Tren Griffin, author of Charlie Munger: The Complete Investor and the 25iq blog, joins us to talk about why writing a book is rarely about money, how AI is reshaping writing and publishing, why every author is really starting a business, how to build a book in public, the Charlie Munger lesson that changed his life during the dot-com boom, whether serious reading is really dying, and how to find a passion worth following.
We’ve shared some highlights below, together with links & a full transcript. If you like what you hear/read, please leave a comment or drop us a review on your provider of choice.
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Links
Show Notes
Tren Griffin & Jim O’Shaughnessy
Tren Griffin: Investor, writer, and author of the 25iq blog. Read 25iq
Charlie Munger: The Complete Investor: Tren’s book on how Munger approached investing and life. Charlie Munger: The Complete Investor
Tren on X: Follow Tren on X
Infinite Books: Jim’s publishing company. Infinite Books
Tren’s earlier conversation: Welcome to the Tren-verse, Ep. 86. Watch
Jim O’Shaughnessy: Host of Infinite Loops, founder and CEO of O’Shaughnessy Ventures, and author of the New York Times bestseller What Works on Wall Street. Follow Jim on X
Full transcripts: Transcripts and highlights from every Infinite Loops conversation. OSV newsletter
Books & Ideas Mentioned
The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel: Tren’s example of how stories sell nonfiction. The Psychology of Money
Runnin’ Down a Dream by Bill Gurley: The book Tren recommends on turning passions into a career. Runnin’ Down a Dream
Kelly criterion: The bet-sizing formula Tren calls one of the hardest ideas to explain simply. Kelly criterion
Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned by Kenneth Stanley and Joel Lehman: Jim’s case for taking unexpected opportunities seriously. Kenneth Stanley
1,000 True Fans by Kevin Kelly: The essay behind Tren’s advice to build a community of super fans. 1,000 True Fans
Duncan Watts on social influence: Why bestsellers emerge from people copying what others buy. Duncan J. Watts
Mimetic desire: René Girard’s idea that we want what others want. Mimetic theory
Influence by Robert Cialdini: The reciprocity principle behind Jim’s warning about manipulation. Influence
Reflexivity: George Soros’s idea from The Alchemy of Finance, which shaped Tren’s thinking on feedback loops. Reflexivity
Benoit Mandelbrot: Whose The (Mis)Behavior of Markets Jim credits with shaping the models he built to pick stocks. Benoit Mandelbrot
Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter: Jim’s example of a hard book that AI could open up to more readers. Gödel, Escher, Bach
Clarke’s third law: “Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Clarke’s three laws
Cabo Wabo: Sammy Hagar’s tequila, Tren’s example of a founder bringing a ready-made community to a product. Cabo Wabo
Menlo Ventures consumer AI survey (2025): About 3% of AI users pay, in line with Tren’s point that most people use AI for free. Read the release
Highlights
If you write for money, you’re a fool.
And looking at things fresh. And then some people... it’s just hard to see sometimes when we’re not being clear. And one of the hardest things about writing is... I always love the line that if you write for money, you’re a fool. If you write to teach and share and tell stories, you’re unlikely to make much money, but you might get rich, like Morgan.
The point is, it’s a very severe power law. 20% of the authors make 97% of the money, and the top people make even more. So it’s unlikely you’re going to achieve that, but you might. But you’ll never do it if you’re in it for the money, because there won’t be any soul in your writing. There won’t be any passion in your writing, and you probably won’t say anything interesting. Some people write really well, but they’re not interesting.
People are interesting and can’t write. Some people can do both. And we are all a mix of those categories. And then as you get older, maybe you’re more interesting in some way, in terms of you can tell more real stories.
But some people tell good stories and some people don’t. Some people tell a joke and you want to sit down and sit there for the afternoon while they tell the joke. Good shaggy dog stories are fabulous. Sometimes it’s not even a very good joke, but the way they tell it is hysterical.
A good book is that way too. Like, “This is great. What’s going on here? I can’t believe this happened.” But it’s real. It’s realistic. And I always love that phrase: sometimes, if this was fiction, you wouldn’t believe it.
Don’t take the turd
I have this saying that I talk to people about, which is: you’re going through your day and some guy comes up to you and says, “Hi, you’ve been really smart. Will you help me with this problem? Here’s this turd. Will you take it?” And the answer, of course, is, “No, I’m not. It’s a very nice turd, but you keep holding that. Here are some things you might want to think about, and here are some resources, and good luck with that.” You should only take on things that you want to take on. You should take on things that make you happy and productive, but realise you’re in control. If you’re unhappy, it’s because you’re letting yourself be unhappy. No, someone else isn’t making you unhappy. You are.
Edited Transcript
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Well, hello, everyone. It’s Jim O’Shaughnessy with yet another Infinite Loops. Today I have back one of my favourite people. Tren Griffin is back. You know him from our earlier conversations. You know him from his brilliant 25iq and his wonderful book on Charlie Munger. Today, as Tren and I were chatting before coming online, we thought it would be fun to talk about all things writing, publishing, what motivates us. Tren, welcome back.
Tren Griffin
Nice to be here. It’s great to have this conversation because you are both a writer and a publisher.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
That’s right. I’m on both sides.
Tren Griffin
Goes a long way, and it helps you get perspective. All jobs are hard, as someone once said. Being a publisher is hard, and being an author is hard.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah, my kids joked, “Dad, why are you going to open a publishing company? You do realise all of the problems that publishers are facing?” And I said, “Yes, and I see a lot of solutions.” You’re writing your eighth book right now.
Tren Griffin
Yes.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
And I was rereading your 2017 essay on half a dozen lessons on getting a book published. What’s changed from then to now?
Tren Griffin
Well, the publishing industry has changed quite a bit. It’s moving from more a royalty model: you get an advance, maybe you earn it out, usually you don’t, and there was a power law. And the new model they’ve sort of adopted at many firms is, no, we’re going to treat this as a joint venture. You’re going to write this book, and we’re going to do the editing, publishing, we’ll get it out there, and then we’ll split the proceeds. And so the upside is much higher, but there’s not this guarantee. And so it appeals more to people like me who don’t write for money. Lots of books that I’ve written, I’ve just given all the money to charity. But even then, writing a book is not a way to make money.
Writing a book has many other great things. You can write a book because you want to get these ideas down. You can write a book because you want to be a mentor. You write a book because you want to leave something behind. We’ve discussed before the concept of paying it forward. A lot of people helped me. Most people who helped me are dead. And so the best thing I can do is help other people. And so if you can do those things, writing is great. And there was a period, you will recall, when blogs were huge, and now the web is shrinking, and the number of non-fiction books is shrinking. AI is competition now. There’s all of the old back titles. And so it’s harder in many ways to write a non-fiction book. That was a long answer.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
No, but it’s a good answer, because there are so many different reasons people write books. The first couple of books I wrote to help my career. That was my objective: Invest Like the Best and What Works on Wall Street. And I still maintain to this day that What Works on Wall Street in particular put me on the map and made my career possible. I think a lot of people underestimate the power of books. What do you think?
Tren Griffin
I agree with that. And then also, there are some categories, finance might be one of them, but there are some categories within finance where you’re appealing to a very small number of people and you’re educating a very small number of people. But those people are decision-makers. And so that can help you. Somebody’s got a wealth management practice, somebody’s trying to establish a fund, somebody’s trying to raise money from LPs, all those things. And so you don’t have to sell that many if you’re just doing content marketing. But if you want to sell something like The Psychology of Money by Morgan, I think I saw the other day it was 10 million, but it’s probably higher than that now. But there are people like that.
And the good news is there are people like that. The bad news is it’s probably not you, because the guy can just flat out write. And he knows how to tell stories. And people love to read stories. They don’t want to be lectured to. They like to read stories. And then the other thing is all these new formats, BookTok and Reels and all these things, YouTube: they’re short. People’s attention spans are shorter. They have other options. There are a lot of screens they can turn to. I’ve got a laptop here, I’ve got a phone right here, the TV’s over there. There’s a lot of competition, so you’ve got to stand out somehow. And that’s not easy.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
And you’re working with Harriman House, right? That’s more...
Tren Griffin
Yes, that’s part of Macmillan.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah, they are great guys.
Tren Griffin
They are. And they know business books, and that’s important, because if you’re going to get editing, you want somebody who actually understands the topic. And then distribution, getting Amazon taken care of and stocking books and doing all that, requires some work. And then the trickiest thing of all: book publishing is such a weird industry. The big titles, they don’t have a list of all their customers.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Right.
Tren Griffin
They have a list of all the bookstores.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yep.
Tren Griffin
But they don’t have a list of all the customers. So direct marketing is impossible. So the first question they ask you is, “Well, what’s your book about?” And the second most important question is, “Who’s your community? How are you going to market this book? What’s your marketing plan?” It’s on you. And so the way I look at it is, you’re a publisher, so let’s talk about this for a minute. Every one of your authors is starting a business.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yep.
Tren Griffin
Right? He’s starting a little book publishing business, or she is. And they have to understand how to market it, how to make it cost-effective, how to create virality, what formats to use. And so they have a little business, and just that is a lot of work: building that community, keeping the community up, finding the channels to reach people, all those things. And so you’re a publisher, so let’s talk about this. Someone comes to you and says, “Well, I’ve got this idea for a book.” Do you require a proposal? How do you evaluate them? What are your standards?
Jim O’Shaughnessy
So our standards are, we’re looking for books that can, like Morgan’s, withstand the test of time. So we are shying away currently from super-current topics and looking more for books like Morgan’s, as an example. But on the marketing side, what we’re trying to do at Infinite Books is really supercharge the author’s marketing. A lot of the Big Five publishers, you get a two-week window, it gets a lot of push, and then they move on to the next project. We’re trying with continuous marketing to all of those portals that you mentioned: BookTok, Threads, Instagram, all of these social media, Twitter, but consistently. And we’re trying a bunch of different things. Everything we do is sort of AI-first.
And by that I mean we have fact-checkers, for example, that blow my mind. Literally, we have our own stack, our own hardware and software stack. And I’m currently writing a book, a fiction book actually, a first for me, and I was running one of my chapters through our AI fact-checker, and it blew me away. It was like, “Yeah, Jim, no, that tram doesn’t come in on track seven. It comes in on track nine. Here is the schedule in Polish,” because this is a generational thriller and this happens to be happening in Poland. And I’m like, holy shit. And then I looked, I have a library over here, and I just thought, all of my books that I own are filled with errors.
So we try to help the author, not only with marketing, but with everything from fact-checking to introductions to people who might be writing about his or her topic. We found that lead generation is very interesting, but you have to do it just straight up: “Here’s a book we thought you might be interested in.” And that’s it. You don’t ask them for anything. You just send them the book. And we’ve gotten a lot of good coverage that way as well. But it allows us to continually search blogs, other books, podcasts, et cetera, and then say, “Oh, wow, Tren’s book. This guy is writing about something just like Tren published in his book.” Because we have that ability to find those people, that has made a huge difference from the publisher’s end.
Tren Griffin
What’s interesting about you are many things, but one of the things, sometimes when I see your face or you have a post or something, is that I say, “Well, that’s Jim Medici.” He’s taking some of his winnings and he’s creating a Medici style... not patronage, not, right. But you’re trying to generate a lot of other good things with your capital.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Well, thank you. And yes, I am. We talked about that last time we were together. We both believe that being generous, paying back, is something that is incumbent upon us. I was lucky enough to be born into a prominent, prosperous family. Man, I was born on third base. And then, even crazier, lucky to be born in America, where the right to free speech, the rule of law, all of these things. So I owe a lot, in my estimation, because I wouldn’t have been able to achieve any of this had I not been born in this country, had I not had the opportunities that I had. And I love reading, I love books, non-fiction, fiction, and I passionately believe that they are what allow us to advance as a species.
And so, yeah, in addition to just loving it, we also want to get good at it. So you mentioned the split with the publisher. We actually have one that goes all the way to 70% to the author, and 30% is retained by Infinite Books. Now, we can only do that because of all of the technological workflows that we have built into the process. And it’s just super exciting for me, because not only do I find many authors incredibly fascinating people, it really gives me joy to be able to bring their works and their ideas into the public.
Tren Griffin
So the conversation is lovely with a great editor, and then the conversation with your audience is even lovelier, although sometimes it’s not. And I’ve talked about this before in your post. When you create something, that’s art. A book is a form of art, literature is a form of art, and you put it out in the public, you’re saying, “Here’s my heart. I’ve put my everything into it. Go ahead and attack me.” And there are professionals. A publisher said to me once, there’s a category of people who, when the book comes out, want to be the first one on Amazon, and they’re going to give you a negative review. And that’s their whole purpose in life. And if you did a search for them, you’d find they’re doing it book after book.
Some people just want to be seen, or have attention, or whatever. But if you have a thin ego, writing a book is not a place to go. And I know some authors do not read their reviews at all, because what’s the point? For me, if I don’t like a book, I’m not going to review it. I would never write a negative book review, because these people are my brothers and sisters.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yep.
Tren Griffin
And I feel like they’re comrades in arms. I know what they put into it.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yep.
Tren Griffin
And they tried. And maybe it’s not popular, but the meaning of writing, the reason you should write, is for yourself. The book I’m writing right now is about a series of topics that I wanted to get better at explaining to other people myself. And Buffett says writing is thinking, and I agree. But also, in order to write for a broad audience, you have to find a way to simplify.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yep.
Tren Griffin
And to create narrative and tell stories, not just, “Well, you should do this and this, and here’s the formula for this.” We’re storytelling creatures, way before the written word.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Oh totally.
Tren Griffin
So we love stories. And so let’s go back to The Psychology of Money. Morgan’s got great stories. The fact that thing was optioned for a movie is unbelievable. But, because it isn’t... It is believable if you know that he’s a good storyteller.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah. It’s also one of my saddest memories: I tried to hire Morgan before anyone knew who he was. He was a young guy, and I’d been reading the stuff he’d been writing, and I’m like, man, this guy can not only write, but his storytelling ability is incredible. And he was very kind to me. If you know Morgan, he’s always quite polite and kind. And he was like, “Yeah, thanks for the offer, Jim, but I’ve got a really good thing going here and I’m just going to stay the course.”
Tren Griffin
So let’s talk about the economics of publishing. There’s a lot of competition, and you’ve got all the back titles that you’ve got to deal with.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yep.
Tren Griffin
You’ve got self-published books, you’ve got more books coming out. You have all the fondleslab-style content. When they’re designing book covers now, they want them to look good on a phone. They have very specific things, because that’s where a lot of people buy books. And so a lot of consolidation has gone on, and it’s sort of like be big and have scale, or be small and be specialised. Is that the way you see it?
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Sort of. For example, you mentioned book covers. One thing that we do with book covers is we have artists who create them, we have AI artists who create them. We have a whole host of cover creators. But then we A/B test them. And one of the things that we found is our own judgement is often not that great, because everyone on the team, and sometimes even the author, will say, “Oh, I love this particular cover,” and then it comes in last place on the A/B testing. And then we have to go back to the author and say, “Look, it’s our job to help get your book into as many hands as possible. This particular cover scored off the charts. This one that we all love really didn’t.”
And the authors, as you mentioned earlier, we’re finding that the authors are more willing to be partners in the marketing, getting the book into hands, et cetera. But I’m an empiricist from way back. It was how I invested. It’s how I do things. And so we had one cover for a book on grief that ended up being a picture of the author and her deceased daughter. And ultimately it wasn’t the first choice, but the feedback that we got, not only from the author but from readers... we would get emails saying, “When I saw that cover, I knew I had to have this book.” Because it gets back to your idea. People want to see people’s stories. They want to hear: how did she get through that grief?
And then when you look at a picture of her and her beautiful daughter, it’s just like, I have to own this book right now. It helps that it’s a great book as well. But we try to cover every aspect on the marketing side in a continuous, ongoing way. Now, as far as economics, your question on economics: we couldn’t offer this 70/30 split if we did not have the technology underlying the book company, Infinite Books. So one of the first questions you asked that I didn’t answer: yeah, if you’re writing a non-fiction book, we’d like to see the proposal. And then what happens to the proposal is it goes through all of our evaluators, some of whom are human, some of whom are AI. We segment it to the audience.
We have pretty deeply segmented-by-audience data sets that are very helpful. And it wouldn’t surprise you, I don’t think, that many of them are based on the Big Five personality profile. Lots of really interesting tidbits as to who’s most likely to read your book that is coming out. We could tell you with a fairly high degree of accuracy what the profile of that reader looks like. So being able to take advantage of all these innovations, A, keeps our structural costs down, but also invites all sorts of marketing opportunities that, even five years ago, you couldn’t do. I mentioned earlier, we are continually scanning for other authors, people doing blogs, people making comments, et cetera.
And if we find one that is really very adjacent to what you’re talking about in your book, if we were publishing it, we’d send them a copy of your book without an ask. That’s very important. It’s just, “We think you might enjoy this. Here is a complimentary copy.” Boom, we’re done. And when you do it that way, it’s amazing how often you not only hear back from that person, but they’re like, “Yeah, I think I’m going to actually write a blog post. And thank you so much for...” In other words, it’s got to be organic. You can’t do it the old way, as far as we’re concerned: “We’d love it if you would give this particular blurb,” blah, blah. People get turned off by that.
Tren Griffin
Yeah. I think that blurbs are less important, I think. And the power of word of mouth is bigger than ever.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Huge.
Tren Griffin
And then the whole Jeff Bezos quote about shouting doesn’t do much good anymore.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Nope.
Tren Griffin
But it’s interesting, in that a lot of my career has been about the economics of a business. And one of the key variables is always customer acquisition cost.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yep.
Tren Griffin
And one of the reasons why publishers like celebrity books is because they have a cult already. They have a group of people. So when Michael Douglas writes his tell-all book, he’s going to sell a lot, because he’s already got a big fan group. He’s already got a community. He’s going to get a lot of free press. And so it reminds me of... I wrote this blog post on Sammy Hagar and how he made a lot of money on Cabo Wabo. He brought a community to this product, in this case, and that was valuable enough that, I forget who bought it, one of the big houses bought it. But the point here is getting a customer is hard. Whether you’re opening up a shoe repair store in a mall or whether you have a frontier model and you’re trying to get people to pay you. I mean, it’s wild that 97% of people who use AI pay nothing.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
I know. And what they don’t understand, at least many that I’ve spoken with, is the paying nothing gets you the free models, which, as you well know, are not the frontier models. And the difference between the models you pay for, or have in-house where your own engineers have built them to your specifications, it’s literally not even in the same country. I used to say they’re not in the same zip code. They’re not in the same country. I mentioned earlier the fact-checking that we do. That’s a very sophisticated model, which has tons of access to data and literally will pull... again, in my case, I’m writing a generational thriller. It starts in World War II and it ends sometime in the future. And it’s a story about families that are combating one another: the villain’s family and the good guy’s family.
Anyway, the ability to have access to the actual documents. So, for example, there’s another thing that I got wrong when I was writing the book, and it was having to do with a blackout in a particular town. And our fact-checker came back saying, “This works. But you might also be interested to know that the family that electrified that town actually has a house on the hill overlooking it, and they have their own internal generators running their electricity. So when the town goes into blackout, the house will still be lit up.” And so the ability to have this kind of access to not only the fact-check, but also, hey, that’s a good idea. I’m going to have that house light up in that particular chapter.
But I also think, back to basics, in non-fiction, in fiction, you are absolutely right. My friend Rory Sutherland says your average human runs on stories the way cars run on gasoline. Horses don’t run on petrol. And if you’re not getting the story right, it just really doesn’t matter. Unless you’re writing a technical book like, say, What Works on Wall Street, which I intentionally wrote in a very consistent way, so that I would say, “Here’s what we’re going to test. Here are the results. Here are the implications of those results. Moving on.” And when the book first came out, I would give speeches. And in my speeches it was all stories. And a guy came up to me at the end of one of my talks and he goes, “You can’t be the same James P. O’Shaughnessy who wrote What Works on Wall Street, because the book itself is so cut and dried.”
Tren Griffin
So in terms of your production, what’s really big, and I’ve written books for a long time, is people are doing indexes now with AI. They have their own internal tools, usually. In the old days it was like three grand to get some professional firm to create your index. I don’t know what your first book was like, but...
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Oh, yes, I remember that headache. And of course, this is back in the dark ages of the 1990s. Things were obviously, and I’m sure you experienced the same, a lot slower. But then when you got to the index and the bibliography, I remember spending literally days going line by line in both, and then you kind of lose your mind. Have you had the same experience in trying to do the indexing?
Tren Griffin
Yes. And it’s a phenomenon that I find even in writing, which is after you’ve looked at a text long enough and you’ve rewritten it, it’s hard to look at it again.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
That’s right.
Tren Griffin
Because you’ve read it so many times. So you need to go for a swim, or go catch some fish and come back, or something, and clear your mind so you can look at it with a new mind, with a fresh mind.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
And that is one of the huge advantages of having AI do the indexing. It’s not that humans aren’t looking at it. Of course we’re looking at it. But the AI doesn’t get that text blindness that we get. We’re big collectors of photography, as you know, and we would go to Paris Photo, and they have this huge exhibit with literally thousands of photographs. And both my wife and I... she’s a professional street photographer, so her eye is much better than mine. But even she, an hour and a half into us being in that huge exhibit, we look at each other and say, “We’ve got to go walk around. We’ve got to go have a coffee. We’ve got to go do something.” Because literally, you stop seeing. You really stop seeing. And it’s worse with text.
I remember when I was going through the line edits for my book How to Retire Rich, we both just looked at each other and sort of at the same time shuddered and said, “I can’t read this sentence one more time.” With AI, what we find is we have it do the line edits and then present them to the author. And it’s a lot easier if you chunk it, if the author prefers not to have them all at the same time. We’re accommodative. But it’s enormously helpful, because the AI catches things... because of what happens with our brains, we get that prose or text blindness, and it doesn’t suffer from that same problem that we humans do.
Tren Griffin
Well, the phrase I always use is that none of us have perspective on ourselves. And that’s why the importance of a community of friends is so important. So over the years, people like Michael Mauboussin, or others who I’ve interacted with, they have a way of sort of shaking you loose and making you think about things in different ways.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yes.
Tren Griffin
And looking at things fresh. And then some people... it’s just hard to see sometimes when we’re not being clear. And one of the hardest things about writing is... I always love the line that if you write for money, you’re a fool. If you write to teach and share and tell stories, you’re unlikely to make much money, but you might get rich, like Morgan.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah.
Tren Griffin
The point is, it’s a very severe power law. 20% of the authors make 97% of the money, and the top people make even more. So it’s unlikely you’re going to achieve that, but you might. But you’ll never do it if you’re in it for the money, because there won’t be any soul in your writing. There won’t be any passion in your writing, and you probably won’t say anything interesting. Some people write really well, but they’re not interesting.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Right.
Tren Griffin
People are interesting and can’t write. Some people can do both. And we are all a mix of those categories. And then as you get older, maybe you’re more interesting in some way, in terms of you can tell more real stories.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yep.
Tren Griffin
But some people tell good stories and some people don’t. Some people tell a joke and you want to sit down and sit there for the afternoon while they tell the joke. Good shaggy dog stories are fabulous. Sometimes it’s not even a very good joke, but the way they tell it is hysterical.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah.
Tren Griffin
A good book is that way too. Like, “This is great. What’s going on here? I can’t believe this happened.”
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah, yeah.
Tren Griffin
But it’s real. It’s realistic. And I always love that phrase: sometimes, if this was fiction, you wouldn’t believe it.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Exactly. Exactly.
Tren Griffin
Right. But good storytellers... And so anyway, I encourage people to write books. I love books. I worry about the future of books. I think your mission is really good with Infinite Books, in that the industry needs help. Authors need help. Most authors are working on some side job and they’re trying to put this thing together. They’re passionate about what they’re doing. So having it more economical, having them channels, teaching them, I think is a mission, and I think it’s fabulous. If books have given enough to you, then you should try and give. I see what you bring back.
The phrase I’ve talked to people about recently is, you and I are probably the same, because when we were born, we had analogue childhoods and we had digital adulthoods. Like, 1971, the chip came out.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yep.
Tren Griffin
And because our childhoods were analogue, there were just a lot more books and a lot more paper. And I think books are still very advanced. They’re searchable, they’re portable, they don’t run out of batteries. All these things are great. I love paper books, and I just hope they continue, and I hope that video becomes more book-like. Blogs are a problem, because nobody really reads the web anymore.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah.
Tren Griffin
But social media is picking up on some. Long form is kind of possible on X now.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yep.
Tren Griffin
Anyway, it’s all evolving, but people like you with Infinite Books are trying to put a shoulder and make it a better world.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Well, thank you. And that is intentional. So my editor-in-chief, Jimmy Soni, is a wonderful author. He’s had great success writing. And our editors, same deal: they’re all published authors. So they know. They have that passion, they have that love, they have everything that you and I love about books in their blood. And also it was very helpful for us when we were thinking about starting Infinite Books. I put the group together and I’m like, “Okay, we’re all authors. What did each of us hate about the publishing process that we went through?” And one of the things that really surprised me was a lot of the stuff that I went through back in the 90s, when I was writing my books, still happens today to these younger people. Not much has changed.
And so we took as one of our North Stars: we are fellow authors. We want our authors to succeed. We want to get that book into as many hands as possible. And so we built a lot of our practices around that. But I also want to come back to something you mentioned earlier about the passion. The same is true in so many different genres or careers. I’m an old asset manager, and I can count on both hands... it used to be one hand, but then one guy screwed it up... I can count on both hands the number of clients, when we serviced high-net-worth individuals as their asset manager, and I’m holding up my hands for our listeners, and I’m holding six, who literally said, “I did what I did because I wanted to get rich.” Everybody else, getting rich was a side event to their passion, what they did, what they loved. So it’s not just people loving to read that in books. I find it everywhere.
Tren Griffin
One of the great books that I recommended to people recently is Bill Gurley’s book about running down a dream. He has this whole formula around: look, if you structure this right, if you follow your passions, if you take these steps, maybe you can have activities that generate money someday, don’t want to call them work, that aren’t work. Like, I never worked a day in my life, because it was fun. I would have done it for nothing. Don’t tell anybody that. And so it’s true.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
It’s absolutely true. I would have done what I did for nothing, just because I wanted it.
Tren Griffin
Some people fell into it accidentally: “I just happened to love this. I followed it, and I got rich.”
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah.
Tren Griffin
Andy Warhol or somebody, whatever it was. But some people are much more purposeful about it. Gurley’s book is about: find the best mentors in the world, physically go where they are, interact with them, learn from them. The Charlie Munger idea that you don’t have to figure out everything by yourself. Learn from the greats. And then find your own passion, all these things. But the important thing is, don’t lead a life that’s completely determined by chance.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Right.
Tren Griffin
Be active in terms of figuring out: this is the right path, this will help me. I should write a book now. I shouldn’t write a book now. I should focus on this. Some purposefulness, and learning from others, is just so much more efficient.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah.
Tren Griffin
There’s another Munger quote, which is just like, it’s just so efficient to read the greats, to understand the greats. And then also, I had this analogy, I’ve talked to you about it before, which is: life is like going to a grocery store, Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods or someplace, and you’re walking down the aisles. And when you’re young, you say, “Oh, I want to be this way. And this is the way I want to deal with work, and this is the way I want to deal with romantic partners. This is the way I want to deal with physical exercise. This is the way I want to deal with eating.” And then as life goes on, you’re still walking around these aisles, and you can say, “Well, I’d kind of like to change it for this one, because I’m not as interested in this anymore. Or this is bigger, I can even get a couple more of these.”
And so you’re constantly doing this opportunity cost analysis and saying, “Okay, well, this person’s cool. I love everything they do, except only about four-fifths of it. The other fifth, I don’t want to be that way at all.” They’re an anti-model.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Right.
Tren Griffin
But you can be whoever you want, and you can always change, if you’re that kind of person. I’ve always wanted to be someone who could change.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
As have I. And the thing that shocked me, especially when I was younger, was the number of people who don’t want to change. There’s no part of me that groks that. Like, you have...
Tren Griffin
Some of that, I think, is inherent. It’s genetic. You come out of the womb. They talk about the little baby in a crib, and you go up to the baby and go... and somebody goes, “Oh, that’s cool. What’s going on?” Some of them go, “Oh God, no.” And some of it is genetic, but some of it is pattern matching, which is if you’re around people like Feynman or somebody like that, who are super interesting and polymaths and interested in multiple disciplines and play the bongos, whatever it is, you say, “Well, that sounds fun. Why wouldn’t I want to be like that? Why would I want to be like a guy sitting on the couch, the Barcalounger, watching the latest NFL highlights?” It’s just not... But again, some of it’s genetic, some of it’s innate.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah.
Tren Griffin
You can train yourself.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
I agree. You absolutely can train yourself. And I want to ask you about the Munger book, because you started out writing that just for yourself, which I thought was super cool.
Tren Griffin
Yeah. It was also a tribute, in that during the internet boom, things were crazy, and I was worth a lot of money on paper, and I had to make a decision about secondary sales.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah.
Tren Griffin
And how much of my existing portfolio I was going to keep in Qualcomm and a couple of other names. And I went up to the San Juans in a boat. Had a skipper. My family was downstairs. I was upstairs. I just thought and paced, walking back and forth. Eventually I used his principles, because most of what I read was leading to his ideas. And I realised that you only have to get rich once. This is a key idea.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yep.
Tren Griffin
Second of the ideas: you have to survive. You don’t want to get in a situation where you have it all on red. And then you’ve got the whole Kelly optimisation and all of that. And he doesn’t really use Kelly, but he’s talked about that, because it’s kind of what he does. And then talking about how markets can correct 50%: “It’s happened to me three times,” he says in a BBC interview. So anyway, as a result of that, I sold half of my internet and telecom stuff and it went to cash, and I was able to get more out after that. But that changed my life. It just... you relax, your sphincter relaxes, and...
Jim O’Shaughnessy
But what did you have to change when you decided you were going to publish the book for other people to read it?
Tren Griffin
Nothing really, because I wrote the book for me, and as a tribute: this is what you gave to me. Which is another way of thinking, by the way. We don’t agree on everything. People say, “Oh, you wrote this Munger book. You must think he walks on water.” No, I didn’t agree with him on China. There’s a bunch of things I don’t agree with him about.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yep.
Tren Griffin
But I like the way the man thinks. And so that, to me, is the important thing. So really, I tried to make it maybe a little simpler. I guess that’s the thing I did do. The hardest thing is to simplify. Let’s see, the Kelly criterion: writing about that simply is not easy.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
No.
Tren Griffin
Right? And the difference between log and geometric wealth, and getting all that, but making it simple and in a story, that’s not an easy thing. But if you can teach it easily, you’ll reach a lot more people and you’ll help them, because they’ll say, “Okay, I kind of get that. I want to learn more.” And then they go dig in someplace else, or whatever. But simplifying complex things is the one thing that I did. But he does that anyway, and he does it in a funny way. And one thing about writing a book is: write about something interesting. I picked a pretty good topic. I knew a lot of people who knew him, who interacted with him. And so if you pick a good topic, you can do a lot better.
If you’re going to pick the nematode worm in Gambia in the 1500s, you’re not going to get quite as many... And then the thing is, comedy is truth. And he’s always funny, because he’d always say things out loud that everybody knew were true, but he’s saying it out loud. “I can’t believe Munger said that at the Daily Journal meeting. That was unbelievable.” But he doesn’t care.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
I always remember Billy Wilder saying, “If you’re going to tell the truth, you better be funny, or they’ll kill you.”
Tren Griffin
Yes, exactly. And be somewhat humble about it, because if you’re arrogant, people think, “Oh, what an asshole.” Whereas... sorry.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Swearing is allowed on this podcast, remember?
Tren Griffin
You know what I’m saying? You have to be interesting or people will... There’s a lot of competing things for your attention.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Totally.
Tren Griffin
And you have to be interesting, and it’s got to be understandable. It’s got to be simple. But you should have passion for it, and you should be writing it for you. Because the more you write it for yourself, the more likely it is to be a success, in my view. Because it’ll be true to you. And the reader will pick up and say, “Wow, that’s something this person really believes.” And I don’t care if they agree with me. I want them to think about the issue.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Exactly. And I want to go a little deeper on the curse of knowledge and simplifying. I suffered with that, trying to make what are very complex topics simple enough that everybody could grasp, okay, this is the way it works. That ain’t easy. It’s really hard. But it also gets back to: writing teaches you whether you know something or not. I’m an inveterate journal keeper, and I’ve been doing it for 45-plus years. And the amount that it has helped me understand... like, when I’m writing about something, then I look up and I realise, oh, I don’t know about this. But then it spurs you on, because, okay, I need to learn better. I need to be able to synthesise, get this easier to understand.
You are really good at that, with the profiles you do at 25iq, et cetera. Tell us your secret. How do others who want to get that good... what could they do to improve their ability to synthesise information?
Tren Griffin
Well, first of all, you have to read everything that the person has said and written, and try and sort of set yourself in their shoes. And then it helps to understand their history. Ken Griffin, for example, had a rough period, and he learned a lot. It was rough by many people’s standards, a period of underperformance. And you sort of learn. And then, to your point, if you can’t write it down, you haven’t thought it through.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
That’s right.
Tren Griffin
Starting to write it down, you sort of say, “Okay, well, I really don’t understand this as well as I could have.” Going back to the Kelly criterion, or explaining something like that. And it’s just trying to be empathetic. And then eventually other people can read this book. Nobody’s going to read it until I send it to the publisher, and I’ll get some feedback, and that’ll be good. And there are people who think about these issues harder than I do. But I have my own style. I’m not going to adopt their style. I sort of want to be interesting and amusing. In the Munger book, I’ve got six jokes. I’ve got four jokes in my current book. And they’ll probably get cut out by the editors, but at least there are some jokes in there.
You sort of have to mix it up, and you don’t want to be boring. Don’t be boring. It’s deadly. And plus, being boring is not fun. It’s much more interesting... And you’re going to take some arrows. There’s going to be incoming. Any artist, someone creates some lovely painting like the one behind you, and someone will say, “Oh, I don’t like that. It’s too much like so-and-so,” or, “Look at this brushwork,” or whatever the hell that is. Yeah, it’s just negative, and you’re going to have that. That’s fine. In some sense, it can be good publicity. But don’t be boring.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah, I agree. And one of the things that I got very good at... when I read the first review of my first book that was negative, I will admit to you, I was 30-whatever years old, I was crushed. I was literally crushed. And then I read it again, and I read it again, and then I realised he actually doesn’t understand this topic at all, and that’s why maybe I frustrated him, or whatever. And so I became not immune to getting attacked, but my skin thickened up considerably. Now, have you found that there are some very critical reviews that have actually improved the way you think about something, the way you write about it the next time you write about it? Because I have had that experience as well.
Tren Griffin
So what I like is a dialogue. Someone will say, “Well, I read your Munger book and you talked about this. My interpretation is different.” And then we have this conversation, and that dialogue tends to be good. It can be even great, because it forces you to explain things simply. I always had this conversation with this person, and I was trying to explain to them about wealth increasing geometrically as opposed to arithmetically. And it’s not intuitive.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
No.
Tren Griffin
People say, “Well...” And so getting that across simply requires some work. So having the dialogue is best.
And then also the reviews of people who I trust, who read the book before it’s published. I get the most out of that, because in that situation they’re not afraid to say, “Well, this is messed up. You need to fix this, or do this,” or whatever. And sometimes it’s good and sometimes it isn’t. I know some people like Morgan probably don’t need to get a lot of external advice, but I like that phase where I’m getting pushback. But then also, sometimes there’s no great answer. And so you’re doing complex adaptive systems and a whole range of things that mean, well, that might have been a good answer a long time ago, but it isn’t true right now.
And it’s like this whole debate about: is passive share changing active? Everybody has an opinion on that, just like they have a belly button. They’re all different, they’re all slightly different. Some are very different. But the point is, some things are opinions, and you can agree to disagree, because it’s opinion; you can’t prove it. And also it’s early. Some things are non-linear, some things aren’t. Some things come out of nowhere. It’s like they were working on AI, machine learning then, and they created this thing that could make translation better, and they scaled it up and it started to do more than that. It started to be capable of producing things that kind of seemed like it understood reasoning, and it got better. But it came out of nowhere. I mean, this whole AI thing is not long. And so, to me, this feels like when the internet first arrived. It feels like 1993, the commercial internet. Movement before that, but the US said, finally, okay, you can sell things on the internet. That’s when it changed.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
And you and I are entirely simpatico on that. I think that the AI revolution... I’ve been interested in it since it was called machine learning, and I’ve always been fascinated by it. But I agree with you. I think that this is a sea change, not only in society, but in the way businesses are organised, in the way people do publishing, the way people do media, and the way people do investing. My version is: what a time to be alive. I am so lucky that I am around for this innovation, because we are at such early stages of where this might take us. And to me, literally, I get giddy, because the ability to use the leverage that these tools allow is just extraordinary.
If I fell through a time tunnel back to when I got married, 1982, and somebody had an iPhone... first off, I’d be freaked out about the iPhone. But then imagine them running a large language model on it. Can you imagine? It would just seem like... what did Arthur C. Clarke say? “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” And to me, it’s just intoxicating, all of the new things that we can do and make better with these new tools. Now, I’m not naive. All tech, in my opinion, is dual use. Fire: great example, great tech. First, when we started cooking our food, that helped us develop our executive function, our prefrontal cortex. Very nice for us as humans to have. But fire is also incredibly dangerous.
And so we didn’t ban it. We had fire alarms, fire departments, fire exits, fire extinguishers. And I think that we’re going to have to do the same thing with this new technology. But I definitely think that we are looking at what is going to be just an extraordinary, tumultuous decade or two going forward, because of the innovations and the ability to do things that would have been inconceivable just 10 years ago. To me, it’s just like, okay, we’ve got to rethink all of our business models. We’ve got to rethink our playbooks. I don’t know if you’re a fan of Ken Stanley’s Greatness Can’t Be Planned, but I love that book, because, and you alluded to it earlier, nothing is binary. I either love Charlie Munger or I hate Charlie Munger? That’s bullshit. There’s a lot of things about Charlie Munger. I love the guy. I think he was just such an amazing human being. But, like you, does that mean that I think he was right about China? No, I think he was totally wrong. That doesn’t reduce my admiration for him as a human being. It’s just that, okay, you’re not going to always agree with everything.
But the ability to pivot, back to Ken Stanley: a lot of things come completely unexpectedly. And if you want to increase the surface area of your luck, you better take those things seriously. When you notice, “Oh, look at what I can do with this new fact-checking workflow. Wow, that’s going to be very helpful.” Plagiarism, for example. Let’s hope we never have to face that again, because it’s literally trivial for us to run a manuscript through our AI and contrast and compare it with hundreds of thousands of other ones to see if... Because there’s a thing in backtesting for quants called honest data mining. You’re not intentionally trying to mine the data. But we had the old quote that when you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything. And so they’re not doing it intentionally to data-mine. The same thing happens a lot in writing. People who are really good writers, guess what? They’re also really big readers, and they might take notes about books that they’ve read. They might just have great memories.
And when they’re writing about a subject, they could completely unconsciously channel something that they read from letters long ago. So with the new tools, when we find that, they’re like, “Oh my God, that isn’t what I meant.” And obviously it gets changed. But there’s just so much that I think this is going to bring to us as a culture that I just find super exciting.
Tren Griffin
One of the things that’s interesting related to that is, if you look at SpaceX, they’re really vertically integrated. They make a lot of things themselves: steel, cast things. I think writing is that way too, in that people that are doing self-publishing, and some people do really well at it, make a living at it, they’re doing the whole stack.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah.
Tren Griffin
And all these new tools allow them to do the whole stack. And so you get the ability for people to get noticed, maybe with their first book; people to have a niche indie hit; people that make a living doing what they love. It’s not a great living, but it’s a living. The vertical tools enable you to sort of unbundle this whole stack. And if you can’t get to a Big Five publisher, maybe your first book will be self-published, and the next one will be a small press, and then maybe you’ll be a big press, or maybe you’re just happy with a small press. Certainly you want somebody who cares about your book as your publisher.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yes.
Tren Griffin
And the bigger your publisher, the more likely it is to be, “Well, we’ve got six celebrity books on for fall 2027, and yours is in the mix.” Whereas it’s nice to be the big dog. I had this success with the Munger book, and to be a big dog, and I’ve sold some books, and success reinforces itself. Unfortunately, there’s a feedback loop, and success breeds more success.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yep.
Tren Griffin
And it’s sort of one of the questions: why is there a power law? Why do books have a power law? And Duncan Watts has this great essay, but basically he points out that humans don’t make decisions independently. The books we buy are the books that we see that other people have. “What’s on his bookshelf? Oh, he’s got that book. Oh, she’s reading this. Oh, she’s doing this.” And so you tend to buy that book, and that whole thing cascades until it stops. And it can stop pretty quickly. But the point is, how do you get that started? How do you bootstrap that? It’s tricky, but there are ways to do it, low-cost ways to do it.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
And you’re absolutely right about momentum. I think that the whole Girardian idea of mimetic desire absolutely plays in. And by the way, it’s not just books. It’s everything. It’s art, it’s movies, it’s any form of media. And that’s why that word of mouth is so important. Because, as you have rightly pointed out, attention now is truly the most precious commodity. And people have so many options that they can elect to either ignore, or they can read every particular book, et cetera. So finding those readers is really important. Your publisher urged you and encouraged you to develop the book in public. Tell me exactly what that entails.
Tren Griffin
Well, usually they don’t want you revealing the title or any of the content until about eight months before.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Right.
Tren Griffin
And the way it works is, in the spring they said, “Let’s go. Give it to us at the end of November, and it’ll be out the following November.” They’re like baseball managers. They’ve got a lineup; you’ve got to get in the lineup. You’re going to be a Christmas book and all that. And so you have to phase it. But building your book in public is super important, because even before you announce the title or whatever, you’re building the community.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah.
Tren Griffin
And you can do that on social media. You can do that with other kinds of speaking, doing events. But pre-sale is really important, and early word of mouth is really important. And the more they see early sales, the more they’re going to lean into it, and the more distributors are going to want to move it, and things like that. So you really have every incentive to build the community way out, even before you reveal the title and all that. Kevin Kelly’s got this: everybody needs a thousand fans. I don’t think a thousand is enough. But if they were superfans, maybe. I know on your OnlyFans you probably have, what, a couple, 10,000? But they’re very passionate about you, Jim, and you fit their profile. So my hat’s off to you. Although in that last OnlyFans, you weren’t even wearing a hat. Come on.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Anyway, now I’m going to have to start promoting my OnlyFans channel, which is completely, as you well know, non-existent. But seriously, how would you suggest... let’s say you and I had to put our heads together. We found a really bright young non-fiction author. You and I both agree: “Wow, this is an amazing book.” How would we go about it, other than the obvious? Obviously I’d have him on the podcast, I’d suggest him to other podcasters, I would send his book around to people that I know are interested in that particular topic, all of that. But what advice do you think you and I could craft together to tell this young man or woman, “Here’s what we really think you need to do, because your book is amazing”? Let’s take that as a given. Even amazing books that don’t get marketed right to the public die.
Tren Griffin
So the key thing is, the cost of creating a book is high, but the cost of making it and distributing it and publicising it has never been lower. It’s almost zero.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Exactly right.
Tren Griffin
And so what the publisher is saying when they tell their authors to do this is, you need to get out in these channels where it’s essentially a freemium model, which we call it in the SaaS business: you’ve got to find channels where you’re giving your stuff away, but you’re not giving it all away. So Substack is actually sort of a great example of that, where so many authors have, I don’t know, nine paragraphs or eight paragraphs, and they’re leading you into a conclusion, and then, “Oh, beyond this point...” But that’s good marketing. And so because it’s zero cost to you... not zero cost, but very low marginal cost.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah.
Tren Griffin
And so you have to sort of build this passionate group of fans who hopefully are going to say to their friends, “Hey, you should buy this book, too.” One of the funny stories I tell is, I’ll go to someone’s house and I’ll see their bookshelf, and I’ll say, “Wow, cool bookshelf. I’ve always wanted to read that book.” And I’ll pull it out and I’ll open it up, and it’s got that crackling sound of a book that’s never been opened before.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah.
Tren Griffin
And unfortunately, there’s a modern phenomenon, which is people buy books to make a statement.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
I know.
Tren Griffin
And to some extent, I swear, some of them think that if they bought it, that’s good enough, because I’ve got it on the shelf.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Do you remember the meme with the little Chinese boy going like this on the book, and then going like this on his face? It doesn’t work that way.
Tren Griffin
No, it doesn’t work that way. But some people think that way, or some people would like to think they read that much. Look, it requires effort and time. You have to set aside time to do it. It’s like writing. I believe that if you’re going to write, really, you should have a period of time where you set aside a couple of hours, completely lock everything out, and you go at it and you think and you go at it. Not, “I’ve got 10 minutes here, I’ll try and do something.” You can do a little research that way.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah.
Tren Griffin
Like, “Oh, I’m waiting for my pills at the pharmacy,” or whatever the heck it is. “I’ve got a cold and Dr Meck did this. I’ve got 10 minutes. Oh, I always wondered about that.”
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah.
Tren Griffin
There are all these little moments. Like, I always wondered why the mustard packets in Chinese takeout food taste so good versus the jarred mustard. And actually... so, yeah, it’s so fabulous. You go in and it’ll tell you why it is. Well, there’s a reaction, and it won’t last, and you can’t replicate that in a jar. Once it’s aerated, it gets ruined. So you should buy some powder and make your own. So now I make my own. But the point is, if you’ve got 10 minutes, you can go research some point in your book, and then you can go deeper and deeper. And you’ve got five engines you can talk to. Most of the engines now are focused on coding, because that’s what pays.
But for purposes of just, “Who said this, and when?” or, “I remember Michael Mauboussin said this in an essay called this. Find it for me. Give me a link.” I don’t use Google. I don’t use the search engine anymore for that.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Same with me. Everything I find now is through our AI system, because it finds exactly what I’m looking for. And this is one of the things that I’m now questioning my own statements about. I used to say that I was lucky when I came up, because I have an unusual memory, in that if I read something, I can remember it pretty well. But only if I read it. If I see it in a movie or I hear it, my memory is not that great. But if I do read it... it’s maybe one of the reasons why I read so voraciously. But I started to think that my memory back then was a huge advantage for me, because people didn’t have that similar recall. And then I thought, “Well, you know what? In the age of AI and large language models, my memory advantage is going to plummet, because they’re just going to be able to go to their phone and say, ‘Tell me about,’ fill in the blank, Robespierre, and get a pretty good biography, or their specific question answered.” But then I started thinking about the fact that the memory still gives me access to things that other people have never experienced.
Tren Griffin
Your prompts are better.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Exactly. Yeah, exactly.
Tren Griffin
You have to know a lot to be good at prompting. And so it’s really leverage.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yes.
Tren Griffin
Because if you don’t know what to ask... and you have to find out. Now, it’s not always right. The answer’s got hallucination in it. And so you have to be able to smell something: “I’m going to ask another engine, or I’m going to read source material.” I still have a huge paper library. I have tons of books; I go into them all the time. But you have to be able to tell when it’s wrong, but also to ask. The key thing is you’re a better prompter.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah. And I think that will continue to persist. And one of my worries is, everyone’s decrying, “Oh, reading is plummeting. No one’s reading long form anymore.” And I wonder if I buy that. And by that I mean, listen, I think that 50 years ago, probably a similar amount, of what I would call very serious book readers. Okay? And I’m being very specific about that, because 50 years ago, most people read the newspaper, most people read magazines, et cetera. But if we focus in on the group of what I would call serious book readers, do you think that has literally changed all that much from then to now?
Tren Griffin
I think something has changed, in that, like, in 1993 I get introduced to Bill Gurley and Michael Mauboussin on the same day, by a guy named Michael Larson, who’s a big fund manager. One of the biggest. And they got me interested in what they were doing down there, and I said, “Oh...” And then I said, “I’ve got to know more,” and I figured out Mandelbrot. And then Michael Larson said, “Well, you should read Alchemy of Finance by Soros,” which is a very hard book to read.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Oh, no kidding?
Tren Griffin
Yeah. But if you come at it a layer up, it becomes an important book which leads you other places. And so those two books... Mandelbrot has a book that’s particularly good, and Alchemy of Finance, they just lead you to other places. And so I probably had more time to sort of focus on that book when I was reading Alchemy of Finance. I wonder what I’d do reading it today, whether I’d be patient enough to work all the way through it and then think about it hard, because there are so many other competing things.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah.
Tren Griffin
But it was pretty seminal for me in terms of thinking about feedback loops and increasing returns and Brian Arthur and network effects, and it just sort of leads you on a path. So I probably seldom put as much effort as I did in the 90s and 80s into that one book, really digging into Mandelbrot, really digging into Taleb’s books, or whatever it was, because there are more distractions. But I think I’m reading more, and I think most of it is supplementary. I’m still reading as many books.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yep.
Tren Griffin
I’m just also reading more stuff. The how-to stuff is amazing, for fishing: flies to choose, where to fish, what time to fish, all things like that. Now, AI is fabulous on that, and it can be very local. Like, where are the chum salmon going to be hottest in a week in Hood Canal? It’ll tell you. It’s great. So I’m reading more than ever. I’m reading more than ever. But I like thinking. Not everybody likes to think. Some people want to get home and not think: “I don’t want to think anymore. I’ve been thinking all day.” But to me, it’s better than sex. No, it isn’t. But it’s darn good. It’s darn good.
It’s not as good as your OnlyFans, Jim, but...
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Now, you know, as a result of this, people are going to go look for my OnlyFans account, which does not exist.
Tren Griffin
Maybe you’ve got a... what do you call it, doppelganger out there?
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Doppelganger. Yeah.
Tren Griffin
Yes, exactly. Maybe they’ll find something. Maybe they’ll find purpose.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah. Finally, finally I will find my true purpose in life, and that is an OnlyFans account. I think, though, that you’re exactly right about the idea that a lot of us who were serious readers to begin with are reading a lot more. I am. Now, granted, that’s because I’m a publisher and I want to give the manuscripts that are submitted their proper attention. But my idea is a little different, in that I think that the percentage of people who were what I call very serious readers was very similar back in 1950 as it is today. By this, I mean we’re back to power laws. There is always going to be that group. They’re different people, but they’re still very serious readers. And I think that has not changed.
I think when we look at various marketing surveys, et cetera, the percentage of people who read the most books is a power law. Literally... I don’t have the graph right in front of me, but there’s the big majority that don’t read any books at all. And it’s not a big majority, actually. Let me rephrase that. But then it steps up to the top of that heap, which reads some ridiculous amount of books every year. And I just think what’s happening is the group of people that belongs to that category has just changed. I mean, you and I are still around, but there’s a bunch of young people in that category who weren’t even born when we started our reading adventures. And they have taken to reading in much the same way we did.
Now, did they do it exactly the same? Do they have the same paper book that we had, or the way we took notes? Do they have to go to the library like you and I had to? No, but they’re still reading. And so I’m very optimistic that with a lot of the new innovations, a lot of people who, for whatever reason... you mentioned people don’t like to think. I can’t remember who...
Tren Griffin
Some people. I said some people don’t like to think. They want to get... people watch a game and not think.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah. There’s that great philosopher who said that people would rather rearrange their prejudices and call it thinking. And I think that there’s some truth to that. But I definitely think... let’s take a crazy book, like Gödel, Escher, Bach. Kind of like Soros’s book. Oh my God. I don’t know if you’ve read it. I’ve read it, but it was unbelievably hard to read that book. And a lot of people avoid that book. Same with Mandelbrot’s (Mis)Behavior of Markets. I thought that was an incredibly brilliant book. It unlocked a lot of insights for me about the way I actually built the models that I built to select securities.
But I think that there is a chance that the technology could actually allow a path into Gödel, Escher, Bach that wasn’t present before. By that, I mean, how cool would it be to have an AI right there as you’re reading Gödel, Escher, Bach that you could immediately ask, “Hey, what’s this three-body problem? Hey, I never heard about Agrippa’s trilemma. Can you explain it to me like I’m five?” And I don’t mean to belittle that; I often use that prompt: “Explain it to me like I’m one of my grandchildren.” I think that could bring in a lot of people who are right on the edge of, “Maybe I should really read that book. I think I could really benefit from it.” What do you think?
Tren Griffin
One thing I like is to say, do a complicated answer. “Okay, I’ve just read that. Thanks. Give it to me as a narrative, as a simple narrative, and include a story if you can.”
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yep.
Tren Griffin
And so reducing it down to its essential components often helps. But it’s also much more interesting to read about something where you’ve already done something where it’s applicable.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah.
Tren Griffin
And so you start to invest, and you say, “Wow, Mandelbrot’s ideas are... I read about those, and they’re interesting. I’m going to go deeper into that.” And then that leads you to Taleb, that leads you to Ed Thorp, and then a whole range of things, and it becomes a treasure hunt.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah.
Tren Griffin
To get to the truth. And then everybody has slightly different views. It’s like Zeckhauser and Taleb don’t agree on these issues, but they agree on these issues. And then you have to form your own opinion. You have to dig into it. What are the various arguments on either side, and is there someplace where they meet in the middle? But the ability to do self-exploration is amazing. When I was in the second grade, I used to ask so many questions of my teachers. They’d say, “Tren, you should go down and help Mrs Salverson in the library, because there are books down there and you can help her put them away and read for a while.” It’s like, “Stop asking me so many questions.”
But some of us, you can’t stop asking questions. Why? You catch a strange fish: “What kind of fish is this? What do they eat? Where do they swim? Does it taste good? Does it have mercury in it? Does it migrate? Is it sustainable?” And some people don’t want to know: “Tren, it’s just a fish.” Well, no, I want to know. I want to know more. I want to know more. There’s no end to it. So much fun.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
It’s Dorothy Parker’s great quip, that “reading is a cure for curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.” But here’s what I’d like your advice on. How would you inspire somebody to be curious? Because I think, like the fellow you mentioned who just wants to go home and watch the game, for whatever reason... what if you were going to run a course on how to increase your curiosity? What would the syllabus look like?
Tren Griffin
I think the first thing is you sort of have to identify the passion first, because everything flows from that.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah.
Tren Griffin
The reason why the person is coming home and watching the game is they haven’t discovered that they have a passion for fly fishing, or fixing their car, or reading books, or appreciating art, or appreciating nature, or being a bird watcher, or being a fly fisherman. Whatever it is. You can’t fake passion. So you’ve got to try a bunch of things, and then once you find it, then you have to dig in. And the great thing is, the more you know that you don’t know very much yet.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Oh, no kidding.
Tren Griffin
And there’s no end to it. And then eventually you get to this question, you go all the way down to what’s written, you get, “Well, why is there something instead of nothing?” And then you get into quantum physics, and then you’re like, “How did I get here?” Well, it’s because you’re following the string. But you’ll follow a string if it’s interesting, if it’s relevant, if you have some passion about it. And some people just haven’t found their passion. And that’s why I like Gurley’s idea of finding your passion early in life.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah.
Tren Griffin
Because you tell the story about writing your book... I think you were 27 or something for your first book. You have nothing to lose when you have nothing to lose. It’s like a venture capitalist: all you can lose is what you put into it. Well, if you write a book, all you can lose is the energy you put into it and the time you put into it, and you’ve learned during the process. But as you get older, it becomes harder, because your opportunity cost gets harder. And so that’s why I consciously say, “I’m going to do these things that are consulting, because it keeps me around interesting people, and it generates some revenue, and it’s nice. I’ll do these things which are paying it forward.” And I’m going to cordon those off.
And I’ll always give it the time it deserves. And that can happen in a lot of ways, including one-on-one mentoring with people. Just learning about things just to learn about them, that I’ll never be able to use or monetise. I just want to know. I want to learn. I want to know. So anyway, it all starts with passion, is my answer. And then you go from there. You can’t fake passion. But you don’t like sitting on the couch.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
No.
Tren Griffin
You’re going out, trying all kinds of shit. Like, “Oh, you like bird watching? Come with me one time.” You might get hooked. You might not. And then you might say, “Well, I don’t like bird watching, but I sure like looking at sunsets and scenery and all that. Maybe I’ll be a photographer.” At least one thing leads to another. I like to read obituaries. And one of the reasons I like it is because you have these great stories: “While he was at college at MIT, he met this guy, and he was selling rugs, and he moved to Afghanistan, and he sold rugs for a while, and then he shipped them, and then he became a wholesaler. And then he moved to Thailand, and then he did this, and then he bought a bank.” And it’s sort of like, wow, that’s a life. My goal in life is to be able to tell great stories that I’m in, that I’m a character in, because that’s a test. It’s going to be interesting. Shit’s going to go on. It’s crazy. It’s boring to be boring, let’s put it that way. Lighten it up. Light it up. Try something.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
I could not agree more. I had a friend a while back say to me, he looked at me and he goes, “You know, I deeply suspect that everything you’ve done was just for the stories.” I’m like, “Well, what else is there?”
Tren Griffin
But it’s also a great test, which is someone says, “Well, you should come do this,” and you think, “Wow, that’s going to be great. And now I have a great story out of it.” Because if it isn’t material for a great story, it was boring. You didn’t do it interesting. We were out and the weather got bad and the ship was getting tossed, and if not for the courage of the fearless crew, the Minnow would be lost.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Would be lost.
Tren Griffin
All these things. That’s an adventure. You learned. How did the Professor make a radio out of a coconut? All these things. Maybe I should investigate. No, just kidding on that one. He used to live very close to me, and I asked him that once in the grocery store: “You really couldn’t fix the Minnow, but you’ve made a radio out of a coconut? How did that work?” He didn’t think that was very funny. He’s passed.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
I think it’s hysterical. But both you and I had early experiences. Yours was actually earlier than mine. I was a teenager, and I was listening to my uncles and aunts argue about an investment. And it was one of the first times I got to sit with the adults, when they all had gathered. And so I was trying to be on my best behaviour, and I was listening to my dad and my uncle argue about IBM, I think it was. And I just remember thinking, “I think that’s the worst way to think about a stock.” And I remember your story about when you were six years old on your grandfather’s 45-foot Chris-Craft boat. You were listening to them talking about business and about buying hotels and all of that.
What was something that, when you were six, you were like, “I have no idea what they’re talking about,” but that stayed with you from that experience?
Tren Griffin
So in that era, Seattle had a tolerance policy. And if you were south of Yesler, which is a street that goes east to west, there was gambling and prostitution, and cops were being paid off, and there’s bingo and all kinds of crazy stuff. There’s drugs. Illegal gambling was probably the biggest thing. But anyway, they would talk about that, and who was corrupt, and the governor was corrupt, and this guy was the bagman. And it was a smaller town. And the thing I took away from it was, this is damn interesting. But also that people are human, and things aren’t always what they appear. And so that nice hotel right there is actually a brothel, and all these things.
But it was different in that, when I was six, I was very old, and so I was paying attention. And so we’d go on a trip someplace, Palm Springs or skiing or something, and I’d see Mr So-and-so kissing some 24-year-old, and I’d say, “That’s not his wife.” My dad would say, “Yes, that’s...” But most kids didn’t pay attention to that. But I said, “Okay, I want to know why that happened. Why would he do that?” Because I want to understand the motivation. I was observant to a fault early on. And so listening to those things made me curious about how the world really worked, and then how the world appeared to work.
And once you learn about something, then you want to know a little bit more. Like, “Okay, well, who’s taking the bribes, and how did they get distributed, and why did they choose Yesler, and which of these buildings has a casino in it,” and all these sorts of things. So anyway, I think we were both genetically curious, and probably at an earlier age than most people. But everybody can get curious, because it’s fun. It’s just fun to learn. It’s fun to discover. Like, why does this restaurant packet of mustard taste better than the stuff in the jar? Well, the stuff in the jar has vinegar, and there’s a chemical reaction that happens when you open this thing up. And if you mix your own powder, you can have a chemical reaction and it tastes better. But knowing that is fun. Learning that is fun.
But for some people, it’s not fun. “Why would I want to know that? I just want to focus on my Corvette I’ve got in the garage, and I work on that, and it makes me happy, and that’s all I think about.” I go to bed... it’s not me. But it makes them happy, if it cranks their... Look, if they want to get home and just turn on Jim’s OnlyFans, it’s okay. I’m not judgemental.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
You’re doing such a good job of marketing my non-existent OnlyFans, I might actually have to open one.
Tren Griffin
I think it’s a chance to diversify the imprint brand. A lot of these publishers are talking about being multimodal: video, all that. And you could publicise a lot of things there. You could advertise. You could get... like, Speedo would give you big money for wearing a tight Speedo.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
I admire your optimism, but...
Tren Griffin
Placement. They’ll give you a Speedo.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
But let me correct your assessment. Speedo would probably pay me a huge sum of money not to wear a Speedo and show it. So, whenever I’m talking to you, I glance at the time and the time just disappears, which means a very good thing. What are you doing right now? Are you agreeing with Craig, and what are you doing specifically to do this book in public that you want our listeners and viewers to know about?
Tren Griffin
I’m really not supposed to talk about what’s in it yet, but what I’m trying to do is take some key ideas and illustrate them with stories.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Okay.
Tren Griffin
And to not make it too complex. But it’s a book about investing. I can say that.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Okay.
Tren Griffin
It’s a book about investing principles. It’s like my blog. Someone said nicely the other day, or yesterday or something, on Twitter, “I love 25iq because it’s timeless.” There are 300 posts there. There’s over a million words. And I didn’t write it to say, “Well, this is what’s going on today.” I think in one case I went into one business deeply. But I was trying to be timeless, and I’m trying to do the same thing. But the other thing is I’m trying to be happy and enjoy the process of writing the book.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah.
Tren Griffin
You can’t torture yourself. And being happy is tremendously underrated. So I’m trying to be happy. I’m trying to be focused. I’m trying to be passionate. I’m trying to create something that I feel proud of, that might help people, that is paying it forward.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
I think that’s a wonderful motivating thing when you’re writing your eighth book. I’ve always... and I think you probably agree... I view happiness as a byproduct.
Tren Griffin
Right.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
And by that I mean, there are so many books on how to be happy, how-to books. And I think that if you make it conditional and you say, “When I get X, then I will be happy,” you’re setting yourself up for failure.
Tren Griffin
Absolutely. I know so many rich, unhappy people.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Oh, no kidding.
Tren Griffin
Right. And I know many people who don’t have anything who are super happy.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah.
Tren Griffin
And then I know rich people who are super happy. And so you could draw a matrix with the quadrants. But a lot of it is just up to you. No one’s going to make you happy.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Oh, truer words were never spoken. Yeah, that is absolutely correct.
Tren Griffin
And it’s very hard to make someone else happy, and it’s even harder to make them change in some way.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah. Right.
Tren Griffin
And so you get to acceptance. But then you get to the fact that, at least with your own behaviour and your own happiness, you’re in control.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yes.
Tren Griffin
Right? I have this saying that I talk to people about, which is: you’re going through your day and some guy comes up to you and says, “Hi, you’ve been really smart. Will you help me with this problem? Here’s this turd. Will you take it?” And the answer, of course, is, “No, I’m not. It’s a very nice turd, but you keep holding that. Here are some things you might want to think about, and here are some resources, and good luck with that.” You should only take on things that you want to take on. You should take on things that make you happy and productive, but realise you’re in control. If you’re unhappy, it’s because you’re letting yourself be unhappy. No, someone else isn’t making you unhappy. You are.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Completely agree. And there are so many simple things that are not easy. Like investing. The way I look at investing is, there are a lot of simple ways you can do very well, but they’re very hard to actually do. And I love the idea about the turd. “No, thank you. You keep that turd.”
Tren Griffin
It’s a very nice turd. Good luck with that turd. But I’m not grabbing it.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Lovely turd. And I definitely agree that it is ultimately up to you. Because, uniquely... Exactly. Right.
Tren Griffin
You don’t need anybody’s permission.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Right.
Tren Griffin
You don’t need... It’s frictionless.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah.
Tren Griffin
As opposed to, “Well, if so-and-so doesn’t like me, I won’t be happy.”
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Right.
Tren Griffin
That’s a setup. That’s handing someone else control over your happiness. It kind of reminds me of the margin clerk, when you’re borrowing on margin: they can sell that stock when it gets low. So you’ve basically said, “Here, you determine my fate.” This is like, “Well, unless you help me, unless you do these things and you say that I’m wonderful, I can’t be happy.” Well, no. You don’t want to do that. Again, you can strive to be... you can strive to have someone like you. You can strive to have them approve, or not think you’re an idiot, or whatever. But you’re in control. And that’s just... this is beautiful.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
I again could not agree with you more. I’m sure you’ve read Cialdini’s Influence.
Tren Griffin
Yes.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
And one of his first principles is reciprocity. And I do think sometimes that, we talked about genetic curiosity, et cetera, I do think that there is, in many people, a strong component to their personality where reciprocity can be a bitch. Because let’s take the guy with the turd. Prior to asking you to take the turd from him, he does something really nice for you.
Tren Griffin
And then you’re supposed to take the turd.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah.
Tren Griffin
That’s like the woman, the guy, the Buddhist monk or whatever, who gives you the flower in the airport and then asks for the donation.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
And by the way, that was based on that principle. The Hare Krishnas studied that. They actually had a pretty good marketing plan.
Tren Griffin
Yeah.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Because...
Tren Griffin
And reciprocity is a powerful thing.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
It really is, until it gets ruined. Like the example of the Hare Krishnas with the flowers in the airport: for the first couple of years, that worked really well, until people became inured to it. They don’t take the flower; they won’t take the flower. And then you’ve got to move on. But I think the broader point that is worth people contemplating is, unfortunately, there are other people who are doing their very best to manipulate you as well. And one of the downsides of social media is that a lot of the things are posted there specifically to get you angry, to get you nervous, to get you worried, et cetera. And so I always say to people, get in the habit of saying, “Why am I reading this now? What would happen if I actually believed this? Who wants me to believe this? Is it a guy who wants me to take his turd from him?” And yet those kinds of simple questions elude a lot of people.
Tren Griffin
Yeah. The truth is: be true to yourself, be kind to yourself, and don’t take the turd. Those are the three principles. Then, in my next book: Don’t Take the Turd.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Don’t Take the Turd.
Tren Griffin
Please.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
If you do nothing else, send Don’t Take the Turd to us.
Tren Griffin
My current book is not... there’s nothing about that. But that’s sort of the life advice thing. The Munger-esque stuff is, there are some things that are really pretty simple, and there are some things that are complex, and there are some things that involve ambiguity and uncertainty, some things that involve what Zeckhauser called ignorance. There’s deep uncertainty. There are black swans there. There are tail events. Life is complex, but if it wasn’t, it’d be damn boring. Nothing like a little stirring things up, a little soup. You don’t want to sit around and not have anything going on. It’s like a lot of people who were really smart had already checked out, and then AI came along and said, “Oh, I’m in again.”
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah.
Tren Griffin
This is fun. This is cool. Quantum. Wow. Let’s go. Let’s go. You don’t want to be bored. You don’t want to have things stay the same, because life is short. Someone said to me the other day, life is like a toilet paper roll: towards the end, it goes really fast.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
And that is very true. And I also could not agree more about, man, if you don’t mix it up, life just gets really boring really fast. And we get one time around on this baby, hopefully.
Tren Griffin
The other point is, you have a career, and you have all these interesting people, and you’re getting challenged, you learn things, and all that. And then just because you decide not to take a W-2 anymore, which I decided when I was 71. I said, “Okay, it’s time not to have a W-2. Time to focus on fishing, time to focus on writing books, time to focus on this consulting work that’s just super interesting.”
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah.
Tren Griffin
And I can order my own life when I want to, and all those sorts of things. But you still need these interesting people. And so you need to find ways: how am I going to be around interesting people? Who’s going to challenge me? And it can be not real people. It can be virtual people, in terms of what I read, what I listen to, what podcasts I listen to. But you don’t want to go into a state where, “Okay, well, I don’t have a W-2 anymore. What am I going to do now?” My mom told me about people she lived with, and the wife had been on her own for 20 or 30 years, and the husband was suddenly retired, and he’d start following her around, and eventually she would turn around and say, “Go find something the hell to do. Get out of here. Go someplace. Get out of here.” Because she’s used to having her own life.
And you don’t want to be in that situation where you don’t know what to do, so you’re just following your wife or husband around. It can be the other way. Some guys are retiring before their wives. But the point here is: seek out what interests you. Seek out your passions. Find new passions, do new things, try new things. Don’t be boring.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Totally agree. And I took the advice from my grandfather, when I was lucky enough to spend a lot of time with him when I was a kid. He was born in 1885 and died in 1973, at age 88. He had a wonderful life. I remember one of the last things, when I was a teenager and he was getting on, I’m like, “So what do you credit everything to?” And he said, “Never retire, and always find something interesting that you hadn’t done before.” Those are two pieces of advice, and, boy, you seem to live them, Tren.
Tren Griffin
The key thing is, not having a W-2 does not mean you’re retired.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Of course not.
Tren Griffin
There’s so many things to do.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Of course not. Absolutely.
Tren Griffin
We’re about to wrap up. I interrupted.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
No, that’s okay. I actually think you’re absolutely right, because a lot of people do equate the two: “Oh, now I don’t have a W-2 anymore, I guess I’m retired.” No, you’re not. You can do a ton of different things, like you’re doing, like a ton of people are doing. And you really want to do that, because life will get boring very quickly if you don’t. I’ve been married nearly 45 years, and I would have been divorced long ago had I hung around the house.
Tren Griffin
Give the person you love some space. Can be excellent advice.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah, it really is. Well, Tren, as always, I have a wonderful time chatting with you. I think this has been a great conversation. As you recall, you get to... and now you’re on your third time, so you get to really incept people.
Our final thing is: we’re going to make you the emperor of the world. You can’t kill anyone. You can’t incarcerate anyone. But we’re going to hand you a magical microphone, and you can say two things into it. I bet I can guess what one of them is going to be. But you can say two things into it, and you’re going to incept the entire population of the world. Whenever their morning is, they’re going to wake up and they’re going to think, “I just had two of the greatest ideas. And unlike all the other times, I’m going to actually take action against both of these ideas today.” What are you incepting in the world’s population?
Tren Griffin
I think that probably the keyest thing is to find your passion: to find the thing that motivates you, to find the thing that wants you to learn more, do more, help people more. Find that passion. The best way to do that is just with experiments. You just do a lot of things, and you do more of the things that really float your boat, that charge you. And once you find that passion, then all these other great things flow from it.
And then the second thing is: really listen. We’re all good... me particularly. I could do a better job listening. I know I could do better. I should listen more. And you really have to listen, because you can get into your own grooves. One of the things I’m talking about in the book I’m writing is path dependence. You can be like a snowball rolling down the hill, and the bigger you get, you can’t change the motion of this thing that’s going down the hill. But you really have to change, and you really have to adapt. AI right now is really that way, which is, maybe you used to do X and that was your thing, but now you’re expected to do the whole stack yourself. And unless you can change, you’re in trouble.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
Yeah.
Tren Griffin
And so the only thing that doesn’t change is change. It’s always going to be different. So you have to listen. So be passionate and listen. If there are only two things, that’s what I’d say.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
I love both of them. Good old Heraclitus for the win: “The same man cannot step in the same river, because he is no longer the same man, nor is it the same river.” Tren, I always have a wonderful time chatting with you. We will put up all of the places that people can find you when we post the podcast. But thank you so much for giving me so much time.
Tren Griffin
All right. Good luck with the OnlyFans.
Jim O’Shaughnessy
You’re going to carry that bit right to the bitter end, aren’t you? I admire the persistence.