The Rich Roll Podcast - Why You Should Choose Yourself

Episode Date: March 10, 2014

I love people who ask questions other people aren't asking. See trends others don't see. Have the courage to try a new approach. Risk the illusion of security. Think differently. Jump into the abyss with nothing but faith and their own resolve in search of answers. And refuse to wait for permission to simply do. In a certain sense, this dictate can be boiled down to a singular principle — people who Choose Themselves. And this is what today's guest is all about. Enter James Altucher. Where to even begin with this multi-talented hyphenate. Hedge fund manager, investor & serial entrepreneur, James has founded or co-founded over 20 companies; chess master; inspirational public speaker, radio, television and successful podcast host ( his show debuted at #1 on all of iTunes a few months back); bestselling author with 11 books to his name, both self-published and with the biggest publishing houses; husband, and father. I first stumbled upon the world of James Altucher about a year ago through his prolific, always humorous discernments on his The Altucher Confidential Blog and have counted myself a rabid fan ever since. What keeps me coming back isn't just his keen perceptions and invaluable insights, but the honesty, authenticity and total transparency as a vehicle to deliver his perceptions. A self-deprecating style that astutely mines his many fears and failures with a profound degree of relatability that threads a fabric of deep emotional connection with his readership. An expert in navigating rejection and colossal failure with as much enthusiasm and authority as his lays out — brick-by-brick — the many principles he has honed and freely shares to achieve greater health, perspective, life satisfaction and prosperity. We live in precarious times. A fear-based, quickly changing world pulling the thinly veiled curtain on the illusion of security. To crib a few ideas from James, markets have crashed. The traditional idea of jobs are disappearing. Everything we thought was “safe,” no longer is: College. Employment. Retirement. Government. In every part of society, the middlemen are being pushed out of the picture. No longer is someone coming to hire you, to invest in your company, to sign you, to pick you. More than ever, it falls on the individual to create a sustainable future. Scary stuff. We can look at this as a crisis. Or we can change perspective and see it as a moment of great opportunity. As always, destruction begets renewal. The truth is that we live in an amazing, unprecedented time of opportunity. A time of fantastical technology that in many ways has simply eradicated the seat once occupied by what we call the gatekeepers. With the advent of mind-blowing software and social media, new tools and economic forces are emerging that make it more possible than ever for individuals to create, thrive and change the world without “help” from the finicky sometimes not so permissive hand traditionally relied upon to feed us. This is the idea behind what James would call the Choose Yourself* era. It's also the title of his most recent book, a roadmap primer on transcending the decaying the master/servant paradigm of our economic system of employment and a call to action on how to configure a more meaningful life liberated from the so-called gatekeepers. Enjoy! Rich

Welcome to Episode 75 of the Rich Roll Podcast with James Altucher. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, people. Welcome to the show. I'm Rich Roll. I am your friendly podcast host. Lots of incredible content out there. 250,000 podcasts, YouTube videos, Twitter, etc. So much content out there vying for your precious attention, compelling your ears and your eyes to pay attention. your ears and your eyes to pay attention. So I'm very appreciative that you guys are tuning into this podcast that you have chosen this one to listen to. I don't take it for granted. And I'm very appreciative of the fact that you are lending me your ears today. So this show

has enriched my life in innumerable ways. It's a lot of work, but I really enjoy it. And it's definitely made my life better. And my hope is that it's doing the same for you. But I don't take you guys for granted. So thank you for tuning in. Each week, I bring to you the best, most forward-thinking, paradigm-busting minds in health, fitness, wellness, diet, nutrition, spirituality, creativity, and entrepreneurship. Today's guest is an entrepreneur, so that's on point. I deliver these conversations with the intention of giving you a toolbox, information, motivation, inspiration, ideas to help you take your life to the next level. And my goal is simple. It's just

to help you discover, unlock, and unleash your best, most authentic self. Take what resonates with you, discard the rest, but use the tools that are speaking to you and implement them into your life. When I think about the guests that I want to have on the show, my focus is always on people that are asking questions, challenging the status quo, trying new ways, thinking differently, thriving on their own resolve, and searching for answers, but always committed to helping other people. And I think that in many ways, you could distill all of this down to a singular idea, people who choose themselves. And that idea, this idea of choosing

yourself rather than waiting for the approval of a third party, whether it be a boss, a publisher, a network, an interviewer, a teacher, a parent, or whatever, any kind of gatekeeper or permission giver for that matter, is really what and who today's guest is all about. So James Altucher, who is this guy? If you've never heard of him, it's difficult to even figure out where to begin. If you've never heard of him, it's difficult to even figure out where to begin. He's done so many interesting things. He is extraordinarily intelligent, incredibly engaging, very funny, entertaining, and an expert in so many disciplines. It's like, where to even start? But let me give you a list, I suppose.

He's a hedge fund manager. He's an entrepreneur. The guy's founded or co-founded, I suppose. He's a hedge fund manager. He's an entrepreneur. The guy's founded or co-founded, I think, like 20 companies. He's a chess master. He's an in-demand public speaker, motivational speaker. He speaks on business topics, et cetera. And more recently, he has dipped his toe into the podcast world. He launched, I don't know, a couple months ago, maybe two months ago, released his podcast upon the world, The James Altucher Show. And I think within a week of his first episode posting, it went to number one in iTunes of all podcasts. So that's a testament to how popular this guy is. He brings some pretty cool,

interesting people on his show. So I would urge all of you to check it out. You can find it on iTunes. He's a bestselling author. He's my age, but he's written 11 books, some of them self-published, some of them with the big publishing houses, including a book he wrote in 2011 called houses, including a book he wrote in 2011 called I Was Blind But Now I See Time to Be Happy, which reached number one on Amazon in the motivation section. He's written a new book called Choose Yourself, and I'm going to get to that in a minute. But what I find really compelling about James is what he writes on his blog. That's how I found him. And that's what keeps me intrigued and coming back to find out what he's doing. It's a blog that in the first year of him launching it, amassed over 5 million page views. And he's got like 290,000 Facebook fans. So this guy is,

got a big, big following of people that are really tuning in to what he has to offer. And what he has to offer, and I think why it struck a chord and why he has become so popular with his writing, is that it demonstrates an incredible authenticity and honesty. I stumbled into it about a year or so ago, and now I just eagerly await every new post that he writes. I can't wait to read it. And he's prolific. I mean, the guy's posting multiple times throughout the week, very long blog posts that really challenge you to think about things differently. And his insights have been really invaluable to me. But what really draws me in, the emotional connection that I have is to his fearlessness when it comes to complete transparency. It's not so much about his successes, but really about

how he talks about his failures, of which there are many, you know, whether it's a company that failed or a book that he wrote that nobody would publish or read, or even what it was like when he blew $15 million after he sold a company and had to ask his parents for money. He tells these very colorful stories with a technical reverve and a sense of self-deprecation and humor that makes him really a pure joy to read. In essence, he is very much an expert in navigating rejection and colossal failure as much as he is an authority on how to succeed. And he is an authority on that. It's unbelievable how much content this guy puts out. Ninety-nine percent of it is completely free and how available he makes himself to his basically massive audience.

He does weekly Q&As on Twitter. He answers questions on Quora. He always seems to be able to find the time to respond. And that is a testimony or a testament to an insane work ethic and an ability to focus and an ability to engage in his passions. And those are all things that we talk about in this interview. His most recent book is called Choose Yourself, which I read and I loved and I got a lot out of it. It really resonated with me. And it's both motivational and instructional. It's kind of a roadmap primer on transcending this kind of, for lack of a better

phrase, slave master paradigm of our economy and system of employment, and really a call to action on how to configure a more meaningful life that's liberated from the so-called gatekeepers. And to kind of crib from his thoughts on the book and where he's coming from, kind of cribbed from his thoughts on the book and where he's coming from, you know, the world is changing. Markets are crashing, jobs are disappearing, and everything we kind of aspired to, or at least the generation before us aspired to, things like security or a safe career, college, employment, retirement, government, these things seem to be crumbling down in rapid succession around us. And every part of society, the middlemen are being pushed out of the picture. And it's no longer the case where someone's coming to hire you or to invest in your company

or to sign you or pick you up. And more and more so, it's on us to make the important decisions in our lives, to choose ourselves, essentially. And this presents a great moment of opportunity, as it always does. I mean, destruction always begets renewal. And never before have we had so many amazing tools. I mean, technology has really given us the ability to transcend these forces, to make it more possible than ever for us to create art, make a good living, or change the world without the quote-unquote help or permission. Opportunities arising all around us out of the ashes of, you know, this ever so decrepit system. And we are more capable than ever of creating or generating real inward success, whether that's personal happiness or health or fitness,

and translating that into outward success, careers, professions that can support our families, that are fulfilling and that are giving back. And this book, Choose Yourself, is really kind of a primer on that. And James is a guy who sees and understands and can translate these life principles in a way that will really make you think, that will challenge you and at the same time completely entertain you. He's a really funny guy and he'll make you laugh. So there you go.

That's it. Let's just get into the interview. I'm delighted. I'm a big fan of this guy. So I was super psyched to be able to sit down with him. Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, I present you with James Altucher. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life.

And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more.

Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Well, I've been a big fan of yours for a long time. And, you know, athlete aside, I mean, that's not what this is about.

I like to just find people that inspire me in different ways. And you certainly are at the top of that category. I've been reading your stuff for a long time. And then I go home and flog myself for not being as good a writer as you are. No, no, I wouldn't worry about that. You know, but it's interesting because I do read your writing and I find there to be overlap actually, because whenever you go through a transformation and you've gone through like your own series of transformations, whether it's a body transformation or a financial transformation, whenever you go through one of those,

you learn from them and you can either stay behind or move forward. And it seems like you've been very successful at moving forward. Well, I'm afraid to stop. I don't know what would happen if I stopped. So I'm propelled to move forward. Yeah, I think there's two contexts there.

One is, are you afraid to slow down? Or are you afraid that if you stop, you die? Yeah, I'm not sure. My therapist might be able to answer that question. We'll put the motivation to a podcast together. Yeah, I know. Well, maybe we can get them in on the conversation altogether. Yes. We'll do that next time. But I have this theory about you and the theory goes something

like this, that you have been hibernating and meditating in a cave in the Himalayas for the last 20 years. And then suddenly you appear in New York City with all this wisdom to impart. in New York City with all this wisdom to impart. And it's fun. You're sort of like this Yoda-like character imparting Jedi mind tricks on people. I like that theory. You do? Okay, we'll go with it. Because I'm attracted to what you have to offer, not because I'm looking for financial advice or I want the five tips that are going to allow me to become a millionaire. But because of the honesty in your voice, the authenticity, and what I think is going on, and I want to hear your thoughts on this, is really what you're doing behind this kind of veil of insight into how to be an entrepreneur or what have you, is really spiritual wisdom.

I mean, that's kind of like you try not to highlight it too much or hit it on the nose. But behind everything you're saying, it all kind of begins and ends with getting right with yourself and doing the inside work first as a preface to anything that follows. Well, I think that's very true. And I'll tell you there's kind of a secret twist to it, which is that I think the word spiritual, and we can think of other words like this. So there's words like spiritual, God, religion, divine, meditation.

All of these are sort of evil words. I don't mean evil like, you know, maybe evil is the wrong word, but they're sort of like ugly words in the sense that people say, oh, I'm not spiritual, I'm more scientific, or I'm more rational. You know, as if spirituality is the opposite of a rational mind, or God is the opposite. You know, people think of God as like this old man with a beard, which they were taught when they were six years old. You know, I think that's the opposite of living a rational, productive life.

And that has nothing to do with productivity and entrepreneurship. But the reality is to succeed, you kind of have to. And by success, I don't mean financially. I mean, just in general, being a happy, you know, self reliant person, but to succeed, you kind of have to know who you are. And that's at a very deep level doesn't mean this is my address. It doesn't mean this is what I look like. It doesn't mean this is my weight or how much money I have in the bank. Who are you might be is a very complicated question. And

lots of people have tried to answer that through the millennia. And so what I do is, I kind of take my personal story, because that's the only story I can really vouch for. And I sort of run it through a filter of, you know, well, you know, based on everything I've read, or experienced from others, you know, particularly in this spirituality realm, you know, how can I translate that into my own experience without using words that scare people off? Like, oh, you know, chant in Sanskrit and you're going to get these results. Well, I don't want to do that. I want to speak English and I want to understand myself. I don't want to sit like how they sit in Tibet

because it's very hard for my legs. So I want to do what Americans do and what I do and still feel like I'm moving forward and understanding myself. So you're right. There is kind of a spiritual backbone to everything I write. And often I'll directly refer to texts written maybe 3000 years ago, but not specifically reference them because nobody wants to hear from them. They want to hear what the modern version is. And that's what I tried to talk about. Well, I think it's very astute. And it makes your writing accessible to everybody. Whereas, you know, just just the mere mention, like you said, of using the word spirituality Whereas, you know, just the mere mention, like you said, of using the word spirituality,

immediately, you know, bells go off in people's minds and they just tune out. Like, they don't want to hear about it. But you have a way of getting that across without really, you know, referencing it too directly. And I think it's very powerful. Yeah, thank you. And I agree because there's also kind of a psychological aspect where if something resonates over time,

then chances are it's touching something very deep inside the human vein that runs through all of us. So, for instance, I'll just use a modern example. Take a song like the Beatles song Yesterday. That's a very beautiful song. Most people like it when they hear it. Most people recognize it. Take Justin Bieber. If Justin Bieber were to do a cover of Yesterday, it would probably be popular among both kids and adults just because it's already survived the test of time. It's been a popular hit song for 50 years. So Justin Bieber can piggyback on that and make a song that appeals somewhat to adults. So by referencing, let's say, texts written by, I don't know, I'll just use an example out of a hat, like Buddha or yoga or whatever that was written 2,000 years ago by referencing

some of these texts, but without saying Buddha said, you know, or Confucius said, you know, without specifically, you know, saying who said what and really translating it into the modern language, it's still going to resonate with everybody, just like it did 2,000 years ago. Well, yeah, I think that's true. And, you know, I want to know where this all began for you. I mean, I want to talk about Choose Yourself. I want to talk about all the many, many things that you do in this sort of polyamorous kind of way. But, you know, what kind of catalyzed your interest in these sorts of things? Well, I've always been interested in it. And I always think, and I can ask the same question of you. Let me ask this of you. When did you become interested

in becoming like an ultra athlete? Well, I mean, that journey really was kind of forged out of the crucible of pain. In my experience, I'm very reluctant to change at all, like good habits, bad habits, whatever. It's not until I'm in a sufficient enough amount of pain that I'm willing to look in the mirror and kind of take inventory of what I'm doing. through drinking drugs and alcohol, where I reached a point where that was no longer working in my life and I was in enough pain to sort of entertain a new way of living that was premised on spiritual principles. And then in my professional life, well into recovery, kind of reaching a point where I was living a life I didn't want to be living, and it became so intolerable to me that I had to figure out a way out of it. And for me, it all begins and ends with finding a spiritual connection to something as a lifeline.

Well, and when you were a kid, did you grow up under any discipline? No, no. I mean, I was not the kid who's like, you know, sort of attracted to reading those kinds of books or thinking big thoughts. I mean, we went to church, but it was really kind of more of a social thing. And I never really connected with that. So it wasn't until, you know, into my 30s where this became something interesting to me. Well, it's interesting because I always feel some of our passions, we plant the seeds when we're a kid. So maybe some aspect of what you do now, I'm absolutely convinced when you were 10 years old, you were kind of fantasizing about having a life around some aspect of what you did end up doing. Because it does seem clear to me now

that you're doing something you're passionate about. And I'm sure there's aspects there that date back, you know, 20, 30 years or longer. Yeah, most likely, I'm sure. I mean, and I think part of the condition of the condition of the alcoholic, I mean, there's there's plenty of people that say, you know, you're you're so uncomfortable in your own skin, you're seeking solace and answers in other ways and unhealthy ways. But there's an there's an inherent seeking nature to that, I think that is somewhat applicable. Yeah. And so, so when I was a, when I was a kid, um, I was really interested in spiritual texts and, but not, but for very selfish reasons, I wanted to learn how to astral project, you know, which is this idea that you can project your mind out of your body.

Right. So the Yoda thing is more apt than I might have originally imagined. Yeah. It could be. Except for the fact that my entire goal was I wanted to astral project into the homes of my friends who were girls and see them naked. So I was obsessed with astral projection. I had like maybe 30 different books on how to astral project. And I was trying everything.

And, you know, some of these techniques get very meditative because it was all these 1970s pop parapsychology books. And so what are they doing? They're stealing it all from essentially Buddhism and Taoism and types of yoga and so on. So they're almost doing the same thing of kind of taking these ancient texts and trying to bring them into this Western language. But I had a completely narcissistic, selfish reason for following them. But then I realized what the roots were, which were these, you know, texts like, you know, Taoism and Buddhism and the Yoga Sutras and so on.

And so I basically went to the source and started reading them. And I began meditating on a daily basis. And this is at a very young age. And then college would come. And then I actually did finally get to see a girl or two naked. So I lost interest in meditation at that point because relationships became much too complicated for me to handle, particularly when I was being silent for an hour a day. And, you know, then I got involved in business and entertainment and all sorts of other things. I basically had a very varied career that's gone from one end to the other, you know, all over the place, from entertainment to business to writing and so on. But always there was this undercurrent of, you

know, always interested and open-minded in spiritual texts and reading about them and seeing how I could integrate them into my life, sometimes for selfish reasons. But, you know, as they say, God works in mysterious ways. You're never totally selfish if you're trying to improve yourself, because when you improve yourself, you also improve the lives of the people around you. And that's something that I've really learned from. But more recently, in the past, I guess it was like four years ago, I was not doing great. I was not doing great. I had been separated and then divorced. I had lost a home. My last few attempts at businesses didn't work out. My last few attempts at books hadn't worked out. I was, you know, where the world was going through a financial crisis. So I was an optimist. So TV was no longer interested in having my pretty face on. And so I just started, I said, screw it, I'm just going to write what I'm what's happened to me, and what I'm interested in. And I don't care what anybody thinks. And I integrated this in with my spiritual practice and my writing

practice. And the result was both my blog, and my ongoing books and then blogging for other websites. And it's really built up a nice presence across the World Wide Web. Yeah, it's amazing. I mean, your stuff is everywhere. It's almost impossible to avoid you popping up when I open up my browser. You're so prolific in your writing. And your work ethic must be amazing because you're continually cranking out these blog posts that go viral. I mean, they've really struck a chord, and I think it really goes back to this issue of honesty, authenticity, really allowing yourself to be vulnerable in a way that most people aren't.

I mean, I think the sort of podcast analog to that is Marc Maron. Have you ever, do you listen to Marc Maron's podcast ever? Oh, yeah. And I've been, I used to listen to Marc Maron when he would perform on Ludlow Street in Manhattan back in 1996. And I'm an all-time fan of Marc Maron. Right. And so for people who are listening who don't know, I mean, he was at a real low point in his life where he just thought everything was over and everything that

he had tried wasn't working. And and and honestly, and he he, you know, sort of turned on his microphone in his garage and just started talking openly and honestly and allowing himself to be vulnerable because he didn't have anything else to do and didn't know what else to do. And I think that is aside from the fact that he's, you know, hilarious, wildly entertaining and a fantastic interviewer, it's that vulnerability, I think, that's allowed his podcast to kind of, you know, ascend to the top of the rankings, why he's been able to find an audience. And I think that that is, you know, why your writing has really struck a chord with people. I think that's true because,

and just to continue on Marc Maron, let's say it was 16 years ago, 17 years ago, he wasn't as vulnerable. He was still funny. I mean, he was just as funny then as he is now. His humor has matured, but he was a professional comedian then. But his humor was much more angry and political and um message driven and i think the vulnerability now stands out a lot more than it did then and people relate

to that because you know this is a hard world to live in like when i started blogging you know i was depressed i was down, like, like bad things were happening. And not just for me, but for the entire world. And not just for the entire world that day, but for like a decade, like there was the dot-com bust. There was 9-11. There was corruption with Enron, WorldCom, housing bust, financial crisis, Madoff, two wars, like, and it just kept getting worse and worse. And then I was thinking to myself, why, you know, when I started blogging, also, I think even the stock market then was having a 20% or 30% downturn. And, you know, it just felt bad.

Everything felt bad. And I felt like nobody liked me. felt bad everything felt bad and i felt like nobody liked me and so i i found through writing that it didn't make the people people still didn't like me but suddenly i made new friends and again totally self-serving i kept writing because it was the only way i can reach out and touch people and have human connection with people who, who suddenly I respected, who respected me. And, you know, we, part of the, you know, two things that we very much want in life is, is love slash human connection and a sense of achievement. And suddenly I found that I was getting both of those. Now, I think there's a third thing that's deeper, which is to have

kind of a spiritual connection to your, your deeper self. But, you know, that is like an ongoing process. Whereas the writing for me was directly getting me this sense of achievement and, you know, feelings of whether they're false or flimsy or not, feelings of love and attention from the audience, many of whom became my friends. Right. Well, it provides a way for people to emotionally connect and relate because, you know, in the deep recesses of everybody's psyche, you know, we all share these feelings of fear and insecurity and vulnerability and we're just afraid to express them. And the courage that you demonstrate in doing that and being fearless in that regard is why it resonates. It's the human condition. Yeah, it's the human condition. And so many people

are afraid of it. I'll tell you two common comments that people have. People say, well, in order to succeed, don't you have to be dishonest? You know, you have to be cutthroat. And of course, the answer is no. In fact, it's the exact opposite in most cases, you know, 99% of the cases. Another thing, question that people have is, well, how can you say all this? Won't people hate you? Or won't people refuse to give you opportunities? And the reality is, because people know, I'm impeccably honest, you know, and I'm stealing that a little bit from the book, The Four Agreements. But because I'm impeccable about the honesty and also I endeavor never to hurt anybody, people know that they can trust me. And that's given me more opportunities now than I've ever had in my life.

And I've, you know, I've built and sold businesses. I've built businesses, sold them, gone broke, built again, sold them, gone broke, built again, and so on. But now I've had these opportunities that have been really kind of different in style because people are coming to me, not because I can program something or do something very specific, but because they know I'm an honest, trusted source. very specific, but because they know I'm an honest, trusted source. And, you know, I tell people quite honestly, if there's some other reason that they're interested in, you know, hiring me for something or paying me money for something, then I'm not interested. I've turned down many opportunities as well. Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, in my own experience, when I was setting out to write my book, at the same time that I got my book deal, I was made aware that the most famous accomplished ultra marathoner in the world was also writing

his memoir at the same time, who also happens to be vegan. And I thought, well, who's going to buy my book? I've never even won a race. I'm not nearly as accomplished as this other guy. There's no reason to buy my book when you can buy his book. So why am I even writing this? And I knew I had this moment where I knew that the only way to do it, the only way that my book would work, that its success was inherently related to the extent to which I was willing to be vulnerable and honest and talk about things I wasn't proud of and, and, and, and give it a human, you know, you know, give it the, give it a deep sense of the human, um, condition and in hopes that somebody could sort of relate to that if they were going

through a similar experience. And, you know, that technique, and it's not a technique, it's almost sounds bad to call it a technique, but I'll call it that anyway. That works 100% of the time. I'll give you two examples. So I don't know if you know Kamal Ravikant, who wrote the book Love Yourself. So Kamal calls me up. He had been sick for a while. And then he calls me up and says, I had this experience where I was really sick.

I thought I was going to die. And for a year, he was sick. And I just started saying in the mirror, I love myself. I love myself. I love myself. And gradually, I stopped being sick. And that was the medication that worked. And I said, Kamal, you have to write this down in a book. And he said, well, no, I'm a little nervous what my venture capitalist friends in San Francisco will think of me. And I said, Kamal, I don't even hit publish unless I'm afraid what everyone will think of me on this. I have thousands of posts that I've written because I keep the muscle going, but where I'm not really afraid to publish them, so I don't publish them.

And so Kamal wrote that book and it became a bestseller so it was great so that was one example another example I don't know if you know uh Matthew Barry he's a commentator on ESPN about fantasy sports he has a million followers on Twitter and Facebook and so on so he wrote a book uh The Fantasy Life and he was saying to me um you know there are plenty of people who knew more about sports like for instance ex-athletes know more about analyzing sports or guys like uh bill bill james or nate silver who analyze you know sports statistics for fantasy sports they knew more than me but so he said and he's a professional writer he had written on you know the the sitcom

married with children he said i wrote i took my own personal stories and combined them with my knowledge of my i love fantasy sports he said and i mixed the two together and started writing and i built a huge audience which you know he's built he he created out of scratch a career being the fantasy sports commentator in social media and on espn and everything. So that's the secret ingredient is authenticity. And I think you said your quote was honesty drives success. It totally does. And again, it sounds almost selfish to say that, oh, he's just being honest to be successful. But, you know, I want to be successful, again, by being happy. I don't

necessarily care what's exactly in my bank account as long as i'm feeding the people around me i don't care uh you know i live very modestly i don't own a boat or go on these massive vacations or whatever i like to just read and write every day um but uh honesty has opened so many doors of success and it's opened the door into myself where I really am able to analyze, or I hope on a daily basis, sometimes not so daily, but I, I really make it a practice to try to say what's happening inside of me that bothers me. What do I like? Uh, what am I growing from? And I try to then emphasize

in my life the things that I'm growing from and the things that I like. I've heard you talk about how you start every day, or at least for a period of time in your life, you would start every day by sitting down and just writing ideas out, as many ideas as you could think of in a given period of time. Yeah, so this started, I mean, I guess I've always been kind of doing it, but it really started as a daily practice. practice in 2002. I was, it was another time when I was, it was the first time I was really dead broke. Like I had, I had sold my company in 1998. I had made millions of dollars. I was like a drunken rock star. I bought like this huge place. I did everything wrong. I invested in all

these crazy businesses and I just essentially lost everything except the except the things that I had to pay enormous monthly expenses for like like my house. So I was losing my house and I didn't have any friends, co-workers, family, nothing. And I didn't know what to do. I really thought I was going to have to kill myself because I had my life insurance policy was so much greater than what I was worth at that point. And I had two children. I really thought it would be much better for them if they benefited from my life insurance policy than by having their father around. I figured my wife at the time could get remarried and they would have a father that way and they would have the benefit of my life insurance policy. So I don't know what stopped me,

but I started every day taking a waiter's pad and going to a local cafe at like six in the morning. I would take a bunch of books with me. I'd read from the books to get different ideas. So I would have like a spiritual book. I'd have a book about games because I always love games. I would take a bunch of books with me. I'd read from the books to get different ideas. So I would have like a spiritual book. I'd have a book about games because I always love games. I would have a good well-written like fiction book. I'd have a non-fiction book with me. And then I would take out this waiter's pad. And waiter's pads are great because you can't like write a novel on them or anything. You have to just write lists basically. They're made for lists and they're cheap. You can buy a hundred for 10 cents each. And I started writing lists of ideas. So I'd write lists of ideas for businesses, lists of ideas of investments, lists of ideas

of books I could write, lists of ways I can surprise my wife. And I always had to do at least 10 because 10's hard. You know that feeling when you've run a bunch of miles and then you're, you know, that feeling when you've like run a bunch of miles and then you're like, oh, I can't do this anymore. But, you know, you're going to get that. That's the point where if you keep on running, you're going to get huge benefit. So that's where the rubber meets the road and you really exercise the muscle. Exactly. And the same thing happens with ideas. People don't realize this.

They understand it with like legs. don't realize this, they understand it with like legs. Like if you don't use your, if you're in bed for two weeks, you'll need actually physical therapy to walk again because your leg muscles will have atrophy that quickly. Well, the same thing happens with the idea muscle. If you don't use it for two weeks, it's your idea muscle is going to atrophy and you need to exercise it before it actually works again, before you come up with good ideas. So every day I come up with, you know, 10 to 20 ideas. I write them down and, you know, I continue that. And when I've stopped doing that, which I have during this past decade, I've always gone broke afterwards.

Without fail, if I stop writing ideas down every day, within about a year I'm broke. And so I really will, right now, because of that practice, and several others, which we can discuss, every six months, my life is completely different than it was six months earlier. It's just amazing. And I'm really grateful for that. And what is it? What is the relationship between the ideas that you write down and the ones that you implement or you take action on? Almost nothing. The real goal of writing the ideas down is just to exercise that idea muscle. Because if you think about it, if you write 20 ideas a day, that's over 7,500

ideas a year. And you're not going to, maybe you'll execute on one or two of those, you know, or I don't know. So the power is what then? The power is just in developing this muscle for the imagination. Yes. So, and it's amazing. It's not because, yes, you'll come up with great ideas for businesses during this process, but even more than that, people come to you with a problem and you'll have 10 ideas for them. Like you become an idea machine. Or you'll get your car will run out of gas in the middle of the desert. And you'll have 10 ideas on what to do there to get to safety.

So you just have ideas all the time. Everything I'm doing, I feel flooded with ideas and I'm really grateful for that. Like that more than anything has been this massive boon in my life. You know, it helps in any situation. Valentine's day, can't figure out what something unusual to do. So I'll come up with 10 ideas there. So just every day there's a new situation where I try to apply this muscle. And then throughout the day I see myself using it. It was interesting. I interviewed the filmmaker Casey Neistat the other day.

Do you know him? Lives in New York. No. He's a big YouTuber. He makes amazing, amazing videos. He just did this one where he's snowboarding all over New York City during the snowstorm last week. That kind of went crazy viral. Anyway, we were talking about ideas, and he said, I don't care about ideas. People come to me with ideas all the time. I'm not interested in ideas.

Ideas are easy. I'm interested in execution. Well, it's interesting because, again, coming up with 7,500 ideas a year could be easy if you're good at exercising the idea muscle. And then, like I said, you're not going to execute on hardly you know, I might want to execute on some of these ideas, I always make two columns. And so on one column will be the ideas, and on the other column is the next step. And now most people get very scared of the next step. But I will disagree a little bit with Casey, and I'll say that execution is somewhat easy because all execution involves is knowing what my next first step is.

So I started in 2006, for instance, a business called StockPicker.com. And it was like a social media site for people interested in stocks. And I built it and we got up to a million or so visitors a month, maybe more. And then eventually I sold it to TheStreet.com. But my next step was simply speccing it out, saying this is what the front page looks like. This is what it looks like after you sign in. This is what a portfolio page looks like. This is what a message looks like. And so I just specced out every page. And that was my next step. And then my next step after that was go on elance.com, put up the spec, find software developers in India, hire one.

So that was my next step after that. Right. I mean that just speaks to goal setting in general. Like you establish this crazy difficult goal, whether it's building a business that you're going to sell to a larger business or running a marathon or something that's out of your comfort zone and then breaking it down into stepping stones that are digestible. Exactly. Like you, you know, I always use the example, Dorothy had no idea what she was going to find in Oz. She had no idea how to, how to, what she was going to encounter along the way, who she was going to encounter along the way. She didn't know anything. And often on the way to Oz, many things happened that sort of almost took her off her path. But

she did know she had to take that first step on the yellow brick road. And it's the same thing. You don't know where your business is going to go. You don't know where you'll end up in six months. You know, it's going to be completely different than you predict because we're horrible predictors of our own future. But you do know what a good next step is for your life. And that's all we ever really need to know. I might be dead tomorrow. I don't live life as if I'm going to die tomorrow, which is a common cliche. But, you know, I do know that all I really need to focus on today is what the steps are today. I need to take care of myself today. And, you know, speaking to your life, I mean, we both grew up in a time where you sort of,

you go to school and then you get a job. And if somebody says, you know, what do you do? You have a very specific answer to that question. And when I look at your life, you've done so many things. It's impossible to sort of quantify or define what your profession is. I mean, you're a VC. You're a hedge fund guy. You're a writer.

You're a blogger. You're an author. You're a novelist. You're an investor. You're a public speaker. You're now a podcast host. Why did you have to get into podcasting and ruin it for all of us by going straight to number one and taking all our traffic away from us? No, no. We're all going to share traffic around. It'll be all good. But I don't know. You know,

it suddenly appealed to me. Chess Master too. You know, yes, Chess Master, which is one of my one of my funner activities. But with podcasting, I figured this could be a lot of fun. I can basically call up anybody I want and talk to them for an hour, and 50,000 people will listen to it, or however many people. And so I suddenly figured, okay, let's try this out. So I started it, and I called up these people that I didn't even expect they would return my calls. And suddenly I'm having fun talking to Matt Barry, the ESPN fantasy sports analyst, or Wayne Dyer, the biggest spiritual author of the past century. You know, or Tucker Max, the exact opposite of the biggest spiritual author of the past century.

So it's been a lot of fun so far. The second it's not so much fun for me, I won't do it anymore. Right. Well, it is super fun. And, and, you know, I think that it's a little bit of a, it's recapturing a lost art form that, you know, the, the art of the long conversation, which I think is wonderful and why people are gravitating towards podcasting more and more. But also, you know, I share that it's's like I have this great excuse to have these amazing conversations with people that inspire me.

And, you know, how else would I be able to have that in my life? I mean, it's enriched my life tremendously. And the idea that other people are listening to it is just a bonus, really. Yeah, it's a really great thing. But that's why, because people are listening to it, that's why many people are coming on. You know, but I'll give you an example. Back in the mid-90s, I pitched HBO on this idea. I said, you do the best original content on TV.

Let's do original content on this new thing called the Internet. And they barely even knew what the Internet was then. And they said, okay, the internet was then. And they said, okay, well, what should we do? And so I pitched them this idea of a web show. And I called it 3am. And it was me wandering around the streets of New York City on a Tuesday night, had to be a Tuesday or Wednesday night, interviewing people I would randomly find at three in the morning. Because, you know, honestly, Rich, if you are outside, you know, in New York City in the morning because you know honestly rich if you are outside uh you know in new york city in the east village on a tuesday night at three in the morning there's usually a a reason

for it and it's usually not a very good reason like there's usually something very uh secretive or insidious happening yeah i've been in that situation yes so so this was a great way and i was a shy person this was a great way for me to just walk up to anybody and say, hey, I'm with HBO. It's three in the morning. And I really want to find out why you're here right now. And of course, I would, you know, just like my astral projection story, I really wanted to talk to, you know, women. And it was good practice for that. But I ended up talking to, I spent three years doing this. And I ended up talking to all sorts of people, men and women, just fascinating from all walks of life that I never would have spoken to otherwise, because they were asleep from, you know, 8am to 8pm. It was only at three in the morning, they would be out. And what happened with that show? Did it ever air? How many episodes did you tape of that? Well, I did about 130 episodes on the internet, maybe a little more, about 150 episodes on the internet.

Oh, for HBO.com? Yeah, for HBO.com. And then I did shoot it as a pilot, which never aired, but I shot an hour-long pilot, which they decided not to air. But, you know, shooting the pilot was a fascinating experience for me. I loved every minute of it. I would say that was one of the best work experiences I've ever had in my life. Right. So you're working in television. You've done so many different things, which kind of brings me to this idea of Choose Yourself, the book that you recently put out, and this idea of this new era that we're living in right now where the gatekeepers have been removed and we have this unprecedented capacity to redefine ourselves or to define ourselves differently outside the boundaries of kind of what society has always sort of set up for us. Yes. And, you know, it's interesting because two things have really happened that make this what I call the choose yourself era, which is that...

Maybe just explain that. Explain, you know, the idea behind the book, the kind of thesis. Yeah. So the thesis is that essentially in this day and age, you have to choose yourself to succeed. So you have to basically, you can't rely on your education. You can't rely on corporate safety anymore. It's no longer the case that you go from cubicle to side office to corner office to executive to private jet. These things don't happen anymore or they're happening less and less. And you have to develop your own innovative ways to develop a career.

So for instance, like how you're developing this podcast and your products and your own audience and brand is around you. You're choosing yourself, Rich Roll, to have a career and you're selecting what that career is. Nobody is giving you a career. No one's saying, Rich, I need a new brand manager for my toothpaste. Can I hire you?

You would say no, because you would say, I'm Rich Roll. I've chosen my own career, and that's what I'm going to do for the rest of my life. And it's just going to keep building in a little cycle, up and down and so on. But I'm choosing myself to have a career. Not because you'll be necessarily more financially successful that way you might or you might not but you can't really trust any other situation like the world turned upside down in 2008 and 2009 everybody got fired everybody who thought they could trust their corporate masters got fired and so the trust went away and you have

to it's sort of like, you have to choose, you have to develop this choose yourself career in order to trust that this is the actual safest way to go. The other thing that happened was, is the technology is finally here, you and I can have a podcast, and 50,000 people can listen. And, you know, we can do this without the intervention of a radio station or a tv network or a music label or a book publisher we can just do this and upload it into the cloud and people will download it because they want to hear what we have to say hopefully and uh you know it's the fact that these middlemen are disappearing that has created enormous, enormous both distress from the middlemen who are being fired and opportunity for the people who are taking advantage of it and the individuals who are choosing themselves. And so the Choose Yourself book is basically how to do it interwoven with my story, interwoven with also some of these spiritual concepts that we're talking about, where it's not like you have to pressure yourself to be the number one guy in

the world at something. Your authenticity, and you mentioned this about your book, your authenticity is what makes you the number one you in the world. And the book discusses that as well. And this idea of removing the gatekeepers and not having to ask permission, right? Like whether you're writing a book, you've written 10 books. How many of those have you self-published? Right. So I've written actually, you know, and I believe it or not, I lose count, which is weird, but I believe it's about 11 books and about five or six of them I published with a mainstream publisher like Penguin, HarperCollins, Wiley, and five of them I've self-published.

And I can tell you I've made a lot more money from the self-published book than from the published books. But, you know, it's interesting to look at the statistics now. There used to be this stigma, oh, he self-published because he couldn't get a big five publisher to publish his books that stigma is over you have people like you know Hugh Howey who published the science fiction classic wool totally self-published it he self-published all his books they're they're best sellers they're brilliant they're great uh theresa reagan has sold you know half a million copies of her thrillers el james 50 shades of gray whatever you think of the book she initially self-published that and sold quarter of a million books before

a publisher paid her a big amount to to publish it so you know the gatekeepers oh you know and then let's look at the music industry macklemore is obviously the best example. That guy refused every single record label offer and still does. And he's got like, I don't know, 600 million views on his YouTube videos that he sells out at all his albums. Like he's totally chosen himself and completely skipped the gatekeepers. Now, it took him 10 years of hard work to do it. But, you know, as he puts it, it took me 10 years to become an overnight success. But that's that's also part of having a choose yourself career. And I think the idea when you really embrace this notion of choosing yourself, it really

expands the horizon in the sense that you don't feel the pressure to define yourself by any one particular thing. Like, you know, we both have podcasts, we've both written books, but you're doing all sorts of other things that in their own right could be considered a singular career. And I'm doing similar things. And, you know, when you're at a cocktail party and somebody says, what do you do? It makes it difficult to answer that question, but it's also kind of awesome to not feel like you have to limit yourself to one thing as your profession. Yeah, it's true. You know, like, what do you say at a cocktail party? When, so I have no idea how to answer this question. Yeah. Like when you have to fill out

that form when every once in a while that asks you what your career is, I write something different down every time just as an exercise in creativity. Yeah, you know, like what a cab driver say, ask me what I want to do. I always say what I initially was, what I went to school for, which is I'm a computer programmer. So that's what I say.

But, you know, recently a company asked me to be on their board of directors. So when they asked me what I do, so the other board of directors are interviewing me. And so when they asked me what I do, well, I'm on the board of directors of a billion revenue public company called Corporate Resources. We hire, you know, millions of people indirectly and outsource them to Fortune 100 companies. So that's another thing I do. Or I'm a writer or a blogger or a podcaster or whatever. And it kind of dovetails into something that I've been sort of studying

and looking at, this whole world of, like, Internet marketing. You know, the choose-yourself ethos sort of requires everybody to be their own personal brand and to kind of effectively market and build their own audience. And when I look around at the resources that are out there, I read all these blogs and look at what other people have to offer about how to build your audience and all of that. I try to take the wisdom behind whatever is being offered. But at the same time, I can't help but become getting turned off at times because I feel like there's this sort of really hard pitch on, buy now, get this free and these sales funnels and all this kind of stuff that reeks of a lack of authenticity. I mean, what is your sort of take on, you know, what you see out there and

what people are trying to kind of push and promote when it comes to getting people to buy into kind of all these techniques? Because for me, it's just about the quality of the work. Like, I just focus on the work and yeah, I want to have an audience, but I'm not willing to kind of involve myself in all this sort of pseudo trickery to get there. Yeah, it's very interesting because on the one hand, I'm fascinated by marketing techniques because, you know, you use a good word, pseudo trickery, because it's trickery, but not quite. And the reason I say not quite is because it has a very strong evolutionary psychology bent. So for instance, why are testimonials so important in marketing?

It's because 400,000 years ago, when you were in a tribe of just 30 people or 30 chimpanzees or whatever, you relied on the social testimony of the other chimpanzees oh this fruit is good it's not poison so it's acceptable for you to eat so there's these strong evolutionary psychology beginnings of every single uh internet marketing technique a hundred percent of them all come from um our evolutionary tendencies. So an entire part of my work is to kind of move past evolution so we can see who we really are rather than what our chimpanzee brains tell us we are. And so I think a lot about these techniques and try to make sure I'm not manipulated by them. But at the same time, you know, when you're trying to sell your products, you have to say, well,

But at the same time, you know, when you're trying to sell your products, you have to say, well, you know, what works and what doesn't work. And so I agree. The most important thing is having a good, authentic work. And so that's what I focus on. I feel that's what my job is. And then if I work with a publishing company, a publishing company is going to use their sales funnels and they're going to use their techniques. Some of them will work because they understand these techniques. Some of them won't work because they're not really that familiar

with these techniques. And I leave it up to them to market my stuff. But again, I'm more fascinated by what can teach me to say no rather than automatically saying yes. So who is trying to trick me? Who is trying to manipulate me? How can I use that and

teach the readers not to be equally manipulated? So you'll see there's many programs out there. You know, here's how you learn how to be an internet millionaire. All of that stuff's interesting and teaches these techniques. But I'm more interested in how to say no to those people because I want to learn how I'm being, how my chimpanzee brain, my animal brain is being manipulated in ways that I don't approve of and what, what comes from a deeper core inside of me. Right. I mean, what would be a good example of that? If you could think of one? Well, like, you know, again, this idea of social proof, which is, you know, using testimonials, Again, this idea of social proof, which is, you know, using testimonials.

That's why Facebook works on advertising and has very high conversion rates. Another one is a very interesting one is the word because. So if you use the word because in a sentence, people are likely to do what you said. So if you say buy my product because it'll make you healthier, people are more likely to buy it than if you just say buy my product. But here's the interesting thing. If you say buy my product because you should buy my product, that is equally as good as buy my product because it will make you healthier. So you didn't even give a reason. You gave what's called placebo information. Buy my product because it will make you healthier. So you didn't even give a reason. You gave what's called placebo information.

Your information was a placebo. And still it has the same statistics as the more useful because. And both of them are 50% higher conversion rates than if you didn't use the word because. Why this is, I don't know. But it's been like tested all over the place and why does that why does that leave me despairing for the human race yeah it's it's despairing for the human race but it's it's it at some point it was a survival technique which allowed us to to evolve and the people who didn't pay attention to because died out and their descendants don't live anymore

so so some some aspect of that turned out to be very important to us in our evolution as a species, but I don't know what that is. So the key now is, though, is because we study these techniques and combined with studying spiritual techniques of mindfulness and heartfulness and so on, the things that you talk about in your blog, because we're aware of these things, I think it can lead us to a higher understanding of who we are as humans and as beings. So we're humans and then we're beings and then we're human beings. So understanding all three of these factors of what makes our entire lives is very important.

Speaking of you being sort of a creative being, I get the sense that you're somebody who's not overly precious with your work. I mean, you're putting out so much content all the time and you make yourself so available to your followers that it kind of reminds me of a principle in Steven Pressfield's book, The War of Art, which I'm sure you've read. Yes. Okay. So there's that famous story in this book, which it's essentially a primer on unlocking your creativity for people that are listening who haven't read it. I strongly suggest you check it out. I do too. I think that book and Turning Pro are really brilliant books. They're amazing books, but there's that sort of famous story in there that I'm sure I'm going to botch in my memory. But it goes something like, you know, somebody who toils

endlessly on their book and, you know, turns it in and is finally ready to rest on their laurels and just sort of gets the response of, good, you finished that? Okay, now what are you writing now? Like just always moving forward and not sort of clinging on to the past or being too precious about anything that you've done, just this constant propulsion of forward momentum. I think three things. One is, yes, as soon as I finish finish something i move on to the next thing so last night i

finished a book that i'm writing uh co-authoring with my wife actually called the power of no we finished the final rewrites we handed it in um and it's not going to be self-published or no actually this is the first time in five books um i'm using a publisher called Hay House, and I like them because they have a very strong readership of people interested in spiritual issues, self-help issues. I don't think any of the major publishers have very strong, cohesive readerships, but Hay House does. Yeah, they do. They also really support their authors quite well. Yes, it's like a family, their authors. They have conferences, they have webinars, and I think their authors quite well. Yes, it's like a family. They're authors. They have conferences. They have webinars.

And I think their marketing is excellent. I don't think the marketing of any of the major publishers is good. Now, I'm going to self-publish in between then and now. And after that book comes out, I'm going to self-publish again. We're just doing that as an experiment. But I started work on my next book today. So I'm always moving forward. You're making me feel terrible about the one book that I wrote two years ago and still haven't moved

too far forward on my next one. Well, but that's okay. You do other things. Like I literally, if I don't write every day, it's like you with running, I'm sure sure if I don't write every day I get stressed and I feel bad and um and I don't like it I really love to to write so so I write I write every single day but as far as being too precious I probably rewrite about 10 or 20 times for every single blog post that I put out there rewrite even from scratch um so I feel much better a lot of people tell me oh i write a thousand words a day i don't care about that at all like uh if someone tells me oh i cut out 400 words a day that's impressive so i always try to cut out like 40 of everything i write and then i feel really good about it. And then I publish it.

And again, using the check, you know, I check the box. Am I afraid to publish this? Yes. Hit publish. And then I move on to my next thing. The final thing I want to mention is on Steven Pressfield himself, his most successful book,

The Legend of Bagger Vance, totally, without mentioning it at all, totally is a rewrite of the 3,000 year old text, the Bhavagad Gita. And he knew that something that resonated for 3,000 years would be a successful novel

now. And so he doesn't mention it at all in the book. But every character is based on a character in the Bhavagad Gita. Everything that happens is related to an event in the Bhavagad Gita. Everything that happens is related to an event in the Bhavagad Gita. It's completely a rewrite. And he knew on purpose that that would propel it to success. And he was correct.

The other thing, too, that strikes me about how you approach your writing and your blog is this tremendous degree of availability that you make yourself available to your followers. You do this weekly Q&A on Twitter and you have this sort of question and answer section to your website and you engage on a very deep level, whereas it would be very easy for you to just write your posts and, you know, not really engage at all. And so what is the, what is, you know, where does that come from? Or what's going on with that? Well, I think part of it is selfish in that, you know, I like the human connection of talking with people and being with people. And the other thing is, I just like, you know, a lot of people are in great pain right now, because of various reasons, whether it's economic or personal or

social, whatever. And I like to kind of, I don't know, maybe it's egocentric of me, but I like to help if I can. And I always start off by saying I'm not qualified to help anybody. But if there's an opportunity where I can help or give my opinion, then I'm happy to do that. Yeah, well, I mean, it definitely comes through. I mean, again, it goes back to authenticity. I mean, there's a very genuine feeling that you get that you really are there, you're being of service. And it's that spiritual equation of when you're truly in service, which I think you are, that that comes back to you tenfold, a hundredfold, a thousandfold. I agree with that, that you, you know, I have a technique in my next book, The Power of No, which I'll describe on right now.

Yeah, what is this about? So the power of no is in general about how we learn to say no in our lives. And by saying no, we accumulate a lot of power. But I specifically address, I have one chapter which addresses the so-called law of attraction, where if you have positive thoughts, then miracles happen in your life. And I have no opinion on that. You know, I do think miracles happen in life, and I do think it's better to have positive thoughts. But what I recommend one exercise, which I call the reverse law of attraction, which is that I'm going to do everything that the law of attraction says. I'm going to think positively, and I'm going to give

it up to the universe, and then I'm going to do the best I can to live my life well. But any miracles that are coming to me, I want them to go to somebody else. I practice thinking that I sincerely hope that these miracles go to people who are better served for them. And I think that that actually is a much better generator of goodwill and real massive miracles in life that you almost build up this karmic bank account that, you know, has infinite ramifications in your later life or even your later day. And so that's what I call the reverse law of attraction. And I find for myself, it works very well.

So it's that kind of give at every level that I think has really big benefits. And is this the subject of The Power of No? Or, I mean, what is the general kind of overarching thesis of this book? The general thesis is that there are many layers of no. There's the kind of no where somebody wants to put your hand on a fire and you say no. There's the no where someone invites you to a wedding in Australia and you say no. And these are hard things sometimes to say no to. But that's at the basic level.

Then there's the kind of what I call the evolutionary no, which we discussed earlier. There's all these ways which we've survived as a species that we no longer need now so so and yet marketers still use them to manipulate us so you learn to say no to those and then gradually you get into more spiritual nose where there's lots of noise there's lots of negative chatter in your head all the time and learning to say no to that and then finally learning to say yes to a deeper silence that actually becomes very fulfilling. And it does become a power which you could use. And that's why I call it the power of no. Yeah, I mean, I think the power of sort of living well begins and ends with your health and your wellness in the truest sense, meaning a balance of mind, body, spirit, emotion.

All of these sorts of things have to be firing on all cylinders, and they have to be in proper proportion and balance with each other. And if you don't have that, like if you don't have that first, then how do you know that these impulses that you're having are going to be sending you in the right direction. So when someone comes to you and says, James, I need to teach you how to start my own company, or I want you to teach me how to make a million dollars, I would imagine your question to them is, well, why do you want that? Let's step back and figure out what's going on with you,

what's driving you right now. Because if something is out of balance, then whatever kind of messages are impulsing that person to move in a certain direction can't necessarily be trustworthy. That's exactly right, Rich. I mean, I always tell people you need to take a step back first and do what you write about in your blog very much, which is make sure are you physically healthy? Is your heart healthy? Make sure are you physically healthy?

Is your heart healthy? Like are you emotionally spending time with people you love and respect and who love and respect you? Are you mentally healthy, which is what I was talking about earlier with the idea muscle? And are you spiritually healthy, which I can translate into, you know, are you grateful for the things that you have in your life? And if you have these four things, and you build a solid base of that with a daily practice of those four things, then and only then can you start to think, well, how can I make a million dollars or how can I get the woman of my dreams or whatever? allows you, I think, to really embrace this choose yourself kind of time that we're living in right now in terms of, you know, where you want to invest your energy, like where is, you know, what is the direction that you want to go in? I've been listening to Brad Easton Ellis's podcast. Have you checked that out yet? No, but I didn't even know he had one. I got to listen to that. Yeah, he's pretty cool cool he gets some great guests

on there and he's he's endlessly fascinating to me but anyway he uh he sort of couches it i mean his he talks about a very very similar thing to you but instead of calling it choose yourself he calls it uh post-empire he's like we're living in a post-empire culture right now where all these rules that used to kind of guide and govern us are kind of out the window. And it's a revolutionary time where we can, you know, embrace new ways of living our life and making a living. And we don't have to be shackled or limited by these gatekeepers. And whether you're a filmmaker or you're a writer, whatever it is that you're pursuing, there's a certain freedom that can be terrifying at the same time, which I think makes

it all the more important that you're spiritually grounded and that you're, you know, emotionally intact and spending time with people that are about, you know, high vibration, etc. It's really true, because when you do a choose yourself career, as I'm sure you've realized, and you've even written somewhat about it, it's there's ups and downs like no matter what you're going to you know fight every demon you've ever had in your life and uh uh being able to deal with that requires you know training and strength and strength at every level not just physical strength and it's hard but but it's also necessary now yeah it is the warrior's path for sure and you will meet your maker and you'll work harder than you ever have but there's a there's a level of

satisfaction and joy in that that you just you'll never get being in a job but it's not easy like look in a job i never would have gotten to talk to you for an hour about all these different things this is this has been great it's fantastic um one thing I want to talk to you about before we close it up is some of your thoughts on education. I mean this is something that's going on with my family right now. We're homeschooling all four of our kids. Oh, that's great. Congratulations. I wish I could do that with mine.

I tell them, let me homeschool you, but they never, they don't want to do it. They don't want to do it? Oh, ours wanted it. They were dying for it. But it's frightening, you know what I mean? Because it's not what I was raised with. It's not what I know or what I'm used to. And I believe in it, and I'm seeing the results.

As my kids get older, I can see the difference. And I know that we're doing a good thing, but it's also very frightening. And I wake up in the middle of the night, you know, am I doing the right thing? I don't want to screw my kids up. You're definitely doing the right thing. If my testimony to this means anything,

not that I know from experience, because I don't do it with my kids, but I see how poor the traditional educational system is. And it's just, it's really heartbreaking to me, actually. Yeah, it's, you know, I don't know what it's like where you live, but it has quite a bit to be desired out here. And I'm not in a position to, you know, spend the kind of money it would require to go to a fancy private school. And I don, I don't know. They're worse. The fancy private schools are worse. Yeah. I went to one of those. I know what that's like. Um, but our oldest is, uh, is 18 and he decided not to go to college, uh, this year and he's

working and he's also serving as my podcast producer. He's been doing a great job. Um, but, um, but I've, I've, I've read some things that you've written and heard you interviewed about your opinions on college, whether not to go to college at all, how times are different now, or at least the idea of considering delaying the prospect of going to college. Yeah, I think, look, right now, as an example, MIT offers almost 100% of their courses online for free. Like the videos, the tests, the homework, the extra readings. Their entire college is online for free. And yet people still want to spend $200,000 to go to MIT when they can have it totally for free.

$200,000 to go to MIT when they could have it for totally for free so you know that people will argue oh well it's a lifetime it's it's the experience of a lifetime you meet such great friends my feeling is you don't a young 18 year old does not need to spend $200,000 to make friends like they'll probably figure out how to make friends for for cheaper than that you know whether it's $200,000 or $100,000 or $30,000, it still doesn't cost that much to make good friends. Second, people say, well, oh, you won't get a job if you don't go to college. That's just not true anymore. I mean, more than 50% of the unemployed don't have college degrees for the first time ever. And this is at a time when they're also graduating with a trillion dollars in student loan debt for the first time ever. So we don't

know what's going to happen. This is a disaster that you have a trillion dollars in debt being held by unemployed people. So it's just a disaster waiting to happen. Second of all, or third or fourth, whatever number we're at, your son, he's learning how to be a podcast producer. He's going to learn so much in the next four years of actual real world situations that will help him make money, that will teach him, that will make him friends, that will build him a network. And when he's 22, he's going to have a skill set and a network that every other graduating 22-year-old is going to have to spend the next 10 years trying to get because, you know, just – this is the prime of his life when he could learn the fastest, when he could learn the most. And they're – you know, most college students, they don't remember anything they're learning in college. I often get – Well, they certainly – they're certainly not teaching you how to be an entrepreneur or to think creatively for the most part.

And I think we're increasingly in a skill-based economy where it's a very specific skill set that is going to get you hired or not, not what school you went to. So, for example, if you know how to use Pro Tools or you know how to use Final Cut Pro and you can edit a movie, you're more likely to get a job doing that than, you know, a liberal arts degree from a college, which, you know, doesn't guarantee you much of anything, I suppose, anymore, or at least not what it used to. No, it doesn't guarantee you anything. Like people, you're right. People are hiring for a skill, not for a piece of paper. You know, and if someone says, oh, what if you're going to be a brain surgeon? Okay, well, then that's different because the law requires you to have gone to school. But I would rather have someone who didn't go to school but has conducted a thousand brain surgeries than someone who went to Harvard. So it kind of suggests that an apprenticeship system would still have worked better than what the law prescribes.

But, okay, you know, for some things, you need a degree by law. I will tell you, I've, you know, speaking of the law, I've spoken at many legal conferences, I have consulted to law firms. You know, if you don't need a law degree to know the law, you don't need a medical degree to heal people. You don't need a computer science degree to program a computer. I mean, I'll give you an example. I went to undergrad and graduate school at some of the best schools for computer science and computer programming. Then when I actually had a job at HBO, it was my first kind of quote unquote real job, my programming skills were so bad that they had to send me to a remedial school

to learn how to program. And I had just studied, you know, in undergrad and grad school, five years of programming and had jobs as programmers in the school. It was, but I couldn't program a real computer in the real world. I mean, I went to law school and I enjoyed law school, but it wasn't too much time spent on the actual practice of law or what I was going to be doing day to day when I got to that big corporate law firm. And I had to learn all of that when I got there. And there's an expectation when you arrive that you already know how to do all these things. And I didn't know the first thing about it. Yeah, it's really sad, the divergence between traditional education and what you actually need to learn to enjoy the world and also what you would enjoy to learn, you know, to have fun on the planet, which is what we're here for. Right. Well, I think we need to get back to more of an apprenticeship type economy. You know, I mean, Hollywood sort of still works that way. And I think it functions well that way. It mean, Hollywood sort of still works that way.

And I think it functions well that way. It's very much a meritocracy in that sense. And it has been. It's never been a place where it relied on the piece of paper and where you went to school. It was all about your work. And no matter who you are, whether you got an MBA at Stanford, you still start in the mailroom.

Right. And, you know, every choose-yourself career doesn't need a college degree. So doing these podcasts, there is no degree for podcasting. No, there is not. Doing a blog that millions of people – Maybe we should create one, though, and then charge people a lot of money to teach them how to podcast. And then you could give them a piece of paper.

Right. Sadly, people will take that course. Yeah. But, you know, like you don't need a degree to have a blog that has millions of readers. These are things that you're going to earn on your own and through trial and tribulation and everything. So I agree. I agree with your approach to homeschooling. I'm glad your 18-year-old is not going to college. I can't think of a better way to start life. Well, I'll let him know. He'll be happy to hear you say that. Excellent. As he produces this podcast. Exactly. When he's listening to this. Maybe I won't tell him. I'll just let him hear it when he listens to the show. That's great. All right. So I'll let you go in a second. But the last thing I wanted to kind of ask you to kind of top it off is, you know, what would you say to somebody who's listening to this

who is in that cubicle and feels stuck and feels, you know, like a prisoner in a life maybe they didn't choose and really can't see their way through it and who's saying, well, choose yourself. That sounds great, but, you know, I can't do that and I've got kids and I've got a mortgage and I've got to, you know, pay the bills and, you know, maybe in the next life. Yeah, sure. I agree with him. Maybe in the next life. You know, I don't say that in a bad way. The next life could be right now. You kind of have to take again that step back and say, OK, well, am I writing down ideas of other things I could be doing? Am I making sure I at least walk 20 minutes a day and I'm eating healthy and I'm sleeping well? Am I happy with my current relationships?

Am I grateful for everything I have? Am I grateful that I have a job, for instance, you know, as opposed to always complaining about my job? This is the beginning of how you start to choose yourself. And, you know, then I. And then I would suggest ways of being mindful. For instance, when you take your 20-minute walk, let's say you live in a city, look at the rooftops. Often people just are glazed, their eyes are glazed, and they mesh with everybody in the crowd on the sidewalks. But take a chance to look at the rooftops around you. It's often where the architect gets to do his flourish after he's finished building all the floors

and see the artistry in the life around you. And that begins to kind of awaken these brain cells so you can start to see your way through this choose-yourself life. I think the more that you can kind of embrace mindfulness as a way of living on a daily basis, that will unlock a certain part of you that you can then begin to explore. So I agree. It's not about going into your boss's office and just quitting that day. It's about starting to put the pieces together about what you might be passionate about.

Because I think that most people, we're in a culture that compels us not to look inward. And so a lot of people, myself included, for many, many years, I didn't know what I had to offer. I didn't know what would make me happy or what I was passionate about because I was so disconnected from myself. So it's been many years of doing that exploration to kind of get from that place to where I am now. So it's been many years of doing that exploration to kind of get from that place to where I am now. So it's not about, you know, an overnight thing. It's a journey that you decide you're going to undertake and you begin to implement these changes slowly over time that aggregate and move you in a new trajectory so that five years later, you're in a very different

place. That's a really important point. It's the small steps. It's that first step on the yellow brick road. Like you can say, oh, I can't. I got the bills to pay. I got the mortgage. That's all true. So just take a small step today. That's all you can do.

All right, man. Thanks, James. Thank you, Rich. Thank you very much for having me on the show. I really appreciate the time. So for people that want to check out James, the best way to do that is to go to jamesaltucher.com. Yes.

Right? And jaltucher on Twitter. Yes. Where else? Choose Yourself, the book Choose Yourself. Yeah, of course. Is that a website too? No, just on Amazon.

Oh, just that. Yeah, definitely. Use the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com buy choose yourself which I don't know that I mentioned I love that book

I just read it on the plane to New York the other day oh excellent and it was yeah I just breezed through it it's fantastic it's definitely a primer on

on how to implement change into your life and improve the quality of your life I recommend everybody pick it up and check it out. So thanks, James.

I appreciate it. Thanks, Rich. All right, everybody. That's our show. Thanks for tuning in. Like I said before, I've been a big fan of James for some time. So it was a real treat for me to get to talk to him. And I hope you feel the

same. I hope you got something good out of that. Before we close it out, a quick announcement. I said it last week. I'll say it again. On a future upcoming episode, I am going to give away five signed, personally inscribed paperbacks of Finding Ultra. How do I get one? Well, send me a question you would like answered via my website. Don't do it on Twitter or Facebook. If you do, it's harder for me to organize everything. So send me an email through my website with a question you'd like answered on the podcast. I'm going to pick five of those. I'm going to read them on the show and do my best to answer them. And then I will award you guys with the five people that I pick with a personally inscribed copy of the book. So do that. I'm not sure when we're going to record that episode,

but probably sometime in the next two weeks or so. Also a couple appearances coming up. If you want to come and meet me in person, hear me give a talk, all that information is on my site at richroll.com. But to recap, April 1st, I'll be at Colorado College speaking at the school there, which will be cool. April 30th, I'm going to be in Burlington, Ontario, not Vermont, Ontario, speaking at the Performing Arts Center for an event being hosted by Edvika Health. And then on May 2nd, in London, Ontario, not London, England, London, Ontario, Julie and I are participating in the Holistic Health Diary retreat with the two girls from the Holistic Health Diary podcast, Jillian Manbeck and Ange Peters. So that's going to be cool. May 4th, I'm doing another event in Toronto. I don't have

the details on that yet, but I should very, very soon. And we'll let you know as soon as I have a website on that, that I can share with you guys. I want to support the show. Of course you do, right? Best way to do that is to use the Amazon banner ad at richworld.com. Just click on that, go to Amazon, buy whatever you're going to buy. It does not cost you a cent extra and Amazon kicks us some commission change and that helps us pay the bills. It helps me pay Tyler, my son, to produce this podcast. So like I said before, you are supporting youth and entrepreneurship when you do that. And again, nothing comes out of your pocket. So it's a great way to support the show. But the best way to support the show is if you've been enjoying it, just tell a friend. That's it. If you want to go to the extra mile,

you can donate to the show. You can subscribe on a weekly or monthly basis and throw us whatever dollar amount you feel good about. And that's all up at richroll.com. So that is the best way to do it. If you want to learn more about getting plant-based, you're plant-curious, you want more plants in your life and in your diet, you can check out our Ultimate Guide to Plant-Based Nutrition. That's up at mindbodygreen.com. It's a three and a half hour online course, three and a half hours of streaming video content. There's an online community, there's downloadable tools, recipes, shopping list, all kinds of good stuff, a free copy of our Jai C.D. cookbook, questions on the forum where we can interact with you and yeah, should answer

most of your questions about how to implement this way of eating into your lifestyle. Of course, go to richroll.com for all your plant power provisions, lots of products there to take your game to the next level, including our newest offering, our t-shirts, our plant power t-shirts. Those seem to be really popular, and I'm so pleased. So wear your affiliation with this lifestyle proudly. And as always, you can read my musings on my blog at richroll.com, like me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.

On Twitter and Instagram, I'm just at Rich Roll. I'm pretty easy to find. And that's it, everybody. So I'm out of here. Thank you so much. Have a great week and choose yourself. You're worth it. We'll see you next week. Thanks. Peace. Plants. Thank you.