James Altucher - Choose Yourself

Full transcript: James Altucher on London Real

5:52 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is James Altucher, who is an entrepreneur, chess master, podcaster, and best-selling writer whose work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, and the Financial Times. James, you run two podcasts, The James Altucher Show and Ask Altucher, with guests like Mark Cuban, Peter Thiel, Tony Robbins. Your blog, The Altucher Confidential, has over 25 million readers, and you’re the author of 18 books, including two Wall Street Journal bestsellers, Choose Yourself and The Power of No.

6:19 James, welcome to London Real. Brian, thanks for having me here. We’re like chess pieces. We’re playing Black vs. White chess here.

6:27 Exactly. I was worried you were going to exercise The Power of No when I asked you on this show, but I wasn’t going to take it personally because… No, no, I was going with the flow. When I figured I’m coming to London, whoever asks me to do anything, I’m just going to do it. Okay.

6:42 Good. And also, I had heard about the show. Everyone’s like, oh, London Real, you’re going on that show? You’ve got to go. Awesome.

6:48 I’m glad you’re here. What’s it like being in London? You know, I know you were here a long time ago when you were like 12 years old. Yeah, I spent the summer here when I was a little kid, so… Doing hip, doing breakdancing.

6:58 Yeah, exactly. You would think coming from New York City to here, I would bring a little bit of America there, but it was more like I came basically, like there was a group tour, and we would stay with a family, like each person would stay with a family, and I didn’t do any of the tour events. I just kind of met some kids from the suburbs of London or whatever, and they taught me how to breakdance, and I would hang out with them for the whole summer. And then on the plane ride back, nobody knew who I was.

7:25 Like, I was with this group tour. Nobody knew who… I wasn’t supposed to be with them. They were very upset, so… And what’s it like being here now?

7:34 What does it feel like when you’re here? You know, you’re from America, okay? I’m from America. Here we’re in London. It feels like I haven’t left the United States.

7:44 Like, there’s all the same kind of fast-food places. Everyone’s… I can’t tell from anyone’s accent where anyone’s from, just like in New York City. So I don’t really… Other than the jet lag, I feel like I’m in the same place where I just left.

7:58 Wow, I heard that from one of my guests recently. They’re like, it feels like New York City. Which is weird. I mean, it’s a lot less intense. It’s cleaner than New York City.

8:04 It’s cleaner. It’s like a suburb, right? It’s quieter. Yeah, it’s like… Not quite a suburb.

8:11 It’s a city, but cleaner than New York City, and less noisy. New York City at 3 in the morning, you still have to yell to talk to the other person standing right next to you, because it’s too loud. Right. That doesn’t happen here. So how did you move to London?

8:23 You know, I’m going to tell you about it. I moved here 13 years ago. I used to be in finance. I came here for banking. Most Americans need a reason to get here, because we still need visas.

8:32 So it’s hard. You need a company to pay for it. And then once I got here, I tried to get my passport as soon as possible. I got residency after four years, and then five years I got my passport. So I’m a dual citizen here.

8:44 Are you allowed to be a dual citizen? Yes. Does the U.S. allow it? Yes.

8:49 Over one million U.S. citizens are dual citizens, for the record. And they know about it. I just have to travel to the U.S. on my U.S. passport.

8:56 And I travel to the U.K. on my U.K. passport. But I’ve got to ask you a question about tonight. When you originally were coming here, you were going to be down the street at Google Campus London, which is like a great place that Google set up for startups.

9:06 Yeah. Tonight you’re talking in front of a thousand people in Westminster. Can you explain the Altucher phenomenon? Well, I don’t really know. We were going to put up a sign on Eventbrite, I guess, for the Google campus that I was going to speak there.

9:22 And I guess it fits about 150 people, something like that. And then another bunch of people downstairs can watch on screens. And then quickly, like, 1,300 people signed up. So Google couldn’t handle it. And so we switched venues a couple of times.

9:36 And finally we found a venue that could handle most of the people. And I still don’t know how many people are going to show up, but I hope we fit everybody. I don’t really know, to be honest, I didn’t expect that, to be honest. I didn’t know what the effect would be. And so you can’t explain it.

9:55 I mean, I got emails from everybody when I mentioned you were coming on this show, like, you know, old people, young people, girls, guys. How many girls? Three. No, I’m just kidding. But for our audience, that’s a lot.

10:06 Yeah. But, you know, I don’t know, what is it about you? I mean, you know, you talk about, like, ideas being the currency in this century, but, like, vulnerability seems to be this tool that resonates all these people with you. And when you started being honest and talking about your failures, it seemed like all these people just, you know, I don’t know, attached themselves to you. You were doing an interview with Tim Ferriss where you said, originally people were like, this seems like a train wreck on Twitter, and then they would write you emails and say, that’s my life too.

10:33 Yeah, it’s funny because I was going, so I was in the Financial Times, I had a column, and I was going on CNBC a lot, and I would see all, CNBC is like the financial channel in the United States, and I would see all these, you know, so-called pundits in their suits and ties, and they were saying, well, the euro is going to do this, Greece is going to do that, you know, stocks are going to go like this. And I’m thinking to that, you know, I know what you’re like when you’re not on the screen, like, you don’t know anything about the stock market. You’ve been wrong 100% of the time, but you’re not allowed to say, I don’t know, and you’re not allowed to admit failure.

11:11 And failure is almost a bad word. You’re not allowed to admit that you’ve tried and lost many times in your life. And once someone gives permission for that, like once I said, oh, you know, really bad things have happened to me, you know, I’ve lost a lot of money, I’ve made really bad decisions, I’ve made really bad mistakes, I’ve been really sad in my life or suicidal or whatever, then I don’t want to say it opens the door, because it’s not like everybody can sort of choose to share what they want to share, but people would suddenly realize, oh, okay, here’s someone who is not just telling me how Greece is going to affect the United States, here’s someone who’s going to actually talk to how I’m really feeling and what I’m really going through right now, maybe.

11:58 And so I was starting to get emails that, you know, oh, I’ve been through this, and then what did you do? And so people wanted to know, so I didn’t give advice, you know, all these people were giving advice, I didn’t want to give advice. I was just saying, this is what I did. It may or may not work for you, or here’s some places where you can fill in the blanks, but you do what you want to do. And people then started kind of doing what I had done, and sometimes I would do things and then I would fail again, do things, fail again.

12:32 It was sort of like I was failing enough that it was almost like one big statistically significant experiment, unfortunately. And in a sense, I was trying many different ways to kind of get out of this hole that I kept burying myself in. And I was good at kind of using, you know, building a network, making some money, getting some things going, like a business or writing or whatever, but then also I was really good at like totally bombing, totally just ending up in the hole and losing everything.

13:04 And so finally I started to figure out, okay, here’s how I’m going to climb out a little bit at a time. And I think people really related to that or wanted to hear that, like wanted to know that this isn’t the end for me, which is a common feeling. Like if you’re getting a divorce, you lost all your money, you’re losing your house, and things look like they’re going to get worse before they get better, you want to know that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

13:28 And I think people related to that, not necessarily learned from that, because I think you kind of have to learn from your own experiences, but at the very least they said, okay, here’s someone who’s telling me the truth, and I’m going to listen to that now. That also created a lot of angry people, and I have no idea why. So it created, it seemed, I would write these things that would seem to me common sense, and everybody would be angry. And so there was like half and half, like some people angry because they didn’t know what was happening.

14:00 It was almost like I was hitting some button that they didn’t want to recognize, or maybe that they didn’t have, and then other people were really relating, and so that I really appreciated. Is that a sign of great art when half the people love it and half the people hate it? I don’t know, I hope so, because then I would be the greatest artist of all. And you had tremendous successes, like in 2001 you were up $15 million, and you started losing like a million dollars a month, and you’ve had some really big wins on companies you’ve created.

14:30 Yeah, no, I mean, there was one point where like I was, I really was like a genius, like I’m just, I’m not even going to like, but it’s not bragging because it didn’t last for a long time. So, and a lot of people were geniuses during this period, like the internet, boom, but I was smart and then I totally cashed out. You sold it to the street, is this stock quicker? No, this was even before that, yeah. Like I said, I had many, I was good at making it and then not good at keeping it.

14:57 So I had built this one company, nobody was on the internet, so I saw this internet thing’s going to be big. Now, I wasn’t as smart as like the Google guys down the street, but I built up my little internet business, sold it for a good amount, it was about $15 million, totally cashed out because I saw this cannot last forever, everything is going to just collapse. But then somehow, after that very smart, intelligent thought, someone slipped me some Kool-Aid mixed with like crack and all sorts of other things and I started like buying every internet stock in the world.

15:34 I was like, this internet is great, it’s going to last forever, which is true, that was a true statement, but the stock market doesn’t always follow the truth, you know, it kind of does what it wants for a while. So I just simply kept doubling down and doubling down and doubling down all the way down. Cash, it wasn’t like I was in paper, you know, I was like, I would throw more cash, I would borrow, I would mortgage against my, I bought a huge apartment in New York City and I would mortgage against that and double mortgage against that and just throw it all in the stocks.

16:05 And I just, there was one point literally, I lost about a million dollars a week. And again, I’m not saying this to brag because at the end of that period, I had literally, I remember looking at my ATM machine, the cash dispensing machine, and there was $143 left in my bank account, that’s all I had. And so I called up my parents, I was really upset, obviously, and, you know, my expenses were out of control because I didn’t even know, I didn’t know anything about money was the sad reality.

16:39 So my expenses, I didn’t know what it meant, I didn’t know what, I didn’t know I have any idea about the value of money. So I said to my parents, look, can I drive tonight 100 miles to your house and just borrow some money? I might need like diapers for my kids somehow in the next few days, you know? And then I was getting ready to kind of, you know, I was losing the house and we were selling it for like a great loss, but I would pull out a little bit of money then.

17:06 And I said, you know, in a few days, I’ll just drive right back down and I’ll pay you back with huge interest to my parents. And they started saying, you know, absolutely not, we paid for your college education. You know, and here I had just, I’m not gonna have the, I’m not gonna replay the argument with my parents. In any case, I decided, okay, I need to solve my problem a different way. So I hung up the phone on them and they tried calling back.

17:29 I didn’t pick up because I really was in a panic. I needed to solve this problem and got rid of the house. I moved like far away from New York and I literally was in exile. Like I didn’t leave my house for two or three months. I gained 20 or 30 pounds.

17:44 I mean, the few times I would go out to run errands, I was like this weirdo. I would ask the cashier like, why is just the whole world going to crap? You know, nobody would even understand who I was. Is this like 02, 01, like post-internet crash? This was like 02, 03.

18:03 Okay, alright. And because I was now, because I was like literally a lock-in into my home. I would like never leave my home. And because I was afraid of everything. Like if I walked out, I was gonna lose more money somehow.

18:14 You just lost everything, you would double down, you’d bet all the interest stuff. Everything crushed and you were just… And so I had no idea what I was gonna do with my life. I had no idea anything. And you know, I had small ideas.

18:24 I had put out some feelers out there that were starting to happen, but nothing that would allow me to leave my house yet. And about six months into this, I get a call. My father had had a stroke the night before. And so he had a stroke and then he was in a coma and then he died. And literally after that time I hung up on him, I just never spoke to him again.

18:48 And so, you know, it was at this point, I was like, look, this is just getting too bad for me in every possible way. I need to figure out how to get my life together. And I realized that, you know, I really kind of thought that… And this is sort of true. I had won some kind of lottery ticket because I had made that initial money and the internet boom.

19:08 Now, credit to me that I knew a lot about the internet as it was on the move up. But now I had no idea. What am I gonna do now? I have no other skill. So I couldn’t get a job anywhere.

19:21 Like, nobody was going to hire me for anything because there were maybe other people like me out there too. Like, I had no idea what to do. So… And, you know, I had two little girls and, you know, my parents were, like, dying on me and I had no friends anymore because, you know, when you’re on your way up, of course, everybody’s your friend knowing you’re on your way down. You find out who your friends are.

19:49 It turned out I had no friends. And this is O3 when no one wanted to hear anything about the internet. Right. No, no. In fact, in O2 I was running a venture capital firm and I had a partner who was an ex-banker from Credit Suisse and I had this Defender arcade machine in my office because I was, like, that cool internet guy.

20:08 And, literally, things were collapsing all around us. We were playing Defender instead of, like, looking at companies and he lost the game and he, like, said, this whole internet thing is a scam and he, like, smashed the window of my Defender arcade machine and he’s, like, have a nice life and he walks straight out and I never saw him again. Actually, it’s not true. 13 years later, 14 years later, I saw him a few months ago just crossing the street, okay, his hair was all gray and he was like, hey, how’s it going?

20:39 You know, just banker, like, smile. Again, that’s the whole thing. Everybody is wearing their eight layers of masks all the time. Like, he hated my guts and because I represented that internet thing that he had left his great banker job for to be in this internet VC firm and, you know, we raised, you know, $150 million and we were going strong and he just was disgusted with me, with the internet, with everything and then, you know, they got rid of me too once he left and everything was just a disaster.

21:10 I had nonstop disasters. Right, and this repeated itself again in 0708 to a certain extent? Yeah, this repeated again in 0405, in 08, in 10. Like, I was always really good at figuring out how to, like, put people together and, you know, it’s like I say, ideas are really the currency of this economy. Like, think about it.

21:35 Industry, we can outsource now. Like, Apple doesn’t make iPhones here. They make iPhones in China. Knowledge, you know, everybody said, okay, we switched to a knowledge economy but that’s not true. Knowledge we can outsource.

21:46 Like, in 07, I outsource a software project. I have two software projects now outsource to different countries. I have a translation project outsourced. I have research projects outsourced. But I can’t say, I can’t outsource to someone, come up with 10 ideas for me to do as businesses or come up with 10 ways for me to, you know, treat my customers better.

22:09 So, ideas are still here. Ideas are the only thing we have left. So, we’re in an idea economy now. People don’t quite realize that yet. They still say, oh, we’re in a knowledge economy but that hasn’t been true for at least, like, probably 15 years but really the crisis of 09 underlined that.

22:28 So, really the past four or five years, ideas are how you make money. Now, people say, oh, execution is everything. Ideas are a dime a dozen but it’s not true. Execution is a subset of ideas. When you came up with this space, for instance, you didn’t automatically know how you were going to set up the lights and the cameras and what you were going to do.

22:48 You had to come up with the ideas. We’re going to put this here. We’re going to put these books here. I’m going to ask advice where to put the lights. Like, you had to come up with the ideas and how to execute on this.

22:57 And every day for you, I’m sure, ideas on who you should have on the show, ideas how you can better market the show. For you, the execution was the easy part. For you, ideas on the execution and how you can better distribute this, that’s the hard part every day. I’m sure you wake up thinking, not how I can get a better camera but how I can really market this better, how I can contribute better and help people better. Those are the ideas that are building this as opposed to just simply a better camera or a better light or whatever.

23:30 So execution really is ideas, then? Execution is a subset of ideas. So like, for instance, in 2007, I had an idea for 10 websites. So I figured, okay, I was running another business at the time but the business wasn’t creating what I call equity value. So someone offered to buy my business but they wanted a six-year employment agreement from me.

23:51 And I showed the contract to my lawyer and he was like, I thought they outlawed slavery 140 years ago. So I didn’t take that deal and I realized, well, how can I create a business where I don’t have to sign my whole life away? And so I came up with ideas for 10 different websites. Now, what do I do next? Well, for each website business that I wanted to start, I had to come up with, well, what are the execution ideas?

24:19 What does each page look like? How do I execute on each page? And I built all 10 of these little web businesses. And instead of taking kind of like an all-or-nothing approach, I sort of built them all quasi-simultaneously and nine of them failed fairly quickly. Even my six-year-old daughter at the time was like, or eight-year-old daughter, I have to remember her age.

24:43 My eight-year-old daughter at the time, she even looked at one of the sites and she’s like, isn’t this a little mean to people? Like, she was even telling me this is a bad idea. But one idea worked, and that was the site called Stockpicker, which I then, just literally eight months after I launched it, sold it to the street.com. Wow, and that was 0708. Yeah, I started it in like August 06.

25:04 We officially launched it in January 07, and in April 07, I sold it to the street. And to the street equity or in cash? Sure, both cash and equity. Okay, and did you manage to blow all that as well? Yeah, I blew all that as well.

25:17 You said you’re like training for Olympics or something, like you’ll train, work, work, work, work, and when you get the gold, then the next day? Yeah, it’s like you see photos of Michael Phelps. He’s like totally, you know, doing whatever, drinking, eating, everything after the Olympics. And he’s like, don’t worry, I’m going to get my self back together. And then he’s on the Wheaties box again.

25:35 But that’s how it’d be. You know, they say money doesn’t make you better. It just magnifies who you are. So I really wasn’t, I had like no control over myself at all. So I would just go completely crazy once I had money.

25:50 Not that you need like total control and discipline over yourself, but you need to have some idea, you need to have some meaning in your life. And so it’s meaning in your life that causes you to have ideas that will help people. And that’s how you create, you know, there’s a saying, if you help a million people, you’ll make a million dollars. So the dollars is like the side effect of helping people. First, people have to be helped.

26:15 And then that means first you have to be really good at coming up with ideas. So I always say you have to have this idea muscle that you exercise regularly and get it really, so you’re an idea machine so that you could then help people, which then in turn helps you figure out how to make money. Or, you know, you don’t even have to figure it out at that point, you’ll make money. Have your ideas changed? I mean, Stock Picker, that’s a great idea.

26:38 That helped people. But now your ideas help them in a different way, in a more altruistic way. Yeah, so now I help people, I hope I help people, which is, again, by, you know, saying look, life is not a straight line upwards. It’s like I remember one time I was three years old. It’s like my first memory.

26:59 Like I literally, like if my parents had aborted me before this point, it would have been fine because I never would have remembered anything. So I was, I remember my dad like shaking me and waking me up, you’ve got to get dressed. You’re going to go to nursery school. And I’m like, what’s that? And he’s like, well, you’re going to go to nursery school for two years, then kindergarten for a year, then you have elementary school for six years, then middle school for a couple years, then high school for four years, then college, then graduate school, then you’re going to work for four years, forty years, and then you’re going to be as old as grandpa and you’ll be able to retire.

27:32 And I was like, I literally remember thinking this. It totally must be my first memory. This sounds really bad. Like I am not going to enjoy this. So, and it was like, you know, you can’t, there is no straight line.

27:48 It’s all a myth. I mean, it worked maybe from like 1950 to 1990, but then it stopped working. And it’s never worked since. And so now everything’s crazy. College is crazy, all this debt now for college, at least in the United States.

28:03 And then the workplace is crazy because, again, industry is being outsourced, knowledge is being outsourced, ideas are important. So the entire workplace is undergoing this transformation. And entrepreneurship is changing. So you can make money, but money as an entrepreneur is very volatile. So you don’t just make a check every two weeks, you make feedback every two weeks, every month.

28:28 So some of the feedback might be a lot of money, and some of the feedback means you lost money. So that’s, you have to take that as feedback. Oh, I did something wrong. And I didn’t know that, and a lot of people don’t know that. And I would lose money, and I would, I had these panic attacks, like, oh my God, I’m going to go broke.

28:46 And I did go broke, you know, more than once. And I really, I really like, I would take out my insurance policy. Okay, if I fake a suicide so nobody knows, then maybe my kids will be better off with this insurance than with me. That’s dark. Yeah, and I would really, I would like be on Alta Vista, you know, and later on Google, because it’s happened more than once.

29:10 Like, how can I do this? And I won’t even Google the methods that I like Googled, but I mean, I won’t mention the methods that I Googled, but there really was no painless way or safe way to do it. So both painless and untraceable. There’s no way to do it. So I had to figure out, like, I’ve got these two kids, and I need them to survive.

29:32 I didn’t even care as much about myself, like, I could go away. But my daughters were beautiful, and I wanted them to have a good life, and I had to figure it out. So I had to really figure out, well, what does it mean to reinvent yourself, and is it possible? I didn’t think it was possible, and other people don’t think it’s possible. And so when I started writing about how I did it, I think that’s part of the anger.

29:55 Like, people were like, no, you did this. If you’re a failure once, you’re always a failure. If you made a bad decision once, you’re always that guy who made a bad decision. And I see this every day. Like, I wrote about someone a few weeks ago who made a mistake in 1991.

30:11 And so I got angry emails, like, how could you write about him in 1991? I don’t know. He was in a trial, and he was acquitted of all charges. They didn’t mention that. But still, if you’re being investigated, you’ve did something bad.

30:27 And it’s 24 years ago. And the guy’s given hundreds of millions of dollars to charity. There’s no charges. But still, people are always angry. If you do one thing wrong, that’s it.

30:40 They want to feel justified that they’re better. You know, we’re always in a hierarchy of alpha to omega. It’s just evolutionary. That’s how we think. And so people want to, I call it like, junk status binging.

30:56 So instead of junk food binging, they junk status binging. They find somebody who they perceive as in a certain ranking, and they try to say, no, he did something bad, or she did something bad. Kim Kardashian did something bad. So I’m better than her. And it’s like this instinctual thing.

31:15 And so that’s why they get this fake anger, or real anger. Jon Ronson did a whole book about the shaming world and how we were just into the shaming piece. And you almost did the opposite of shaming. Because you’re talking about failures and people doing these things. Yeah.

31:29 So in my writing, I never talk about other people, because I have no right to mention anybody else, what they’ve done wrong. So I’ll shame myself. Because we’ve all been there. You shame yourself in new creative ways every week. First of all, I want to talk about how you write so much.

31:45 But every article I read, I’m like, how can James find a new way to shame yourself? And you do. And it draws people in. It’s really a challenge. Claudia, my wife, who’s…

31:56 I don’t know why she puts up with me, but she wrote a blog post, 10 things to do if Claudia dies and you’re James’s new wife. So if James starts talking, what am I going to write about today? I’ve already written about all this stuff. Just slowly back out of the room, nodding your head and then leaving him alone. Because you will find something.

32:19 I somehow find something, yes. Because you know why? Every day there’s something. Every day there’s things we think about, there’s things we do. Life is filled with many chapters and sub-chapters and things we think about and things we do that are uncomfortable and there’s always material.

32:38 I think it was Flannery O’Connor even, who said by the time you’re five years old you have enough material to write about for the rest of your life. So I don’t know if that’s true, but certainly everybody has these pivotal points in their life where if you anchor your writing or your art around that pivotal point, then you can do anything from that point. Like the author Kurt Vonnegut, for instance. So he was a prisoner of war in the firebombing of Dresden.

33:08 So he wrote this great book, classic book, Slaughterhouse Five. I don’t know if you’ve ever read that book. It’s a very strange book because he anchors it in this devastating event. You know 130,000 people died in this firebombing. So once he’s got that emotional point where everyone understands this is a real historical point and he was there, then from there he’s on flying saucers, he’s time traveling, the author is a character in the book, writing about the character in the book.

33:38 Everything is crazy. You’re allowed to do whatever you want, but he always gets back to that anchor. So we know we’re in a story, we know we’re in a lie that’s told truthfully that’s the essence of good fiction. So what I do is I tell my story. Now, I’m not telling fiction, but I always try to think of different ways to have that anchor but tell it from something different that happened to me.

34:01 And you anchor yours in usually a tragic situation that you were in. It could be the guy busting up your defender game. It could be asking your parents for money that time. And then you write a narrative around it and it draws people in immediately. Yeah.

34:14 So you have to do that too in this internet age where you’re given the gift of someone’s attention and it really is a gift, but the gift is for six seconds, say. And you have to make sure that you then feed them for the next six seconds. And I don’t mean it so blatantly like that, but I really am grateful for the people who read or who listen to us, but you have to make sure you’re not wasting their time. And, of course, at the end of every single article I’ve ever written, someone comments, I’ve just wasted three minutes of my life.

34:49 Like, that is the most common comment across all of my articles. But fortunately, other people like it. What did you do to change your game this last iteration, maybe from 2010 on, before you had the binge and bust, you know, Altitude lifestyle, but then you did. You learned something. Yeah, so I did, and it was something I had to figure out bit by bit, but I kept asking myself, okay, so I’ve succeeded and failed maybe like four or five times now.

35:16 What was I doing on the way up, and what did I stop doing on the way down? And so there was a common theme on the way up, and it was almost like a discipline, loosely, but I would always try every day to 1% improve myself with physical health, emotional health, which means just not be around negative people. So some people will bring you down. Everybody has this in their life. Some people will bring you down and not be supportive of what you’re doing.

35:44 Other people are good, you know, companions through life, and who love and support you and who you love and support. So try to make the shift from there to there. That’s every day a little bit. Mental health means not going, not necessarily not going crazy, but means every day write down 10 ideas, because I really wanted, I knew that we were moving into this idea economy, but if your idea muscle is left alone for too long, it atrophies, just like your leg muscles.

36:12 If you’re in bed watching TV for two weeks, your leg muscles will atrophies so fast you’ll literally need physical therapy to walk again. And the same thing with the idea muscles. So I make sure I always write down 10 ideas every day. I mean, I have… But with you, the ideas aren’t for…

36:29 I have a waiter’s pad, I write down my ideas. They’re not necessarily for commerce, they’re just for even basic happiness. Yeah, yeah. So I’ll write down, you know, 10 ways I can surprise Claudia today. Or 10 ways, what are the 10 aspects of a good idea?

36:45 Has nothing to do with making money. But I’ll also write down 10 ways Amazon can improve their self-publishing business. 10 ways Facebook can improve their user experience. So let’s say half of my ideas are more for me and just exercise. I’ll tell you something I did the other day.

37:01 I was sitting in a cafe, and I was going to write 10 ideas about something completely different. And then I saw, like, a couple tables down. Two little kids were playing chess. And I could barely see their game, but I could see what they were doing wrong. And their father was just reading the newspaper next to them.

37:18 And when he closed the newspaper and they finished their game, they were all getting up to go. So I wrote down 10 ideas how they can improve it. The 10 things they were doing wrong in their game that if they just stopped doing those things, their game would be better. And so I totally must have been this weirdo. Like, I go up to the dad with this waiter’s pad note and I’m like, oh, I was watching your kids play.

37:41 Here’s 10 ideas for them. And he’s like, oh, okay. And he took the note. But, you know, hopefully he looks like they were sincere ideas. They moved their rook pawns first thing.

37:53 It was a bad idea. Then they moved their rooks out. You know, people do that when they’re kids. But it could be about anything. So about half usually are about things that could help me or ideas for an article or whatever.

38:07 Or sometimes it might just be 10 random things, 10 things I want to see in the next Star Wars movie. Or sometimes it’ll be ideas to help somebody else. And then if it’s to help somebody else, I might send it to the other person. Or I might not. Okay, so sometimes you share, sometimes you don’t, but you get them down every day.

38:24 So you’re Ted Talk. You said everyone should do 10 ideas a day. Yeah, like I did a few months ago, I did 10 ideas how Airbnb can be better. I love Airbnb. That’s the place where you stay in different places all over the world.

38:36 So I’ve used Airbnb nonstop for the past six months. And I haven’t sent it to Airbnb. It’s just, these were my ideas for the day. So the rest of those things, it’s emotional, physical. I know you don’t like the word spiritual.

38:50 It is spiritual, but I think people have like, everybody has their own meaning of that. And a lot of people are like, oh no, I’m a scientist. I’m not spiritual. But really all I mean is, don’t, this is what I was always doing wrong, was I was either filled with regret. Like for instance, after my father had his stroke, if I still had that money, there was all these experimental treatments I could have tried that cost money that maybe I could have helped him.

39:20 But instead I was broke. I was dead broke, so I couldn’t help him at all. So I was filled with massive, massive regret. And just every day, I couldn’t get rid of the regret. Or anxiety, like I would have so much anxiety about things that, in the future, that may not even come true.

39:37 Like everybody’s a horrible predictor of the future, but I was convinced I’m going to go broke three years from now. Or three days from now, or three months from now. And so I call that time traveling. And so I made it, so really what I mean by spiritual is, don’t time travel. So you can’t have regret and anxiety and gratitude in your head at the same time.

40:00 So whenever I feel like regret is coming on or anxiety is coming on, I’ll say to myself, okay, well what are ten new things I can be grateful for? And so this is a challenge too. Like I can always be grateful for my daughters, for my wife, I’m grateful I’m here sitting here with you and to have this opportunity. But then now I think of like ten grateful things. So for instance, I was late getting here, as we know.

40:20 And I was stuck in traffic. And so I can be anxious, oh my god, this is going to throw everything off, everyone’s going to be upset at me. Or I can be grateful, like I’m in this amazing, magnificent city about to go on London Real with Brian. And it’s such an amazing city that everyone else wants to be here, and everyone else happens to be going in the same direction as me. So I must be doing the right thing.

40:44 So turning things from anxiety to gratitude, I call that a difficult gratitude problem, that’s spiritual health. And so if you can keep doing that, and it’s a practice because it’s easy to slip back, I’ve always slipped back. But I try every day to do that. A difficult gratitude problem? Yes.

41:01 Okay, that’s when you’re having an anxiety moment is a difficult gratitude problem, and you have to be creative to figure out how to be grateful. Yeah, and every day is filled with regrets and anxieties. You know, my daughter, my younger daughter, she’s always anxious about lots of things. She’s like a little mate, and I love her to death. And I said, you know what you need to do?

41:22 You need to keep a notebook with you, and every time you’re predicting the future, just write down what you predict, and let’s just see if it comes true. So now, I don’t think she’s done this, but I’ll remind her later, I’ll remember what she was anxious about. Did that come true? And she’ll kind of sheepishly say, no, it didn’t come true. And so, you know, I don’t know if that changes her or not, but almost everything we predict doesn’t come true.

41:47 So she’s afraid her teacher’s going to yell at her, or they’re going to have a test, and she’s going to fail. And I try to tell her, for one thing, why do you even care? Like, you know, let’s take this to being an entrepreneur again. A good CEO, or even a good employee, will make correct decisions only 50 to 60% of the time. So most of the time, you know, or a good chunk of the time, at least 40% of the time, a CEO is making bad decisions, and it’s how you come back from that that makes you a good CEO or a bad CEO.

42:22 But in school, if you only got 50% of the questions correct, you failed. So we’re trained throughout our whole education to think that you have to get 95% of your questions correct, your decisions correct, or else it’s no good. The thought of, for my daughter, the thought of getting a 50 on a test is like a horror story. That’s like the worst nightmare. And yet that’s daily life. That’s reality.

42:49 So, you know, 30%, okay, now you’ve got to be careful. That’s when I would start losing all my money, is when 30% of my decisions are correct. But if 50%, you’re doing well. Right. So spiritual and then mental is your final one.

43:03 Yeah, and that’s the idea of the day. And the physical is like, just don’t kill yourself. Do something intelligent with your body, and that’s the physical. Yeah, so a friend of mine, Tom Rath, wrote StrengthsFinder 2.0. He wrote a book called Are You Fully Charged?

43:17 He has one chapter in there that I really like the title of. It’s called Eat Sleep Move, or Eat Move Sleep, something like that. And so, and he’s very balanced about it. Like, look at the plate in front of you, and if there’s more net, if it’s a net positive, like if you have more good things than bad things on the plate, then it’s probably okay for you. Just don’t eat junk food all day long.

43:36 And then sleep, you know, there’s so much evidence that sleeping eight hours a day is better for you than sleeping six hours or five. You know, there’s the mythological kind of entrepreneur that only needs three hours of sleep a night. Those guys are mentally ill in part. Now, I don’t know. Maybe it’s true for some people.

43:53 I’m sure there’s some people physically. But for the vast majority, they need eight hours. Like, the average professional violinist, they did this study, needs 8.6 hours of sleep a night on average. Have you ever met one of those entrepreneurs that sleeps three hours a night? Yes.

44:06 And they actually exist? Yeah, and they are. If people see this, they’ll actually even probably even know who I’m talking about, but they are mentally ill. So you go crazy only sleeping three hours a night. And then moving, just take a walk.

44:22 So what’s great about London and New York City and a major city is that it naturally forces you to walk around, you know, rather than taking cars everywhere. Like, you go shopping. You walk to the local store. But just walk, basic exercise. Like, my wife does yoga every morning.

44:39 I do some yoga. Like, I’m not a person who’s an advertisement for a gym, obviously. But, you know, even I was talking to Nassim Taleb, who wrote Antifragile and the Black Swan, because I’ve fallen victim to the Black Swan many times. But I talked to him because I was worried about my personal fragility. Like, forget the economy.

44:59 I don’t care about that. But I’m like, how do you become personally antifragile? And he’s like, look, all these people drive two miles to the gym where they walk on a treadmill for two miles. Why don’t you just walk to the gym in the back? And that’s good enough.

45:13 And, you know, try to walk on not flat surfaces because, you know, we only have been walking on flat surfaces for the past hundred years. And for the 200,000 years before that, we’ve been walking on, you know, hills and mountains and all these sorts of things. So that’s your three for physical, emotional, being around the right people. I mean, I don’t know if we need to dive into that more or not. Spiritual is, you know, manage your anxiety, be grateful.

45:35 What’s this mental component? Well, that’s the writing 10 ideas a day down. Okay. So that’s how you get your creative. Because it’s not just about business.

45:43 A lot of people say, okay, I’m writing 10 ideas a day down. When am I going to have an idea for a business? It’s not about that. It’s about making… You’ll see the difference in just a few weeks, really.

45:54 You’ll see the difference. But within six months, you could be like in a car that runs out of gas in the desert and you’ll figure your way out of it. Like, your ideas will just be all over the place. Like, everything that happens will have ideas coming to you. And so that really boosts your mental health.

46:11 Can you tell me about the concept of idea sex? This is yours, right? Yeah. You trademark that? No.

46:18 You know, a lot of people have actually talked about the idea that, you know, let’s say, you know, if you combine… Well, music is such a great example. So, you know, take the rap group, the Fugees. Okay. I remember at one point, they did a rap song to the theme song of the movie, Saturday Night Fever.

46:40 Okay. Stayin’ Alive. Okay. Which was such a mega hit in the 70s. It was a…

46:46 I’m going to say it was only an okay rap song, but it’s the Fugees combining rap with Stayin’ Alive. So that’s idea sex. And it was a mega hit, of course. Because you can’t… So, you know, another thing is, for me, for instance, I was really skilled at computers and the internet.

47:05 And then I also became… Because I had lost so much money, I made it a concerted effort to get much, much better at managing my own money. Like this… I devoted my life to it for years and years and years. So, at one point, I decided, you know what?

47:21 Let’s combine this knowledge I have of computers and the internet and programming, and this knowledge I have of finance, and combine them together and make a website that actually helps people in finance. And so, once you combine two ideas, even if I wasn’t the best in the world here and I wasn’t the best in the world here, once you have an intersection, you’re the best in the world at the intersection. And so then I was able to create a site that had a million users a month.

47:47 And for all I know, it still does have a million users a month. So, when you combine ideas like that, again, you become the best in the world at the intersection. So the more ideas you find that you can combine, the higher probability that you’re the best in the world at the intersection. So that’s almost how you shortcut this 10,000-hour rule. So you know the famous Malcolm Gladwell, or it comes from even before that.

48:10 But the 10,000-hour rule that it takes 10,000 hours to master something. Yeah, or Robert Greene talked about it in his book Mastery as well, right. Right, but E. Seldom, so Robert Greene Seldom talks about taking the intersection of different ideas to really master something. You know, so a great example might be, and we’ll see if she goes through with this, but Serena Williams, right, just won Wimbledon, won the Grand Slam, maybe the best female tennis player of all time.

48:36 She happens to love fashion. Yeah, she’s had a brand for a while. Yeah, and so suddenly she becomes known, she’s like the first female tennis player who becomes known for having all these colorful tennis outfits. And then when she eventually retires from tennis, maybe she’ll start doing that full time. She’ll take the intersection, and she’ll be the best in the world at designing women’s tennis outfits or some other fashion related to sports.

48:59 So that’s an example of idea sex that could be potentially very lucrative. But I always find that that, you know, a great example is, you know, Facebook, okay? Facebook, there already was social, there already were social networks, right? We could list them all, MySpace friends, their Geocities, you know, whatever. I’m trying to think of some others.

49:25 There were like three others before that. And there already were social networks, but what did Mark Zuckerberg do? Was he combined the notion of a social network with the notion of true identity and authentication? So you had to, at least initially, you had to have a real identity, you know, at a school. You had to have a .edu initially.

49:46 So you had to have a real identity to join Facebook. And so it was the first social network that combined social networks with true identity. And so now it became the best. How did MySpace become the best before that? Again, it was the fifth social network out there, but they combined social networks with fan clubs for musicians.

50:08 And then bam, that’s how they became huge. You know, Google combined search engines with, how do we know, you know, the real algorithm that Larry Page was working on was how do we know what scientific paper is more important than what other scientific paper. So that was the real research project. And they combined that with the notion of, let’s just do it with web pages in general, the same algorithm, and he came up with Google. So almost all of these things that are now the best things ever are combinations of ideas.

50:40 Right. You’re in the media business now, more or less, it seems. You write books, you publish a blog, you do amazing podcasts. I mean, you used to be starting companies and entrepreneur and making these products and selling them. And I mean, that word serial entrepreneur got in the valley and even here, but you really were.

50:58 I mean, you repeated execution, whether that’s ideas or not. You did it. Do you miss being just an entrepreneur, or do you agree that you’re kind of in the media business now? Let me ask you the same question. Okay.

51:12 Do you, I mean, you’re an entrepreneur. What don’t you like about it? About the media business or being an entrepreneur. You’re like an entrepreneur with London Real. What don’t you like about it?

51:21 That’s an interesting question. I mean, you know, I never wanted to be in the media business and I don’t even know if I’m in the media business. No, this is the media business. I guess so. There’s lights.

51:30 We’re in a media business. I mean, I just like having these real conversations with real people, but I guess at the end of the day, I am competing in this, you know, media world. But I like it and I like the connection and I like talking to real people in a real space and I get so much out of it. I almost get these mini mentoring sessions here, you know, with people every week. That’s how I feel with the podcast as well.

51:48 Right. You said you just love it. You even said before, like, I don’t know why I do it, but I love it. Yeah. Yeah.

51:54 I love getting out of it. No. But what I want to know is what you don’t like about being an entrepreneur. So you love having the conversations. I get that.

52:00 Okay. So when I used to work in the city, I worked 10 years in the credit derivatives business. You know, we could talk hours, I’m sure, about finance. And so, you know, one thing about that business and you know more than anything is that everyone gets paid probably, you know, 10 times more than they should for doing an equivalent work and an equivalent business. And so the money is really good and you’re not your own boss.

52:18 And the money locks you in too because you have to get a better apartment just like all your colleagues. And now you’re attracted to the money. Yeah. How many guys do we both know that are making one, five, $10 million a year and are broke? Yeah, totally.

52:29 They got the house in the Hamptons. They got this, the house there. And they’re broke and they don’t know what to do when they’re locked in. So many people. Right.

52:35 And look, people listening might say, oh, I don’t feel sorry for those people at all. But the reality is they do get in this mindset, right? That they’re locked in and they literally then go broke. Right. They also don’t realize they have other skills.

52:47 So if you get locked into like a real microneach, like I was a credit derivatives broker in London, you think that’s all you’re good at. And so then you don’t know you could be creative. You don’t know you could do an interview show or do what you do, write books or any of that stuff. So my question back to you is, are you loving this part of your life where you get to interview people, where you get to write, where you get to self-publish your books? Yeah, this is by far so much better than anything I’ve ever done.

53:13 Let me describe the one thing about entrepreneurship that’s kind of a trap that people forget about. No matter what business you start, it doesn’t matter who you are, it doesn’t matter what money is backing you, no matter what you start, there’s an 85% rate of failure. So and the best venture capitalists in the world can’t beat that rate of failure. So it doesn’t like, like, I don’t know, Kleiner Perkins, let’s say that’s the best venture capital fund in the world.

53:38 They have an 85% failure rate, you know, give or take on their entrepreneurs. And like maybe 5% are like big successes or less. So being an entrepreneur is like being it’s like you’re creating your own job. You just went from a job that was somebody else’s job for you. Now you’re going to create your own job, but now you have to answer to investors, to employees, to customers.

54:02 And by the way, you just gave yourself a job where there’s an 85% chance you’re going to get fired. So it’s really unpleasant to be an entrepreneur, certain aspects of entrepreneurship. So that’s why now, I mean, you know, people in general who are successful and make a lot of money, make it from generating multiple sources of income for themselves. Like, look at Richard Branson. Okay, he started a magazine, right?

54:27 Then he started record label. Then he opened stores. Then he started an airline. Now he’s going to have spaceships or whatever. But not everything worked, right?

54:37 He had to close down the stores. He had to sell off the label, you know, to fuel the airlines. So not everything works because he has that 85% rate of failure. But he had multiple sources of income coming in, so he was able to generate enough money for himself and then do what he wanted to do. So it’s having a mindset where you’re going to generate multiple sources of income.

54:59 Like, even a show like this, you have advertisers, you have sponsors, maybe you’ll be able to generate books out of it, maybe a little transform into a syndication on a TV show. Who knows? You’re going to eventually have multiple sources of income branch out from this. Some people should always be thinking about all the different products. Well, you have to always be thinking, you know, because otherwise you’re stuck and you might fail.

55:22 You can’t predict it. Because here’s another problem. People have a cognitive bias that the business they’re working on is the best business mankind has ever seen. So you always have to make sure you’re not smoking crack about your business. And it’s really hard.

55:37 You have to, like, constantly… That’s why I would bounce ideas off my 8-year-old daughter or my wife or other friends. And also you have to use metrics, is the business growing? Are customers happy? Am I helping people?

55:49 Like, at the end of every day, you can ask, who did I help today? And if for a certain number of weeks in a row you didn’t help anybody, then you don’t really have a business. It’s not going to work. So you have to… Even if it feels like, oh my God, but they’re just not seeing the value, no, there’s no value.

56:02 You didn’t help anybody. So your customers are going to tell you, you’re always going to get feedback in the form of customers and money and metrics. You know if this show is good, if your traffic and comments and other feedback is good. So you constantly have to go through a feedback loop instead of saying, no, they just don’t get it. And then also things might change.

56:24 At some point, you know, like for me with writing, at some point maybe it’s no good anymore. Then you have to change. Because of the amount of writing you do, you probably don’t have the chance to start as many companies as you do. That’s correct. But what I do instead is I advise some companies, I still keep my fingers in it because I like to write about business and I like to write about how people are using ideas and also people ask for my help.

56:51 And so if I like the idea, I’ll help them. I’m sort of at my limit. Like I probably advise or invest in about 30 different companies. But when I do that, I’m pretty active. So, you know, actually the companies that I talk to the least are the best companies.

57:07 They don’t… They’re like, lose my phone number already, James. We don’t need you anymore. But then the companies that I talk to the most need to help more. Okay.

57:16 Can you tell me about book publishing, self-publishing? I think your last book, you published yourself and you sold it with your email list or on your website. I heard you talking about it on your podcast. And it was just amazing to hear that you were able to do that, you know, without any type of hybrid or you made your own hybrid model. Can you tell me about how you publish your books and how you think people should publish their books?

57:37 Yeah. So right now, people still believe… And this is a thing that’s happening in the economy and it’s, again, related to this idea economy, which is there’s all these gatekeepers. So there’s everybody, then there’s the gatekeepers, then there’s the people who want to reach everybody, but the gatekeepers are in the way. So if I want to write a book, let’s say I want to write a romance novel.

57:59 For fiction, you have to write the whole book. Then you have to hope that an agent likes it. Then the agent has to hope that a publisher likes it. And then the publisher edits it, makes a cover. You have no choice over any of this.

58:12 And then the publisher decides completely on the marketing. You have no choice over any of that and sends it out into the masses. So you’re really disconnected from your end user. But with self-publishing, you write the book, you upload it to Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble.com, maybe a few other places. I only upload to Amazon, because Amazon has by far the largest number of customers.

58:38 And then it’s published. You’re done. There’s no gatekeeper. There’s actually no publisher. You’re the publisher.

58:44 So what I do though is, particularly with my last few books, I do what I call professionally self-published. So I hire a really good cover designer. I hire a really good editor. I do 30, 40 drafts of the book. I’ll hire a marketing company to help me.

59:04 Now, they won’t do the marketing for me, but they’ll help me. It’s almost like I’m hiring an army to help me run a military campaign. And then we’ll figure out, we’ll brainstorm for at least six months in advance all the different ways I can market the book. And usually we’ll have four or five good ideas on how to market the book. And then we’ll just go all out and market the book that way.

59:26 And so choose yourself, for instance. We did this, and everything is included, like the reviews you get on Amazon, how people feel when they first buy the book, how the cover looks, the message they get when they first buy the book. And so far now it’s sold close to, you know, this month we’ll probably hit about 350,000 copies, which is decent, because I had never sold them. I’ve sold with like four or five major publishers, like Penguin Random House, Wiley, HarperCollins.

59:55 And I don’t think I’ve ever sold 20,000 copies of a book. Before this, now I self-published. I basically, in a sense, created my own little mini-publishing company, published that book, and it sold great. It sold more than all my other books combined. And that’s print and e-book form.

1:00:11 Print, so paperback, audio, hardcover, and e-book. So a lot of people think self-publishing is just e-book, but Amazon lets you do paperback, and then you do Audible. So I went to a recording studio. I read the book. I did it very unabridged.

1:00:26 So I told different stories. I made like an unabridged version. You can also make an abridged version where you read straight out of the book. And then the recording studio sends it to Audible. Audible publishes it on Amazon. It’s owned by Amazon.

1:00:38 And then Amazon also, you know, had to work out the details, but they also allowed me to do a hardcover book. Now, I think they’re going to make that more available in general, but I did a specific order of like 20,000 copies of the hardcover, and then I made a deal with people who had various e-mail lists to combine selling my hardcover book, and I’ll write extra material so they can charge whatever price they want, and I’ll split the revenues with them. So I had to be a businessman around my book.

1:01:09 This is something I would never be able to do. Like, publishing companies don’t think that way, so I would never be able to do that with a publishing company. And after I published that book, I did use a traditional publisher again for one other book, and I tried to get them to think creatively, and they did a little bit, but not as much as I would push them. And to their credit, it’s just not their business, not what they do. But I know that this self-publishing approach works.

1:01:35 And the one downside is you don’t get any advance, right? You’re out of it. You pay money. But it doesn’t cost as much as people think, and I could have cut costs a lot more now that I’ve seen the whole process several times. And advances from major publishing companies are going way down now anyway.

1:01:55 So in order to get a major advance, you have to have already a big social media platform. But if you have a big social media platform, there’s a lot of other ways, a lot of better ways to make money writing a book than depending on that advance from publishers. An advance seems like an anachronism to me. It almost seems like something really old. To get money upfront for something that you’re going to have to sell as a business in the future is strange.

1:02:22 Well, think about it. It feels like a raw deal too. Someone’s going to advance. I’m like, I’m not getting all the money that I should be getting. Some people will get enormous advances still, but chances are they’ve done something huge.

1:02:31 If you were President Obama, you’re going to get a $10 million advance. But let’s say a good writer who’s already got a decent social media platform in, let’s say, a New York Times bestseller before, they might get a $200,000 advance, which is great money. But it’ll take them two years to write the book. You get the advance in stages over the period that you’re writing the book. From that moment up until the day it’s published, you’re getting it like in chunks.

1:02:57 Okay, we’re giving you the first part now. We’re giving you the second part when it’s submitted. We’re getting the first part when we’ve decided that we’re going to actually publish it. They just agreed to give you the advance. They haven’t decided to publish it yet.

1:03:09 Then we’re going to give you the final part when it’s actually in bookstores. And then each part is heavily taxed at the maximum tax rate because you’re not writing anything off. You’re writing much less off as business expenses. So the $200,000 turns out to be again, and you also have to write the book. It turns out to be like $8 an hour when you really break it down in terms of take-home.

1:03:30 So you have to have another reason. This is where the ideas come in. So I know somebody who does get seven-figure advances. He lives in New York City, so he has an apartment there, and it’s over years. So he doesn’t make his full income.

1:03:47 That way he has to know years in advance, okay, I’m going to book 20 speaking gigs, and I’ll charge X per speaking gig, and then I’ll also do consulting for companies, and I’ll do this. And he’ll know that in the six-month window around the time his book comes out, he’s going to have these multiple sources of income, and that’s how he really makes money. So he can’t have to think multiple sources of income and treat it like a business. Right, as opposed to an old-school author way, it would be like, I’m just subject to my next book.

1:04:14 The publishing company is going to let me know when, and I put it all on black every four years, and I don’t have a multimedia platform. Yeah, and again, a publishing company, just like television networks now too. Television networks do the same thing. You could have a great TV show now, and if it doesn’t get the ratings in five or six episodes, they’re going to cancel the show. The same thing happens with books.

1:04:34 If your last book didn’t sell so well, you’re not getting a publishing deal on the next book, or you’re going to get zero advance or whatever. They’re going to treat you really poorly, and your agent’s going to stop returning your calls. Your agent was your biggest fan on your last book, and he’s going to start cursing you out if the book didn’t sell. It’s not your fault it didn’t sell as random. But it used to be publishers would nourish an author.

1:04:57 There’s famous stories, there’s a famous American editor in the 30s and 40s, Maxwell Perkins, who was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s editor, Ernest Hemingway’s editor. These guys wrote books that did not sell well. The great Gatsby did not sell well when it came about. But Maxwell Perkins would just nourish him, and more books would come out, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Kurt Vonnegut is where we spoke about earlier, he was writing books for 10 years before he had Cat’s Cradle, which became a mega hit.

1:05:27 You have to nourish talent. So I used to work at HBO Home Box Office, which is a television network in the United States known for being kind of the first to create original creative programming in the cable world. Sopranos was their big one. The Sopranos. Yeah, but before that, even Sex and the City, Larry Sanders’ show, and actually even before that was boxing.

1:05:49 They were the first ones to kind of do satellite TV with boxing and sports events. But the point of making, the number one credo at HBO was the talent is always treated as superstars. And I think that’s why, if you look at every single company now that then did original programming, like Showtime, AMC, Stars, Netflix, even Amazon, there’s always an HBO person. An ex-HBO person is at all these places, and that’s how you get like House of Cards on Netflix, and the hits on Amazon, and so on.

1:06:25 Because they recognize it’s all about the talent. It’s all about the talent. And I think a lot of the gatekeepers don’t do that. They play like a venture capital game. 85% is going to fail, and we’re going to focus on the 5% who will succeed.

1:06:39 And then they double down on that. And so you’ve missed out on great TV shows that just didn’t get arrested development. I don’t know if you know that show. Again, we’re in England here. Arrested development was a great sitcom, but after three seasons, the third season, the ratings were going down.

1:06:57 Best sitcom ever, other than Peep Show here in the United Kingdom. And they canceled it. Peep Show would never have survived in the United States. And now they’re on their ninth season. So I trained Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and you’re a black belt when it comes to self-publishing, just listening to you.

1:07:15 What would you do differently now with Choose Yourself that you know now? Is it two years or a year ago when you published that? Two years. Two years almost to the day. So anything you would do differently now?

1:07:26 I would produce my own video trailer. I outsourced that, so I didn’t have total control over that. And I think now I would use more of my own. I would think about it a little bit more and do that a little bit more cost effectively because a video trailer is not going to sell that many books for you unless it’s amazing. So I might not do one at all.

1:07:50 There’s not that much else I would do differently there, actually. And do you use the same model now on every book you publish, or does it depend on the size or the market you’re going into? Now I do the same model on everything I publish. How many books are you thinking about writing now? Well, I have one more book coming out September 1 that’s kind of in the Choose Yourself theme, and it’s called The Rich Employee because a lot of people thought I meant, when I said Choose Yourself, immediately quit your job and become an entrepreneur.

1:08:19 But I think you can tie your success. If you can tie your success to the success of the company you’re working for, you can be almost like an entrepreneur within your company. So similar principles apply. So it’s sort of like Choose Yourself for employees. But then after that, I want to do other things.

1:08:34 Okay, you can take a break from writing? No, no, I’m going to write books, but I’m going to do other kinds of books. Okay, and the kinds of concepts and that kind of thing. Yeah. Okay.

1:08:42 And what’s your breakdown in time, like from podcasting, writing, you know, working on companies? You know, I definitely write slash read because they’re related to each other three to five hours a day or more. I won’t start my other parts of the day until the writing is finished. So that’s the one thing I’ll do every day. But if I have a big podcast coming up with somebody I really need to prepare for, I’ll prepare like, you know, 50 hours for that person.

1:09:12 So if they’ve written like a lot of books and done a lot of interviews, I’ve almost gotten myself into trouble like getting guests on and I’m not realizing how much work they’ve done because I’ll want to read everything and watch everything because I don’t want to ask them things they’ve been asked before or if I do, I want to ask it in a slightly different way. You know, like, you know, if I’m going to like, you know, Neil Strauss who wrote the game. So it’s like go about the whole pickup artist scene.

1:09:36 So of course, I’m going to ask him about the pickup artist scene, but I don’t want to just do the same things that every other guy interviewing him did. So I have to really think about like his other books and about what people have asked them before and really try to come at it from a different angle. And I try really hard at that. It was a great podcast with him. And I saw you do a live podcast with Freeway Rick Ross.

1:09:57 Oh, yeah. Jason’s event and Napa and I knew about Rick. So when he was coming up, I was like, hell yeah. And it was fascinating. But, you know, doing something like this is tricky because you get one shot.

1:10:08 It’s not edited. And, you know, you have to structure like a movie almost. It has to hit all the arcs. Like you said, you don’t want to ask Neil Strauss all the same dumb questions that everyone asks about the game. But you don’t want to focus on it the whole time because Neil is so much more than the game.

1:10:22 So how do you find that? And are you getting better at it of how to structure an interview? I think I’m getting better at it. I mean, I actually used to do interviews for HBO. So I had a background of it.

1:10:34 And I’ve worked for a lot of newspapers and things like that. And then there’s interviews at three in the morning with transvestites in New York City. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I was definitely turning over every rock in New York City at three in the morning, like on a Tuesday night. Like if you know this, if you were out on a Tuesday night at three in the morning, there’s something going on.

1:10:52 Yeah. Sunday night’s even worse. Sunday night could be. I never tried that. But Saturday night I would avoid because everyone’s just partying.

1:10:58 But Tuesday night, everybody’s up to something. And so, but yeah, I think I try really hard. I mean, it’s hard for me to, because I’m so buried in writing most of the day, it’s hard for me to talk to people. Right. So I work really hard at trying to make those interviews better.

1:11:18 And I think they’re pretty good. Like Rick Ross was in person. That was the one. I’ve done one or two in person, and that was one of them. I’ve done maybe four or five now in person.

1:11:26 And, but that one was in front of an audience also. Changes the whole dynamic. Yes. There was 200 people in the audience. There was Rick Ross, who was like the biggest drug dealer in history.

1:11:35 And I read all his stuff and I read all, watched the documentaries, but I didn’t know a basic thing. So I want to make sure also I get my questions answered. Like I didn’t know how a crack transaction worked. Like who gave him the crack? How much did he pay for it?

1:11:51 And then who did he sell it to? And just, I didn’t know the basics. So it was, it was a natural starting point to just dive down into every aspect of that. And he would go quickly ahead because it was like common knowledge for him. So he would say like, if somebody was causing a problem, he’d take care of it.

1:12:06 And I’m like, whoa, whoa, whoa. When you say take care of it, that might mean something else. Like what exactly does that mean? So I have to, I have to be careful. Like I’m really listening for where I’m, I have to feel where I’m curious.

1:12:19 So it’s tricky because you can over prepare because then you know all the answers and then you’re not being curious. Yeah. And you can under prepare. I think being an audience is really hard because not only you’ll find yourself performing a little bit, even if you don’t want to. And then the guest will a little bit and you’re conscious of the audience.

1:12:33 And it’s, it’s a different show. I don’t, I’d rather not do it in front of an audience because I think you get a more just a deeper combo. That’s probably right. Because I was nervous both about Rick and the audience. And, and then also the people listening aren’t necessarily always hearing the feedback from the audience.

1:12:50 Whereas I’m responding to the feedback in the audience too. So, so probably without an audience is good. Now the good thing about this too is that you say we have one shot. It’s, it’s better than like TV because there’s no editing that could be really cut out. Like this is, this, this is what it is.

1:13:06 So, and also you’re, you prepare, I prepare. It’s not like, you know, you’re going on, someone going on David Letterman late at night and David Letterman says, so what’s your movie? And you know, and then they have a screenshot of the movie and it’s three minutes and it’s over. So this is, it’s a different format. Right.

1:13:23 What’s a shy guy and introverted guy doing for a guy that’s like that, you always put yourself in front of the camera. You know, even in HBO, you’re putting yourself in front of the camera, you know, on podcasts. Like, do you ever think, why do I do that? Well, one thing is, is like, there was two reasons. One is, A, I just wanted an excuse to call people up.

1:13:42 So, and talk to them. So I wanted to be able to call up Rick Ross and ask him, what does it mean? You bought crack from these guys and slow cracked it over. Or I wanted to ask like, you know, I don’t know, whoever I am on, like Coolio, what was it like to write Gangster’s Paradise and then had it blow up like so big and you know, you’re in the Grammys and all these things. So I had questions for each person and I just wanted to be able to call up and ask them.

1:14:07 They wouldn’t talk to me normally. So I said, oh, but I’ve got this podcast. And they’re like, what’s that? And they explain, oh, you’ll come on. A lot of people will buy your next record and whatever.

1:14:17 So it gave me an excuse. The other thing is, it definitely takes me out of my comfort zone. So I get really nervous before every interview. Like, did I prepare right? Are they going to be there?

1:14:29 Or am I going to ask the right questions? And are people going to be interested in this for like the whole hour? You know, so it takes me out of my comfort zone. And I think that’s an important thing. Most people, I think they don’t realize there is a comfort zone because we’re used to always being in the comfort zone.

1:14:48 We structure our lives so we stay in the comfort zone. And so one guest I had on suggested to me, why don’t you go to a coffee shop? And next time you go to a coffee shop, you water up your coffee and your cupcakes and whatever. Try to get it for free, right? No, just ask for a 20% discount.

1:15:05 Like, just say, can I have a 20% discount on this? And don’t say anything else. Don’t give any reason or anything. And so I did it twice now, and it really does. It’s hard to do.

1:15:15 It takes you out of your comfort zone. It’s a good exercise. Everybody should try that, right? Yeah. So I went out immediately, and I went to a local place.

1:15:23 No, I went to the next town over, so they wouldn’t know me at all. Because in my local place, they know me, and they might give it to me. And so I just go, and the woman’s like, looking at me, excuse me? And I’m like, yeah, can I have just 20% off? And just quiet, just silent.

1:15:39 And she’s like, uh, let me find out. And so the guy sweeping the floor behind her turned out to be the owner, and he’s like, no one’s ever asked that before. And I’m like, OK. But yeah, I would just like 20% off on this. And he thinks about it.

1:15:55 He’s like, nah, I don’t think so. And so I pay the full amount. And gave a big tip, too, for the inconvenience. Right. But then I write that up, and there’s always a critic in the comments.

1:16:08 That girl’s working for minimum wage, and you just gave her a hard time, and the boss is building a business, and you gave him a hard time. And I don’t know what’s the true answer or not, but that is what it is. What do you learn from some of these amazing people that you get to interview, like Tony Robbins? I know you know Jim Crano for a long time. But you get to hang out with these people and spend time with them.

1:16:29 Is there anything that you’re always constantly reminded of, like, wow, they do this or they do that? These success secrets are only available on the London Real Academy. Become a member and get access to live shows, exclusive courses, my webinars, bonus content, meetups, live events, an amazing community, and much, much more. Now back to the rest of the show. Good advice.

1:17:02 James, I always ask everyone here a few questions, and I’m going to hit you with those. If you could make a phone call to the 20-year-old James Altucher and give that young man a bit of advice. Was he at Cornell? I don’t know. Yes.

1:17:14 What would you tell him? Nothing. Nothing, because otherwise I wouldn’t be sitting here with you. If I could change him at all, he’d be maybe with a heroin needle sticking out of his elbow in some alleyway somewhere. I have no idea, because I can’t predict my own future.

1:17:29 How am I going to predict his future? And he was studying computer science at the time? Yeah. He’s a different person than me. Our cells change 100% every seven years.

1:17:39 He looked different from me. He was stupider in every way than me. And he had a lot more confidence than me. He did. Yeah.

1:17:49 He was arrogant. He was so confident. So let him do his thing, and I’m fine with it. I’m fine how it ended up. Okay.

1:17:56 Best advice you’ve ever received in your life, business or personal? I’ve received so much good advice. I think the best is just at the end of the day, ask yourself, who did you help today? Because that really will become a routine. You’ll start to know during the day, I’m going to ask myself this question by the end of the day, so I better be thinking about the answer.

1:18:25 And that changes your whole life. Wow. That’s powerful. Who did I help today? Yeah. Who did I help today?

1:18:30 Okay. So I’m hoping, for instance, I literally pray that, for instance, people watching this maybe can say, oh, I’m in the middle of what he’s been through, and maybe these things I can try some of it out or a little bit of it out, and that helps somebody. Right. Last part of that, to the 20-year-old that’s listening to us around the world that want to grow up one day and be just like James, what advice do you give to them? Buy a comb when you’re…

1:18:58 And surround yourself with good people. That’s always been very important. You know, I have a really supportive wife, and that’s one of the most important decisions that I’ve ever made to marry her, and it’s been really great for me, and it’s really been so supportive of everything I’ve done here. So, you know, in the past five, six years, we’re going to have our five-year anniversary. I’ve got to keep reminding myself of it because I have a bad memory in less than two weeks.

1:19:34 So I’m really happy about that. Okay. Awesome. Thanks so much for the time. Thank you, Brian. This is really great.

1:19:42 You have a great show here. Thank you. You know, we always say it’s about the journey on London Real, and it’s like the story of my life is my journey through hearing all these cool people I meet. And I think you mentor me in ways that I haven’t thought about. Just the power of no, just talking about that concept, it’s just refreshing to a lot of people, and I just think about that all the time.

1:20:02 And so many things that I’ve read from your blog pieces got stuck in my mind, and I’m repeating them to you today, and even necessarily attributed to you. Yeah, that’s okay. Steal all my ideas, whatever you want. You know, the no thing, just to mention, is really interesting. People, and I say people, but you can’t write a book unless you’re dealing with it.

1:20:20 So I had a hard time, and still do, have a hard time saying no. So I couldn’t write the power of no without having a hard time saying no and yes. It’s a hard thing to say no and yes, and to know which is which. And then there’s shades of no. People think they have to say no and an explanation.

1:20:37 But sometimes you just say no, and no explanation is necessary. It’s the other person’s problem if they think an explanation is necessary. And that’s a really hard thing to learn. Like, someone asks you to their destination wedding, like, can you come to my wedding in Hawaii on July 4th? No.

1:20:52 Right. And just no explanation. Empower yourself by just saying no. Stop qualifying, and then use that power. Right.

1:21:00 Otherwise you lie. No, I’m going to break my leg that weekend. I can’t do it. Right. Awesome.

1:21:06 Thanks, James. I appreciate it. Thank you. Grab all your books. Huge inspiration.

1:21:11 I hope you keep doing what you’re doing. I got a funny feeling you will. You’re so prolific. We’ll see. And all the good stuff.

1:21:16 Best of luck tonight. London will love you. And please come see us again next time you’re in London. Definitely. Thank you.

1:21:37 All right. Thanks.