On politicians, saving Uber, and mobile voting with Bradley Tusk, a man doing everything at once.
Bradley Tusk is a venture capitalist, political strategist, philanthropist and writer.
He is the CEO and co-founder of Tusk Ventures, the world’s first venture capital fund that invests solely in early stage startups in highly regulated industries, the founder and CEO of political consulting firm Tusk Strategies, and the co-founder and Chairman of the Ivory Gaming Acquisition Corp, a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ. Bradley’s family foundation is funding and leading the national campaign to bring mobile voting to all U.S. elections. Tusk Philanthropies also runs and funds anti-hunger campaigns that have led to the creation of universal school breakfast programs in 8 different states. Bradley is the author of The Fixer: My Adventures Saving Startups From Death by Politics, writes a column for Fast Company, hosts a podcast called Firewall about the intersection of tech and politics, and is the co-founder of the Gotham Book Prize. He is also an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School.
Previously, Bradley served as campaign manager for Mike Bloomberg’s 2009 mayoral race, as Deputy Governor of Illinois, overseeing the state’s budget, operations, legislation, policy and communications, as communications director for US Senator Chuck Schumer, and as Uber’s first political advisor. You can now find him working on Andrew Yang’s mayoral race.
Alex: [00:00:00] Bradley Tusk is a venture capitalist political strategist, philanthropist and writer. He's the CEO and co-founder of Tusk Ventures, the world's first venture capital fund that invests solely in early stage startups in highly regulated industries, the founder and CEO of political consulting firm, Tusk Strategies and the co-founder and chairman of the Ivory Gaming Acquisition Corp, a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ.
Bradley's family foundation is funding and leading the national campaign to bring mobile voting to all U S elections. Tusk Philanthropies also runs and funds anti-hunger campaigns that have led to the creation of the universal school breakfast programs in eight different States. Bradley is the author of The Fixer: My Adventure Saving Startups from Death by Politics, writes a column for fast company, hosts a podcast called Firewall about the intersection of tech and politics, and is the co-founder of the Gotham book prize. He's also an adjunct professor at Columbia business school. Previously Bradley served as campaign manager for Mike Bloomberg's 2009 Mayoral race, as deputy governor of Illinois overseeing the state's budget, operations legislation, policy, and communications as communications director for US, Senator Chuck Schumer, and is Uber's first political advisor. You can now find him working on Andrew Yang's mayoral race.
Uh, this one was a lot of fun. I hope you enjoy.
Alex: Well, thank you so much again for doing this. I know you're a busy guy, so it means a lot that you take the time, you know?
Bradley: [00:01:30] Yeah. Happy to.
Alex: [00:01:31] All right. So. You are definitely a man of many hats and we've got some ground to cover. But it seems right to start at the beginning in politics, you started off during undergrad, but you ended up as communications director for Chuck Schumer, special advisor and then campaign manager for Michael Bloomberg, deputy governor of Illinois you know, your, your book makes it all sound a bit like the art of war, so to speak.
Um, so I've got to ask what were some of the biggest takeaways for you during that time?
Bradley: [00:01:59] Yeah. I mean, there's really one overwhelming takeaway. It shapes a lot of what I do today, which is all policy outputs are the result of political inputs. I believe that 99% of politicians are desperately insecure.
Self-loathing people that can't live that the validation of holding office and what that means is almost as whole in their psyche and the only way to fill it, they feel okay about themselves. Is with outside affirmation and validation and the perks and everything I know. And, you know, rather than expecting them to defy their human nature and do what we think is right and what they should do.
We've got to, if we want them to, to resilient pass different kinds of laws and behave differently in office, we've got to give them different political incentives. So you're a Republican candidate which come from Florida and your district is gerrymandered. Like they pretty much all are and turn on your primary 12%.
And half that 12% are NRA members. You may know intellectually that it's insane that someone can walk in off the street and buy an AK 47. You also know that if you vote for an assault weapons ban within the electorate that you have, you're going to lose your next election, which is why. Every time, there's a school shooting, there's hopes and prayers and vigils and calls for change and nothing ever happens.
And nothing ever happens because we're asking that Congressman to do was not in his own political interest. Imagine instead of turnout in that primary will 40%, 50%, you just look at the polling. People overwhelmingly don't think that assault weapons should be readily available. And that same Congressman simply because all he wants to do is stay in office.
At any cost now is voting for the assault weapon ban again, because those are the inputs he's given. And I'm pretty sure the politicians like this and the Greek Senate. And the Roman said, I don't think it's our prop politicians, particularly. I just think the human nature of someone who pushed them through everything that it takes to run for office almost always means that they are highly deficient human beings, and they're never ever going to do anything to jeopardize your next election.
So if you can accept that about them then the question becomes. How do you change their incentives? Right now? I learned that in office. Right. And thinking about when making the case to whether it was to city council and I was at the parks department and I was 20, but to support funding for a new playground or we're in the us Senate or in Illinois or anywhere else is they're looking at everything from a political perspective.
If you can show them why it's beneficial to them politically or harmful, they don't do what you want. That's how, that's, how you win. And then I think for us, my first big test of that post government was Uber where, you know, Taxi industry historically had been major campaign contributors to city council members, state senators, all kinds of people in that world.
So normally the political incentive would be to do what they want. Right. But when we built Uber and we were getting these cease and desist letters from cities all over the country, we tapped into our customer base and we turn them into political advocates for our cause. And so you're a city Councilman in Chicago.
They're all different in Chicago, you got 7,000 votes to win your primary. We just sent 15,000 emails from constituents in your district who say, don't take this thing away from me. I want it. And guess what happened? You say, okay. Right. And that's how we won every single market in the us. And that's been the basis for everything else that I've done.
So whether it's our venture capital fund and sort of how we get. Legalize, the companies that we invest in, or the mobile voting projects I do out of my foundation or anything else. That's the one key learning to me that has really been helpful.
Alex: [00:05:28] Definitely. I want to touch on the sort of take on politicians. I, I grew up in DC, so I've been surrounded by some of this stuff. And my, my take on it basically over time has become, you know, there I'm sure are lots and lots of people with fantastic intentions that are going into politics to make a change, but. I think, I feel like you'd have a great perspective on this.
I think the only way to survive in an atmosphere like that is to play the game so to speak. And if you don't. You don't really make it. Is that like a fair assessment you think?
Bradley: [00:05:59] Part of it is that our view of politicians is a too simplistic, right? Which is they're either this St like figure, like say Obama, or there's this, like, they're this complete devil like Trump and nothing in between.
And the reality is they're human beings, right? They're very flawed human being. So Obama really good person for everything that I know of him personally, and read it and everything else. He has flaws right. It was a kind of not super effective president. He had some corruption issues in Chicago. I still think he's one of, you know, a great American. Donald Trump, one of the worst human beings that I've ever met.
But he did do some good things. They Abraham Accords with Israel and those Gulf state countries are great. And as you know, if you went through, I'm sure almost anyone find three, four, or five other things that were worthwhile, then if some democratic president did that, you'd be cheering for. Right. So that's just, the reality is.
They're humans they're flawed. So they're not coming in with the sole intention of being corrupted and totally cynical with no values at all. And they're also not as pure as the driven snow and the original that's going to political scandals is they're all total. They have to present themselves as perfect.
And then when it emerges that they're human all of a sudden it becomes a major scandal, but the reality is that's how people are. If you look at the whole bill Gates controversy right now, it's, it's pretty instructive. Gates had kind of been built up into the he's the one good billionaire, right?
He's the guy worth over a hundred billion dollars, but he gets it. He gives it all away. He's moral. He's good. It turned out he's human. Right. And human beings have weird shit when it comes to sex. And so apparently that's Bill Gates and we're like, that's okay. Right. So I think fundamentally the, the w what we get wrong is we would just have expectations about them that are so shallow.
And so one side of it that and they're never going to meet them.
Alex: [00:07:46] So back to your timeline for a second, you realize you're pretty good at all of this. And you start your own political strategy consultancy, and you get a call from Uber. You touched on this, just now about the regulatory sort of hell they're going through at the time with the cabbies and the unions and the lawmakers and all that.
And you find yourself on the other side of the fence in a way, because you're fighting with bill de Blasio on legislation limiting Uber's growth. But you win it for Uber by controlling the narrative. Is that pretty much right?
Bradley: [00:08:11] I think so. I mean, basically. I remember I was sitting in what airport was.
I, I think I was in Dallas and it's raining. My flights canceled the opening, my book, actually first book and Travis calls me. And tells me what happened. And I kind of let me, you know, I'm thinking maybe he, you know, he probably doesn't get the details of this, right. Because you know, someone pretty similar, pretty similar, pretty tan.
So let me look into it and look into them. I know he, he got her, right. You know, the mayor introduced it at city council speakers on board, and most of the members are on board and there's really no way to stop something at that point. Once all the powers that be are there. And then I was sitting on the flight at home and kind of hit me like, okay, well, what if instead of the normal campaign, but how you're going to hurt business and that's bad for the economy.
What if you came at it from his left? Right? The Blasio, his whole thing was that he was Mr. Wolf. Mr. Procrastinator, Mr. Liberal, what if we said this plan that you're doing is actually racist and anti-immigrant and we would put enough behind it. And all of a sudden people got uncomfortable, started dropping off the bill.
That's exactly what we did. So whether it's our paid advertising on TV or radio or mail or digital or lobbying, or all the earned media and events and social media on grassroots, it was all around this notion of you are hurting, you know, people of color who either drive for Uber because the best job that's available to them or.
You know, every black and Latino person in New York, probably everywhere else too, has had the experience of needing a cab, raising their hand and an empty cab goes right by, cause it doesn't pick them up because of the color of their skin. We were able to tap into that anger and frustration. And by setting that kind of, kind of very counterintuitive narrative council members started getting anxious and dropping off the bill one after the next, after the next, and finally, the speaker realized they were dead and called to negotiate a truce and we did.
And that was it.
Alex: [00:10:02] Definitely. So to shift gears just for a second here, as someone who knows about that space, where politics and startups intersect probably better than anyone. I'm curious about your thoughts on the situation with base camp and regulating culture in general. I think something like one third of their staff after they banned political discourse at work, think maybe Coinbase had gotten caught up in this as well, but I'm sure you have a good idea of how those dynamics play out.
Bradley: [00:10:25] I have it's look, it's hard and this is where anything I think is. Startups tend to have lots of younger employees, but this is something that is probably true for. The vast majority of employers, right? I deal with this too, which is, you know, there's a generational shift in how people think and the way that your generation thinks is different than the way my generation thinks.
I think by the way, this is probably always true. You know, the 1960s came around after her long hair freaked out, totally freaked out that the generation before them. But you know, right now we have, I would say overall, Good broad societal normative changes, right. That are resulting in people having more rights, being treated with more respect, you know, it tends to have less structural discrimination and prejudice.
Those are very good things. And the application of it can sometimes be absurd, right? So you've got people who just decide that their job. And I even see this with my kids who go to a very progressive school in Manhattan and come home and. Call lots and lots of things, racist that are not racist.
Right. But they're young and you know, this is kind of what they're learning. The overall notion of like, Hey we, you know, want to treat everyone with respect and treat everyone as equals is absolutely right. The notion that. You know, if you fail a purity test because you going to be with Rachel Maddow on every single thing is not.
Right. Right. So the thing I love the most about the university of Chicago is that they teach you how to think, right. And they teach you not to let others think for you. And I think the biggest problem on the left is not the underlying intentions. I think it's the fact that most people on the left don't think for themselves, And the goal is retweets and likes on Instagram and Twitter and things like that.
And it's just to sort of, you know, do nothing to let anyone criticize, you know, the level of your period. And at that point, you know, you're not doing your own thinking. Right. And so I do think a time like that, like an old guy here that you have a generation right now that is, you know, so eager to show that they're pure and good and woken everything else.
That often they kind of miss the forest for the trees. With all that said as much as I don't love all elements of old culture and New York city mayor heritage right now I'm getting beat up by the kind of the holders of woke culture. I still think fundamentally it's a good shift for society.
Alex: [00:12:49] So now that we're talking about politics I'd love to hear a little bit about mobile voting, which you're really big on how do you help get the kind of turnout that that provides. While ensuring election security. This is like the big question, I'm sure.
Bradley: [00:13:02] That's the big question. Right. So we've done 18 pilots so far across six different States.
West Virginia, South Carolina, Utah Washington, Oregon, Colorado. And in all 18 pilots people with disabilities are deployed. Military were able to vote on their phone either over the cloud or the blockchain, depending on the technology that was used all 18 work. Independently audited audited by the national cybersecurity center.
All came back clean and turn out on average stuff. So we know that at least at small scale, you can have a secure way for the people vote on their phone and use that to really increase turnout. Right. And I would argue that if we can't increase turnout, we're stuck with. The extremes on both sides.
And as a result we eventually had had towards not just a polarized system from government, but I don't think we remained as one country, you know, eventually enough discord enough failure and people say, let's do something different. Right? Why am I, why am I still here? And so I think if, if you want to save the union you've got to get more, government's gotta be more effective and get more done, and that's means it.
You got to change the input so that there's a desire for presenters to take like immigration, for example. The vast majority of people would agree with these two statements. One, we should not be deporting people who are here, even if they're undocumented too, we should not just have open borders running up and just walk in from wherever they want.
Right. But there's 15% of the right that says no one should be here under any circumstances. And we should throw more out. There's 15% of the last, the day. Any immigration laws are inherently racist and bad. And those 15% temporary should be ignored. The 70% consensus is what should be captured in the law.
But those 15% of the only ones who bothered to vote in primaries as a result they have all the power. So I don't think that we can even be a functioning democracy if we don't solve this problem. And so while security is really important, a lot of the people who pose what I'm doing say. Well, if you can guarantee you that it's a hundred percent perfect, then we can give it a shot.
And my view is It's not going to be a hundred percent perfect. Just like paper ballots have their challenges, the whole Bush Gore, and eventually the Iraq war will die because of it. And for no reason voting machines certainly have their challenges, but by now has its challenges. You know, every system has its challenges.
I don't want mobile voting to have many more challenges than any other system, but fundamentally. You know, if, if we feel great about the integrity of every single vote and turn out is 10% and we are a completely broken, dysfunctional democracy, I'm not really sure who that's benefiting. So the goal is how do we have something that can make it as easy as possible to vote with the highest level of security that's feasible.
So after we finished those 18 pilots, We can start to put their own mobile boarding technology simply because I felt like I had more resources to tackle the problem internally from what, within my foundation going to start up. So we're doing this. We are hired a bunch of different companies and cybersecurity experts.
I'm doing a partnership with Berkeley. It was supposed to be The University of Chicago, you guys fucked it up. Um, so Didn't have the professor at Chicago left and the school couldn't like, get it back together. And so so we, we shifted unfortunately, cause my, my preference is always to work with you and see if I can.
And We're building our own technology end to end encrypted and the blockchain. And I think that by, you know, some of our former critics not being involved in the process we can build some of the people are more confident in a book. Is it going to be perfect? No, it's going to improve over time just as all cybersecurity.
Well but if we can transfer, if we can for banking online or healthcare online we can vote up.
Alex: [00:16:38] To drill into that a little bit more. It seems like convincing regular people let alone lawmakers right. Of that security is a whole different ball game though. Like, does that come naturally or is there a struggle?
Bradley: [00:16:47] Well, you have to build a movement around it, right. And to me, you focused on millennials and gen Z. You know, I've got someone now whose whole job is just to promote mobile voting on Twitch, Instagram, and Tik TOK as my kids who are that age. I need them to feel the same way I'm a voting that you about climate change, right.
Or that they do about racism, you know because if everyone from ages of say 18 to 35 demand, this thing it will happen. Right. But you're only demanded if you really believe that you have a right to do with it. And if you really believe that you can't solve, for example, climate change, absent, having something like mobile voting, no mobile voting in and of itself is not a solution to any problem.
But it puts you in a position to solve every problem. Right? Cause now you can govern based on consensus as opposed to based on extremism. So I don't think that the curve of getting regular people to do what is actually all that hard. Simply because one I've already seen this now in the 18 elections we've done.
And to people, you know, digital penetration in the U S is, is over 90% now. Right. So pretty much everyone has a smartphone. And people use it all day every day. So the people are not the hard part. And in some ways it's not even the regulators in the sense that, you know, if you're an election official, of course you would like turn out to be 60%, not 12%.
I mean, you intellectually understand why it's a problem. The problem is there's a lot of people who benefit from the status quo, right? So whether you're the NRA on the right or the NEA on the left, low turnout primaries and gerrymander districts is your bread and butter. Because yeah, only 12% of people are voting.
If you, you can constitute a third of that or a quarter of that or whatever it is, you become an all powerful voting block that a politician will never defy. If turnout is now 60%, you know, then the teacher goes from being 25%. When I left there to. 5% of it a lot there. Right. And there are a lot less powerful.
Right? So you're going to see both interest groups on both sides, unions, business groups, and then every individual politician has no idea changing things now because they've figured out how to succeed in the system. All opposed. Yeah. And what they're going to say is we can't do it. It's not safe because no one can actually say.
I don't want to make it easier to vote. Right. They know that you're not allowed to say that. So the reason that I'm spending all this money on building well, we're in technology. And once we build it, we'll make it opensource available for it. Any government that wants it is to take away that excuse.
Right. If I have all these people who had been our critics saying, you know what? I thought that too. And then I worked on the construction of this new technology, and I think it's at least as secure as the other ways that we vote. Then I think I take that narrative away from them. And then from there, if I've got that plus a generation of younger people demanding it, that's how we push it over the top.
Alex: [00:19:29] So today you spend a lot of your time investing in startups facing some of the same challenges you helped others overcome. We just talked about mobile voting, but what are some examples of maybe highly, highly regulated industries you're particularly optimistic about seeing change?
Bradley: [00:19:45] I'll give you four companies that I think are probably the best example.
So one is Roman Roman's a men's health company. They started off by, by selling the fact that we Viagra. Over text because their view is erectile. Dysfunction is often a sign of other health problems that are ignored and because people are embarrassed about it, they don't ask for help. And so for them, we had to make prescription via tax legal because when it comes to at least asking for viagra.
Every additional friction point, having to go see the doctor, having to see the doctor on video that you remove increases the uptake significantly. Right? So we'd been rewriting tele-medicine rules and regulations in States all over the country. So the companies like Roman, and now we have another half, a dozen investments in the space can operate or transportation, you know, started off with Uber, but then also invested in bird if their series a and then, and we've been running campaigns all over the U S to legalize electric scooters and had the path legislation in, in Chicago of New York and a whole bunch of other places. And you know, it's been a different process to Uber and that's a little more cooperative, a little less confrontational.
But nonetheless, you have a lot of competing interests and you have regulators in this case, what I think. Valid questions. I think the notion of electric scooters is societaly beneficial. If it cuts down on car rides or makes a, a mass transit system more accessible, like in New York, for example, it's true in Chicago, too.
Yeah. People live in regular neighborhoods that might be a 20 minute walk to the house. Right. And and if, and that means they don't use the subway, but if there was a bird or lime or whatever, and it became a two minute scooter ride, Everything changes. Right? So we know there's societal value, but so a lot of questions.
Should you ride it on the street, on the sidewalks? There'd be a special lane to how much be mandated or not. How do you do insurance? Well, who does charging? So it's really working through. All these different permutations with cities to figure out what, what makes no sense? FanDuel we came in when they got hit with, you know, cease and desist letters from like 40 odd States at the same time and ran campaigns in 23 different States to legalize daily fantasy sports betting.
And of course, if turning into full on sports betting Illinois, right now, it's in the middle of the process. And then the fourth one is lemonade, which is a insurance company. That sells property, category insurance homeowners and renters online, and it's much cheaper and much easier it's to very different experience.
You can't sell insurance without a license, but the state licensing agencies where we're locked in to approve lemonade in part, because it was a new model and in part, because. You know, there's this notion called regulatory capture, which is kind of Stockholm syndrome. You know, the regulators end up protecting the companies that they're regulating and protecting their monopoly.
And that's the case in the insurance world too. And so we had to overcome all of that to be able to allow lemonade to operate. We were able to win them the right to do that pretty much everything. So those are the kind of four highest profile examples that have.
Alex: [00:22:44] So shifting gears for the last time here, you also do lots of work at tusk philanthropies, particularly in hunger programs that have gotten universal school breakfast for kids in eight States, which is amazing. Why was that of Importance to you?
Bradley: [00:22:57] Yeah, so like to me, and maybe it's just because I've got a really short attention span, but like the, the most fundamental thing you can help someone is giving them food. If someone is hungry and you can feed them their life for that moment is just unquestionably better.
Right. And so I started when I was a freshman in college, working in soup kitchen. So was 30 years ago now. And pretty much have always done it. Uh, sometimes in some years it's been meals on wheels. I'm the soup kitchens. I literally. Left the soup kitchen to come do this with you today. I did every Thursday.
And it's just something that really, you know, makes me feel, feel pretty good. And, and the reason I expanded it into these legislative pushes, what I realized is you have all these wonderful. Hunger organizations who are really good people, but not bad, not that great of politics in part, because politics is a rough business, right?
And by nature, by definition, almost if you're the kind of person who dedicated herself to feeding the hungry, some of the backhand and shit that is necessary in politics, isn't, isn't going to come naturally to you. So what have we put our expertise and our infrastructure and our money. Into helping these groups like share our strength, pass these bills as we've been doing that for the last five years now.
Uh, in fact last week was a really big moment for us because governor Newsom in California included 150 miles, $80 in new funding. That's recurring for school, breakfast and lunch. Another 1.8 million kids in California now will have access to regular meals. We are on the cusp of passing legislation in Vermont.
That will be the first, truly universal school breakfast program in any state. Our bill in Maryland on Hunger-Free college campuses becomes law today. We've got bills pending right now, Massachusetts, Arizona, and Texas. And I feel good about passing them at least in Arizona, in Texas. So to me, it's just something that we can do.
That has a huge impact on the world. That's up our alley and skillset. And quite frankly, not that hard or expensive.
Alex: [00:24:45] So to wrap us up, this is sort of a big question. What mark do you want to leave behind? You know, you've done so much across so many industries you've done so much good for real people that I'm curious about your, your life philosophy when it comes to all this.
Bradley: [00:24:58] It's a good question. And I I've been learning now I'm 47 to maybe stop trying to think about my legacy of the narrative around it so much, because what I've learned is I like doing a lot of things at once, right. So like right now, I run a venture capital fund. And when you don't have a fund, you have multiple you're investigating multiple funds at the same time.
You're raising a new funds. It's pretty complex. Yeah. I've got a political consulting firm. That's, you know, in addition to a lot of other things running Andrew Yang's campaign for mayor of New York city I've got a teller religion, a social media startup that I'm incubating I'm the chairman of a publicly traded company that we did a SPAC for.
Doing another SPAC. We do mobile voting and hunger out of the foundation. We'll opening up a bookstore and podcast studio on the lower side of manhattan. I've got my column for fast company, my podcast. I'm writing two new books. I teach at this school, well, the point is this, which is what I realized.
I like it. I'm good at coming up with ideas and putting them into play. And the reality is I'm not doing the day details on any of that. Right? The only thing where I say I do all of it is the writing because I don't like anyone else writing for me, but putting that, putting that aside, it's really okay. How do I use this infrastructure that I've built over the last decade now to find ideas that really interests me.
And it could be things that I think are really society beneficial. It could be things that are intellectually interesting. It could be things that I think are really lucrative and are worth it to them or the things that I care about. How do I build the right team to execute it? How do I give them?
Enough direction and support and how I use my own politic profile to kind of move it along. I think you're doing more and more stuff. So as a result, you know, I think on one hand, you know, should I be lucky enough to let's say have an obituary one day when I die, I think it would be a confusing of which story to write, because I do a lot of different shit.
And I think you know, but at the same time, that's what makes me happy. And so ultimately, you know, big picture, I think I've had an impact of the political world. I think I've had been impacted in the tech world. You know, if mobile voting happens and if it works, that's probably the single best thing I'll ever do.
Having a, hopefully an impact on the philanthropic world and you know, uh, I think what I'm best at is just doing everything and then I'll let others decide how to talk about it. And there, you know, look you go online and there are profiles maybe that you could read that make me sound, it took to the point earlier about politicians, right there.
There are profiles making sound far better than I really am. There are profiles including Warren on the front page, New York times, a couple of weeks ago. That makes me sound. Exponentially worse than I think I really am. Yeah. And you know, a lot of it depends on the agenda of the writer. If you're someone who cares about hunger, you're a tech writer or you believe in innovation, you're probably be pretty friendly towards me.
If your view is capitalism is evil and venture capital is evil and we have to be fun to police some Charlotte that every charter school like an area times pleasing stage, you're going to not like me at all. I'm not my duty, my position for anyone. Right. I'm gonna do what I think is interesting and meaningful.
Some people will like it. Some people won't like it. What I have to learn is as long as I feel good about it, that's all that really matters. And then I get that intellectually. The emotional struggle that I have is. How do I believe that kind of internally, right? Because we're all susceptible. Like I was talking to politicians earlier to the need for outside affirmation and validation and praise.
And how do I get enough satisfaction and meaning out of all the things that I'm doing, that whether I'm being praised to health or getting the shit, your data, they're more likely both at the same time, it doesn't really impact my self esteem one way or the other. So you know, to me, that's the, the doing stuff part, I've got a pretty good handle on.
The, how do I derive all of my satisfaction just from the act of doing it, regardless of external perception is something that I'm still trying to do, trying to work on.
Alex: [00:28:43] That's the one to leave it on, right?
Bradley: [00:28:45] Well, yeah, I think we've covered most of it.
Alex: [00:28:47] That was amazing. Thank you so much for doing this. Appreciate you.
Bradley: [00:28:51] Thanks. Bye-bye okay.