Habits and Hustle - Episode 133: James Altucher – Best-Selling Author of “Choose Yourself”, Podcaster, Co-founded 20+ Companies

Episode Date: September 14, 2021

James Altucher is the Best-Selling Author of “Choose Yourself”, Podcaster, and Co-founded 20+ Companies. Possibly the biggest example in recent history of “losing everything” James has pulled himself back from the brink more times than any one person should have to. After switching up his interests and focusing and becoming proficient in one area, like chess, he’s “recycled” hours into other crafts to streamline his expertise. Cold emailing CEOs with ideas of how to fix their companies, deciding to be a comedian late in life and touring Sweden, writing a million books even releasing a new one this year called “Skip the Line…” James is immovable and forever stretching the limits of what he can do. Worried it’s too late to start a new passion? Struggling with coming up with ideas and overcoming the fear of executing them? Generally interested in one of the strangest people to ever be on this podcast? Choose yourself, listen in. Youtube Link to This Episode James’ Website James’ Instagram ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Did you learn something from tuning in today? Please pay it forward and write us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts. 📧If you have feedback for the show, please email [e-mail]  📙Get yourself a copy of Jennifer Cohen’s newest book from Habit Nest, Badass Body Goals Journal. ℹ️Habits & Hustle Website 📚Habit Nest Website 📱Follow Jennifer – Instagram – Facebook – Twitter – Jennifer’s Website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Pressure! Today on Happens in Hustle, we have James Altisher. This guy is probably one of the most interesting guys I've interviewed. He does it all. He's not only an entrepreneur, he's also a national chess master. He is a stand-up comic. He's written over 20 books, his latest book is called Skip the Line. He is extremely insightful and has a really interesting and fantastic take on how to be successful in life, a tons of different theories. He's made millions and lost it multiple times. And I think that you will find this podcast extremely, not just insightful and interesting, but practical, and you will walk away with some great tips of how you could achieve the things that you probably want in your life. Enjoy.

First of all, I'd like to say, I've done a lot of, you have like 20 books out. I mean, it's ridiculous how many books you actually have written over the last, I don't know, 25 years or so, but you're kind of like the actual real life for a scump. You're a writer, you're a chess master, you're a comedian, you're an entrepreneur, you're a podcaster. I mean, like your life, you've had so many careers that you've kind of just started and figured things out.

And it's kind of like worked out for you more or less, I would say. More or less, I mean, I've had a lot of problems along the way, and I often I wonder, and I wonder if you wonder this, I mean, you've obviously done different things. Like, some people say, oh, you should focus on one thing and be the best you can be at it. But throughout life, we have many different things that we love, many different things that we're interested in.

And sometimes I wonder, oh, should I have just focused on making money instead of spending six years doing stand-up comedy or thousands of hours doing other stuff and there's nothing to do with money or career or whatever. And there's no real answers. Just I always, when given two choices, I choose the thing I love to do. And sometimes that works out for me, and sometimes it seems like it doesn't, but I would say right now I'm pretty happy overall. Well, no, I love that,

because I talk a lot about how people like to get, they kind of get compartmentalized and pigeonholed into one thing. Like, you know, my background is fitness, and so because I'm, you know, have a is fitness. And so because I'm, you know, have a career that I've been known and in that area, people automatically assume that I'm not able to do other stuff

like a strategist or whatever that might be. I think people are much more multi-layered and colorful. It's about attempting and trying and going after things. So I love that, that is your approach now. So you, but you initially started as a writer, correct? Like that's just something that you've always done. You've always loved. Actually, I initially started as a computer programmer. So I majored in computer science. I went to graduate school for computer science. And I fell in love with writing. And I was literally writing like

novel after novel. So and I wasn't attending any classes. So they kicked me out of graduate school for computer science. And I started a company making websites for entertainment companies. So combining my interests in writing and entertainment and computers. So you actually start. So you basically like that that isn't that, don't you call that kind of like, IDSX is one of your things, like you're combining two things as into two things. And so, let's talk about that. Like, one of your habits every day and what you really, you talk about in your book, Skip the Line, which is a great, which is a great name of a book, by the way,. You're welcome.

And I really enjoy reading your book. I found there to be some really great nuggets of practical information and ways people can easily integrate that stuff into their lives to act and to do. And I really enjoyed it. So I'm not just telling you that because you're a guest on my podcast. No, I enjoyed it. So, and I'm not just telling you that because you're a guest on my podcast. No, I appreciate it.

For me, this has been my favorite books are right. I feel like it's been my most practical book. Really, okay, so did you write it? Because I know that you, did you start writing it before the pandemic? Like what was kind of like the, like you've written so many books, what kind of was the reason that you decided this was the next one for you?

Yeah, I mean I finished this in the book the first draft in March 2020 So I started writing it before the pandemic, although it fit in nicely With the pandemic, which is a weird thing to say, but it fit in nicely with the pandemic because during the pandemic a lot of people Were thinking you know what I don't want to go back to my old life. I really love fishing and not accounting. So I want to be great at fishing and maybe make money from it and whatever. And my book is about how at any age you can change interest, change what you love to do, become one of the top in the world at it and monetize it. So, and I hadn't, I couldn't find any book that was about all of those things.

And I know for me, I've changed interests and careers and things that I love to do so many times. And people always told me every single time, James, you can't, you can't do that. Don't even think about it. Like, how are you, you have a mortgage to pay. You have kids to raise. You have things do that. Don't even think about it. How are you, you have a mortgage to pay. You have kids to raise. You have things to do. You've been doing this for 10 years.

Why would you stop doing that now to do some other weird thing? And I was always, sometimes I would believe them, but sometimes it would agitate me. Like they're telling me they can't do it. They don't know. They're telling me I can't do it. They don't know me. Maybe they can't do it. And they don't want me to do it because they don't want to know that it is

possible to switch interests and switch and do what you love to do and and maybe make money at it, maybe not, but figure out a way to survive and and continue your lifestyle and you'll be you'll be happier. People are always happier doing what they love doing. Oh yeah. When did you start the comedian stuff? The stand-up comedy? How many years ago was that? 2015. Definitely everyone told me, you can't do this. You're in your 40s at that time and you can't do it. You have to start from the bottom and it takes 20 years. Well, six years later, I was touring around the world. And that's why I called the book Skip the Line is because not only do I give techniques for how to literally skip the line learning

so that you could be among the top one, two, or three percent in the world, but also how your career can skip the line, because it's very hard to get gigs touring around. And more recently in the past few months, really, I've slowed down the comedy, and I find myself evolving into other things and other interests. Well, I'd like to say that you're one of your, I was going to say, and we kind of got sidetracked a little bit.

And I found it interesting that you, one of your things is that you write down 10 ideas a day and not even just for yourself, but you do it for like other people, other companies, you send them in to like all sorts of different people. And it's like you have this abundance mindset versus a scarcity type of mindset, where you share your ideas. A lot of people are nervous about that, right? Because they're nervous that someone else will take away

their opportunity. And how did you tell people, or what would you say is some good ways and strategies people can kind of get an abundance mindset? Yeah, that's a great question because particularly with ideas like people think oh an idea is so precious a good I When I have a good idea to take I'm struck by lightning and I can't I have to take care I can't share with anybody or they'll steal it. And it's my one chance to have an idea. And I started writing down 10 ideas a day a long time ago.

I was dead broke after selling a company for millions. I kind of squandered all the money and was so depressed, even suicidal. And I don't know, just randomly I started, I got a waiter's pad and I started writing 10 ideas a day. And within a few weeks, I noticed I started to be happier and I started to come up with interesting ideas for myself. And the point of writing 10 ideas a day

is not that you're gonna have a good idea but that you're gonna exercise this creativity muscle. It's really hard to think of ideas and to think of good ideas. People say ideas are nothing. Execution is everything. Execution is very hard too, but execution is only a subset of ideas. I've seen two people with the same idea, one executes poorly, one executes really well. Execution ideas, again, are a subset of ideas. And so I started writing 10 ideas a day for myself, business ideas, book ideas,

just ideas to improve different things. At the time, I was losing my home, ideas of where I was gonna live, because I was going broke. But, and again, it's just, it's just to exercise that idea muscle within a few weeks, a few months, I really felt like I was starting to have decent ideas that I've been doing this ever since, almost 20 years later, including today.

And but I also started writing ideas for other people. So if I wanted to meet somebody, I didn't, I couldn't just write an email and say, hey, Warren Buffett, I want to meet you. Because Warren Buffett is not going to say, oh my gosh, James Altature wants to meet me. You know, hold on my phone cause. James Altature is going to buy me a 60-send cup of coffee. Like, nobody responds if you do that. So I started coming up with ideas for other people and sending to them and I would do the

reverse. I would say, no need to contact me. I really am a fan or I admire you because of this, this and this reason. Here are 10 ideas where I think could improve your business. And I wrote 10 ideas to one guy who was a well-known financial writer. And I said, here's 10 ideas for articles you should write. And you don't need to write me back. And he wrote back right away and said, these's 10 ideas for articles you should write. And you don't need to write me back. And he wrote back right away and said, these are great ideas. You should write them. So I started all of a sudden.

It was the first time I ever got paid as a writer after writing for 10 years almost. And then another person, I wrote, I was interested in the financial industry then. I wrote this guy who was a hedge fund manager. And I said, here's 10 strategies you can use for your hedge fund. And here's a software I wrote that shows that these strategies are good strategies. And he wrote back right away and said, oh, we should meet. I love to meet you. And later on, he gave, you know, invested money

with me. And I started my own little hedge fund. But those were, I sent around 20 of those emails, those were the only two that responded. And so most time people don't respond. But because of this strategy of writing thinking of ideas for others, particularly if I was excited about what they were doing, because of this, I've not invited to speak at or a tour or a consult with Google, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Quora, Amazon, and on and on. It never stops, really. I just had a response now from somebody because I had ideas for them.

And from who, anyone I know? No, no, it's in a totally unrelated industry. It's related to chess, which is what I want to talk. Which is your latest address. Yeah. Yeah. so I really like that But I have a couple questions about that right because obviously Never when you're making your own opportunities, right? So you're not just sitting back waiting for someone to you know for the phone to ring You're you're kind of creating those opportunities by

Giving someone a reason to respond versus where a lot of people end up doing is they don't think, they email, and people email me too, they're like, hey, I need your help. As opposed to turning the tables and starting from a place of you giving as opposed to taking. When I feel that, you know? That's interesting because,

I think that's the worst when they say, you don't know them. So the worst is when you don't know them, and they say, hey, can you introduce me to Richard Branson or whatever? And yes. The second worst is when you know them, and they write you and say, hey, can you introduce me

to Richard Branson? The third worst is when they say, hey, you don't know me, but I really like your stuff, and I'll, what do you need help in, and I will help you in it. And I feel like that's almost the worst, actually, because don't give me a homework assignment. Like you don't know me, and already you're giving me a homework assignment,

like I don't know what I need, I'm doing everything I can do. So I don't want to first figure out what I need, then figure out what your skill set is, then teach you how figure out what I need, then figure out what your skill set is, then teach you how to do what I need, and on and on. Like that's not good either. Really the only email is, hey, you know, it seems like you need this based on my study of you, and here are some ideas, or I've already done it for you and here it is.

And even then I might not respond. Not because I'm a bad guy because it's hard to respond to everybody. I have really my own things. Oh, absolutely. No, you're 100% right. Like how many times people say to you, you know, I just want 20 minutes to pick your brain to figure out what I want to do with my life. So then it gives you that at the pressure now on the onus is on you to figure out their stuff

as opposed to coming to you. Right. With, you know. And not only that, it's like, it's like their philosophy, their mentality. And by the way, we've all had this at some point. I'm not blaming anybody. Absolutely, we have.

Absolutely. And I hear this every day. Their mentality is, oh, it doesn't hurt to ask. Guess what? It totally hurt you to ask because it feels like you don't really respect my time and it feels like you, you, it doesn't hurt to ask because you don't care about me. You only care about whether it hurts you. It doesn't care, you don't care whether you hurt me. And so yeah. Well, it's also because time is also the most precious

and most valuable commodity we all have, right? We don't have tons of time on our hands. And so then it just, it becomes, I get anxiety actually because I feel like I gotta put time into something that's not being benefit. It's just, it becomes a bad vicious cycle. But the other thing that you're obviously, these 10 ideas, and in your book, by the way,

like I swear to you, like, it shows. Like, you have to be very creative in thinking of these things, because 10 ideas can sound is a lot, right? Every single day. Yeah, it's hard. It's really hard. It's really hard.

It's really hard. My brain starts to literally sweat after ID number seven. Even today, I've been doing this 20 years. After ID is seven, I've always gotten to 10 yet. I'm always counting one, two, three. And then I'll do another ID. Did I get to 10? Oh no, it's just eight.

And it's, ID is one to seven. No problems. Eight, nine, ten. Really difficult. Like every time. If you have a good ID list, you're like every time. If you have a good idea, list, you're working on. And it's a good way to exercise the brain. Yeah, and you get better at it, I guess, as you can, if you do it every single day, right? But

like, for example, what was your list today? What did you put on your tent? What your tent today? So I list is, and I always write on a waiter's pad. My list today was, why are you writing a, why they're just a cabbid? Or this is like that? No, you know, a waiter's pad is many reasons. First off, you can't write like a novel on a waiter's pad. So it's just bullets.

Like 10 ideas, I shouldn't flesh out the ideas. This is just bullets of ideas. So that's what a waiter's pants made for. And, you know, it keeps me consolidated so I don't write too much. And the other thing is it's a great, it's cheap. This is like a mole skin, whatever notebooks are $1,000 and this was 10 cents.

And also, I'm in a meeting and everyone pulls out their fancy notebooks and their fancy pens. And I just pull out the Waderspad and put it on the table. First off, everyone, someone always says, I'll take fries with that hamburger. And then they ask me why I have a Waderspad, and I say, well, I'm frugal. And people always appreciate. It's a good way to make me the center of attention and a meeting and the expressive value that I have that I know they appreciate.

And so it starts off the meeting for me on a good note. Right, it's because it's funny. And then, okay, so what are some of the ideas you didn't tell me? So, the list today was, I wanted to come up with experiments for my podcast. Different ways to either expand the reach for my podcast different ways to either Expand the reach of my podcast or leverage the content. I've created on the podcast and so You know different experiments I can do so one is I one note was books and I there was three different ideas for books

That I could write big like I could take all the let's say all the Podcasts I've done with writers, get the transcripts, edit the transcripts, write an intro and outro, and I could write a book, think like a writer, based on the many great writers on my podcast, ranging from Judy Bloom to Ken Follett, whoever. So.

Judy Bloom, oh my God, I loved her as a kid. Oh my God. I loved her. Oh, yeah. And um, it was right when I was getting a divorce and I said to her, Hey, I have to ask you for advice because you're a Judy bloke. And I said, I feel like I'm damaged goods right now. And she said, listen to me, you grew, you grew up, like you grew up reading me, right? And I said right now. And she said, listen to me. You grew up, like you grew up reading me, right? And I said, yeah. And she said, so you have to listen to me. And she described her own two prior marriages. And she said, third time's a charm.

So now I'm married with my third wife, and it's a charm. So it's great. A charm? How long have you been married to your third wife? When did you guys get married? Uh, almost, well, I grew over two and a half years. Oh, okay. Wow.

So hopefully, Judy Bloom, well, how long have you married to your first wife and your second wife? About five years each. So hopefully this will last longer than five years. Exactly. I'll call you, I'll call you in about three years, just to see where you are.

I mean, but that's a good, I'm gonna listen to that podcast episode because she was like, I think everyone in my age would love her. She was like the shit back then. I know I read every book from Towsled of Borsgrade Nothing to, you know, are you there, Gardens, V, Margaret.

But then I also liked Forever, which was more of her teenage book. I was in fifth grade at the time, and then Wifey, which was like her a doll book. So I was reading all of her stuff. I never read any of her adult stuff. Is it as good as the, I guess it's hard to say because you're in a different place in your life,

but was her adult books good? Oh For her for a fifth grader her book wife. He was like a poor novel like it was great No, but her older stuff like when she was old like the older stuff that she did like For older kids or older people or adults was that stuff good to I always liked it But again, I read everything the entire period of me reading Judy Blue was in fifth grade.

So. Yeah. No, it's true. Me too. Me too. Oh, my God. I love that you had her on your podcast. Sorry.

So you were saying those are the ideas. So basically, so yeah, that was like one bullet point. And like another one was, oh, I had an idea for a podcast about what does it mean to have a legacy, but I was going to call up this billionaire who really loves doing art. He hates business and he made his billion dollars and he went back to his art, so it's just curious what he wanted. So I wanted to do a podcast in general about legacy. And then, oh, I thought of a mini series I would do

where every Monday I did an episode called I Was Wrong. And I would take some article I've written where I was passionate about some opinion over the past 20 years, but now I'm admitting I'm wrong and why and what does it mean and so on. So can I give you an idea? Because I was doing some research on you, I guess yesterday when I knew you're coming

on today, I was listening to some podcasts, like a little bit some pieces, and I came across one that you had some phenomenal ideas. You said to some guy, I don't know who it was, what podcast was, about like he was saying how he wanted to be a Joe Rogan and then he realized later on that he wanted to have a life that he could see as kids, bubbable. Anyway, so you're saying you were talking about it and you're like, you know what would it would be an idea for a podcast? You said calling up 10 random people and seeing who would be on, whoever you would strike up a conversation with it's any what kind of conversation You can have with some like random stranger and that could be the podcast

Because you would never know Remember that when you said that Yeah, I and and I want to do that like I do think everybody's got a story And I think it would be interesting to just either call random people or just sit there on Zoom and let people like log in and interview anybody who comes on. And I'm sure everyone out there has an incredible story. It's convinced of that. So I think that's still an interesting idea. You should do that one.

That calling up 10 people, just saying like just calling random phone numbers and saying if you can get somebody and like have like what kind of conversation can come out of that, what kind of like, I'm sure it would be interesting. I think I really honestly want you to do that. I would listen. Yeah, because it's interesting because not only would people want to hear hopefully the interesting stories, but the process itself is interesting. I think those are the best podcasts where the format is just as interesting as the outcome. Just like when the process towards a goal is as is filled with

meaning as the goal of self. Absolutely. So then let's talk about this comedy thing because I'm obsessed with stand-up comedy and like comics in general. And that is to me the most fearful thing in the world to do, right? Because you're standing up and you've got to be funny in front of all these strangers. And the thing that's the most unfunny or least funny is when people are like nervous and uncomfortable and they're not funny. So how did you even start that process? Like, what was that kind of in your brain? Like, hey, I'm going to do this, like this, to game through the fear factor of it, right?

The embarrassment of going up there and not being funny. Oh my gosh, it is so scary, it's ridiculous. And that's the other thing about, I want to mention, about doing what you love. People say, oh, you must be so happy, you do what you love. Not at all. I would be happy watching TV all day and eating popcorn, but like that's not what I do. Instead, I choose to do things that I love doing, which means I'm going to suffer a great amount of time. Because let's say you love playing poker, well, half the time you're going to lose money, even if you're like a great player. So doing what

you love means doing hard, difficult things that are difficult to get good at and then difficult to build a career around and anything that's difficult there's going to be suffering involved as opposed to just watching TV and not caring at all but I love watching TV anyway. But stand-up comedy was always a fascination of mine. I made many comedy. My very first company was in the 90s making websites for entertainment companies. I made many websites related to comedy. I went to a lot of comedy events. I was always really interested in comedy, but I was too afraid to go on stage.

So finally, I was doing a podcast at a comedy club in the owner said, why don't you do a set of comedy on the stage? And I said, why don't you do a set of comedy on the stage? And I said, sure. And so I did it, and everything else I was interested in fell away, and I became obsessed with, I would literally, for six years, seven years, I performed three to ten times a week, traveled all over the country, right before the pandemic, I was traveling all over the Netherlands, doing comedy. Wow. Wow. It is scary and it's difficult because like you said, you're standing up in front of a room full of strangers. They might not like you, whatever, and you have to viscerally

make them laugh. It's not like giving a talk where they're listening, and you think they're listening, every 15 seconds or so, you want to hear them laughing. And, or else, you feel bad. And you feel bad pretty quickly. And by the way, like you pointed out, it's hard to see someone messing up on stage. The audience is an X-ray machine.

They know when you're screwing up. Even if you try to act confident, they can tell and they will punish you for it. I've had some great experiences, the best experience, is ever doing comedy because the dopamine is amazing and it's really great to feel you have the ability to make people laugh. But also, I've had some very horrible experiences doing it, but I always came back to it. So then number one, the first of all, are you funny? I mean, I know it's you saying it,

but subjectively speaking, do you think you're funny? I don't know. I mean, I mean, my kids laugh all the time, and I just made you laugh. I think you're funny. No, you're too. My mom does not think I'm funny. My mom thinks I'm pathetic, but my kids think I'm funny,

although one of my kids will sense it if I'm doing something in public, I'm about to do something embarrassing. She'll be like, oh no, and she'll run away. But no, I don't know. I mean, I was good enough to do it because, and again, here's what you notice when you're doing comedy. I'm always very interested in the process of learning anything. Anything that's hard. And comedy, there's no such skill as stand-up comedy. Instead, there's humor, there's joke writing, which is different from humor. There's crowd work. Like, I have to

be able to interact with the crowd and make them laugh without any material. There's stage work, like how do I move around on the stage? Can I do that in a funny way? Can I do funny things with my body and face and stuff? There's likeability. If they like you, they'll laugh. If they don't like you, even if you're funny, they will not laugh. And there's so many different microscales that have nothing to do with each other, and

you kind of have to learn all of them to be a good comedian. And then, and what's great when you get, when you start to get better at something, is that you then start to appreciate how the comedians you love, how they are, are good at the various microskills. And I start to notice in each comedian, which skills they're great at like Chris Rock so great at stage work the way he moves around the stage Louis D.K. is like so absurd like he's just everything he says is like absurd but but it feels normal and you know and on and on and on so I don't know I'm I always had a fun time doing it, whether I did poorly or not. It's scary as hell. And I, you know, I think it took a while, but I think I got most of the time people were laughing at what I was doing.

Or they were just laughing at me, which sometimes could be fun as well. Well, first of all, I think that being a standup comic is the most difficult thing in the world for all of those reasons why you just said, right? Because there's so much to it. And to be really smooth and good at it is very difficult. I think Bill Burr is the best comedian. I love Bill Burr. I think he does, he's amazing. I love Bill Burr as well.

And I'll tell you one story. One time, Bill Burr and I were performing on the same lineup. And the manager asked everyone, or asked me beforehand, hey, do you want to go on before Bill Burr or after Bill Burr? Now going on after Bill Burr is like a death sentence because everyone just saw Bill Burr and he's the funniest guy in the world or one of them. And you're going on afterwards and they're thinking who is this guy? I want Bill Burr back or going on Bill Burr before Bill Burr

I would have been able to do my normal set and get gotten people to laugh and have a normal experience But you could only learn when you're challenging yourself like if you're Lift if you lift weights and you're used to lifting a certain weight and you only do five of them It's easy But if you push yourself to do something difficult, you're going to learn. So I always, whenever I had to go on after Gilbert or Tracy Morgan or whoever, I would always say I want to go on immediately afterwards. And usually I would fail miserably, but the time after Gilbert, I don't know, I picked up on his energy

and I did really well and they kept me going for a long time because they knew that it was hard to go on after him. So I was really, that was a happy night for me. That's amazing. Going on one time after, I don't know, like, Judah Friedlander one time, he does a lot, he's really good at crowd work and going on, it's going on after someone who's really excellent at crowd work is very difficult because the crowd wants to still talk to you and they know that you're going back to just doing your material and they can feel it a little bit more in a more nuanced way that you're just

doing material. So it's great and I can't do crowd work as well as what Judith Friedlander, he was on 30 Rock, he's a... uh... that was a hard one but i had to figure it out i went on after him several times until i kind of crack crack the code there keep coming back you got plenty of space uff not how you would have done that you like working with people you can rely on like us a a who has helped guide the military community for the past one years. USAAA, get a quote

today. Vitamin water just dropped a new zero sugar flavor called with love. Get the taste of raspberry and dark chocolate for the all warm, all fuzzy, all self-care, zero self-doubt you. Grab it with love today. Vitamin water zero sugar. Nourish every you. Vitamin water is a registered trademark of glass. Well okay so I mean that's different. I mean if I bravo to you. I mean if you're going on after built even have the option of going on before or after billber or Tracy Morgan you have to be at least at a certain level, right?

Because I'm not going on, I think my mom thinks I'm kind of funny, my friend's thing I'm funny, but I'm not going on after billber. No, I'm not even in that position. So my point is you have to be at least good enough to even be in that thing. So bravo to you because you're able to,

you know you're welcome. So I want to know, how did you to, you know, you're welcome. So I want to know how did you overcome, how do you, how did you overcome your fears? How do you tell other people to overcome their fears? And then you, you, you talked about it and I wanted to ask you about micro skills because you talk about micro skills in your book. And I want to know what micro skills that you think that everybody should learn. So those are the two questions I have for you. Yeah, great. Well, in terms of comedy, you never really, if I had to do a comedy tonight, I would be

afraid right now. I would be watching comedians on YouTube trying to pick up on their energy. I would be looking at my material over and over and over. My friends are sick of me calling them at the last minute. Like, you think this is funny? Like, uh, and I would, and then right before going on stage, I would be thinking to myself, you know what? I don't have to do this.

I'm just going to leave. No one's going to know. They'll announce me, but I'm never going to talk to them again. And that's that. And I would just leave like before. But so I'm always nervous. And then I would go up there and you get used to it.

Like you go up there and you grab the mic and suddenly you get like a lot of energy and I wouldn't feel nervous anymore. Now I would get nervous again later if I was messing up but that was happening less and less frequently. And you also start to build a kind of repertoire of comebacks if the crowd is not reacting. You know, like, I'm going to repeat a friend of mine, Joe, but like, he would go up there.

And if the audience was not lapping, he was like, listen, right before I came here, I just want you to know I was performing comedy at a children's cancer hospital. And the one, you know, one little girl, my past woman, she said, wait a second, are you, his name was Brian. Are you Brian, the comedian? And he would say, yeah, I went in the room and entertained her. And she said, can you please stay? And I had to say no, I have to go to the New York comedy club now and perform in front of 17 people.

But good luck with everything and so I and so I Then my friend who's the community would say the audience like I could be you know I chose to come here instead of helping this and then everybody would start laughing at you know his premise there And so you so you develop kind of like I said a toolkit for dealing with when the crowd's not Reacting the way you want and that that helps a lot as well So that helps you develop fears knowing that and we get rid of fears knowing you have that toolkit and just the more skills you develop You know of these microskills you know you can fall back into like you know when I just had material

If the crowd in the like my material I was dead, but then you developed the skill of crowd work, meaning I could just say, hey, you know, I bet you and this, I bet you and your boyfriend have been together for three years. And usually you get to learn to read the audience pretty good. I'd be pretty dead on. Because in the comedy co-month thing I noticed is that, boyfriends and girlfriends, husbands and wives, they, every inch apart, they sit from each other is the number of years they've been together. It's almost always true. And so I would call these things with debt on accuracy, and then that would be part of my crowd work,

and I'd build from that. So once you develop crowd work, if the audience is quiet from material, I could switch to the crowd work, right? I could switch to something more absurd, or I could just do, or I could just say, screw it. I'm going to do something I know they're going to hate, but I'm going to like doing it. I had some routines for that.

So you just start developing a repertoire of things to do in every situation. It's like, if x, then y, if the crowd, if half the crowd is making noise and this half the crowd is not, here's what you do. If there's one person who's drunk and yelling at you, here's what you do. If everybody's laughing hysterically, here's what you do. And so you just know, you know like thousands of different situations of what to do.

Well, yeah, I mean, but did you build and learn micro skills that are kind of, that you can kind of use, that are kind of, you can bleed through any scenario, it could be comedy, it could be chess, it could be writing, I mean, could you talk about these micro skills that everyone should be learning?

What are those micro skills? Well, for each skill, for each skill. It's a different set of micro skills Oh, I'm gonna answer your question, but like let's say you want to get good at business There's no such skill as business. There's coming up with ideas. There's executing ideas There's negotiating their sales. There's marketing. There's motivating employees. There's raising money They're selling the company and on and on. There's follow up with customers. So these are all like negotiating has nothing to do with executing an idea. But you have to learn all of these completely separate skills. But a good meta micro skill is realizing every important skill has micro skills and then

figuring out a training regimen for those microkills and being disciplined enough to stick to that and then Another meta microskill is let's say you want to get good at something I every time I want to get good at something I immediately find a plus minus equal plus is someone who's like a coach to to me Equals are people at your level who you're you're improving with and you can change notes and you bond with them. And a minus is someone you could teach because you can't explain something simply that you don't really understand it. So that's as soon as I decide okay I'm really interested in learning X I get the I find a plus minus equals for X. I don't

waste any time because everything else is a waste of time. And so that's another meta-microscale. Another important thing, and this is maybe a little bit more of a specific microscope, is understanding risk. So for anything that you love doing, we know that there are benefits in doing it. Like if you love investing, of course, there are people who love and people do

investing because they want to make wealth. But that's clear, but the key to winning the game is staying in the game. And the way you stay in the game is by learning how to always manage your risk and identifying what all the risks are and whatever activity it is and making sure you know how to deal with that risk. And I didn't understand that first, for instance, with investing, which is why I would go broke. It took me a long time to understand just the concept of risk. But then I realized there's risk in everything you do.

So even in writing, you could take risks. And in comedy, there are risks you can take. And you have to, you know, you could decide you're gonna do something completely off the wall, but you have to understand, is this a risk that's gonna ruin the audience for you or is it gonna ruin something else for you or if you always understand what your risks are and what your, and at the same time,

it's important to take risks or else you're never unique. And it's very important to be, more important to be risks or else you're never unique. And it's very important to be more important to be the only and to be the best. Because if you're the only people will remember you. But nobody could tell the difference. Like, let's take two comedians, Chris Rock, Dave Shiphelt, or Amy Schumer, Louis C. K. I can't tell which comedian necessarily is better. One might be 20% better than the other, but it's subjective if everybody has different opinions. And you can't tell.

But if someone is the only person who lets say, only does comedy while at the same time wrapping freestyle, that's unique. That's somebody who will stand out. And he, that person doesn't have to be the best comedian person doesn't have to be the best comedian doesn't have to be the best rapper But it's so unique it'll stand out whereas if you're gonna follow the path of an Amy Schumer or Louis CK or Chris right You kind of have to be the best in the world unless you're doing something really unique So it's very important to develop to understand What is unique? what is different,

what can you discover as opposed to just learn? And that's an important microscope in life is to really fix on, what can I do in this area that I love? What can I do that's unique to me as opposed to just better than everyone else? That's such a good point, you know what? Cause I talk about, you know,? Cause I talk about, you know, we only watch shows like, you know, world of dance

or so you think you can dance or, you know, American Idol. I'm just breaking it down to the most, you know, easy example. And like, how do you judge who's a better dancer? You don't know, like to the layman, you know, to the common eye, like me, they're all amazing dancers're all amazing dancers. I'm not a judge to be it. So the reality is, but when everyone is just really good, there's nothing that really stands out. Something has to be different for you to actually break through that wall, and that makes sense to me, actually,

that's a really good way of putting it. So, it's not really, oh, go ahead. That's good. I was just saying, so it's not really the important to be the best. As long as you're good enough, like, good enough, at something that has, like, also that, like, added edge of uniqueness, that's more important, basically. Yeah, like, for me, I knew I wasn't going to be the number one comedian in the world or in the top 10 comedians in the world Because I really was starting at a very older age, say, right and and but I Had to really think like who am I and how am I different from the other people?

Well, I've had a lot of experience losing millions of dollars, which most other comedians have not had. And I'm able to bring that to the stage. And it took me a while to figure out how to do that. But that's, you know, people come to see me, not necessarily because they think, oh, I got to see James Altature. He's better than Chris Rock, but they come to see me because they like me and they want to hear my story in a funny way and So you do I develop the skills of comedy not enough to be in the top 10 in the world But maybe to be in the top 1% of the world which is a big difference 60 million 60 million people are in the top 1% of the world only 10 people are the top 10 comedians in the world So I just need to let's say let's say there's a 10 comedians in the world. So I just need to, let's say there's a million comedians,

I just need to be in the top 10,000, to be in the top 1%, which is good enough to tour all over the world. And then if I bring something that's uniquely me, now I'm the top one uniquely me comedian. And that's a big skip the line technique, and it's a big, that's a meta-microskill. That's a good question about what meta-microskills are.

That's a good meta-microskill. So always, one of my daughters was applying to colleges and she got into some colleges, but not necessarily the ones she wanted. And I said, why don't you take a year off and instead of just trying to improve your SAT scores? I think everyone is from the same area and they've all got the same SAT scores

and they all got A's or good grades and they all work for a charity and play to sport. I said, why don't you take a racing car racing lessons? And so she took car racing lessons. She got her car racing, her racing license. She participated in races. And then she applied to schools again. She got into every school she applied to.

And she was unique. She didn't have to improve her grades or anything. That's actually a very, I love that you just said that. Because, oh my, I love that you just said that because we talk about this a lot in my friends and I, right? Because my friends, my friends who are a little bit older have older children who are applying to your point. They're all going to great schools or all getting good marks and then like, they're trying

to get into all these schools. But at the end of the day, like the people are actually getting in are the ones who stand out differently, because at the end of your baseline is all the same by what you just said, right? They're all doing that, but how many people are doing car racing at that age? Probably none. Yeah, I mean, I was a horrible high school student. I was not in the top. I don't even know if I was in the top 100 in my class.

But I got into, and I only applied to one college. If I hadn't gotten it, I wouldn't have gotten it. But I was New Jersey, I was New Jersey's junior chess champion. So I got in. There was no issue at all. Right. You know, we, going for you. Right. And you only have to be good enough at something to make sure it's going for you in other areas you really like you care about. So like I've gotten jobs because of that same reason.

I've got I got into graduate school because of the same reason. And I didn't have to go on and be like World Chess champion to get into college. I just had to be good enough to get other things I wanted in my life. And of course, I loved it. I didn't do it artificially, but things like, like if I, no, if I was applying to college, wouldn't it be amazing to say, oh,

I, towards stand-up comedy and the Netherlands, I would get into college from that. Like combining these things that you're interested in is always useful. Even now, in business, I'm an entrepreneur first and a writer and writing about these experiences or being an entrepreneur and getting people interested in my story, I have an interesting story

because of these aspects. No, I think that is so accurate. I'm not going to apply to anything and everything in life. Yeah. And, you know, so going back to that, first of all, I love, by the way, I love that positive, what is it? What do you call that? That one technique, positive, positive, negative, equal? Is that the way you call it?

Yeah, plus minus equal. Plus minus equal. Yeah. What is bor- nine is equal. What is borrower borrowed hours though? Is that what do you mean? Okay, so, so all use comedy as an example. I can use I can use other things as an example, but I'll use comedy for a second.

So I was a public speaker for a long time. I spoke I used to speak about financial stuff and then I was speak you, not quite self-help stuff, but I would speak about my stories of going broke and bouncing back from it in the 10 ideas a day. So I was always invited to give talks at different places, give them a TED talk, I spoke at Google. And my public speaking, I've done my 10,000 hours in public speaking. To get good at comedy, I'm going to borrow hours from public speaking. Some of the time I put into getting good at that, to get good at, to apply it to comedy.

So I wouldn't need those hours. Like, for instance, when you're a public speaker, you get pretty good at being on the stage and dealing with your fear of speaking and I'll be able to bring that into comedy. That didn't really, that worked okay but not great. But when I went from after I did comedy for a while and I went back to public speaking, I taking the hours I had put into comedy, super-amped up my public speaking. Like that comedy 10x to my public speaking. And so I borrowed hours from comedy to even get better at public speaking.

Or when I switched from playing a lot of chess to playing a lot of poker, I was able to borrow hours from the time I spent getting good at chess to get very good at poker very quickly. Because if I just started poker from scratch, and I had any experience in competitive game playing, it would have taken me much longer to get good at poker. But I've been able to take my experience in one game and borrow hours from it to get good at another game.

Or my experiences in entrepreneurship, I borrowed hours from that to get good at investing because I'm able to, let's say, value a business in a different way than the average investor. And things like that is borrowing hours. Right. So you're using your experience in one thing to help build the, to help kind of build another thing, kind of like in that 10,000 hours to be an expert at something, concept. I know that you don't, we'll get to that in a second, but that whole concept, but you don't need to do 10,000 hours in one particular thing.

You can take hours from different things that you're doing and apply them to that. Yeah, let's say I wanted to be the best in the world at poker. Well, it wouldn't take me 10,000 hours because maybe I already put in several thousand hours and chess. Right. That would be, maybe I would need 5,000 hours in poker to be the best in the world at poker because I'm borrowing hours from other disciplines. And so, you know, that's a simple example, but, you know, whenever you do something new, think about what you can borrow from other disciplines. And so I had one friend who is very good at poker and she was able to borrow from her,

she had a PhD in psychology and she was able to borrow from her experience in psychology to apply that to the, you know, figuring people out at the poker table. Right. That's great. And but you don't love the whole 10,000 hour ideology, right? Like you're all about, you think 10,000 experiment rule? Yeah. Because, first of all, you don't need 10,000 hour rules

related about being the number one in the world. You need 10,000 hours to be the number one in the world. You don't need to be number one in the world to get everything you want out of something you love like to monetize it to use it for other parts Your life and so on you need to be in the top 1% or top 2% which again is a much bigger number than being number one in the world and so I I don't believe it for that reason, but The idea of experiments is always the idea of how do you be unique? So for instance

is always the idea of how do you be unique. So, for instance, and also how do you put yourself through difficult situations so that you can learn much faster. So, again, better to be the only rather than better or the best. So, for instance, when I was getting good at comedy, one experiment, an important aspect of an experiment, it's got to be cheap or free, and it's got to have little or zero downside and it has to have huge upside. So, you know, a great example is Thomas Edison. He supposedly experimented with 10,000 different wires before he could light his first light bulb. And very little downside, just move on to the next wire. Very cheap, these wires cost nothing.

And the huge upside, which is, he lit the world literally, and had a sort of a huge company, General Electric. And with comedy, for instance, or let's take entrepreneurship as a different example. Let's say I have a theory. And my theory is that if I design a, I'm gonna be a different example. Let's say I have a theory. My theory is that if I design a I'm going to be a fashion designer and if I design a jacket with I don't know 27 pockets and each

pocket is going to like one's going to have a zigzag zipper or it's going to have straight zipper or it's going to have buttons. Those are going to have like Chinese style buttons. And so I just have this weird idea for a jacket. And so, you know, I need to do an experiment with that's cheap and easy with little downside and huge upside. I don't want to make a thousand jackets and stock a warehouse and raise money and then start the business. I want to do an experiment to see if this is a good idea. So let's make a picture of the jacket using Photoshop and make a Facebook ad to use a $50 budget, put it up on Facebook and see if I get any clicks. Doesn't

have to click through to a website. I'll be able to use the analytics just to see how many clicks I get. And it's only a $50 budget. And if nobody clicks, okay, what's the downside? This was not a good idea and I learned about Facebook ads I learned about fashion design a little bit and I learned this is a stupid idea for a jacket If it gets about two or three percent click through a rate, which is enormous Then I also have the huge upside that I could start a business. I'll start selling this I'll find customers among my friends and then community and then so on and so That's a kind of experiment.

With comedy, I didn't experiment once. I wanted to get really good at one liner, so that I get very quick to the left. So I went on a subway and started doing stand-up on a subway, which is very scary because it's also experimenting with dealing with a hostile audience. And that's an experiment. There was no downside, really, even though it

felt scary, because nobody would know what I was. And the upside is, I would get really good at like high-stress situations on a stage. And there was even more upside. I enjoyed it doing it so much, even though I was scared at first, that I shot an entire talk show format on a subway and pitched it to an agent as a talk show. And they rejected it, but that could have had that experiment, could have had a huge upside, could have had my own talk show on a subway if they liked it. I love the fact that you're so resilient too. Like you don't let someone saying no to you, just stop you or something not working out for you, stop you.

You kind of keep on going to the next thing. Like as Jay-Z says, I can go on to the next one. Like how do you teach someone that skill of like keep on trying, keep on moving, not kind of getting stuck and stop at the no. Like, okay, I didn't work out, try this. Or if I can't go through the window, I'll go through the door. If I can't go through the door, I'll jump, you know what I mean?

That's how you seem to kind of like live your life. Yeah, and the thing is, first off, there's no avoiding disappointment. Like if you go up on stage, I'm always using Communities in an example here, but if you go up on stage and everyone booze you, you're going to be sad and depressed. But you go back the next day because you love doing something, which is why it's really important to do what you love. People say, oh, you don't have to do what you love. That's ridiculous, but it's not true.

If I didn't like friends I love writing and I written a bunch of books. If I didn't love writing, then some of the energy required to write, I would have to use in another way. I would have to use that extra energy to convince myself to write every day because I don't love it. You all just sit down and you'll be famous if you write. I would have to talk myself into it and instead I'm able to use that valuable energy to just write because I love doing it.

I don't need to convince myself to do it. The same thing with, don't do comedy if you don't love it. Don't be an entrepreneur if you don't love the idea of it. Even though they're suffering and buff, it's not a happy experience. Right. Exactly. But also important to note, it's not resilience really because resilience is, okay, it didn't work out. I'm going to try again. But I'll refer to Thomas Edison again, a reporter asked him, how does it feel to fail 10,000 times in a row when you were trying to make a lipo?

And he said, no, I did not fail 10,000 times in a row. I learned 10,000 different ways to not make a lipo. So he wasn't just resilient. He, you have to learn from every, you have to treat every bad experience like an experiment that you learn from. So to get better, to get better, for instance, at chess, you take a game that you lost, which is a very depressing experience, and you analyze every move of it and learn from it. What you could you have done differently? What could my opponent have done differently? And then you go over

that with your plus with a coach. And you actually become a much better player because you look at the games that you lost. The games that you won by the way are not that interesting to analyze, but the games that you lost are always interesting. Because what part of your thinking was flawed that you lost this game? And you try to patch that or improve it. And so, so this is a seem to lived concept of anti fragility, not just resilience, but you know, the cliche, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And I think the only way to really do that is,

A, you have to do what you love doing. You're not always going to love it, but in general, you have to love it. And B, you just have to remind yourself, okay, this was a bad experience. I'm feeling bad now. What can I learn from this? You just have to be very disciplined about reminding yourself, there must be something I can learn from this, even if it's just dealing with depression. But, because you're going to be depressed a lot if you do a hard activity. And whether it's entrepreneurship, investing, back am in comedy, writing, acting, violin, you're going to have very just depressing moments.

And so you have to always remind yourself, how can I get at least 1% better from this bad negative experience. Do you think you can teach that to somebody or do you think people have that innately in them, right? I didn't have it innately at all. I had a very, and I still do to an extent, like, have to fight this, you know, there's something called a fixed mindset, whereas opposed to a growth mindset. So if a kid is a fixed mindset, they think they're a genius. Everybody tells them, you're such a genius. And then as soon as they fail a test, they collapse.

They're like, they can't believe it because I thought I was a genius. I thought that was part of who I was. And a growth mindset is, okay, I messed something up, I need to learn. And I think I had very much a fixed mindset on everything I did. And I would just get really, really, and then when I lost all my money, when I thought I was so smart, I sold the company,

I mean, money, I lost everything down to zero, I had to really teach myself that, okay, it's maybe I'm not a genius, and I have to just really work hard like everyone else and learn things and and be a good person and and try harder and and and everything I do I always get really disappointed if I don't succeed right away because probably too many people told me I was smart when I was a kid because I had glasses and curly hair or whatever. And so I looked smart. I swear I want, one time I went to take the SATs and I was, you know, my hair was all over

the place. I had glasses. People like literally parted down the hall by what I want. I just looked like I was going to score a,600 on the SATs, which I did not do. And so it's been a hard, brief thing for me to have a more of a growth mindset. I don't think it's an aid. I think you have to really train yourself to have that kind of mindset, to an anti-fragile

growth mindset. So I think that a couple of things. Everyone, do you believe in talent then? Do you think people are neatly talented or they can, anyone can train themselves to do anything? It's more about desire than talent. Yeah, depends what you mean. I mean, aside from me, like a basketball player and NBA, let's do like 4-4-10.

You're not going to be playing with LeBron James. But I'm saying within reason. Yeah, I think that's what I'm saying. I saw it for me like a basketball player and NBA. Let's do like four for 10. You're not going to be playing with LeBron James, but I'm saying within reason. Yeah, I think it's much more, much, I think there is such thing as talent, but that you won't succeed at anything without 90% work, 10% talent. So I used to know this kid in the chess world.

I was roommates with his brother. It was this to know this kid in the chess world. I was roommates with his brother was this 11 year old kid and he was maybe the most talented chess player in world history, but as he's totally unknown, he would crush 11 years old. I I don't know if I ever saw him lost like lose a game and I would talk to him after his games and he would explain the things to me like so far above my head. And I was already like a master level player. And I'm like, what the hell is wrong with this guy's brain? Like he's such an, how did he get to be such a genius

without he must have been born that way? But again, when he started playing competitively and started playing in tournaments, and occasionally he would lose against people who worked really hard. He flipped out, he couldn't handle it and he just stop, he immediately stopped playing and never played again. So it really takes, it really takes to be good at something, it takes a much more hard work, psychology, and when I say hard work, I can, you can still use the skip

the line techniques and get in the top 1% really quickly, but to be the best in the world at something, you know, it takes work as much more important than talent. Doing, exdoing these experiments, getting the plus minus equals, figuring out the micro-skills, figuring out the psychology, figuring out risk, these are much more important things than talent. Talent can be beaten, but, but, but, work cannot. Yeah, no, I agree. I, I, I, I, I, I'm in agreement with you. As a small business owner, you know that unexpected costs can pop up at any time, but the traditional loan process is too slow. That's why you need it, Zinch. The direct lender that can fund up to $250,000 and less than two days,

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but you were like totally, you sold these companies for millions of dollars and then you became broke If you how did you become broke if you sold these companies for millions of dollars? What where did you spend your money on? Again, yeah, I didn't really spend money on anything. I just I didn't really understand About I thought I always thought about was smart at this, I'm going to be smart at other things. So I would sell a company and I must be really smart. So I'm going to start investing and make a lot more money. And I didn't even really, I would look at other people who made more money than me.

And I tried to invest enough to make even more money than them. I was really stupid. And I didn't respect risk. I didn't start to become a good investor until I understood what risk meant. And again, the way to win the game is to stay in the game. And I would just, I would go for everything, thinking I'm smart enough, I don't need to stay

in the game that way. I'm just gonna do this one thing and make it all. And boom, I would always lose it all. I would just lose that money really fast. I mean, like, more than $10 million, I would lose in a summer. And that would be all the money I had. I'd go, I went from $15 million to $143 in my bank account. And I lost my home, just lost everything.

I mean, everything. And that got really depressed. And this happened more than what's happened like three times. Is that like a gambling thing, do you think a gambling addiction or what is that? I don't know. I don't know if it's like gambling because I don't really like to play poker, but I don't like to gamble. They're different. I've never really been a gambler in a casino, but maybe it is like a gambling thing or maybe it's some kind of insecurity that I'm not really rich until I have X and then when I get X no, no, no, I need X times 10 and I would be too greedy and I would think I was poor all the time. I had some sort of problem and

But I it's really just it's hard to manage risk. And I was much more of a risk taker than I should have been. And now I've gotten completely in the other direction where you take calculated risks. It's certainly risky to spend, you know, a thousand hours doing stand-up comedy in a year as opposed to career things, but you learn to manage your risks accordingly.

And, you know, risk is really the most important meta skill here, like understanding how to be, how to manage the risk of your time, your money, your energy, your relationships, how to understand, you know, how to bounce back stronger as an important meta skill, but I had to learn these things, because I didn't have them. I lost everything. I didn't bounce back for years. I was just depressed for years.

So really how long were you depressed for? I would say depressed to the point where I couldn't do anything for not that many years, but like two. And it was only when I started writing the 10 ideas a day that I started to be less depressed But then I think for that whole next decade I was anxious all the time and You know, it just I had to really figure out how to

live in the moment a lot better a lot more and You know all these cliche things, but they're really they really are true that you know life's difficult, and there are ways, though, you could learn to manage your time and learn to not live in the past where you regret all the time, or not to live in the future where you're anxious all the time, but to focus on what you could do this moment to improve your situation.

And also to surrender to what you can can control. I couldn't control that moment what was in my bank account when I had nothing left. I couldn't imagine. I remember one time I saw a psychiatrist and he said how can I help you? And I said the only thing that could help me is if you give me a check for a million dollars right now. And he said you know what? My guess is that's not going to help you very much. And he probably was right. Like I needed to discipline myself and learn all these things about bouncing back and about coming back stronger and about risk and about living it more in the moment. And all these things that are in the book skipped a line about learning things quickly, because I would switch careers a lot to try to figure out how to bounce back and so on.

So what were some of the things you do daily to kind of keep you in the right head space to kind of make sure that doesn't to kind of help with the anxiety or all those things that you were saying. You have the list of things you do? Yeah, four things, but they have some things. One is exercise the creativity muscle

or I writing 10 ideas a day. You don't do that, you won't have good ideas. Very important is every day am I trying to improve my physical health? Because if you're sick and bed, you're not gonna have good ideas not going to have good ideas, or you're going to give good ideas, you won't be able to execute on them. So like, and what's what's health? Just breaking it down simply, you know, more than me, but

basically sleep, eat, and exercise. So sleep eight hours a day, eat, you know, as well as I can. I'm not the, I'm not a nutritionist, but I try, I try to eat well. And I. I'm not the, I'm not a nutritionist, but I try, I try to eat well. And I, I'm not a, I'm not a big gym person, but I try to stay modestly in shape, so I don't get sick. And then, so that's, so physical, creative health, emotional health. If you're all the time arguing with your spouse, you're not going to have the energy to have good ideas and, or to execute them. So, you know, they sit, there's a cliche, you're the average of the five people you spend your time with. I make sure those five people are positive people who I encourage me in my dreams and I encourage them in their dreams and with support of each other and, you know, not just five people, but, you know, then there's their five friends and their five

friends. So emotional health is very important. And then some degree of spiritual health, which just means trying not to control, trying to surrender to the things you can't control. And so those four things, physical health, emotional health, creative health, spiritual health, every day at the end of the day, I ask myself, did I work on those four things every day?

And that's how I keep going. And when I stop doing that, I always screw it up again. Right. And so you're pretty diligent about doing those things, like those components. What I didn't, I got sidetracked, but I forgot to ask you a couple of things that I was curious about for productivity. We were talking about, you stay something about the 51 rule, what is that?

So do you know that 80, have you ever heard of the 80 20 rule? Of course, of course. So it's the idea that for people who don't know, we're listening, you know, it started off with 20% of the seeds that you, let's say you plan 100 seeds in your garden, only 20 of them will create about 80% of the flowers that bloom.

And in work, 80% of the profits will probably come from 20% of the employees in everything in life, like trying to think of, you know, 20% like if you're a student, 20% of the things you study will probably create 80% of the correct answers on the test you take. And on and on. Like, you have to figure out the right 20% that creates 80% of the value. 20% of your customers will create 80% of your revenues if you're in business. And so you have to figure out the right 20% to create the 80%. The idea is if you figure out that 20%, you could be a lot more productive in one fifth the time. And so the interesting

thing is though, you could apply the 80-20 rule to the 80-20 rule. So once you find that 20% that creates 80% of the value, and I don't mean to get too much into the math, but 4% of the seed you plant will create 64% of the flowers. It's 80-20-roll times the 80-20-roll. And then if you do it one more time, it turns out that about 1% of the seed you plant will create 50% of the value.

Think about it, think of the average business. 1% of the employees is going to create 50% of revenues. And that sounds crazy until you think, well, probably the CEO of the company helped generate 50% of the revenues, or the founder of the company probably helped generate 50% of the revenues. And 1% of the effort, you put it to something, if you find the right one percent,

will create 50% of the value. So there might be, like let's say comedy, it's a little harder to think about in terms of comedy, but it might be that there's some idea you have that that idea will create 50% of the laughter you get in comedy. Or in chess, you might understand, you might know a lot of things in chess,

but there might be one thing you're really good at, one percent of all your knowledge in chess might create 50% of your wins. And so it must exist that way, because the 80-20 rules have been shown to exist in almost every area of life, and it's just applying the 80 20 Roll to itself twice. So that's the 50 slash one roll.

I love that. So then, um, one thing I wanted to ask you. I'll give you, uh, sorry, I'll give you an example from 50. No, go ahead, go ahead, keep on going from 50. Let's say I love how fit that you can always get. Go ahead. Let's say my, let's say my main goal is to broaden my shoulders. So I swim, I run, I lift weights, I, you know, do squats, whatever. Run and squatting will broaden your shoulders. Right, right. Maybe it's just that one exercise, though, where you have a weight on every arm and you hold out your arms horizontally and then back to your waist.

And you just do that. That might be one percent. No, just do pull ups, how about pull ups? You're the fitness instructor, you tell me. Is that fitness instructor? Yeah, fitness instructor. So that's the 1% then that creates 50% of the value of getting me to broaden my shoulders.

Oh, so that's the one thing that, isn't that called the one thing? Like what kind of like holding that's the one thing that isn't that called the one thing, like what kind of like holding, kind of like honing it into the exact thing. It's like, you know, for golf, right? Like everyone thought you're you get to work your torso and you had to work your, you know, your shoulders to be a good golf player. But then they figured out like actually really great golfers have a really strong, like,

like leg strength. They have a really strong leg strength. Yeah, a really strong trunk. So once they figure it out, dialed in what really creates the big change, isn't that what it is? Isn't that similar? Similarly in on the exactness. It might not be one thing, might be multiple things, but it's 1% of all the things you could do.

So as opposed to 20% to create 80% of the value, now you're only getting 50% of the value with this 1%, but you might not need more create 80% of the value, now you're only getting 50% of the value with this 1%, but you might not need more than 50% of the value. Who knows? No, I like that. That's okay. I'll go with that. That's good.

So from the chest experience, because you are a chest master, what skills did you learn from chest that you were able to kind of use with everything else, like the micro skills or without meta skill. Like, what did you use from that? Or a borrow time, your borrow time from that time that you did everything else? Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of different things. There's a saying in chess, when you find a good move, find a better move. So a lot of times, people in life or in business or whatever, they have a good move, find a better move. So a lot of times people in life or in business

or whatever, they have a good idea and they say, let's do it. But when you find one good idea or one good thing to do, there's probably something a little better you can do. And in chess, you look at the board, you find a good move, I can guarantee you there's always a better move to do, not always, but 99% of the time. And so that's an important thing to remember like with everything

that I do You know here's an idea for a product. Okay, let's just push on it a little more. What's a better product to do? And that helped me a lot in business like a client would ask for something and I would do what they, but I would always just do it a little better and that's how I would keep the client. In Chester's just saying, the threat is stronger than the execution. So if I'm negotiating with you in business, it's not like I'm going to say, well, I quit. But it's like, I might say, look, I see a lot of my friends out there who have similar skills to me are making more money. And I just wanted to have a conversation with you about that. So there's like an implicit threat in that.

Like if you're in the boss and I'm an employee and I want more money from you, I just gave you a little bit of a threat that I might leave. Now I didn't just say, hey, I'm going to quit. If you don't give me more money, that's executing. It's going too far. So in chess, if you just threaten to check me, if you threaten to take someone's piece, they're the ones who are obligated to respond. You're just threatening.

They have to actually do something that could weaken themselves in order to respond to your threat. But you don't have to actually do something that could weaken themselves in order to respond to your threat, but you don't have to actually do anything yet. And so, that's an important concept, is that the threat is stronger than the execution. And the other thing, just in chess, you have to think hard. You have to be willing to think one step ahead of the person you're playing against, you're opponent. And you have to be ruthless about it. You have to think I'm going to destroy, I'm going to literally annihilate this

person. And I'm going to do it by thinking more deeply than him or her. And ironically, the last game I played in a tournament was against this 13 year old girl whose name was Irene a crush and she crushed she crushed me completely and then afterwards said I think you made a mistake on move 9 and then I just quit playing like that was that but all now I'm playing again so we'll see what happens for the first time in like 30 years, I'm studying the game again. And so I immediately got myself a plus minus equals and put together the micro skills and my training measurement.

And I wanted to get better than I was before, which is difficult. Because as you get older, you get worse. Your mental abilities start to slow down. Your memorization is very important in chess. But there's things like that, like being able to push yourself just a little bit harder, like look for that extra hard move or to think in terms of, to see more strategic things happening.

Chess is not a battle of moves, it's a battle of ideas. And you have to have more ideas than your opponent, and you have to have better ideas, and then it becomes a battle of ideas. And so I think that helps me in terms of why I think, why I initially thought, you know, developing 10 ideas a day is so important, so that I'm always abundant with ideas,

and I always understand the ideas, or always try to understand, you know, chess is a prophylactic game like part a big part of the game is making sure your opponent cannot succeed at what he wants to do. So that means I have to understand what my opponent wants to do and then I have to come up with ideas to stop my opponent at the same time advancing my own agenda so. my own agenda. So let's say I'm in business and I'm competing in someone, I have to really understand at a deep level what are their ideas? What do they want to be the best at in their business? What do they want to be unique at? And we're both going for the same client. How can I contend with their ideas with this client? Like what do I have to say? And so that's where I borrow hours from writing. Writing is really good. It makes you a good communicator.

So understanding my opponent's ideas plus understanding how to communicate might make me help me communicate with the customer so that I can say, hey, you don't really need these other ideas, but you need the ideas I have to offer. So these are where you start combining the skills and then throwing a joke from comedy and you get the deal. Yeah, that's an, I would imagine just from your experience with chess as a young kid, that would have, that makes sense of why how you kind of evolved and morphed into, even to how you even wrote this book, you know, 30 years later, right? Because it's so much

about thinking, you know, thinking one step, thinking multiple steps ahead, learning how to strategize, thinking about that, being like all of those things are so, they can, they help you in so many areas of your life. The discipline, you know, goals, all that stuff. But what's interesting is, so the last time I studied the game in a serious way, and last tournament I played was in 1997, and now it's 2021, much older, obviously, and your brain changes or loses certain muscles. Like my memory is not as good, and my ability to calculate moves ahead is nowhere near that of like How I was in 1997 and so I have to learn a different skill set and it's interesting because I have to learn

Maybe philosophically more about the ideas of the game than just memorizing like huge amounts of knowledge or then just memorizing like huge amounts of knowledge or being sure that I could calculate my way out of any bad situation. And again, it reminds me of fitness because when you're young, you can build muscle, you could exercise, you have more energy. When you're trying to get in shape, when you're older, it's a different type of experience. You have to treat your body differently as you exercise and stay in shape because the body is changed and your mind is changed. And it's the same thing. I have to learn a completely different game now to get back to the level I was in 1997 because I cannot recreate those skills that I had then.

Those were younger person skills now and older person. Totally. That's a great analogy, 100% that's exactly true. So what are you doing? How are you kind of getting the skills? What are you doing differently with chess? Well, I'm doing all the same things that are important. The plus minus equal, I have a coach,

I have people I teach and I have equals. I've got micro skills that I've broken in the apart. For hours, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, but I really have to focus a lot more on understanding the ideas of each type of position. Because if I just try to memorize what I'm supposed to do, given this, what am I supposed to do here, I used to be able to memorize that. I can't do that anymore.

My memory is not the same. So I have to really... So risk if you're talking about that. Yeah, I have to really understand the ideas enough that even if I don't remember what to do, I'll be able to figure out very easily what to do because I understand deeply, much more deeply, what's happening.

And that's really the key is being able to understand ideas more than just calculating moves ahead. I have to get myself into situations now where I can win without calculating too many moves ahead. So I have to, again, that's a matter of understanding the ideas more than the opponent. So I know that, oh, he's going down a bad avenue, even though he doesn't realize it. And I know what the right avenue is as opposed to like calculating every single move, 20 moves deep. Absolutely. Hey, folks, it's Michael Berry and the flooring in your home sets the tone for that room.

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Oh, thank you so much. I'm really glad we were able to arrange this. Oh, me too. I mean, you're like just a fountain of information. Thank you. No, you're welcome. I want to read your other books too now. I mean, choose yourself. You've got a bunch of books that, and you said this one is of course your favorite to date of writing. And for all, I mean, this is the one I've read of yours. And if your other books are like this, I'm going to be very, very pleased.

I think choose yourself is good. And then I think a lot of my books are pretty bad. But choose yourself as good. There's one that wasn't very popular but called the Choose Yourself Stories. I think that one's okay. But yeah, those choose yourself and skip the line are good ones to start with.

I'm going to do choose yourself next, because I like the title anyway. And the idea is that all your life you want to to be chosen for something like, oh, am I getting accepted into college? Did I get accepted into graduate school? Did they like me at the job interview? So true. When I wanted to get a TV show, did they choose me?

And ultimately, you have to figure out the ways around that so that the gatekeepers don't stop you. So as an example, rather than try to go, I've published many books with regular publishers and skipped the line actually, it's published through HarperCollins. But choose yourself. I self published on Amazon to prove I didn't need a publisher. And that's my best selling book ever by far. Really? Yeah.

That one sold over a million copies and I didn't have any publisher. So. No way. Yeah. Million copies with a self-published. Self-published books do well. You know what's so interesting? I mean, it depends.

That's so interesting. I have, I'm running my fourth book right now. This is all with publishers, except one. The one I didn't do with a publisher, I did with another company called HabitNest did really well. And it's interesting. I feel like sometime doing it now in today's time, being self-published, you have more opportunity to sell books because you have all the, it's different, right? You use social media, you use collaborations, you do what you go on podcasts. Yeah, yeah.

Absolutely. Like I, I would, I would make deals with email lists where I would adjust the price or I'd write an extra chapter and, you know, I experiment with adjusting the price really low, really high, see what happens. And the publisher was willing to try things. It's just slower, it's a different type of decision-making process. And I really, I love the publisher I'm working with. My editor is great, I work with her several times. And, you know, it's just a different

experience. Self-publishing, particularly now that people aren't in bookstores as much, they're just finding your things on Amazon. And then I did an experiment last year. Somebody Amazon. Yeah. And then I did an experiment last year. Somebody did a docu series based on choosing the ideas and choose yourself. It was like eight episodes or six episodes, something like that. And he was like, what should I do with this? You know, the world shutdown. Holly would shut down. I can't sell this documentaries. And I said, why don't you self publish it? Meaning he just uploaded it to Amazon Prime. And it looks like any other Amazon Prime show, choose yourself. And it did very well other Amazon Prime show, choose yourself.

And it did very well. And then we did another experiment. I called up a movie theater chain that was open in the South. And I said, can I release the first episode of this in the movies? And this was like in June 2020. So the pandemic was really, so it made just a few thousand dollars, but it was in the top ten box office for that weekend. No way.

Yeah, yeah. So those are, that's amazing. There's always ways to choose yourself. That's this example of that book and I, and I start, I have a start with me going broke and then having to choose myself instead of waiting for someone to just give me money. No kidding. But first of all, the title is so good that like who wouldn't click on that if they saw that title, right?

Yeah. And even doing that title was an experiment because I came up with that. I wanted to do, I wanted to do the choose yourself era. And I kept thinking, so that sounds like error instead of era, like the ROR. And then a friend of mine who was, who was, as a publishing company now, Tucker Maxx, he was like, why don't you call it pick yourself? And then another friend of mine, Ryan Holiday, who's really great at marketing books and rates levels.

He's been on here too many times. Yeah. Yeah, so he had another idea for a title. So we made Facebook ads with each of our titles. Plus we had a Facebook ad for just choose yourself. And that got like 80% of the clicks. I think pick yourself with second. The chooses of arrows third and Ryan's idea was fourth. And that's how I picked the title. Choose yourself. Hold on. So that's an amazing idea. I'm going through this right now with my fourth book. I'm like, what am I going to call it?

We're going back and forth and back and forth. And I guess, can you do that if it's a book that's going to be published with a publisher? Like doing a... Yeah, as long as they're willing to accept the results of the experiment, I probably should have done that with this book. I didn't do that.

And maybe there would have been better titles with the skip line. I love that name. Did you think of that name that title too? I did, yeah, but I was torn between that. And I was also thinking of the 10,000 experiment role because there was something kind of interesting to me about that.

But I don't know. I should have tried a bunch of ideas and done the same technique. We could achieve Facebook after each one and see how many people clicked through. Because ultimately, we're just guessing it's good to have data on these things. You know, there's absolutely. John Doer wrote this book, Measure What Matters. You title of your book, Matters. That's the first thing people see about your book. So it's important to measure stuff like that.

And I made the mistake of not measuring that for this book. Well, as this book selling well well or how do you do it? Oh, yeah, it's still selling well. But maybe it would have sold even better. If I had the best, you know, if you have a good title, find a better title, I could really maybe try to find the best possible title. I think this is a good title too,

is my idea of the title, but maybe I should have pushed myself a little harder. I, and I didn't. I thought the title was so when I first heard it was like so clever, so good. And also it's like positive skip the line that sounds happy and like skipping and like do something good. You know, there's not like, not, there's no negative connotation. Like they say don't put words like don't do this or like, you know, no or whatever. That if it's like a positive connotation or a happy

connotation it does well. And choose your set. I mean, I think that's, I think that's an amazing title. I cannot believe you sold a million copies. How old is the book? I came out in 2013, in June of 2013. So did you say eight years? Eight years.

Did you tell the majority of it in the last couple of years because of what's going on? No, no. I mean, the first few months, I sold about 200,000 copies. And then it just kept, I get, it's great because I also saw, sold a lot of audio. I mean, the audio book. And as Audible has gotten bigger and bigger, I still get every month I sell more audiobooks of that than regular books. You must be a good digital marketer. You know how to do something to get the algorithm and getting people to even see the title, no?

No, plus minus equals. So I work with people better than me. And I learn from them. So I'm okay with digital marketing, but I really try to learn from the master. So I always ask people a lot of questions about marketing. That's amazing. Because marketing and copywriting,

these are like really, you can make a lot of money with those, if you're great at those things. Like maybe I'm top two or three percent, but there are people who are like top 10 in the world. Absolutely. Oh my gosh, you're so interesting, my God. Thank you for coming on this podcast.

And like, maybe we can have you again when you write your 21st, you know, your 21st book, or you know, you'll have 40 books before you're like, before next year anyway. I don't know, I mean, right now I'm really focused on getting better at chess and that's been very difficult and very consuming. I could imagine. But you know, that's been about six or seven months now. No, more like eight months.

And you know, we'll see how much longer I stay interested in it but so far so good. Did you get interested because you saw the Queens Gambit like everybody else and now everybody's playing chess again or or still to yeah yeah well what happens I saw the Queens Gambit and then I started playing online again and I realized oh my god I'm not as good as I used to be like I'm significantly I've lost some skills and so now I'm probably better than I was at my peak But I want to get even better. So we'll see Yeah, and like you know 70 million people join chest.com after the Queen's Gambit So there's a huge audience for streaming and all this kind of stuff. So I figured, okay, I'm already good

at this. I might as well see how far I can go with it. So we'll see. Thank you again. How do people find you? I mean, you probably much, you know, they find your books, skip the line on Amazon or wherever. Yeah, as a result. Yeah. I swear, Google my name or whatever. They keep on on the Abbots and hustle podcast This is the best place to find me right now as of today. This is the best place to find me as of today and tomorrow But somewhere else This episode is brought to you by the Yap Media Podcast Network. I'm Halataha, CEO of the award-winning digital media empire, YAP media, and host of YAP Young & Profiting Podcast, a number one entrepreneurship and self-improvement podcast where you can listen,

learn, and profit. On Young & Profiting Podcast, I interview the brightest minds in the world, and I turn their wisdom into actionable advice that you can use in your daily life. Each week, we dive into a new topic like the art of side hustles, how to level up your influence in persuasion and goal setting. I interview A-List guests on Young & Profiting. I've got the best guests. Like the world's number one negotiation expert, Chris Voss, Shark Damon John, serial entrepreneurs Alex and Leila Hermosi, and even movie stars, like Matthew McConaughey. There's absolutely no fluff on my podcast and that's on purpose. Every episode is jam packed with advice that's gonna push your life forward. I do my research, I get straight to the point and I take things really seriously, which is why I'm known as the

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