What's up, everyone? This is Alex Lieberman, co-founder and executive chairman of Morning Brew.

Welcome back to Founders Journal, my personal audio diary, where I give you the business builder,

the tools you need to think better in order to build better, whether that's building a business,

a team, or new product. Today, and next episode, I am sharing timeless lessons from the book

Principles, an amazing read by Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates. So, as I said,

two part episode, there's so much information packed into this book. Part one is today,

and stay tuned for the next episode, which is going to be part two with other principles by

Ray Dalio. But speaking of principles, I wanted to give a quick shout out to the five Founders

Journal listeners who won the principles giveaway. I want to thank the 250 plus people that submitted

a review for the giveaway, and I want to give a big shout out to Jeremy D, Amanda M, Rebecca H,

Alexa S, and Steven T for winning the giveaway and earning themselves a free copy of principles.

Now, let's hop into it.

Ray Dalio is truly one of the greatest thinkers of our generation. He's best known for founding

Bridgewater Associates out of his apartment, growing it into the largest hedge fund in the world,

and in doing so, amassing a $20 billion fortune. But I have found Dalio to be one of the

clearest thinkers I've ever studied, not just among investors, but anyone, period.

Ray Dalio's philosophy is very much centered around two truths. First, that finding the truth

should be the goal of any deep thinker. And second, that most things we experience have happened

before, and therefore we can create rules around them. This philosophy resulted in Dalio spending

much of his career writing down principles or fundamental truths that can be applied to any

area of work or life without having to learn things the hard way through mistakes.

His book is a 500-plus-page compilation of a career's worth of principles, so what I wanted

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