The Authority Podcast — Expert Insights and Fresh Ideas for Education Leaders

Sahil Bloom

Ross Romano: [00:00:00] Welcome in everybody. You are listening to the Authority Podcast here on the Be Podcast Network. If you're a regular listener, thanks as always for being with us. If you're new to the show, really appreciate you being here. If you're finding it on any platform, you can also head to authoritypodcast.net to find it wherever you prefer. Without further ado, let's get into today's conversation. My guest is Sahil Bloom. He is an inspirational writer and content creator, captivating millions of people every week through his insights in his bi weekly newsletter, which is called the Curiosity Chronicle. He is a successful entrepreneur, owner of SRB Holdings and the managing partner of SRB Ventures, which is an early stage investment fund.

Sahil [00:01:00] graduated from Stanford University with an M. A. in Public Policy, B. A. in Economics and Sociology, was a four-year member of the Stanford baseball team, and he has a new book called The Five Types of Wealth, a transformative guide to design your dream life. That's what we're talking about today.

Sounds like a good topic, doesn't it? Let's get into it. So, hey, welcome to the show.

Sahil Bloom: Thank you for having me. I'm thrilled to be here.

Ross Romano: I wanted to start out by talking a lot about curiosity. I'm referenced the name of your newsletter. I think that's kind of the journey that you started on here that led to eventually realizing there was a book there, right? What is curiosity to you? And if I dare put these two questions together, I mean, what is it not?

I mean, what what do people think curiosity is that you might disagree with?

Sahil Bloom: Hmm, that's interesting. Yeah, my my entire journey, I would say, to this It was started by what is still in my bio on my [00:02:00] Twitter profile, which was where I started all the writing, which just says exploring my curiosity and sharing what I learned along the way. Curiosity is the willingness to explore.

It's the both ability and willingness to explore the world around you. It's something that's hardwired into our brains and into our biology. It's how we learn about the world around us. And so you have a young child, I do as well watching them. is a course in curiosity, the way that they actually look around, observe things, learn about them, learn what hurts, learn what's beneficial, learn what tastes good, learn what tastes bad all of those things are the natural human instinct towards curiosity.

Unfortunately, as you get older, that natural instinct starts to atrophy. And Wither. And we live in a world where in adulthood curiosity is generally frowned upon. The pursuit of kind of new, interesting things, going down new rabbit holes. People say, stay in your lane, [00:03:00] right? People are like, oh, just focus on your thing.

Don't worry about those other things out there. Don't pursue those curiosities. Part of that is like an evolutionary survival instinct, right? When you're young, it benefits you to be curious so that you can learn about the world and understand it. When you're older at least in the wild, it might have gotten you eaten by a lion if you got interested in, like, what was in that Brush over there making a sound and you got curious and you went over you might have gotten eaten So maybe there's a little bit of survival instinct there But in a world where a few of us have to worry about being eaten by a lion if we go explore some new thing the loss of curiosity over time is a very a very unfortunate thing Because curiosity is what keeps us young it's what allows us to learn and continue to grow over the course of our lives, and it's what allows us to answer some of the most challenging questions that we have to wrestle with, these universal questions that we all have about our lives.

Ross Romano: I love that part of your definition was included the word willingness. I think because [00:04:00] there needs to be a willingness to learn what you learn to to go where the information takes you. And as you reference maybe it's a factor of adulthood, maybe it's a societal thing.

It's certainly elements of this American society, although not exclusively, around anti curiosity, anti knowledge, anti intellectualism, that if we're seeking out information it might be exclusively to confirm what we think or to prove a point versus to say actually you know what I don't know that much about this or I don't understand why somebody else thinks something different.

Let me really try to learn about that and see what I find out. And I think there's something there about like the reader of the book which we'll get into and even the reader of your [00:05:00] newsletter, there's the audience is broad at this point, but. There's some self selection and there's some people out there that if we could reach them and kind of like how would you make the case that being curious about new ideas is objectively good, right?

That just having a disposition toward curiosity, toward trying to learn new things, trying to learn a diverse variety of things, right? And different disciplines, things that are outside of our natural experience. how would you best explain that To someone who may not believe that curiosity is necessarily a good thing or would serve them or that it's yeah, that it's has utility.

Sahil Bloom: I mean, fundamentally, curiosity is what allows you to improve. It's what allows you to grow. If your life is currently perfect, 10 out of 10, every single day, I don't think you need to be [00:06:00] particularly curious. You should just focus on maintaining your current state. But I don't know anyone in the world that would say that they're at a 10 out of 10 every single day.

And so there are always areas that you can improve, that you can learn more about, that you can question, that you can ask new questions to chip away at the assumptions you presently have that you can improve at the things you're currently doing. And that comes through curiosity. That comes through asking the questions about why you're doing it a certain way.

Maybe you could do it slightly differently. You know, it's like the idea of a you know, a professional athlete who constantly reinvents themselves. They're already at the top of their craft, they're already making a whole lot of money, but they're constantly thinking about ways that they can improve their game or that they can better leverage their unique skills as they get older and older.

Maybe they no longer have in tennis. Maybe they no longer have the powerful serve that they had when they were younger. Tiger Woods as a golfer is a great example. He no longer had the extraordinary power that he had when he was young, so he needed to adapt his game. He needed to be curious and ask questions about the ways that he could adapt certain facets of his [00:07:00] game to continue to improve over the long run, to continue to execute at a higher and higher level.

That is curiosity. That is how you do it. It's by asking those questions. It's by looking at the things that you otherwise wouldn't have looked at.

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Ross Romano: How did you start to become curious? I mean, has this been a lifelong thing? Is it something you intentionally committed to at a certain point?

Sahil Bloom: I would say it's to some extent hardwired in my DNA beyond. What is hardwired in normal persons? The reason I say that is because I think that the questioning and rejection of common convention is something that was passed down to me by my parents who made a very deliberate decision when they chose each other to question common convention.

My mom grew up, born and raised in Bangalore, India. She came over to the United States for college against her parents wishes and my father is a white Jewish guy from the Bronx, New York. The two of them had no business meeting or being together and they crossed over for a two week period at Princeton University, where my dad was finishing his [00:08:00] dissertation, and my mom was going to be doing her master's program.

She was working in the library to pay her way through was about to start school, and they had a two week window where they crossed over at that place. And they went on a date and they fell in love and when they wanted to get married, my dad's family did not accept it for a variety of reasons, told him that he had to choose between her or them, and he walked out the door and chose love, and that rejection of the cultural default setting of the common convention is something that was passed down to my sister and I through that daily decision that they made to choose love.

And 40 plus years later, they're still a role model for an incredible marriage that we both have to look at. But I feel like in many ways, I was raised in this world and in this household where that questioning, that curiosity was part of the DNA of our house. And I was encouraged to do that.

I was [00:09:00] encouraged to ask questions about things, to do things differently if I felt it didn't make sense. And not everyone has the joy of growing up in a house like that. So I do feel like I learned it from a young age because of the DNA of that household from what my parents original decision was.

Ross Romano: Yeah, I mean, that's a good origin for it, right? And I think certainly that having I don't have any data on this but I feel like I would be willing to wager that most people who had to learn how to make something work the hard way, whether it's a relationship or whatever have more Consistent more success sticking with it.

Because of having had to go through the friction, I talk a lot about like things that are friction less in conversations I have here on the show and things with marketing and stuff like that around. Okay. We're talking about the affirmative case for X. Let's make [00:10:00] sure we also introduce a little bit of.

either why that's challenging or easier said than done, or what the status quo of the alternative is, and like, not make this conversation too frictionless, because then it's just slippery. Like, it sounds good in the moment, and then it goes away. And you know, I also think that applies to what you were talking about to say, like, I had, like, If I had to investigate like what love really is, what does it mean to be in a committed relationship?

What does it mean to make our own decisions around our values versus just adhering to convention and doing what maybe is easy or has fewer headaches? Same thing with learning anything, right? Via curiosity that if you truly are curious, you're going to come against some ideas that make you uncomfortable that at first you're maybe even repulsed by, and then eventually you start to see, all right, I kind of understand this.

[00:11:00] Doesn't mean you necessarily come to agree or disagree, but you just have a much deeper understanding because of that friction that existed and appreciating the labor of having had to be accountable, I think, for your own exploration, your own decisions, saying, like, if I'm choosing this path.

It's my job to make sure it works. And I mean, you can tell me whether or not you recognize that your parents marriage specifically, but when people make a decision to say, this is our choice is what we decided, and nobody's going to make it work except for us.

Right. And if it doesn't work, it's because we didn't make it work. You know, it certainly relates to how I think about things in my own life as well. And,

Sahil Bloom: Yeah, there's a certain accountability that comes with it for sure. And I mean accountability and that ownership that you're referring to, that recognition that no one's coming to save you around these decisions that you're making. is at the center of everything that we're talking about. You're talking about building the life that you want.[00:12:00]

Ownership over that life is a foundational principle there. If you're not willing to take ownership, if you're not willing to assume control and assume that you have the power to take action that creates outcomes, that creates change, then you're not going to be making progress in any of these areas.

And frankly a pushback that anyone has against the entire like self help category of books or content is fundamentally that. It's this feeling of hopelessness. It's a feeling of powerlessness that this person is telling me that I can take an action and I can do this to change this. And I don't feel that I have that power to do that.

So you perceive it as snake oil, which look, I totally understand that. Self help as a category is not for everybody. If you don't feel like you have the power to create, to do something and to create a change in your life then it makes no sense to consume that type of content because you don't feel that you can actually take those actions to go and create that change.

I know that that's not true. You absolutely can and [00:13:00] there's tiny little proof points that you can create that will shift your mindset around that. But that is a that's a fundamental reality.

Ross Romano: Not to get too far field here, but it is making me think of something and you might have had similar experiences as we're both men, we're both around similar age that certainly I've experienced with a lot of my peers and friends, men in particular, right, that have that fear of commitment when it comes to marriage and things.

And the way I always say it to people is. It's because you think that when you go up to the altar, and you say, I do, that's the last time you're making that decision, I say it's the first time, and then you continue to make that decision every day afterwards, like, you think that whatever happens after that is just whatever happens to you, versus you saying, like, it's your job to make it a great decision, and make it a great marriage, and to continue committing to it, and part of that is, [00:14:00] Continuing to learn more about your spouse, more about yourself.

You know, when people say, oh, well, I'm worried that spouse is going to change. Well, yeah, I mean, I'm worried if they wouldn't. I'm worried if you wouldn't too, but you know, you should be learning more about yourself, more about that person, more about the people around you. When you have if you have kids, you learn a lot.

of things that you did not know. And a lot of things that you thought that were wrong, right? And if you are committed to that, the sky's the limit. If you just think, well, the job of my partner is to serve me and make me happy. And if I'm not happy, it's because of something that somebody else is doing, then, Yes, I think you'll be unhappy. That's a whole other thing.

Sahil Bloom: Said that between stimulus and response there's a space, and your power is in your ability to choose your response within that space. It's your ability to actually assume and recognize that space that does exist, and your ability to [00:15:00] influence the path there, the path forward that is so, so important.

And I mean, I often think, like, when I Encounter young people, or anyone for that matter, that is feeling lost in their journey, that's feeling, that feeling of powerlessness or hopelessness. What are the small ways that you can recognize and reassume your power? And the power is just simply the recognition that you can take an action and that it can create an outcome in your life.

And that you have the power over that outcome through something that you did. It's why I talk about health and physical health so much. It's why that's one of the types of wealth that I cover in the book, because the ability to influence an outcome is so direct. If you are overweight and you're not happy with your current place in life, you're feeling down, you're feeling depressed, and you wake up every single day for a month and go to the gym, even for like, 20 30 minutes, just for a month, do that, you will like, lose a couple notches on your belt and at the end of the month, you will feel like a completely different [00:16:00] human.

And that has ripple effects into every other area of life. You haven't actually changed your professional setting, you haven't changed your relationships, you haven't changed anything. What you have done is that you've re assumed the power in your life that you can take an action that creates an outcome in your world and that has ripple effects into all of those other areas.

Ross Romano: Yeah. So you've talked to a lot of people when you were working on writing this book, a lot of conversations, interviews, I think just hearing their experiences. What impresses you about somebody when you meet them?

Sahil Bloom: Ooh, I would say a clarity and self awareness about who they are and their both strengths and weaknesses as a human is the most impressive thing because self awareness is actually a very rare trait in humans. In a lot of ways it's one that has been squeezed out of us. You know, like we, we are sort of designed in some ways to protect our egos.

And so a lot of people will inflate themselves [00:17:00] because they don't want to admit their flaws. We protect the ego, protect the strength of that ego. And that gets you into trouble in a lot of ways in life when you're not self aware. And so the clarity and the ability to be vulnerable and self aware about deficiencies is rare and immediately impressive when you interact with someone, when you can tell that they've done the inner work, that they've had the introspection, that they've gone through those periods of wrestling with themselves to understand what they're great at and also to understand their deficiencies and what they need to work at or what they're going to avoid putting into conflict with things.

That is a fascinating trait to me and one that I would say I've observed in most of the highest performers in whatever field that I happen to have interacted with.

Ross Romano: Other than just the opposite of that, what disappoints you? I mean, without, I mean, maybe something specific comes to mind, but without necessarily giving, identifying information. I mean, when there's, somebody who from the outside, you're really interested to get to know, [00:18:00] and then there's certain things that you say, ah, man that's disappointing.

Sahil Bloom: I mean, I think there's nothing worse about someone than a person that speaks badly about other people. I think that says so much about a person's confidence in themself when they act that way. I think braggadocio, like people that feel the need to inflate themselves is a very telling sign about their own insecurities.

Typically you know, people who are crushing it in life very rarely feel the need to tell you that they are crushing it. They just don't because they are and you know it and they know it and it doesn't need to be said. Generally speaking, if someone brags about their wealth or income or success, you can assume that it's like half of what they're saying because the real people that are crushing it don't say it.

Those are definitely two that that jump out to me. You know, the last one I would say is just like, people that seem to believe that they are a static entity really disappoints me. Like, when someone uses phrases like, that's just the way I am, or you know, [00:19:00] that I was just born that way, or this is how it is.

Things like that really bother me. Not about the person, necessarily, but it makes me sad that they think that. Because in my experience, it's so untrue. We are so capable of change and growth and dynamism, that having that mindset and having that perspective around your own life, it's just, it's a sad thing to me.

Ross Romano: Yeah, that's reminding me of I guess curiosity in another form and one of the things that just in the professional world can be of great service or disappointing is the willingness of people to reward another's. willingness to go outside of their comfort zone, to be curious, to seek feedback.

I always think of a couple of experiences, but one in particular, very early in my career recently out of grad school, only had a little experience and I had interviewed for a job and I didn't get it. And I reached back out and asked if they'd be willing to share any feedback. And the CEO of the company was willing to get on the phone with me and talk through [00:20:00] it.

And gave me some great advice. And what you said that kind of reminded me of it was they had asked me about my previous experience and it was a really toxic culture and really bad. And I gave an honest answer and he said, you really want to avoid saying negative things about a previous employer, even if it's true.

And. I learned that and I remember it many, many years later. And, but I wouldn't have ever learned that if I didn't reach out to them and say, would you be willing to. Give me feedback on this interview and here, maybe here's some things that are going to hurt. Right. And if he hadn't been willing to give it and a lot of people will come up with all kinds of reasons not to do that.

But think about that. That was somebody I met one time however many years ago. And. That is still serving me all these years later and it's something I can pass along to others. So, I'll always appreciate that.

Sahil Bloom: Amen.

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Ross Romano: Let's talk about these five types of wealth. So, time, social, [00:21:00] mental, physical, financial, and you know, we won't get into detail about all of them, but if you'd like if you'd like to kind of summarize them and, but I'd also really be interested in. You know, your perspective on finding the balance and understanding how each of them, right, is optimized at different times of life. Each of them are kind of, how can we, I guess, in essence, attend to all five once we have an understanding that there are all these different types and it's not just financial.

Sahil Bloom: Yes, I'll walk through them and then we can chat through some of those bigger picture questions. So time wealth is all about who you spend your time with, how you spend it your control over that time, your awareness of the fleeting nature of your time. It's it's all of those things. Social wealth is about your connections to the people around you, both the breadth and the depth of those connections.

Mental wealth is about purpose, it's about growth, it's [00:22:00] about your curiosity, it's about creating that space between stimulus and response that you can actually think whether through spirituality, meditation, prayer, walking, whatever it is, it's creating space in your world. Physical wealth is all about your health and vitality.

It's controlling the controllables in order to build a healthy, vital life. And then financial wealth is what we know, it's money. But importantly in the context of this book, the way that I confront the problem around it is related to this idea of enough. What does enough and what does your enough life look like to you?

And managing the expectations around your life being a really important piece because expectations are your greatest financial liability. If your expectations are growing faster than your assets, you will never feel rich. You will never experience that feeling of contentment or joy or satisfaction.

So those are the five. The point and the whole thesis is that everyone has always told you that money can't buy you happiness, [00:23:00] but no one ever talks about what you should be thinking about accumulating and building instead. What are the things that matter? What are the things you should be measuring over the course of your life alongside money?

The book is not arguing that money doesn't matter. Very far from it, actually. Money does matter and it is an important thing in all of our lives, but it can't be the only thing. Because at the end of the day, your wealthy life may involve money, but it will be defined by everything else, all of these other types of wealth.

So finding your personal points of balance across the different seasons of your life is what the book is enabling you to do. It's what the framework and what the blueprints and the guides in the book are allowing you to do. I say seasons, which is a very, very important concept when it comes to this book.

Your life has seasons, periods of time. where you are going to be naturally prioritizing and focusing on one or two of the five types of wealth. You cannot hope to have all [00:24:00] five in perfect balance at the optimal level in every single season of your life. It's unrealistic. When you're in your twenties and early thirties, you may be in a financial wealth focused season.

You're trying to build a financial stable foundation for the rest of your life. That means you're going to be really focused on financial wealth. The point that the book is getting at is that you don't want to allow all of the other types of wealth to simply be turned off. To not think about them as you go through this season that is going to naturally be more focused on one.

You want them to all exist on a dimmer switch. So you want to be able to still do small investments in these other areas of your wealth while you may be focused on one. And what happens over the course of the different seasons is that main point of focus will change. If in your 20s and 30s you're focused on financial wealth building, it might be that in your 30s and 40s you have young children and you want to put the financial side sort of on autopilot and be in an okay, enough [00:25:00] position, but really focus on your social wealth, on your connection with your children, or on your mental wealth, on finding that purpose and growth in your life, maybe on your physical wealth, on making sure you stay with your health, whatever it is, It's defining what the priorities are during a specific season and then identifying the core high leverage ways to continue to maintain and foster those other areas of your life over the years.

Ross Romano: Yeah. Do you have any. I guess framework for lack of a better word, although it doesn't have to be that formal, but for following, like, how to prioritize when there is a direct conflict between a couple of them, and you know that you can really only prioritize one or the other at a given moment, and it could be for one day, right?

It doesn't need to be for an entire season of life, but to be able to make that. calculation and that decision about this is what I should [00:26:00] prioritize in this instance.

Sahil Bloom: Yeah, I mean, knowing, so the awareness around what your primary focus is the most important thing within any one season. What is your primary focus that you're trying to drive towards? Across the other areas, the important point is knowing what is the tiny action I can take today that compounds positively in that other area of my life?

Because What we think as ambitious people is that we need to do a whole lot in order to progress something. I think that in order to progress my health, I need to work out for an hour a day. Or I think that in order to progress my relationships, I need to say yes to every wedding, every event, every coffee chat, every date, all of those things.

The reality is far different. You can progress your relationships incredibly well by simply sending a text message to someone when you're thinking about them. Just saying, hey, I'm thinking about you. You can progress your health really well by just going for a 15 minute walk or a 30 minute walk on a daily basis.

So remembering that, remembering those tiny little actions that you can [00:27:00] take, even on those days when it's really hard, even on those days when you do need to be head down in the work doing the thing, is the important piece. I come into tension around this every single day. I'm in a season of my life where I'm really focusing on pushing out these ideas into the world, creating these positive ripples in the world with this book, with any of the content I'm creating.

That comes into conflict with my depth and my desire for a deep, connected relationship with my wife and son. I have a two, two and a half year old son. What that means to me is that I need to make sure that I do the very high leverage thing to be present with them. So that at the end of the day, when I go leave out of here, I need to make sure that I leave my phone, that I'm completely shut off, and that I'm entirely present with them.

Because I may only have 30 minutes or 60 minutes today when I can truly be present when I can give them my energy during that window. And if I allow these other things to bleed out into that, that's going to be zero. I'm not going to have been there and I'm not going to feel that connection. But the 30 to 60 minutes of truly present energy [00:28:00] is extremely powerful if I allow it to be.

So what would have been in conflict, what would have been in tension, I'm now taking and turning into an actual positive. I'm taking it and finding a high leverage way to continue to build that thing forward, despite being in a period of my life when I'm inherently sort of unbalanced with this one primary focus.

Ross Romano: The time wealth stands out to me as unique among them as it's the only one that's truly finite. Physical in some ways is finite, although you can improve your physical health, right? Time you, basically, you have a certain amount in your account when you start You don't even really know how much it is.

You're given an allowance every day and and eventually one day you don't get any more, right. You know, what are your recommendations and for how we should think about time and just understanding, like, like you just said in micro, right. How to say, okay, I have this much time today to do this thing that's important to me.

Let me [00:29:00] make sure I'm fully present. Overall, think about that and say, look, this is something that, I mean, you need to be attentive to because the second. You are not it slips away fast.

Sahil Bloom: Yeah, so I'll push back on one thing there, which is that time is entirely set in stone and fixed. And the reason I'll push back on it is for a slight nuance. You have a certain amount of time, yes, in a kind of linear chronological sense. The ancient Greeks had two words for time. They had chronos, which was the kind of chronological nature of time, and then they had kairos, which was the sort of qualitative nature of time.

The idea that certain moments have different texture. They have different meaning or import, and that is true for your life. You have a certain amount of chronological time, but you can bend the curve on the amount of time you actually have with the people you care about doing the things that you care about.

A perfect example from my life. My wife and I lived across the country on the West Coast. My parents and her parents lived on the East Coast. [00:30:00] There was a point in time where I saw my parents once a year. And the big change in my life came after a friend confronted me with the idea that I was seeing my parents once a year, they were mid 60s, and I was going to see them 15 more times before they died.

And it hit me like a ton of bricks. And we made a change. We decided to Sell our house and move back to the East Coast to live closer to our families, where we've ultimately had kids and built this whole life. I now see my parents at least once a week. And so I went from having 15 more times with my parents to hundreds.

And that is quite literally creating time with my parents, creating time with the people that you care about most. So out of thin air, you've literally just manufactured time to do the things you want, or be with the people you want. And that is through your action. You have power to actually take actions that change that kairos time.

It changes the amount of time you have doing the things you want, spending it with the [00:31:00] people that you want. And so that is a really important point that comes across in the book, loud and clear. It's, you have control over certain things as it relates to your actions. to time. You don't have control over when you die, you don't have control over the amount of chronological time you have, although you can do things to hopefully extend it a little bit longer, but you definitely do have time over how, do have control over how you are spending it with the people who you're spending it with, the things, the activities, the energy you're getting out of those things along the way.

Ross Romano: What has fatherhood taught you about time?

Sahil Bloom: Oof. I would say the most powerful lesson I've learned is that there are specific windows of time. Much shorter than we care to admit, during which certain people occupy our lives. And if you blink, those moments will disappear, and you will never get them back. And I'm smack dab in the middle of one of the most important ones of those, which is that window of time that you get with your children.

You know, I think the [00:32:00] statistic is that you've spent like 90, 95 percent of the time you're going to spend with your children by the time they're 18 and they leave your house, and the bulk of that, Even more impactful time comes before the age of 10 when you are truly the most important person in their world.

And if you blink, if you spend that entire time hustling, chasing whatever, more, whatever goal, whatever ambition It's going to be gone, and your kid is never going to be 5 years old again, 7 years old again, 10 years old again. And you're never going to occupy that same place in their world. And so, it's one of the things I share most about on social media and my newsletter, in the book.

It's just this idea that the days are long, but the years are short. And we really need to find ourself and connect with ourselves during those days so that we don't allow those years to pass us by.

Ross Romano: Yeah. Yeah. I have that I have to, I mean, I don't, I haven't learned the answer to this yet [00:33:00] whatsoever. But when and how to determine when there's times that the other types of, well, or the other ways. you know, that you provide or and are a good parent to your child, when to prioritize them versus spending time, because I never want to do anything else other than spend time with my son.

However, if all we ever did was spend time together. then you know, it would be hard to make an income and do other things. And not everybody has a different experience of it. But I certainly have found that it's like, okay, how do you wait? And there's no perfect way to do it.

And there's no right answer, like the different ways that you bring value to someone's life. Right.

Sahil Bloom: yeah, I mean, I think that the important piece with parenthood in particular, that at least the way I've wrestled with it is it is very important for your children to see you working [00:34:00] hard on things that you care about. And that thing you care about is dynamic, right? I, it is very important for me for my son to see my wife and I working hard on our relationship.

You know, for us navigating challenges of life, having hard conversations loving each other, supporting each other. It's very important to me that my son sees that. It's very important to me that my son sees me doing hard things on a daily basis. pushing my body, challenging my mind, doing those kind of hard things and experiencing delayed gratification from them.

It's very important to me that my son sees me working hard on the work that I care about and understands why I care about it, why it is meaningful, what it does for our family, what it does for the world, hopefully. Those lessons are necessary for him to live a great life. I learned those lessons from my father from observing him.

They weren't taught to me. I learned them from seeing him and seeing how he engaged with the world. So when I work or when I have to travel, especially as my son gets older, I [00:35:00] want him to understand why. And that is really where I'm gonna center my effort is making sure he understands why I'm doing the things I'm doing when I'm not with him.

Because if they understand the why, then they fill the kind of void with that why. If they don't understand why, then you're just gone. And they fill it with whatever the worst version is. Oh, my dad doesn't love me, or my dad's not around a whole lot. If they understand the why, they fill the gap with that why.

They understand that you're gone because you're working on X, or that you're gone because you care about providing for the family, or you're gone because of whatever that thing might be. That why is really the essential point there.

Ross Romano: Yeah. So in working on this book, you talk to a lot of 80, 90 year olds about their lives and about their reflections on what they learned about life. Is there anything that in particular really has continued to stand out and resonate? I'm sure there's plenty of things, but anything that sort of is standing out above the rest?

Sahil Bloom: Yeah, there's a lot. I mean, I they kind of [00:36:00] fall into different areas. You know, as it relates to This one 80 year old man told me to treat your body like a house that you're gonna have to live in for the next 70 years. That was the advice that he would have given to his younger self because he hadn't done that and had really experienced the pain of it later in life.

I love that analogy of the house, the idea that your body is your house, and so treat it that way. You have to make the investments, you have to make the minor repairs along the way because otherwise your house is not going to be in good shape when you're 70, 80, 90 years old. One older man Gave me the advice to tell your partner you love them every single day because someday they'll be gone and you won't be able to that obviously a very emotional point but.

A really important one, and a reminder on a more micro level to just tell your people that you care about them along the way. You know, one of the things that comes out in the book a lot is these tiny things that you can do every single day. You don't need to take extraordinary actions, you don't need to change the world every single day with all of [00:37:00] your you know, growth in all of these different areas.

You just need to do the little things. The tiny little, like, one minute thing, the two minutes of journaling in the evening can dramatically improve your mental health. The 15 minute walk after lunch can really improve your your physical health. You know, being slightly more aware of your energy can really improve your time and how you think about it.

These little interventions can actually create a lot of value in your life if you let them.

Ross Romano: Yeah, so somewhat of a pivot to, to a point on mental wealth, but you know, our primary listenership here and leadership roles in education. So I certainly think that there's a lot here for them to take in but I'm interested in What's the most compelling thing you've learned about learning?

You know, all these various, I think, models, frameworks, and things. Is there one that you've really come back to time and again and really found that really powerful?

Sahil Bloom: I would say the Feynman technique is probably the [00:38:00] most powerful learning method I've come across. It's Richard Feynman, the American theoretical physicist who had a reputation that his real genius was in his ability to convey complex topics using simple words. And the important point with this is that you, if you can't distill something down to its basics in simple form, you don't understand it well enough yet.

And so the idea with the Feynman technique is that when you're learning something, you quickly try to teach it to someone else. And you'll know very quickly if you teach it to an uninitiated person, someone that doesn't understand the concept, where your knowledge on it has gaps. So if I go try to explain a new concept framework to my wife, who doesn't understand that concept.

I'll see in her face or in her questions where I wasn't explaining it clearly, where I was using jargon, where I was trying to you know, glaze over things, where I need to go deeper. And that gives you the information now to go and study more, to go dig deeper into those areas so that you can distill it and simplify it [00:39:00] down for other people.

I have just found time and time again. That is the most powerful way to learn. It's just like, very quickly, default to teaching it. I lear when I learn something new, one of the first things I try to do is explain it to someone. Like, hey, I learned this cool new thing, let me talk to you about it.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The person looks confused on some part, and I'm like, oh, yeah, I didn't understand that that well. Let me go learn more about it. And then I come back and try to iterate on it that way. I think that is is a really, really powerful one that a lot of young people can use.

Ross Romano: What's something you've learned in this book writing process, right, your research, your conversation that you didn't expect?

Sahil Bloom: Ooh, the power of feedback for creating motivation and this is sort of a macro point on the book writing process, but when you are doing almost anything professionally, whether it's creating content like writing and newsletters you know, social media, whatever, or if it's like an actual job, teaching, whatever you're getting immediate feedback from people.

And that feedback creates motivation to keep working and to do the thing. So you're getting you're seeing the kid learning. If you're a [00:40:00] teacher, you're seeing the kid learning, you're seeing how they interact with it. And so you're getting feedback, you're getting information back that's encouraging you to continue working at your craft.

When you're in the book writing process, you get none. You are writing alone for three years before anyone's going to have seen this book. I mean, I've been working on this since 2022. It's going to be 2025 when the book comes out. That makes it very challenging to daily motivate yourself to continue working on a thing when you're not getting that feedback and that dopamine from the feedback to keep you pushing forward.

That is a really interesting challenge that needs to be solved when you're going through one of these long term projects that is necessarily happening in the dark.

Ross Romano: What's something that you have changed your mind about

Sahil Bloom: During the book writing process or in general?

Ross Romano: in the process of learning lots of things?

Sahil Bloom: You can't teach your kids anything. I Before my son was born had this like a long list of things I was gonna teach him And I was gonna sit down and I was gonna be like this is important and this things matter and these things And I've come to believe that you really can't [00:41:00] teach your kids anything The best you can do is embody the things that you want them to learn and then they need to figure it out for themselves

Ross Romano: What should I have asked you that I didn't?

Sahil Bloom: I like that change your mind question. I would have said that actually but you asked it.

Ross Romano: Now you can tell other people that. This is a great question that you never asked me. Awesome. Well, it's been wonderful to have you on the show. Listeners, the book is called The Five Types of Wealth, A Transformative Guide to Design Your Dream Life. You want to tell our listeners all the places they can find you, where can they find the book, how to connect?

Sahil Bloom: yeah, you can buy the book on Amazon or anywhere else books are sold. And you can also find it at the5typesofwealth. com. And then my name is Sawhill Bloom. You can find me anywhere on any of the major platforms. Having a weird name. One of the benefits is it's pretty easy to find me.

Ross Romano: Yeah I I've always certainly thought that my name was quite unorthodox and I learned that there's a, some politician in [00:42:00] Canada that has the same name.

Sahil Bloom: That's funny.

Ross Romano: I unusually have to use my middle initial sometimes for accounts and things, which I'm like, really? Who has this name? But anyhow yes.

You know, we'll put all the links below everyone to the social channels, the newsletter and the book, make it really easy for you. Check all of it out. It's really great to have this biweekly newsletter. If you're not totally sure, do I want the book or not read that? And if you think that's good you know, you probably will want the book.

And I'll certainly say for myself it's definitely worth checking out. It's something that I've. I've been reading for the past few years and and I do think that I honestly probably tuned some of it out for a while because I think there was a proliferation of not necessarily directly, but copycat ish type of content around.

And at a certain point, I think a lot of people [00:43:00] decided they were going to write. So then they had to figure out something to write about. And I think it led to a lot of stuff that wasn't necessarily exploring ideas in a lot of detail or was just oversimplifying things. But there truly is so much to learn here.

So many. interesting lessons, frameworks stories passed down over generations, just a lot of interesting ways to think about things. So check all of that out. And then if you enjoy it, check out the book as well, or check out the book today. But Sahil, thanks so much for being here.

Sahil Bloom: Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.