Excelling in Venture Capital & Embracing Self-Love with Kamal Ravikant – EP 163

Interview with Kamal Ravikant

Excelling in Venture Capital & Embracing Self-Love with Kamal Ravikant

Featured on This Episode: Kamal Ravikant

✅ What he does: Kamal Ravikant is a serial tech entrepreneur and Managing Partner at Evolve VC, an early stage Silicon Valley Venture Capital fund. He is the author of the bestselling books, Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On it, Rebirth, and Live Your Truth.

He is a sought-after public speaker, television, and podcast guest, often appearing as an expert on the topics of entrepreneurship, investing, creativity, being your best self, and, of course, loving yourself.

💬 Words of wisdom: “America is very unique in that. You don’t get punished by the system for failing. You get punished for not trying.” – Kamal Ravikant

🔎 Where to find Kamal Ravikant: Facebook | X | Instagram

Key Takeaways with Kamal Ravikant

• Training with a Navy Seal
• What’s your unfair advantage?
• You can’t be a generalist and make a fortune
• Become so good they can’t ignore you
• The risks of not taking a shot
• The power of commitment amidst despair
• When rejection fuels greatness
• Your mind runs the show – take good care of it
• The biggest mistake angel investors make
• Insights from Naval
• Ego is your enemy
• Kamal’s recipe for success and fulfillment
• Advice for 20-somethings
• The kind of founders Kamal loves to invest in

How To Be Wealthy In 5 Years or Less | Kamal Ravikant

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Kamal Ravikant Tweetables

“I'm a very big believer in the power of personal commitment. If you want to build confidence in yourself, make commitments to yourself and keep them. You will walk differently. You will be a different person internally.” - @kamalravikant Share on X “The better your inside gets, the better your outside gets.” - @kamalravikant Share on X

Resources

• VC
• Kamal Ravikant
• Kamal Ravikant on Facebook | X | Instagram
• Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It by Kamal Ravikant
• Tim Larkin
• Steve Sanders
• Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis
• Hal Elrod
• HarperOne
• The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
• Larry Page
• One Way Ventures
• Semyon Dukach
• James Altucher
• Ernest Hemingway
• HarperOne
• Mike Maples, Jr.
• Jeff Bezos
• Amazon
• Sergey Brin
• Mark Zuckerberg
• Facebook
• Elon Musk
• Tesla
• Naval Ravikant
• AngelList
• HarperCollins

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Read the Full Transcript with Kamal Ravikant

Justin Donald: What’s up, Kamal? So good to have you on the show.

 

Kamal Ravikant: Thanks, man. It’s good to be here. It’s been a while.

 

Justin Donald: Yeah. We’ve been talking about this for a little while, and I’m glad that we’re finally connecting off-air. You know, we just had a fun conversation about the worlds that we have, and we share a lot of mutual friends and probably more than we even realize. But we are chatting offline here about how fun it would be to have you come here for a month and you’ve got an incredible network and just get extended time with friends and family and this amazing entrepreneurial and technological epicenter here in Austin.

 

Kamal Ravikant: Yeah. It’s actually really funny because I was thinking, you know, we were talking, I was like I probably had more close friends in Austin than anywhere else. And I should, literally, just pack up the car and the dog and just drive out, get an Airbnb for a month, I rent a place for a month or so, and just like hang out with everybody. I think it’d be a lot of fun. And I think you and I both basically convinced me before the podcast. I’m going to do it next year.

 

Justin Donald: I love it. 2024, it’s the year of doing some cool stuff, that’s for sure. Well, I’m excited for you to be joining us and spending some extended time here. There’s probably a ton that we can dive into and potentially even a lot of stuff that we could even partner up on, which would be fun. But at a minimum, just getting a chance to hang. I love sharing networks. You know, when people come into town and there are certain people I want to meet, that’s my favorite thing, is playing professional matchmaker. Someone tells me about their business and I immediately know, “Hey, you’ve got to meet this person.” I love doing that and I’m sure that there’ll be some fireworks there.

 

Kamal Ravikant: No, that’s actually a very valuable thing you offer there. You know, especially when you have someone connecting and there’s no like ask or anything like that. There’s no handout for the vig kind of thing. It’s an old term I think someone taught me once and it’s just like, I love these connections. So, looking forward to it.

 

Justin Donald: Yeah. Well, talking about the vig, you live in Vegas and I’ve got to imagine for some people that’s a tough place to live, but you don’t gamble, which probably is very helpful. You don’t party so that’s probably really helpful. How did you end up in Vegas?

 

Kamal Ravikant: I mean, look, honestly, like I think this was in 2015-2016, I was like I’ve been in San Francisco, I’ve been tech for a long time, and I’d built my career there. It was the same conversation. And I just realized I wanted to just go away somewhere very, very different and actually, just have a different conversation. The writer in me is always interested in people’s human journeys. And so, I decided to make Vegas like a part-time hub so I can like have a place here and just like travel around and go to places and have a place to, you know, Vegas is a very easy place to live. And I don’t live near the Strip. It’s actually when you live here, you go to the Strip only when people visit. You take them there. It’s a very, very different life. It’s a very different life than people imagined. And also, I like the proximity to California because I can go as a family. Any time I can hop in my car, go see my mom, go see my brother, my nephews, my niece, and so forth. So, I did. I really liked it but to be honest, when I first got here, especially when I did full-time, I hated it. I was living in this condo overlooking Circus Circus. And when you go out at night, it was literally like, “Oh my God, there’s zombies here.” There was literally zombies like if you can think of the homeless problem and think of a town where the homeless people would really get destroyed when they fall, you see that in Vegas. And it was really sad. And I was like, “What am I doing here? I should be living by the beach in California. Screw this.”

 

And then I started training. I called a buddy of mine. I do these things once in a while. I was like, I woke up one morning, I thought, “You know what? I want to be John Wick.” So, I’m going to set up my own personal John Wick training program, so I call a buddy of mine, Tim Larkin. You should know him, great guy. And he introduced me to this guy named Steve Sanders, who’s a former SEAL Team Six operator, like, very highly decorated. The stuff he’s done is just legendary, very no-nonsense, very humble. And he ended up taking me on as a one-on-one student in combat shooting. And I just started training with him full time and I just fell in love with it, like I fell in love with it. It’s like I realized what I did was I basically found a modern-day samurai who had come back from the wars and hung up his sword and now took on a student once in a while and trained from that experience. And it was like really transformative for me. And I’ve gone through a lot with some health stuff that I basically died in the hospital and brought back and lost couple years of my life, a lot of pain, and I lost a lot of myself in just being in that severe pain. And this training, this way of applying myself at a standard to someone I so respect, who held me to such a high standard really helped me come to life. Of all the things, I never expected that.

 

So, I realized I can’t have this kind of life like, you know, this is only going to happen to red state. It’s not going to happen in a bIue state just because he’s going to a desert to run a gun and do all this stuff. And so, then I started to really just creating a life here that I can’t have a life that let’s say if I had decided to move back to California. And so, I’m living kind of like the American dream. I’m shooting guns, driving fast cars, just that kind of life but I don’t even play like a 5-spin slot machine because as I was telling you earlier, I understood enough math to know who’s got the advantage. And I’m a big believer in any money games, I will not be in that money game unless I have an unfair advantage. I don’t gamble. And I love that mindset and I will refuse to even think like, “Oh, it’s fun, whatever.” No. I want to stick with that mindset. I’m not a club guy, whatever, but you have some of the best restaurants in the world. I can do this kind of training. So, I really have enjoyed it and life here is actually quite easy. It’s a pretty simple easy life. I like it. And also, I have meetings. I just hop on a plane, go to California, or everywhere you want to go, there’s usually a direct flight from Vegas. Anywhere domestically you want to go, there’s a direct flight. It makes it very convenient. Yeah, makes it very convenient to travel. So, I’ve been surprised how much I’ve enjoyed it here. And what really did it was that training that started for me. Yeah.

 

Justin Donald: And you’re cutting down the learning curve really quick. You’re going deep on something. You’re getting to go from novice to experienced, you know, maybe expert in time, but you’re well on that way and you’re going to get there a lot faster. And then just even your mindset that you just had about, “Hey, I’m not putting money into something unless I have an unfair advantage.” I mean, what a great mindset that’s really going to serve you long-term. I absolutely love that.

 

Kamal Ravikant: Well, thanks. It’s actually something I’ve learned. It’s like that’s why I don’t really do much in the public markets because there’s way too many quants, way too much computing power in Wall Street, way too much money. We’re playing that game and I’m just a small fish in that pond and they’re just smacking me around. They decide the rules. They decide the prices. They decide all that, let’s just be honest, right?

 

Justin Donald: Yeah. You’re never going to beat a quant unless you’re a super quant, which most of us are not. And most of these quants aren’t even like real people anymore. They’re algorithms. They’re AI-based. I mean, they can operate at the speed of light. They can make decisions. They can make ten investments before you can click a button to make one investment and probably even 100 times. I mean, just these micro trades. You know, Michael Lewis wrote about it in his book, Flash Boys, like to me, how do you make money? I mean, like long-term, that’s one thing. You can have your money in the stock market and over a long period of time, you can get the appreciation of the U.S. economy and whatnot, especially as you’re using indexes. But to beat something that is as efficient as anything out there, it’s just not going to happen. The reason that alternative investments are where I spend the vast majority of my time is because they’re inefficient. I got started in mobile home parks because it’s inefficient.

 

Kamal Ravikant: Yeah. That’s where you make money.

 

Justin Donald: That’s right.

 

Kamal Ravikant: That’s the way the money is made. That’s literally once a market becomes efficient, the easy money is gone like the massive multiples are gone. That was the gain. That was the whole point of crypto. You know, by the time your grandmother’s buying bitcoin, the appreciation, those appreciations are gone. A lot of people get scared by this but what they don’t realize is like that classic high risk, high reward is applicable but you can lower your risk by having the unfair advantage. The unfair advantage can come in knowledge, can come in like connections, can come in experience but you’ve got to have – if you’re doing any money game, you’ve got to work on your unfair advantage. Everyone I know who’s done really, really well in different spaces of life has had their thing. This is their thing, this is their advantage. That’s what they’re better at, know better at than the majority of people out there and they just go in. You know, that’s the trick. It’s a very simple trick. You can’t be a generalist and make a fortune.

 

Justin Donald: Yeah. That specialization, that niching down, finding that niche market, yeah, I mean that’s where it’s at and finding where it’s underserved, finding where it’s inefficient. You got to do a little work or it’s even recognizing the trend. You know, I talk about this in my book of finding invisible deals. It’s like, what’s the trend that’s going to happen that hasn’t happened yet? How do you get on the front side of that trend? How can you be an early adopter of a trend that ends up becoming mainstream and no longer just a trend?

 

Kamal Ravikant: That’s actually where the fortunes are made, at least in my world, in the tech world, Silicon Valley tech world.

 

Justin Donald: That’s right.

 

Kamal Ravikant: Yeah.

 

Justin Donald: And we’re going to dive into this for sure because I want to hear about your tech life. I want to hear, I mean, so back story, I first learned about you from my dear friend, Hal Elrod. Good friend of yours as well.

 

Kamal Ravikant: Love Hal. Love Hal.

 

Justin Donald: He’s the most amazing guy. And what’s really fun is we bought a home. We bought a country house next to him so we’re actually neighbors now, which is a blast. But one of the things he told me goes, “First of all, you’ve got to read this book.” And so, I didn’t know about your book. I didn’t know about you. And he’s like, “Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It.” And he goes, “And Kamal is like he is exactly who you think he is. Like, he shows up, the way he is in the book, that’s the way he is in real life. And he’s someone that you need to meet.” And so, I thought, “Okay, cool.” And so, I read your book a number of years ago probably close to when it came out. I’d have to check back to when it actually came out, but I bet it was not too far after it came out, and thought it was incredible. It’s just really well done. And I would love to dissect that a little bit but I’d also love to talk about your life prior to and what led to that book and then your life afterwards and where you are today.

 

Kamal Ravikant: Sure. I mean, that’s pretty encompassing. So, I’ll try to make it brief and hopefully some lessons in there, like practical lessons from people. My career is like, look, I’ve had like a very kind of like crazy, there’s no simple path. I was in the US Army, I was an infantry soldier, kind of like backpacked around the world in my 20s with no money living in Europe, but $3 a day, like sleeping in wheat fields and ruined castles. We’re climbing ruined castles, sleeping in them, and churches, whoever would take me in. Literally, my budget I remember was about $3 a day. That would get me enough like a piece of bread, a big piece of bread, cheese, some apples, and maybe possibly sometimes a bottle of wine and that’s it. I’ve done stuff like that and then I got into writing and I fell in love with the craft of writing. And I knew I had stories to tell. But I also learned that I was a very sh*tty writer like most people who start out are, and how what it takes. And Hemingway was a model for me and just obsessively studied him for like over a decade and then wrote, rewrote, taking classes, going to Stanford, doing all these like classes, like workshops until like every place I went, I was the best writer there. Because I was writing and sending stuff with publishers and collecting rejection letters and I was always like, “You know what? This is too a part of me. One day they’re going to chase me.”

 

And it took time but I got there and it’s a very good feeling. But man, when you get those rejection letters, you go through those, you know, basically, you get depressed. It’s like it’s interesting being an artist, like creating art and depending on other people’s opinions of your art. Looking back, I wish I hadn’t done that. I just would have taken the craft opinion of where I could be better, but not their judgment. Because all the great artists, like all the great writers, so many of them if you read their rejection letters it’s so comical, right?

 

Justin Donald: Right.

 

Kamal Ravikant: But the one benefit that did give me was it just gave me a stronger resolve to be a better and better and better writer until so no one would ever question my quality of writing. They could maybe question the story and say, “Oh, this is not the right story,” but they will never say like, “Wow. No, you’re not good enough. Your writing needs to improve.” And that’s actually a very important lesson. Sorry?

 

Justin Donald: That’s a minority. Like, the minority of people, that’s not the mindset. The mindset like if you get beat down, most people just give up and cave in and they say, “You’re right.” So, your mindset that you’re a small percentage that says, “Okay. This just fuels me even more and forces me to get better at my craft. And at some point, you’re going to chase me down like Penguin Random House did.” But that is not a common mindset. That is an atypical, uncommon mindset.

 

Kamal Ravikant: You know, yeah, it was HarperCollins, actually. And I love them. They’re a great publisher, HarperOne. Funny enough, HarperOne also published one of my favorite books of all time, The Alchemist.

 

Justin Donald: Love that book.

 

Kamal Ravikant: And it was great to know that one of my all-time favorite books was published by my publisher. Right? But you know what it was? It was I look back at that young guy who was consistently like when I was working in tech, but at night was like deconstructing Hemingway and the weekends was taking classes and writing. Everyone was out partying. He’s working on like, “Kamal is writing again. Kamal is writing.” You know, it’s like, “Why are you wasting your time and all that?” But there was something I think it was because I knew I had stories to tell. And then I owed it to the stories to tell them the best way I could. So, it wasn’t like I haven’t had that attitude about everything. You know, I will drop things on a dime. It’s like I haven’t been that disciplined in everything, but it’s like when you find your thing, that’s when you know that you will not quit. It’s like it’s your thing. Like, you’ll do it until the day you die. So, I think that’s what it was. And we all have our vigs. So, that was my thing and I’m very lucky that I found it. And I’m very lucky that I kept at it. I’m glad I got those rejection letters because it made me go out and become such a better writer. You know, the letter of rejections do do that. You know, you work your way up the belts. That’s kind of like what I was.

 

Justin Donald: That’s great.

 

Kamal Ravikant: Yeah. I’m very, very grateful for that.

 

Justin Donald: And for those that don’t know, why did you want to write this book? And what’s the general thesis of the book from your perspective, you as the author?

 

Kamal Ravikant: You know, that’s a great question. Honestly, I never set out to write a self-help book. I am not a self-help person. I appreciate it but I’m not the big self-help guy. I’m very practical. I’m very like my background is in building startups, right? So, I moved to Silicon Valley in my late 90s, got involved in the dot-com boom. Find another passion because I like a lot of things. I like to do a lot of things. And when you’re a very early-stage startup or you’re starting one, you learn to do everything. So, you’re never bored and it’s always a challenge. It’s nothing but a series of challenges you’re always solving. You’re getting your ass kicked and getting up, you solving, getting ass kicked, you get up to solving. That’s all it is. Like, to go from 0 to 10,000 revenue is one thing, right? And then from 10,000 to 100,000 thing is another series of challenges. You know, we’re getting asked if 100,000, a million is a whole different set of challenges. A million, 10 million, 100 million, billion, whatever. You know, like to entrepreneurs, I see, people don’t realize it’s not like a linear thing. It’s like a whole different level of challenges he’s stepping up to. And I think it’s a great way to grow. It’s a great way also to get your ass beaten, feel sh*tty about yourself at times too, but that’s part of growth.

 

Justin Donald: For sure. People who are not entrepreneurs or haven’t built a big business may not realize it might sound like, well, once you figure it out, you’re good, right? No, because in business, the exact protocol, the exact model, the exact SOPs that got you to one level is going to actually make you fail at the next level. So, the next level of scale, the thing that got you there is the thing that’s going to hold you back from the next level. It’s such a crazy phenomenon, but you’re always retooling. You’re retooling your own skills, but you have to retool the business and you have to retool who’s in the business with you.

 

Kamal Ravikant: Yeah, I just realized something as an analogy and I don’t have kids, but for having watched friends of mine and the time I was a kid, it’s like it’s the same as having kids. The strategies you use for a two-year-old is not the strategy you’re going to use when that two-year-old is 15 years old.

 

Justin Donald: That’s right.

 

Kamal Ravikant: They’re challenging you nonstop. You have to step up and grow. Entrepreneurship is that as well. And it’s a great journey. I highly recommend it. You know, it’s what makes America special. It really is. The American dream is the dream of entrepreneurship. You can come here and actually, you can make it. You know, when you make it, I mean, you have immigrants, people who came here. Look at Larry and Sergey, you know, some of the richest guys in the world, they control some of the information of the world, right? Immigrants. And like if you’re in Europe, one of the reasons why venture capital in Europe is not so advanced, at least in tech, is that in certain countries, if you fail, you’re punished. You’re never going to raise money again. Here in tech and like in Silicon Valley, if you fail, if you did it right, if you’re doing the right thing so you’re a good entrepreneur, we will come back and back you right away. We’re like, we want to profit from your lessons. You know, like we want to back you. And America is very unique in that. You don’t get punished by the system, when I say the system, I mean the government, I mean like the capitalist society system, for failing. You get punished for not trying.

 

Justin Donald: That’s right.

 

Kamal Ravikant: I mean, like I love backing repeat entrepreneurs. I don’t care what happened in the past, how they go, because eventually they hit it. And that’s something that makes our country very, very special. I don’t think a lot of people pay enough attention to. And we really need to create more entrepreneurship-friendly regulations rather than the other way because you’re suffocating the American dream. You’re suffocating what’s made this country so successful, so unique. And that’s a very short history in the world, right?

 

Justin Donald: And even to your point of immigrant founders, there’s a fund called One Way Ventures that I absolutely love. Semyon Dukach runs it who’s a brilliant guy from MIT. You know, if you saw the movie, 21, like this one of the guys in those movies and behind some of the Vegas, you know, just being able to take Vegas for millions, right? And so, his whole thesis is immigrant founders and investing in them as a niche asset class. So, I love that. And I have found that, I mean, there’s just a world of immigrant founders. I feel like for many of us that have been born here in the U.S., don’t know what it’s like to live true third world. Like, sometimes we’ll go vacation and we’ll go vacation to the nice areas. But people that actually live in tougher economic times, tougher seasons, tougher places geographically, when they have the opportunity to come here and to start companies or even from their home country, it’s incredible to see the work ethic that is displayed and the success that these immigrant founders are having.

 

Kamal Ravikant: Yeah. Yeah, that’s a very interesting thesis. That was a very interesting thesis. Hmm, I wonder how that friend does. Okay. But that’s a whole different conversation. Yeah, but I’m just like a big fan of the American dream. I think it’s such a unique experiment in human history. And it’s changed the world. It’s transformed the world in such a short period of time if you look at just how long we’ve been around. I’m a huge fan. Yeah. So, I was doing startups, moved out to Silicon Valley to do startups, and then building companies, start big part of companies, building companies. And then one company I built that I founded and I made the mistake of I put all of my money I had saved over the previous decade into it and self-funded it. That was doing great. I finally took some money and the whole thing blew up and I lost everything. And not only I lose everything. I was literally, making like paying off my employees with my credit card. I was like when I say I lost everything, I’m like later living off credit cards, you know? And it was not a fun time. And also, this was like the problem was a lot of my ego was tied up in that. My self-worth, everything was tied up in that. I’ve been working at it nonstop for two and a half years. I think the last half year I started taking Sundays off.

 

You know, it was an obsession. There’s a lot of ego tied into it. I had to pull it off. In some ways, I felt I had to prove myself to my peers or whatever. I have a level of success that they had and so forth. And that passive failure, I kind of collapsed like mentally, emotionally, physically. And I just remember I was really down. And one night, I was sick, I was down, I was just miserable, and I was just like, “I cannot stay in this head.” I cannot stay anymore. I was just sick of my own head. I was sick of being stuck in my damn own head. And the only solution is, well, you go jump off the Bay Bridge. That’s how you get out of your head or you just get out or you just change everything. And I remember that night, I was so sick of it. I walked to my desk in my bedroom and I had a journal and I just sat on a journal and I wrote a vow to myself. And I’m a very big believer in the power of personal commitment. If you want to build confidence in yourself, make commitments to yourself and keep them. You will walk differently. You will be a different person internally, which in turn have people treat you differently, especially in small to big and then when you make a vow. You know, that’s why they call it a marriage vow, right? It’s pretty serious.

 

So, really like if you make a vow to yourself, that’s about as serious as it gets because it’s just between you and life and God or whatever you believe in, right? I sat down and I wrote a vow to myself. But I was going to write a vow that I was going to get out of it, I was going to be better, but what came out in that moment, what came deep within me was a vow, and it’s much more poetic and better. I have it in the book. It came out, basically, but in a nutshell that I was going to love myself. And I sat back and I had written it so hard, I think I wrote almost like carved into the wooden desk. You know, like you could see like lines in the desk. Like, it came from like a deep, powerful place, but also like desperation. And I remember sitting back and saying, “What did I just write?” Like, I know nothing about loving myself. I was not the love yourself guy. And for a guy who went out and later I wrote a book about it, I didn’t go reading any books about it because I think my problem with a lot of modern self-help is that it’s very pedantic. It’s very fluffy. It’s not practical. I come from a world of practical, what works. You’re an entrepreneur, you’re building things, write me a spec of what works. You know, give me a – it’s got to be what works. It can’t be like, “Oh, you should love yourself. This is how you feel. Good, blah, blah, blah.” No, give me the step by step by step. That’s all I care about.

 

So, having no guidebook on that but in all honesty, I didn’t look. But from what I’ve seen before or I read before, there was no guidebook. I then just sat around and try to figure out myself and, you know, I was broke. I had no job. My company was dead. I had some time on my hands. I was feeling really sh*tty. And so, I just started working on the one thing I could, which was in my head. That is the one thing I could work on. I just started running like loops in my head, started thinking things, feeling things, making myself thinking things, making myself feel things, looking myself in the mirror, and doing things. And the only thing was, because I made that vow, I had to keep it. Otherwise, I was literally breaking my own vow to myself, which I was breaking the most sacred act to myself. And so, I couldn’t lie to myself about that. So, I did. And I just kept at it. And I noticed that I did certain things and my mind got better. And so, I went further down the rabbit hole. And if it didn’t get better down there, I threw it out. I didn’t care. It was only like a clinical trial, the sample size of one. And to me, the only sample size that matters is you. Does it work for you? That’s the only thing that matters when you work on the inner stuff.

 

Justin Donald: That’s great. That’s so good.

 

Kamal Ravikant: And what this ended up being was like a process I came up with it and just purely internal process. And it was very simple, very easy and there was no bubble baths, no like chanting. No, nothing. Like, it was just inner work. And I shifted everything in my mind and my mind became like a really beautiful place to be. And it was all from a place of loving myself, making myself feel it, experience it. And then I remember a co-founder of that company who had burned out and reached out to me and I replaced him, you know, I’d continue, and I was the only one. Well, I burnt out, but I continued on because I was the one funding it. And he reached out to me and he’s going through a really hard time. I was like, “Oh, dude, don’t worry. I figured it out.” So, I quickly wrote up a thing for him, like exactly what I’d done. I sent it to him. He comes back in a week and he was like, “Oh my God, I’ve been doing it. I feel like I’m starting to feel really good about myself, like life is…” It was the interesting thing I noticed. It’s like when my insight changed, life started to shift around me through no effort on my own. You know, I was like, “Okay, this is interesting.” This is like I started to use the word ‘magic’ to describe it because I felt like life was becoming magical where things would just work. That’s the only way I can describe it.

 

And how will you believe the whole show is, that’s up to you. Like, I have my own theories on it. But in the end, like I said, I just care about what works, right? And so, he reported that back and then so I shared it with a few other people. They report that back. And so, I got basically convinced to write it down. And I was terrified of writing it because I was like, “Look, I’m going to be such a laughing stock if I write it down and publish it and I put it out there because look here, I failed in Silicon Valley. Like, no one’s ever going to invest in me, but I’m okay now because I learned to love myself.” I mean, this is like way back. We’re talking like I wrote, this is the original version I wrote like 2011, right? Like, people weren’t talking about this stuff. But I got convinced to do it and what finally made me do it is because I gave my word to a friend of mine, James Altucher, that I would do it. If he liked it, I would write it. If he liked it, I would publish it, self-publish it. And he liked it. So, I have to keep my commitment to him. I did this purely from because of commitments I made. If I hadn’t made those commitments, that book would never exist, honestly. In fact, that practice, what I came up would never exist. That is the power of commitment. It really is. They take you way beyond, way beyond what you committed about. But you won’t know what that road is, what that path is until you’re on it.

 

Justin Donald: Yeah. And maybe having friends being insistent upon you doing it or swearing by the effects that it had.

Kamal Ravikant: Well, that even then, I still want to publish this. Dude, I was really scared, I was going to be a laughingstock in Silicon Valley. But what it was, it was the commitment I made. And so, I wrote it. Now, here’s the interesting thing. For a decade, I’ve been working to teach myself the craft of fiction writing. I was going to write the great American novel. I was going to be like the next Hemingway.

 

But what that done was, it had taught me how to write simple and true. And then my experience of writing building companies and building startups was how to be very practical. And so, I wrote that book with the craft of writing, I already knew, so anyone could read it and absorb it, and I could do layers with the layers with the layers of the stuff would just come in your subconscious. I knew how to do that, but I was going to do that in fiction, right? So, I did that in a book. But yet, the practical side of me literally wrote like, okay, this is what the whole thing is, like just follow this, do this in your mind, and here you go.

 

And I self-published it on Amazon. I think it was 2011, 2012, 2011, I think. And then I just hid, I was terrified I was going to be a laughingstock, I thought. But I just was like, okay, I’m going to buy eight copies, give them out to friends. Whenever someone needs help, I’ll give them that. And so, I don’t have to keep explaining the damn thing over and over again, right?

 

And within a month, I think it went viral. People were like, it was all over Facebook. Facebook was really big then, like, in the sense, it was used a lot more by everyone you knew, even everywhere Facebook, people are posting it, whatever, because it was written from a non-self-help guy in a very practical way who was sharing up himself. And it just hit a nerve, like it took off within a month, it was done number one self-help book on Amazon.

 

I don’t mean like how people say, Amazon best, I mean, it’s like book’s self-help number one, right? And it’s like no marketing, no nothing. We talked about this. I’m not a marketer. I’m a tech guy or a writer. And it kind of put me on the map as a writer. So, all those rejection letters that I got over the years and now just doing this one thing that I put out to help at worst and to keep commitment, all of a sudden, I was getting– because I didn’t expect to sell any copies, right? I put my email there. So, like, hey, if you want to read this, email me. And you know what? I have a lot of emails slotted. And it was like this changed my life, this saved my life, and blah, blah, blah, these questions. And it was incredible.

 

And that book went on to just sell incredibly well for years and years. That’s when the publishers and agents started chasing me and wanting to just set it up and put it out there. But the book for me was so true and special that I almost turned them down, like, no, there’s something like lightning in a bottle created here. I will not sell it to you just for money because, honestly, self-publishing, you make more than you do actually with traditional publishing.

 

Justin Donald: Right. That’s right.

 

Kamal Ravikant: So, it started paying my bills. It helped me actually build back up. That little book paid my rent in San Francisco. And San Francisco was not a cheap place to live and like paid my living expenses, so then I could actually rent and have to go out to get a J-O-B. I sat down, I thought, “What do I want to do?” And then I built my next career, which is trying to be fantastic. That allowed me, that gave me the space to pay my bills, and no declared bankruptcy. I paid everything off, personal debts off, or whatever. But that book, and again, the prior commitment, look what it did for me, it allowed me to do my next career which is doing venture capital which I’m doing very well in it and I very much enjoy it.

 

But again, those series of commitments, I never would have thought doing the battle of loving myself but lead to that career because the VCs are like, I never thought I’d be a VC, I didn’t think I had the skill set. It turns out, actually, if you’re an entrepreneur, I mean, those are the better VCs in my book because you know what it’s like to be in the trenches. Those are the ones I respect.

 

So, this book for so long did so well. And then eventually, with all those emails, I mean, God knows how many emails I got, so many from all the stuff come from all over the world. They’re like, “Look, can you publish in this language, that language? I’m trying to translate for my mom,” like all this stuff. A lot of those, “Okay, I wanted my mom to read it, but she only speaks this language.” And then I started to notice there were a lot of questions in there. And I realized because the original version I’ve done is shorter to the point, but I had left a lot of personal stuff out of that I knew. I was actually kind of scared of sharing, but in this course, I was like, “Sh*t, if I had just shared all of that, very honestly, it would answer all these questions.”

 

So, then I sat down to write, rewrite it, and I kept the original version as part one, but then I wrote down. I’m going to write the definitive manual for loving yourself, including like what someone’s done, it’ll have seeped into them and then know exactly how to do it, how to apply it. I’d spent a year working on it, like a year just obsessed, writing, rewriting, and did the expanded version. HarperOne bought it. And they were very, very wonderful about it. And then it’s gone on.

 

Now, I don’t have to worry about those emails about I want to translate for my mom because it’s out in like all these different languages all over the world and I get the same email. Now, I don’t get curses anymore because I literally made sure every question I’ve ever gotten, I didn’t answer as a Q&A, but I made sure that it was answered. Like, there was no unresolved points, like this was it. And it’s been an amazing journey, man.

 

And here’s the interesting thing, here’s a very interesting lesson. I was so scared of sharing of myself with that book because in my mind, I’ve been a failure, right? And I was so scared. And you would be amazed, the caliber of people who come up to me at parties and events and told me that book helped them, I’m talking about Fortune 50 CEOs. People, like I’m in a room and they’re surrounding, we’re talking about some of the biggest people in the industry that we’re surrounded. And I’m just like, usually, if I’m in a room at someone’s tribe of people, I go the other way. I’m not that guy. I’m fine on my own. Thank you.

 

And they had come up to me and say, “Oh, you’re Kamal Ravikant?” “Yes.” “You wrote that book.” Because sometimes, I get, “Oh, you’re Naval’s brother.” I forget that. It’s like, well, I’m like, “Yeah, yeah.” And then, “But you wrote that book.” I’m like, “Yeah.” And then like, “That book really helped me last year.” And I mean, this is a very, very prominent company. I was like, “Wow.” I mean, from that to like kids and grandmothers all over the world just telling me the same thing and it’s so rewarding. And if you think about all those years when I was writing and then working the craft of writing, it’s like anything when you’re working in obscurity, all you have is a dream, right?

 

And then, eventually, through life making it happen in ways you didn’t expect, I didn’t expect to write a self-help book. I really didn’t, man. But it was the story I had to tell. Life gave you that story, right? And it’s gone on to like, why would people come and join my VC fund, become LP’s, because they’re like, “Look, I read your book. I know the man you are. I want to invest with a man like you.”

 

Justin Donald: It’s so cool.

 

Kamal Ravikant: But that, never would I imagine that. So, that is the power of sharing of our self, our real self. The world is hungry for that.

 

Justin Donald: Real, vulnerability, and authenticity, yes.

 

Kamal Ravikant: Yeah. Like, that’s full of too many people showing up, rented lambos and all that stuff, it’s just like, no, it’s just being real, just being human and sharing your lessons. One thing I’m not a fan of is just sharing your dirty laundry. We all have a dirty laundry. We all have our issues, right? That helps no one. Share the solution. Share what you did that made you better over a comment because they’re all human things, especially the mind. What I learned is, and really rewriting the book and writing the extended version, I was like, “This isn’t just about loving yourself. This is all about the mind.” You’re never born. We live and we die the entire time in our mind, right? The whole thing is in our mind.

 

And we spend so much of our time. We’ll work on fitness, we’ll get the right cold mattress that makes the temperature better. We’ll get the right this and that. How much time do we spend working in our mind, the thing that runs the entire show?

 

Justin Donald: That’s right, 100%.

 

Kamal Ravikant: And that creates our misery. I mean, look, we can have situations which can make us miserable. Let’s be honest. I’ve been through something. They were horrific, and I was miserable. But then here is your choice. What do I do with this? And you work on your mind. That is the only choice we have, really. And it’s the most liberating thing too. And here’s the funny thing. The better your inside gets, the better your outside gets. It’s just I have literally come to believe in that. It’s like the law of gravity. And then it’s the same thing. Better your inside, the better your outside.

 

Justin Donald: 100%. Yeah, without a doubt. And I’d love to talk about, so this book, I feel like there’s a real healing aspect of writing this book. You’re helping others. There’s a healing aspect to yourself, too, but it’s also healing to know that you’re having impact in other people and that creates a lot of motivation in itself. But you did a total career change, right? So, you pivoted from being an entrepreneur to being an investor. And I know that you said, you think that there are a lot of entrepreneurs that end up being good VCs. I would say as a general rule, my experience is most people who are entrepreneurs don’t do well at investing. There’s a small percentage…

 

Kamal Ravikant: Oh, I’ll tell you why.

 

Justin Donald: Over at the VC, because they get that game. They did that game. And so, they can identify things quickly that other people can’t. So, I think it’s niche, right? But most people, because it’s two different skill sets, but investing in early stage and you did early stage, you’ve got a playbook that other people don’t have, right? But if you delve into the rest of alternative investments, I think it’s a different skill set. And I love that you were able to cross that bridge in a very successful way.

 

Kamal Ravikant: Well, I stay in the same field. I didn’t go to real estate. I didn’t go to investing in things I don’t know. I’m investing in the world I was in, right? But actually, yeah, you’re absolutely right, I’m really glad that there is a caveat. A lot of entrepreneurs when they say angel investing are awful investors and I’ll tell you the secret. I realized quickly what the secret was, is why there are awful investors versus how do you become a great investor if you’re a former entrepreneur. If you’re an entrepreneur, you’re fundamentally a problem solver. If you’ve been that, that’s what you’ve done, right? So, you can look at a problem. Someone comes to you with a pitch and they have this thing, “Am I doing this?” And you could think of, “Oh yeah, so this is what I would do, this is how it’s going to go, this is how it’s going to go. And I can go.” So, you see the possibility and you invest in that. Wrong. That’s when you’re going to lose money.

 

Because here’s the thing. You’re not the one in the trenches. You’re not the one who’s going to be solving that problem. So, what you got to do is you got to ask yourself, that person pitching me, can that person play along? When you change that mindset, that’s when you make money in investing. And that’s the mistake most entrepreneurs make when they start angel investing. They look at it as a problem from that mindset of how they could solve it.

 

My brother actually gave me some great advice. My brother is one of the most successful investors in Silicon Valley, and one of the most, as founders of Silicon Valley. He said, like, when he first started investing, before starting investing, he would just meet with entrepreneurs and talk to them about their pitches just to help. But I don’t think he said he wrote a single check until he had done at least like a thousand. Think about it. By a thousand and over time and he was being helpful, it wasn’t taking their time, right? He was being helpful, but it was learning. He had enough experience and even data, like over– it takes time to see how did the one that he thought would do well. Did they end up doing well or no? Or why? You start to see the patterns before he wrote his first check, right?

 

Justin Donald: It’s so good.

 

Kamal Ravikant: And so, that’s really great advice. And so, like I use to do that. I used to just meet with a lot of entrepreneurs, just try to help. But also seeing like, okay, looking back, where did they go, what were my thoughts, like so forth? And that was actually really, really valuable. And I still love doing that because you’re always learning. There’s no, like, “Oh, I figured it out because it’s human beings.” It’s not tech. It’s human beings. You’re investing and I never look at a spreadsheet. I do early stage. I did not look at business plans. Business plans are for MBA presentations. If you’re early to invest and looking at business plan, you’re doing it wrong. Basically, you’re looking at what the product is going to be and can these team pull it off? Can it sell? Can they build it? Can they sell? Can they build it? Can they sell? That’s it. And also, is this…

 

Justin Donald: Does the concept work? And is the jockey going to be able to do it, right?

 

Kamal Ravikant: And also, do you think this person could go from stage one to stage two to stage three? Or the most important thing, actually, can they motivate really people better they have to join them? You got that, it’s a no-brainer, you’re going to last them all day long, like some of my best investments. All my best investments were in the founder, but also knowing like, okay, this guy is going to build. This is a great problem to solve. This is a lucrative problem to solve, like this is needed, one.

 

Two, this entrepreneur, this is his passion. This is what he’s going to do no matter what. This is not a fairweather entrepreneur. Run away from those because those are like, if the markets go down or that industry goes down, they jump ship. You want the one unless there’s no more customers left. We’ll still be building it because we still care.

 

So, I mean, the market, the founder, but then also, do they have the passion and the smarts to recruit amazing people? If they do, you have basically the recipe for success. There are outliers, right? Because what I have in my company is like, yahoo, woke up one day, I realized I was taking away check in their business and they contacted all the people that contracts with them and said, “Choose us or this little startup.” And boom, got, right? So, those things happen. But barring that, if you’re going to bet on success, that’s it. Like, great founder can build a team, product, the value of the product.

 

Justin Donald: That’s right. And the right team can pivot if the product’s not working, if the product market fit changes, if there’s some competitor that you just can’t get ahead. In many cases, the right team can then shift what the business is into a more successful model or maybe a totally different vertical.

 

Kamal Ravikant: Yeah. And if you get lucky sometimes, you get into like, even the market is hungry for it and just like the thing becomes, like, what they call unicorns or whatever, but it’s never an easy thing. You talk to any of the founders, it’s never easy. But yeah, that’s the trick in angel investing and venture investing if you’re an entrepreneur. Don’t look at it as a problem yet, like how you would solve it. You’re not in the trenches. I mean, if you had an advisor, advisors don’t build companies. It’s literally the founders and the team. That’s it.

 

In fact, the founders, they set the stage, they set the culture, they set everything. And in fact, Mike Maples is an amazing venture investor in Silicon Valley, was in Facebook, Google, all those, right? Really good man, Texan, actually, lives in California but Texan, very gentlemanly. He told me once that the best companies he’s ever invested in, he’s seen over time is where the founder stays at the helm. He says he looks at it, this founder is going to stay with this for like 10. And that kind of thing, I mean, you’re obviously guessing, but you look back and he’s like, look at Jeff Bezos and Amazon, look at Sergey Brin, they never let go, look at Zuck and Facebook, look at Elon and Tesla. I mean, this is their sh*t. They’re not handing it over to a professional management team.

 

Behind a professional management team, that just becomes a B company. Their professional management team is just to keep the status quo, maybe slowly go X percent a year. But the great game-changing companies are the ones with the founders and just going to stay at it. This is their lifelong thing.

 

Justin Donald: Yeah, 100%. And it’s fun. I tell people all the time that I think your brother Naval is one of the greatest investors, if not the single greatest angel investor of our time. And the experts all say that you really need to be in at least 100 angel investments to have the probability to have one become an outlier and outperform. And Naval says this all the time. And so, in this space and in what you do in VC…

 

Kamal Ravikant: His record is way better than that, though.

 

Justin Donald: Oh, his is incredible, but I mean, no one can do what your brother did. I mean, it’s such a small percentage.

 

Kamal Ravikant: You know what it is? I’ll tell you, like, look, I’ll be honest, he’s my brother, right? I’ve known him all his life. I’m the older brother, so I can say that, I’ve known him all his life.

 

Justin Donald: I love it.

 

Kamal Ravikant: He is probably the most brilliant human being I’ve ever met. And I met some very brilliant human beings. He’s also very– he and I are both very like values driven, like he sticks to his values. And over time, it’s your reputation, right? You help enough people over time and you take care of them and you are that person. So, who do you think entrepreneurs are going to come to when they’re raising money?

 

Justin Donald: That’s right.

 

Kamal Ravikant: If you’re intelligent and you’re so helpful and you don’t screw entrepreneurs and you’re like, because a lot of VCs do. And they used to until my brother built AngelList which shifts a lot of power away from actually VCs to angels and entrepreneurs. I mean, it was standard to be screwed over by VCs because you would go raise money from a VC. If you were lucky, you’d go to those big offices in Sand Hill Road and some of those big boardroom meetings with these guys who have never– like VC is not hard work, it’s meetings. And building a company is hard work. I take a flak for saying that, but I will say that all day long. I’ve done both, meetings versus like your servers are melting, your customers are calling and screaming at you, your employees having, like it’s– and you go there and then if you get a term sheet, they get you a lawyer at a law firm. The law firm is the one who wrote their term sheet.

 

And then they have all these clauses that were right in there that literally, they could screw the founders and then it happened often. That was just the game, right? He changed that by building AngelList. He was on a mission, right? And so, the one thing is, he’s very values driven. And if someone is giving that much to the community by creating something that wasn’t a public service, but he did it in such a way that it never cost entrepreneurs, it gave them the power. And and so, who do you think they’re going to go to when they want an investment, right?

 

And he is sharp. One thing I’ve seen about him, if anyone, people from Twitter or actually from an air chat, that’s where he’s now, that’s his latest thing, latest project is you can download in the App Stores. If you want to talk to him, you can literally go there and talk to him. And he’s always seen the future ahead of anyone. Like, he used to annoy me at some point. I’m like, geez, man, can you be wrong once? But now, look, I got to appreciate him. I mean, he’s really impressive. Yeah, like, you’re an investor and it’s fun, right?

 

Justin Donald: Yeah, yeah.

 

Kamal Ravikant: Yeah, it’s fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean…

 

Justin Donald: Yeah, I love Ravikant Capital because it’s the deals that I am never going to recognize, it’s terms that I wouldn’t get, it’s that foresight and that recognition of trends that I’m not going to see in a way that he does. So, I love hitching my wagon to people that are way smarter and have way more access. I mean, that’s one of the big things I talk about. You add enough value to people, you get access that you otherwise wouldn’t get. And most people, when you ask them about deals that they do, they’re like, “Oh, I got plenty of deals. I got tons of deals. I got–” but that’s not it. You don’t want the investments you can get in. You want the investments that you can’t get in.

 

Kamal Ravikant: That’s the secret, yeah, yeah.

 

Justin Donald: And that only comes with relationships.

 

Kamal Ravikant: Yeah, relationships, trust, access, and also knowing deal structures, being able to get the right deals. I mean, my brother and I, I mean, in all honesty, he helped me set up my first venture fund because I was basically paying off my credit card debts. The book was selling and it was bringing some money in. And we were driving back from visiting our mom once and we talked about what I’m doing next. I was like, “Look, man, I’m too burnt out to go starting the company.” And there’s no problem, we want to solve that badly, that I want to go start a company to do it.

 

I’ll probably just go become VP of something somewhere. I had the experience. Then I’ll clock in, do the VP of something, which was like at least exciting option, but it was like, okay, I got to make some money. I got to make some good money. And I was like, “Look, you’ve been helping friends of yours get into deals in the Valley,” like friends actually from Austin. I was having a tough time getting into deals, and then in the Bay Area, getting deals in the Valley through him and through my network because I’ve been in the Valley since the late 90s. And the people who were starting off there are now running the show.

 

So, he’s like, you’ve been helping people get into deal, your friends get into deals, and then you also helped a bunch of entrepreneurs, like you just really like doing it. He’s like, basically, you’re a VC without the carry. He’s like, why don’t you formalize it and tell your friends, I’ll get you deals, but you have to put the money in this fund. And then, you help the entrepreneurs and then also you got to fund them. And then on the upside, you’ve never gotten the upside for the entrepreneurs you developed. You got the upside, a piece of the upside, and it’s a win-win. I was like, “Oh, when you put it that way.” And so, I set out to do it. And he helped, like he put into his lawyer. He really, if I was able to do it much cheaper than a regular fund is and that was off to the races. And he helped me with investments and taught me and we co-invest a lot together. And I’m very grateful for it. The credit, I will always give him the credit, like never put your ego in the way of making money.

 

Or learning or being good at what you do, right? And the one other thing is like, I really like now, as in investing, I can help entrepreneurs in a different way and I’m always very available to them. Because I’m also a former founder and the conversations we have are always very different than the pitches they’re used to along like, to be fair man, don’t pitch me. Just talk to me. Tell me what you’re building, tell me what you’re thinking, tell me what you’d like, what wakes you up in the morning? What do you like nightmares about this? Tell me that. That’s what I want to know. Because at the end, I’m investing in the person.

 

And investing really is, like you said, on the jockey, and the best investments are. And I love this, I’ll always be doing this. I mean you get to be part of the future. I’m going to invest in really smart people building the future. I like stuff that I never would have any access to otherwise. And you say your brain stays young. You have to be sharp. I always have to be on top of what’s the next thing coming and learn it and be good at it just so because I’m deploying people’s capital into it.

 

Justin Donald: That’s right.

 

Kamal Ravikant: It’s a great game. I love it.

 

Justin Donald: Oh, so fun.

 

Kamal Ravikant: What’s awesome is I build my own fun. I’m not responsible to anyone. I’m no VP of anything anywhere. It’s just like on my terms. And pretty much, all my LPs are entrepreneurs because they know how I operate. Those are the best ones.

 

Justin Donald: I love it. Yeah, it’s a great gig when you have a passion for it. I mean, I love investing. It’s fun. I took a year off and traveled the world with my family, and I kind of journaled trying to figure out what are my common patterns. And one of them is that I love to learn. Another one is the more I learn, the more I want to teach other people what I’ve learned. And then another one is that I love coaching and teaching people how to create financial freedom and how to build wealth. And then the fourth one is I just love investing. I love deals. I love the art of a good deal. I love the negotiation of improving the deal terms. And so, these are all the things that I did when I was totally disconnected from money, right? This is what I did when I…

 

Kamal Ravikant: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. You can find that and then monetize it. You got your thing. That’s the secret. If you’d really what you would be doing, like you just so enjoyed it and you could figure out how to monetize, those are the people who are successful and the happiest.

 

Justin Donald: Well, that’s where Lifestyle Investor actually was born from was that year of really figuring out what was next because I had no clue what I was going to do. I was searching, I was eager to figure out what’s next.

 

Kamal Ravikant: Yeah, yeah. And the game’s always evolving. You think you figure it out, like B2C, and all of a sudden, this thing called crypto comes into play. Next thing you’re trying to figure out, decentralize this, decentralize that. You think you start to figure that out. AI shows up. You’re figuring that out. It’s like a nut. Then what’s next? It’s like you’re never bored. In fact, I tell people now, like, let’s say if you’re in the 20s, if you’re in your 20s right now and you’re thinking like, how can I be wealthy in five years? Look at the thing that is going to change everything. Look, like, let’s say if you’re in the late 90s, if I knew what you knew now, I would just have said go build websites, start building website. You’ll get into this. You will get into it. People were charging like six figures for an HTML, CSS website back then, right? And getting it, easily. Remember those days? And so, all the stuff we take for granted, but a new technology comes out, the people who can even just do the basic iteration of it for any company, for people who that’s not their strong suit can charge, can name their price.

 

Justin Donald: That’s right.

 

Kamal Ravikant: Now, you want to do, say, you want to be rich within five years and be on top of the game, get into AI. Just go deep into it, figure it out, start selling those services to companies, to businesses because you don’t have time to figure that stuff out. You hire people who are experts at it and you can name your price. And because being in it, the end game, the path will come to you. They’ll show you, will basically materialize in front of you when you’re in it. You may start out building websites, but two years later, you’ll have had the connections and then this and that, next thing then you start a SaaS company that’s worth $1 billion.

 

Justin Donald: That’s right.

 

Kamal Ravikant: That’s how this all happens. I’m always wary of the entrepreneurial pitch. Honestly, I never invested in to tell you the truth. I was like, I’m going to be the next multibillion dollar company. I’m like, I wish you the best of luck. Seriously, I’d never seen them pull it off. I mean, if Elon Musk says that, yes, here’s my money, please, whatever, I mean, if you’ve done it before. But I met too many people who I was like, “Oh, I’m going to be next building this, building that,” no, you have no idea what it takes. You have no idea of the lashes on your back you’re going to have. You have no idea of the sacrifices. You just go from zero to billion. The level of even just a luck it takes on top of everything, right?

 

But the person comes to you and say, this is Kamal or so, and he’s got a market and he’s mad right now. This has got this small bunch of passionate users. I’m like, well, take my money now. That’s the one, right? And you do that and you go down that path and you’ll find the next thing you’re using, the next level, next level. Those are the founders I found that create a multibillion dollar companies, solve a small problem that really keeps overnight. And then when they’re solving it, the next level, then the next level, then the next level. It’s all it is.

 

Justin Donald: Agreed. Man, Kamal, this has been awesome. I appreciate your time. I appreciate your insight, your expertise, and your willingness to be open and vulnerable and share what life has been like for you, like, the good, bad, and the ugly. And so, this has been just such a blast for me. I appreciate your time and I’d love…

 

Kamal Ravikant: Thank you, man. It has as well. It has as well.

 

Justin Donald: Well, thank you. I’d love to make sure that people can find you. Where’s the best place they can learn more about you?

 

Kamal Ravikant: Well, if you want to look at my investments and my fund, just go to Evolve.VC, like venture capital. Actually, my brother came up with that name because we’re both big believers of first evolution, right? Evolve.VC, they’ll take you to– you can see my investments and my fund if you’re interested.

 

And as far as my books, Amazon, Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It. Or anywhere bookstores around the world, but Amazon is the biggest bookstore in the world. And my email address is still in the book and I still get emails or just reach out to me, a lot of people reach out to me on social media now, too. But that book is really, really special to me. So, I hope people listening, like there’s number of things in different state, but I will say this book, if you read it, it will make you a better version of you. And if it doesn’t, reach out to me, I will refund your money by the HarperCollins. Like, I’ve never had anyone take me up on that. That’s how confident I am.

 

Justin Donald: Well, I can second it. I can second it. This book will make you a better version of you because you’ve got to do some soul searching. And you look on the inside in this book, so there’s no way if you read it, you’re not going to become a better person.

 

Kamal Ravikant: Thank you, man. I really appreciate that.

 

Justin Donald: Yeah. Well, I love all that you’re doing. I love to wrap up every episode, I do, asking our audience a question. And the question I love asking every week is some variation of this question, but it’s almost to the same tune because this to me, is the most important thing that I can help people with. And it’s this. What’s the one step you can take today to move towards financial freedom, to move towards living a life by your design that you truly desire, so again, a life by design, not a life by default? And what are some of the action steps you can take based on what Kamal has shared today to help you achieve that? Thanks so much for joining us this week and we’ll catch you next week.