The Most Valuable Skill For Any Founder

George Mack

I call it *"getting Ted Lassoed"* now, which is when a Brit has twice the intelligence or knowledge, but the American has ten times the agency or confidence. As a result, they achieve five times more. *That was brilliant.*

Shaan Puri

George, you had an interesting career because you were at Social Chain early on. So, people like Steve Bartlett from [unclear: "divers"] were there early? </FormattedResponse>

Sam Parr

And then, a couple of weeks ago, you came out with this thing — it was called **highagency.com**.

Shaan Puri

Let me give the background here. George got obsessed with the way that Nikola Tesla fell in love with a pigeon. George fell in love with this idea of *"high agency."* He started tweeting about it, started blogging about it. He's like, "I'm gonna write a handbook on this thing." He started making it his sole focus for at least—what, six months, George?

George Mack

Well, I'd say *five years*. *Five years* is when I first started thinking about the idea — when Eric Weinstein mentioned it. Then I started writing about it. I got advice that it would never take off as an idea. Interestingly, since we did our podcast last time when we discussed it, the idea — or the *meme* as a whole — has become *bigger and bigger and bigger*, I think, by the way.

Sam Parr

It's not five years. When I googled your name, I googled "George Mac High Agency." You were tweeting about this in November 2018. </FormattedResponse>

George Mack

2007

Shaan Puri

So let's explain it in an easy way. We could put this visual up on YouTube. A high-agency meme that stands out to me is this: there's a person deserted on an island, and two people. Person A takes wood from the island and tries to spell the word "HELP." They're just sitting there hoping, waiting to be rescued. Person B takes those letters, builds a little raft, and starts paddling away. They start helping themselves. One is a higher-agency version than the other. The person who builds the boat and starts paddling is the higher-agency version. What's cool about this is you got obsessed with the idea, then you got interested in it, then you committed to it. You started writing this thing and you were giving me updates saying you were writing it for a while. Sam—do you know the story of how he got highagency.com? No, because he did not own that domain. It's actually a very high-agency story.

George Mack

Yeah, so one of the things that I have in the piece is an exercise that I do and recommend. It's called *turning bullshit into reality.* The way most people live in the 21st century is a to-do list model: they empty short-term memory — what's caching in their mind — and then they do those things that day. By contrast, the *turning bullshit into reality* model is: you think of a value you want to hold or live up to, and then you come up with ideas based on that. It's a much more creative way of living than the to-do list. When I was writing the piece, I thought, *you want to be the personal trainer who's in shape,* so I tried to do some high-agency stuff around how I could promote that. One of the things I listed during the exercise was, “What about if I just get highagency.com?” I looked up the domain and it looked like it would likely cost tens of thousands of dollars. I started reaching out to a few brokers and some hacky people. We realized the person who owned highagency.com had owned it for about twenty years — it was an old agency — and it was about to expire when we checked. So we waited for the moment it would expire. It went into a small auction and nobody else online was aware of it. It was me and a marijuana/cannabis marketing agency bidding, which actually makes sense for the name *High Agency* — I hadn't thought of that. I managed to get it for essentially nearly free. That’s an example of *turning bullshit into reality.* Then, when it came to promoting the piece, I wrote down “high agency” and asked, “What are ways I can display that value to promote it?” I always pay attention to my facial muscles: if I start giggling at something, I think, “That’s probably a good idea.” One idea I had for promoting it was, “What if I take over Times Square for a blog post?” I started giggling at that — my gut told me it was the right direction. I began cold-emailing and blasting people, using my background in advertising to set up favors and move things around. On the day of the launch, I took over One Times Square with **highagency.com** — a billboard with my little Twitter icon — taking over Times Square that day.

Sam Parr

Dude, that is *awesome*. How many views did this article get so far, or that day?

George Mack

So, I don't track any of that. The one thing I *do* track is **DMs and emails**, because I've been in media for a while and one of the biggest issues we face with modern media is people go off *vanity metrics*. What gets measured gets managed, and it's so easy to see view count. For example, if an episode gets a million views, that's great. But if 10,000 people listen to it five times, I would argue the latter is much better than the former. Right now we don't have many ways of measuring *depth* metrics. So I prefer going off depth metrics: quality of people that DM me, quality of people that email me. One side effect I've noticed is that once every two days somebody will say it made them cry, which was not the intention at all. I haven't paid attention to that; I just look at the depth metrics.

Sam Parr

Alright — a few episodes ago I talked about something and I got thousands of messages asking me to go deeper and to explain. That's what I'm about to do. I told you guys how I use **ChatGPT** as a life coach or a thought partner. What I did was upload all types of personal information: my personal finances, my net worth, my goals, different books that I like, and issues going on in my personal life and businesses. I uploaded so much information. The output is that I have this GPT that I can ask questions about issues I'm having in my life, like, “How should I respond to this email?” or “What's the right decision knowing my goals for the future?” It understands the context because of the information I provided. I worked with **HubSpot** to put together a step-by-step process showing the audience the software that I used to make this. ChatGPT asked me all this stuff, so it's super easy for you to use. As I said, I use this 10–20 times a day — it has literally changed my life. If you want that, it's free. There's a link below — just click it, enter your email, and we will send you everything you need to set this up in about 20 minutes. I’ll show you how I use it again 10–20 times a day. Alright, check it out — the link is below in the description. Back to the episode.

Shaan Puri

So I wanted to do a little thing which was: what are examples of **extreme high agency** that we've personally experienced? Either something you did, something you didn't do, a friend, somebody you admire—anything like that. I just wanted to quickly spitball what comes to mind. You weren't there on this podcast, but I did a podcast with this guy, **Nick Mowbray**. Nick Mowbray's episode—I don't know if it has the most views—but it is the most hardcore episode I've ever done on this podcast. The guy, I think, is the most impressive entrepreneur that's ever been on the podcast. We've done around 700 episodes, something like that, and he's a guy nobody's ever even heard of. I think this is like an **Elon-level** entrepreneur in terms of his level of agency. *Agency* is the perfect word to describe him. He talks about basically just this. I'll give you the simple examples and then ramp to his most insane example. He and his brother wanted to start a toy company straight out of high school. He was, like, 17 or 18 years old. First, he goes door-to-door selling his brother's science-fair project. Door-to-door sales—already, let's say, level one of agency. That takes agency to go do every single day, and he sells thousands of units door to door. Then he's like, "Okay, great—how are we going to produce thousands of units? We have to ramp production." They said, "Well, where do other toys get made? They get made in China." So they just picked up and moved to China with no money. They literally slept on a sidewalk outside the airport on the first night. The funniest part is he's describing to me that they moved to China to set up their factory. What I thought he meant was the usual approach—you go to China and you find a factory that already does this. That's the...

Shaan Puri

He didn't even understand that. He's like, "Dude, to say I was naive is an understatement." He's like, "We went to China and then we just built a factory with wood—by a river. We built a shed and that became our factory. We found Chinese people and we employed them in the factory. We created our own factory." It's like... besides the, like, factory.

Sam Parr

Is—is glamorizing it? It's like, *"hot."*

Shaan Puri

Exactly. And then, as they're... [unclear], he's like, "and by the way — worst product." You know, everyone says, "product is everything." He's like, "we had the worst product. We just couldn't even make it good. We were so bad at it." "We just slept in the thing for, like, years. Lived off a dollar-a-day budget, eating the cheapest food. They basically employed this Chinese woman from the village to make them rice every day."

Sam Parr

He's like, "I was like, 'So how?'"

Shaan Puri

He asked, "Did you get distribution? Because they're everywhere — they're in Walmart, they're in every store." He said, "I would email every buyer of every retail store in every geography every day. That was my day." Eventually, they would reply, "Dude, we don't want it." He'd respond, "Ah, so you're here. Great — would love to tell you about our latest product." Finally, someone would crack and say, "Alright, just send me the sample," or, "Look, I'm going to the show — please stop emailing me. If you're there, I'll meet with you. I'll give you 20 minutes." He used that to scrape and claw. He's describing the journey for him and his brother to bootstrap a toy company that became the biggest toy company in the world. They made about $1 billion a year in profit — the two brothers with no outside investors. Then he got sick — he had to have part of his intestines removed [I think Crohn's disease or something; I forgot the exact diagnosis]. While recovering on his sickbed, he decided to go into a new space and created the world's most popular diaper brand — the fastest-selling diaper brand in the world right now, *Rascals*. He also created the fastest-growing hair-care brand on TikTok. This guy is just prolific. I couldn't believe it. It blew my mind — it showed me there are so many levels of agency above where I'm at.

Sam Parr

George, do you think that "crazy people like that" are born, or do they learn it? Or can you learn it? </FormattedResponse>

George Mack

One thing—like a model from cognitive behavioral therapy—is black-or-white thinking. So people will ask, "Is it nature or is it nurture?" Realistically, it's probably somewhere on a spectrum. That's why I kind of call it the **high agency spectrum**. I think there are definitely people who have genetic advantages. Balaji had a great line the other day: "When communism ended, the Soviets could discuss profit for the first time," and he was saying that with wokeness ending maybe we can discuss genetics for the first time. I feel that genetics definitely plays a component. But I would say it can be quite low-agency to then just outsource everything purely to your genetics. Genetics plays a role, but you can have **agency over your agency**. The way I would explain that is: regardless of the genetic roll of the dice, it's possible to decrease someone's agency; therefore, it's possible to increase someone's agency. The easiest example I look at is the difference between my British friends and my American friends. I love to show *Ted Lasso* because it's an example of what I call "getting Ted Lasso'd"—when a Brit has twice the intelligence or knowledge, but the American has ten times the agency or confidence, and as a result they achieve five times more, dude.

Sam Parr

"The way I think—I said, **'That's brilliant.'** I think I've said on the podcast to all my British friends: the difference in American culture and British culture is watching *The British Office* and *The American Office*. In *The American Office*, the guy always gets the girl. There's a little bit of laughing at each other, but it's more like we're laughing together, and it always ends well. In *The British Office*, it's kind of mean. The guy does not get the girl; oftentimes it actually ends sad.

Shaan Puri

The British show is more realistic and was less successful than the American version of "The Office," too.

Sam Parr

But the *Ted Lasso* example is way better because it's so true: you see this **optimistic person** in a room full of haters. That reminds me of my British versus American friends.

George Mack

There's a crazy stat around universities: of the top 10 universities in the world, I believe three are British and three are American. So when you actually look at intellect, I think you could argue we're at least as smart — or at least the British *sound* smarter. We have that going for us. However, when it comes to entrepreneurial output from those universities, America is like five times higher. Even in the example of *DeepMind* — a lot of the AI innovation came from the UK, but the actual execution happens in the U.S. So, to go back to your point, I think using the UK versus the U.S. as an example shows you've got a similar, wide distribution of genetics going on, but a completely different output as a result.

Shaan Puri

You said something we passed over, but I thought it was actually a pretty good insight. You said it in a very intellectual way — "pitch this to the facial muscles" — but really what you were saying was: *if it makes me laugh, there's actually some merit in the idea.* The idea that makes me giggle is the one I should double-click into. I just thought, have you seen this email that basically kickstarted Airbnb? Airbnb, which today is about a $100 billion company, has a public email you can read. It's from Joe Gebbia, and he's emailing Brian. The email goes: > Brian, I thought of a way to make a few bucks. > Turning our place into a designer's bed and breakfast. We could let young designers come into town and crash at our place during the four-day event. There's like a conference, and we'll give them Wi‑Fi, a small desk, a sleeping mat, and breakfast every morning. And if it's hot!

Shaan Puri

At the end, Joe — he leaves it with that. </FormattedResponse>

Sam Parr

They've got such a good email that it sounds *fake*.

Shaan Puri

And so, I remember pointing out that I think any idea that ends like that—*genuinely*—you would be like, "If that's your genuine feel to the end of it, there's a lot of potential in those types of ideas."

George Mack

This is the one I was afraid to say for a while because I thought I might get canceled. But when I explain it, I think it kind of makes sense. This is obviously the TikTok clip that gets me canceled, but I'll explain—so **don't clip it**. Essentially, I think **"child labor is underpriced."** Let me explain. Obviously, the classic child labor we see in the world now is truly atrocious and horrific. Anybody involved in that—I wish them hell. However, historically we had models of children working. For example, in the UK children used to clean chimneys, and that was largely outlawed across the world. But I think now, thanks to AI and the teaching collapse [education collapse], things are changing. I've always said for a while that AI has accelerated this. I think you'll see the first **self-made teenage billionaire by 2030**. Saying that makes me giggle, and I think it's true.

Sam Parr

I think that is a **very bold prediction**. It doesn't even seem crazy, dude. We had a 17-year-old on the podcast the other day who had a business doing $30 million a year in revenue. </FormattedResponse>

George Mack

Yeah, so I have an idea: the next **Y Combinator** that only invests in founders aged *11 to 18*. First off, nobody's funding them because they can't. You've got the homeschooling boom right now. One of the criticisms beforehand was that they're in school, so they can't do it. But you're obviously seeing that the [unclear: "koa"]—as well as the question, **"How would adults take them seriously?"**—is changing. Now, with smaller teams and the ability to hide behind a cartoon or whatever, I think this is the time we will see it. </FormattedResponse>

Sam Parr

When Sean first told me about [it], I think it was on this podcast. Or I forget when—but you or someone told me about *Peter Thiel's* "Thiel."

Shaan Puri

**Fellowship**

Sam Parr

Yeah, and he was like, "He's gonna give you $150,000 to drop out of college and start a company." That was one of the... it doesn't seem ridiculous.

Shaan Puri

"Opposite of 'stay in school, kids.' He was like, 'I'll pay you to leave school, kids.' That was his." </FormattedResponse>

Sam Parr

When that idea came out, I felt the same thing: *"That's insane—wait, why? You can't do that."* Then everyone goes to the same mental model. Although for some people it will take ten years because they'll wait to see the results, other people—like me—took a few weeks. I was like, *"That's crazy."* Then it's like, *"That's crazy, right?"* And then you're like, *"Is this crazy?"* — *"Oh, this is actually kind of awesome."*

Shaan Puri

And then, you know, **Ethereum** comes out of that, and **Figma** comes out of that, and a bunch of, like, you know, kind of multi‑billion‑dollar, industry‑changing companies come out.

George Mack

A lot of it is on the topic of *high agency* and how it relates to all of this that we're discussing right now. So, one great question is: "What would I do if I had 10x the agency?" Another question I love—because you guys obviously talk about ideas and opportunities that are coming up, but to, like, zoom out and then give people the agency to think about how to actually come up with the ideas and opportunities themselves—is: "What is ignored or neglected by the media that will..." [sentence unfinished]

Sam Parr

"Be studied by historians. What's a historical example?"

George Mack

So, I did a post two years ago on this topic that went really viral. Even if you look at some of the things in there, a good example would be **microplastics** — it's slowly bubbling up now and reaching the media. But if you discussed that two to three years ago, you were an absolute weirdo. Another example in that post was around **fentanyl**. At the time, it was seen as absurd or crazy; there weren't many people discussing it, and now it's way bigger. I think there are countless examples of this media–historian gap that exists. There's a great book called *The Sovereign Individual*, and they have a line in it that always stuck with me. They're talking about the fall of the Roman Empire: it's quite easy to date when the Roman Empire fell, but if you actually went to people at the time and asked, "When did the Roman Empire fall?" there was no big announcement — no "Hey guys, the empire has fallen." It was likely that a lot of people didn't admit it until a hundred years later.

George Mack

To that case: if **CNN** existed during the fall of the **Roman Empire**, on the day it fell they wouldn't have announced it had fallen. It just takes people a while. I think that's a big *high-agency* trait: essentially, if you wait for the news, you'll be wrong—or late.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, that's great. That's great. Do you have suspicions of what an idea like that would be today? It's a very hard question. It's an **important question** — it's worth pondering. But it's not one where, you know, ten answers come to mind right away about what's largely ignored or over- or under-reported today that will be, you know, historically important to historians in the future.

George Mack

One funny one—if I was a historian, this is really absurd—I've spent a lot of time in the Middle East. Coming from the UK, I spent four to five years in Dubai. One thing that's truly absurd about the West is that in the Middle East, whenever you go to the bathroom there's this "ass-spraying thing." In the West, a bidet—everybody, yeah, a **bidet**—it's more like a showerhead kind of thing. So you get a bidet, which is a separate mechanism, but it's like a little showerhead. I could go to the most remote, crazy location in the desert and they will have one. I've... what's it called?

Sam Parr

There's, like, a... What are they called? I actually...</FormattedResponse>

George Mack

I call it, like, an *arseprite*. I don't—I don't know what the official term is. Talk to [whoever is there] about it when you're there, but this is the problem.

Sam Parr

Right. "Is that there's in..." [fragment — incomplete thought]

George Mack

The West — there's almost not really a good naming mechanism for it. And the fact that Rory Sutherland has this great bit, which is: > "Imagine if a bird shat on your head and I go, 'Oh, Sam [name unclear], here's a dry piece of paper to wipe it off.' You go, 'What the fuck, man? I need to wash my hair.'" But meanwhile this is happening in the West en masse. I think, as an entrepreneurial opportunity—changing the frame around that—**it's a billion-dollar opportunity** if you partnered with a plumbing company or something like that. Imagine that again. I think, first as well.

Shaan Puri

Have you seen **Tushy**? No. **Tushy** is like an attachable bidet. It turns any *dumb* toilet into a smart-toilet type of thing. I think they do extremely well — I think they're north of $100,000,000 in revenue. Yeah, they're targeting the American market. But I'm with you, dude — that's just the tip of the iceberg. Alright, you're right; it will seem crazy in hindsight.

George Mack

Another example of what's ignored or neglected by the media — and that will be studied by historians — is a seismic shift I think we're going through now. It's similar to the change that happened when writing first came online. There's a great sci‑fi short story by Ted Chiang that describes a scenario which is possible today: *always‑on recording technology*. Some people record their whole lives. You can kind of see it now with Twitch streamers. What’s fascinating is the impact this has on memory. [Spoiler alert] The story follows a father, daughter, and mother. The mother leaves them without saying goodbye. One day the father and daughter have a huge argument. The daughter says to the father, "I wish you'd just leave. Like Mom, I hate you." That moment haunts the father for years. After about five years they slowly rebuild their relationship. The father doesn't have access to all these recording devices, but his daughter does. One day he needs access to go through her memory log, so he asks her. She shares it with him, and as he's going through it a file pops up. He realizes — to his shock — that he completely misremembered the event. It was him who said it to her. The story suggests that essentially all our memories are complete bollocks — they're made up, they're artificial. How does that change when we essentially have recordings of everything? I think that will be a major topic historians begin to study: the same kind of cultural shift we experienced when we first started writing. That's going to be a huge shift as a result as well.

Shaan Puri

Have you seen the *Black Mirror* episode about this? They did a version of this on *Black Mirror* as well.

George Mack

Oh, really. Well, there's an example: in the UK there's a building called **Grenfell Tower**. It was a horrific accident where the whole building caught fire. It was in a council estate and many people died. On the day, there was this strange case of a baby being dropped from the top floor all the way down and somebody catching it. It went crazy viral at the time, and a lot of eyewitness testimony came out saying that they saw it. Then, a physicist—about six months later, after the emotion had calmed down around the event—was like, "Hold on: if you drop a baby from that high to there, the physics of this... I've got a bit of doubt about it." When they actually dug into the memories of it, a lot of it was just artificial memories that people had created. So I'm pretty fascinated by devices like that that come online. I think part of society will go for it, and the other part will not. But it completely changes who you are when you no longer have a story of your memories; you actually have the *full log*.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, there's a famous experiment. I don't know if you guys have ever seen this — the **9/11 memory experiment**.

Sam Parr

"What's that?" "No."

Shaan Puri

So people feel like they really remember those important traumatic days. There's even phrases in the language like, "I'll never forget where I was" or "I'll never forget how I felt when I saw that." I don't have the studies in front of me, but I remember learning about a set of studies where researchers examined memory accuracy for 9/11 [September 11th]. It was pretty shocking: less than 50% of the details were accurate. People had extreme confidence that their memories were accurate, but their memories actually were not. Not only did they not remember what happened, they didn't even remember how they felt. Early on they logged how they felt, then researchers measured them three years later and many years later. People often couldn't recall their earlier feelings accurately. In other words, memories tend to converge toward a shared narrative rather than reflect what actually happened. There are terms for *"flashbulb memories"*—all these terms describe how poor human memory actually is—which is kind of crazy when you think about the **court system**, for example, since a lot of it is based on eyewitness testimony or somebody remembering certain details.

Sam Parr

"And what's funny is, Sean—as you were describing that, I was thinking, 'Where was I at 9:11? What was I doing?' And then I'm also saying the second-most common thing, which is, 'But I remember...'"

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I'm *the exception*.

Sam Parr

**"Ads don't work."** That's what everyone's going to say. Oh, and by the way, I told this story on here. I asked a prestigious journalist to come in and freelance for *The Hustle*. She wrote a letter back to me and I remembered it as, "That's cute, thanks." Right? That memory drove, like, eight years of success for me because I was like, "I'm going to prove this freaking jerk wrong." I thought she was so dismissive of me. I went back and reread the email. She was super nice. She didn't say "That's cute." She wrote: > "I'm honored—thank you so much for thinking of me. I'm too busy right now, but, you know, good luck with your new..." I reread it and thought, "That's insane." I had told myself that story, and I've said it publicly so many times. I even named her once or twice. It was wrong. I didn't remember it correctly, and I'm happy I didn't. But our memory is crap. What about George? About you — you had stuff in here about looking for business ideas through a **"high-agency"** lens, but also about building software that's **"high-agency."** What does that mean? Because what you're describing sounds like a philosophical or mental framework, but when you think about it, it actually seems more tactical than that.

George Mack

Yeah, it's incredibly tactical. There was a post—I think two days ago—that went really viral on *Pirate Wires* about how **agency** is the most important thing thanks to AI. I think agency has always been one of the most important things, so I said it's probably the most important idea of the twenty-first century... or it might be. And if a British person says *probably* or *might be*, it's almost like an American betting the house on it. In this Pirate Wires post they talked about how, thanks to AI and large language models, the exponential leverage you get on **agency** is so much bigger. You just begin to look at it differently. A small case of high agency for me: I started getting bored of being bullied by algorithms. I feel like everybody is just a bitch to the algorithms these days, and I try to find small ways to have agency over the algorithm. For example, I reflected on my YouTube history—I literally recommend everybody do it; it's one of the weirdest exercises related to memory. You go on YouTube, press *History*, and scroll through the videos. I asked myself: which ones am I glad I watched in hindsight, which ones am I neutral about, and which ones do I regret? I found I regretted about 80% of them, 10% I was neutral about, and 10% I enjoyed watching. Then I looked at what the ones I liked had in common and what the ones I didn't like had in common. The single biggest thing where I thought I wasted my time was content under 30 minutes—particularly under 5 minutes. It was just brain-rotting content: a Coffeezilla reaction or "Logan Paul did this crazy crypto pump and dump"—I click on it and then I'm in that vortex. And, going back to the memory thing, I've completely forgotten it. So I thought, how about I work with ChatGPT to solve this problem? I built a script and now I call it the **Kail Algorithm**: my YouTube does not show me any videos under 30 minutes. This ability to manipulate your environment—particularly with AI—has only gotten bigger and bigger. There's agency everywhere. I don't know if you've heard the phrase "everything's a skill issue"; it's kind of like that for agency—everything is just an agency problem.

Sam Parr

"Where else are you doing that in your life?"

George Mack

So even small things—just constantly, each day. Do I recommend going back to **"turning bullshit into reality"**? Yes. Just go through that list and operate from a creative model each day: *How can I have agency?* Then apply it, rather than going off the to‑do list model. I mean anything from writing down, "I want to learn..." I have always wanted to play **"Baker Street"** on the saxophone. I sat on the beach. I did **"turning bullshit into reality."** I wanted to learn Baker Street on the saxophone. My girlfriend says, "Why don't you do it?" There's nothing more embarrassing than a girl saying, "Why don't you do it?" So I just ordered a saxophone and taught myself Baker Street on the saxophone. So, come at it from a very simple model: write down the value, then ways you can display it, then do the thing. There’s an amazing article that went viral the other day. You know it's a good article when it's from, like, 2010 on a really weird niche blog. There's a guy called Aaron Swartz—you probably heard of him; he was the Reddit cofounder who tragically took his own life—and he has this amazing blog which goes to your? </FormattedResponse>

George Mack

Then Sam was like, "How do you actually turn this tactically?" It talks about having a *theory of action* versus a *theory of change*. He uses the example of: you want the United States to decrease their military spending. A *theory of action* would be, "I'm a blogger; therefore, I'm going to write blog posts about this." Whereas a *theory of change* is essentially where you go, "Okay, I want to decrease the United States' military spending — how can I do that? Why? How?" You keep asking "why" and "how" all the way down until you get to a concrete action you can do today. The piece is absolutely incredible. I think you mentioned to Sean on the podcast the other day how hard it can be to actually think from first principles, but using Aaron's framework — the blog post I really recommend checking out — is absolutely incredible.

Sam Parr

You said on here — when we asked what you wanted to talk about — you mentioned something about how you think language kind of controls people a lot. I think you said, "language shapes the world around us." I've been thinking about that. I actually made a change recently. I have a problem where I compare myself to other people a lot. I would say things like, "I should be doing this," or "I should be at this place." I remember I read something and started changing the words to *I choose to do this*. I think — Sean, did you actually say this? I think we had someone on the podcast where it changed my thinking. Instead of saying "I should," I'm going to change that word to "choose." It's like, what am I going to *choose* to do, not "I should be doing X, Y, and Z."

Shaan Puri

I was at a Tony Robbins event, and he said it beautifully. Somebody had raised their hand and said, "I should do this. I know I should do this, but... blah blah blah. I just think that they should do that." He replied, "You're doing what a lot of people do — you're shitting all over yourself." I just couldn't unhear it. He said, "People just shit all over themselves." From that moment on, it literally, viscerally felt gross to say the word *should*. "I'm shitting all over myself right now," and I just couldn't do it anymore.

George Mack

Language is a great example of *low agency*. The number of times we'll wait for a word to find us rather than trying to create words ourselves is huge. That's why I felt **high agency** was quite a meta concept: when I discovered that word, it actually changed the way I viewed reality. One way of viewing reality is that reality happens and you have words to describe it. Another way is that you use words and that, in turn, edits reality. It's a double-edged sword. A good example is "fake news." There were words beforehand that never really caught on — there was "yellow journalism" and "truthy news" — but when "fake news" came along, you had a clearer way of viewing reality. A great example right now is the term "vibe coding" or "vibe code." The only thing that's probably done more than LLMs for vibe coding is the meme itself of vibe coding. So **high agency** is another example.

Sam Parr

So, what is **"vibe coding"**, by the way? I still don't know what the difference is between **"vibe coding"** and coding.

George Mack

"Just you—basically a **non-technical** person—prompting an **LLM** [large language model] and getting it to code for you."

Sam Parr

"That's vibe coding. Alright, got it. And you're saying what?"

George Mack

When you actually have that language itself—or you have that meme, those memes—it actually increases the output of things. You begin to see how language can have such an impact everywhere. I'm actually fascinated, on the topic of the show, by the **"millionaire meme."** The concept of a millionaire is so impactful to society, and it hasn't been updated even as inflation has changed what it means to be a millionaire. I once watched a YouTube ad where they were speaking in a currency that was like 1-to-10 [scaled currency], and he was talking about making his first million. The idea still exists even though inflation has kicked in, and I'm fascinated to see what replaces that.

Shaan Puri

There's this great book from back in the day that I've never read because it's one of those books where the cover tells you the whole story. You can literally read the cover, have the epiphany, and move on. It's called *Your Word Is Your Wand*. It's by, I think, Florence Scovel Shinn, and it's actually kind of a hard book to read because it's one of those books written like eighty years ago — it's just too poetic to really grok nowadays. The whole idea is: your word is your wand — it's your magic wand and it shapes your reality. Exactly as you're describing, and this applies to high agency. I'll give you another example. I tore my knee ligament a couple months ago, so I've been recovering and doing rehab. My trainer — he's like the black belt in mindset that I get to work out with every day — he never uses the word "rehab." He always uses a different word. He'll be like, "Alright, let's get ready," and he'll say things like: > "This is not rehab. We're going to renew. We're going to refresh. We're going to recharge." He's like, "We're going to do something. We're going to make that better than it was before." "Rehab" already implies it's broken and we need to try to fix it. He'll say, "We're going to rejuvenate this thing; we're going to make your knee ten years younger than it currently is." How are we going to do that? It's literally when you change the word, you change the method. What you say changes how you do it. You see this over and over in small ways in business. Another version of this that I've done recently is intentionally breaking your speed bar. We all have a certain clock speed — a speed with which we operate. A good exercise is to break the speed barrier of what you think is possible for any given task. It can be very small: maybe you're doing the dishes and you normally put away the silverware at a certain rate, so try to break your speed bar and see how fast you can do that. Or take the piano I got. I had this idea: I've been practicing piano for three months and I'm ready to upgrade from my keyboard to a legit piano — more fun to play, feels better, etc. My birthday was coming up, so the normal speed bar would be to wait for my birthday. That's not a very high-agency move. Then you get it, maybe it's on back order, it takes a few weeks to come, you set a delivery date, then it shows up. Instead, I set myself a challenge. From the moment I had the idea I said, "This inspiration is perishable — ideas are like avocados. I'm not going to let this go brown. I'm going to do it now." I wanted to see how fast I could do this. I figured a normal person would make this a two- or three-week project, so I said, "I'm going to try to do this in 24 hours." Sure enough, I mobilized my resources, my focus, my intention toward making that one thing happen. The store was closed, but I found the owner, called him, and asked if he would come open the store — I was ready to buy a piano right now. The owner opened the store for me. Instead of just playing pianos to see which one felt better, I said, "I need to know first which pianos you have in stock in the warehouse that could be delivered tomorrow. While I'm looking, call the delivery guys and schedule a delivery for tomorrow. I'm going to pick, but schedule it right now — it's Friday and I want this delivered Saturday morning." I made the whole thing happen, and by 11 a.m. Saturday morning I had the piano in the room and I was playing it. There are so many instances where if you break your speed bar in one area, you realize speed is negotiable everywhere — you can change the rate at which something happens in your business or your personal life.

Sam Parr

"He just said, 'His **attention**, **focus**, and **energy** is his army.' How good is that? That's good.

George Mack

Is that?

Sam Parr

"What you just said."

George Mack

Yeah, go ahead, Josh. You got the military and the Air Force — you need a little one for each. *That's beautiful.*

Shaan Puri

Yeah, let's go march, right? *Scott Galloway* had a great version of this. He goes—what did he... how did he say it?—he's like, "I deployed an army of capital in my forties from my family to go kill and grow while I was asleep."

Sam Parr

Dude, that's so good. That's so good, George. Who are examples—not the Elon Musks of the world—who you think represent *high agency*? </FormattedResponse>

Shaan Puri

Can you give us a friend? I think the best way to get **high agency** is to just hang out with a high-agency person. You'll realize how unacceptable your low-agency thoughts are around them; you'll feel embarrassed by it. Being around high-agency people is the fastest way to become more high-agency yourself.

George Mack

Well, the question I always come back to is: who would you call when you're stuck in a third-world jail cell? That's how you identify the highest-agency person that you know. Two come to mind. One is **Claude Shannon**, who is probably one of the most underrated individuals that exist. He literally created information theory. He took the idea from philosophy—where you have ones and zeros in logic—and applied that to computing, creating information theory, which is the foundation for much of what we're doing right now. Basically, he and Alan Shearing, the father of modern computing, are central figures in that history. He has this crazy thing. One of the things in the essay—one of my favorite high-agency aphorisms—is: *"Does it defy the laws of physics?"* It's like a brain prompt whenever you're faced with a problem: does it defy the laws of physics? Claude Shannon and a guy called **Ed Thorp** wanted to hack roulette. Roulette is the example of the ultimate game of luck. Before the first ever mobile computer, they created the first mobile computer—they had it in their shoe. It would observe the ball as it hit, and based on probability they managed to outcompete the house by about 33%. So, I'd say Claude Shannon's awesome.

Sam Parr

Sean, you should read *Ed Thorp's* biography — one of the best biographies I've ever read.

Shaan Puri

"Adding it to the list."

Sam Parr

So this guy, **Ed Thorp** — he was basically a math guy, a math prodigy. He got sick of just making the wages that math teachers got, so he said, "I'm gonna invent a way to count cards." He did. He invented card counting and made a lot of money. He didn't really like being in casinos all the time; it wasn't good for his family. The casinos started getting on his case [not the mafia], and he was like, "I don't want them to, like, break my hand in the back room because I'm counting cards." So he eventually got into finance. He started one of the first hedge funds and, you know, became a billionaire that way. He tells stories — it's sort of like a **Forrest Gump** story. He tells a story about how he met this young man who had really good ideas. He knew this guy was going to be super rich, so he decided to become one of his first investors. That guy went and started **Berkshire Hathaway**. There are like ten or twenty stories like that where he was "just poking around," met someone he thought was really smart, stayed in touch, and then that person went and founded **Apple**. He's got a ton of stories like that. But who's the second person on your list?

George Mack

The second person on my list is... a book called *"Don't Tell Me I Can't"* by Cole Summers. It's, in my opinion, the most underrated business book in the world. It's about an hour long, and it's written by a 13-year-old who tells the story.

Shaan Puri

"Is this the unschooling guy?"

George Mack

The unschooling guy. So when he is, I think, four or five years old, he and his parents see some kids outside causing havoc and saying nasty things. He's from a very poor background, and they decide, "You know what? We're not going to go to school — we're going to homeschool you." Unfortunately, his father — who served in the military and was supposed to be his teacher — ends up having to have multiple surgeries. One day the boy goes to his dad, who, you can imagine, is sitting there post-surgery, a little out of it. Cole says to his dad, "Dad, how do I get rich?" His dad replies, "I don't know, son. Maybe go watch **Warren Buffett** videos on YouTube." So this six-year-old starts watching **Warren Buffett** videos on YouTube. You listen to the audiobook and you're taking notes: "Oh my God, this kid's so smart," because of the lessons he's taken from **Charlie Munger**. Then, at seven, I believe he starts his first business that makes $1,000 profit per month. He acquires a vehicle using his parents' license [unclear phrase: "when he's like business"].

Sam Parr

"What was the seven-year-old's business?" </FormattedResponse>

George Mack

**Rabbit farming.**

Sam Parr

So, he would breed rabbits and sell them. </FormattedResponse>

George Mack

He sold them to restaurants, so he took that to **$1,000 per month**. He then flipped a house and made, I think, about **$10,000** profit when he was 10 years old.

Shaan Puri

It was like an **abandoned house**, right? It was somebody's house that was just dilapidated. They weren't doing anything with it. He just said, "Hey—if I do all the work, can I... you know... share in the profit of flipping this?" Basically, he didn't even buy a home to flip. He just found an **unused home** and was like, "There's potential here."

George Mack

*He's incredible.* He tells this story when he's meeting other seven-year-olds for the first time, or when he's at Scouts with his friends. They're talking about what they learned that day, and they're like, "Yeah, I was looking at Pluto — is it a planet? That's what they were teaching us at school. I don't know... whatever, I care about this." He replies, "Oh, I was looking into how Amazon manages to pay 0% tax just using the internet."

Sam Parr

So I...

George Mack

Think his book again. Just to be clear—maybe not every seven-year-old should have a **P&L**. Maybe 80% of them should, but not every seven-year-old should have a **P&L**. He completely reframed my reality of what a child can do.

Sam Parr

What—and, by the way, this is one of those stories where he's still, like, 15 or 16. This isn't, like, "no, in the Eighties"—like this. Yeah... he's a

George Mack

He unfortunately passed away, which is *really, really sad*.

Shaan Puri

Wow—like a surfing accident or something, right?

George Mack

Yeah, I think... I don't know the ins and outs of it. *Tragic*, obviously, but *absolutely incredible.* Oh no — that he might still live the life that he lived.

Shaan Puri

You have this thing in your post. You said **"How to spot high-agency people,"** and number one you wrote was **"weird teenage hobbies."** Teenage years are the hardest time to go against social pressures. True — if they can go against the crowd as a teenager, they can go against the crowd as an adult. And that—would that be yours? Your weird teenage hobby was an obsession with juggling?

George Mack

Yes. I kind of wish my dad had bet me he couldn't code—I would probably be on a yacht right now. However, I think even my best hires, the ones I've placed, pretty much all line up with that criteria: they have weird, interesting hobbies. I was listening to an interview with Palmer Luckey about this, and it kind of hints at intrinsic motivation as well as the ability to go against wider mimetic forces. That is a good indicator. So it's a very good interview question: **"Tell me about the weird shit you did growing up."**

Shaan Puri

We used to ask: **"What's something you were degenerately obsessed with?"** Meaning, something you were so obsessed with that it actually negatively affected the quality of your life — you were too obsessed with it but did it anyway. It's usually a video game, a hobby, collecting, that sort of thing. I forgot who it was — some famous investor — but they had another question they asked along with it: **"What's something you could give a one-hour talk on right now, unprepared?"** The idea is you know it so well, because you've spent so much time on it, that if I gave you 45 minutes to an hour you could give me a crash course. You have mastery over it. That question does two things. First, it gives you a relative bar: if that's the thing they know best and you compare it to the things they've been telling you about, you might realize, "Oh, that resume was a little shaky — they don't really know how that other thing operated in their company compared to how they know this." Second, it tells you about their communication skills. Can they actually break something down simply for somebody and then build up from there? Are they a good storyteller or a good communicator or not? You don't need that for every job, but for roles like being a CEO or being a marketer, you want to be able to do that well.

George Mack

"That's a phenomenal."

Sam Parr

Before we kind of wrap up, you had one thing here that really caught my eye. First of all, you called yourself—well, you said, "I'm the Laird Hamilton of surfing the internet." I thought that was actually hilarious. You also mentioned one line: "the number one under-discussed antidepressant," which I'm curious about. And then you also said, "the next ADHD." What are you referring to for those two things?

George Mack

Yeah, so, too—I get kind of what is ignored by the media that will be studied by historians. So there was a study that came out in terms of depression. I don't know if you've seen the *meta-analysis* of depression. Guess what ranked the highest in terms of alleviating the symptoms of depression?

Shaan Puri

Walking.

Sam Parr

Yeah — working out: *physical exercise*.

George Mack

So, as part of that, that was the big breakthrough that came out: exercise ranked higher, according to this analysis, than SSRIs. The number one, however—significantly more than exercise and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and higher than yoga and tai chi—was **dance therapy**.

Shaan Puri

What?

George Mack

Dance outperformed exercise significantly. According to this meta-analysis, dance had the greatest impact in alleviating depression. So, I think there's potentially a claim to be made that this is *dance therapy*.

Shaan Puri

Dude, that's **amazing**. Who knew Sam?

Sam Parr

"I'd rather be depressed."

Shaan Puri

"When's the last time you danced, **Sam**?"

Sam Parr

Never. I—my wife. My wife, no.

Shaan Puri

"Dude, when's the last time?"

Sam Parr

Dude, I have literally— not once in my life have I been in a public place and, in the **Midwest**, you don't cry and you don't dance. That's what men don't do. And you don't drink liquids out of straws. Hold on — those are the **three rules** of being a man in the Midwest: **don't cry**, **don't dance**, and **don't drink liquids out of straws**.

Shaan Puri

"You're okay. Let's work backwards. You're in your *thirties* now. You're at a friend's wedding. You're just sitting down—holding down the fort at the table, making sure the purses don't get stolen. What are you doing?"

Sam Parr

"Yes, yes — I am not dancing. Okay, wait — George, would you dance at a wedding? I mean, you're kinda suave; you probably would have."

George Mack

Of course, there's a *barbell* when it comes to dance. My girlfriend is an **incredible** dancer—she's been a dancer since she was five; it's what she does for a living. I realized you either want to be the best dancer on the dance floor or the worst dancer on the dance floor—just letting loose and not caring, full-on David Brent style. It's the person in the middle—who either doesn't want to get on the dance floor or is kind of half-moving—that is the cringiest. So yeah, I'm a big dancer. I'm terrible, but I'm a dancer.

Shaan Puri

"Alright, Sam—prom. Did you dance at prom?" "Nope." "What'd you do?"

Sam Parr

I just sat. I—I tell you, I don't know... wow. It's horrible. That's, that's... you know how people say "public speaking is the biggest fear"? *Mine's dancing.*

Shaan Puri

**Public dancing**—yeah. **Public dancing** is definitely a bigger fear than **public speaking** for me.

Sam Parr

Yeah, public dancing is pretty tough. I don't drink, so if I were drunk I could probably get away with it. But *sober dancing*, as a grown man, is probably the scariest thing one can do... I'd rather...

George Mack

Go to some... wow.

Shaan Puri

"Send me to Ukraine."

Sam Parr

Right. I'd rather get deployed in Baghdad than have to dance at a wedding. Put that on a bumper.

Shaan Puri

Think about this: we could do this together, man. We could overcome this. You could just wait.

Sam Parr

So, you're *fearful* of this too?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, but not like you. Like—I... if I'm at a thing, I do it. I *hate it*, but I do it. I kinda like it, but I also kinda feel insecure about it. But then I do it anyway. I've never just taken the stance of, "Nope, I'm out."

Sam Parr

So, no—I don't think I'm going to be dancing. What was the second thing? The next *ADHD*...? </FormattedResponse>

Shaan Puri

We've—I'm trying to change the subject. I can't even think about dancing.</FormattedResponse>

George Mack

The next ADHD is, I think... one great idea I heard for spotting trends — this came from Chris Williamson — is: when a new trend is coming, *bet on a counter-trend occurring.* One trend you’re seeing right now is a rise in nationalism: “America for America,” “Canada for Canada,” “China for China.” One funny idea I have is about language learning. Duolingo is obviously huge, but AI is almost making that irrelevant. I think the skill of learning a language is going to decline over time. A funny business idea that I think could work: when I’d speak to Chris he would talk to me about his therapy sessions and all these revelations he's getting from therapy. I said to him, “I think 50% of this has nothing to do with your childhood — it’s just being British. You’re just overcoming what it means to be British.” I think there’s something to be said for essentially creating a *Duolingo that cures you of your nationality.* You’ll have a barbell: on one end, everybody’s like “America for America,” and on the other, it’s like “I’m a global citizen” — Balaji, network-state style. You could then localize everything. Imagine an ad campaign. From the ad first: - “Oh, you’re British. I bet you can’t take compliments. I bet you have a lot of self-doubt.” — *Yes. Yes. Yes. Help fix being British.* - Or, “If you’re American, you don’t know anything about Europe — you just call Africa one big blob.” — *Let’s remove that syndrome for you.* People are very self-conscious about their own country, so that’s one of my ideas. I think it will be the new kind of pathology that people have about themselves.

Shaan Puri

"American One sounded awesome to me. America for you."

George Mack

That might be the market where it doesn't work.

Shaan Puri

Okay, so this works internationally, but you don't want to cure Americans of the self-delusion that we have—that everything is great, we're great, it's all going to work out great. That *pronoia* that we have is very, very helpful to us. If you rob us of that, we get worse.

George Mack

One of my big regrets about being British is I've been early to a lot of things but then maybe didn't have the conviction. Maybe it goes back to what you mentioned earlier. Sam and I came up with this idea ages ago where I would visualize myself on my deathbed. I'd be there—there's nobody there; I'm the worst version of myself. Then I get a knock on the door and it's the best version of myself. It's that kind of meditation, like the *"deathbed regret meditation."* At the end it's like, "What action are you gonna take today?" I thought this was the weirdest fucking shit I'd ever created. Now it's big on TikTok—my friend showed me; it's a viral trend of these girls doing the exercise that I originally came up with. I think there's something in *hardship as a service*. Bet on a trend going the other way, which is: life is so good compared to historical standards that people want more hardship in their lives. So I'd potentially create an app that would be a *negative visualization*. Every day you plug it in and you are in World War II, about to go over the trenches. Your brother has died. Your mother's written letters but you don't want to read them. You have no way of contacting your wife and you're about to go over into the trenches. Then you wake up and all of a sudden your life now is incredible. So I think *negative visualization* is a tool from Stoicism, but I think there's probably a billion-dollar idea in...

Shaan Puri

A product. A product you could build out of that.

George Mack

Yeah, dude—have you guys?

Sam Parr

I've seen this thing — I'll send it to you. It's on Instagram: a page where the guy uses **AI**. The headline will be, for example, "You woke up as a slave who's being forced to be a gladiator in Rome," or "You've woken up as a laborer in Egypt building the pyramids," or "You've woken up in a slum in Mumbai in 1992." It sets up all these crazy scenes. Some of them are great — like "Woke up as an emperor in Rome," and it shows, from a *POV*, the person waking up in the morning and walking around. Have you guys seen this? Or it could be like "You woke up as a kid in the Midwest in 1982." Have you seen that, George?

George Mack

Yes. So this is the thinking from the *ad-first model*. You can already picture the ads there. It then runs to a monthly subscription, and you do that as your *morning meditation*. It replaces just observing your thoughts. It's more a *negative-contrasting* tool to make people feel better about themselves.

Shaan Puri

"George, thanks for coming on. Where should people follow?" "Twitter — Twitter's the best spot."

George Mack

Yeah. Twitter's the best spot — George Mac on Twitter. **highagency.com** if you want to read the full piece. Anything at **adprofessor.com** as well. And yeah, that's everything.

Shaan Puri

"**You're awesome, dude.** Every conversation we have with you is amazing. You're a great thinker, and you really have a gift for making ideas that are—let's say—outside the zone of conventional thinking, and then making them sticky and memorable and kind of worth considering. So I think it's very rare; there are not a lot of people who could do that, and you're one of them."

George Mack

Thank you.

Sam Parr

Thank you, George. Likewise — **you're the man**. Are you going to become an American anytime soon, by the way?

George Mack

So I just landed yesterday. I just had my visa approved. I've moved from Dubai to the US purely because I find that when I'm in the US, it's luckier — you're way more likely to be lucky, serendipitous. I don't think the quality of life here is as bad as in the rest of the world now; but, look, it's so much more — significantly so. So yes, I'm a proud *Ted Lasso*. </FormattedResponse>

Sam Parr

Welcome to the tribe, brother — you're in. Welcome to Texas. I'll get you some cowboy boots and a hat. Thanks for being here. Thanks for coming on the pod. God bless you. God bless America. Talk soon.