hiring for an extreme strength, not a lack of weakness.

What you don't want to overlook is what I call a mobile minority. So, a mobile minority is a group of people who decide to actually take their business and walk elsewhere, or they take their lifestyle and they just change it.

I'm somebody, historically, who's very bad at waiting. I am a very impulsive, impatient person. It serves you well as an entrepreneur ... As an investor, impatience and impulsiveness is a terrible trait.

One of the best ways to figure out if someone's actually wealthy or not is by the real estate holdings that they own ... If someone has bought a $20 million home, the likelihood that they're worth $100 million plus is incredibly high. It's hard to bullshit that.