🔥Hot Take: Society celebrates people who are wildly successful in one thing, but the most satisfied people are *multi-dimensional*.

👉This means they strive for success in multiple unrelated pursuits.

Elon Musk has said...

👇
...that being obsessed with your work is the only way to change the world but it’s a tormented existence, not a path to happiness. You see this all the time in the business world. Some of the most “successful” people are unhappy and frankly, uninteresting🥱

A quick story:
Not long ago, I had an unexpected (and awkward) chat with a high profile billionaire - let’s call him Greg. Greg has it all: Private jets, pro sports teams, & connections to society’s elites. I knew that Greg, like me, was a climber 🧗‍♂️ so that was the topic.
As climbers tend to do, we sized each other up by humblebragging about our adventures. As we chatted, I had an epiphany: Climbing - and similar pursuits, athletic or otherwise - are the great equalizer.

🏔 To put it bluntly: The mountains don’t give a 💩 who you are.
🏔’s are indifferent to wealth, status, and even twitter follower count 😱. Money can buy the best equipment but it can’t buy a summit - everyone, rich or poor, has to earn it the same way.

I couldn’t resist asking Greg, “Do you like that the mountains don’t care who you are?”
I was hoping for a glimpse of vulnerability - was climbing was an escape from Greg’s billionaire lifestyle or part of it? He didn’t take the bait & I got the sense that to Greg, climbing was just a summit photo, another trophy on the wall. He was missing the point, which is...
👉We all *need* that thing that strips us of our identity. Something outside of our career, where money isn’t the currency.

Something pointless and pure, that we do simply because we love it.
For me it’s rock climbing. For you it could be fishing, Fortnite, guitar, or whatever turns you on. These pursuits keeps us grounded, provide a refuge from the daily grind, and most importantly, expose us to a different community beyond our echo chamber.
It also provides a regular reminder that *some of life’s best experiences cost nothing*.

These pursuits make us multi-dimensional so that our identity & happiness isn’t based on one thing.

This is especially important when the chips are down in one area of life.
We all have bad days at work & personal problems, but the worst day spent [INSERT YOUR PURSUIT] is still pretty good!

To be clear, I’m not talking about a hobby. I don’t like that word because it implies secondary importance, something you dabble in when you have free time.
I’m talking about a passion that competes for time with top priorities like work & family. Paradoxically this conflict tends to result in *more* balance & productivity due to a synergistic effect. This is esp true in creative work, where inspiration comes from unexpected places.
Here’s the sad thing:

Most people *aren’t* multi-dimensional. For 15 years, in every interview, I’ve asked candidates, ‘What do you like to do when you’re not working?’. To my dismay, about 70% struggle to answer, usually reverting to some version of ‘spend time with family’.
Wrong answer. Yes, we all love our families. Some of us enjoy our work. But is that all there is to you?

Conversely, the best candidates begin their answer with, ‘Where do I start?’.
I say “best candidates” because my observation has been that multi-dimensional people perform better and more importantly are *a hell of a lot more fun to be around*.

Are you multi-dimensional? If not, this might be something to medicate upon.
MEDITATE, not medicate. @jack, can we please get an edit button?

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More from @Camp4

31 Jan
I can’t stop thinking about it.

Robinhood’s CEO whiffed on what may have been the *biggest PR opportunity in business history*. He could have become a legend overnight, creating the Tesla of financial services by playing a different game.

Here’s how he should have handled it 👇
1) He should have taken a page from @stoolpresidente’s book and approached this with an “us vs. the suits” attitude, but toned down about 30%.

He should have live streamed constant updates to twitter & WSB, creating a sense that we’re in this together.
2) The first rule of crisis communications is to be brutally honest and provide all the details. Vlad should have taken this to the extreme.

For example, the *instant* RH realized that they were approaching capital or regulatory limits, he should have communicated like this:
Read 9 tweets
27 Jan
Sometimes when I’m not on Twitter I do real work. Lately I’ve been helping a bank in Hawaii transform into a modern, digital-first bank w/ the ultimate goal of taking the mainland by storm (& expanding our market 300X 📈).

Here's the inside story of our journey so far.

👇👇👇 Image
First a quick background.

Central Pacific Bank has one of the *best origin stories* I’ve ever heard:

CPB was founded in 1954 by a group of WWII veterans. The idea was to serve local families & businesses who had been ignored by the banking establishment. Image
Just imagine being Japanese and living in HI after Pearl Harbor.

When the time came to raise capital, local bankers laughed at the idea. But local investors poured in, with many purchasing just $100 worth of stock. Within a week the bank was capitalized.
Read 24 tweets
13 Jan
🐹 Stepping off the Hamster Wheel, Part 2

After my thread on re-thinking success I got a bunch of DM’s asking what I'd do differently next time.

Here’s a simple 3-step framework that I'd recommend to the younger me for building true wealth, which I define as... 👇
... 1) having predictable income to support a great lifestyle *plus* 2) control over your time.

✅ STEP 1: “The plan is nothing, planning is everything.” – Dwight Eisenhower
Your goal is financial nirvana, where the things you own generate income that is greater than your living expenses. This gives you financial certainty control over your time.
Read 25 tweets
5 Jan
🤔 Thread: More of the wrong thing is less
(or, how I stepped off the hamster wheel)

I’m going to share a personal story with hope that it inspires at least one person to re-examine their definition of success 👇
Through hard work and an unfair share of luck, I’ve done some cool “bucket list” things in my career:

✅Raised VC from the worlds’ top firms
✅Helped build 100’s of millions in revenue from nothing
✅Rang the bell at the NYSE
✅Met & did deals with billionaires & business icons
These are things I dreamed about when I was young and I treasure some of the memories. But when they finally happened I felt surprisingly unfulfilled. I was scoring lots of points but didn’t feel like I was winning.
Read 18 tweets
22 Dec 20
🤔 “There is no secret to success - there are only strategies.” @drgurner

In my recent thread on home ownership I mentioned the importance of living in a “City on the Rise”. I believe it’s a critical first step toward prosperity for people of all ages.

Here's why 👇
I’ll start with a simple analogy. If you’ve ever been a runner or cyclist then you know that headwinds are the bane of your existence. Even a light headwind makes everything feel so much harder. It’s physically exhausting and mentally demoralizing.
But with a tailwind at your back, everything changes. Progress feels effortless. Your spirits are lifted. You feel like an Olympian!

Locating in a City on the Rise (COTR) is like choosing to live with a tailwind behind you. Everything is easier & there’s a compounding effect.
Read 17 tweets
20 Dec 20
📸Sunday Startup Snapshot: @NinesRadiology

I often refer to myself half-jokingly as a Master of the Obvious. I say *half* jokingly because I do believe there’s value in curation, the ability to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Time will tell if I have that skill in angel investing, but I occasionally stumble into a startup whose idea is obviously the way of the future (whether the company can execute is another matter). Nines is such a company 👇
Nines does cloud-based radiology. It may not sound sexy but it’s a complete no-brainer business. The number of medical scans being captured is growing much faster than the number of working radiologists, so technology is the *only* way to close the gap.
Read 8 tweets

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