Why the Economy is Totally Screwed. And How You Can Make Money Off of it Today

I’m scared.

Imagine you’re the passenger and a coke-addict speed addict drunk is driving the car and it’s on one of those James Bond cliffs where one wrong move and everybody dies in a firebomb.

That’s where the economy is. I’m not a doom and gloom guy. I’m an optimist. And the firebomb is my optimistic view of where the economy is going.

If you’re lucky they can take a skin graft from your leg and turn it into a nose. They can fix up your eyes. But nothing can replace a smile except skin from another face.

But don’t worry. I think there’s a way to avoid it. I’m an optimist because although the “economy” is screwed up, innovation is here to stay.

I put economy in quotes because there’s no such thing. The word itself is in doubt. “Economy” means a way of being prudent, of having less leg room, of being forced to check your bags all the way through. We’re an economy class world being ruled by first class plutocrats.

Again, I don’t mean to be paranoid so I won’t be. Let’s focus on the optimism.

But first, let’s not forget whose fault this is:

Women.

I don’t mean this in a bad way. The real fault is that all the 18 year old little boys in the US were sent off to shoot people in WW II.

Note this is not an anti-war post. History is written by the winners. You and I are winners.

So women took their jobs. And when the men came back the women, quite correctly, didn’t want to give those jobs back. Why should they?

Double income homes. Double income garages and white picket fences and grass and schools and big roads and mass transit into the city they left behind.

But then they needed more. Dopamine is triggered when you get your new rewards. Dopamine makes you happy. But “new” is the key word here and not “reward.” So we needed more “new” to trigger more “dopamine.”

Johnson had his Great Society, which put money into the economy. Then we had to pay for another war, another group of 18 year old coming back depressed and dead. And we needed more.

So Nixon took us off the gold standard. Suddenly we were shooting inflation into our veins. The great thing about inflation is that first you feel flush and it’s only later you feel down.

Which led us to the 1980 stock market boom, then junk market boom, until people went to jail and got cancer.

When we needed a fix again we had the peace dividend, then the need for speed got us the Internet boom (and thank God Clinton said “no sales tax” on Internet sales) and then finally a man who understood the dark side of history used Y2K as an excuse to flood the economy with money (more and more leg room in our economy class).

This created a housing boom and credit cards that were like instant mortgages on our houses. And then banks that collateralized all the loans and hedge funds that collateralized the collateral and sold them in pawn shops.

And….it was over. That was it.

The only thing left. The Federal Reserve for the first time ever actually gives interest payments (0.25%) to banks that don’t lend out money while the Fed still buys stocks.

Which leads me to….the average person is screwed. I’m on the board of a billion revenues temp agency. I can tell you, it’s not pleasant what is happening. Don’t believe the employment numbers. Look at the part-time numbers. Look at underemployment. Look at people leaving the “numbers” behind.

Which is the good news.

Because there is a separate economy. A real economy. An economy where people are driving cars with no drivers. Where robots perform surgery. Where drones kill people from thousands of miles away. Where fracking goes horizontaly into your rivers to turn the US into a new Saudi Arabia.

In other words, the innovation economy.

So if you want to avoid riding over the cliff in economy #1, you must go into economy #2. Be the lady and the tiger.

Here are the trends coming in the next ten years and the stocks to keep an eye on. Some old, some new.

(Note: To stay ahead of market trends, check out my checklist for finding profitable innovative technologies – Learn more here.)

A) Lithium shortage

Every car needs batteries. A car is just a computer with a car app on it now. And computers need better batteries. All the lithium is in…guess where…China and a tiny unheard-of country called Afghanistan.

ENS, Enersys, is a Lithium play. ENS makes the batteries and trades for 12X forward earnings although my guess is they will continue to surprise. More on this stock and all stocks I mention here in a future article.

B) Old people

Every ten years the average age of death is rising by 2.2 years. You know what happens to old people? The three top causes of death: cancer, heart disease, and Alzheimer’s.

I am a big fan of diagnostics.

I own TROV (Trovagene). Here’s the key, what if Steve Jobs peed in a cup every week to keep updates on his pancreatic cancer instead of get invasive biopsies. That’s the difference between TROV and what hospitals do now. The market for this is basically every person above the age of 40. Meanwhile TROV is doing deals with every medical facility out there to test the test. I own it and I’m not selling until $70.

C) The offense industry

Too many people mistakenly call this the defense industry. What exactly is America defending against. We have military in 74 countries. ANd the government doesn’t hire tiny companies to offend for us. They hire big companies that then hire the tiny companies.

Lockheed Martin (LMT) is my choice. When we need more drones some general calls LMT who then makes the call. They trade for 15x forward earnings, 3% dividend yield and they’ve raised their dividend for 10 years in a row. BAM!

If you really like drones (and I do. I’m still waiting for Amazon to start delivering me pizzas with drones) then keep an eye on AMBA (Ambarella). They make the camera chips inside the drones. In the land of the blind, drones are king.

D) Clean energy

And by clean energy I mean coal. You ever see those vast tracts of land with those ugly wind farms that don’t work? Land that could’ve been used for food?

Coal goes straight down, and still fuels half the country with electricity.

E) The leaders.

We can argue all day long about what companies will be here in 20 years. But there are three clear leaders that are not going anywhere and keep out-innovating each other: AAPL (the iphone6 is baked into the price but not the ipad mini air), AMZN (all bookstores are dead), and GOOG (the above-mentioned driverless cars are only the starting engine).

I will follow up more on each category in future articles. This is my starting point. (Update: The Next Trillion Dollar Tech Business)

I’m very scared. If we trust that the world will fix itself, we are putting our trust in the wrong place. It never has and never will. The world will be fixed by the next generation of the economy.

And nobody can predict the future.

But I look for what demographic trends are starting to ripple with excitement today. What trends seem unstoppable by the direction the car is going.

(Related: How I make money off of trends)

In 2005 I wrote a book, “Trade Like Warren Buffett.” In the book I show how Buffett’s first criteria is not value but demographics and trends. This is the way to build for the future.

I’m scared but I have hope for the future because of the innovation that I am seeing every day. Don’t believe anyone who focuses on doom and gloom or timing shorts or hate for the news or hate for the people who think they control the economy. These people will lose money.

Focus on what works today. Because the best indicator of a successful tomorrow is a successful today.

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The Crappy Person Checklist

When I was 40 I completely gave up. I wanted to disappear. Screw passion and purpose. I was done.

I had no friends. Or I was scared of my friends. Or I was ashamed of myself. I forget. Lots of bad things were happening.

I remember talking to a friend and crying on the phone, ‘why is this happening to me again?’

At my 40th birthday party there was me, one person I knew, and all his friends. That was the extent of my close friendships.

That one person who was my friend – he’s no longer friends with me.

What was I doing that was so bad? Why would my friends, family, peers, all stop talking to me. Hadn’t I helped them whenever they needed help? What had I done wrong?

Doesn’t matter.

Never ask why? There is never an answer to why? if you ask the negative people in your life.

There are many posts that will tell you The Habits of Millionaires. Or How to Find Your Passion In Life.

I don’t know. Life is pretty hard. I don’t want more homework.

 

Here is what I was doing bad:

I was spending time with people who were bad for me.

How do you know if someone is bad for you?

Try this checklist:

• Do you feel bad or anxious after you spend time with them?
• Are you more often than not, arguing with them?
• Do they put you down in a way that is destructive and not constructive?
• Do they try to limit your opportunities?
• Do they try to isolate you from your friends?
• Do they resent your successes in any way – or try to compete with your successes?
• Do they not listen to you as much as you listen to them?
• Do they add drama to your life instead of remove drama? And what is drama? It took me a long time to realize what “drama” meant. Drama is for the theater and not for your life. In a good drama, often the hero dies. Don’t be the hero of a drama.
• Do you get so busy with their life you forget about your own health, your own creativity, your own ability to change and better the world? Remember: if you are not making the choices in your life, someone else is – and the results won’t be good.
• Do you sometimes cry after an interaction with them.

 

If you say yes to any of the above, then even if they are sitting at the table across from you right this second, stand up and go sit at another table.

When I was 40 I had many people in life where I could check the box on all of the above. Even the crying.

Finally, I gave up. I dropped out. I lost touch with everyone for awhile. I moved 70 miles north. I hid.

And I started to write. I was writing about all the bad stuff. Someone even said, “this is like watching a train wreck in action.”

But I wasn’t afraid anymore. And I started to find others like me.

Others who were no longer “civilians.”

 

Reverse the checklist above.

Those are the people you want in your life. There are very few of them. There should be very few of them.

That is the secret of all success in life. There isn’t anything else.

The other day I was meeting a new friend for the first time. I said to another friend of mine, “I’m always nervous meeting someone new.”
He said, “Why?”

I said, “I don’t know. Maybe I don’t have enough confidence in myself that I’m a good person. Someone worth meeting.”

“Of course you are,” he said. “Look at what you have even done for me in the short time we’ve known each other.”

Listen, he said, just do this. When you meet the new person, lean back and think inside your head, impress me. And then see what happens.

People will quickly show you who they are.

So I did. And now my life is a little better than it was a week ago. And I hope next week… even better.

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6 Ways That Driverless Cars Will Change the World (and How to Profit Off It Today)

I don’t like thinking about the future too much. It makes me nervous. Dwelling on things you don’t know for certain is a surefire way to give yourself heartburn. At least it is for me.

That’s why I don’t really like making predictions about the future. There’s always a 50/50 chance I’ll be wrong.

But whether we want to think about it or not, the future is kind of the only thing we CAN think about. Unless you want to live in the past. In which case, you’ll be one of the people left behind.

Here’s the one thing we know for sure about the future. Innovation isn’t going to stop. The world has problems. Smart people are working on solving those problems. And they will succeed, like they always have.

And these innovations will change the world.

One of the biggest innovations making headlines right now is driverless cars. When I was at Google a little while ago, I actually stumbled into the room where they were developing these cars. Security had to escort me out.

Google only considers a new innovation worthy if it can solve a problem for a billion people. A BILLION! That kind of innovation has the capacity to do more than solve a problem; it will impact every facet of the world we live in.

Here’s what I expect will change as a result of driverless cars.

The Auto industry

It’s plausible that within 20 years, nearly all the cars on the road will be driverless, which means that 90% of the automobile industry might be out of work at that point.

Sure, some people will still own cars; car ownership is about more than transportation for a lot of people. Those car sales won’t go away completely, though many will transition into driverless car sales.

But here’s the thing: Every time a market disappears, a new one has emerged. When we switched from horses to cars, people in the horse industry moved over to the car industry.

So what will the new industry be? For one thing, car designs will change. Also, solving problems that arise in the technology (which is inevitable) will also be a major need.

Insurance

The number of car accidents will go down once human error is taken out of the equation—many experts estimate by up to 90%—and this is going to be confusing for insurance companies.

That said, no technology is foolproof.

Just recently, a Google self-driving car caused its first accident, after over a million incident-free (or at least not at their own fault) test miles. Sure, the car was going 2 mph when it collided with a bus, and no one was injured, but it happened, and it will inevitably happen again. At some point, a driverless car will kill someone.

But who’s at fault when there’s no one behind the wheel? And in the case of collision, will driverless cars be designed to protect the driver or save the most number of lives? These questions will need to be answered and regulated. Whoever figures that out will make millions.

Delivery

Really any jobs that require drivers—pizza delivery, snowplowing, taxi driving, public transportation, long-haul trucking—will change. Why pay an employee for something that a machine can do for free?

Roadside businesses

This is going to be a side effect of the changes to the transportation industry.

Businesses that cater to truck drivers, or that strategically locate themselves off the side of highways, will inevitably be impacted. Think 24-hour diners, truck stops, motels.

Without truck drivers on overnight excursions or travellers needing to stop for the night, the market for these businesses will drop quickly.

Military and law enforcement

Driverless vehicles have endless potential in the military from transporting soldiers, to serving as decoys, to sweeping for IEDs without casualties.

As for law enforcement, police will be able to focus attention their away from traffic violations and drunk driving, and direct those resources elsewhere.

That said, there’s an interesting side effect that will take place here. Tickets from traffic violations are a major source of revenue for many towns, and that will go away almost completely when driverless cars take over. How will municipalities replace this funding source?

Privacy/data protection

At constant odds with our desire for new technology is our desire to be off the grid. And because driverless cars, by virtue of necessity, will be entirely dependent on GPS technology, there will be more tracking data available than ever before. So privacy protection and data security fields will thrive as people look for new ways to have the best of both worlds.

Profiting from the trend

Whether or not you’re the guy who figures out how insurance is going to work or how to direct market using the technology, that’s OK. There are still ways for you to win from this trend. The best way is to invest in the companies that are going to solve these problems.

Alphabet (GOOG): It may seem obvious, but Google is already a million miles ahead of its competitors in driverless cars. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that they already have their thumbs in about a trillion other pies, like online advertising and data gathering. They’re going to be the titans of industry here, no question.

Tesla (TSLA): Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said that his company is working on producing its own driverless vehicle as early as 2017. And this is the guy who’s trying to launch people into space, so I have very little doubt about his ambition or ability to deliver.

Baidu (BIDU): The Chinese search giant recently announced a partnership with BMW to release its own self-driving car, which they say could be out by the end of this year. Their technology is more to assist drivers rather than fully replace them, which may be a smart place to start as a transitional space for drivers who aren’t ready to fully relinquish control.

Uber:

Uber is currently a privately held company, so there’s not a whole lot you can do to directly invest it in yet. But if Uber ever goes public, the opportunity here would be staggering. This is a platform that will continue to grow and flourish in the driverless car economy. Keep an eye out for companies that provide to Uber or its competitors like Lyft.

Are other companies helping them to develop software or new services? Which companies are using UberRUSH to deliver to customers? (There are over a dozen.) Who’s partnering with Uber? (Spotify is one example.) Keep an eye out for these kinds of backdoor plays.

(Note: My 9 backdoor investing checklist. Get it here.)

And speaking of competitors…

You’ve probably heard of Lyft, and sort of in the same sphere is Zipcar.

But I’m guessing you’ve never heard of Didi Kuaidi, i.e. the Uber of China.

OK, China had its own ridesharing service. So?

Well here’s where it gets interesting. Despite the fact that Uber operates globally, and Didi Kuaidi only in China, the latter is actually putting out bigger numbers. In December 2015, Uber announced that it had officially booked over one billion rides since its inception in 2009. Didi Kuaidi, on the other hand, had booked 1.43 billion in 2015 ALONE.

As a disclaimer, it’s a little unfair do a side-by-side comparison, since Didi does operate seven transit services, including bus and enterprise services. Still, the company commands over 87% of the ride-hailing industry in China, a country with a population of 1.36 billion, which is about 20% of the GLOBAL population. So we’re talking a big potential market, even if they never move outside of China.

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The Ultimate Cheat Sheet For Selling Anything

I was a salesman snob.

Like many people, I always looked down on the concept of “selling.” It seemed like something lower than me.

To some extent, selling appears manipulative. You have a product and you try to portray that it has more value than it actually does. So you need to manipulate people into buying it. This seems sad, as in the book “Death of a Salesman” sort of sad.

I was wrong. And for the past 25 years, all I have been doing is selling. Selling products, selling services, selling businesses, selling myself.

Sometimes I have been manipulative. And sometimes I’ve sold things I’ve had such passion for that I practically gave them away just to get the message out.

And often, it was very much in the middle: I needed to sell something because I had to pay my bills. I wanted to make sure my family got fed.

We live in a hard world where our basic needs cost money, and as we get older we become responsible for the basic needs of others. We become adults.

None of this cheat sheet comes from a book. All of this is from my own experience. Which means it might not work for you. Which means it might go counter to the basic rules of salesmanship. I have no idea.

But I can say that over the past 25 years, I’ve sold hundreds of millions of dollars of stuff. That stuff being everything in Pandora’s box that I had to sell just to stay alive. When I thought of what worked for me, here’s what I came up with:

 

A) Friendship

Nobody is going to buy from someone they hate. The buyer has to like you and want to be your friend. People pay for friendship.

This sounds sort of like prostitution, and it is.

One time when I was raising money for something, the buyer was going through a business catastrophe and was worried he would go out of business. I didn’t like him but I called him every day for three months at the same time to see if he “wanted to talk” and to offer my advice on how he should deal with his situation.

I eventually raised a lot of money from him even though the first time I met him he said, “It seems like you don’t know your industry very well.”

Which just goes to show that friendship outweighs almost every other factor in selling. One time I wanted to do a website for ABC.com. How did I do it? The main decision-maker volunteered at a school in Harlem. I went up there four weeks in a row and played 20 kids simultaneously in chess. Everyone had fun. I got the website job. My competitors were all bigger, better financed, and probably better.

Unfortunately, I didn’t like either of those people personally. And eventually, I lost the business.

The only good outcomes come when both sides like each other.

Now I only do business with people I like. The fastest way to lose all your money, mutilate your heart, and then kill yourself is to work with people you don’t like. I will never do that again.

Nor do you have to, despite what you might think.

 

B) Saying no

If someone wants to do a big deal with you, it’s hard to say “no.” But “no” is valuable for many reasons, and one big one in particular:

Opportunity cost. Instead of pursuing something you really don’t want to do, you could free up time and energy to find something more lucrative or something you would enjoy more. Opportunity cost is the biggest cost in all of our lives. We spend it like there’s no tomorrow.

And guess what? Eventually there’s no tomorrow.

When I say “yes” to something I don’t want to do, I end up hating myself, hating the person I said “yes” to, doing a bad job, and disappointing everyone. I try really hard not to do it anymore.

 

C) Over-deliver

If someone pays $100 and you give that person just $100 in value, then you just failed. You’ll never sell to that person again. someone pays $100, you need to give him or her $110 worth of value.

Think of that extra $10 as going into some sort of karmic bank account that pays interest (as opposed to a U.S. bank account). That money grows and compounds.

Eventually, there’s real wealth there. And that wealth translates into the real world.

People are 3-year-olds. They like to get presents. People want to do business with people who give them presents. Over-delivering is a present. And it makes you feel good. Give and you will receive.

 

D) Never take “no” for an answer

This statement, which everyone knows, is usually applied incorrectly.

People think it means keep pushing and trying new things until you get a “yes.”

That’s not what it means. If you do that, you end up in the spam box. Then you end up in a coffin. In other words, you end up dead to the person you are trying to sell to.

Instead, remember point A. Be a friend. However flimsy that connection of friendship is. Follow on Twitter, follow on Facebook. Say nice things about the person to other people. Never gossip.

Do the art of the “check-in.”

Send updates after the “no” on how you are doing, on how the product or service or business or whatever is doing. Not every day. Maybe once a month. Maybe once a year. Eventually you will find the “yes” with that person. It could be, and often is, up to 20 years later.

You plant a seed and eventually the garden blooms.

 

E) Under-price (if it’s your passion)

I once wanted to do the website for Fine Line Films. I loved their movies. I met the guy running their site. He kept saying over and over again, “We can’t afford a lot,” and I kept saying, “Don’t worry about it,” and would show him more and more of our work.

Eventually we did the websites for every one of their movies at $1,000 per website. We made amazing websites for $1,000. Then, when Con Edison wanted to hire us, Nevin at Fine Line was a reference. Price for coned.com (a basic four-page website): $250,000. And that was the first of five websites we did for them, plus monthly maintenance.

I write for a lot of places right now for free. Any medium I love, I am willing to write for. The benefits from doing that have been incalculable. Not always financial, but always real.

 

F) Be the source

One time I wanted to buy a company.

At the critical moment, the owner called me and said, “What should I do? I have this other offer and I have your offer.” He described the other offer to me. I told him to take it.

I missed out on what could have been a lot of money to me. But there was a slight chance we would have all gone bust. Now he is thriving and eight years later he is a friend.

Will we ever do business together? I can’t predict the future. But I know I delivered value to another human being. That value is real and I can put it to use whenever I want.

Often the best way to make friends and customers for life is to direct them to a better service or product than yours.

Be the source of valuable information rather than just the source of your product.

Then they will know forever that you are a trusted source.

Trust is worth more than next month’s rent being paid. Trust builds a bridge that will never wear out. At some point in the distant future, when you are on the run in every other way, you may need to cross that bridge.

 

G) Sell everything

Your offering is not your product. Your offering is your product, services, your employees, your experiences, your ideas, your other customers, and even (as mentioned above) your competitors. Sell them all.

When you are good at what you do, the product or service you offer is just the way people build the first link to you. It’s the top of a huge pyramid.

But the base of the pyramid, the real service, is when they have access to you and you can provide advice and the full power of your network and experience. This is when you are over-delivering on steroids and how real wealth is built and not just a one-time fee for a service or product.

Many people say, “No! My product is high margin and I want to make money when I sleep.”

Stop going to BS entrepreneurial get-rich-quick conferences. In the long run, nobody cares about your product. In the long run, it is the entire holistic view of your offering, your service, you, that you are selling. Without that, you will build a mediocre business that may or may not pay the bills. With that, you will create wealth.

 

H) Sell the dream

People can see what your product is right now. What they want to know is the future. Will your product make them more money? Will it get them a promotion?

Everything is possible. When you get in the door, do not sell your product. People make a decision on your product in five seconds. Sell the dream. The dream has infinite value. Build up images of the dream. Give a taste of what the dream is like. Let it linger. Let it weave itself. Let the imagination of the buyer take hold and run with it.

But then, you might ask, do I risk under-delivering?

Answer: Yes. Don’t do that. Be as good as the dream.

 

I) Fire customers

This is similar to point B with the one difference that you have already made a sale.

If it’s not going well or if it’s leaving a bad taste in your mouth, or if they have gone from friend to enemy for whatever reason and it seems like there is no repair, then fire your customer. The sooner, the better.

This applies to not just customers but everyone in your life. Everyone.

If someone no longer has your best interests at heart, then in your own self-interest, you need to back off. Now.

A bad customer (a bad person) spreads like a disease inside you, your employees, your other customers, your competitors, your future customers, your family, etc.

“But what if it’s my biggest customer? How do I pay the bills?”

I don’t know. Figure it out. This is where being an idea machine saves your life and everything around you.

But remember: bad customers will kill you and your family and your friends.

 

J) Welcome to the pleasure dome

Your best new customers are your old customers. If you need to make more money or build new business, go to your customers (who are now your friends) and say, “I need advice. What other service can I provide you or anyone you know?”

It might be something totally unrelated to your business. No problem. Do it. It might be your customer is looking for a new job. That’s great. Make it your business to find him a new job. Now you have a new customer.

It might be your customer needs a boyfriend. OK, introduce her to all of your friends who might be good for her. If you’ve been following this approach to sales, then your customers are now your friends, are now your family.

 

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I don’t know the buzzwords to make a sale. I’m not very good at shaking hands. I don’t take people out to baseball games or do any of the things I see other people do.

But I’ve been selling for 25 years. And whenever I’ve been dead broke, depressed, and on the floor, I’ve picked myself up and sold again and again.

 

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P.S. If you are really serious about choosing yourself (and you should be!), then you need to develop a portable, highly valuable skill that let’s you work on your own terms.

Selling is only one of of these skills, but it’s one of the best. If you are seriously interested in learning how to sell, test yourself to see if you can write a letter like this one. 

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Money, Freedom And How Not To Ruin It All…

If you believe money will buy your freedom – you’re wrong.

I believed it….

So I did everything I could to make a lot of money.

I started a company. I was building websites for huge companies (think ABC.com).

And I was making more money than I knew what to do with. I was finally able to be free. The future felt bright.

But instead I bought chains.

I bought a house…

I bought a paintings…

I bought expensive material goods that turned me into a sick maniac.

Money can buy A LOT of chains. Many more chains than if you didn’t have money.

But although I ruined it, just like so many other people do, I realized that money often gives you a momentary glimpse of freedom for the first time in your life.

 

What I’ve found:  Money, freedom and how not to ruin it all.

That glimpse of freedom money first gives you is not a lie.

It’s real. It can last. Just don’t ruin it.

How?

Decluttering. Not just your house….

• But your body: make sure you’re healthy every day.
• Your emotions: make sure you only spend time with people you love and who inspire you.
• Your mind: make sure you attempt to be creative every day. Creativity takes the mind away from anxieties.

And then…make some money.

But do it by making money YOUR way. Don’t let the chains creep into your life.

Invest in experiences. In people you love. In things that make you happy.

Making money is the easy part.

Breaking the chains is the hard part.

Many people write to ask me how they can make more money. (There are so many ways you can make money. For example, can you write a letter like this?)

But no one writes me to ask how to break their chains.

 

I’m experimenting with no chains…

No house. No stuff. No “job”.

Nothing I can’t put in a bag and carry.

I can go anywhere anytime…no chains.

That feels like freedom to me right now, but you don’t have to be “homeless” like me to be free.

 

That doesn’t mean money isn’t important.

The ability to make money on your own terms makes everything easier.

It makes it easier to do what you want.

But you have to choose the freedom you want by choosing what chains you don’t want.

Making a lot of money isn’t the same as being free.

If you really feel like a lack of money is holding you back then develop a portable, highly valuable skill that let’s you work on your own terms (like writing for money).

 

Just don’t buy more chains once you do.

-James

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I Doubted Everything In My Life… Here Is What Happened?

Someone wrote on Quora:

“I want to benefit all of humanity as much as possible. But how can I get over all the doubts I have?”

 

My response:

You’re going to totally fail. Your doubts are completely correct.

I’m not saying this in some reverse psychology way. You’re not a teenager (if you were – I would totally use reverse psychology).

You’re an adult with a grand and admirable ambition.

You want to benefit humanity. I admire that.

My waitress just poured me a cup of coffee. She benefited humanity just now.

But you want to do it in a bigger way. You want to do it, as you say, “as much as possible”. Not just a cup of coffee for me. A cup of coffee for everyone!

We are lucky, you and I, that we can want enough that we are also able to doubt enough.

“Want” is the older brother of “doubt.”

First we want, then we doubt that we can get what we want.

 

So I will tell you what I do.

I wanted to start a company. I had an idea in the 1990s. That every company would eventually need a website. A million companies or more would need one. I would help all of them.

So I learned how to build a web page. Then a website…

Then I found one customer. It was hard. I had to convince him why he needed me.

I had to convince him I could do it even though I had never done it before.

I had to find someone to help me with design while I would do programming. And I had to figure out what to charge him, then I had to charge him, then I had to collect.

 

Then I had to do it!

Then I had to find more people like that. And then I had to hire someone to help me. Then I had to find another programmer to help me.

Then we had to find more people who wanted websites. I would call people I knew. Then they would call people.

I had a full time job. And I couldn’t tell the people at my full time job what I was doing. So I had to sneak around. And I had to work late at night.

I found more and more people who were willing to let me do their websites. I was doubting myself every day. I’d wake up at night, “What if I found no new customers?”

I was scared to death every day.

That doubt would make me write down a list the next day. “Ideas of the day.” More customers, more websites, what special things can I put on the websites that would convince them to let me do it.

I wanted to be to unique that they would think to themselves all day long, “What would James do?”

Because if I wasn’t the one convincing them they had a problem then chances are someone smarter than me had been in the door before me.

I couldn’t allow that.

And some people didn’t like the websites I did for them. So they “fired” me and my company. And I had to explain to my new employees that so-and-so didn’t like us. That the Wu-Tang Clan or HBO was unhappy. Or whoever.

I went to meetings in LA, in London, in Paris, in wherever. To try to get more customers. I traveled all over the world trying to convince people to like me and let me help them do something I really believed in that I wanted to charge for.

 

18 months after doing this I finally quit my job.

I was scared. My boss, Bruce, told me, “At HBO everyone returns your phone calls. When you leave here, nobody will return them.”

He was right. It became a lot harder to get customers. Except now I was full time.

Which was good. But also bad. Now I had to make sure I had customers or else my baby on the way wouldn’t have food.

I could give up on food for awhile. But not a baby.

And my employees had to have food also. I had to get them food.

Then we got an offer by someone who wanted to buy the company. “I don’t know a hamburger from a website,” he told me, “but websites are hot.”

But I doubted he wanted to buy the company. In the six months it took to negotiate and close the deal I was scared every day. I lost 30 pounds.

Then we sold the company. And then I helped buy five more companies. Suddenly I had 1000 employees working for me.

I was scared every day I didn’t know what to do. I doubted myself. I wasn’t a very good boss.

To conquer the doubt I built up in the tiniest of increments. Even though I doubted the big picture, I chopped it down to tiny pieces that I knew I could fit into the puzzle to build the big picture.

But it was hard. Every time it was hard I built it into smaller and smaller pieces. Until finally I could do it.

Doubt gave me the energy to list what I needed to do. To dream big but to break into tiny small pieces.

Doubt got me out of bed every morning.

Doubt got me scared to make sure I took care of customers, employees, family, myself – usually in that order.

Doubt turned me into a schemer – how can I juggle job, family, relationships, customers – and still do a good job at everything I was doing.

Because my motto then, as it is now, is “Over promise and over deliver.”

If you don’t over promise and over deliver, then your doubts will be replaced by loneliness.

Because someone else is over promising and over delivering. And everyone you loved (customers, employees, friends, family) have moved over to the person who let his or her doubt fuel his ambitions better than yours did.

And then I left that job. I was too stressed. I doubted myself too much. I couldn’t juggle it all.

And I was right to do so. I lost all my money. I lost my home. I lost my family. I remember never sleeping. Crying on a swing-set in back of a school at 4 in the morning, wondering what i would do next. Doubting that I should be alive.

The doubt beat me. I built everything I wanted and achieved freedom for five generations. But lost it all.

 

OK… So what?

Then I made it again. All of that doubt was for nothing

Except also all the doubt led me to right now, where the waitress, who I love like a daughter-sister-lover, just poured me another cup of coffee as I write this. “You need to eat, James,” she said.

I’m not sure. But I think I will.

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6 Rules To Help You Connect And Persuade…

You’re on the most important elevator ride of your life.

You have 10 seconds to sell someone on your idea—the classic “elevator pitch.”

I’ve been on both sides of this equation. I’ve had people pitching to me. But mostly, I’ve been scared and desperate and afraid to ask someone to give me, want me, love me, all in the space of time it takes to ride an elevator.

This was perhaps the hardest thing for me was when I was doing my 3 a.m. web series for HBO.

I had to walk up to random strangers at 3 a.m. on the streets of New York and convince them within five seconds to spill their most intimate secrets to me rather than kill me.

Not quite an elevator pitch but the same basic idea. I had a lot of practice. I probably approached over 3,000 people cold.

In some cases people tried to kill me. In one case I was chased. In other cases, people opened up their hearts and I am infinitely grateful to them.

The ideas below have worked for me the hundreds of times I’ve had to be persuasive.

Either in writing or in person. In business and in friendships and in love. I hope variations of it can work for you. You decide.

 

A) Who are you?

People want to know they are talking to a good, honest, reliable person that they can trust and perhaps even like, or love.

Yes, love.

They won’t love you by looking at your resume.

You have to do method acting. Imagine what your body would feel like if they already said “yes” even before you open your mouth.

You would be standing up straight, smiling, palms open, ready to close the deal. You have to method act at the beginning of your pitch.

When you’re slouched over, not only are you not using the full potential of your brain, but you look untrustworthy.

 

B) Relax

Think about how you breathe when you are anxious and nervous.

I will tell you how I breathe: short, shallow breaths in my upper chest.

So do the reverse before a 10-second pitch.

Breathe deep and in your stomach. Even three deep breaths in the stomach has been shown to totally relax the mind and body.

People sense this. Again, this builds trust and relaxes you.

Now, even though you haven’t said a single word, you’ve probably done the two most important things for persuading someone.

 

C) Uhhh. Yeah. Uhhh. Mmmm-Hmmm. Uh-huh.

I have a hard time with this. It seems natural to say, “yup” or “right” or “uh-huh” or “whatever” when someone is talking to you to show that you’re listening.

But here are the facts (and there’ve been studies on this): people perceive you as stupid when you do this.

Just keep quiet when someone is talking.

Then, when someone is done speaking, wait for two seconds before responding. They might not be done yet. And it gives you time to think of a response. If you are thinking of a response while they are talking, then you aren’t listening to them.

People unconsciously know when you are not listening to them. Then they say “no” to you.

 

D) The Four U’s

Finally, now we’re getting to the heart of the matter. The actual nuts and bolts of persuasion.

By the way, I’ve searched online for “the four U’s” and each time I get a different set of four.

So I’m going to use the four that have worked for me the best.

This is not BS. This is not a way to convince someone to do something they don’t want to do. This is a way for you to consolidate your vision into a sentence or two and then express it in a clear manner.

This is the way to bond and connect with another person’s needs instead of just your own pathetic wants.

You can use this in an elevator pitch, on a date, with your children, on your mother, whatever. But it works.

 

Think about these things when talking:

1. Urgency: Why the problem you solve is URGENT to your demographic. For example: “I can never get a cab when it rains!”

2. Unique: Why is your solution unique? “We aggregate hundreds of car services into one simple app. Nobody else does this.”

3. Useful: Why is your solution useful to the lives of the people to whom you plan on selling? “We get you there on time.”

4. Ultra-specific: This shows there is no fluff. “Our app knows where you are. Your credit card is pre-loaded. You hit a button and a car shows up in 4-5 minutes.”
 Of course the example I give is for Uber, but you can throw in any other example you want.

I’ll throw in a fifth U.

5. User-friendly: In other words, make it as easy as possible for someone to say “yes.” Like, a money-back guarantee, for instance. Or a giveaway. Or higher equity. Or testimonials from people you both know. Etc.

OH! And before I forget, a sixth U.

6. Unquestionable proof: This can be in the form of profits. Or some measurable statistic. Or testimonials. Or a good wingman. Whatever it takes.

 

E) Desire

A lot of people say you have to satisfy the desires of the other person in order for them to say “yes.”

As much as we would like to think otherwise, people primarily act out of self-interest.

The less they know you, the more they will act out of self-interest, because to do otherwise could potentially put them in danger. We all know that kids shouldn’t take candy from strangers.

In an elevator pitch, the investor is the kid, what you are saying is the candy, and you are the stranger.

So their gut reflex, unless you make the candy super-sweet, is to say “no.”

So make sure you make your candy sweeter by sprinkling in their desires…

And what are their desires?

• Recognition
• Rejuvenation
• Relaxation
• Relief
• Religion
• Remuneration
• Results
• Revenge (maybe steer clear of this one… at least don’t do anything violent.)
• Romance
• Etc.

If you can help them solve these urgent problems or desires, then they are more likely to say “yes” to you.

 

F) Objections

Everyone is going to have gut objections.

They’ve been approached thousands of times before.

Here are the most common objections and their solutions:

1. No time: That’s OK. It’s on an elevator. So they have an elevator-ride length of time. The key here is to stand straight and act like someone who deserves to be listened to.

2. No interest: You solve this by accurately expressing the urgency of the problem.

3. No perceived difference: Have your unique difference ready to go.

4. No belief: Offer unquestionable proof that this works.

5. No decision: Make their decision as user-friendly as possible.

 

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Pitching an idea is the easy part…

The hard part is selling someone on it.

Most people don’t have the power of persuasion. It takes practice and hard work.

It takes training (like this).

Why do you think most companies have teams of dedicated professional marketers, copywriters, salespeople to do it for them?

It’s the same principle, just on a bigger scale.

But this is not just about persuasion, not exactly.  It’s about connection.

It’s about two people, who are probably strangers, reaching through physical and mental space and trying to understand each other and reach common ground.

Want to learn the skills of connection and persuasion?  Click here.

Copywriting is one of the most in-demand skills online today.

Because nearly every sale happens online because someone wrote something.

Copywriters write everything from the headlines on articles to product description copy on Amazon to scripts for sales videos to sales emails.

 

If you know how to do it then you can make a lot of money.

In some niches it’s not uncommon to make $10,000 or $15,000 for a single project. Plus, you can often get paid a commission on sales you generate.

Launching your own business? You’ll either need to write great copy yourself – or pay someone else to do it for you.

The best person I’ve ever found to teach you how to be a copywriter is my friend, Mark Ford.

As far as I can tell, he’s trained more six and seven figure copywriters than anyone else alive today.

He’s a multi-millionaire who has built over 100 businesses, most of which relied on strong sales copy.

But good copywriters are hard to find so he started training copywriters one on one. And when his businesses got too big his need for copywriters grew to where he had to turn his mentoring into a business process.

He turned that process into a course on how to become a six figure copywriter.

If you’ve ever wanted to make money writing then click here to go check it out.

 

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