Podcast Notes Playlist: Business

• Everything is an issue of agency; agency is the most valuable skill for any founder
• Work from a creative mindset by actively applying your sense of agency: Write down the value, how you can display it, and then do the thing 
• Getting Ted Lasso’d: When a Brit with twice the intelligence and knowledge gets outperformed by the American who has 10x the agency and confidence
• Pay attention to your ideas that make you laugh; if they elicit this type of emotion in you, then you might be onto something 
• If you wait for the news, you will be wrong or late
  • What is ignored by the media today that will be studied by future historians?  
• Leverage on high agency has never been higher, thanks to modern AI tools 
• Some people let reality happen to them and then use words to describe it, while others use words to edit and shape their reality 
  • Language shapes the world around us
  • Minimize “should” from your vocabulary and start doing!
  • The best way to increase your agency is to hang around people with high agency
• Ideas are avocados: they are perishable – there is no time like the present to work on your idea 
• The high-agency approach to problem solving: Ask “Why, Why, Why?” and continue to drill down on the problem until you arrive at the fundamental issue upon which you can take action today 
• Speed is negotiable: Mobilize your army, which is your ideas, your resources, and your intention, to achieve your goal in much less time than you perceive to be possible 

Episode 703: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) talk to George Mack ( https://x.com/george__mack ) about high agency. 

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Links:

• Steal Sam's guide to turn ChatGPT into your Executive Coach: https://clickhubspot.com/wec

• High Agency - https://www.highagency.com/ 

• Nick Mowbray episode - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pHcxoZ0j9A 

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Check Out Shaan's Stuff:

Need to hire? You should use the same service Shaan uses to hire developers, designers, & Virtual Assistants → it’s called Shepherd (tell ‘em Shaan sent you): https://bit.ly/SupportShepherd

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Check Out Sam's Stuff:

• Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/

• Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/

• Copy That - https://copythat.com

• Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth

• Sam’s List - http://samslist.co/

My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by HubSpot Media // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano

• “Looking way forward, we are on an unsustainable path.” – Kenneth Rogoff on the US fiscal situation 
  • The debt continues to balloon and another inflationary impulse is on the horizon 
  • Higher taxation is likely as a means to manage the deficit 
• Japan has been effective at becoming sclerotic slowly, but their economic model is not worth imitating – especially if you are trying to compete with China

• Japan could be in serious trouble: It is finally experiencing inflation, needing to raise interest rates, has stuffed government debt into every orifice of its economy, and cutting old-age benefits to pay its growing interest expense

Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff approaches global finance with the same strategic foresight that made him a chess grandmaster. Author of the new book Our Dollar, Your Problem, Rogoff doesn't sugarcoat America's future: he foresees a significant inflation shock within a decade, far more severe than the post-COVID bout. When this second wave hits, he warns, "credibility's really going to be shot."

In this conversation, Ken and Tyler tackle international economic dynamics, unresolved macro puzzles, the state of chess, and more, including whether trade deficits are truly unsustainable, why China's investment-heavy growth model has reached its limits, how currency depreciation neutralizes tariff effects, Pakistan’s IMF bailouts, whether more Latin American countries should dollarize, Japan's deceptively peaceful economic decline, Europe's coming fiscal reckoning, how the US will eventually confront its ballooning debt, the puzzling absence of a recession during our recent disinflation, the potential of phasing out large denomination currency notes, the future relevance of stablecoins, whether America should start a CBDC, Argentina's chances under Milei, who will be the next dominant player in chess, hanging out with Bobby Fischer, drawing out against Magnus Carlsen, and how to save classical chess from excessive computer preparation.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.

Recorded April 2nd, 2025.

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• AI is not thinking-as-a-service but collaboration-as-a-service: The wrong way to approach AI is to sit back and see what it comes up with; the right way is to tinker with it and poke it in different ways so that novel patterns emerge
• Banning AI in schools is like stopping humans from using fire because they might burn themselves
  • After discovering how to use fire, we created fire departments, firemen, and fire exits; the same thing will happen with AI
  • “AI is a mirror, not a mold.” – Jim O’Shaughnessy 
• Creation is fundamentally about choices: The choices reflect what the creator considers; the creation is the result of what the creator decides
• The best writers use the best prompts – the same skills that make them great writers help them get the best from AI
• “A lot of things that are revolutionary in the history of technology have taken something that was encoded into the substrate and then made it an abstraction.” – Nathan Baschez 
• AI in 2025 is roughly where the internet was in 1995: So even if there is an AI ‘crash’, value creation will take place post-crash just as it did with internet companies following the Dot Com Bubble
• Understanding cumulative cultural evolution: Recognizing cultural shifts before others do gives you a competitive edge in both life and business 
• The thinking that you should let the world pull companies out of your creative projects may be wrong; the vast majorities of successful businesses were started by people who wanted to create a successful business  
• Do not fall victim to the “Disney Princess Co-Founder” Fallacy: Instead of waiting to start because you have not found the perfect co-founder, just start on your idea!
• A common misconception about writing is that it is not only a way to communicate our thoughts, but also a way to formulate our thoughts 
• Learn more by doing: Set aside preconceived expectations and follow your curiosity

Nathan Baschez is the cofounder and CEO of Lex, an AI word-processor. He also cofounded Every, was the first employee at Substack AND co-created Product Hunt.

Suffice to say, Nathan knows a thing or two about building on the internet.

He joins the show to discuss how AI is changing writing, why it’s time to rethink the article, the rise of solo founders and MUCH more.

I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. For the full transcript, episode takeaways, and bucketloads of other goodies designed to make you go, “Hmm, that’s interesting!”, check out our Substack.

Important Links:

• Lex
• Twitter
• Substack
• LinkedIn

Show Notes:

• Lex: Your Spotter In the Writing Gym
• Letting People Into Your Creative Process
• Collaboration-as-a-Service
• Creation Is Fundamentally About Choices
• What Will Become of the AI Holdouts?
• AI Is Like the Internet In 1995
• Can AI Unfuck the Government?
• Blindspots While Working In Organizations
• Rethinking The ‘Article’ As A Medium
• Memes Are Dense Information Packets
• It’s Time for Solo Founders
• Why Learning About Cumulative Cultural Evolution Is Vital
• What’s Next for Lex?
• Writing As A Way To Design Thoughts
• Nathan As World Emperor

Books Mentioned:

• A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life; by George Saunders
• The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous; by Joseph Henrich
• The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter; by Joseph Henrich

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• The time to start your art is now; without action, nothing will happen
• Start creating your art before you feel ready; you will discover the answers along the way 
• Use labels to elevate your ambition: Your identity will conform to the words you use to describe yourself 
• Half the magic is in *not* knowing; the magic exists in what you don’t know, but will soon discover 
• Life and art should be the same; you write your own story in life – the story of who you are, what you are going to become, and what you are going to achieve  
• If you do not have fear about something that you are going to do today, then you are probably wasting your time 
• Remove ego from the creative process and be a conduit for the creative spirit to come through you  
• Don’t parent, partner: If you want your relationship with your kids to last a long time, then partner with them and be their mentor instead of parenting them 
• “The biggest obstacle in your life is you, always.” – Robert Rodriquez 

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• Embracing the Founder Persona in America: The founder persona is a unique legacy of America that we should celebrate and embrace 
• Rethinking the Software-Industrial Complex: If software is so great, why does nothing seem to work? Perhaps we need to reevaluate whether the software-industrial complex is genuinely serving society, or merely claiming to 
• Data is not the “new oil”; data is the new snake oil: There is nothing inherently valuable about data – it is only valuable if you can use it to make a decision  

Shyam Sankar is the Chief Technology Officer at Palantir Technologies. A builder at heart, he’s spent over 20 years designing and deploying cutting-edge software and AI for both government and private sector partners. As Palantir’s 13th hire, Shyam helped take the company from scrappy startup to S&P 500 powerhouse.

Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors:

Shyam Sankar Links:

• Check out the Tetragrammaton episode page

Mel Ziegler is the co-founder of Banana Republic and The Republic of Tea. In 1978, with $1,500 in savings and no prior business experience, he and his wife, Patricia Ziegler, launched Banana Republic, reimagining military surplus as stylish safari and expedition wear. After leaving the company, the duo went on to co-found tea company The Republic of Tea with Bill Rosenzweig. Ziegler is also the co-author of the memoir Wild Company: The Untold Story of Banana Republic, chronicling their unconventional entrepreneurial journey. Before his business ventures, he worked as a journalist for the Miami Herald and the San Francisco Chronicle, and he wrote for New York Magazine. A multi-faceted creative, Ziegler has also been an abstract painter for nearly 30 years.

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Athletic Nicotine

• Everything is an agency issue; all problems are solvable with enough knowledge
• All the progress that the human species has made is due to agency; from the air conditioned rooms we sit in, to the clothes we wear, to the cars we drive – everything is agency
• The four ingredients for high agency: clear thinking, resourcefulness, bias to action, disagreeability 
• Avoid the Rumination Trap, which is a mental loop where overthinking disguise itself as problem-solving but actually leads to inaction, anxiety, and wasted energy 
• If you want to be high agency, you must be intentional and decisive; mid-wits try to appear smarter than they actually are by overcomplicating things
• General ambition gives you anxiety; specific ambition gives you direction 
• Fundamentally, there is no “way” apart from the the one that works; focus on outputs instead of inputs  
• There may be a range of outcomes in which you have the capacity to achieve, but within that range, everything is exclusively on you 
• Inverse Charisma: The people who are most well-liked are the people who make other people feel the most interesting
• There is no memory of normal; the only thing we remember about someone is their weird eccentricities – much of life consists of getting back to our childlike curiosities 
• “High agency is the most under-discussed and most important idea in the 21st century.” – George Mack  

Sponsors:

• Necessity is the mother of innovation: “We are putting enough friction into the system that it does theoretically give America an advantage at the cost of creating tremendous incentives for China to develop their semiconductor ecosystem.” – Gavin Baker 
  • Prohibiting China’s access to Nvidia GPUs encourages China to create its own Nvidia, though it may take a decade for it to do so 
• If progress in the AI agent space continues, the only rate-limiting factor to its widespread adoption will be compute power; the days of AI agents competing in all of our daily tasks is a long time away because this will require so much computing, and the capacity does not exist yet 
• Most everybody agrees that deregulation is good: Every time the admin says the word “tariff” it should say “deregulation” three times after
  • The best way to encourage the reshoring of key industries is just making it easier to do business in America
  • The US must figure out the difference between manufacturing and IP so that we can trap the real value of these industries back in America
• The admin is focused on making life better for normal, working-class Americans 
  • The goal of the tariffs is to restore the industries that can be restored into the US; but implementing them may create externalities, such as inflation and retaliatory tariffs 
  • The globalized “free trade” model of the last twenty years has benefitted US knowledge workers, but it has left the everyday American behind 
• On DOGE: While Democrats and Republicans may disagree on where the government spends its money, both sides should want the spending to be efficient 
• Using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, the Trump admin has deported 238 alleged gang members to El Salvador’s high-security CECOT prison

• The last use of this act was during World War II under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who ordered the deportation of thousands of Germans, Italians, and Japanese
• Since 2015, El Salvador has slashed its murder rate by 99% through widespread arrests of suspected gang members without due process  

(0:00) The Besties welcome Gavin Baker back on the show!

(1:20) Nvidia balance sheet questions, CoreWeave IPO, M&A/IPO bounce back

(16:22) US vs China in AI: Manus, China building its own Nvidia, and more

(28:37) The Administration's endgame for tariffs

(53:05) Signalgate: context and fallout

(1:09:42) El Salvador deportations

Follow Gavin:

https://x.com/GavinSBaker

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https://x.com/DavidSacks

https://x.com/friedberg

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Intro Music Credit:

https://rb.gy/tppkzl

https://x.com/yung_spielburg

Intro Video Credit:

https://x.com/TheZachEffect

Referenced in the show:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/coreweave-planning-cut-us-ipo-size-price-below-range-source-says-2025-03-27

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-adds-dozens-entities-export-restriction-list-2025-03-25

https://modelcontextprotocol.io/introduction

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/openai-plots-charging-20-000-a-month-for-phd-level-agents?rc=pxkrxo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8wJc7vHcTs

https://x.com/JohnArnoldFndtn/status/1905296181208416744

https://x.com/chamath/status/1904547884877701610

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/trump-administration-accidentally-texted-me-its-war-plans/682151

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/invocation-of-the-alien-enemies-act-regarding-the-invasion-of-the-united-states-by-tren-de-aragua

https://www.statista.com/statistics/696152/homicide-rate-in-el-salvador

https://x.com/Sec_Noem/status/1905034256826408982

• “The key is to stop sending money to the wrong place so that we can always defend sending money to the right place.” – Howard Lutnick 
• If Howard balances the budget, Trump agrees to waive all income tax for people who make less than $150,000 per year 
• About $1 trillion per year can be saved by cutting government waste, fraud, and abuse; this is DOGE’s target – and it is Howard’s job to generate $1 trillion in exogenous new revenues for the government 
• There is no such thing as free and fair trade: Inflation comes from printing more money, not from tariffs; the strategy is to put tariffs on things that will reshore 
• Establishing the External Revenue Service: The institutions and infrastructure of the United States are not being optimally monetized
  • What is the market value of American citizenship? 
  • If Nvidia is worth $3 trillion, how much is the American legal system worth?
  • Why are we not mining our valuable resources?
  • Are there creative and productive ways to monetize federal lands?  
• The United States is the greatest customer in the world; it should benefit from that reality when it does business with other nations or corporations

• Example: Hold stock warrants in the sovereign wealth fund so the American people benefit when the US does a business deal
• Capital appreciation in the sovereign wealth fund will be used to offset the nation’s debt 

(0:00) Chamath and Friedberg welcome Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick!

(1:10) Howard describes his 30+ year relationship with President Trump and his road from business to politics

(14:44) Running Trump's transition team, DOGE origin story, what it's like working for Trump

(38:01) Balancing the budget and fixing GDP

(52:21) Tariff history and strategy, global trade

(1:10:34) Trump Cards, building better government software, AI thoughts

(1:22:49) Sovereign Wealth Fund strategy

(1:37:16) How his family reacted to his new role

Thanks to our partners for making this happen:

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Follow Secretary Lutnick:

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https://x.com/DavidSacks

https://x.com/friedberg

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Intro Music Credit:

https://rb.gy/tppkzl

https://x.com/yung_spielburg

Intro Video Credit:

https://x.com/TheZachEffect