The School of Greatness - 133 Mastermind James Altucher Reveals Secret to Success
Episode Date: February 2, 2015"Success is measured in decades, not years." - James Altucher If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes (including all the book links he recommends) and more at www.lewishowes.com/13...3.
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This is episode number 133 with James Altucher.
Welcome to the School of Greatness.
My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur.
And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message
to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness.
Thanks for spending some time with me today.
Now let the class begin.
What's up, everyone?
Thank you so much for joining me today on the School of Greatness podcast.
Now in this episode, we've got my friend back for the third time.
He's actually been on four times, but one of the times he was interviewing me.
So this is the third time we're going to have James back. He's actually been on four times, but one of the times he was interviewing me.
So this is the third time we're gonna have James back.
He's always up to big things.
And I'm asking him some different things than I've asked him ever before.
And in this episode,
you're gonna learn some powerful things.
How he learned to go with his gut
when interviewing all of the guests on his podcast.
We talk about his process for getting his guests
to put their armor down and share their
journey and how you can do this the same when building relationships, why you should never
do work for just money, luxury, or girls.
He makes a specific point and shares some interesting stories on why you should never,
ever be in work or do business just for money for luxury or girls.
I think you guys are really going to like that part. The reactions he has gotten from his family
and friends to what he writes about because he writes and shares very openly why he says you
should never listen to feedback, which is a little bit different than my perspective of listening to
feedback and seeing what lands for you.
So we have a little debate about that, how the gatekeepers have gone away and publishing
and creative work and all the different things that he's been investing in lately and also
what he believes is going to be happening in the future with business trends.
I think you guys are going to get a lot out of this episode.
Make sure to dive in.
Make sure to take notes.
Share with your friends and let me introduce you to the one and only James Altucher.
Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness podcast.
Very excited today.
We've got the man James Altucher on.
How's it going, James?
Lewis, thanks for having me back on the show.
How many repeat guests have you had on your show?
I've only had like three or four.
And you are the one who's now has the most.
I think this is our fourth time on.
Really?
I'm really honored.
Yeah.
Well, because we had you on for Choose Yourself.
Yeah.
Then you flipped the script on me and interviewed me on my episode.
Right.
Then we had you for The No Book.
Yeah, yeah.
Power of No.
And now it's number four.
That was recent, too. Yeah And now it's number four.
And this is number four.
But you're one of the most intelligent guys that I've ever met.
And it's always inspiring to have,
if I can get 30 minutes with James,
I want to take it.
So I was like, James, I'm in New York for the month.
Let's find a time to get you on the show.
And we booked the room, or you booked the room
and now we're here.
So I'm excited to have you back on to hear what you've been up to. It's your one year anniversary,
my two year anniversary of our podcast. You've got two podcasts, the James Altucher Show
and Ask Altucher. And I want to ask you a little bit about the podcast first. I want to ask you,
what's the biggest lessons you've learned about yourself since doing the podcast?
You've interviewed a lot of people.
You've also done a lot of shorter Ask Altrisha shows.
But what is the biggest lesson you've learned about yourself in the last year through this journey?
Not with the books you've written, but just the podcast.
You know, I think two things.
One is sort of internal to me, and the other one is sort of more external, like a different way to live my life.
And the internal thing is that I have to be really comfortable with the person and not be afraid of whenever somebody whenever somebody talking, whenever somebody is talking and I get curious, I have to be comfortable interrupting.
So my first couple of podcasts, people would write to me and say, you're interrupting too much. And I got a little nervous, like, oh, maybe have to be comfortable interrupting. So my first couple of podcasts,
people would write to me and say, you're interrupting too much. And I got a little nervous, like, oh, maybe I shouldn't do that. And I was really catering to the audience. But
then I realized, you know what, I'm just really curious about something he said. And every guest
has their media message that they want to get through. And I have to be able to stop that media
message and get into reality. Like, so I'll just
give you an example. Like, um, and this is like a crazy example. So Coolio, the rapper was on my
show and he starts talking about drugs or he's no, he started talking about how he was going
through some hard times. And I got curious, well, what do you mean? And he said, well, I was taking
a lot of cocaine and I'm like well what happened and he said well
then i got off of it how do you get off of cocaine i don't know how to do it tell me how to do it
so so if something like really makes me like almost um have this urge to find out an answer
i'm never gonna have the opportunity again to ask julio how he got off of sure okay so i'm just
gonna make sure i take advantage of this time because, you know, life is short. It's not like I'm going to call him up afterwards and say,
Hey, yo, I just wanted to chat some more about this one thing. And, you know, that became kind
of an ongoing process where I learned better and better how to just let my curious curiosity run
wild. So like, for instance, when Tony Robbins came on,
I knew he was going to have, and I wanted him to get out his message about the book money and his
problems with how, uh, you know, people deal with their money and the financial crisis and so on.
But what I really wanted to know, Bill Clinton was the first blurb on his book. What the hell
does he talk to Bill Clinton about? Like, why did Bill Clinton call him? And so we started going down that angle.
And it almost, it's like he realized what was happening.
He had this like almost visceral reaction where he shook and he's like, wait a second,
how did we even go down this direction?
And he pulled himself back into the message, which again, was an important message.
I wanted him to express it.
But I was just really curious about what he and Bill Clinton would talk about. Sure. What did he say they talked about?
Well, you know, I think he emphasized that he wasn't into politics that much, you know,
Tony Robbins. But, you know, all of these guys, obviously Bill Clinton had issues in his
presidency where he needed coaching. Yes. And so, you know, and all of them do. And so we started talking about Barack Obama
and George Bush. And and so it was interesting. But that's when he kind of like pulled himself
back because these are very confidential conversations he had had with these people.
Yeah. So but it was interesting. I wanted to know a little bit more about what his life was like,
as opposed to what his message was like, because ultimately people have a message. But that's like
that's like the tip of the iceberg. And then but that's like, that's like the tip
of the iceberg. And then they have, you know, when you see the tip of the iceberg, that's one eighth
of the iceberg. Then the seven eighths you don't see, but that's the part that destroys the Titanic.
So I really want to see what's going on, what their lives are about and not just what
their kind of message is about. So that's important to me.
The thing you said about, you got feedback from your audience,
emails of people saying like, quit interrupting,
or I want to hear the person.
There's a lot of entrepreneurs that listen to my show.
And I think a lot of them are, and I speak for myself,
I think I can be and other people can be susceptible to what others say they want you to do.
And I remember when I started out,
people were like, your music is too loud.
It sucks.
You're interrupting.
This like changed all these things.
So they're giving you constant feedback.
When does an entrepreneur know
to trust their own instincts
or to do what they want to do
and also improve to make it better
to meet the entire audience,
but also not to just take every piece of feedback and apply that and then have no voice.
How do you know?
I think the answer is you never listen to feedback.
So, and I'm going back now across four or five different businesses that I've started.
And if I'm excited about a business, then I'm going to
know more than anyone else what, and I'm looking at all the, because I'm excited, I'm looking at
all the analytics. I'm looking at all the feedback. I'm going to know more than anyone else
what excites me and what I should add. So one time, for instance, I made a business that revolved
around a financial media site and I was getting feedback feedback all the time how to improve this site.
I ignored all of it.
Instead, I would put in the features that I wanted in a site.
I was a hedge fund manager at the time.
I put in the features that I want, that I, a professional financial person, wanted in a site.
And those were the best features.
And those are the features that increase the traffic the most. So now I know when I have a guest on, if I'm curious about something, that's what I'm going for.
That's going to be the best content.
Now, I might be wrong, but I won't do anything that's better, even if I'm wrong.
Right, right, right.
So if I just listen to what the audience is saying, then it's not going to be as good as –
and this is not being arrogant about the audience.
They might have – like one person out of 100,000 might have a specific thing he might want to learn from.
Let's call it Mark Cuban or whoever.
But I know what I want to learn from this person.
And so I'm going to ask it because these might be questions I've had for 17 years about Mark Cuban because I used to work with Broadcast.com, his company, just as an example.
So I might have had questions in my mind for 18 years.
Wow.
And I'm going to ask him those questions no matter what the audience is going to say.
So that's something I got better with myself.
And I've been a professional interviewer before.
For HBO, I did a project where my job was to interview essentially prostitutes on the street at three in the morning. So I had to get really good at just from a cold start interviewing people. And like these people would be in the middle of the night, sometimes with guns or people watching them who are protecting them. And I would just walk up to them and start talking to them. And so I had to get them really comfortable very quickly. And so, you know, now it's almost more difficult now because it's not
like almost everybody I talk to is used to being interviewed. So they get very quickly, their armor
goes on and they have their message that they have to get across. But I don't want the message.
Everybody can read about the message anywhere else. I want to find out who they are, what we've all been through. And Louis, you and I have talked
about this now on every podcast. We've all been through these low, horrible moments. And so I
want to find out from my guests how they got through those low, horrible moments because
everybody in the world has been through them. It doesn't matter how far apart in background they are from me. And I'll bring up again, even though I've interviewed 80 people
or 90 people or whatever, I love bringing up Coolio as an example, because there is no
common ground between Coolio and me at all. Complete opposites. Complete opposites. Yeah,
yeah. And, um, you know, which, and, and it was one of the things that another thing that he said that almost everybody said, which I have to always remember every day for myself.
He said that and I'm going to say what he said and I'm going to translate it.
He said when he in 1977, he started writing down rap lyrics every single day.
So he was a writer every single day, every morning, rap lyrics.
every single day. So he was a writer every single day, every morning, rap lyrics. But it wasn't until like 1993 or 1994 that he had his first hit. And it wasn't until 1995, of course, he had the
best selling song in the world, Gangster's Paradise. So great song. It took a great song,
took him 17 years of writing down lyrics every day to have a hit. And so he even said, if you're doing something
for money or for girls or for luxuries, just forget it. Like, that's not why you do something
you love. Now, you could do something for money, but it might not be the thing you love.
And you did a lot of those things and it didn't work out at the end.
Right. Or you went broke or something would go wrong.
Something would go totally wrong
because I was so unhappy
doing these things
and I would deal with people
I didn't like
and just from there on down
it goes bad.
What do you say?
Money, luxury, and girls?
Is that what you said?
Yeah, yeah.
So, you know,
here's a guy
who wrote every day
just because he loved it
and then he became
the best in the world.
And then when he was
breaking down Gangster's Paradise, he was saying, saying okay we combined a little bit of burkeen
we kind of combined a little bit of these this 80 big daddy came we combined a little bit of
what was coming up there was some singing there was some talking so he really knew the subtleties
better than anyone in the world and that's why he had the best hit in the world in 1995. So,
so that's just one example. Every single person I spoke to had examples like that, where success
cannot be measured like, Oh God, did I write something good today or bad today or whatever?
You could only measure success in decades. Like you can look back when you're like 30, 40, 50,
has my success happened because of things I've done over the decades. Now it can look back when you're like 30, 40, 50, has my success happened because of
things I've done over the decades. Now it doesn't mean like I've done different things in my life
every year. It doesn't mean you do the same thing. Now, cool. You'll happen to have done the same
thing, but a lot of people do different things. Mark Cuban's an example. He did broadcast.com for
like three or four years. He did a hedge fund. He owns a basketball team. He owns a movie company. So he does lots of things. But for him, the overriding umbrella, I think, is he is so
savvy about business. You know, people say all the time, oh, Mark Cuban got lucky. He sold at the top
and he sold the shoes. That guy did not get lucky once. He works hard. He works hard and he knows.
Like he had a hedge fund in the mid-90s. Most people don't know this about him.
He knows when to sell his stocks.
And he knows when markets are topping out.
So he knew exactly what to do every step of the way.
There was no luck involved.
Wow.
And again, but that was over the course of a decade.
He had a bar.
Then he had a software company.
Then a hedge fund.
Then Broadcast.com.
Now he knows in all these different areas.
He's got to apply the lessons to everything. Yeah. Interesting. Something that came up for me
during this is, first off, when I'm speaking of feedback, you said never listen to feedback
or something like that. But is there ever a moment where you should listen to feedback?
And when all of your customers are like, we want this, or when there's feedback that what you're
doing isn't working and that alone should
be the feedback to shift something or to adjust. Is there ever a time to listen to feedback? Because
I actually think you should listen to feedback, but you should only listen to, you should only
apply what lands for you. I think that's a good way to put it. So like listen to all the feedback,
but don't shift and change to all the feedback unless it really like hits you like, okay,
I could see this working.
You know, like I've been going through something recently where, you know, I see a lot of podcast work where they bring on a guy that, you know, all the guests, 100 percent of the guests are people who have gone from zero to millions.
And those are always good podcasts.
And it's always interesting to see.
But I haven't really been that interested in that lately. My interests lately have been I've been having a lot of writers on and a lot of people who do many things.
Unique individuals, yeah.
Yeah.
So my most recent guest or one of my most recent guests is a guy who he's done a lot of screenplays.
He worked in the film industry.
But he was feeling somewhat bottlenecked.
He wanted to really write fiction.
So he talked about the process of writing his first novel.
And that was interesting to me.
It wasn't the typical kind of zero to 10 million story.
And I wanted to learn about his process.
I wanted to learn about what he did because, you know, he was busy with his full-time job.
How did he find time to, you know, he was busy with his full time job. How did he find time to,
you know, write a novel? So that was something that was really interesting personally to me.
And if I had just gone by what I see in the analytics of the podcasting world,
I probably would not have had him on. But it was just so interesting to me. He basically
the guy's name is David Levine. He basically wrote his novel on the commute to work.
And it was very interesting because he said, I was on the commute to work from Connecticut to New York.
And everybody was either sleeping or reading the New York Post or whatever.
And I didn't want to just waste this hour back and forth each day.
And so he took out his laptop and he started writing.
And within three years, again, success is measured in years or decades.
And he wrote a novel that became a bestseller.
Amazing.
Yeah.
So people always say, oh, I don't have the time to do that.
Here's a guy who it was so important to him to write fiction that he got it done and he wrote it during that time.
And he had two hours a day to do it.
Two hours a day to do it.
Look, I commute also.
I see what he's seeing.
But it's hard.
You think to yourself, oh, I woke up so early.
Now I'm commuting.
I'm tired.
But he just forced himself to do it.
Yeah, it's interesting.
So you learn a lot by getting all types.
And also you learn a lot by following your passion.
So look, I'd like to write a novel maybe.
Or I'd like to do stand standup comedy. So I would have
comedians on, or I'd like to, I don't know. Um, look, I wanted to be an astronaut as a kid. So I
had an astronaut on my podcast, like, and what was great here again, it's the measure it in decades
and not years. He applied for NASA for 15 years in a row and they rejected him every time. And so finally,
on the 16th try, they accepted him. And then it's another bunch of years after that before you don't
even know just because you get into NASA, maybe they just put you in the engineering room. You
don't even know if you're going to go into space or not. So it was another several years after that.
And finally, he became an astronaut. So crazy, like 20 years after he first started, probably 40 years after he first wanted it.
And, you know, things like that are important to me because often I think I judge myself.
Not only is the feedback from my audience affect me, but my feedback for myself, I judge myself too harshly.
And, you know, Lewis, we just spoke about the importance of having friends and family and people around you who love and support you.
This is the most important thing that's underneath all of this, which is you can't write lyrics every day for 17 years with no success.
You can't apply for NASA every year for 15 years with no success.
You have to have people around you who say,
I believe in you, I love you, I support you,
maybe here's what you can do differently,
and that's what you're talking about,
like does this land well with me?
But it's constructive criticism as opposed to like,
oh, this sucks, you should do it this way.
So, you know, we all are social creatures.
You know, we grew up, when I say we grew up,
Homo sapiens for 3 million years or for hundreds of thousands of years grew up in tribes. We
survived in a tribal structure. We need the help of the tribe and the people we surround that we
have around us are our tribe. And that's, we're fortunate enough now because we live in a big
world that we can pick and choose.
We don't have to just hang out in the tribe we're born in.
We can pick and choose who are the members of our tribe that we're going to try to conquer the world with.
And I think that's another critical thing I've learned.
Some of the most successful people that I can think of are really good at asking the right questions.
think of are really good at asking the right questions. And through this process of my podcast,
I feel like I've gotten better at learning how to ask the right questions where I'm going to get the most knowledge away from it. You've got a lot of years on me, a lot of experience of asking
questions. And I think of like Oprah and I think of any talk show host who's really good at it.
Larry King, I think he was really great at it as well, still is.
I think, you know, Howard Stern's really great at it. He is good. It's was really great at it as well, still is. I think Howard Stern's really great at it.
He is good. It's just a different result that he's getting from people.
A lot of people don't like the results that he's getting. So what I do, and I don't necessarily
know one way or the other, but when I watch a Howard Stern interview, it's really fascinating
to see how he, he's very curious. It's interesting to see
at first the guest doesn't want to tell him what he wants to hear. So he backs off,
but then he gets back, he finds another way to get back in there. So he is the master interviewer,
I think. What have you learned about asking questions and creating an environment? Because
I think when we just did our interview,
you create a great environment for me to feel open and wanting to share. How did you learn how to
create the environment to ask the right questions? And then how do you know what questions to ask?
You know, so whether it be a podcast or business or relationships or whatever, just in life.
Right. So I'll answer the second question first. So research is everything.
So, you know, usually before a podcast,
I'll read everything that they've written.
I'll be able to break it down.
I'll know what they've written
maybe even better than they know what they've written
because once they write something,
people forget it.
But, you know, when I had Nassim Taleb on my podcast,
I had read everything he had written, including like some of his more esoteric mathematical stuff, just to kind of compare and
see the direction his thought had gone over the years. And then to kind of take it another level,
like he wrote this book, Anti-Fragile, about how economic systems would be stronger if they were
built so that if they were hit hard, they would actually
become stronger as opposed to the U.S. economic system, which he says fell apart when it was hit
hard. But I didn't want to know about economics. I took it one step further. I thought I was fragile.
So I don't really get colds, for instance, or I don't get sick or anything. I've never been
to a hospital. So, yeah, so not going to worry. So I asked him,
what should I do? I'm afraid the second I get sick, I'm just going to completely collapse.
Like I'm just going to be a pain in the neck. I'm going to get even more sick. I'm not going
to know what's going to happen. And he actually suggested you should try to figure out how to
get like a little bit sick so that you can build up your immune system. And he said, for instance,
so he had never written about this in his books,
but he started talking about his own personal anti-fragility system.
Like he would walk on rough, like he said, our ancestors didn't walk on flat surfaces.
So he would walk on like, yeah, or just in general, like hills and stuff for 20 hours a week.
So that's his exercise program. Uh, and you
know, we would talk about different things like that, or, or he talked about the paleo diet. He
said, paleo is fine, but it's not paleo. Our ancestors did not eat a solid breakfast, lunch,
dinner. Often they would go for, you know, a day or two without eating if they hadn't been
hunting or gathering or whatever.
So if you really want to do paleo diet, you have to be anti-fragile in how you eat. You have to fast occasionally. So, you know, we talked about all the, so that's how you get the research got
me interesting questions there. Other times it's just what I'm so curious. I'm just annoyed. Like
they're not telling me something and I need to know. So, you know, so for instance, Peter Thiel, we had a podcast scheduled and it was a great podcast. One of my favorite podcasts and his book Zero to One is an amazing book, like a real eye opening book, but he was an hour late for the interview. And I'm fine with that. Like he's a busy guy. I actually wasn't so busy that day. So I was totally fine. Um, but what I really wanted
to know, or the very first question I asked is what were you doing the past hour? Like I needed
to know. And he told me he was looking at, um, you know, advances in kind of, uh, financial
technology, which started my, which is what he's always been doing. Like PayPal, of course,
was an advance in financial technology. So what's the next step in that? And it made me start
thinking about that in terms of my own investing and thinking and so on. So if I get really curious
about something, I really want to know what the answer is. What's something... So I want you to
think about the first thing that comes to mind when I ask you this question. What is something that you've been wanting to share about yourself that no one's
asked you? You know, I share so much on my blog that- You do share a lot and your Facebook posts
are great. Yeah, thank you. I actually don't even use my blog anymore. I use Facebook as my blog anymore i use facebook yeah my blog like i barely post to my blog anymore but i share so much there that i don't even know what i haven't shared there like you know one
thing is i don't ever uh i don't ever want to harm anybody sure you know i never want to say
anything bad about somebody which maybe is a cop out but i think you can you can be sharing without
hurting somebody yeah yeah um Because that's often you wanting
revenge rather than you really hurting somebody. So I never talk about my ex-wife, really. I rarely
talk about my kids. One time I did actually say something embarrassing about one of my kids,
and she called me on it and she was upset. So I never say anything bad about my kids.
upset. So I never say anything bad about my kids. Um, but even then, is there any questions that,
uh, that you wanted to answer that you haven't verbally? No, I shared it all. Nothing. I mean, people ask and I usually just answer like, uh, uh, I don't, I don't really say why I got divorced.
I don't really say, um, you know, I don't really talk much about my family.
You know, a lot of my family has not liked my blog and how much I've shared.
So even if I don't say something about them, they don't like the fact that it happened so revealing.
And so they'll, in many cases, people close to me have stopped talking to me.
And I usually don't talk about that.
Sure.
You know, one, I had a post that was very
anti-war and it's not that I'm against the soldiers. It's not that I'm against any
politicians. I'm just, I just simply would never think of a scenario where I would send my 15 year
old daughter to a war. Yeah, that a simple conversation could resolve.
Right.
And so one really close friend of mine took that to mean that I was for slavery.
Yeah, yeah.
So because that must have been, because he concluded I must have been, I was against
the Civil War, so it must mean I'm for slavery.
And he literally stopped talking to me.
And so I did call him and I say, don't you think, you know,
we've known each other 20 years.
Don't you think you should have,
you obviously know I'm not for slavery.
Like, don't you think you should have called me
before saying what you said?
And, but anyway, he doesn't talk to me anymore.
When I, my first interview was with Robert Green,
who I think, you know,
Yeah, I've interviewed him too.
Yeah.
Great guy.
And he talked about, you know,
we were talking about,
it takes like decades to be successful, years, sometimes decades, like you said.
He talked about how it took him decades to really figure out what his greatest asset was and what his greatest skill was, I should say, which is writing these unique type of books that he writes now.
Because he was first like a copywriter and then a TV show writer, then a movie writer and like doing different
things. And he wrote, I think novels or something like that. And now he became,
he figured out his niche, like his greatest skill, which is writing these type of books.
And they're very effective for people. Yeah, they're excellent.
What do you think is your greatest skill right now after decades of building businesses and making millions and millions,
losing it all multiple times, having a family, successful podcast, being in the media,
hedge funds, advisor, investor? What do you think is your greatest skill right now?
I think my, and it's hard to know, but I think my greatest skill is figuring out what specifically has worked for me in bad times and then communicating that in a way that's entertaining so that then people are in the worst case, they're entertained.
And in the best case, they could say, oh, this worked for James.
This may or may not work for me, but I might want to try it and see.
And then I've gotten the feedback now over the years
that often things that have worked for me
have worked for others.
So that's a case where I do build upon that
and I say, okay, this is feedback that is useful to me
because now I should tell more entertaining stories
and combine it with what's worked for me
and whether it's succeeding or coming out from a low
point or so on. So I've been very good at that. Like someone says to me, oh, I've got to negotiate
this situation. And I say, OK, well, here's what happened to me in a similar situation.
Here's how I negotiated it. Take it or leave it. You know, but that's my only it's not really
advice. It's just what I did. So I always say, I never give advice. I just say what's worked for me and people should just try what's worked for them.
That's good. But, but I have been through so many different types of situations. Now
I kind of, um, immerse myself in different situations cause I get interested in something
and then I get passionate about it. Like you said, you got passionate about handball and you read everything, you watched everything, you did everything, you showed up at the coaching
sessions. And I do that too. And I do that with, unfortunately, I probably do that with too many
things, but I've done that with lots of different things. So some things I got good at, some things
I didn't get good at. Right, right. You know, I love reading your Facebook posts because I feel like you talk about a lot of great lessons that you've been through, usually hilarious lessons.
And your headlines are always incredibly hilarious.
I just want to, like, save them and use them for something.
But I also follow you a lot on Facebook because I always feel like you're speaking into what we should be looking forward to in the future, what might be happening in the future.
And we were talking about trends with why we started our podcast earlier.
I'm curious to get your thoughts on what do you think is going to be happening over the next couple of years in business?
And what do you think is going to be – what will set people up to be successful and to win in their business if they do what things?
You know, it's interesting because a lot of people that we know, including you and
potentially including me, are in the information products business.
Yes.
And that's really great because that's one trend that has gotten bigger and bigger,
particularly in the past five years, and it's just going to only get bigger.
And the trend is basically all the gatekeepers have gone
away there's there still are publishers there still are TV networks there still
are creative agencies but they're like the walking dead like they don't know
that they're already dead because you could just publish something and you
don't even have to publish on Amazon you can just publish it on your website and
I mean Louis CK.K. does this.
Before he releases something to HBO now, he publishes it for $5 on his website, and you can just download it there.
And so all those gatekeepers are gone.
I think that's an important trend.
I think everybody who thinks they need to be chosen should take a look around and decide not to do that.
And book publishing is the most obvious.
Like E.L. James' Fifty Shades of Grey,
that was originally self-published.
Hugh Howey's Wool, which is going to be a Ridley Scott movie,
that was originally self-published.
The Martian, which is like the most popular science fiction novel
this year by Andy Weir, that was originally self-published.
You know, and then you could kind of pick and choose
who's going to publish it. You know, you put out so much work, uh, over the course of years and
then you decide, you know, what, what major media companies who have, but that's your choice. Like,
okay, now I'm going to get distribution to this audience. Not hoping that someone chooses me.
Right. You make them, you know, want you rather than, you know, begging for them to choose.
And only get the deal that I want.
Exactly.
As opposed to being like, okay, I'll take whatever they give me.
Like, for instance, I just had a major publisher call me and wanted to republish Choose Yourself, which has been out for a year and a half.
And sold 200,000 plus copies.
Yeah, over 200,000 copies.
And I explained to her, like, you don't need to do this.
Like, it's already out.
Like, it's already, everybody's already bought it.
And, you know, maybe you can reach a higher audience.
And she's like, no, no, I really want to, we really want to do it.
This is a major publishing company.
And, but then she came back to me with a whole list of questions.
And, you know, it would have taken me like two hours to like figure out her questionnaire.
And so I just decided I don't need that.
Like, I could just put it, it's doing well. It's still a number one in one of its categories. It sells every day. So with other
books, though, I might decide to use a publisher. Who knows? You know, that's one trend. The other
trend that I think is really important, this is hard for the average entrepreneur to do,
but it's something that people should look for. Let me ask you what kind of phone you have.
iPhone 6.
That's an iPhone 6. Why did you upgrade?
I wanted a better camera. I wanted it to be faster. I wanted it to be smaller.
I wanted it to be better in general.
So the iPhone 6 has the same processor in it that a Samsung S3 has.
So it's two years old, that Samsung S3.
So you upgraded to a phone that everybody else got two years ago who were buying Samsung.
Not to criticize your choice.
No, it's okay.
You're tuned into the whole Apple infrastructure, so you wanted to stay with that.
But a lot of people this year, for instance, I did not really upgrade my phone this year because I couldn't really find any differences between last year's models and this year's models.
But if somebody came to me and said,
here's a phone and the battery life could last a month
instead of a day, I'll stand in line to buy that phone.
Yeah, of course.
So, but the interesting thing there is
that's a chemistry problem.
It's not a computer problem.
It's how do we get more out of our lithium
or how do we find another element
to make batteries out of?
So it become, so I think all,
and you see this even at Tesla,
like the, you know, Tesla's considered
almost a tech company
because Elon Musk who comes from a tech background.
So he had a big IPO, raised a billion dollars,
but now he's building a billion dollar battery factory.
So he's moving all this kind of tech raised money
into the chemistry space.
And I really see that's the trend.
And it's not a new trend. It was the
trend for 3000 years. That's how we created agriculture. That's how we created the printing
press, you know, ink that stays instead of washes away. That's how we've created almost every major
invention except for the past 50 years, which was mostly computers. And, you know, this past 10
years was mostly internet. I think we're going to get back into everything being mostly chemistry.
So that's where I'm putting my money, for instance, on investments.
Interesting. Wow.
And again, that's almost something I learned from Nassim Taleb, which is, you know, in my podcast.
He said, look how we do our computing.
He said 3,000 years ago, we were writing on our tablets.
Now what do we do? We're writing on our tablets. So even though it's of course a computer tablet, it's completely
different, but what worked in the past for many years, that's where you can look for the future.
Interesting. You know, that's why the, um, people can't operate and improve on themselves. You said
earlier, you know, you kind of need a coach. And it's because, again, we grew up as a species
in a tribe. You know, there's the saying, no man is an island. It's really true. You can't,
everybody needs someone to listen to. Everyone needs someone to talk to. Everyone needs people
around them who they love. We were talking earlier offline, how the most important decision you can
make is who you marry. You know, this is,
these are all, this is the basics. You know, when people want to know a success, they want to know,
okay, well, how do I make my website? That's not success. The success is who should be the first
person I call on the phone today? Who should be the first person I say thank you to today? Who
should be, you know, how can I sleep better today?
Because, you know, we're human beings where we have bodies, we're not robots. How can I eat
better today and be healthy so I can start coming up with ideas? If you're unhealthy, you're not
going to come up with ideas. If you're not sleeping well, you're going to be lazy during the day
because you're going to be tired and you're going to procrastinate and all this stuff.
So all of these basic things, people need to look back to what the roadblocks,
what the roadmarks for success were for 10,000 years
before they start thinking about,
well, do I need to know Python or Perl to build my website?
It's the wrong thing to be focusing on, yeah.
I want to wrap things up here in a minute.
I want to ask a couple questions left.
If you could talk about, let's say, a couple of things, maybe the three things that are the key to being fulfilled and happy on a mostly consistent basis.
Obviously, things are going to happen and maybe you won't be happy for a day or two or a period of time.
But what do you say, like, the three or four key things that you've seen from all these great people you've interviewed that play into
being fulfilled and being happy a majority of the time. And they're like the simple lessons
that they follow. Well, I think you just said it, which is that you said it twice. You said
the majority of the time and you said, you know, not every day is going to be good. I think people
need to realize that there are down moments that we're humans and just even chemically we cycle.
It's not going to have this dopamine rush all the time in our lives.
You know, if you do that, it's like you're taking cocaine every day and even then you crash.
So, so, you know, you have to realize there are down cycles where you just need to kind of say, OK, I'm having a down cycle and I'm going to sit by myself and I'm not going to try to do anything.
I'm not going to judge myself. I'm not going to I'm going to be gentle to myself and be able to handle that.
And that happens at every level. It happens on a daily level. It happens on a career level.
You're just going to have those moments and it's really important to live through them.
And then it's just these other things that we've been talking about, which is I sleep.
We talked about sleep in the other podcast.
I sleep nine hours a day.
So I sleep very early.
Sleep hygiene is very important to me.
I don't look at a screen for a couple hours before I don't eat for a couple hours before I sleep.
And then I always make sure my most productive work
happens in the morning so not right after i get up but like within two hours after i'm getting up
so that then the rest of the day i could just make sure i have a solid day and close to sleep
nice and then so that and then having strong friendships and being grateful so so whenever I notice a complaint coming up
in my head I try to replace it with gratitude so a classic example that is
let's say I'm stuck in traffic coming into the city I could think to myself oh
my gosh this is horrible why always am I stuck in traffic or I can think to
myself how isn't it so great that I live in such a popular city that everyone else wants to live here, too?
So I'm in the best city in the world and everyone else wants to be here.
So and I call this a difficult gratitude problem.
So solving difficult gratitude problems is a good way of practicing, avoiding complaints, asking good questions of yourself during hard times, and in general,
sort of building those blocks for success. And then of course, I do think reading and writing
ideas down every day is a good way to feed the mind. Just like you want to put good things in
your body, you want to put good things in your mind as well. So I read every day a ton of stuff.
Books or online?
Books only. I don't read anything online.
It doesn't count unless it's books. Yeah. Because again, like if something was written,
like, like let's say tens of thousands of books were written in 1960 or the 1960s, but let's say
15 of those books have withstood the test of time and are now considered great books.
Now I know through millions of critics and readers, these are probably a good 15 books to start with.
So I'll read books published this year, but I like to have some notion that this is something I could dive into, really learn from, really get some knowledge out of.
So there's a few contemporary authors, but mostly authors that are, let's say, a decade or two or more older.
let's say a decade or two or more older.
If you could only leave three books behind your family to say,
these are the books, your grandkids or whatever,
these are the books you got to read.
If you could only read three, what would those be?
Well, they're going to, of course, be three of my own books.
Besides your own, so six books.
Oh, okay.
Because I have three besides your own.
That's a good answer.
My daughters, and I don't say it in like a self-promotional way.
No, that's great. I have asked my daughters to read my books just so this is the advice for them. That's a good answer. My daughters, and I don't say it in like a self-promotional way. No, it's great. I have asked my daughters to read my books just so this is the advice for them.
That's great.
It's interesting because Tony Robbins, I asked him this question, and he said three other books and none of his own.
And I was like, why not one of your own?
He's like, I don't think my books are, you know, as powerful as these other ones or something like that.
And I was like, that's interesting.
Well, you know, that's great.
You said three of your own. I was like, that's cool. Because, you know, you said three of your own.
I was like, that's cool.
I specifically have written my books for my children.
Nice.
So I want them to see they don't always know everything about me because they're kids.
So this is the way for them to learn.
Three other books besides yours.
Three other books.
You know, that's a hard question for me because I probably read a couple hundred books a year.
And I don't say this.
I don't always read 100% of a book.
But I get the gist of it.
Yeah.
So it's hard to pull out just three that I think are amazing.
I don't really know the answer.
I read.
I just I just read so many.
How about one in business?
I just read one by Stephen Johnson, Where Do Ideas Come From?
And another one, I forgot the title, but the subtitle was Six Innovations That Changed History.
And it's his most recent book.
So Stephen Johnson, I just all of a sudden read in the past couple of weeks.
I had never read it before.
And I thought they were really interesting.
What about one for your personal development as a man in your whole life?
Someone that stands out?
You know, I like Tony Robbins books.
I do too.
I would say like Awaken the Giant Within.
You know, that was very valuable to me when I was really at a low point in 2001, 2002
that really got me to stop complaining about what was going on in my life
and really start figuring out what was going to get me together. So, so, and that, that really
worked like, like self-help usually doesn't work. But his book really worked for me and his book is,
you know, kind of comes from a long ancestry of books that you could trace back to the 1800s or or to the to zero or whatever so
but i i like the way he puts things and i like his books um and then for for for entertainment
um there's just a lot of fiction i think is just really beautiful so i i actually encourage people
to read fiction because the best writers are fiction writers usually.
You've got to be creative.
Yeah.
And they're focused on writing.
So like someone who's a great nonfiction writer, they're good at something else and then they
wrote about it.
Someone who's a great fiction writer is good at writing and keeps on writing.
And they write about it.
Yeah, exactly.
So studying, if you want to be a good writer, studying the best fiction writers is like
the best thing to do.
Who's the top two fiction writers um you're mine so dennis johnson um has written a bunch of novels
but he wrote a collection of short stories about drug addiction um called jesus son which is by far
the best fiction book ever they made a movie out of it wasn't good i hate to be one of those guys
the book's better but it is better yeah and there's a book out where they ask writers, what's your ideal bookshelf?
And that book, Jesus Son, turns out to be the most popular book next to Moby Dick on what people would have on their bookshelf.
I'm going to have to check it out.
Yeah.
And it's only like 120 pages or something.
It's a great book of short stories.
Nothing comes close to that.
And then I've just read tons of stuff.
I love it.
Tons of fiction.
I love it.
All right.
We'll wrap things up.
I want to acknowledge you for coming back on and for sharing.
I feel like every time you come back on, you have a sense of groundedness, like even
more so.
Like you're more grounded now than you've been in the last couple of years I've known
you.
That could be.
I mean.
Maybe it's the time of the day.
Who knows?
couple of years I've known you. That could be. I mean, maybe it's the time of the day. Who knows?
You know, I always say that, uh, for me, my big thing is I write down ideas every day and that always gives me things to work on and things to think about. And every six months my life
is completely different. So, so you've been, so last time I was on your podcast was at least one
full iteration of that. And my life really is like a little different from six months ago. So that's cool. Things happen. Yeah, that's great. What are you most grateful
for lately? Uh, I'm really grateful for, you know, that's hard because there's always the
obvious things. I'm really grateful. Like I'm still happily married, still happily a father.
Uh, but like a lot of the businesses and investments I'm involved in, I really feel are changing the world and doing good things.
I haven't really talked about a lot of them in my podcast or work, but I'm involved with a lot of really great people who are just geniuses doing world saving things that I'm really grateful for.
Nice.
Which I hope will make me money, but at the very least to make an impact.
Yeah, they're going to make an impact.
That's cool.
And I'm really grateful that my own writing, just like I'm sure you get, I get emails and feedback, and it's nice to see when you have an impact.
I have an ego, and it's nice when people share with me what my work has meant to them.
And then even better, even when I'm recognized in the street, I'm like, oh love your podcast. So that was great. So that's cool. Okay, cool. Final
question. I think you've asked, answered this three times so far. So this will be the fourth.
What's your definition of greatness right now? You know, there, I think actually there is no
definition of greatness. I think it's one of those things like, what is the definition of a thought?
Like you can't put a thought under.
We know we all know we think thoughts.
Right.
But you can't put a thought under a microscope and say this is what it's made of.
So I think greatness is something similar to that where, you know, it's just if I'm and I this is what I'm going to go back to the message from four podcasts ago.
back to the message from four podcasts ago. If you're physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually healthy, then that's right this moment. That's the best predictor of having a
great moment. The next moment. I love it. I can't predict the future. So that's the only way I can
predict is if right now I have those four things going for me, that's my best predictor of a great
tomorrow, a great next week. And so on, even though I have no idea what those tomorrow will
look like. James Albershirt, thanks for coming on. Thank you again, Lewis. next week, and so on. Even though I have no idea what tomorrow will look like.
James Altershirt, thanks for coming on.
Thank you again, Lewis.
Once again, fourth podcast.
Bam.
In the can.
And there you have it, guys.
I hope you enjoyed this episode.
Make sure to go back to the show notes at lewishouse.com slash 133. If you go there, you'll get this full episode,
all the notes we talked about, all the things that James is up to and links back to his site. Again,
lewishouse.com slash 133. Got some big guests coming up. We're going to have a lot of video
podcasts coming out as well that'll be featured back on the blog at lewishouse.com.
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keep coming back for more because I'm going to keep bringing you some good stuff.
That's the end of today's episode.
You guys know what time it is.
It's time to go out there and do something great. Outro Music