The Investment Strategy To Build Generational Wealth (ft. Morgan Housel)

**Morgan Housel** (0:00)
What matters is not necessarily what are the best returns that you can earn this year.
That's what everyone chases, but that's not what matters. What matters is what are the best returns that you can sustain for the longest period of time.

**Sam Parr** (0:20)
Let's just get right into it. Morgan, what's going on, man? I'm happy you're here.

**Morgan Housel** (0:23)
I'm happy to be here. Thanks for having me, guys.

**Sam Parr** (0:25)
I read the book, your first big hit, Psychology of Money, a while ago. What was that, four years ago?

**Morgan Housel** (0:30)
About, yep.

**Sam Parr** (0:32)
Yeah, and then this new one just came out. Was it called Same As Ever?

**Morgan Housel** (0:34)
That's right.

**Sam Parr** (0:35)
Yeah, man.
And people are, the Goodreads reviews are higher on the most recent one, I think, than the first one. So congratulations.

**Morgan Housel** (0:43)
No, thanks. It's always, I think with all books and all articles, this is probably true for podcasts too, you really never know what's gonna work and what's not. And even I've been a writer for 17 years and I still really don't know when I publish something, a blog or a book, how it's gonna be received.
And maybe you get a little bit better around the edges, but it's always like you just have to birth into the world and then just step back and watch. It's gonna do whatever it's gonna do.

**Sam Parr** (1:07)
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**Shaan Puri** (1:49)
Well, you told me that the first version of Psychology of Money, you said that the first print run was I think 5,000 copies, is that right? So you guys, you thought, you know, 5,000 copies is the right amount. You sold over 4 million.
So I think that proves your point of, you don't really know till you know.
But that is, that number is kind of amazing, dude. Like over 4 million books sold, you're, I don't know, in the top 0.01% or something of authors. You know, that, I don't know how much you make per book, but I think that means you've made like over $10 million as an author on a successful book. That's so hard to do. That's so rare. And, you know, congrats to you for doing that.

**Morgan Housel** (2:29)
Thanks, Sean. Yeah, I mean, I was telling someone the other day, I think the closest analogy to the book industry is probably professional sports, where 99.9% of high school basketball players will never make the NBA. I don't know, 99.999, whatever it is.
But then you have a couple of LeBron James and Michael Jordan's who go on to make a billion dollars doing it. And I don't know this to be 100% sure, but adding it up in my head, I'm pretty sure there are more billionaire authors than there are billionaire athletes.
Even in a world in which 99.9% of books will sell, you know, a couple thousand copies or less if that. But then you have JK. Rowling and Dave Plinky and James Patterson who have made over a billion dollars writing books. So it's just like extremely tail-driven in the success.

**Shaan Puri** (3:15)
I want to ask you about one of your philosophies because you're very interested in me. You have a philosophy. It's very easy to sell a philosophy of more, right? People do that all the time. And in fact, even our podcast, I would say falls into the bucket of the philosophy of more many times when we say no small boy stuff, right? We're saying think big, play big, go for it. Don't sit around and wait. Don't be fearful, right? So more action, more ambition, more whatever. That's one philosophy a lot of people fall into.
And some people go even crazy, right? David Goggins is like, work harder. Gary Vee, Alex Shamozi, these guys are like, just grind harder. So people often have the philosophy of more. And some people, Marie Kondo and others, have the philosophy of way less. You need less minimalism, you know, escapism. Just become a sort of a Zen person. Go whatever, get those vans and just like travel around the world, right? So it's like, there's the philosophy of less. And you're in the middle, which usually is the dead zone for content.