Wednesday, July 26, 2017

Ep. 239: Alex Berenson – How to Write a Page-Turner

Alex Berenson had the dream job. But he was unhappy. And perhaps it even scarred him in some ways.

He switched it up. To his true dreams. To the dreams he had for himself since he was a child.

I want to do this.

First off, Alex has written 11 bestselling thriller novels. Alex knows how to get the reader to turn the page and ask, “What happens next?!”

This is an unbelievably hard skill.

But it’s not the most important skill when you are moving into your dream job.

I will tell you the most important skill. And Alex explains more clearly how he did it when we are in the podcast.

The most important skill is to have this weird sort of “active arrogance”.

Here’s the gap: The best in your profession have skills, experience, and they know how to sit down and DO something every day.

The beginners: they WANT to do something. They PLAN to do something. They SAY they will eventually do it. They THINK they have the skills they need.

But they never do it.

The ones who succeed. They have the arrogance to think they can just simply sit down and do it. Despite not having the skills. Despite being total amateurs. They simply sit down and DO IT.

By doing it, you LEARN the skills, you DO the job [a first novel in Alex’s case], and you get better.

DOING is the only way to succeed. Most people stop before this point. Alex didn’t.

And thank god. Because his 11 bestsellers have been lifesavers for me. A way for me to dream. A way for me to escape.

Here’s how Alex did it:

Create your own universe

“In 2003 and 2004, I went to Iraq for the paper,” he said (he worked at The New York Times). “The war had ended, supposedly… we deposed Saddam. Most reporters go during the ‘active phase,’ so The Times said any cub reporter could put their hand up and go. So I put my hand up.”

Then he came back and realized he had stories. And John Wells was born. Alex has written 11 bestsellers. All page-turners. I wanted to know what made him start writing thrillers. I’ve always thought of writing fiction. I still wonder if that’s what’s next.

Here’s what he told me, “In my universe, nobody lies to me. They can lie to each other, they can even lie to themselves, they cannot lie to me.”

[listen at 8 minutes]

Some luck goes unnoticed

“Coming back to the states was a shock,” he said. “The wastefulness of this country really smacks you when you’ve been away for a while, certainly in a place like that.”

“What do you mean? What’s an example?”

“I think the example that struck me is the electrical grid.”

We take it for granted that the lights go on. And then use them like crazy. I live in NY. The lights are always on. It doesn’t matter what time. And I never think about it. “American is a place of abundance,” Alex said. “I guess that’s a good thing. It’s better to be rich than poor but realize that 80% of the world is never going to live in conditions anything like this. It really does just smack you in the face to realize how lucky we are and how little we realize that.”

[listen at 13 minutes]

Choose yourself

I asked Alex if he thinks we’re becoming complacent as a society. “Thats a real fear,” Alex said. There are two sides. One side is if you give people everything will they stop wanting to work? Will they say they have enough. And give up.

But then the other side is you work so hard and go nowhere. “The flip side of that is if you make the system so unfair that nobody believes hard work can get you ahead, they’re not going to work either.”

And I think that’s why work should be more than a paycheck. There has to be a vision. And following that vision is how you choose yourself.

[listen at 14 minutes]

Have a little arrogance

Alex said a lot of reporters want to write novels. He was one of them. But there’s something that separates those who write from those who don’t…

“I did something arrogant,” he said. “I wrote a novel.”

So I wondered if that’s part of the formula? Do all novelists have some arrogance to write something totally made up and think other people will want to read it?

“Of course,” Alex said. “Are you kidding? It’s the craziest endeavor. ‘I’m going to create this world with these fake people and I want you to believe they’re real. And I want to make them come alive for you.’”

[listen at 17 minutes]

Finding aspects of you

I’m curious about the characters. Like dreams, where do they come from? Is it a manifestation of yourself? Of people you know? And who leads the story? Is it the writer? Some writers say the characters are so strong psychologically that they lead the story.

Alex got his answer from his wife. She’s a psychiatrist. She says John Wells is a projection of Alex’s most idealized version of himself. “He’s strong, he’s very capable, he’s so tough. Women love him, men fear him, sheep want to be with him, ya know he’s tortured because he’s committed all this violence over the years, but he’s essentially a good guy.”

I wonder what it would be like to create my own universe and then ask a doctor to read into me. But I only know what I create if I start creating.

[listen at 19 minutes]

How do you survive?

His books are 400 pages each. And that’s before everything gets cut down and reformatted. He used to write before work. Now it’s his full time job.

“So how do you survive? How do you sit through it?”

“Writing the books is mentally painful,” he said. “I make the characters suffer. Because I’m suffering.”

[listen at 21 minutes]

Who’s your hero?

I wanted to know more about Alex’s hero. He could’ve made the everyman. But instead he chose a spy, someone who in danger. Maybe it’s a reflection of who we want to be. Someone with real freedom.

Alex said. “When you have nothing to lose, when you don’t care if you live or die, you have incredible freedom.”

Alex doesn’t have that freedom. He told me how he was almost kidnapped in Iraq. “People thought I was spy,” he said. ““I had a very close call. I mean everyone has a close call, but I had a very close call”

“What was your close call?”

“Ya know, I don’t like to talk about it.”

I couldn’t let this go. When someone comes on my podcast, I have one chance to ask them everything I want to know.

“Could we please talk about it?”

“I found a notebook that a Shia fighter kept… It was just a tiny green notebook. It was in the rubble of a building. And I took it.”

“They saw you pick it up?”

“No… I was dressed like a local. I had a goatee. I had my haircut shorter, but no one was going to be fooled into thinking I was Iraqi. No one who REALLY looked at me. And I didn’t speak arabic”

People got suspicious of him.

“The question was, ‘What are you doing? Why do you look like this? Why are you trying to pass… you’re not one of us. And once that happened, it just spiraled.”

“So you reached a point where you got scared,” I said.

“Oh, no no no no. It was much worse than that…”

[listen at 32 minutes]

Get stories

I wanted to know how Alex got back home. He was detained. And almost martyred.

These experiences lead to his novels. Now, he had stories to begin fueling the John Wells series.

[listen at 39 minutes]

Write everyday

People ask Alex how he gets his inspiration.

“I have a mortgage to pay and I have a contract. I can’t wait for inspiration.” He says he makes progress everyday.

[listen at 48 minutes]

How do you get people to turn the page?

Alex turned the tables. He asked if I wrote a page-turner.

The answer’s no. I tried. I’ve tried for 20 years. He said one key is to let people read your work. I’ve never let anyone read my fiction. I want to know the beats.

We broke them down.

“I’m kind of the wrong person to ask about structure,” he said. “My books violate the normal structure of genre fiction.”

But I find this is true with all peak performers. They can’t explain how they do so well. It comes natural to them. So getting into the finer nuances takes effort.

I dug. And here’s what I found…

[listen at 50 minutes]

Finding structure

  1. In the beginning, the main character is involved in something bad
  2. Then he solves it
  3. And he’s given a grace period of relief
  4. Then he goes through something worse… Alex said, “You have to have a mission and within that mission there has to be sub-missions.”
  5. It could get worse. “It depends,” Alex said. Sometime the main character gets help from somewhere else or a clue is revealed. Anything can happen.

[listen at 1 hour]

They key to a great ending…

Eventually it ends… But here’s the key. You need a cool solve.

So I asked, “What’s a cool solve?” This is another great example of an expert knowing his craft better than the inner workings of that craft…

We went through a ton of examples. And finally landed on this:

You have to build. “For Wells, there’s always tensions. Your always asking, ‘How far will this go?’ You just got me to explain it better,” Alex said.

[listen at 1 hour and five minutes]

Links and Resources: 

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Ep. 240: THIS IS COMEDY: GARY GULMAN BREAKS DOWN THE BEST JOKE IN THE WORLD

When Patton Oswalt, one of the top comedians over the past several decades, was going through the worst experiences of his life this past year, he wrote an entire post about one joke Gary Gulman made. ONE JOKE.

Oswalt starts off:

“This is…so perfect.”

I like the pause in there. LIke there are no words so he had to notch himself down even though it doesn’t express exactly what he wants to say: … “so perfect”.

He analyzes Gary’s joke and why it’s so difficult to do a joke like this (nobody sees how the sausage is made, they only see the final joke after years of perfecting).

Patton closes with: “Thank you Gary Gulman. I know a lot of my shit’s gonna get angry these next four years, but it’s stuff like what Gary’s doing that reminds me I gotta make sure it’s funny first. Angry doesn’t change shit. Funny disarms the horde.”

Gary is one of the best in the world. And no matter what area of life you want to improve in, studying in detail someone who is among the best, will up your game.

It ups my game. I am infinitely frail. I fall apart at the slightest resistance. I sometimes can’t handle it. I sometimes can’t handle failing. I don’t always believe you learn from failure.

But studying the best, makes my brain feel good. Like it’s being nourished. And that often gives me the strength to persist.

For the past five months I’ve been going up on a stage 2-3 times a week and performing standup comedy in front of an audience.

Often the other performers are people who were on the Colbert Show the night before. Or just released an hour-long Netflix special.

So I have to up my game all the time. I want to be “one of them”. And I don’t want people in the audience to be able to tell that I’m different.

Plus, I get scared to death. I am honestly so scared I am about to cry every time I am about to go on stage. Even if I’m going on stage to perform just five minutes of jokes. Five minutes is an eternity.

What I realized, and will save for a future post, is that there are at least 20 or 30 (and probably much more) “micro-skills” that I could not have possibly imagined when trying to get better at standup comedy.

I’ve been public speaking for 20 years. Is it that different?

Yes.

Which is why I had to have Gary Gulman on the podcast. One of the best in the world.

I said above “five minutes is an eternity”.

Gary told one joke on Conan in 2016 that lasted six minutes. One joke where (and I measured it) he gets laughs every ten to fifteen seconds throughout.

He uses every skill in the comic’s toolbox. And probably many more that I haven’t been able to understand yet.

I printed up the joke. I gave it to Gary. I said, “I want to analyze this joke word by word.”

The first thing he said is, “This almost depresses me”.

“How come?”

“It took years to write this joke. And the others that I came out with around then. It’s so hard. Sometimes I can’t’ even get up because it’s so hard to do this.”

What follows is one of my favorite podcasts. We cover his career, the techniques he learned and how he learned them.

We cover the depression and anxiety and fear that goes into building any career out of excellence. We cover the micro-skills.

No matter what you do in life, the one who masters all the master skills of your field of endeavor will be the one who rises to the top. How do you identify those skills? How do you master them?

And we analyze this joke. To see the joke, Google: “Youtube Gary Gulman Conan States”. It’s his 7/13/16 performance. Watch it first.

 

Here are some things I learned:

Part A) DELIVERY

1. COMMITMENT

The whole joke is about the states and how they were abbreviated. Gary walks out on stage, “I just wanted to recommend a documentary to everyone and then I’m going to go.” Everyone laughs.

No one believes him. But he’s totally COMMITTED to the joke.

In the podcast he says, “I’m bragging, really. Because I know I have something in my pocket that I’ve polished so frequently over the years. Years and years have gone into this one joke. And I know they haven’t seen it. It’s almost like I’m say, ‘Wait till you get a load of me.’”

A lot of comedians just pander for a laugh, especially in the beginning. Yes, fart jokes work. But GREAT comedy is art.

Gary’s worked hard and he’s know it. This transcends more than just jokes. People won’t always know that what you have to offer is valuable to them. Until you show it.

That’s how Gary builds rapport with the audience. They sense the committment. They are in for the ride.

2. BUILD UP CAPITAL

Audiences are terrifying. And often they don’t know you.

Might be a business audience in a meerting. Might be a reader. Might be a listener or a crowd. Or a comedy club audience.

They have to like you. Johnny Carson has said that this is the most important skill for a comedian.

Likeability.

Watch Gary’s clip and see how he becomes naturally likeable to the audience. These are techniques that can be used in every situation.

But it’s also how you build up capital so now you can take chances, propose ideas they have never heard of, build rapport with each person listening to you, and perform the magic trick of transmitting what you see in your head, into the heads of all the listeners.

I didn’t realize this was such an important skill at first.

Again, I have another post about this. But, for me, the results were disastrous when I didn’t realize how important this was.

3. MOVE

Gary uses movement. It’s almost like he’s acting out the joke.

He points to the sky, everyone’s eyes move up. They’re with him. They’re in the story. “I need to keep their attention during that time because it’s a lull,” he said.

You can’t just tell your joke. Or tell your story. Or tell your idea. Ideas, jokes, stories are three dimensional.

Gary takes his joke and turns it from a premise into a three dimensional world we are suddenly all living in.

 

Part B) WRITING

4. OBSERVE THE ABSURD

Throughout my entire life, I’ve been abbreviating states.  I’ve never thought, “Oh so many states start with the same two letters.”

Who thinks of that?

“What were you doing when you first thought of that?” I asked him.

“I think the first time was when I was in 2nd grade and I got the arrow book of the states. I got it in 2nd grade but it must’ve been printed several years prior because the abbreviations was a new concept in this particular version of the Arrow Book of States. For whatever reason, I wanted to memorize the abbreviations. That’s when I noticed how difficult it was.”

Thirty years later, he turned that difficulty into a joke.

I notice this with comedians. They observe everything our of the ordinary.

Seinfeld once said that a regular person goes into Bar Mitzvah and says, “nice buffett”. A comedian will go in and say, “why is there pork?”

I’ve been working on a joke lately. The premise is that OJ Simpson made $2.7 million while he was in prison. The premise doesn’t have to be funny. Just quirky. The punchline can come after years of work. Not in my case but in the case of the best comedians, jokes, speakers, inventors.

5. PERSISTENCE AND DEPRESSION

This is unique to Gary. He’s able to draw out jokes for 6 minutes. I asked how he’s going to get down to writing the next 6 minute bit.

“It’s daunting,” he said.

“How do you deal with the anxiety?”

“I’ll say this, but it’s something that’s very personal to me. Hopefully it will help people. But I was in the hospital for a few nights because of my depression and anxiety. I was overwhelmed. It was a couple of months ago. I wasn’t suicidal. I just went to the emergency room and they admitted me and changed some medicines up, but it’s literally crippling.”

“Did that help? The combination of medicine and them talking?”

“Yeah…I’m in a better position now then I was then. I can function a little bit better and I’ve been able to get back on stage.”

He said he had a fear of performing. Which was amazing to me because he’s so good at it.

But I get it. I can’t go on stage without having a panic attack. And I know he’s been on stage 1000s of times.

It’s hard. But once you say, “This is too hard”, that’s when you have to do it to get better. And improvement never ends.

That’s why I wanted to learn from him.

It’s easy for a comedian to tell crude jokes. Gary brings you into new territory.

He told me that once he got a hold of the abbreviations joke, he held on. “I tried to strengthen it and lengthen it.”

We kept dissecting. I wanted to get deeper into the toolkit. How did he make the joke stronger?

6. GO OFF ON TANGENTS

He’s a few minutes into the joke. They’re talking about abbreviating the first state (Alabama). Alaska is next. But he had to take the audience away from the story.

Or they’d lose interest.

He sets the scene. The whole team of abbreviations is eating breakfast. And Gary says, “The omelette station had just been invented and was sweeping the nation.”

“I’ve always felt uncomfortable with the omelette station,” he told me. I never thought it before.

Hidden truths surround us. Ghosts in a conversation. But saying them brings the discomfort into comfort. Makes the scary…funny. Or possible. Or gives us a new way of looking at things.

“The omelette chef must hate us,” he said.

And in the joke Gary says they wanted to be a “chef chef.” Not an omelette chef.

The tangent diverts your attention away from the main plot. He adds another about the people who call Hollandaise sauce “holiday sauce.” This has nothing to do with the joke. But it’s funny and adds depth to the story. And does it have to do with the joke..? Maybe!

And then brings it back to abbreviations. Alaska is right after Alabama.

Both are AL. That’s when the “crack team of abbreviators” realize they’re in trouble. “Did we already use AL?”

7. BE SPECIFIC

In one of his first lines, Gary tells you the documentary is 98 minutes. Not 90, not an hour. It’s 98 minutes.

“Why 98?” I said.

It had to do with the number of syllables. And the exactness. Words don’t tell a story. Details tell a story.

And it ends on a “t”. Gary knows from 20 years experience what consonants will elicit a bigger laugh.

Micro-skills.

8. TAKE ADVANTAGE OF MEMORY LOSS

The crack squad of abbreviations is made up of “nayer do wells.”

I didn’t even know what that meant. “I like to use language that you forgot you knew,” he said.

9. PUT LAUGH LINES TOGETHER

Gary quoted the late Richard Jeni, who said, “What you’re trying to do is put together as many laugh lines as close together as possible.”

You don’t have to wait long to laugh again when you watch his act. Gary does this to. He makes a small reference.

“I want to say it was 1973… So I will.”

And the whole crowd laughs. At first, I couldn’t figure out why I was laughing. “It’s a cliche,” Gary said. He uses a cliche to make fun of cliches.

He makes you take a second look at some statement everyone says, but no one realizes they’re saying.

10. SUBTRACT SELF-KNOWLEDGE

The joke gets more and more ridiculous with each line. But Gary looks almost clueless. He’s going on and on about this documentary, their struggles and challenges.

It’s almost like he crosses this invisible line where he’s no longer aware. He becomes part of the story.

And his comedy turns from joke to performance.

Everyone in the audience begins to see there’s no real documentary. Except Gary.

He subtracts self-knowledge which adds to the laughter. Because now people not only can’t believe how ridiculous this documentary’s premise is, but they can’t believe how ridiculous Gary is.

Adding knowledge makes a hero. Subtracting knowledge makes comedy.

James Bond can get shot in the heart, perform surgery on himself, and then get the bad guy. He’s a hero.

If Woody Allen is shot in the heart then….even picturing it makes me laugh.

11. TAKE RISKS

Gary makes jokes out of difficulties, adds specificity, tangents, cliches and so on.

He has his tool kit. Each element has a purpose. And they all take him to the edge.

“That’s one of the reasons I’m moving to Boston,” he said. “I can take more risks.”

“What does it mean to take more risks?” I said.

“Just to go on stage with material that is not as worked out as the one we went over today.”

He wants to test his joke in front of audience, then record it and tweak it.

If you can’t take risks, you won’t hit the edge. You won’t go beyond it.

Beyond the edge is peak performance. The area few, if any, hit.
Beyond the edge is success. Because people reward the ones who have mastered the risks beyond the edge.

I always say I don’t like to hit “publish” on an article until I’m afraid of what people will think.

That’s not quite true for this article. I’m proud to say Gary is one of the best there is. I’m happy I got a chance to take my absolute favorite joke and get the guy who told it to answer all my questions for an hour.

I felt bad when Gary expressed his depression. His desire to continually improve and his fear of where that next improvement might come from.

We’re all afraid.

I wanted to tell him…sometimes when I feel that way, and I feel that way almost every day, I often know that something new is going to happen. Something that wlll push me forward.

Afterwards, I felt bad I didn’t say that. I wanted to tell him how skilled he is. That he will push forward.

But I didn’t say that either. I’m hitting publish here not because I’m afraid. But because I want everyone else to experience the pure joy I felt when I listened to this joke, listened to how he crafted it, and learned a bit more about how in any area of life I can strive to improve and be the best I can be.

Gary gulman

Links and Resources:

Also mentioned:

Gary gulman

photos by: Pamela Sisson

 

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Monday, July 24, 2017

20 Books Every Teenager Should Read

I hate being nervous. But I am.

I’m speaking in front of 1000 teenagers today for “Internapalooza”.

This is how I like to spend my Sundays.

I was a lazy, disrespectful teenager. I’m impressed with any kid who shows up to hear me talk on a Sunday afternoon.

My life was a mess in my 20s and 30s.

I know that “it all worked out for the best”. But…still…I wish I had these books to read. Heck, I even wrote one of them so I guess I couldn’t have read them.

I picked specifically these books for this crowd.

These books are all simple for a teenager to read and take at least one lesson from.

Remember to focus on one rule:

HELP PEOPLE WITHOUT ANY EXPECTATION OF GETTING HELP BACK

That’s super power #1.

Then…reading.

Use these books as starting points to read 20 more books and listen to 20 podcasts.

Go for it:

“TOOLS OF THE TITANS” by Tim Ferriss

Only the best lessons from 100+ peak performers.

 

“TURNING PRO” by Stephen Pressfield

Amateurs talk about money. Professionals talk about ideas.

And 1000 other tips.

 

“TED Talks: The Official Ted Guide to Public Speaking” by Chris Anderson

Most important professional skill in life: how to communicate.

 

“ANGEL” by Jason Calacanis

A guide for investing in the best startups. Also a guide for founders to stand out.

 

“PURPLE COW” by Seth Godin

How to stand out in the crowd and provide value.

 

“THE ESSAYS OF WARREN BUFFETT” by Lawrence Cunningham

The best businessman in history explains in simple terms from his own examples.

 

“THE OBSTACLE IS THE WAY” by Ryan Holiday

Build a mindset for turning adversity into success.

 

“ZERO TO ONE” by Peter Thiel

A guidebook to modern capitalism.

 

“CRUSH IT” by Gary Vaynerchuk

Get value in every possible outlet of life.

 

“I CAN’T MAKE THIS UP” by Kevin Hart

Kevin Hart is a one-man media empire. Who failed and failed and worked and persisted and failed again and persisted and finally hit some tipping point that helped him break through.

“SICK IN THE HEAD” by Judd Apatow

A fanboy interviews his heroes….and then becomes one.

 

“EXTREME OWNERSHIP” by Jocko Willink

Take blame for every problem. And then solve it.

 

“THE LONG WALK” by Stephen King

Horror fiction. About persistence. Starring teenagers who die.

 

“WRITE. PUBLISH. REPEAT.” by Sean Platt

Structure a story. How to work fast. How to make money from it. Repeat.

 

“DISPLAY OF POWER” by Daymond John

Classic rags to riches.

 

“THE FOUR AGREEMENTS” by Don Miguel Ruiz

Be a person of your word. No higher quality.

 

“GRIT: The Power of Passion and Perseverance” by Angela Duckworth

The scientific conclusion on what makes success.

 

“ALWAYS EAT LEFT-HANDED” by Rohit Bhargava

“15 Surprisingly Simple Secrets of Success”. And they really are simple so I’ll keep the description at that.

 

“REAL ARTISTS DON’T STARVE” by Jeff Goins

Your ideas and creativity are worth money.

 

“CHOOSE YOURSELF” by me. (and “REINVENT YOURSELF“).

Normally I wouldn’t recommend my own books.

A) It feels arrogant or like I’m trying to push them. Trust me I don’t make money on 70 cents.

B) I publish writing every day for free.

But the book “Choose Yourself” is specifically my story combined with things I wish I knew when I was much younger.

An approach to living where I wouldn’t be dependent on all the forces around us that try to push their own agendas on us: corporations, governments, schools, peers, parents, etc.

Not that their agendas are bad. I’m not making a judgment.

But ultimately, each person is happiest choosing their own specific path in life and nobody else’s.

If you only follow someone else’s path, you will get lost.

Instead of getting lost in the maze, create the maze.

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Wednesday, July 19, 2017

Ep. 238: Ryan Holiday – How To Create Something That Will Sell Forever

Ryan Holiday, stop writing books that are just for me!

With “Perennial Seller” you just answered an obsessive question I’ve had for years: What makes something, someone, some product, some art, withstand the test of time?

What is the magic sauce? The secret formula?

What makes something sell a million copies a year (music, art, books, products, etc)… forever?

I want to know.

I’ll try my best to summarize our conversation and your book but people should buy the book for your 1000s of examples:

 

BE COUNTERINTUITIVE

If you write what everyone else is already thinking, then nobody needs to read your work, or use your product.

They already have it.

It doesn’t matter if you are 50% better than anyone else.

Nobody understands how to judge that except the experts in your field. And those experts don’t care about you. They might even hate you.

Create your own field. And be 1000% the best in that field.

 

DON’T TRY TO COMPETE

The 100th person who writes a “50 Shades of Grey” style book, or a disco pop EMD album can…MAYBE…get 1% of the audience.

If you find an underserved audience, you can get 100% of it.

There’s an important side effect of this: IF YOU ARE DOING SOMETHING FOR THE MONEY…YOU LOSE.

Because the rest of the world is competing for that dollar.

Money is a side effect of creativity, quality art, creating something unique, and building your marketing into that art.

 

VALIDATE THE IDEA

Test out sample chapters. Release songs on YouTube. Keep iterating. Keep digging for your authentic voice.

In comedy, it took Louis CK 20 years of telling jokes before he found his voice when talking about dating and parenting.

Don’t look for LOTs of fans at first. Look for the hard-core fans. The ones who will stick with you while you go on this crazy ride. The ones who will share.

What my prior podcast guest, Kevin Kelly, calls “The One Thousand True Fans”.

 

DON’T GIVE UP IF YOU DON’T WIN ON DAY ONE

Ryan told me that “Smokey and the Bandit” beat “Star Wars” at the box office the same weekend they both opened.

I did not know that! It almost seems like blasphemy to me.

John Grisham only sold a few thousand copies when he first published “A Time To Kill”. Only much later did it sell millions.

Catcher in the Rye had a slow start. Now sells a million copies a year.

The best works of art and the best products have to fight the masses to find their right audience. But when they do, the audience will reward them.

Write or create what is unique to you, find the 1000 true fans. The ones who are hard-core and love the value you bring. And serve that market over and over.

That divides the winners from the non-winners.

 

TELL A STORY THAT IS PERSONAL TO YOU

“Choose Yourself” could have been another ranty personal development business book (“Blah!”).

Instead I wove in a personal story of struggle and loss and pain. Pain that changed me and still does every single day to (hopefully) lesser extent.

This is what makes a story both unique (it’s my story) and universal (everyone experiences pain, everyone wants to solve it).

Too many people play a persona (“my life is perfect so let me teach it to you”) and that’s inauthentic.

 

TELL A STORY THAT RESONATES WITH EVERYONE

Star Wars is a perfect example. It’s the ‘arc of the hero’. A boy who struggles, encounters problems, faces them, lives forever. I.e. Jesus. Krishna. Buddha.

Star Wars is a sci-fi western (great example of “idea sex”) where he innovated on the graphics but used a story that was basically “Focus grouped” for thousands of years. Thousands!

So he stuck within the rules of a genre (actually several that he combined) but also made it uniquely his own.

This is the key to successful art.

Telling a story that is personal to you AND resonates with everyone is very difficult. It takes practice. It takes marketing. It takes listening. That’s why these are the items that become perennial sellers.

It’s worth it to build that skill. How do you do it:

  • Understand the history of what you love
  • Learn from the best
  • Practice over and over
  • Build marketing into your art.
  • Experiment, learn, repeat
  • Follow the rest of the advice in this article.

 

ASK THE ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS

Ask yourself, “Who is this actually for?” Who is your fan?”

“A lot of creators struggle with this,” Ryan said. “You make this great work and then you think the world is like eagerly anticipating it, but they’re not.”

You have to have a sense of honesty internally to know who your stuff is for. So you need to ask the right questions from the beginning.

You have to connect strongly with those initial hard core fans.

Combine your creative idea with the heart of another human being.

The people who struggle with your struggle. The people who will be better off when they read your writing or use your invention.

 

BE OK WITH PEOPLE HATING YOU

If you do something new, people will not like you. SOMEONE will hate you.

“When the moon landing happened,” Ryan told me, “It had 93% market share. That’s incredible.

“But think about it. That means 7% of the audience turned on the TV, saw Neil Armstrong stepping on the moon and said, ‘oh, this is boring. I’m going to change the channel.”

Be ok with that.

Iron Maiden had a lot of people hating them. And yet they focused on their core audience and became one of the most popular rock bands ever despite playing music that would NEVER make it on the radio.

The TV show, “Seinfeld” was on the verge of cancellation it’s first few years.

But Jerry Seinfeld already had a hard-core following not only among fans but even among network executives.

Having network executives as hard-core fans guaranteed him the runway he needed to succeed with the wider audience.

The Beatles had a hard core following from 1957 on that, even when their label rejected them in 1962 (“Guitar bands are going out of style”), their hard core fans kept them afloat and a year later they were catapulted to success.

Your hard core fans buys you “marketing capital” that you “spend” on expanding to a wider base.

If you go for just the wider base, you face the competition too early and end up as an also-ran.

And remember, the moment you first start – NOBODY at all cares about you.

 

THE BEST ART DIVIDES THE AUDIENCE.

I don’t hit publish unless I’m actually feeling physical fear about doing it.

If you don’t want to divide the audience, don’t hit publish.

 

MARKET YOUR IDEA

Nobody really cares about you. Every industry is turning upside down. Everyone is worried about their own jobs and agendas.

You can’t just be better than everyone else. There’s “infinite shelf space” as Ryan puts it.

You’re competing against “Breaking Bad”, Google, Trump’s tweets, old episodes of Seinfeld, Harry Potter, etc.

If you want to be out there and noticed. If you want your vision to succeed. If you want your product used…you need to talk about it. You need to represent it. You need to write about it. You need to be about it.

The marketing has to be part of your art. Even the Beatles made entire movies (art and marketing at the same time) to support their true creativity (the music).

Marketing is no longer about ad space. It’s another important outlet of your creativity.

And if it doesn’t work. Move on. You don’t have one idea in you. You have 1000s.

 

VALIDATE, REPEAT

Most things fail. The ones who succeed, pick up from their failure, figure out what went wrong, figure out how to validate an idea better with an audience, and then go back and try again.

They try over and over until they find that hardcore audience that will listen.

Validation is a cure for stupidity.

They go back again and again until their skills are refined. John Lennon and Paul McCartney met in 1958. They played and played and played and refined.

In 1962 their label rejected them (“Guitar bands are on their way out”).

The rest is history.

Now you can create history.

And Ryan, one final note. Please keep writing all-star books so you can keep coming back on the podcast.

And keeping writing books that will make my life better.

And then letting me ask you any question I want about them. Because the’s the way I roll.

You’re a good guy and, of course, welcome any time but I’m really mostly interested in reading things that make my life better. So keep at it.

 

ryan holiday

photo credit: Pamela Sisson 

ryan holiday

Links and Resources:

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Monday, July 17, 2017

Ep. 237: Scot Cohen – The Best Networker on The Planet. PERIOD.

Scot Cohen is the best networker on the planet. I have never seen anything like it. And he used that skill to make tens of millions of dollars, not only for himself but for many others.

I wanted him to explain, in detail, how.

But first:

I’m sorry, Scot. I am really, truly sorry. I am horrified at my behavior. A year of bad behavior.

Imagine: you owe someone a phone call and you say to yourself, “Ok, I’ll call tomorrow”.

And then tomorrow you say, “Well, maybe tomorrow”.

They have been nothing but generous with you. But still…you put it off one more day. “What’s one day?” I said to myself.

And then you delayed so much you feel awkward about calling. Because you know you have to apologize and you hate confrontation.

Stupid, right?

Let’s make this even worse: the person you have to call back let you stay in his apartment for three months for free. You’ve worked together for 14 years and he’s one of the most successful investors in NYC.

And then you moved out of his place and you were too awkward to ever call him again.

I’m an idiot.

The day I threw out all of my belongings  and gave up my apartment I was sitting in a restaurant with my one bag and I called Scot Cohen. I said, “I’m just sitting in this restaurant.”

“Where are you going to live?”

“I have no idea yet.” I could’ve just stayed in a hotel. But for various reasons I was feeling a bit down. I just wanted to sit in the restaurant. I had no idea where I would live.

My brain had turned off. Has that ever happened to you?

“Come on over,” Scot said. “Stay here.” And so I did. For the next three months I stayed in one of Scot’s several apartments.

I invested in Scot’s hedge fund in 2003. We’ve worked together on and off for 14 years.

Sometimes it worked out. And sometimes it didn’t.

He’s made tens of millions, invested in dozens of companies that went up 1000s of percent, and I am glad that, in my own small way, I was able to help him in several situations. .

When you build your network over years, over decades, and your network is made up of good people, they help you out. They let you move in their apartment. You work on deals together. You meet each other’s girlfriends who become wives.

And then sometimes you let them down and you have to apologize.

So I did.

But I’m so awkward and non-confrontational I could only do it on my podcast. I feel like a weirdo.

But that’s how I did it.

I hadn’t seen Scot in a year. I had stupidly avoided his calls. And so I said, “come on to the podcast and that’s where I will apologize”.

And then let’s talk about how you became the best networker I know by far.

Scot came to NYC with nothing. With zero.

But he had a skill that is worth tens of millions at the highest level. It’s networking at a level I’ve never seen before or since.

One time, a year earlier, I was sitting in his apartment. Scot rushed in, changed into a suit and rushed out.

It was Snday night, 8 o’clock at night. He was rushing  from tennis with one hedge fund manager to the wedding of one of his investors.

That’s how he made himself so successful. He networks seven days a week. All day long.

I just sit around and fall asleep early.

And by “network”, I don’t mean (AT ALL!) that he spends time with people just to get some purpose out them. That is not networking. That is manipulation.

Networking is when you create your “scene” over years. The people you can help. The people you learn to help. The people who can connect some dots and you become happy when you can introduce them to people who connect other dots.

Networking is when you create a far bigger family around you than you could have ever imagined.

I asked him on the podcast how he did it. How can I do it? How can anyone do it?

Here’s what I feel are the Ten Commandments of Networking as per Scot.

He goes into much more depth in the podcast. But here’s what I specifically remember by watching him in action over the years.

1)SELF-AWARENESS

“Do self-work,” he said. Some things you are good at. Some you aren’t. Some things you like. Some you don’t.

Networking is not about calling people you know. It’s  about helping where you provide value. And that requires, before anything else, understanding who you are, what you need to learn, the value you can deliver, and when you need help to deliver  that value.

2) NETWORKING IS NOT LINEAR

A “personal network” is not valued by the number of your names in your rolodex.

It’s valued by how many of those names in that rolodex know each other.

Because, for all of those people who are helping each other…who is at the center?

3) “I KNOW SOMEONE WHO CAN HELP…”

Scot always seems to have that on the tip of his tongue. For any situation, he remembers who he’s worked with in the past 30 years that can help in that situation.

He’s not always right. But he always tries.

4) SAY, “YES”

Someone is celebrating an event in their life. Help them celebrate it. Make it better because you are there.

It’s interesting that the first rule of successful improvisation is “Always say ‘Yes’.”

That’s Scot’s starting point.

I once watched Scot in a negotiation with the CEO of an oil company based in China that is probably worth over $500 billion.

The guy RIPPED into Scot. Destroyed him. Essentially calling him an idiot.

Scot said, “I hear you and I agree with everything you’re saying. Assuming we can resolve all of these issues, and we WILL work on everything you just said, can we move closer to a way in which we can help you.”

The CEO was taken aback. He said, “Of course!”

When Alice Walton (daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton, worth about $20 billion), needed someone to go to Eastern Europe and Russia as the economic walls were crumbling in the mid-90s, the much younger Scot Cohen was the only one who jumped up and said, “I’ll go”.

Nobody was an expert then. It was the wild west.

The difference between the experts and the non-experts were the people who simply said, “I’ll go”.

It was that simple.

Alice Walton became a connection for life.

5) IT’S NOT ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA

As far as I know, Scot doesn’t have a single social media account. He doesn’t post pictures of his meals. He doesn’t hit “Like” of his friends’ pictures of their gardens.

It’s not about social media. It’s about being personally social.

6) PERMISSION NETWORKING

Scot never sends me an email that said, “James meet Alex. Alex, meet James. You guys should meet.”

First he calls me and says, “This is why Alex might be helpful to you. Does this sound like someone you might want to meet?”

This doesn’t happen over one phone call. Sometimes it might be a dozen phone calls.

He makes the same calls to Alex. Then he will make the introduction, usually over a dinner.

I have written about this before. Probably many times. But the reason is…because I learned it from Scot.

7) FACE TO FACE

Last week, I think I spoke to Scot four times. One time he was in San Diego, another  time in LA, another time in Oklahoma(!), and another time in NYC.

Each time he was either entering a meeting or going to one. He doesn’t say “No” to a face to face meeting.

I will never be able to do this. But this is part of self-awareness.

8) BUILD A NETWORK OF GOOD NETWORKERS

One of the businesses Scot is involved in is an oil company. Does Scot know anything about oil?

Maybe now he does. But for eight years he was struggling with it.

But now the CEO of his company is the ex CEO of a former oil company that got sold for billions. And his advisors on the company are all ex CEOs of billion dollar oil companies.

And Scot STILL goes to all the meetings in person. But now he has good, smart people telling him which meetings are the important ones to go to.

You can’t call up people and ask them to join your network. He had to spend eight years proving he belonged in that industry before his network could start expanding there.

9) KEEP A DIARY

“If you don’t write stuff down, how are you going to go anywhere? You’re not going to remember where you came from.”

“I think it’s really important to be able to quantify what you’re doing during the day,” he said. “You’ve got to keep account of how you’re spending your time. That’s the most important thing.”

Scot is my age. The past 3 decades are mostly a blur for me. Some days I met people, some days I didn’t’. I now forget most of them.

Scot has everything written down. About everyone. He knows what they do, what they need, what he likes about them, what he can call them for, what makes them laugh, what they do that makes him laugh, who he can trust, why he can trust them, who to avoid, and on and on.

It’s never too late to start doing that. During the podcast, Scot showed me one of his diaries. It was over 20 years old. It was DETAILED.

I’m nervous to see the various entries through the years that might mention me.

10) MAKE IT FUN

The goal is not to make money tomorrow. Or today. Or even a year from now.

Have fun with people.

18 months ago I went to a dinner Scot had. At the dinner was a pro basketball player, a famous novelist, a former police chief, me, a hedge fund manager, and three or four other diverse people (I wish I kept a diary and then I can say exactly who).

Scot kept asking questions around the table to keep the conversation going at a fast pace and filled with stories.

No business was discussed. I sort of remember the conversation: art, sports (everyone laughed when I asked the basketball player if he played basketball – I had no clue), the craziest stories I’ve ever heard about the police, relationships and on and on.

I can’t remember ANYTHING about investing or business.

And yet…18 months later…I know Scot has now put together a business in the law enforcement space based on the people in that room in that day.

Scot puts people together. Has fun. And then the brainstorming starts.

All of this is the same as saying:

Plant seeds.

Start early or start late. It doesn’t matter. The two best days to start something is five years ago…and today.

But plant them.

“Surround yourself with great people. I don’t care if it’s a plumber. I don’t care if he’s a construction worker. I don’t care if it’s a teacher, a police officer, a guy in the gym, somebody that you met at the grocery store. It doesn’t matter, but just make sure they’re kind. Make sure they’re aligned with where you want to go…”

And that all said, I will say it one more time because I feel really bad.

Scot, I’m sorry.

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Friday, July 14, 2017

The Discomfort Zone

Subway Stand Up

My comfort zone was killing me.

Doesn’t matter what age you are: 20 or 50 or 80: you improve and enjoy life when you dive into the deep end of the pool, swim for your life, and survive. YOU LIVE!

Even for just one day.

I’ve been trying to learn standup comedy. I’ve admired this skill for 30 years. Now I want to learn it. So I’ve been performing at clubs. It’s HARD. 60 different micro-skills to learn.

But I wanted to take it one step further.

To go into an audience that is completely not expecting it, and try to do standup comedy.

So I took the subway.

The benefit: getting even more comfortable communicating in front of strangers and trying to get a specific response (laughter). Whether they wanted it or not.

And I also wanted to tighten up my one-liners.

You can’t tell a story on a subway car. You have to have fast, one-liners that are funny. This is a skill I need to learn. A weakness.

In the 1950s, world chess champion Mikhail Botvinnick, hated smoke. HATED IT.

So he played training matches with smoke being blown in his face all the time.

When Tiger Woods was a kid, his dad would throw golf balls at him while he was trying to hit.

The DIScomfort zone is NOT about experiencing pain.

Happiness and well-being are also outside of the comfort zone. You have to travel into your discomfort to find the silver linings hidden. The mystery.

The kiss I pray for only happens when I lean in and ask.

So I did standup comedy on the subway.

I went on the subway for the first time in ten years.

I was terrified. And I thought after I got in there was ZERO chance I would start talking.

Please, I thought, please please please let me get past my fear.

There was the girl on her headphones, the man reading, the homeless guys talking, the schoolgirls giggling, and a dozen others, and me.

Nobody looking at me. Nobody wanted to be interrupted.

I said to myself, “there’s no way I’m going to do this. This was a waste of time.” And I got ready to get off at the next stop.

Then, I figured, why wouldn’t I do it? What can happen? I’m not even really trying to make people laugh. I just want to do it.

So I did it.

I went from car to car each stop and did standup comedy all the way from 42nd Street to the Brooklyn Bridge and back.

One joke: ” I ordered an Uber Pool and they sent me this subway car with all of you people on it.”

Another joke, “I was supposed to get on the Six and a half to get to Hogwarts but I got on the Six by mistake. Can anyone help me?”

Another: “If this subway car is traveling at the speed of light and I’m traveling at the speed of dark…when will I go back in time?”

I learned that having fun and smiling at people is just as important as making people laugh.

Being likable is a hard skill, particularly when everyone wants to hate you.

Terror is not fun. It is pain. But when you push through it, you’re in a new world. A world you never explored before. It’s a mystery, a maze, a game, a play.

Happiness is outside of my comfort zone. Every day.

And I’m happy now.

[Video coming soon. I went WAY out of my comfort zone the day afterwards and took it to a new level.]

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Thursday, July 13, 2017

Ep. 236: Farnoosh Torabi – Flipping the Mic – Farnoosh Interviews Me

She was my partner in crime.

Farnoosh recently hosted her own show on CNBC. She also has a super popular podcast. And she’s a successful book author and all around writer.

But to me she’s more than that.

From 2006 to 2008 we did videos together every day. We would meet on Wall Street, a video guy would tape us talking about whatever we wanted to talk about, and then we’d send that video out onto the interwebs.

The day the first iphone came out we went to the Apple flagship store near Central Park. We interviewed the people who were waiting on line all night.

A homeless guy started to pick on Farnoosh. Not that I am so brave but I didn’t want to seem unmanly so I stood in between the man and Farnoosh and asked him to please go away.

He lifted me up and threw me to the ground. And then he went away.

That was a fun story that I wanted to share.

But more…Farnoosh is a textbook example of how a career can be made and be a success.

She had a fulltime job learning skills she loved and then mastered: financial markets, writing, video, multimedia, communication, and the business of business.

While at the full time job, she wrote a book on the markets: YOU’RE SO MONEY.

From that, she no longer needed thestreet.com and diversified her sources of income by writing for many outlets, going on various TV shows, starting her own show, writing more, starting a successful and profitable podcast, and many other activities.

And ten years later, we still find each other doing videos together or podcasts, or articles, or whatever.

Building a career is like knitting a tapestry. It’s small thread by small thread. It takes years. It becomes beautiful. And it’s something you can fall into when it’s done for comfort and security.

That tapestry becomes your network. A career is not what you created today, but the networks you built up today that will create unexpected opportunities for you ten, fifteen, twenty years later.

As an example: I just did a deal with a friend of mine I began working with twenty years ago. Every day I see these opportunities.

And I’m horrible at networking. Farnoosh isn’t.

But there’s another reason I wanted Farnoosh on my podcast.

Farnoosh is great at interviewing. And I wanted her to interview me. I find when I am a guest on other people’s podcasts I always find new ways to say the things I want to express, new ways to say what I’ve learned from my guests and my experiences.

Who better to interview me than the person who has been interviewing me for almost a dozen years.

“I came prepared,” she told me. Because she wanted to find out what you don’t see on Google…

Here’s what we talked about:

  • The rise of entrepreneurship and the rise of “gurus.” Farnoosh asked me, “Who should people trust?” But really, it doesn’t matter. Anytime you “study” entrepreneurship, it means you’re not DOING entrepreneurship. It’s great to have ideas. And it’s fine to read one business books (TOPS), but then that’s it. Get in the mud and starting doing. – listen at 7 minutes
  • Farnoosh asked me, “Do you remember the first time you used the internet?”  It was before the web. I logged into a news group and could talk to people from Norway about Star Wars. Besides the phone, it was the first time I spoke to someone without being in the same room…  It was 1986. And then the web started. Hypertext came in. And I thought it would be used for storytelling. But then it became huge for commerce. Then she asked me, “What’s next?” – listen at 19 minutes
  • Mentorship and finding your inner circle – listen at 25 minutes
  • Evolution, willpower and the access economy – listen at 36 minutes
  • My daily schedule (the morning is my “maker” hours, in the evening I manage several businesses and at night I have fun. I do comedy.) – listen at [38 minutes
  • Is it better to focus on one thing and enjoy the subtleties of what it takes to be the best in the world at something? Or diversify? I struggle with this. Farnoosh said she bought the book, “The One Thing.” Because she wanted to get focussed. “I bought it and never finished it,” she said. The irony… she got busy doing “other” things. But maybe the other things takes us off our path, out of our delusions and shift us into doing more fulfilling learning curves. – listen at 43 minutes
  • The story of “lucky Lisa.” That’s Farnoosh’s nickname for the friend who helped me get rid of all of my belongings – listen at 53 minutes
  • “What about dating?” Farnoosh wondered if dating is weird for me. Because I have no home. And then we talked about renting vs owning. I used to believe in renting. But now I just borrow. It’s part of the new access economy. We live in a world of access (and Airbnb). But I eventually answer her question about dating, too. – listen at 59 minutes
  • Then we talked about money. “If you couldn’t pass on any money to your kids and all you could pass on was investment strategies, rules, a portfolio, what would it be?” – listen at 1 hour and 5 minutes
  • “Do you like talking about politics?” she asked… – listen at 1 hour and 10 minutes
  • “Did you vote?” No. And I don’t think it matters. Here’s why. Saying it’s your “civil responsibility” to vote is not true. I agree we all have a civil duty. I do mine by writing 300 articles a year, giving talks, doing 100 podcasts a year and giving it all away. You get to decide how you fulfil your this civil duty. If you choose voting, that’s fine. But I don’t. I don’t want to outsource my contribution. We started debating – listen at 1 hour and 11 minutes
  • Hear the story of the time I went to Bernie Madoff and was turned away. He said, “The last thing I need is to see the name Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC on the front page of the Wall Street Journal” – listen at 1 hour and 19 minutes
  • How to get into TV – listen at 1 hour and 22 minutes
  • AND the “choose yourself” method for getting into TV (how to get past the gatekeepers) – listen at 1 hour and 27 minutes

Links and Resources:

Also Mentioned: 

farnoosh torabi

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Monday, July 10, 2017

How I’ve Lived Off My Ideas (sort of) For 20 Years

[The picture is of me, this past Monday, going over my list of joke ideas right before going on stage to do some standup comedy at StandupNY on 78th and Broadway. 10 ideas a day works for anything.]

Since 1997, I have 100% lived off of my ideas.

Some years I was rich. Some years I was dirt poor, depressed suicidal, and greatly in debt to banks and IRS and family.

If you type “I want to die” in Google, I’m the second or third result. I’m the “I want to die” guy.

One Father’s Day my daughters bought me a scooter. My first ride I flipped over and flew ten feet. My kids yelled, “Daddy!” and started running towards me. I didn’t move.

I wanted to be dead. I wanted the worry in my stomach to just stop for one, please ONE, second. That worry ate my stomach alive.

I wanted my daughters to love me. To miss me if I were dead.

But I didn’t die. And each time I was stuck and on the ground, only ideas saved me.

Ideas, then good ideas, then execution, then Do-ing, then networking, then idea sex, then turning an idea into a future vision, then monetizing the idea. Then more ideas.

It took me a long time to learn how to not self-sabotage on the last two steps.

Before really hitting the accelerator on monetization so the value that was created continued into a much larger picture.

Ugh. What a long and ugly time! For an ugly person who never forgave himself.

A company, Highbrow, just approached me about doing a 10 part course. I said, “How about on becoming an Idea Machine. From beginning to monetization and beyond!”

Here’s my outline.

Please tell me: Would you take a course like this? Yes or No.

People lie and say “ideas are a dime a dozen and execution is everything?”

This is the biggest lie told in “business self help”. It divides the amateurs from the pros.

Why? I sort of explain in the outline below. But anyone who says that has never truly executed.

I have a fun idea I’m going to do today. It involves a subway, AJ Jacobs, hugging people, and a lot of laughter. And I WILL monetize it.

It’s an idea and we’ll execute.

But I’m never going to ride a scooter again. I don’t want to die anymore.

Course Idea. It would be free. 10 emails. Tell me if you would sign up:

HOW TO BECOME A NUCLEAR IDEA MACHINE AND BECOME A MEMBER OF THE JUSTICE LEAGUE OF IDEAS

Ten classes, delivered via email. One a week.

WHAT IS AN IDEA MACHINE?
a. What is creativity?
b. how the idea muscle atrophies?
c. What is passion and purpose?
d. Why ideas are not “a dime a dozen”
e. Execution is everything BUT execution ideas are a SUBSET of ideas. You still have to be an idea machine to execute

TEN IDEAS A DAY. THE BASIC EXERCISE
a. How to do it.
b. Homework assignment
c. Ten days of ten ideas
d. The benefits of a waiter’s pad
e. Why you should throw out all the ideas.
f. Personal story of how I started this.

IDEA SEX
a. Examples of idea sex
b. Homework assignment
c. What is a “comfort zone”?
d. How idea sex breaks you out of the comfort zone

HOW TO USE THE IDEA EXERCISE TO FIND WHAT YOU ARE PASSIONATE ABOUT
a; 3 exercises for finding your passion.
b. Is there such a thing as passion
c. Why it’s important to focus on passion.
d. What “focus” really means – the Umbrella technique

IDEA NETWORKING
a. The real value of a network
b. How to use ideas to build your network
c. How to reverse network
d. Permission networking.
e. Seed networking.

DO-IT MARKETING vs CONTENT MARKETING
a. How to use ideas to DO
b. Why content marketing is the wrong approach for brands

EXECUTION IDEAS
a. How to know if you have a good idea?
b. Examples of coming up with execution ideas.
c. The value of testing execution ideas.
d. Fail fast to succeed forward (i.e. the value of having a strong execution idea muscle).

PLUS, MINUS, EQUAL
a. How to use ideas to build the resources to skip the 10,000 hour rule in any area of life
b. Homework assignment

MONETIZING IDEAS
Bringing it all together:
a. Identify a good idea
b. Basic execution
c. Idea sex.
d. DO IT Marketing
e.. Idea networking
f. Turning an idea into a motivational vision
g. How to share the vision to build a tribe
h. Turning that into money.
i. Personal stories.
j. Homework assignment

THE ULTIMATE BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR IDEA MACHINES
a. Ideas don’t exist in a vacuum.
b. Histories of ideas and creatives
c. Futurism and its role in idea generation
d. How to escape the beaten path and wander safely into the jungle of creativity
e. How to learn from everything you read and experience
f. Next steps for turning into a super idea machine
g. The complete resource guide for everything you need to be a permanent idea super hero.

Thinking of this outline brought back memories from 15 years ago. Writing down my a list of ideas when I was so scared I could barely breathe.

For the first time in years I felt a tiny bit of hope. I felt it in my chest. I am still alive.

The post How I’ve Lived Off My Ideas (sort of) For 20 Years appeared first on Altucher Confidential.



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Wednesday, July 5, 2017

Ep. 235: Tim Kennedy – How to Have a Spirit of Adventure (when it’s lost…)

“Have a spirit of adventure, the desire to learn something new, be an explorer and never get too comfortable.”

“Imagine this room is filling up with poisonous gas,” Tim said. He’s looking straight at me. “There’s two doors behind me, one window and one to either side.” He points exactly where everything is, even though he’s still looking straight at me.

“We have several choices,” he said, “I can pick the locks of one of the doors. I can break down the doors. I can smash one of the windows and we can climb out. We have three minutes until we die. What do we do?”

Tim is aware of everything around him. Which is probably why I started off the podcast with:

“We have nothing in common.”

“We’re 30 seconds into the interview and we’re already disagreeing,” he said.

It’s a creative challenge to figure out how to relate with each person I meet… He’s a US Army Special Forces sniper. He’s been to Iraq and Afghanistan. He’s an MMA fighter. And has multiple black belts.

I have zero black belts. I have negative black belts. I haven’t been to war. And I’m not trained to kill people. I can’t shove someone without looking funny.

So we have different instincts.

“I remember every moment of every gunfight I’ve ever been in,” he said. “And there are things that wake me up at night.”

“Like what?”

“In the movies, saving your friends and killing a bad guy is a high-five moment, right? No. You just took a human life. That is something that echoes with you through eternity.”

He told me about the decisions he had to make every day. And how his dad’s words rang in the back of his head, “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.”

There were four people in Tim’s unit. Each had a different job: communications, medicine, explosives, tactics. Tim was tactics. “Weapons tactic expert,” that was his job title.

He constantly had to assess whether or not to fire. Because the situation was never clear. Innocent people could be in the same room as the man with the machine gun.

“He was shooting at my teammates. He had a machine gun in the window.” And Tim didn’t know what (or who else) was on the other side…

Then he asked me, “Do you throw the grenade?”

I didn’t know. My instinct is to run.

“Run? The bullets are 175 grain and travel at 2,800 feet per second. Do you run 2,800 feet per second?”

He threw the grenade.

“Did you ever find out what was behind that window?”

“Yeah… the moment the grenade goes off and all you hear are women and children screaming and crying. I stayed up for a week with the women and kids that were in that room. We fight until the fight is over. But then we revisit and give them the best medical care that we can in the field and transport them to the best hospitals that we have access to. That’s the most beautiful thing about US Army Special Forces, ‘The Green Berets.’ We want to do everything by, with and through the indigenous people.”

I can’t imagine.

And not being able to imagine, is what we have in common. It’s when you try to find the bridge where two people can meet that I learn the most about the people around me.

Here’s what we talked about:

HOW TO LIVE A BALANCED LIFE EVERYDAY

[12:20] – We talked about his childhood. I wanted to know if fighting is inherent. He says it wasn’t. Although, he did learn how to fight when he was young. His brother and friends always threw him in the pool. “Were you traumatized?” I asked. Tim had the mindset that he could get stronger. And he planned to throw them in the pool someday. All 9 of them. But in between sports and horsing around, Tim’s Mom brought in balance. She enrolled him in piano lessons. I didn’t ask if he still plays piano. I don’t know if he still has this balance. But it’s worthwhile to try to create it in your own life. To lose your stresses in the concentration of a new art, a new practice.

THE RIGHT TIME TO TAKE ACTION IS…

[27:12] – “War is horrible. Period. It’s where we see the most unimaginable horrors,” Tim said. So I asked him why he initially signed up to go to war. And He told me this, “Evil will prevail if good men stand back and do nothing.” He had to take action. I asked him another question. This is happening all over the world. We didn’t take action in Rwanda until it was too late. At what point do you start to take action against evil?   

GIVE THEM LIFE OR DEATH… WHAT TO DO WHEN IT’S YOUR CHOICE?

[39:20] – Tim’s made mistakes. Mistakes that wake him up at night or prevent him from going to sleep. War takes a toll. He set up a scenario for me. A machine gun being stuck out a window, pointed at him and his team. Shooting. He throws a grenade through the window the machine gun is in. The grenade goes off. The moment it goes off he can hear the women and children screaming and crying. He had no idea who was in the building, but does he risk his own life to save the lives of the women and children inside? Listen for what happens after the smoke clears.  

WHO ARE YOU AT YOUR CORE?

[49:00] – “You don’t get to see who a person really is, until you strip them down,” Tim said. He’s talking about the Army Special Forces selection process. It’s one month of breaking the candidates down before the real training even begins. You don’t have a name. Just a number. You have no identity, no resume. They deprive you of sleep and your calorie intake is substantially inadequate. Then they find out who you really are at your core…

UNDERSTANDING HUMANITY

[53:00] – Tim said, “Once you understand humanity, you understand right and wrong, you understand just and unjust. These are things that transcend language”. Tim was an expert at transcending language. It was part of his job. Because he had to adapt and assimilate into cultures around the world. So I asked him, “What are the tools? How do you became a “warrior ambassador?”

THE DEPTH OF TERRORISM

[58:00] – I didn’t realize how much our army gets involved in all the world’s issues. They stop poachers, save animals from going endangered, they try to stop human trafficking and anything that touches the black market. I wanted to learn more about human trafficking .I know it’s a very real problem in the world, but I didn’t know enough. What does it mean? Are little girls being kidnapped and sold into slavery? And does that happen all over the place? “Yes,” Tim said, “It happens here in the United States, here in Austin, TX.” Then he told me how this black market industry is supporting terrorism all over the world.  Listen here for Tim’s explanation of how we are trying to put it to an end.

FIND YOUR SPIRIT OF ADVENTURE

[1:08:50] – I asked Tim about mastery. He’s a peak performer in all areas of combat and martial arts. He also owns several businesses. So I asked, “How did you master all of these areas?”  But he said, “There’s no such thing as mastery.” So I asked him what he thinks of learning. He told me this, “Have a spirit of adventure, the desire to learn something new, be an explorer and never get too comfortable.” Listen to our conversation to learn Tim’s perspective on how to regain your sense of exploration.

Links and Resources: 

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