The Profile: Elon Musk’s brain implant startup & the billionaire learning what money can’t buy

This edition of The Profile features Elon Musk, Steven Cohen, Katharine Roxanne Grawe, and more.

Good morning, friends!

I recently watched Graham Weaver’s Stanford talk, “How to Live an Asymmetric Life,” and it’s excellent.

In it, he shares four ways to achieve asymmetry in your life, which he adapted from asymmetric investing — achieving the biggest possible outcome relative to your risk. One of those ways was particularly interesting to me.

He shows the following chart, and says:

This chart shows our lives, and this is what happens. We get comfortable, and if we want to move forward and get to the next peak, the magic is to understand that your life is almost always going to get worse first.

Any change that you want to make is going to [make your life] worse first. So you’re in a relationship and you have to have a hard conversation? That particular night, your life is going to get a little worse, and then you’re going to come out the other end, and it’s going to get better.

If you want to change careers, and you want to learn something new, you’re going to go down the learning curve, your salary is probably going to go down, you probably won’t be that good at your job when you first start — your life is going to get worse first.

You want to start a new habit, you want to take a cold shower, you want to meditate, you want to start exercising — it’s going to get worse first.

And you’re going to follow this pattern, but you need to realize that the first move is always the worst. Eventually, these downward curves are going to get a lot shallower.

Because you know what the biggest part of that curve is? It’s just fear. So the more that you put yourself in situations where you do hard things, the shallower those divots will get because you remove that fear.

Everything you want in life is on the other side of ‘worse first.’

It reminds me of that Chris Hadfield quote: "It takes a boldness of execution and an ability to overcome fear. Fear is just a symptom of lack of preparation. The best antidote for fear is competence.”

Whether it’s starting a new exercise habit or maintaining a healthy relationship, it all comes down to competence and understanding that your life will get worse before it gets better.

In his book, The Art of Learning, Josh Waitzkin distinguishes between four levels of competence:

— Unconscious incompetence – “I don’t know how bad I am.”

— Conscious incompetence – "This sucks. I know how bad I am.”

** ^^ this is the stage when most people quit because their life got worse**

— Conscious competence – “I can do this if I focus.”

— Unconscious competence – “I don’t remember the last 10 minutes of driving my car.”

I wonder just how many times we quit because we thought our life getting worse was permanent, not temporary. So allow this to serve as your reminder that things almost always get worse before they get better. You can watch Graham’s full talk here:

PROFILES.

— TikTok’s plastic surgeon who fell from grace
— The billionaire learning what money can’t buy
— The couple behind the Skims-industrial complex
— Elon Musk’s brain implant startup [**HIGHLY RECOMMEND**]
— The world’s most cultish grocery store

PEOPLE TO KNOW.

TikTok’s plastic surgeon who fell from grace: When plastic surgeon Dr. Katharine Roxanne Grawe — aka “Dr. Roxy” — rose to TikTok fame, her OR seemed busier than ever. Until a record of botched surgeries caught up to her. She had her Ohio medical license revoked after she livestreamed surgeries — allegedly harming patients in the process. (New York Magazine)

“It was a loss of focus — she took her focus off the patient to present to the camera.”

The billionaire learning what money can’t buy: When he bought the New York Mets in 2020 for a record-setting price of $2.4 billion, billionaire Steven Cohen promised to restore his favorite team from childhood to glory, saying he would be disappointed if he did not bring it another World Series within “three to five years.” He then assembled the highest-paid roster in baseball history. The ecstatic Mets nation treated the richest man in baseball like he was a free-spending folk hero. At 67, Cohen, the founder of asset-management firm Point72, is used to getting what he wants, but his experiences as Mets owner and casino bidder is teaching him what money can’t buy. (New York Magazine)

“He is approaching politics the way he is approaching Mets ownership. The question is whether it will have the same results or not.”

The couple behind the Skims-industrial complex: Emma and Jens Grede are veteran marketers and the married couple behind many of the Kardashian family’s brands: Good American, Safely, newly-debuted Khy, and the best-known: Skims. Meet the duo behind the Jenner-Kardashian commerce empire. (New York Magazine)

“You can be a great singer or actor, actress, but you’ve got to have an aesthetic that’s different from someone else’s.”

COMPANIES TO WATCH.

Elon Musk’s brain implant startup: Elon Musk’s brain implant startup Neuralink has been cleared by the FDA to start performing surgery. is seeking a volunteer for its first clinical trial, meaning it’s looking for someone willing to have a chunk of their skull removed by a surgeon so a large robot can insert a series of electrodes and superthin wires into their brain. When the robot finishes, the missing piece of skull will have been replaced with a computer the size of a quarter that’s meant to stay there for years. Its job will be to read and analyze the person’s brain activity, then relay that information wirelessly to a nearby laptop or tablet. This is an exclusive look into Neuralink, and its audacious goals for humanity. (Bloomberg; reply to this email if you can’t access the article)

“We need to get there before the AI takes over. We want to get there with a maniacal sense of urgency. Maniacal.”

The world’s most cultish grocery store: Los Angeles-based grocery store Erewhon has never been, just a grocery store. It exists within a space between commerce and cult. Here’s how a 1960s Japanese health-food sect birthed a hippie grocer that changed American food. (New York Magazine)

“Oh, you don’t buy your eggs in a circle? Go back to Whole Foods!”

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