How To Live An Extraordinary Life

Contents

Introduction

How you do anything is how you do everything

Today is practice for tomorrow

Carve your ethics in stone, write your opinions in sand

Excellence doesn’t have a watch

Do it right, do it light

Build things

Have a bias for action

Finish what you start

Luck is not real

Chinese farmer

Two crappy pages per day

Don’t compare yourself to the bottom of the bucket

Tie your identity to your own name

Two years of experience five times

Life is full of power laws

Take work off your boss’s desk

Bad news doesn’t get better with time

Maker’s schedule, manager’s schedule

Clear thinking can’t happen in a messy room

Management makes the rules, management changes the rules

It’s just business

Never ask someone to do something you are not willing to do

Magnets attract opportunities

What can I do to help you?

Call your friends for no reason

Make people talk about themselves

Genuinely caring is a life hack

Get on the plane

Spend time with your peers

Host dinner for interesting people

Surround yourself with compounders

No one is thinking about you

Fire boring friends

Respect other people’s time

You don’t get if you don’t ask

Compete, don’t complain

Puzzles, not problems

Most people would dream of having your problems

Every play is drawn up to be a touchdown

Childhood is not a crutch

Simplicity signals mastery

Slow is smooth, smooth is fast

Never argue with a fool

Change your mind when the facts change

You can’t be rational with an irrational person

You don’t have to win every argument

How to be unhappy

Optimize your content diet

Information is a currency

Document good ideas

Spend less than you make

Rich people sell too early

Buy great assets and hold them forever

Pictures are memories frozen in time

Weird things can change the world

You can’t live an extraordinary life sitting on your couch

Live your life as a documentary

We are all going to die

Walk outside daily

No stress can withstand a proper workout

Attack the day

Sleep is nature’s doctor

Your intuition is your algorithm

Write letters

Publishing details

How to Live an Extraordinary Life

Anthony Pompliano writes 65 letters to his children with inspiring lessons on how to succeed in business, have great relationships, do well with money, and live a healthier and happier life.

What does it take to make the most of what really matters (and to know what that is before it passes you by)? To overcome obstacles that set most people back (and to see them coming beforehand)? To flourish not just financially—but also in your family, free time, and the world of business?

What does it take to live an extraordinary life?

The answers will surprise you.

Anthony Pompliano has lived in a war zone, met and interviewed the world’s wealthiest people, built and sold companies, invested in more than 200 businesses, formed friendships around the globe, started a loving family, and found happiness. Along the way, he has kept a personal list of the lessons he has learned.

Now, in How to Live an Extraordinary Life, he writes 65 letters to his children laying out each lesson and how he learned it, and explaining how it can be applied by anyone in their life today.

The result is a compelling collection of practical and inspiring life strategies that anyone can use to build an extraordinary life.

You will find unique advice about using your childhood as a chisel, understanding that luck is not real, living your life as a documentary, developing unshakable resilience, becoming a happier person, and much, much more.

Most importantly, Anthony shows that an extraordinary life is within reach for anyone who wants it. You can start right now.

To Polina, life with you is extraordinary

Introduction

I never thought I would see my 35th birthday. When I was younger and friends would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always caveated the answer with, Well, I am going to die before 35 so I have to accomplish my goals before then.

I am not sure why I thought this way.

It could have been because I was always doing reckless things as a teenager. There were multiple car accidents and fist fights. I went to war in Iraq as part of the US Army when I was 20 years old. I was fond of driving my motorcycle over 100 mph in my early 20s. And I drank and partied even more than your average young man.

To be honest, I had an incredible time. I don’t regret a single second of it. But I figured you couldn’t live life that fast and expect to make it past age 35.

I was wrong.

I am writing this book a few months after I turned 35 years old. Every day I get from here until the end of my life is borrowed time in my mind. This milestone made me reflect on everything I have packed into the last 35 years.

My life has allowed me to visit more than 30 countries, meet many of the world’s most successful people, build a family I love, help thousands of people improve their lives, and achieve financial independence.

Simply, I have lived an extraordinary life.

You won’t find me riding a motorcycle these days, nor will you see me partying or going off to war. Those days are long gone. Today, I have an amazing wife and two young kids who I cherish.

As I reflected on where I was before, where I am today, and where I would like to go in the future, I was compelled to write a letter to each of my children about the things I have learned so far. Two letters turned into five letters. Five letters turned into ten. And next thing I knew, I had written more than 60 letters to my son and daughter.

This book is a collection of those letters. Each chapter contains a lesson about something that I learned in my life. These lessons can stand on their own, or they can be combined with other lessons in the book. Sometimes these lessons complement each other and other times the lessons may contradict each other.

Context matters when you are sharing advice, so evaluate each lesson independently.

Before we get started, I also want to leave a message to the many people that have known me over the years. Most of you know me as an entrepreneur, an investor, or someone with a large social media following.

I am proud of everything I have accomplished in my professional life, but the most important thing to me is ensuring that my children are prepared to be happy, productive citizens in the world.

These letters were started out of fear that something could happen to me before I had the chance to share these stories and this advice with my kids. I guess it was a resurfacing of that old feeling that I wouldn’t make it past 35.

But then, as the letters accumulated, they became something that I thought would be useful for a much wider audience. And so the book was created out of hope that these letters could help even more people around the world.

The funny thing about writing a book like this is that people start thinking I must believe I have all the answers. That couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, I am hyper-aware of how much more I have to learn.

Hopefully the book I write in the next 35 years will be three times longer and full of even more lessons.

Anthony

How you do anything is how you do everything

Sofia & Leo,

Everything in your life is made up of details.

From the work you pursue to the relationships you cherish to the reputation you earn, the big things are made up of many small things. It can be easy to forget about the small things though. They aren’t the big things. They don’t seem important in the grand scheme.

But I have found the opposite to be true in my life—how you do anything is how you will do everything.

When I was deployed to Iraq as part of the US Army Infantry in 2008–2009, we would spend hours patrolling our designated areas. These patrols usually occurred late at night under the cover of darkness. During the night patrols, the wind would cover our team, our trucks, and our weapons in sand from the deserts that surrounded us.

We were exhausted when we got back from a patrol. It was tempting to simply go to sleep. But our leadership team had drilled into us that we were not supposed to go to sleep until we meticulously cleaned our trucks and our weapons from the sand.

Their point was that we need to be prepared for the next mission before we went to sleep. Was it likely that we would have to leave on short notice for the next mission without having time to prepare? No.

But they didn’t want to take any chances.

It may surprise you to hear that the leadership team never checked whether we cleaned the trucks or our weapons when we got back. They didn’t need to. It was well understood that cleaning your weapon was not an action that you did for yourself, but rather something you did to ensure your weapon worked when needed to help your teammates in the future.

Cleaning your weapon was a selfless act.

The exhausted person who will take the time to meticulously clean their weapon before going to sleep is the same person who will be dependable for the team. They will be on time. They will come prepared for every mission. They will look after their teammates. They won’t leave anyone behind. They are the type of person that pays attention to the details.

Remember, how you do anything is how you do everything.

It is important to decide what type of person you want to be. Do you show up on time? Do you keep your promises? Do you always complete the job? Do you pay attention to the details? Do you take care of your team?

Once you decide the type of person you want to be, you can start acting like that person immediately. Think of it as your aspirational self. If you want to be a person that shows up on time, then you make sure you are not only on time, but a few minutes early.

You begin to take pride in the small action of never being late. No