The James Altucher Show

"When I was a struggling writer, before I wrote my first book, I got 190 rejection slips."   He taped them to the walls like a serial killer.   "My wallpaper was rejection slips."   "What was the worst one...," I asked Ben Mezrich, a New York Times bestselling author. Over the past five or six years, I've probably read all of his books. He wrote "Bringing Down the House," which became the movie "21". He wrote, "Accidental Billionaires," which became "The Social Network" where Jesse Eisenberg played a seemingly evil Mark Zuckerberg.   The New Yorker sent him just a page with the most powerful word known to man.   "It was just, 'No,'" Ben said, "I was rejected by a janitor at a publishing house because I sent a manuscript to an editor who was no longer working there and the manuscript ended up in the trash can. A janitor took it out of the trash, read it and sent me a rejection letter."   That was his big chance. Not Ben's.   The janitor.   "I've never wanted to write a book," Ben said. "I wanted to write. I wanted to write a hundred books."   I was interviewing him about, "The 37th Parallel: The Secret Truth Behind America's UFO Highway."   They found these cows in the 70s. It looked like they were sliced with a laser. They had perfect slices of circles in their abdomens. Like pancakes. And they were completely drained of blood.   The FBI investigated.   There was no mess. No blood spill.   Then pilots started seeing UFOs. Ben says if a pilot sees a UFO now, they'll get fired for reporting it.   So I asked him, "Isn't there a freedom of information act?"   "They've tried," he said. "But they didn't even admit Area 51 existed until a few years ago. So, no. They don't have to release that information."   People lose their minds looking for answers. Questioning can be interrogative or art. Answers birth more questions. And the space between answer A and question B is just space.   And that's where Ben's books are created.   "I only go into the stories where it's larger than life or something happens," Ben said. "What leads up to that incredible moment? What leads up to Facebook being a billion dollar company or what leads up to a guy suddenly believing in UFOs?"   I asked about his writing process. And selling process.   "I write by page not by time," he said.   If he's writing a 300 page book, he does this:   Step 1: introduce characters Step 2: introduce love interest Step 3: introduce what they're trying to achieve / their goal (You're starting off with the obstacles.)   That's part 1.   Step 4: "At the end of 100 pages something happens -- something that makes it very difficult for the characters to achieve their goal."   Ben said, "When I'm interviewing people, I'm thinking of their lives as chapters."   Interviewing is part of Ben's writing, but it's also part of his selling process. He won't write a book that won't sell.   "How do you know?" I asked.   "Usually, I speak to the main character enough to get a book proposal," he said. "Then I do all that research. Then I do an outline (very specific, in fact, I know how many pages each chapter is. It's like a skeleton. It's very severe.)"   My dreams don't have skeletons.   They usually look like boneless blobs or liquid sliding downstream. Direction over details. That's what Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert told me.   I get stuck because I want to do everything at once. I want to read every book, go for a walk, fly around New York City, interview Carly Simon, Edward Thorpe, Carrie Fisher (who I'm sad I missed sharing her stories with you... we were going to meet when she returned from the UK). I want to spend time with my daughters, begin and win at all my dreams, but I also want to do nothing.   Sometimes I get so worked up dreaming of the millions of directions I could fly that I forget to take off.   But it's ok.   Because I have something to write about. I have a connection... See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

How can you use mass hypnosis to control 60,000,000 people so they vote for you to become the leader of the world? Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, knows the answer and has known it for years. So I called him and asked. I needed to know. He told me how Trump won. And he told me how anyone can use these persuasion techniques to improve their lives. What if you can get people to do whatever you want just by using the right words and subtly hypnotizing everyone you meet? It sounds like a science fiction novel. But it's true. It's what happened, and it happens every day. Who are the victims? You're the victim. Scott Adams predicted in September 2015(!) that Donald Trump would become President because, "he is the best master persuader I have ever seen." Scott Adams trained as a hypnotist and master persuader for years. "Once you realize that everyone is completely irrational," Scott Adams told me, "your life gets a lot easier. "You can start to use the principles behind this to see why people really do things, as opposed to using rational facts, and then use that to your advantage. "Understanding that people are irrational has made my life a lot better." But how did he predict a year and a half ago that Trump would win? I needed to know how. And how I could do it. Trump was the unlikely choice to be President. Just like Scott was the unlikely choice to be one of the world's most popular cartoonists with Dilbert. But we can all learn the skills that Scott learned. Scott heard a story that made him want to change his life in his 20s. His mother had delivered birth to his sister without the use of anesthetics. She was hypnotized. "She felt no pain," Scott said. So Scott, in his 20s, learned all the techniques of hypnosis. "You mean," I said, "You can take a gold watch and swing it in front of their eyes and make them do what you want?" "That has never happened," Scott said, "Except in movies. "What you learn is that basically everything people do is completely irrational. And then they rationalize it later. "Like, they might say they voted for Trump because of his policies but this is just a rationalization. Everyone is irrational and everyone is subject to persuasion." Everything seemed against Trump. But somehow he beat 16 candidates in the primaries and one big candidate in the election. And, Scott says, all the theories as to why he won have been wrong. So I called him up and asked him what happened. And he told me: ----------------- - THE LINGUISTIC KILL SHOT "Trump described everyone using two techniques: - words that had never been used in politics before - words that were visual. So every time you looked at the candidate being described you would look for confirmation bias." Example: Jeb Bush he described as "low energy". "Low energy" had never been used to describe a candidate before so they stood out. And whenever you looked Jeb, unless he was jumping around, you would automatically look for clues that showed he was low energy. Trump systematically did this with everyone who was frontrunner against him, including "Crooked Hillary" which referred both to her legal troubles and the persistent rumors that she was sick. ------------------ - CHARISMA = POWER + EMPATHY Scott said, "Trump clearly had the Power part down. But he was low on Empathy. "So he used polling to figure out what the critical issue was for the most amount of people and came up with Immigration. By going with this issue he proved he had empathy with his base. "Expect him as President to try to show empathy to a much larger group of people." ------------------ - OVERSELLING THE STORY "Trump consistently oversold his point. For instance, 'Build a Wall'." He used hyperbole because it's the direction that counts. "It didn't matter that the facts didn't support him. His base was listening to the direction while all the media was getting bogged down in the weeds. "And... See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

"When did you decide to go from being a lawyer to a full-time writer?" I asked Gretchen Rubin. She wrote the #1 New York Times bestseller, "The Happiness Project." It was 2001. "At the Supreme Court, I was surrounded by people who loved law. They were reading law on the weekends. They were talking about law at lunch time. They just loved, loved, loved law. And I knew that I didn't." I felt pain in my legs. That's the feeling I had in my body the last time I didn't love something. I couldn't sit around anymore. I got up mid-meeting, walked straight to the elevator and left. "I think a lot of people want to leave what they're doing, but they don't know where to go," Gretchen said. A) How to find where to go "I was looking up at the capitol dome," Gretchen said, "And I thought, 'What am I interested in that everybody in the world is interested in?' That's when she wrote her first book, "Power Money Fame Sex: A User's Guide." Her first step was research. That's also what she did for fun. "That's a big tip-off," she said. "What do you do for fun?" I loved talking to prostitutes at HBO. But if I stayed I wouldn't have my own podcast. I couldn't talk to anyone I wanted. I was limited to prostitutes. And it wasn't their fault. I didn't know if it was OK to want a better life. I kept waiting for people to notice the signs. I wanted them to worry about me and encourage me to do what I love. But each situation is different. And you can't always ask for advice. Advice is what other people would do if they were you. Not what they actually do as themselves. We try guiding each other with good intentions... but it's not the same as choosing yourself. B) Be you Gretchen has 12 commandments of happiness. And the first one is "Be Gretchen" so for me it'd be, ''Be James." But sometimes I feel really disconnected to myself. Gretchen's suggestions involve knowing a lot about yourself. So I asked her, "What if I don't know anything about myself?" "That is the great question of our lives. 'What does it mean to be you? Who are you?'" "It seems so easy because you hang out with yourself all day," she said. "But it's so easy to get distracted by who you feel you should be... or who you wish you were. Or who other people expect you to be." It's almost like we outsource our personality to everybody around us. But it's OK to stop doing things that should make you feel good, but don't. "I had this weird experience recently," Gretchen said. "I was at a cocktail party. And some woman, very nice person, was saying 'Oh I love going skiing with the whole family. It's a great vacation.'" Gretchen said it seemed great. But skiing doesn't appeal to her. At all. "I love the fact that my husband has a knee injury so I never feel like we have to go skiing." The woman tried convincing her. She said it's a beautiful adventure, great for the whole family and everything else. "Twenty minutes later she came back to me with this absolutely stricken expression on her face. And she said, 'I just realized I don't like skiing either...'" Here's an easy, two-step formula for being happier: Step 1: Do less of what you don't like doing Make a list: 10 things you do but don't like doing. (Unless you don't like lists...) Step 2: Do more of what you like doing Come up with all the things you daydream about. What have you always wanted to try but never had time for? BAM! Now you have time. And you're you. C) Use envy Gretchen was looking through a magazine from her college. She read about the other lawyers. And felt mildly interested. Then she saw people with writing jobs. "I felt sick with envy," she said. "Envy is painful, but it's a very helpful emotion for a happy life. It's a giant red arrow sign standing over someone's head saying, 'They've got something you want.'" I've learned there are three types of self-help books. One is you're telling people what to do. The other is... See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Dan Ariely was burned all over his body. He lived in the hospital for years. He grew up there. Now he writes about pain. And irrationality. And meaning. He had nerve damage from the burns. And no skin to protect himself from pain. The nurses slowly peeled back his bandages. He begged them to rip them off.   They wouldn't. He wanted quick pain and fast relief. They did it slowly for peace of mind. Not his. Theirs. Dan calls this "irrational behavior." He says, "being irrational are the cases where we think we will behave in one way, but we actually don't. And the reason I care about this is because those are the cases in which people are likely to make decisions." He helps predict behavior. So you can respond the way you'd expect you would... not the way you actually do. "It's an interesting conflict," he says. We talked about his new TED book, "Payoff: The Hidden Logic That Shapes Our Motivations." ------------What do YOU think of the show? Head to JamesAltucherShow.com/listeners and fill out a short survey that will help us better tailor the podcast to our audience!Are you interested in getting direct answers from James about your question on a podcast? Go to JamesAltucherShow.com/AskAltucher and send in your questions to be answered on the air!------------Visit Notepd.com to read our idea lists & sign up to create your own!My new book, Skip the Line, is out! Make sure you get a copy wherever books are sold!Join the You Should Run for President 2.0 Facebook Group, where we discuss why you should run for President.I write about all my podcasts! Check out the full post and learn what I learned at jamesaltuchershow.com------------Thank you so much for listening! If you like this episode, please rate, review, and subscribe to "The James Altucher Show" wherever you get your podcasts: Apple PodcastsiHeart RadioSpotifyFollow me on social media:YouTubeTwitterFacebookLinkedIn See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Steven Pressfield wrote all of the greatest books for writers. He's a pro. And in part 1 he talks about turning pro. Now he talks about HOW to develop your skills. "I have a writing practice," he says. "And what that sort of means is you detach yourself from the outcome and you're looking at the long picture. If somebody says to me, 'Steve you're gonna live to be 97.8 years old. Are you going to be writing the last day of your life?' I'll say, 'Yes.' And I don't give a shit if it sells or not. I'm in it." Be in it. Because it's not just a habit... it's your life.   ------------What do YOU think of the show? Head to JamesAltucherShow.com/listeners and fill out a short survey that will help us better tailor the podcast to our audience!Are you interested in getting direct answers from James about your question on a podcast? Go to JamesAltucherShow.com/AskAltucher and send in your questions to be answered on the air!------------Visit Notepd.com to read our idea lists & sign up to create your own!My new book, Skip the Line, is out! Make sure you get a copy wherever books are sold!Join the You Should Run for President 2.0 Facebook Group, where we discuss why you should run for President.I write about all my podcasts! Check out the full post and learn what I learned at jamesaltuchershow.com------------Thank you so much for listening! If you like this episode, please rate, review, and subscribe to "The James Altucher Show" wherever you get your podcasts: Apple PodcastsiHeart RadioSpotifyFollow me on social media:YouTubeTwitterFacebookLinkedIn See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

HOW TO GO FROM AMATEUR TO TURNING PRO? I had a full time job. I was trying to run a business on the side. I was pitching two TV shows. And I was obsessively playing chess day and night and traveling to tournaments. And nothing was going well. My attention was scattered. I was unhappy. I felt stuck. One time I was talking to one of the partners in my side business, Randy Weiner. I said to him, "I'm reading this fascinating book about chess endgames". He said, "I don't care about that! Why are you even looking at those books? Chess is a game for kids. You should be working at this business full-time." The next day I quit my job. I joined the business full time. I never played in another chess tournament ever again. I stopped pitching TV shows. I went from being an amateur to being a pro. Which is why I'm glad the other day I spoke to Steven Pressfield, author of "Turning Pro", "The War of Art", "The Legend of Bagger Vance", "Do the Work", and more than a dozen other great books and novels. Sometimes it seemed like each new low was lower. And often the highs were higher. But I haven't had a job since. Ever since I made the decision to turn pro, I've been free. It took me two years of asking before Steven finally agreed to do the podcast. I've read all his books twice. But I was still scared to death right before the podcast. Steven and I spoke for two hours about turning pro, writing, how to improve, how to achieve peak performance in any field of life. I wanted to ask questions nobody else would ask him. Two hours later I feel good about it. The podcast is coming out later today. Here is some of what we spoke about: - HOW TO DEAL WITH THE DEMONS When I join a gym, I go until I stop going. Then it basically teeters off. I'm an amateur at going to the gym. Every single day I write. If I don't do it for two days in a row I feel physically sick. But so many times I feel bad about what I am working on. Or I feel unsure if I should work on the next book. or try the next new idea. The demons come up. I get blocked. I get frustrated or scared. Will I be a failure? Have I run out of ideas? Steven wrote several books about these very demons. Steven said, "those thoughts are 'the Resistance'. "Every time you want to go from a lower level to a higher level - becoming an entrepreneur., get in better shape, meditate, be an artist - the Resistance will ALWAYS attack. Every writer or entrepreneur feels the Resistance every day." Recognize each thought as it comes up, he said. Identify the thoughts that are the resistance. Say, 'that's the resistance". "There's no way to get rid of The Resistance. Be aware of it. Say to yourself, these thoughts won't help me achieve my dreams." - KEEP THE EGO OUT A friend of mine started a company once. It was clearly a bad idea. But he thought it was a homerun. This is a cognitive bias. We tend to believe that if we pour our heart and soul into someone (our personal "investment") then it's a good idea. When I do something I have to constantly stop and ask if I'm smoking my own crack. One time I made a website I thought was brilliant. It had an IQ test on it. And it was a dating site. And it would tell you if you were smart or stupid and you can then date people and know their intelligence. I thought it was brilliant! My six year old daughter told me, "Isn't this kind of mean?" My daughter refused to light my crack pipe. Steven told me he had to make sure with his most recent novel, the autobiographical "The Knowledge" that he had to keep his ego out of it. "I had to put some distance between myself and the writing because it was about my early struggles as a writer." - EVEN A PORN DIRECTOR CAN BE A MENTOR: Steven told me about how he switched from writing bad novels to going into screenwriting, to finally getting back to writing novels. It's important to keep switching around, to pursue every angle of an interest.... See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

I was very late and I was very upset at myself. I had flown three thousand miles. I moved into an Airbnb right next to where Tim was staying. I had written thousands of notes on ripped pieces of paper and stuck them all throughout the book. I had notes written up and around all the margins. I listened to dozens of his podcasts. And I've known him for years. All morning I had jotted down possible questions. And I was late to meet Tim for our podcast. Because the west coast is three hours a way in time travel from the east coast. That's how stupid I am. I rushed over and he was waiting. Tim follows his own advice. He was relaxed. No problems. I apologized, we spoke for awhile, and then started the podcast. Three hours later...not even close to done but we stopped. I want to be a better person in life. I want to be healthier. I want to be more creative. I want to find what is hidden inside of me, dig around, unleash it. I want to find the strength to do that. It's not an easy to thing to do. To scrape the dirt and dust that collects inside of ourselves. To explore. To wander. To create. Tim's book, "Tools of the Titans" is a guidebook for doing the above. And I had a lot of questions. ---- A few months after I started my podcast in 2014, Tim wrote me and said, "Can I call you and ask you some questions about podcasting". I said sure and he called and we talked for quite awhile. He called many podcasters during this period. Then he started his own podcast. He DOMINATED. All of his guests were amazing. He told me he was getting so much great advice from his guests it was overwhelming. The aftermath of a hailstorm where everything is just glowing and even the air you breathe seems cleansed. But that lasts only a short time until the atmosphere is filled with the everyday pollution of life. So he took a month off, re-listened to all his podcasts, and just for his own use he wrote down the advice he was hearing. "But it was too much," he told me. "I kept writing. It was clearly a book." It's not like any other book he's written. He steps out of the way in many cases, and let's these super-achievers do the talking. He curates their thoughts. They had found the hidden gems inside themselves, and long ago brought them up to share with the world to achieve their successes, and now they documented them with Tim. That's why I flew 3000 miles. I wanted the gems. I wanted answers. ---- I've had so many ups and downs I try to quantify what works on the way up. What goes wrong on the way down. I try to quantify: what are the steps for reinvention? I wonder: what makes someone break out of mediocrity? About seven months ago I threw out all of my belongings. I gave away or donated to the library about 3000 books. All of my books now are on my kindle. None of the answers were in my things. But now I have one physical book. Tim's. And I plan to keep it. Here are ten things (among many) I learned from the book and from our podcast: "ALL I HAVE TO DO IS SHOW UP" I'm impressed how Tim did his work before starting a podcast. Starting something new is not about taking risks. Jumping into the unknown, getting out of the comfort zone, doing something scary. It's not about bravery. It's the exact opposite. You can only do so many "new" things in life. So do the work beforehand. He called people up. He learned the craft as much as he could. He talked to people ranging from me to people at Apple. He had initial guests lined up. He had a huge launch. And he told me the other day that he is persistent at getting his guests. One recent guest, he told me, took two years to book. Which was refreshing for me to hear since it often takes me that long or longer to book many guests. Comedian Whitney Cummings told him: "My work is not done on the night of a big standup special. My work was done three months ago. All I have do is show up." Even though I was late for our podcast,... See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

I was very late and I was very upset at myself. I had flown three thousand miles. I moved into an Airbnb right next to where Tim was staying. I had written thousands of notes on ripped pieces of paper and stuck them all throughout the book. I had notes written up and around all the margins. I listened to dozens of his podcasts. And I've known him for years. All morning I had jotted down possible questions. And I was late to meet Tim for our podcast. Because the west coast is three hours a way in time travel from the east coast. That's how stupid I am. I rushed over and he was waiting. Tim follows his own advice. He was relaxed. No problems. I apologized, we spoke for awhile, and then started the podcast. Three hours later...not even close to done but we stopped. I want to be a better person in life. I want to be healthier. I want to be more creative. I want to find what is hidden inside of me, dig around, unleash it. I want to find the strength to do that. It's not an easy to thing to do. To scrape the dirt and dust that collects inside of ourselves. To explore. To wander. To create. Tim's book, "Tools of the Titans" is a guidebook for doing the above. And I had a lot of questions. ---- A few months after I started my podcast in 2014, Tim wrote me and said, "Can I call you and ask you some questions about podcasting". I said sure and he called and we talked for quite awhile. He called many podcasters during this period. Then he started his own podcast. He DOMINATED. All of his guests were amazing. He told me he was getting so much great advice from his guests it was overwhelming. The aftermath of a hailstorm where everything is just glowing and even the air you breathe seems cleansed. But that lasts only a short time until the atmosphere is filled with the everyday pollution of life. So he took a month off, re-listened to all his podcasts, and just for his own use he wrote down the advice he was hearing. "But it was too much," he told me. "I kept writing. It was clearly a book." It's not like any other book he's written. He steps out of the way in many cases, and let's these super-achievers do the talking. He curates their thoughts. They had found the hidden gems inside themselves, and long ago brought them up to share with the world to achieve their successes, and now they documented them with Tim. That's why I flew 3000 miles. I wanted the gems. I wanted answers. ---- I've had so many ups and downs I try to quantify what works on the way up. What goes wrong on the way down. I try to quantify: what are the steps for reinvention? I wonder: what makes someone break out of mediocrity? About seven months ago I threw out all of my belongings. I gave away or donated to the library about 3000 books. All of my books now are on my kindle. None of the answers were in my things. But now I have one physical book. Tim's. And I plan to keep it. Here are ten things (among many) I learned from the book and from our podcast: "ALL I HAVE TO DO IS SHOW UP" I'm impressed how Tim did his work before starting a podcast. Starting something new is not about taking risks. Jumping into the unknown, getting out of the comfort zone, doing something scary. It's not about bravery. It's the exact opposite. You can only do so many "new" things in life. So do the work beforehand. He called people up. He learned the craft as much as he could. He talked to people ranging from me to people at Apple. He had initial guests lined up. He had a huge launch. And he told me the other day that he is persistent at getting his guests. One recent guest, he told me, took two years to book. Which was refreshing for me to hear since it often takes me that long or longer to book many guests. Comedian Whitney Cummings told him: "My work is not done on the night of a big standup special. My work was done three months ago. All I have do is show up." Even though I was late for our podcast,... See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Explorer's Code:  I wanted to wake each morning, not anxious about my day anymore. Not worried about what so-and-so would say, or where my career was going, or what was I going to write today. My only job each day is to explore something new. So I called up Josh and asked him how I could be an explorer. He told me. - Have A Mission Every day, whether it's "be creative today." Or "go some place you've never been" or "talk to ten random strangers", make a mission. Learn something new. Missions are for people who DO. Mission statements are for people who DON'T. -Uncomfortable Situation Try to put yourself in as many uncomfortable situations as possible. "For instance," he said, "you should apply for a temp job. See what it's like." Or maybe one day you and a friend can make a bet: who can get the furthest out of town with just $100. The uncomfortable zone is where you find out who you are, the comfort zone is where you sleep. Task: make a list of uncomfortable situations. Stretch the idea muscle. -Partners/Team Josh has 100s of people who submit items to Atlas Obscura and atlasobscura.com. "There's over 10,000 weird and obscure places on there now." He also started it with two partners. Even superheroes need a team. Superman still needed the Justice League. Luke Skywalker still needed Han Solo and Princess Leia. Luke Cage needs Iron Fist and Jessica Jones. Who are on your team? Are they good people? Do you each have your super power? I am constantly looking for my team of fellow explorers. "Try to experience wonder every day," Josh told me. A few months ago, my mission was to throw out everything I owned.  What would it be like after 40 years of collecting things, to own absolutely nothing. And a few months before that, my mission was to track down someone who had disappeared from my life. I failed at that mission. But I experienced wonder along the way. And today, I'm going to change my life forever. I will text you about it.   ------------What do YOU think of the show? Head to JamesAltucherShow.com/listeners and fill out a short survey that will help us better tailor the podcast to our audience!Are you interested in getting direct answers from James about your question on a podcast? Go to JamesAltucherShow.com/AskAltucher and send in your questions to be answered on the air!------------Visit Notepd.com to read our idea lists & sign up to create your own!My new book, Skip the Line, is out! Make sure you get a copy wherever books are sold!Join the You Should Run for President 2.0 Facebook Group, where we discuss why you should run for President.I write about all my podcasts! Check out the full post and learn what I learned at jamesaltuchershow.com------------Thank you so much for listening! If you like this episode, please rate, review, and subscribe to "The James Altucher Show" wherever you get your podcasts: Apple PodcastsiHeart RadioSpotifyFollow me on social media:YouTubeTwitterFacebookLinkedIn See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What does it sound like when you change your mind? That's the name of Seth Godin's next book. He only printed 5,500 copies. And he's not printing anymore. He doesn't just view a book as pages surrounded by two covers. He makes a 3-dimensional object that's beautiful to look at and read. "It's not new," he said on my podcast. "It's the best of the last four years of my work. And it's illustrated with hundreds of photos by Thomas Hawk, who's the most prolific and talented internet photographer." The book weighs 18 pounds. And it's 800 pages long. I asked him about art and marketing... and he told me about life. A) START FROM THE BEGINNING "No business, no project, no novel ever started big," Seth said. It started with fear, uncertainty, excitement, possibility. Tons of "what if's" that lead to real action. And real action halts the what if's. The what if's turn to what is. Seth said, "Instead of saying, 'I need to leap to the middle,' say, 'I'm going to start with people who want to engage with me.'" All successes start with one person. That's it. One person, then two, then three. Success is a curve. We all know it. Don't try to cheat the curve. B) KNOW YOUR WORLD I asked Seth, "How do you know what the world wants to hear?" "Well, first of all," he said, "never the whole world. You pick your world." Where do you hurt? Where you do you feel a knot? Can you loosen it up and ease the pressure? Can you create something for the people who want to love what you want to love? C) WHAT DO YOU CARE ENOUGH TO SAY? We talked about Facebook. And the Lays Potato Chip guy who re-designed the bag. His job was to make it sound crunchier. Kids had slamming competitions. Who could slam a soda the fastest? So Coke-A-Cola created a bottle with a mouthpiece meant to maximize chugging efficiency. They sold product. But it's the message that matters. I always say: message over money. Invention happens at the edges. Between heart and lungs, breath and vocal chords is the message. It's the thing you want to say. The thing you're afraid to say. "What really matters isn't what time you posted on Facebook," Seth said. "What matters is, what did you care enough to say? D) ANYONE CAN LEAD... "'Purple Cow' says, 'How do I sit in my office and make a thing that people talk about?'" "What 'Tribes' says is 'Now that anyone can stand up and lead (because anyone can have a media channel... because anyone can make connection) will you choose to lead? And if you're going to lead, who will you lead? How will you connect the people you're leading? That is marketing, but it's also life." E) CULTURE BEATS EVERYTHING "No one has a Suzuki tattoo," Seth said. "What's a Suzuki tattoo?" I asked. Then I got it. Harley Davidson makes half their revenue licensing their brand. T-shirts, jackets, etc. "If you're in the Harley tribe, you can't show up on a Suzuki," he said. "Tribes aren't about the alpha to the omega. Leaders always go away. The alpha person dies or moves on. But the tribe doesn't. The tribe persists. Because culture beats everything. Scenes have a culture. Tribes have a culture. It's culture that determines how an organization make its choices, how a nation will evolve." I've said this before. It doesn't matter who the president is. What matters is who you surround yourself with. Who's in your tribe? Who's in your heart? And if they're toxic to your creativity or well-being, detox now. "The Beatles didn't invent teenagers. I'm not saying we invent our tribe. We just show up to lead them." I didn't invent the choose yourself community. The cubicle job did. I'll never say what other people should do. I just say what I like to do. I say what gets me past just getting by. F) SHOW UP "Half my blog posts are below average," Seth said. I asked if he feels bad. Intellectually, I understand failure. But it still hurts. It can turn your life upside down. I lost everything more... See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.