April 25, 2021

LifeMathMoney talks about Friendship, Critical Thinking, College with CA & Much More | Born to Grow Podcast with Pooja Sharma

Check out on The Born to Grow Podcast Youtube Channel

Key Takeaways

• “Everybody will have to learn about crypto” Harsh Strongman
• If you feel that your English is not good, that’s the number one thing you should work on
  • “No matter how smart you are, if you speak broken English people tend to assume you’re an idiot” Harsh Strongman
• Losing weight is easier than you’d think
• Don’t let “Great” be the enemy of “Good”
  • Even if you can’t meditate for 15 minutes today, you can still meditate for 5 minutes
• Use your willpower wisely
  • Make healthy behaviors habits
    • You don’t need to use your limited willpower to do them every day
  • Design your environment to not require willpower
  • “The fight to be healthy and fit is not in the kitchen, it is in the grocery store” Harsh Strongman
• Your family doesn’t want you to be successful
  • They will guide you to safe and predictable paths
  • To become successful you need to take a lot of risks
• “If something is true and you get offended by it, the problem is you” Harsh Strongman

Key Books Mentioned

• On entrepreneurship
  • Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow
  • The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss
• Other books
  • Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
  • Gorilla Mindset by Mike Cernovich is a good book on self-development
  • The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene
• On philosophy
  • Striking Thoughts by Bruce Lee
  • Chanakya Neeti and Arthashastra (more on politics) by Acharya Chanakya
• Currently Harsh is reading Mastering Ethereum

Intro

• Harsh Strongman (@LifeMathMoney) is a financial consultant and writer on self-improvement, personal finance, health, and social skills. He is also the creator of the 90 Day Self-Improvement Program Live Intentionally: Discipline, Mindset, Direction
  • Check out Harsh’s website and his online course The Art of Twitter: Build a Business That Makes You $100/Day
• Host: Pooja Sharma (@ipoojasharma)
• In this chat Harsh and Pooja cover a wide variety of topics around self-improvement and business, from crypto and education to willpower and entrepreneurship, and much more

Why Learn about Crypto

• “Everybody will have to learn about crypto” Harsh Strongman
  • The sooner you learn about it the more you can gain out of it
• The key to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is that they are decentralized
  • They are not controlled by a central authority
  • It can’t be endlessly printed as it happens with fiat currencies
    • In many ways, crypto is more sound than the US dollar
• Harsh launched a free course called Teach Yourself Crypto

Improving Your Presentation and Communication Skills

• A lot of people in India would benefit immensely from taking an English speaking course
• “No matter how smart you are, if you speak broken English people tend to assume you’re an idiot” Harsh Strongman
• If you feel that your English is not good, that’s the number one thing you should work on
  • Improving your English speaking skills has an extremely high Return on Investment (ROI)
    • It will make you look smarter and more sophisticated
    • It increases the chances of getting jobs paid in foreign currencies
• Best ways to improve your English
  • Listen to podcasts
  • Read more books, particularly novels
  • Practice speaking English with other people
    • No matter how much you read or listen to English, your pronunciation won’t improve unless you practice speaking
• Speaking slowly and making pauses at the right time gives a sense of confidence

How to Lose Weight

• With COVID and lockdowns, more people are becoming obese
  • Paradoxically, obese people are also more vulnerable to COVID
• “The easiest way to improve your life, or at least the way you feel, is to lose weight” Harsh Strongman
• Losing weight is easier than you’d think
  • Most people struggle with harsh diets that they can’t maintain
  • Then reward themselves, making up for all the progress they made
• What to do if you want to lose weight
  • Skip breakfast
  • Stop eating sugar and vegetable oils
  • Increase your protein intake

Resolutions , Not Seeking Perfection and Willpower

• You’re not going to change your life in one day
• Resolutions create the expectation of perfection (e.g. I will eat healthy from today)
  • If you break it once, you lose the motivation to maintain it
  • It creates a vicious cycle
    • Once you can’t be perfect, you lose all your discipline
• Don’t let “Great” be the enemy of “Good”
  • Even if you can’t eat the perfect diet today, you can still avoid eating that last dessert
  • Even if you can’t meditate for 15 minutes today, you can still meditate for 5 minutes
• Willpower is limited, use it wisely
  • If you use up your willpower for every little task, you’ll quickly be exhausted
  • It’s best to use your willpower to complete the hardest tasks in your day
• How to preserve your willpower
  • Make healthy behaviors habits
    • You don’t need to use your limited willpower to do them every day
  • Design your environment to not require willpower
    • Do not buy tempting cookies and desserts
    • “The fight to be healthy and fit is not in the kitchen, it is in the grocery store” Harsh Strongman

Friendship and Business Partnerships

• Harsh defines a friend as someone he can trust and rely on, even in times of crisis
  • Trustworthiness and integrity are key
    • People’s integrity doesn’t change based on who they are dealing with
    • If you know a person cheated on other people in the past, it’s only a matter of time before they cheat on you
• Friendships based on business relationships tend to be stronger
  • Working with someone you get to know them more deeply
  • You tend to have similar goals
• Starting a company with someone is like getting married
  • It’s essential that you have known the person for a long time and that you can trust them
  • Even better if you worked together and your skills are complementary
• You become like the people you surround yourself with
  • If you’re ambitious and a high-achiever, you should pick friends who inspire you
  • Stay away from people with unhealthy habits
    • Eventually, they’ll influence you too
• For most relationships, you need a reason to stay around people
  • In school, proximity is usually the reason
    • Once you lose proximity, if you have no reason to maintain the friendship, it will usually weaken
• Aristotle’s three types of friendship
  • Friendship of utility
    • Gym buddies, classmates, colleagues
    • You help each other in some specific domain
  • Friendship of pleasure
    • People you like to have fun with
    • Not the friends you discuss serious matters with
  • Friendship of the good (the highest form of friendship)
    • Friends who love you for who you are
    • High trust

Your Family Doesn’t Want you to be Successful

• If you always listen to your family, it’s unlikely that you’ll become successful
• Family members usually don’t want you to take any risk
  • They will guide you to safe and predictable paths
  • A stable job stifles your potential and your dreams
• To become successful you need to take a lot of risks
• Listen to your family’s advice seriously, but discern whether they’re just trying to be protective

Owning a (Scalable) Business vs Self-Employment

• When you own a business, you make money when you sleep
  • You can outsource the tasks that need to be done
  • You can sell your business if you want to
• If you are self-employed, you’re selling yourself
  • A doctor is self-employed
    • He needs to be there and do the work
    • Even if he owns his own clinic, he can’t sell it, because it’s attached to his personal reputation
• Having employees or not doesn’t make a difference
  • There’s software that allows you to automate so many tasks
  • You can outsource work to freelancers
• When starting a business think about scalability
  • “You want to start a business with no glass ceiling” Harsh Strongman
  • When you’re starting a non-scalable business you’re thinking small
  • Technology makes scaling so more easily and cheaper than it was in the past

Should You Bootstrap or Look for Funding?

• It depends on what kind of business you’re looking to start
• It’s getting cheaper and cheaper to start a business
  • You can host a website for $3 a month
• Funding is not the issue, it is that people don’t try
  • Lack of funding is often an excuse for not trying
• Start with what you have
  • Even if you can’t start the business of your dreams today because you don’t have the money, you can surely start an internet-based business

Starting an Online Business

• Observe what businesses other people started online, and learn from them
• Learn copywriting, it is one of the most important skills to have as online entrepreneurs
• Build an audience on social media
• You don’t have to quit your job to start an online business
  • You can find gaps in your day to work on it
    • Most people waste a lot of time at work
    • That extra time can be used to start your business
  • Harsh doesn’t recommend quitting your job until your business has replaced your income

Harsh’s Book Recommendations

• On entrepreneurship
  • Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow
  • The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss
• Other books
  • Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
  • Gorilla Mindset by Mike Cernovich is a good book on self-development
  • The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene
• On philosophy
  • Striking Thoughts by Bruce Lee
  • Chanakya Neeti and Arthashastra (more on politics) by Acharya Chanakya
• Currently Harsh is reading Mastering Ethereum
• Harsh is reluctant to recommend books that are too difficult
  • The internet and social media has been decreasing our attention span significantly 

Is College Worth It?

• The education system is set to go at the pace of the least capable kids
  • The consequence is that the most capable kids aren’t pushed or intellectually challenged
• Homeschooling would allow kids to pursue their own interests and go at their own pace
• Most of the value of going to college today is
  • Building a network
  • Improving your communication skills
• Most of those things can also be done outside of college, and in a shorter time frame
• College doesn’t teach marketable skills that can be applied in the world
  • A recent statistic says that over 80% of engineers in India are unemployable
• Perverse incentives created by college
  • People who earned a college degree will be reluctant to accept many jobs and will prefer to sit at home
• Most people don’t know of any alternatives to going to college
  • India should develop a more entrepreneurial culture

Ancient Wisdom and Uncomfortable Truths

• A lot of practical knowledge is stored in old books and scriptures
• People think that new is better
  • But wisdom is eternal
• Acharya Chanakya’s philosophy can be very eye-opening for many people
  • It is politically incorrect and some people may feel offended by reading him
  • “If something is true and you get offended by it, the problem is you” Harsh Strongman

Thought on COVID, Lockdowns and Real Estate

• Harsh is more concerned about COVID’s impact on the economy than on his own health
  • As a young, healthy guy he isn’t afraid of the virus
  • Continuing to lock people down, in the long term can create social instability
    • Many people lost their job and have no chance to find a new one right now
• Why investing in real estate doesn’t make sense now
  • Most people can’t afford to buy a house in the city
  • The need for owning a house in the city is decreasing
    • Mobility is much more valued today
  • It is possible that we will see a rise in property taxes, as governments need to raise money
    • Property is the easiest thing to tax
• Partial and weekend lockdowns don’t make sense
  • The same number of people go out in a smaller window of time
    • It increases the chance of contact
  • It looks like a way for governments to feel like they are doing something
  • Most of these lockdowns aren’t working in any country, yet they’re still blindly implemented
• Some reports showed that the numbers of cases have been inflated in the US
  • While it is likely that India is underreporting cases to make the situation appear less severe
• How Harsh made his lockdown more productive
  • He bought gym equipment to exercise at home
  • He has been studying, working on his businesses and launched his new crypto course

Additional Notes

• The education system often discourages questioning what is being taught
  • This leads to children not having critical thinking skills
  • There’s an important difference between encouraging critical thinking and simply straw-manning arguments
    • Straw-manning doesn’t address the point of the original argument
    • When people start their counterargument with “so you are saying that”, they are often distorting your ideas
  • Harsh recommends “The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin” to develop critical thinking and debate skills
• Harsh wants to learn Sanskrit to be able to read the original Ramayana instead of its translations
  • Much depth and meaning are lost in translation
• If you want to find the truth, post your hypothesis on the internet, someone will correct you
• Taking L-theanine with coffee will reduce the jitters and anxiety that some people feel with coffee
  • L-theanine is a natural amino acid found in green tea

Born to Grow with Pooja Sharma : business, entrepreneurship, self-improvement
Notes By Giorgio Parlato