What Jason would prioritize if building a village

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what you're doing. So there's a place where you get to a place where people are paying attention and then I think then your ego actually has to soften a bit. So I think you need a strong one to start and then ultimately I think it should soften as you go because people will take shots at you and if that ends up being something you take personally I think it's a it's a it's a bad stressful road at that point. So, I think at that point, you've got to really soften up and be like, "Whatever. I don't really care. I'm just doing stuff for me now at this point." Um, and uh I I appreciate that you care enough to to love it or hate it, whatever. It's nice to be loved. It's also nice to be hated sometimes by people who should be hating you. I I I suppose. But I don't think it's good to take things personally uh once you've established some degree of

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success because uh then you begin to do things only for other people and you're just going to look for more and more praise and adoration to fuel that ego and that's I think a really dangerous place to be as well. I'll be selfish here. The next thing that I want to do after my agency is build a village. You traveled a lot. You've lived in a bunch of different places. If you were to build a village, what would some of the features be? Some of the things that you think about, some of the things that you would borrow, that you saw on your travels. You could take it any direction, but like that's a that's a really interesting question. Um, I haven't lived in that many places or been that many places, but I have been

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to a few um and lived in a few. The best places I've been are um places where there's a lot of texture and um a lot of uh variability in diversity in flora and fauna and architecture and space. Like I don't like planned communities in a sense. I don't like things that are planned out ahead of So, like I'd much rather go to uh a wild than an English garden, you know? Like the English garden is very formal. I mean, they're they're beautiful. Like, they're beautiful, but I'd much rather be in in in wild places. Um, I'd much rather be in a village that is full of

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color and and and self-made spaces and and like architecture for the people versus a planned community where everything is the same or there's like only five versions of something or five styles of something. So I I think I think um that degree of of uh that r I'd like to I'd like a village with a lot of range to me al ultimately um creative range natural range architectural range experience range people different philosophies all this stuff I think it'd be uh that'd be the best uh most interesting place to be. How do you So if you want to I think part of that you get when a place is old and it evolved

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organically and you had people move over the generations. Obviously when you start in your village you don't necessarily have that unless you want to give it the next 500 years. What it sounds like for that you would need to solve for having attracting a group of people that is diverse and different enough that everyone has their own differences but cohesive enough that you can still actually live in a village and be each other's neighbors which is similar to I guess company culture. What how do you do that which is kind of a I don't think you I yeah I to your point I don't think you can do that. I think that these things actually have to evolve organically. M um I don't think you can force I don't think you can force these kinds of things to to evolve. I think things like this emerge and things that emerge emerge

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organically. Um you might be able to encourage some things but there's a point where you encourage so much that you force and that then falls apart. So I don't know. Um but what's the connecting thread? Because then you need different people who all have their own taste and they want to do different things but there still needs to be cohesion. So what's the I think the cohesion is is I mean ultimately is probably the interest in living in a certain way. Um which is which is which is people would be attracted to a place where they can experiment and try new things and do new things and live in a place where they maybe have the chance to build their own place or design their own space or whatever it might be. I don't I don't know this is a bit abstract you know but but in general like I think that ultimately things just have to come together naturally. So I

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don't think you can force it. I think if you like, you know, you bought a big track of land somewhere out out in the, you know, out out in the wherever, out in the suburbs somewhere in some place like, and you tried to plan this thing to happen, it wouldn't happen. Things just happen. Things come together. Um, there's all sorts of places in the world where things have just come together naturally because either the topography is right or the timing is right or there's a few leaders that attract different people to these places or there's a few examples of something that happen. Sometimes there could be a great place that is man-made that just attracts people to it and then other people build around it. Other times there's other places that a lot of things are kind of similar, but the similarities are still rooted in texture and and and scale that make sense. I

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mean, it's hard to answer this cuz there's a lot of things. I think ultimately what interests me are things that happen organically. Um, I don't like things that are heavily planned. I don't think that they are ultimately the best things in the world. The best things in the world just come to be that way. Um, and I think this is true about company culture as well and companies. Yes, you hire. Yes, you collect some people together. Um, but I think that culture is you don't actually create a culture. Culture is emergent and it's really represents to me it's a moving average. It's like the last 50 days of how we've been with each other. Mhm. That's really what a culture is. It's not a list of things. It's not how we want to be. It's just how we are, how

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things are. And um it emerges uh and it emerges based on a lot of other behavior, but it's it's an emergent property. And I just think that those are the most interesting things in the world. What's the new book about? Well, the new book is not written yet. So, um what will it be about? You don't know. But the the work the working title is make it up as you go. And um that's actually a working title. And it's it's it's it's um it's really, you know, I think a a um a consolidation perhaps of of our point of view on on how to build a company, how to build products, how to hire, how to do all the things. We've written about these things sort of in other books, but this is really the centerpiece of this is about gut and intuition and figuring it out as you go

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and not being afraid of the unknown and not seeking certainty, but just going and making things um and making decisions um when you need to and context over consistency and and and this some of the stuff we've been talking about, but but a real distillation of that approach in all the different realms of of the way we work. Um, I think that that's that's where we're headed with this book. Um, we're probably going to write it in a different way. Historically, we've done I don't know what we're going to do, but historically we've done like anywhere between like 60 and 80 or 90 essays, individual short essays broken into different chapters. I think we're going to do this one in a more traditional way in a sense. Maybe just like 10 chapters um, and just like 10 longer essays, you

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know, maybe 2500 words each, something like that. So 25,000 words in this book roughly something like that. So more like a a stream of consciousness style writing where there's an extended depth about around a topic and not just short pathy essays. But we'll see. That's where we're headed and we'll see. We're going to make it up as we go. You stole my Yes. Jason, this was awesome. Thank you so much for your generosity and your time. Um I had a blast. I hope I hope there was something in here for everyone. I know that we didn't cover anywhere close to all the questions. We can do a part two if you want some time. Also, I'm seeing just real quick, uh, Shape Up 2.0, that's another book we are going to release this year. It's done. I just need to edit it. Um, Brian ended up

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writing the, uh, the big changes. So, I need to go through that with him and work it out. But, we'll have that out, too. That's not this book, though. That's a separate book. That's just version or uh the second edition of of Shape Up. So, but yeah, Finn, we can do another one. I This was fun. Your questions are really good and interesting and challenging and a lot of questions I hadn't answered before or thought about. So, I'm glad I'm making it up as we go too here. So, great. Love it. All right, Jason. Thank you. Thank you everyone in the audience.