0:00

Okay, something I'm learning about

0:02

myself. I love business and

0:05

finance. I know that. I'm a

0:07

money guy. I'm a business guy. I

0:09

always have been kind of, I

0:11

guess, or I've always been

0:13

really interested in this

0:15

stuff. And here's my tell.

0:18

I can't finish nonfiction

0:20

books. I don't like

0:22

reading nonfiction. I get

0:24

excited to, and then I peter

0:26

out very quickly. even good

0:29

books that are well regarded like

0:31

atomic habits. I couldn't finish that

0:33

book. I don't finish self-help books

0:36

and productivity books. They just, it

0:38

doesn't happen. When I think about

0:40

all the nonfiction books I have finished,

0:43

it's like the simple path to

0:45

wealth. Even that book that I read

0:47

last year that I talked to you

0:49

guys about, that business book, the, the

0:52

emith revisited, stuff like that, like...

0:54

Think and Grow Rich, The Millionaire

0:56

Next Door, The Millionaire Teacher, whatever.

0:58

All of these books, Money Master,

1:00

the Game, these are all books

1:03

that I have read that have

1:05

been very easy to read. So

1:07

I just picked up a book

1:09

called Poor Charlie's Almanac by Charlie

1:11

Munger. I'm a big fan of

1:14

Charlie Munger's. Him and Warren Buffett

1:16

are like, they're sort of gurus

1:18

to me. I don't think I can do

1:20

what they do, like no one can. No

1:23

one has, you know? So it's kind

1:25

of tricky because a lot of the

1:27

advice from them is like, well, you

1:29

can't, there is no advice and you

1:31

can't do what we do. But

1:33

anyway, it's not like when you're

1:35

listening to somebody who says, you

1:37

can do it too, and they profit

1:39

off of. you buying their course on

1:41

how you can do it too. They're

1:43

kind of like, well, you can maybe do

1:46

it too, but we're very, very good at

1:48

the thing we do. Anyway, you know

1:50

who Warren Buffett is? He was once the

1:52

richest man in the world. He's the CEO

1:55

or whatever you call it of the

1:57

chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, which is like a

1:59

holding company. So anyway at

2:01

Charlie Munger's like his right

2:03

hand man. So Warren is

2:05

out in the open You

2:07

know, he's like a public

2:09

figure kind of Although an odd

2:11

one You know you know him

2:14

and you know his name, but

2:16

you might not know Charlie Munger

2:18

his right hand man who died

2:20

last year the year before at the

2:22

age of 99.9 And up until that

2:24

age he was sitting at the annual

2:27

shareholder so these annual shareholder meetings are

2:29

really cool you should check them out

2:31

on YouTube it's these two old guys

2:33

so Warren's like 93 maybe so the

2:36

last one was 2023 maybe and it's

2:38

Warren and Charlie they sit you know

2:40

at this board table in front of

2:43

you know an audience and they give

2:45

the annual report but in now it's

2:47

like a it's like a mess so

2:49

they do it in Omaha they're both

2:52

from Omaha you know the home Oracle

2:54

of Omaha, Warren Buffett. So in Omaha,

2:56

they host this thing and people come

2:58

from all over, like all over the

3:01

world, just to, you know, this is

3:03

the big Super Bowl for people who

3:05

are mega fans of these two dudes

3:07

and the way they do things. I

3:10

could do a whole episode on the

3:12

way they do things, which is really

3:14

cool and pretty inspiring and I and

3:16

it's definitely like shaped a lot of

3:19

my philosophy of investment and also life

3:21

and money and money in business. But

3:23

they, so Charlie sits there and he

3:25

eats peanut brittle. They own a

3:28

company called Seas Candies. I'm gonna

3:30

buy a box of this peanut brittle

3:32

and I wanna like eat it

3:34

and then put it on my

3:36

shelf as like an ode to

3:38

Charlie Munger. He loves peanut brittle.

3:41

And he just sits there eating

3:43

peanut brittle for hours and answering

3:45

questions. And it's just, there's so

3:47

much wisdom that he just effortlessly

3:49

pours out. He's very kind of,

3:51

He's ranty, he's a little

3:54

ornery, he's a little

3:56

cynical, but he's wicked smart,

3:58

and he's... yeah. I just love the things he

4:00

has to say. So anyhow,

4:03

one of his big things, he's a

4:05

broken record with a lot of these

4:07

things. Here's kind of the quick guide

4:09

to Charlie Munger. It's, you need to

4:11

build a lattice work of mental models

4:13

in your brain to make decisions based on,

4:15

and they need to be multidisciplinary. So your

4:17

lattice work of mental models that you

4:19

carry around with you and apply to every

4:21

decision and everything that you're assessing in

4:23

life needs to be informed by multiple disciplines.

4:25

So you need to have models from

4:27

mathematics. You need to have like a compounding

4:29

interest or something. That would be like

4:31

a mathematical model. Like you need to have

4:33

that model in your head so that

4:36

you can apply it and recognize something in

4:38

something else. And physics, you

4:40

need to have physics, mental models,

4:42

biology, mental models, you know, like survival

4:44

of the fittest from biology. Like

4:46

that's like Darwinism. That's a mental model

4:48

that you should have in your

4:50

brain. And psychology, there's loads of them,

4:53

particularly the psychology of misjudgment. A

4:55

lot of the cognitive biases that you're

4:57

probably familiar with, he doesn't use

4:59

the word cognitive biases and he doesn't

5:01

use the terms commonly used for

5:03

them that a lot of people do,

5:06

like sunken cost fallacy or straw

5:08

man or I don't know, things like

5:10

that. Like he uses whatever, other words.

5:12

Instead of the sunken cost fallacy, he

5:14

calls it the, what is it, the

5:16

consistency. And this is what I hate

5:18

the words he uses for it because

5:20

it's confusing and I can't remember them. The

5:24

consistency and whatever, just the

5:26

same idea that people, what people

5:28

invest in, especially consistent, like

5:30

they will continue to invest in

5:32

because they've already made it

5:34

this, I got what's another, you

5:36

know, what's another this because

5:38

I've already put this much into

5:40

it. Anyway, all these psychological

5:42

biases, particularly ones that

5:44

cause people to misjudge situations, social

5:47

proof, things like that. And basically having

5:49

these in your head so that when

5:51

you're evaluating something, you can apply them

5:53

and say, well, what are the psychological

5:55

biases at work here that might cause

5:58

this person to be inaccurate? So

6:00

he's sort of obsessed with

6:02

accuracy and rationality and worldlyly

6:04

wisdom. Those are his virtues,

6:06

if you will. And yeah,

6:08

so, okay, one must, you

6:10

know, build a lattice work of

6:13

mental models, multidisciplinary mental

6:15

models that you can

6:17

apply to any decision. And by

6:20

the way, their field, their skill,

6:22

the thing that they do is

6:24

assessing businesses. That's what they do.

6:26

That's what they do. is they evaluate

6:29

businesses and decide if they should buy

6:31

them or invest in them. But the

6:33

way that they do it is very

6:36

different. They're very slow. They only

6:38

invest in good businesses that they

6:40

would like to own. Like they don't

6:42

short stocks, you know, they don't invest

6:44

in crummy businesses to make money off

6:46

their demise. They invest in good

6:48

businesses and I don't know. I could go

6:51

on and on about like the way that

6:53

they do things. This is another charlism

6:55

is you... evaluate a lot of

6:57

things, you know, you do a

6:59

lot of your homework and do

7:01

diligence, whatever, but you have to have,

7:04

like, the courage and the vigor to

7:06

seize an opportunity. So you basically,

7:08

you wait a long time and

7:11

big opportunities will come along, just

7:13

very few and far between, you

7:16

have to know when to recognize

7:18

a big opportunity and bet big

7:20

on it. And that's the key

7:23

to life. instead of trying to

7:25

know everything about everything and making

7:27

many small bets and whatever, it's

7:30

like in life but also in

7:32

investment, you wait patiently and

7:34

you wait for the big decisions and

7:36

you work at trying to recognize them

7:39

and when you learn to recognize them

7:41

and you find one, you bet big

7:43

on it. And so these are things

7:46

like buying into Coca-Cola and

7:48

Costco. you know, Walmart and whatever,

7:50

things like that at the

7:52

right time for them. But anyhow,

7:54

so that's another big lesson.

7:56

But here's another one of

7:59

his big... things that he's repeating

8:01

all the time. And it's the

8:03

inversion principle is what he calls

8:05

it. And it's basically it's reverse

8:07

thinking, it's thinking in reverse. It's

8:09

instead of thinking about solving your

8:11

problem, if you're, think about solving

8:14

the opposite of your problem. So

8:16

he actually gives an entire talk

8:18

to Harvard commencement speech and to

8:20

not like Harvard Harvard Harvard, like

8:23

a Harvard offshoot school in California

8:25

or something. that he

8:27

went to or his kids go to.

8:29

So it gives this commencement speech and

8:32

it's called how to be miserable.

8:34

And it's an in-depth guide on

8:36

how to live a life full

8:38

of misery. And it starts with,

8:40

be an unreliable person and surround

8:43

yourself with unreliable people. And... you

8:45

know, have resentment towards others and the

8:47

other, you know, things like that, you

8:49

know, a lot of that type of

8:51

thing. But he goes deep on it

8:53

and it's this idea of thinking in

8:55

reverse. He uses a lot of examples

8:57

like this. It's like when he was

8:59

in the Air Force and he had,

9:01

he was like a cartographer and a

9:03

weather guy or whatever, just like air

9:05

traffic control type stuff. And he

9:08

would have to, basically it's like, he

9:10

would sit there and think about what are

9:12

the ways that I could kill these people.

9:14

Okay, I, they, I could, they

9:16

could, their planes can freeze, so

9:18

I could direct them into weather

9:21

where their engines will freeze, and

9:23

then they will fall and crash

9:25

and die. I could also route

9:28

them in ways that they would

9:30

run out of gas and wouldn't

9:32

have places to land and refuel,

9:34

and they would die. So I

9:36

need to avoid those two things,

9:38

first and foremost, in a fanatic

9:40

way. this you can apply to anything

9:42

in life and he encourages you

9:44

to. And one of the things that

9:47

I was applying it to, I

9:49

apply all of these things to my

9:51

business of Flux and LiveWire and

9:53

whatever. I was thinking about Flux

9:55

and so actually I had a chat with

9:57

ChatGPT because if you didn't know you can

9:59

chat with chat TV now like vocally.

10:02

So download the chat TV app, hit

10:04

that little button at the bottom, not

10:06

the microphone one, the other one, and

10:08

it's like you're talking to Siri kind

10:10

of, except it's chat TV and it'll

10:12

talk back to you. It's pretty cool.

10:14

So I was just like, let's let's

10:17

have a talk here. Given Charlie Munger's

10:19

inversion principle and thinking in reverse, how

10:21

can I kill a project like flux

10:23

as fast as possible? And so I

10:25

started thinking about it about it.

10:27

like useful things. But the biggest

10:29

one that I realized simply is

10:32

that the easiest way to kill Flux

10:34

is to kill LiveWire. And the

10:36

easiest way to kill LiveWire is

10:38

to kill Laravel. And really when

10:40

I when you look around at

10:42

tools that have gone by the

10:44

wayside. Mootools, J Queer,

10:46

UI, whatever. All of these

10:48

things, it's really because the

10:50

platform that they're on has gone

10:53

by the wayside and has

10:55

fallen out of favor. So

10:57

I'm fortunate that people care about

10:59

Laravel, that Taylor still cares

11:01

about it, that you know, now it's actually,

11:03

I think, I think this is actually

11:06

a good bet. This is sort

11:08

of the, you know, the duck in

11:10

a pond that doesn't do anything

11:12

in the... but the water level

11:15

rises, you know, it's like the

11:17

duck didn't do anything, but

11:19

the pond rose, so the

11:21

duck rose. And I think

11:23

everybody in the Laravel pond right

11:25

now is rising because this is

11:27

the pro. There are cons to

11:29

your, to Laravel being bought. by

11:31

a VC firm, you know, or

11:34

having all like a big cash

11:36

infusion and being like a big

11:38

business now where it's not just

11:40

Taylor making decisions. Of course there

11:43

are cons, but you can be

11:45

mad about it. I kind of

11:47

had this this opportunity to be

11:49

mad about it. Like, not specifically,

11:51

just in general, I just felt

11:53

like, you know, there's two ways

11:55

to go here as somebody who's

11:57

not employed by Laravel or you

11:59

did and now like you could you

12:01

could be mad and be like, oh it's

12:04

just a big business now, like we

12:06

all used to just be doing this

12:08

for the love of the game and

12:10

now it's all these people paid

12:13

to like shout about Laravel

12:15

and whatever. Okay, that's that's

12:17

just pure cynicism, but I

12:20

did have an opportunity to

12:22

be cynical and fall away or

12:24

do you want to be on the winning

12:26

team, you know, do you want to

12:28

play ball? It's like, this is where

12:31

Laravel is going. Are you going to

12:33

get with it or not? It's like, all

12:35

right, let's get with it. That's

12:37

a decision that I intentionally made

12:39

to be optimistic about Laravel's future

12:41

and not be a reditor waiting

12:43

to yell at them that VC

12:45

ruined Laravel any time they make

12:47

a misstep. Because that's what these

12:50

Reditors do. That's what they reach

12:52

for. That's the easy thing to reach

12:54

for. So forget about that. What are

12:56

we talking about? We're talking about ducks

12:58

and ponds, so I'm a duck in

13:00

a pond and my ship is rising

13:03

because Laravel's ship is rising, because Laravel's

13:05

ship, why are we talking about ships?

13:07

Oh, because we're on water, yeah. Because

13:10

Laravel's pond is rising, I'm a duck

13:12

and I'm rising. Because, because of this

13:14

big, I'll just say cash infusion,

13:16

but it's more than that, now

13:18

Laravel's getting more air time because

13:20

people are trying to grow it

13:22

to something bigger. And naturally, my

13:25

things will get more airtime. So

13:27

this is an example he uses

13:29

is Disney. Disney when VHS came

13:31

out. So they had all this intellectual

13:33

property. They had all these

13:35

movies that they had shown, you

13:37

know, years ago in theaters and

13:40

probably still in theaters, whatever. The

13:42

VHS comes out. Now they bundle up

13:44

all these movies that they already

13:47

had. They already made the movies.

13:49

People already loved them. They put

13:51

them onto the VHS tapes and

13:54

they sold them and they made

13:56

zillions of dollars for

13:58

doing nothing. essentially. And

14:01

this is a marvelous

14:03

thing. It's being in a

14:05

position where you built something

14:07

valuable and then the world

14:10

comes along and innovates

14:13

in some way and you get to just take advantage

14:15

of it. You just get to.

14:17

You go, oh, these things exist now.

14:19

All right. Well, let's sell these movies

14:21

that we have. Great. We're

14:24

gonna make a killing, you know? So

14:27

this is an example of just kind

14:29

of a right place, right time, right

14:31

ecosystem. So all of this back to

14:33

the inversion thinking and how can flux

14:35

die and thinking about other tools that

14:37

have gone by the wayside, even bootstrap

14:39

and things. So like, but why

14:41

did bootstrap fall out of favor? Because

14:43

of Tailwind, basically, it was bootstrap

14:45

and then it was Tailwind. There were

14:47

things in between that were percolating. There

14:49

were attempts at utility frameworks.

14:51

Shout out to Beard C, Beard

14:53

CSS, David Hemphill, but Tachyons,

14:55

know, other utility things, but they

14:57

were kind of edge KC

15:00

or and that, but there were

15:02

other like bootstrap alternative Zerb

15:04

foundations, one for a long time

15:06

that I used and whatever. There

15:08

were some other, you know, big

15:10

ones, but I'm thinking particularly a foundation

15:12

and then Balma was a smaller

15:14

project, but I remember Jeffrey liked Balma

15:16

and I used Balm in a project

15:18

and it felt fresher than bootstrap

15:20

in some ways and it was a

15:22

little more utility oriented. Anyhow

15:26

though, Tailwind de -throned all of that.

15:28

Tailwind came in and so that's an

15:30

example of things that went by

15:32

the wayside and really it's more that

15:35

they fell out of fashion because

15:37

bootstrap is still a thriving project and

15:39

I'm sure it's used by far

15:41

more projects than Tailwind in the same

15:43

way that jQuery is used by

15:45

far more projects than React because it's

15:47

the incumbent tool that's been around

15:50

forever and has massive, massive market share

15:52

in terms of just projects using

15:54

it. So anyway, so

15:57

Tailwind is an innovation.

15:59

It's a paradigm shift.

16:01

It's some that gave people more

16:03

control and also I mean a lot of

16:06

talent success is Adam selling design.

16:08

It's the magic of

16:10

Adam Adams skill his his

16:12

taste his API design

16:14

taste and taking something

16:17

that had rough edges

16:19

like using tachyons and

16:21

making it palatable combined

16:24

with Steve Shoger's design

16:26

aesthetic which at the

16:28

time was Right, you know cutting

16:30

edge in a sense like it was

16:33

very fresh if you look back at

16:35

the designs from when till and came

16:37

out They don't feel fresh anymore Fortunately,

16:40

they keep up on all this design

16:42

stuff. So they are always feeling fresh

16:44

But at the time like the design

16:47

that they came out with that was

16:49

like, you know, the lot of that

16:51

stripe geekery like geeking out on details

16:54

from the stripe UI like Gray's that

16:56

have slight amounts of trace amounts of

16:58

blue in the gray's and comp like

17:00

non-simple drop shadows that feel really

17:03

you know light and airy and

17:05

beautiful and you know things like

17:07

that like honestly drop shadows and

17:09

slight and the colors are huge

17:11

reasons why Taylor and became so

17:14

popular but of course then Taylor

17:16

UI and whatever just a good

17:18

a good designer mixed I'll say

17:20

a great designer combined with

17:22

a great programmer. A great API

17:24

designer. Adam is a good programmer

17:26

but I don't think he really

17:29

needed to be to build Tailwind.

17:31

I think it's the it's the it's the

17:33

API design. It's the taste. It's the

17:35

knowing what things to do and what

17:37

things not to do whatever. I could

17:39

do an entire podcast on the genius

17:41

of Tailwind. But anyway that's why Tailwind

17:44

won. So it wasn't really yeah it

17:46

was that something else came along that

17:48

was just it doesn't happen that

17:50

often. when something comes along

17:53

and shifts the entire paradigm

17:55

of the entire industry.

17:57

And tailwind is maybe the

17:59

most... The one you can put

18:01

your finger on the most. There's

18:03

been massive shifts, obviously, like if

18:05

you think about front-end frameworks and

18:07

whatnot, but it's been incremental. It's

18:09

been incremental and over time, and there's

18:12

been lots of people contributing to it.

18:14

And I guess Taylor is the same,

18:16

and that Utility CSS is something that

18:18

existed before, but it just took it

18:20

to a whole new level and is

18:23

ubiquitous, and there's nobody coming to

18:25

compete with Taylor and because everyone

18:27

is happy with it. Isn't that

18:29

bizarre. in the way that react exists,

18:31

but few exists, and angular

18:34

exists, and felt exists, and

18:36

whatever. But there are tools

18:38

that don't exist anymore, that

18:40

informed react, backbone, things like

18:42

that. Anyhow, how is Flux

18:44

gonna die? It's gonna die

18:47

when Laravel dies, or when

18:49

LiveWyer dies. So it's important

18:51

that those things don't die.

18:53

Laravel, fortunately, there's a bunch

18:55

of money. basically working to

18:57

make sure that Laravel doesn't die.

18:59

That's a big boon for me.

19:01

That is a lucky strike. The

19:03

live wire dependency, that's a little

19:06

trickier because that one's in my

19:08

control. There's no company making

19:10

sure that live wire is going

19:12

to be around forever and awesome and

19:14

cutting edge. That's up to me. So

19:16

that's like a challenge that I have

19:18

to deal with now is like if

19:21

I put everything into flux

19:23

and neglect live wire. Because LiveWare

19:25

doesn't really affect the bottom line

19:27

in a sense, but if I do that,

19:30

the platform underneath Flux becomes stale and

19:32

decays, and then Flux just basically is

19:34

hurt by that. So I'm actually working

19:36

on a new LiveWire version, like a

19:39

minor version at the moment that has

19:41

some enhancements I'm excited about, which that's

19:43

my philosophy now is like, well, I'll just

19:45

make sure that everything built with Flux

19:48

is incredible. And if there's any

19:50

hard edges in LiveWire that prevent

19:52

it from being incredible. I will

19:55

fix those in live wire, you

19:57

know. Anyhow, so the

19:59

biggest... reason flux is going to

20:01

fail is because of

20:04

the platforms that it's built on. Because

20:06

when I think about it, I'm good

20:08

enough at API design, I think I'm

20:10

actually pretty good at it. And I'm

20:12

good enough at documentation. It's

20:14

full enough. And

20:17

I'm good enough at not

20:19

making big mistakes like, yeah, I'm

20:21

good enough at not making these big

20:23

mistakes and doing the internal things that

20:25

that like will just basically keep flux

20:27

successful. A mistake I could make maintenance

20:29

is a mistake that I have always

20:31

made. But this is the first time

20:33

where I have applied money to something

20:35

like this. And this problem has gone

20:37

away because of Josh Hanley. If I

20:39

think about internal reasons that flux is

20:42

going to fail, maintenance is a big

20:44

one. But Josh Hanley maintains it, you

20:46

know, he wakes up every day. And

20:49

he checks the email

20:51

support. And he replies

20:54

to everybody and he checks every GitHub

20:56

discussion that's come in. He doesn't always

20:58

reply to them, but he reads them. And

21:00

he'll merge them or he'll reference them or

21:02

deduplicate them or whatever. And then he goes

21:04

through every GitHub issue that comes in. And

21:06

then he writes pull requests that solve those

21:08

GitHub issues and we get on calls once every

21:11

day sometimes every other day,

21:13

two times a week, whatever,

21:15

it depends. And we work

21:17

through problems, mostly verbally. And

21:19

then he goes off and fixes them and

21:21

writes pull requests and I build new

21:23

stuff. And it's this really good kind of

21:25

balance we got going. But the maintenance

21:27

thing is solved. So flux won't die because

21:30

it's unmaintained. That problem is solved right

21:32

now. Won't die because it's undocumented. It won't

21:34

die because the APIs are bad. Could

21:36

die because the community isn't thriving because

21:38

it is a paid product. And it's

21:40

not, it doesn't have like a community

21:42

in the traditional sense it has a

21:45

community. I sort of think of it

21:47

like tailwind and tailwind UI. There's, is

21:49

there a tailwind community? Not

21:51

like there's a Laravel community. And is

21:53

there a flux community? Not like

21:55

there's a filament community, you know, it's

21:57

not a pile of people that

21:59

are just passionate about working on this thing

22:01

and contributing to the thing because

22:03

the the platform has to welcome

22:06

contributions and flux is an open

22:08

source so it's not a place

22:10

that welcomes contributions and and I

22:12

think that's actually a good thing

22:14

it's for it for what it is

22:16

every tool is different and there's pros

22:18

and cons to being a community oriented

22:21

tool but I was thinking that like

22:23

it's not the community will cause it

22:25

to die it's that not listening to

22:27

people and fortunately we have a

22:29

way to because we have get hub. We

22:31

have get hub discussions and issues that roll

22:34

in all the time. We're constantly hearing from

22:36

people about the things they want, the things

22:38

that are broken, and we have a pretty good,

22:40

I think, accurate list of things that people want,

22:42

and so we can respond to that. So

22:44

anyway, we're totally dragging on, but I haven't talked

22:47

to you in a bit, so this is me

22:49

talking to you. I'll be seeing you.