now here’s here’s another one so when I retired from the Navy and it got out and started the consulting business working and one of my risk-averse friends that was staying in the military for its its welfare program write it so it’s a paycheck write it he the guy wasn’t you know he wasn’t all fired up anymore but he was in and so he had a mortgage to pay and kids to feed so he’s just staying in and he kind of looked at me when I was getting out I said yeah man I got bills to pay too but I’m gonna go and get after it somehow and he said what are you gonna do if it if it you know if the business doesn’t work and you end up in you know you’re gonna come back in and about what are you gonna do you won’t be able to get back in baba baba and I said bro worst-case scenario everything goes to hell guess what I’m gonna be doing I have an RV I will be in my RV with my family we’ll be driving up and down the coast of California raiding jujitsu schools and training and I’ll be surfing it’s all good and it won’t cost me barely anything do that my retirement cover will be good to go you got a back-up plan like that well let me rephrase that if you needed a back-up plan like that mmm what would it be this is this is one of my favorite topics so I would say that I have an infinite number of backup plans and the way I think about that is by doing what I call fear setting so much like you just said looking at my goals the worst things that could happen the ways I could mitigate that in the way I could get back to where I am now if all hell struck at once it helps me to remove the fear of taking these these steps that might paralyze me otherwise the second part is by say practicing fasting practicing spending no money for certain periods of time I don’t fear I would say the top handful of things that tend to stop people from taking what they perceive as risks the other very important thing is that risk has a very specific meaning for me and I realized early on that people talk about risk tolerance taking risks but if they don’t define it clearly it can it can end up being paralyzing and how nebulous it is so for me risk is very simple it is the likelihood of an irreversible negative outcome that’s it so most things I do even though people look at it they say oh my god this guy’s in investing in speculative startups when it’s just one guy and an idea man he’s a risk-taker I don’t view myself that way at all I view myself as if anything someone who’s very has taken a lot of time to get good at mitigating risk I’m a risk mitigator and in the case of say specular investing I am only using money that I can comfortably afford to lose and for me backup plan similar to yourself throw my to hug in an RV get some get some instant oatmeal sleeping bag you know seventies right in my backyard I’m gonna go find some dirt bag climbers and hang out there good good go yeah go hang out with my parents get to see more of them go for a run in the woods yeah while I’m trying to figure out the next step it’s and you had that attitude when you were taking more legitimate risks I mean right now obviously you’re you’re pretty good to go and but but in the beginning when you moved out to the west coast you had to have the similar attitude of because I know I did that that that attitude for me freed me yeah Oh worst case scenario I lose everything cool I still have my RV it’s paid for yeah we’re good yeah totally I I had that Adam four surfboards than any other human should ever have and and knives and circle oh yeah we roll deep I I had that realization early on and of course when I first graduated from school went out to the west coast I did not have a lot of money I remember when I came out to California for the first time for a job interview I couldn’t afford a hotel I stayed at the fairtex kickboxing gym on the second floor sleeping on a bunk bed with a Thai instructor sleeping above me and washed my clothes in the sink there you go and I was happy I mean that I was fully content I I didn’t feel like I was missing any and but let’s not kid ourselves I mean when I first moved out it was 1999 this is at the peak of the bubble rental prices are out of control and I was making 40 grand a year pre-tax and yet so yeah and my my office my desk was in the fire exit I mean they they was completely illegal I was I had I had a pretty slick setup but it was very low budget and but really what I think freed me on some level is realizing and this hopefully this doesn’t sound British or arrogant or whatever but no matter what difficulties might befall me whatever unemployment might come my way there are people with fewer resources with less education who have figured it out before and survived so if dozens or hundreds or thousands of millions of people have figured this out I’m going to come out the other end of be fine and so that that was very reassuring to me
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