#44 - Runnin' Down a Dream: Lessons from Bill Gurley
Episode notes
In this solo episode, I break down some of my biggest takeaways from Runnin’ Down a Dream by Bill Gurley.
I’ve always loved reading, and I really believe books are one of the highest-leverage things you can invest in. You’re basically getting decades of someone’s thinking for the price of a book.
I share a story from the book that really stuck with me, along with one of the core ideas: instead of trying to “find your passion,” just follow your curiosity.
If you’re thinking about your career, feeling a bit stuck, or just want to hear a different way to think about it - I think you’ll enjoy this one.
💡 What You’ll Learn:
- Why books are one of the most asymmetric bets you can make
- The mindset shift from “find your passion” → “follow your curiosity”
- A powerful perspective on time, life, and doing work you actually enjoy
📚 Honorable Mentions:
- How small daily habits (like reading) compound over time
- Brandon Turner on books being an amazing investment
- Tim Ferriss on always having a “budget for books”
Transcript
Transcribed from the recording and lightly formatted for reading. Nothing has been reworded, so the occasional mis-hearing is left as spoken.
Jeff Albaum
What's going on everybody? Welcome back to another episode of Curiosity Class. Today I am super excited to be joined by a huge, huge mentor of mine, the one and only Bill Gurley. Just kidding, kind of. Not really. Bill wrote a book. It's called Running Down a Dream. How to thrive in a career you actually love. I actually had to read the subtitle.
Bill is awesome. I've listened to him on a couple of podcasts and I didn't know he wrote a book. And so those of you that don't, that don't know, I've been a huge reader my entire life. I've always really enjoyed reading. used to wake up early to read Harry Potter. And, it's something that I've tried to continue throughout my life. I, two things I love is reading and podcasts. So I figured why not do a podcast about a book? so I'm about 75 % of the way through run, a dream. And I want to talk today a little bit about,
the things that lessons I've gotten to take away from it so far. but just before that, quick word on, books in general, I think books and reading, especially nonfiction is one of the, these, call it asymmetric asymmetrical bets. Like there's really not a lot of downside and pretty much unlimited upside. I've heard it said that, you know, a book isn't the cost of the book. It's actually what you can get from it. So, like Brandon Turner always talks about like,
If you spend 20 bucks and you buy a book, he says that the odds that you're going to make millions of dollars in your career is like pretty high because you're getting someone's knowledge. So if you pick the right author, you're getting this person's knowledge that they've spent 30 years or 20 year, whatever is their entire career trying to distill down and write down and get on paper and you get to absorb that, you know, for, for 20 bucks or even better, you know, for free at the library.
If the library doesn't have a book, you can request it and they can get you the book. So for zero monetary dollars, it does take time. But man, what a great way to spend a couple, 20 minutes every day. If you read five pages a day or 10 pages a day, you get to absorb these mentors' words that they spent their careers and life distilling for free, basically. I think that's just so cool. As someone who tries to find a lot of mentors in life, I just think it's a really, really cool idea.
The other really fun quote that I love, this is from Tim Ferriss. He talked about, forget when I heard this or when he said it, but he talks about growing up, were not, I think they were very like solidly middle class. They were not starving for food, but they weren't well off. They weren't wealthy. And he said the thing that he remembers as a kid was there was always a budget for books. And for some reason, I don't know if it's the alliteration, but I've always loved that idea of like, there's always a budget for books.
And if there isn't like go to the library and get a booklet, you'd always have a book that you're reading. and so I really, really liked that. So I've kind of taken that, you know, with me. so every time I'm thinking about, I kind of want to read that book, all order from the library or get it from Amazon. And, know, I don't really think twice about that in my Monarch money account, you know, flashes, Hey, you spent this much on Amazon shopping. I'm like, it's education. That's okay. but anyways, so I listened to bill on a podcast that I really like.
And, it was my first million and he was breaking down the book and I was like, man, it's so cool that you wrote a book. So, yeah, I wanted to dive in and just share a couple takeaways that I've gotten so far. this is kind like a podcast book report, if you will. so he's a really great writer. So to start off, each section is broken down between a profile of a, a person that he's profiling and then a kind of core lesson. So it's really interesting because you don't actually know who the profile is until the end of the chapter.
Show full transcript
Jeff Albaum
So I'm not gonna spoil anything here. So you gotta definitely recommend you go out and get the book. if you read the book, if you are interested. But so the first chapter specifically talks about a story that I didn't know. And you learn all about this person. He really kind of pulls you in and you have this immense love of this character. And then at the end of the chapter, you learn who it is. And it's like that for all the subsequent chapters, followed by a principle. So it kind of says like, hey, this is a person.
you get the life story and then you get who they are at the end and it's all people that you've heard of. And then the next chapter is a principle based off of that. So I wanted to read just a couple excerpts of pages that I thought were really interesting and fun.
the first quote that I really liked, I highlighted here. So the person, his name's Danny, the character that we're gonna learn who it is at the end of the chapter. So Danny is sitting at dinner with his uncle and basically it was the night before he was supposed to take the LSAT. So the entrance, you know, the law school entrance exam, law school admission test, I think is what it actually stands for. And you know, he was somebody who's
pretty upset, he wasn't really excited for it, and so he was down and they were at dinner and his uncle was saying, what the hell is eating you? And Dana remembers his uncle saying.
Um, and so basically he's like, you know, trying to figure out like what, what is the issue? his, his, he's taking the LSAT the next day and his, he's pretty upset by it he's not really excited. And his uncle says, you know, like what's, what's going on? Like, what's the matter with you? And Danny's like, man, I'm taking this LSAT. I don't only want to be a lawyer. Like, I don't know what I'm doing. And does it, the Danny remembers his uncle was super, super mad at him and he looked like he was going to throw a spoon at, at Danny and his uncle said,
Do you have any idea how long you're going to be dead? Uncle Richard asked. No, I don't know either, but I'll tell you one thing. Uncle Richard said, you're going to be dead a hell of a lot longer than you're going to be alive. So why in the world would you do something that you have no passion around? And I just love that idea. Like, yeah, you're going to be dead a lot longer than you're going to be alive. So you might as well do something you love. You know, like I think that's really interesting. And I really like that quote. So again, I'm not going to spoil who this is, but definitely read the book to
to understand and to get the end of the chapter. But the next chapter is the principle. And the principle is, I promise I didn't do this on purpose, the principle is chase your curiosity. And so he breaks down about how passion is maybe an overused word sometimes because it's everyone says, find your passion, find your passion. But a way to cut through some of that, because if you don't know what your passion is, it's a hard question to answer. If someone says, hey, what's your passion? You say, I don't know.
Right? But an alternative question you can ask is what are you curious about? And so again, I think that obviously ties in very well to the podcast of curiosity class, but yeah, just chasing curiosity and understanding like, you know, pick a pick something that you're interested in and just like go down a rabbit hole for 20 minutes, 30 minutes an hour. Right. Find some time to just dive deep on something that you're purely interested in. Like it doesn't have to be. And specifically, he writes that it doesn't actually have to be
career aligned, right? So a lot of the other profiles in the book showcase that it's people who are actively doing things that don't quote unquote, like help progress their career. But it's really interesting and these people have just like following what they're curious about. And it's a really great read. So again, I'm very much enjoying the book. Again, that's 75 % of the way done. And who knows, maybe they'll listen to this and who want to come on the pod and we can we can have a conversation together. But
That is that's it. That's it for now. So again, go and get the book, Running Down a Dream, How to Thrive in a Career You Actually Love by Bill Gurley. It's awesome. I'll link to it in the show notes. I don't even get a kickback, but yeah, I'll send an Amazon link. And if you do decide to get in and read it, let me know what you think. And thank you as always for being with me. Have a great one. Bye everybody.