Bryan Johnson (TW: @BRYAN_JOHNSON, BRYANJOHNSON.CO) is an entrepreneur and investor. He is the founder of OS Fund and Braintree, the latter of which was bought by eBay in 2013 for $800 million in cash. Bryan launched OS Fund in 2014 with $100 million of his personal capital to support inventors and scientists who aim to benefit humanity by rewriting the operating systems of life. In other words: He fuels real-world mad scientists tackling things like asteroid mining, artificial intelligence, life extension, and more. He is currently the founder and CEO of Kernel, which is developing the world’s first neuroprosthesis [brain-implantable computer] to mimic, repair, and improve cognition.
Spirit animal: African lion
On selling credit card processing door-to-door to retailers:
“I would say, ‘Tim, if you give me 3 minutes of your time, I will give you $100 if you do not say “yes” to using my service.’ Usually they would say something like, ‘That is interesting …’ and I would open my pitch book and walk them through the industry. Here are the providers, here is what they do, here is how they do it, here is what I do. I am the same as everyone else, except with me, you get honesty and transparency and great customer support. So, I became this company’s number-one sales person. I broke all their sales records following this really simple formula of just selling honesty and transparency in a broken industry.”
“I have a lot of conversations with people who want to start their own thing, and one of my favorite questions to ask is, ‘Is this an itch, or is it burning?’ If it is just an itch, it is not sufficient. It gets to this point of how badly you really want it. For me, I burned the boats. There was no way I was going to get a job. Failure was never an option. I had to make this work.”
“One time [as a kid], I wondered—if you filled a milk gallon jug full of gasoline and you lit it on fire, what would happen? So, I took the gasoline that was otherwise used for the lawnmower, and I filled up this carton, and I went out on the street and I lit it on fire…. As expected, it produced quite a flame. [My mom’s] green Taurus rolled around the corner, coming down the street and I thought, ‘Oh, no …’ So, in haste, I kicked over the jug and the gasoline spills onto the street and into the gutter. Now it is rolling down the gutter and there are cars [down the street]. I am imagining cars blowing up. So, I walk over to the gutter and I stomp on the gasoline to put it out, and, of course, that splashes. Now, the lawn is on fire. It is getting worse and worse. Anyway, we put the fire out and then the only thing she says to me is, ‘Bryan, you probably should not do that again,’ and I said, ‘All right, that is fair.’ That is typical of my mom.”
“So, we got on a four-wheeler 2 weeks ago—my 11- and 9-year-old and I—and I said, ‘Okay, I am going to put your helmets on, I am going to give you a 2-minute lesson on how to go forward and how to go backwards, how to brake. I am going to give you some lessons—do not go into a ditch, do not go on a hillside that will turn you over, etc.—but I am expecting you now to go out for 5 minutes and come back safely, and tell me how you did it. What were your thought processes? How did you stay safe? What were the risks you took? But I want you to do it, and I am not going with you.’ … They came back in one piece, and it was a good experience for them to tell me ‘Okay, Dad, this is how we looked at the risk, this is how we thought we might potentially get into a problem….’ They [even ran into a tree] going slowly … but they talked about it, which I thought was really helpful.”
Ernest Shackleton had a huge impact on Bryan as a child. “He is remembered [for] the grit and how they actually overcame all the obstacles that came about during the expedition. He is hugely inspirational in my life, because I apply what I call the ‘Shackleton sniff test’ to everything I do…. I contemplate: If I go about on this endeavor, does it meet the threshold that Shackleton applied? Is this the most audacious endeavor I can possibly conceive of? What would Shackleton do?”
TF: Joe De Sena (here) goes through the same exercise using Shackleton as the litmus test. “That’s his dude, too,” as a mutual friend put it.
• What is something you believe that other people think is crazy?
“Our existence is programmable.”
“Life is not waiting for the storm to pass, it’s learning how to dance in the rain” [adapted from Vivian Greene].
This relates to learned helplessness, which is often outdated and reinforced by others who mean well:
“At Braintree, one of the principles I consistently communicated was, ‘Challenge all assumptions.’ The story that I accompanied that with was: There are five monkeys in a room, and there is a basket of bananas at the top of a ladder. The monkeys, of course, want to climb the ladder to get the bananas, but every time one tries, they are all sprayed with cold water. After a few times of being sprayed by cold water, the monkeys learn to not climb up the ladder to get the bananas…. [The experimenters then] take one monkey out and put a new monkey in, and the new monkey sees a banana. He thinks, ‘Hey, I am going to grab a banana,’ but when he tries to go up the ladder, the other monkeys grab him and pull him back…. [The experimenters eventually] systematically pull every monkey out, and now you have five new monkeys. Any time a new monkey comes in and tries to climb the ladder, they grab the monkey and pull it back, but none of the five have ever been sprayed by cold water.”
TF: This brought to mind a story from Tara Brach (here) that I think of often:
This is a story about a tiger named Mohini that was in captivity in a zoo, who was rescued from an animal sanctuary. Mohini had been confined to a 10-by-10-foot cage with a concrete floor for 5 or 10 years. They finally released her into this big pasture: With excitement and anticipation, they released Mohini into her new and expensive environment, but it was too late. The tiger immediately sought refuge in a corner of the compound, where she lived for the remainder of her life. She paced and paced in that corner until an area 10-by-10 feet was worn bare of grass…. Perhaps the biggest tragedy in our lives is that freedom is possible, yet we can pass our years trapped in the same old patterns.
What past limitations—real or perceived—are you carrying as baggage? Where in your life are you pacing in a 10-by-10-foot patch of grass? Where are you afraid of getting sprayed with water, even though it’s never happened? Oftentimes, everything you want is a mere inch outside of your comfort zone. Test it.