The 9 Reasons Most People Won’t Become Millionaires

I met a girl in an elevator and asked her out on a date. This was between marriages.

The first thing she asked me on our date was, “How much are you worth?”

I had made and lost millions but nobody knew at that time what I had. I lied. I said, “$1 million.” But I was worth less.

“Not good enough,” she said. Still, we dated for awhile but then it ended. Like most things, it ended horribly.

I had made and lost so many times at that point that I had to ask myself: “Why can’t I keep the money?”

There’s three skills to making a million:

1. Making it.
2. Keeping it.
3. Growing it.

Sometimes I was good at #1. And sometimes I was bad at it. And, at that point, I was always bad at #2… keeping it.

Like the time I blew it all on bad investments, or bad tax decisions, or bad house decisions, or other bad spending decisions.

But it wasn’t any one decision. It wasn’t someone ripping me off, or me being irresponsible.

I catalogued all the reasons I would fail to make or keep $1 million. The reasons were never on the outside world. The reasons were always inside of me.

Every failure to become a millionaire will boil down to these nine reasons.

A) Sickness

If you are sick all the time, you won’t be successful at a business. When I was a venture capitalist, I would never invest money to a guy hooked up to a ventilator.

Or even if I suspected they were clinically depressed (which I often was).

Many people avoid second dates if they find out on the first date the girl has late-stage terminal cancer. This is sad but reality.

Put good things in your body. Exercise. Don’t drink. Sleep eight hours a day. That’s it.

Then you probably won’t get sick as much and you’ll have a lot of energy to do your business. If you’re sick in bed all the time, your business will fail.

Sometimes sickness might also be telling you something.

When I worked for a private equity firm I fell once for no reason and could barely walk for a week or so afterwards.

My body was telling me something. I should’ve been fine but my body fell.

I quit the next day and had energy for the next opportunity.

B) Inertia

I went out for dinner a few months ago with people who couldn’t stop talking, eating, and drinking.

One person had business ideas. The other person wanted to write a novel.

All night long drinking, eating, talking about business ideas, talking about writing novels. Talking, eating, drinking, talking, walking, drinking again, talking more. Then you sleep. Wake up at 10. Bloated, sick, heavy.

If you want to succeed, you first have to get up and start. You can’t watch Shark Tank — you have to be the shark.

Don’t waste time. Start NOW. No more stuffing your face. No more parties at high-tech meet-ups with lots of social media experts.

You know you only want to have sex with a social media expert. Stop lying about it. Start your business.

C) Doubts

You need to have a real passion behind the product you are creating.

Would YOU use the product? If you wouldn’t, or if you are not sure, then you have doubts. Steve Jobs WANTED an iPad, an iPod, an iEverything.

Doubts will make you fail because you won’t be able to make critical design decisions.

With one business I started, Stockpickr, I was obsessed with putting in new features. But EVERY single feature had to be something that would make me personally want to use the site more.

With Reset, the first business that I was able to build and sell, I only created websites that I would want to use.

D) Laziness

I am lazy. I admit it. I like to watch TV and play games. I like to hang out with friends. Everyone is lazy some of the time.

If I am bored with something, I’m lazy.

But with a startup, or if you are trying to move up in the corporate world, or if you are falling in love with someone, you can’t be lazy. She wants to go tango. You want to watch Jay Leno. You’re a lazy pig. Go dancing!

Treat your money like you love it. Don’t be lazy about it.

Or she’ll find someone else to tango with.

This doesn’t mean work 100 hours a week. This doesn’t mean you have to kill yourself to succeed.

But it does mean you have to work on all aspects of your life that give you energy — physical health, emotional health, creative health, spiritual health — so you can make smart, creative decisions when you need to.

So you can sell with enthusiasm. Negotiate with conviction. Manage the details. Constantly have new ideas.

And when you have put in the time, rejuvenate with good downtime. Go tango dancing!

E) Carelessness

If your programmers present you a final product, you still have to check every page, click on everything, click on everything fast and twice, don’t forget a birthday or an anniversary, don’t forget everything your boss told you or everything the client wanted.

Be detail oriented.

Persistent carelessness equals consistent failure.

F) Vacillating

Always wondering: Is this the right business? Or should I back up and start fresh with a new idea?

Don’t be constantly stuck in the middle of a decision. Then you are blocked.

If you’re stuck in too many middles, you get sliced up into bits of broken glass.

Your businesses implode, your relationships have to start back at zero. You vacillated and ended up with nothing. Congratulations.

G) No progress

You start your business. You launch your dating site. A few people sign up. But there’s no excitement. People stop signing up.

Traffic stays at a few dozen people a day. OK, no progress. You buy some Google ads. They sort of work. No progress. By the way, failure is not a stigma. It’s OK to fail.

Its just that having “no progress” might be an indication you need to move to another idea or business.

One business I once started didn’t seem to get any traction. I had no signups. Very few people were using it. Nobody cared.

I raised $1 million. But I was physically shaking the next day. My body was again telling me this was not going to work.

[My dating site for Twitter users was getting no signups.]

Nothing bad was happening. I just knew that no progress meant this business idea was not going to work.

I returned all the money. At first I felt like a failure. I failed “yet again!”

But ultimately returning the money on the eve of failure created much goodwill and led to greater success later. This is not about the success of one business or failure. This is about the success of you.

Even profitable companies sometimes have no progress and have to be rethought. This happened to me with my fund of hedge funds. This has happened to me with some podcasts I have started. This has happened to me with books I started writing, even when I was 200 pages in.

But “no progress” is ultimately a great signal to take a step back, and even another step back, and go in a totally different direction.

Persistence will get you nowhere if you keep running into a wall.

H) Delusions

People start a business, and they think it’s the best geo-locator mobile dating discount app in the universe.

“It’s called ‘6th Circle’ because its a play on Foursquare and the sixth circle of Dante’s Inferno. We’re going to do five deals with major sidewalk companies in China to get the word out. The market is $18 billion in profits if we get everyone in Shanghai to pay 10 cents a day.”

Blah blah. Always look back. “Am I smoking crack?” “Am I smoking crack?” “Am I smoking crack?”

Every day check the ashtray. Is there crack in there? Delusions will keep you from making progress.

There is something called “optimism bias” but I call it “smoking crack bias.”

We always think the project we are doing is the BEST. We become delusional.

Then suddenly, no money, no friends, no more PR, and you’re on your bed smoking your last piece of crack hanging onto the lonely panties of the last hooker who left you by yourself, not even bothering to dress as she slammed the door on the way out. This is your mind on crack.

I) You fall backwards

You’re losing clients. Your best programmer quit. Your traffic is going down. Your girlfriend is not returning your calls. Your boss promoted someone over you.

Time to get creative now. You need to think out of the box. Again, this is just an obstacle. Not a failure.

Learn from it. Adjust.

Experience is curriculum. Always.

—

Consistently meeting ANY of the nine criteria above will prevent you from making $1 million.

And if you avoid these nine items, you will succeed. It may seem basic. Some people might answer, “Millionaires work 100 hours a day! Millionaires have 10 streams of income!”

I don’t know if that’s true. But I do know if you have some or all of these nine items working against you, then you WILL NOT make $1 million.

Be vigilant. Every morning ask if you are falling into these nine categories. Every afternoon. Every night.

Catch yourself when you first hit the obstacle. If you can clean the obstacles out, you’ll have success. Guaranteed.

How do you build the inner strength to avoid these nine obstacles to making $1 million?

Focus on these four items every day:

• Physical health: Eat, move, sleep well.
• Emotional health: Avoid toxic people. Be around people who you love and who love you.
• Creative health: Write down 10 ideas a day. Exercise the idea muscle. Within six months you will be like a super hero. An idea machine.
• Spiritual health: Every day, never obsess over the things you can’t control. This saves enormous energy.

TRUST that this daily practice works. It works for me.

I finally stopped going through this painful, depressing, unrelenting cycle.

I started a business that built up to millions in profits. I started doing more and more of the things I love rather than giving up on things I love to do more of the things I hated.

I started being honest with myself about what was costing me energy.

I made better friends. I fell in love. I exercise the idea muscle every day.

Sometimes I get stressed, anxious, scared.

Sometimes I get doubts. Or I get a little too lazy. Or I get “smoking crack bias.” But then I get back to that daily practice and it works. And I see it work with other people.

Businesses might fail, relationships might not work out, your old boss will be stuck yelling at the dead pieces of meat that sit in his office sucking up to him.

But no longer can anything stop you from succeeding.

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How to Write 12 Books This Year

Maria had a crush on Mark. But Mark was going out with Jen. And I had a crush on Maria but I thought I was too worthless for her.

Mark wanted to be a writer. He read James Joyce and could quote Thomas Pynchon. He had a beard. He wanted to write “The Great American Novel.”

And Maria loved him and I was jealous.

So in 1990 I started writing every single day and haven’t stopped since.

I thought I had to write a great literary novel to get a girlfriend.

So I read hundreds of literary novels. I started writing every day. I got thrown out of graduate school because I stopped attending classes.

I took jobs that had flexible hours so I could spend most of the day writing.

I wrote four novels and dozens of short stories. I even printed up a small little book of my short stories and sold them in local bookstores for 25 cents.

But mostly I got rejected. Hundreds and hundreds of rejections. Nothing got published.

29 years later I’m still learning about being a good writer.

I should’ve started by doing EXACTLY what I am about to tell you to do. I wish I had known this then.

And maybe one day I’ll write a novel.

—

INTERLUDE: My first “30-day” book idea

In 2002, I would walk for hours in the middle of the night. I was too depressed and anxious to sleep.

I obsessively went over and over and over all my problems.

Every time I had a “solution” to my problems, my anxious brain would find more problems.

You can’t THINK your way to success, but you can DO your way to success.

I got a waiter’s pad and I sat in a cafe and I wrote at the top of the page:

BOOK IDEA: “How to Beat Your Friends and Family at Every Game in the Universe”

I wrote down 10 games (chess, checkers, poker, Scrabble, Monopoly, hearts, etc) and then listed three simple tricks for each game so you can beat all of your friends and family.

Domination at Thanksgiving!

For instance, in Scrabble, everyone thinks good vocabulary is the key. It’s not.

– Memorize the two letter words.
– Memorize the “q-without-u” words. QAT, QOPF, etc.
– “SATINE” (Google it).

If you know those three items, you’ll beat every casual player 100% of the time. You will be the most hated person at Thanksgiving, which is always my goal.

I never wrote the book. I wrote other things.

But it gave me an idea: How to write 12 books in 12 months.

—

Challenge: Finish a “101” book by Labor Day.

Pick an area you love or pick an area you want to research.

Write ten new things about that area each day that are critical for understanding it better.

Each item should surprise you. As in, “I wish someone had told me this 10 years ago.”

“I did not know that!” is the ideal response for each item on your list.

When you have 101 items, you have a first draft of a book.

—

“101 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT ENTREPRENEURSHIP”

1) The average millionaire has five different sources of income according to the IRS.

2) Only 30% of startups fail (as opposed to the often quoted 90%), according to the Small Business Administration.

Etc.

For each item, write a paragraph or two explaining it in more detail and telling a story.

—

“101 SECRETS THE U.S. GOVERNMENT IS KEEPING FROM YOU”

1) If you’re in NYC and afraid of a terrorist attack, stay at the Waldorf Astoria. Presidents usually stay there because below the ground floor is an exit to Track 61 — a secret train track that takes you to Grand Central and allows you to quickly get out of NYC.

2) Want to avoid taxes and live in a beautiful vacation spot? The U.S. Virgin Islands has a top federal tax rate of 3.35%, instead of the top federal tax rate of 39% in the states.

—

Why a number? The dreaded listicle?

Because they work.

Listicles have been popular ever since a random Middle Easterner wrote a blog post called “The 10 Commandments” in 1500 BC.

And then another blogger wrote for his meet-up group “The 4 Noble Truths” in 300 BC.

And then a priest named Martin Luther wrote “95 Theses” in 1517 and it went viral with over a billion views.

Some recent books that are among my favorites:

• The Four Agreements
• 12 Rules for Life
• The 48 Laws of Power
• 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
• 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do.

—

“101 STRANGE WAYS TO BE HAPPIER”

1) Feeling that mid-day stress? Say a long “eeeeee” for a minute. This contorts the facial muscles around the mouth the same way a smile does.

Much research shows that actions precede emotions. And that smiling (or fake smiling) actually makes you happier.

Try it.

2) …

—

How to Write and Publish Your 101 Book in a Month

A) Write 10 items a day
B) Write a one- or two-page story for each item
C) When you hit 101, outsource a book cover to 99Designs
D) Use Fiverr to find someone to format for Kindle
E) Use Amazon to upload the Kindle format. They will also convert to paperback format
F) Record the audio and upload (via Amazon) to Audible.

Boom! You have a published book.

—

“101 SMALL HABITS WILL BRING YOU SUCCESS”

1) Take a cold shower. Cold showers shock the body, inducing deep breathing first thing in the morning, which increases alertness throughout the day.

2) Look at rooftops while you walk — it’s meditative, reduces smartphone use (which creates anxiety), and helps you to find the hidden beauty in your city.

—

My only number book, “40 Alternatives to College,” was actually No. 1 on Amazon under the category “College Education” for a few months after it was published.

I should do more number books.

—

“101 PARENTING TRICKS YOUR PARENTS NEVER TAUGHT YOU”

“101 THINGS COLLEGE NEVER TAUGHT YOU”

“101 MAGIC TRICKS YOU CAN LEARN IN FIVE MINUTES”

Etc.

—

TEST, TEST, TEST

You can test out the content (or book idea) by taking 10 points, writing up a little story around them, publishing on LinkedIn or Medium, and gauging the response.

Shares > Comments > Likes.

Pick the book idea that has the most engagement.

There’s also sequel potential: “501 MORE Things…”

And remember to write a story around the list items. Stories sell. Not numbers or facts.

Moses had to rain down frogs, kill everyone’s firstborn, and part the Red Sea before we paid attention to his invention of the first tablet that connected to the cloud.

Moses had a story.

—

“HOW TO WIN AT MONOPOLY”

Buy, trade, do whatever you can to get the orange properties and build hotels on them. Buy the railroads.

Why?

Because the most common square to land on is Jail. The most common dice roll is seven. And those two things put you in the middle of the orange properties.

—

I never wrote that book.

Traditional games got less popular. In my local game store, chess, Scrabble, and Monopoly, are in the “Nostalgia” category.

But I love games. Probably the passion I’ve had that has lasted longer than any other passion in my life.

One day I’ll finish the book. Or start it. Or maybe I’ll just continue beating all my friends at every game.

Or losing to the friends who already know my tricks.

I tend to share too many of my secrets.

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50 Things I Did Before I Turned 50

1. Got depressed because my dad went broke, lost our home, and went insane. He’d cry all the time, ask me, “What’s wrong with me?” and listen to music until he died.

2. Got depressed because the first 10 girls I asked out didn’t like me and said no. Two actually ran away before I finished my question. One said yes and then the next day told her brother to tell me no. One said, “Maybe in 100 years,” and I actually felt hopeful she was going to give me a chance eventually.

3. Got depressed when my mom hit me because I woke up my dad after his surgery. He made me stand in the middle of the room and not move while she came over and hit me.

4. Got depressed when the first business I started, CollegeCard (a debit card for college students), went out of business after less than a year.

5. Got depressed when I was thrown out of graduate school. The letter cited “lack of maturity.” I had dinner the other day with the professor who wrote the letter. He said that it was Nobel-prize winning economist Herb Simon who said, “Why are we letting that guy sit at a desk doing nothing when we could have a student there who is doing something?” and I guess he was right.

6. Got depressed when a girl I was in love with went home for a few weeks to her home country and her family found a letter I wrote to her. So they arranged a marriage for her within days and when she came back into town, she denied we ever were going out. I called a friend of mine on the phone but was crying so much I couldn’t speak and he couldn’t figure out who I was so he hung up.

7. Got depressed when four novels I wrote didn’t get published by the time I was 26.

8. Got depressed when 40 short stories I wrote and sent out to magazines didn’t get published. All of them got rejected by form letters. Out of the thousands of letters and copies of writings I sent out in my 20s, I did not get back one personalized rejection. I worked 10 hours a day on writing and nothing came of it in my 20s, with no hope for the future.

9. Got depressed when a TV show I pitched to HBO got rejected after we spent a year shooting a 45-minute pilot. The woman in charge of the decision said, “For material like this you need to either show someone shooting their mother while naked or show your neighbors f***ing.” She is now in charge of HBO Family programming.

10. Got depressed when a 13-year-old little girl crushed me in chess. Her name, in fact, is Irina Krush. I was a strong player and had studied for years. She analyzed the game for me and told me where I went wrong on the ninth move. I gave up playing tournament chess that moment.

11. Got depressed when Amy chose another guy over me. I really fell hard for her. She married him and has a kid. I ran into her a few years ago. I still fell hard for her.

12. Got depressed when I liked this girl, Jaimie, and she liked me, but I was always so nervous and intimidated by her that I couldn’t “perform.” One night she literally kicked me until I fell out of the bed and she told me to get out. So that was that.

13. Got depressed when I moved into my first apartment by myself. I had only one foam mattress and it was hot and I had a fever and all my sweat soaked thoroughly into the mattress. When I woke up in feverish pain in the middle of the night on top of my sweat-soaked mattress, I was covered by roaches.

14. Got depressed when I entered a contest for writing a “three-day novel.” I finished the novel and I called my girlfriend at the time. I wanted to get together. She said, “I thought we were taking a break.” And that was that.

15. Got depressed when I quit my job because I thought my business was going to take off and on the first day full time at my business our largest client cancelled us.

16. Got depressed when I jumped off my bed, pretending to be Superman, and I broke my toe and had to wear a cast. Then I had to start a new school as a first grader and I was “that kid” limping with the cast.

17. Got depressed when I was 10 years old and I was caught stealing football cards at the local toy store. They turned my coat upside down and packs of cards came out. They said, “Is that it?” and I said yes. They shook more. More packs came out. “IS THAT IT?” “Yes.” They shook more. More packs… And so on.

18. Got depressed when 10 minutes later they found my grandparents and asked them to come to the back of the store. The look my grandmother gave me.

19. Got depressed when I was 16 and I had so much acne and so many cysts you could barely see my face. I’d hear girls talking about me and looking at me and then look away when I looked. One guy, Yung Shin, told me to just try and smile a lot.

20. Got depressed because cysts are purple.

21. Got depressed when I cut school because I was so embarrassed of how I looked. I went into NYC and got mugged and my backpack was stolen from me and it had a bunch of books I wanted to read that day. Later, my mom asked me, “Where is your backpack?” and I had no answer.

22. Got depressed when I was eight and my dad convinced me to donate all my games to charity and he would give me his tax write-off. I didn’t even know what a tax write-off was but I thought it was a lot of money. I gave him about 20 games (Monopoly, Chutes & Ladders, Trouble, etc.). About six months later he gave me a dollar.

23. Got depressed the first semester of graduate school when I failed ALL of my courses. Up until then I thought I was smart. But at that moment I knew for the rest of my life I would have to fake it.

24. Got depressed when we moved to a new town when I was five. My new friends thought it would be fun to hold my hand on top of a burning barbecue for as long as possible. We moved a month or so after that.

25. Got depressed when I was unhappy in a relationship but we were living together and both of us too poor to move out. So I stayed at work and played online chess all of the time. At least 20 hours a day. And she would be upset at me and bang on my office door but I would lock it and pretend I wasn’t there.

26. Got depressed when she cheated on me. But I deserved it.

27. Got depressed when my college girlfriend and I took Kung-Fu class freshman year of college and she beat the shit out of me.

28. Got depressed when I started a brand new job in NYC and my dad bought me a suit and I was walking to work from the bus station when the woman standing two feet to my right was run over and killed by a taxicab that came up onto the sidewalk. I was depressed but it was worse for her.

29. Got depressed in my very first memory. I was in some sort of big crib even though I was too old for cribs. I was screaming. It was early in the morning. Eventually my grandmother lifted me out of the crib so I could play. I don’t think I have another memory until at least a year after that.

30. Got depressed when she said, “I have to run errands, I’ll be back in an hour,” and then she left and took a plane to another country and I never saw her again.

31. Got depressed when one… no… two women got pregnant with a child from me (presumably) and then decided to have an abortion.

32. Got depressed because I couldn’t see my kids every day like I used to. I remember I used to come home on the train and one of my kids would run and run and run and then jump into my arms. Those days died.

33. Got depressed when I got an offer to buy one of my companies. But he wanted me to sign a seven-year employment agreement and they could fire me at any time and I would have to pay back all the money in the deal. Didn’t take the deal and I shut down the company and was almost broke.

34. Got depressed when I realized I’d made a huge investing mistake. Oingo was going out of business in 2001. We could’ve maybe picked it up for nothing. I said, “No, the search engine business is dead!” Less than a few months later, Google bought the company for 1% of Google. The company, Oingo, had changed its name to Applied Semantics. Which later became called AdSense under Google. It generates 99% of Google’s revenues.

35. Got depressed when I decided to take a job at a private equity firm and give up on my dreams of entrepreneurship. On the second or third day of work I was in the middle of a meeting, said, “I have to go to the bathroom,” left my jacket on the chair, went to the elevator, said goodbye to the receptionist, rode the elevator 40 stories down, took the subway to Grand Central, took a train sixty miles home, and then never went back to work or returned their phone calls ever again.

36. Got depressed when a big hedge fund manager didn’t invest in my business. He was worried he would have no idea if I would spend the money on something unethical. He said, “The last thing we need here at Bernard Madoff Securities is to see our name on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.” So I decided to get out of the business, thinking, “Bernie Madoff is too good. How can I compete?”

37. Got depressed when many years later I reached out to Bernie Madoff’s prison and asked if he could come on my podcast. They sent back a message saying he said no and I thought to myself first, “Well, what else is he doing with his time?” and then I thought, “Man, Bernie Madoff keeps rejecting me no matter what.”

38. Got depressed when I was first doing standup. The first time I was heckled. The guy in the audience kept yelling to other people in the audience, “He’s a weirdo.” And then the MC said afterwards, “Sir, can I get you a drink?” and he said, “I need two. That guy was a weirdo.”

39. Got depressed when I took my daughter on a trip. We had so much fun. I took her to London and Paris. We ate at restaurants, went to bookstores, walked for miles, laughed and talked about anything. When we landed I kissed and hugged her before a car was taking her back to her mom because I realized we would probably never take a trip like that again.

40. Got depressed when I wrote a script for a TV show. It was about a hedge fund manager who secretly wants to be a standup comic. But he can’t tell his hedge fund friends and he can’t tell his comedy friends and throughout the arc of the show he develops his voice as a comedian. I sent it to my friends who were producers. They all said no. One called me and said, “Have you heard of a show called, ‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’?” “No,” I said. “Watch it when it comes out next month.”

41. Get depressed every time I have a podcast guest say at the end of a podcast, “Man, that was the best podcast I’ve been on. Let’s grab dinner some time.” And then I call them later to follow up on a potential dinner but they never pick up or return my calls.

42. Got depressed when I threw out all of my belongings and was living out of a carry-on bag. I was living from Airbnb to Airbnb, just a few days at a time and if I bought anything new I had to throw something out of my bag. But then I realized I had also thrown out all of my pictures of me as a kid and pictures of my parents. I missed them. I missed the moments when I thought they loved me.

43. Got depressed when I got addicted to anti-anxiety medication in 2009. I was so anxious about money I couldn’t sleep. I would stay up all night trying to figure out the exact moment I was going to go broke and how I couldn’t escape it. Anxiety was filling every corner of my head. After a month of taking anti-anxiety medication I felt better. When I tried to stop, I couldn’t. I’d have seizures. It took years to even begin tapering off.

44. Got depressed when I realized that losing all of my money cost my dad his life. He had a stroke and there was a “miracle cure” involving spinning him around in a giant ball to stimulate parts of his brain. I wanted to try it but I was broke and couldn’t afford it so we had to check him into a facility when his insurance ran out and for the next two years he couldn’t move and just stared at a ceiling.

45. Got depressed when I suspected she just liked me for money and would make me feel guilty every time I wouldn’t buy her a dress she wanted. Why was I afraid to say no?

46. Got depressed when two different people asked me to take down their podcasts with them because they didn’t want to be associated with me.

47. Got depressed when I just realized I can’t remember the last time I cried.

48. Got depressed when I turned 40 and a friend of mine threw a surprise party for me. I didn’t know any of the people he had invited and I paid for the dinner at the end and went home to my crappy motel room. I had no friends.

49. Got depressed when my sister wrote me, “I never want to speak with you again for the rest of my life.”

50. Today I woke up and I’m the happiest I’ve ever been.

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Everyone Is an Entrepreneur — No Excuses!

She said, “Not everyone is like you. I’m not cut out to be an entrepreneur.”

BS! That’s just an excuse and I’m tired of hearing it.

Although I don’t consider myself in the “entrepreneur” category of podcasts, I am grateful to be on this attached list.

People often think being an entrepreneur is about risk taking. I hear this a lot: “Not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur.” Neither of these is true.

—

1) An entrepreneur DOES NOT take risks.

The entire job is to reduce risks. Else an entrepreneur will fail. There are many ways to reduce risks and I had to learn this the hard way.

Example: Before I started one of my companies, Stockpickr, I guaranteed an ad deal that would net me $90,000 a month starting immediately.

I had one partner, no employees, and no risk.

Otherwise I would not have taken the risk of going into that business.

Example 2: My first successful business, Reset, started while I was a full-time employee at HBO.

I stayed a full-time employee for 18 months, until Reset was generating enough money that I would not have to go down in income if I made the jump to full time.

And I had clients to make sure Reset would stay in business for at least another 12 months in the worst-case scenario.

This is how I cut out risk.

2) When people say, “Not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur,” I am confused.

An EMPLOYEE is the biggest risk taker.

It’s like the turkey that is fed well every day and then on Thanksgiving is surprised when the machete comes out.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb says the three greatest addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a stable income.

Even within the confines of working for a company, an employee must be an “entre-ployee.” Constantly connecting dots, looking for opportunities, seeking out the place least crowded, in order to find and then protect and grow their success.

At HBO, for instance, they didn’t have a website (1995), so I carved out my space there by going from lowly IT slave to being in charge of their website.

Humans have always been entrepreneurs.

70,000 years ago we hunted for food and shared or bartered with the tribe. And 10,000 years ago, the most successful humans were merchants, farmers, military leaders, religious leaders — all entrepreneurial efforts.

To not cultivate the entrepreneurial aspects of our lives is to become the serfs and slaves of the ones who do.

Whether we are employees, entrepreneurs, artists, “lifestyle entrepreneurs,” side hustlers, etc., we must always go to the place least crowded, nourish our unique abilities, and provide service to society that gets rewarded.

Without doing this, we lead lives of simmering anxiety. We will always feel like we have the potential for more More MORE but we won’t know what.

We will have an itch. We will have sleepless nights wondering, “What if?” We will wonder if the canvas we created our life on is a work of art or something to be discarded.

And then we peter out, leaving no stamp behind on this world that was so eager to give bloom to our potential.

—

I hate traditional entrepreneurship. I’m not a businessman although I know the rules of the game. I don’t like sales but I can sell things I believe in. I hate negotiation. I hate to manage other people.

Every time I started a business, from 1987 until now, I always told myself, “Never again! I hate this.” And I truly do.

I started a food delivery business in my college in 1987. I started an internet-based chess server in 1992. “Never again!”

But I did again. And again. And again.

I’m an entrepreneur, like the rest of us. And I always will be.

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The Autobiography of My Meditation

I wanted to see women naked.

But I was too ugly.

I was 12. I had a cyst so big I could Airbnb it out if I had it now.

I had acne all over my face. My hair was tangled like dreadlocks. My glasses were huge and bent.

I had braces and metal all over my mouth, held together by a cat’s cradle of rubber bands.

I’d wake up some days and try to comb and untangle my hair and fail and start crying. I’d try to wash my face but it would get more red and pus would run down my face.

One time my mother walked in and yelled at me, “You’re disgusting!”

I asked a friend of mine, “Do you think a girl will ever like me?” He didn’t say anything. Then he said, “Maybe in college?”

We were in seventh grade.

In gym class we were taught how to square dance. One girl said to another who had to dance with me, “It’s OK, just hold your hands in the air. You don’t have to touch him.”

No girl held my hand then. I just twirled around by myself.

—

So I came to a decision. I was going to see as many naked women as possible.

And nobody will ever know.

—

I bought the book “Journeys Out of the Body.” Then I bought “Wisdom of the Mystic Masters.” Then I bought “Psycho-Cosmic Power.” And then “Secrets of Ultra-Atomic Power.”

Each book had a chapter in it about how to “astral project.”

I’d “project” my soul out of my body. Then I could fly anywhere. I’d be invisible.

Just like Dr. Strange from my favorite comic book.

I tried every technique. I tried more. And more.

—

THE PURPLE DOT

Here’s one technique. For 30 minutes close your eyes and picture a purple dot.

Do that for a week. Then picture that the dot turns into a pipe. Do that for a week. Then it gets as big as a tunnel. Do that for a week. Then practice climbing through the tunnel.

Within four weeks I would be flying around, invisible, and visiting the rooms of every girl I liked in class. They wouldn’t see me and I’d watch them undress.

I would set my alarm for 4:50 a.m. and do it each morning for 30 minutes. Then, because practice makes perfect, I’d go to sleep at 8 p.m. and do it for 30 minutes.

It didn’t work.

—

OM

Here’s another technique. Breathe very deeply, hold it in. Breathe out. Do that 15 times. Then say, “Ommmm.” Then do the deep breathing again. Do this for a half hour each day.

Strange things will happen, the book said. You will astral project. Also, you will control traffic lights.

One guy in the book said, “Cops would always stop me and ask me how I did it.” I believed it.

I did this for months. It didn’t work. No naked women. I couldn’t even change a traffic light.

—

“Don’t masturbate!” one of the books said. I was 13.

My favorite books then were “Wifey” by Judy Blume, “Candy” by Terry Southern, and “Boys and Girls Together” by William Goldman. But I wanted to astral project!

For 18 months I tried every book. “Secrets of Extra Sensory Perception,” “Modern Witchcraft,” “NEW Wisdom from the Mystic Masters,” etc.

Then I read books about Zen. And Tibetan Buddhism and Yoga meditation. All with completely different techniques.

Then I joined a cult.

—

I would skip school, wait in my backyard until I heard both my parents leave, then run across a farm field and take the bus into Port Authority in NYC.

I’d walk down 42nd St. and guys would whisper in my ear, “Guns, knives, drugs, women?”

I was in my argyle sweater, my too-big glasses, my pus-filled cysts were purple mountains stretching from my eyes to the corners of my mouth.

I was 15. A guy with blood all over him ran screaming down the street. NYC in 1983.

My head was turning into an adult head but my body stayed the same size. My head was HUGE.

People at school started calling me “Moose.” If I rode my bike on the street I’d hear people yell from their window, “MOOSE!”

Older kids would run out of their houses and chase after me. “MOOSE!” I’d peddle as fast as possible so I wouldn’t get beat up.

In NYC, I’d show up at this cult that focused on meditation (and “soul travel”) called Eckankar.

The Living Eck Master said if you breathed deep and said “HU” for 30 minutes a day you would soul-travel to other dimensions.

I tried it every day. And when they started charging money in order to practice thinking, I quit and never went back. I had no money.

My parents found burnt bowls of incense in my room. They started screaming at me. “Are you on drugs?” They swore they would take me in for drug testing.

And all my friends got sick me of talking about meditation. “Try it,” I said. “We’ll meet in the astral world.”

And I stopped getting invited to Dungeons & Dragons because all I talked about was meditation and astral projection.

But I kept doing it. I focused on Zen meditation. I did it every day.

First playing with Koans. Then more focused on breath, vipassana-style. Occasionally Tibetan-style visualization. Or Tibetan-style compassion. Or simply prayer.

Later, yoga-style focused meditation. Or the Dalai Lama style of compassion.

Or Islam-style surrender. The beauty of bowing down five times a day. Forget the worries of the day for a moment to surrender to the mystery.

Then Advaita Vedanta style. Silently asking yourself, “Who am I?” And then asking, “Who is asking that?” And then asking, “Where do these thoughts come from?” and so on.

An internal scientist with a sample size of one.

Thoughts of fear, anxiety, lust, anger, hope, dreams. Who is thinking them? And then who or what is thinking that? Over and over.

I got into college and finally saw a real naked woman. I moved in with the very first naked woman I saw. For three years.

So I stopped meditating.

—

Years later I lost all of my money.

So I started meditating again.

I cried to an astrologer who was also my acupuncturist and therapist and sold me crystals and tarot cards.

I said, “I built up all this ‘good power’ from those years meditating as a kid. And now I’ve wasted it. I’ll never build it up again.”

I thought all my powers were gone. Powers I had built up from meditating since I was 12.

But I started meditating again: two, three, sometimes 12 hours a day.

I started seeing another therapist who had written books on meditation. I asked him, “What level do you think I’m at?”

“There aren’t any levels,” he said. But I knew I was BETTER than other people at meditating.

But when I meditated in groups my mind would often drift until I realized I had an erection.

—

After 30 years of on-and-off meditating, someone asked me to teach a class at Kripalu, a meditation retreat.

Was I qualified? I don’t care.

I wanted to title my course, “Spirituality and Money,” but they wouldn’t let me. “We aren’t materialistic here.”

“Money is not materialistic,” I said. “You can meditate and make money also.”

“No.”

Meditation is boring. Meditation often hurts.

If you sit still in the lotus position for more than 15 minutes, you cut off blood from your legs and they go numb.

That’s the point. To sit there and deal with the discomfort without obsessing on it.

This is practice for the many moments we DO obsess in our lives.

One time I got up in a meditation group and fell over. I couldn’t feel my legs.

Everyone kept silent and simply stepped over me.

—

Meditation doesn’t make you more relaxed. You could sit there but your mind can’t stop. Can’t stop can’t stop.

Meditation doesn’t improve your brain waves.

All of the science on this is bullshit. Scientists that bent the data to appease the Dalai Lama.

Meditation doesn’t get you what you visualize. Doesn’t make you a more compassionate person.

Only being compassionate makes you a compassionate person.

Meditation doesn’t need secret mantras that are tuned to your specific vibrations. If you want to believe that, that’s fine. Many do.

But it’s bullshit.

Meditation doesn’t make you happier. Tibet as a country is proof of that.

Meditation apps might relax you. But you can also try to stop worrying so much.

—

Two stories about meditation [I am simplifying the stories]:

A) A Zen master wants to retire. He is looking for his replacement. He asks his top students, “What is the nature of the soul?”

His very top student replies, “The soul is like a mirror. Clean it thoroughly, let no dust cling to it.”

Everyone murmured “Yes.”

Overhearing this, the cook of the monastery, wiping his hands after cleaning the dishes, came out of the kitchen and said, “Smash the mirror.”

The cook became the new Zen master.

B) U.G. Krishnamurti had been meditating for many years but was disappointed he hadn’t received any “benefits” or enlightenment.

He went to Ramana Maharshi, who is the subject of many books, including Somerset Maugham’s novel (and later a Bill Murray movie), “The Razor’s Edge,” written in 1944.

U.G. sat there and Ramana didn’t pay attention to him. He kept reading comic books.

U.G. meditated for several hours. When he opened his eyes, Ramana was still reading comics.

U.G. thought, “This guy is useless. Everyone says he meditates but he just reads comic books.”

U.G. asked Ramana, “What is enlightenment?”

Ramana lifted up his comic book. “This is.” And went back to it.

U.G.’s ego was bruised. “This is BS. I’m leaving.” And he left. Many years later he admitted he wished he had stayed longer.

—

Meditation never let me see naked women. Not once. For years I tried.

Never calmed me when I was so anxious I was adding up numbers all day and night to figure out when I would go broke (medication helped but not meditation).

Meditation does nothing.

But how often do we get to do nothing?

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The Introvert’s Guide to Hitchhiking for Love and Fortune

The first time, I was chased.

I had my thumb out. I was slouched over a little bit to look as unthreatening as possible (not difficult for me). It was night and it was raining a bit and I wanted to get home.

A car pulled over. I only needed to go a few miles.

A bunch of kids jumped out of the car and, laughing, started running at me.

I ran as fast as I could and they continued to chase me. I ran maybe 300 feet and I kept hearing them yell stuff but I couldn’t hear what.

Another car pulled over and the guy said, “Get in.”

I got to my destination and I was shaking. But I wanted to try again.

—

I had a job I hated and it was outside of the city.

Since I hated the job I knew I was going to quit so I didn’t bother buying a car. I couldn’t afford one anyway.

I snuck out of work every day at 4:45 p.m. while the sun was still out. I walked over to the highway. I would stick my thumb out.

Within a half hour I’d always get picked up. I was always scared.

I would say, “I just got fired,” so people would assume I was depressed and had no money on me.

But for a moment, I’d feel free. No past, no future, just there, in the car. A destination hurtling towards me.

—

Guy No. 1

First pickup:“I’ve seen you out here before so I figured you were safe. I’m married but I don’t know. Maybe I was too young.”

Second pickup: “I cheated on my wife with her sister. Then my wife found out. I’m really scared she’s going to end it with me. I love her so much. We decided to go to church together. I really messed up.”

Third pickup (wife was in the car):

“Honey, this is the guy I was telling you about!”

She didn’t look at me at all.

“We’ve been going to church every week. You should go to church with us this Sunday. It’s really set me straight. I was being tempted by Satan for a reason. Things are going great now.”

His wife said nothing. Stared straight ahead.

That’s the last time I ever saw him.

—

Girl No. 1

“Are you going to murder me?

“…”

“OK, get in.”

She had dark red hair. Bright red lipstick. Quirky. Why would she ask if I was going to murder her? If that was my plan I wouldn’t say yes.

I liked the idea that I was a mystery. We spoke for the entire ride back into the city.

The next day I called her at her work and asked her out.

We met for dinner. She would say things like, “You’re going to love these friends of mine.” I felt like she was picturing a future for us. I started picturing a future for us.

I said, “Can you imagine the story we will tell our grandkids of how we met?” I said this. I said “will.” She laughed.

I fell in love with her.

The next day I called her around 8 p.m. No answer. Just went to voicemail. I called again at 9 p.m. Then at 10 p.m. Then every half hour. Around midnight she picked up and said, “Have you been calling all this time?”

“No,” I said.

She had figured out my secret identity.

I never spoke to her again.

—

I loved “micro-hitchhiking.”

Just getting from one part of town to another. I got really good at it.

One time when I was still in high school I was picked up by one of the trustees of the college I ended up going to. She wrote me a recommendation just based on the conversation we had in the car.

Another time I got picked up by the guy who invented the smiley face.

You didn’t know someone invented that? Google it. In the 1980s, a message group was trying to figure out how to represent a smile via text without writing it out. The guy who picked me up suggested the colon and right parenthesis.

That happened.

—

You have to learn how to look unthreatening (again… easy for me).

Then you have to have good conversation so they don’t regret picking you up. This is critical. Else they say, “Well, I have to pull over here. Good luck.”

You have to be a clean slate. A reflecting pool of water. No matter what they say, you have to improv (“Yes, and…”) and run with what they are saying. Agree and add to their beliefs. No matter how insane they are. And they are ALWAYS insane.

You have to make them laugh. You have to make them think, “This guy is alright.”

Then you have to shut their door quietly. I had been a slammer until then. People get upset and it ruins the illusion.

—

I’d race my friends. We’d all agree on a location. Then I’d bet them dinner I could get there faster via hitchhiking. Sometimes I’d win and sometimes I’d lose.

I wanted my life to change every time a car pulled over. I felt fear each time. But I was safe.

I met people. And I became a tiny bit more fearless.

And each time, I became a different person. It was like going to a costume party in each ride. I got to try on different personalities.

I was “the hitchhiker.” I hitchhiked over 100 times.

Sometimes I still try to do it. But I never get picked up anymore. The world is different.

But it’s the same skill as when you walk into a room and need to make a sale. Or you go on a date for the first time. Or you go for a job interview. Or you meet someone at a party.

I don’t always like being me. Sometimes I like to “hitchhike.”

Yesterday I dropped off one of my kids for her first day of a summer program in a different country.

I was scared for her as she unpacked in her empty room. Will she make friends? Will she be nervous and shy?

And I was jealous. I want to experience that moment again. That fear. That newness. I could be anyone.

I still want to be a hitchhiker. A blank mirror. Wanting to be liked. A man in a costume.

Alive.

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I’m the Least Brilliant Idiot: The Most Intense Podcast I’ve Been On

Andrew got it all out of me. Which is why he was the most viewed comedian of 2018 on YouTube.

He called me up the day before.

“Charlemagne is out, can you come in and do the podcast?”

He was ready to go: Do billionaires kill people? How the heck could I lose all that money five times in a row? Am I the most brilliant idiot of all?

I let it all hang out. It’s hard to shock the master of shock.

Is Warren Buffett a scumbag?

Why is Bernie Madoff still screwing with me?

Why did the FBI contact me about Osama bin Laden?

How had I made and lost my first four fortunes? And what were the worst, most stupid things I did to make it back and then lose more?

Why did Yasser Arafat invest in me?

How is AI determining sports outcomes?

How to be at the cutting edge of comedy.

And much, much more…

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Are You In Prison?

I had to go to the bathroom or I would s**t my pants. But I was stuck in a meeting.

And what if I ran into my boss? Would he be in the next stall?

Would we wait afterwards to see who would leave first after making all of those embarrassing sounds?

I ran out of the meeting. Ran downstairs. Ran across the street. The New York Public Library. Three levels down.

For a brief moment, I was by myself. I was free. This was my happiness.

I was a worker at a job. A prisoner of a human domestication program.

—

My first major job the boss said, “Don’t you have any pride in yourself?”

Next job the boss yelled, “Are you telling everyone here that you sent an incomplete product to the client, ruining everyone’s work?”

Next job, next job, next job.

Bosses can’t help themselves. They love to yell. They love to humiliate their prisoners.

I wasn’t cut out to be an entrepreneur. The first two times I tried, I failed.

But I couldn’t help myself. I really didn’t want to s**t next to my boss.

So I needed more money.

—

The jail takes your money.

Sure, you might say, I realize I don’t get all of my income. About 40% goes to taxes.

You’re wrong. It’s much more.

YOUR TRUE SALARY is the value you create for the place you work.

And this is where your money goes:

1) BOSSES 

Some percentage of it goes to your boss. He has to get paid also you know. Who do you think pays him? You do.

Some percentage of your salary goes to his boss and her boss and however big the hierarchy is.

The only value they create is by managing you. You create all the value.

I know this, having been a boss, having run a company, and having been an employee.

My “job” as a boss was to make sure employees created as much value for me as possible while being paid as little as possible.

2) SHAREHOLDERS

Some percentage of your “salary” goes to the shareholders of the company before you even see it.

3) VENDORS

And some percentage goes to the vendors of the company.

Like the insurance “benefits” your company gives you that you most likely will never need (if you were likely to need them, then the benefits would be higher, until you no longer need that much. That’s how insurance works).

4) THE “80%”

And some percentage goes to employees that don’t pull their weight.

This is VERY important.

This is the 80/20 rule:

20% of the employees provide 80% of the value.

If you are in the 20%, then the money you create helps pay the 80%.

Goodbye money.

5) SUPPLIES

Finally, you have to pay for your cubicle, your office supplies, the computer on your desk, your phone, etc.  

If you created no extra money to pay for these things then they wouldn’t exist. So this comes directly out of your salary.

I call all of the above your “Above The Line” salary.

Try to figure out what your Above The Line salary is.

Your salary + your office + your bosses + your share of the “80%” + vendors + shareholders = your Above the Line salary.

You can say, “My company gives me the opportunity to make this Above The Line salary.”

Most companies are very wasteful and you pay for that waste directly out of your salary.

—

Then there’s your “Below The Line” salary. Subtract your salary by the following amounts to see how much you really make.

A) GOVERNMENT TAXES 

40% goes to Federal and State taxes.

This is already after your services have been taxed at the corporate level, now you’re being taxed another 40% at the personal level.

Note that ONLY salaried employees pay 40%. Nobody else does.

You can say, “Well how about we change that in Congress?”

OK, good luck!

271 members of Congress are millionaires. They got that way by being owners of businesses and not employees.

If you have a regular corporate income, Congress doesn’t represent you.

Guess who pays the least amount of taxes? Entrepreneurs.

The richest Americans pay less than 15% on average on gains in their net worth.

That’s because salaried employees are slaves and have the least political power.

BUT, your 40% tax to the government is not your only tax.

B) SALES TAXES 

Another 5-8% goes to taxes on everything you consume. Now we are almost at 50%.

C) MORTGAGE + MAINTENANCE + PROPERTY TAXES

Then, like most Americans, you have a mortgage. Maybe this is another 10-20% of your salary.

Your company likes you to own your house because you are less likely to quit (you need the money to pay the mortgage) and you are less likely to move (you’re not mobile).

They branded the phrase “The American Dream” to make you less mobile, more in debt to them.

Then student loans you are paying off. For the first time ever, greater than 50% of the unemployed have college degrees.

So it’s pretty scary. You got this degree because (in part) you thought it would get you a job.

But 50% of jobs college graduates get jobs that no longer require college degrees.

And some percentage of your salary is sliced off every month to pay for that degree.

D) OTHER 

Then some portion of your salary goes towards health, upkeep of your relationships (they always cost money. This is not being cynical. Just reality), your transportation to your job (they force you to pay for the honor of transporting yourself to your prison cell).

How much goes to you?

You wake up before dawn. You travel. You work hard. You come home late. You’re feeling stuck.

You’re mildly depressed and may take medication for this. And you have trouble sleeping and digesting.

Shouldn’t you get paid more?

—

You are probably left with 1/100 of the real value you create, i.e. your real salary.

In other words, you could be making between 10x and 100x as much money if you started to un-slave yourself.

When I was at a job I was fooled into thinking I was free. I could “sneak out” at 4pm. I could take lots of breaks. Vacations were big.

But… did you look at the manual?

There’s a big manual. It’s like a bible. It’s called the “Employee Manual”.

This is the manual you get in your new human domestication program (HDP).

Some of the things in the HDP manual:

• You can’t talk to people of the opposite sex in certain ways. 
• You can’t talk to your boss a certain way. Because for all of your slavery, all he has to say is, “you’re fired” and all of that goes away.
• You can’t wear what you want. Most office situations have a uniform, either explicit or implicit.
• You can’t be friends with who you want. You’re mostly just friends with the people you spend your day with – the other slaves. 

When your slave master sells them to another human domestication program, will you keep in touch? 
I want to know, will you attend your cubicle mate’s funeral? 

• You can’t be creative when inspiration hits. 

“Anything done on equipment owned by the company is intellectual property owned by the company.” Good luck arguing with that one.

• You can’t have an office romance even though those are the only women you know. 

For one thing you might get fired. And all of your emails can be read by human resources.

My closest friend when I was at HBO was fired when his office romance went awry and all of his emails were read by his boss.

• There is no privacy. 

I know at least 10 people who have been fired because their boss decided to read their corporate emails. 

• If you want more money, you have to beg for it. 

There are entire seminars created just to teach people how to ask for 5% more money at work. People are scared to death to ask.

And by the time you get home to have real social interactions, you’re tired and bitter and angry at work.

I know I’m doing a little bit of projecting here. This was my personal experience about having a job.

I was sick knowing that another human being can yell at me in front of others and I had to just look down.

I was sick knowing over 90% of the value I created was being taken from me.

And I kept getting sick.

—

Money won’t solve all of your problems, but it will solve your money problems. Don’t let them take your money so they can keep you in slavery.

You want to own your time. Own your work. Own the value you create for others.

Protect yourself so nobody can fire you. Not be owned by the bank or the government. Not be owned by your relationships. Own your thoughts.

Real freedom.

The average millionaire, according to the IRS, has at least five different sources of income.

“I can’t just quit my job!” you might say.

And I agree with this. Don’t quit.

Start to be an explorer. We live in a 15 trillion-dollar economy. You helped create it.

Just like slaves and death and misery helped create the beautiful pyramids.

But 90% of what you create is taken from you.

Start to explore what parts you can take back. Work every day on ideas. I promise you can take some of that freedom back.

List every interest you’ve had since you were a kid.

List every business or job that can be started from that interest. Read every day about your interests.

Connect with people you might not have seen in years. Connect with their friends.

Don’t be angry at the people at work, even your boss. They are all slaves also.

Don’t waste your free thoughts on the other slaves with their Rolex shackles.

Study the lives of people who aren’t slaves. Aren’t in prison.

What did they do? List what they did. Can you mimic any of it?

Keep working on building your idea muscle into an idea machine: write down 10 ideas a day no matter what, no matter how bad.

Start today. 10 ideas.

—

I did this. And in six months my life changed completely.

Sometimes for the worse. Much worse. I didn’t know what I was doing and sometimes I ended up on the floor, depressed and suicidal.

Sometimes freedom is very scary. It’s outside of the jail cell (“comfort zone”) you created for yourself.

But every six months since then my life has changed completely. My life is completely different than it was even six months ago.

24 years ago I had a boss yell at me. Humiliate me. I cried.

So I went to the library on 41st Street and 5th Avenue. I found a science fiction book I read once before as a kid.

It had that cellophane wrapping and a library card in it. And it had that smell when you open the pages.

I went three or four levels down, to my private bathroom in the library. My sanctum sanctorum.

And I sat there and I read about a man who lived forever and was happy. And the world disappeared and for a brief moment I was no longer a slave.

From that moment on I plotted my escape.

And every day since, I figure out new ways to escape, new ways to be free. New ways to own my world.

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