Skip the Failure Porn and Other Surprising Success Advice with James Altucher

Bulletproof Radio, a state of high performance. You're listening to Bulletproof Radio with Dave Asprey. Today we are going to talk about experimentation, about skipping the line. And my guest today ran and started more than 20 companies and only failed at 17 of them. He's an investor and advisor to about 30 more companies now, from tech to energy to healthcare, biotech. He's also a well known author and podcaster. And I'm talking about James Altucher, by the way. Hey, James.

Dave, thanks so much for having me on the podcast. It's a reunion. You know, I remember the last time we did a back to back podcast. You know, you were on mine, I was on. Yours was right around the time I was starting to do standup comedy. And you know, I even asked you for advice then and you said, you know, just take a deep breath and feel love for the audience right before you walk out. And I've since then performed probably well over a thousand times and I always do that right before the second before I perform.

Dude, that's awesome. You never told me that before. Yeah, I think it connects with that and I do that every time I go. Even if I do an Instagram live, I make it a practice to do that. Just you send something, I think people feel it. Well, you're doing something right in comedy because I mean, I have a whole bio of stuff you've done. You've lost $15 million, down to $143. You've experimented and like just ridden things up and down. Every time I interview you, like you did what? And this time you, you wrote a, an opinion piece. You know, high integrity. This is what I think. And Jerry Seinfeld, which is a comic a few people have heard of, like wrote a rebuttal piece to it. So you've been kind of out there lately just talking about the future of, of what you think is happening in New York. And you looked at the whole experiment or the whole experience as an experiment. And that's what your new book is about, which is about experimenting and how you can skip the line and all. How did like pissing off all New Yorkers, including Jerry Seinfeld, how was that really an experiment?

Well, it wasn't. I didn't, I didn't write the article in designed to piss people off. I really saw, you know, as part of this economic lockdown, there were things happening in New York City that were starting to get at a critical level. And I felt everybody was in the denial. The governor and the mayor and the average man on the street. A lot of business owners were not in denial because they were going out of business. A lot of employees of those businesses were not in denial because they were going unemployed. New York City is the city with the highest unemployment rate now in the country. Like, everything I wrote about in August has been coming true. But at the time. And by the way, in the article, I write about my love affair with New York since I was born. And I write about how I don't want this to happen. I write about how I was searching for solutions, but I think people didn't really think about that. It triggered their cognitive dissonance. And rather than engaging with the. With solutions and with the issues, people just attacked me, including Seinfeld, who, I will say this about Jerry. He loves New York City and like everyone else, he was sort of offended by what I was saying. And. But nobody addressed the actual issues. They just. Jerry included. And by the way, then some family members, ex girlfriends, people started writing articles left and right just like insulting me. No one actually addressing any of the issues. But just like Jerry Seinfeld, it's the first op ed piece he's ever written in his life. He wrote it a full page of the New York Times, and he spent the whole article just insulting me. And he's a very good. He's very good with insults. Like, he was very powerful with his insulting. And, and so, yeah, it was. I. The experiment. There was a. You know, I'm always trying to push the envelope a little bit with my own writing. It's always very important for me not just to write a story, but to have an impact and write something that no one else has written. Otherwise, if somebody else has written it, what's the point of me writing it? I'm just going to add to some echo chamber. So every article, I always do a test. And I'm sure you do this as well, because we've even discussed this, how you always, I always hear you say things like, and nobody's ever written about this before, but I wrote in my book this. So I do the same thing I always do a gut check. Has. Is this new? Is there some part of this that's new either in terms of the content, the facts, the story, whatever? Then the other thing I always ask myself is, am I afraid to publish this? Is there something that I'm a little bit afraid of? Because then I know I'm pushing past my comfort zone and I'm going to learn something one way or the other. And so the interesting thing that I asked myself, like I said, to myself, why am I afraid to hit publish on this right before I hit publish? And it was because this is the first time in. In at least over a decade, I can't remember ever. This is the first time I ever wrote an article where I talked about something very pessimistic that I was seeing all around me, which was the, you know, some conditions in New York City. But I did not have optimism at the end. I did not have a solution for the problems I was mentioning. I was just trying to get people out of denial, but I didn't. Normally I will say, oh, this and this, and this is happening, but don't worry, because this is what looks like will be happening after that. And it's optimistic because I'm usually an optimistic person. But this time, I was struggling to find a solution. And that's what I basically was. The article is that I couldn't figure out a solution. So I think a lot of my initial readers were sort of like, this is odd. He doesn't have. They were expecting kind of a way out of the misery by the end of the article, and I didn't have it, and I felt bad about that. But which. Which, again, was, for me, the experiment, the real experiment was, can I sit with not being the optimist everybody expects by the end of this article? And then I saw this massive, massive reaction. I mean, huge radio hosts were reading the articles live on their shows or podcasts the next day.

Well, Joe Rogan read your article, right?

Like, Joe Rogan. Yeah, he mentioned my article on at least three or four different podcasts. You know, I was on every media outlet about it. And. And then. And then, you know, all these people were really trashing me. And I want to say I was getting about 10 hate tweets a second for a while in that first week, and then I thought it had died down. And then a week later, Jerry Seinfeld, as this op ed in the New York Times where he calls me a putz. He. He basically insults me in a variety of ways. And I figure, okay, I try to look at the upside, which is that, hey, at least my writing hit home enough that all these people reacted strongly to it. And I hope maybe that will make a difference. And in fact, it was the one thing Mayor de Blasio and Governor Cuomo agreed on was how much they hated me. And so it was the first time I'd seen them agree on anything in, like, years. So I thought, okay, I'm accomplishing something. But. But then it was weird just how many People I knew started unfriending me, including in the case of some family members, some people who had been, you know, friends of mine for many years. And then some friends of mine told me they were being unfriended by their friends because they were defending me. And I. So I have, I have somebody I work with who was wearing a T shirt that said the James Altucher show. And he was harassed with walking his dog in, in the middle of the street in New York. And so all these strange stories, like, everywhere I went, people were like, oh, you're like that New York City is dead guy. And then one. And even four months later, one person, a well known guy, insulted me. And. And I'm like, I called him and I said, look, you were accused of X, Y and Z, and I had your back. You were on my podcast, you explained your side of the story. Like, why would you say that about me? And he. And he was just like, well, enjoy your moment of fame. And I'm like, I'm not trying to be.

I've written, you're already kind of famous, James. I don't think you needed more. And you have like a million followers on LinkedIn. Like, you're. People listen to you. You're not doing that for fame.

I knew, I said that. I said that. I'm not even trying for that. I'm trying to help New York City. I said, I specifically said, I'm not trying to be famous. And this guy, his response was, I know. You know how I know? Because I am famous. And just everybody tell me who it was.

Who was this?

I'll tell you after the podcast. I'll tell you after the podcast.

He's been on your show. Come on, we're going to. Everyone's going to go on your show and then find.

No, no, no, no, no, no. Because he's a good guy. I think he was just, I don't know, agitated for whatever reason. Everybody. That's the other thing I learned is that everybody has their own agendas. And I can't really assume. It's always a mistake to assume malice. Although, you know, who knows what he was going through that day. I don't know.

You know, I love.

Yeah, it was intense.

It's a, It's a mistake to assume malice because if you think you know what's going on in someone else's head, that's ego. Because there's no way you can know. You can only measure behaviors, right? And they can be out of trauma or they can be done out of malice. You Just don't know.

And the reality is I did write an article that in. I didn't realize, and maybe I should have. I didn't realize how much cognitive dissonance is, it would trigger. So I wrote an article with facts so people couldn't really argue with the article. It was just facts. And. But a lot of people have made life decisions, very important life decisions to either buy a place in New York or move their family to New York or take a job in New York. And here I was questioning these decisions at a time when maybe they were scared. And again, the only reason I did that is because I felt people were in denial that, you know, maybe up to 80 or 90% of restaurants might close. One third of small businesses might close in New York. And so I wanted to get, for people to get out of denial. And I've even tried searching for solutions since then. And I've talked to a lot of government officials or, or economists or whatever. But it was also an experiment on, on writing in a variety of ways. Every time I write or start a business or let's say, do stand up comedy or do investing or podcasts, I always try to push some envelope. I try to do an experiment because that's the fastest way you learn. It's the, it's the, you know, people off. You know, there's this rule popularized by Malcolm Gladwell and before that, Professor Anders Erickson called the 10,000 hour rule, which says if you do 10,000 hours of deliberate practice, which means repetition with a coach and fast feedback and then more repetition, and then that's rough, but that's it. You'll, if you do that, you'll be among the best in the world by the time that you hit your 10,000th hour, roughly. And I don't like that role. You and I are both in our 50s, and if we, and, and many people, whether you're in your 20s, 30s, 40s, or 50s, it's okay to change your interests, it's okay to change jobs, change careers, it's okay to do what you love. And if you think that you need 10,000 hours once you switch interests, I wanted to prove that wrong. I was getting very, I was getting personally frustrated and I was almost tying my hands behind my back because I was following that rule. And I'm like, I don't, when I switch interests now, I don't want to spend 10,000 hours. And so that's when I realized through much trial and error that all my theories about the 10,000 hour rule were not working out. But this other aspect, experimenting, where you're always trying to push the edge, push the envelope of whatever it is you love and, you know, and I could get more into detail, but it was through the, what I call now the 10,000 experiment rule, that I really was learning anything I wanted in a very quick amount of time, you know, combined with some other techniques. And so I decided, you know what? This has been so life changing for me. I'm going to write about it. Well, I wasn't going to write another nonfiction book. I wanted to write a novel. And then I ended up writing this book. I was so in love with these ideas and how much it had helped me.

It's a powerful book because the 10,000 hour rule, it's actually crippling because it says, because with no enhancements, no proper technique, you just put your head down and plow through it, you'll eventually get some results. This sounds suspiciously similar to what they told me when they said, just eat low calories and exercise all the time and eventually you'll lose weight. And I'm like, 18 months later, I'm still £300. Like, maybe this advice sucks. Maybe it'll work someday. But no. And the reason the 10,000 hour rule works is because that's how long it takes to myelinate nerves. Assuming that you insulate your nerves so that they can carry electricity faster. Assuming you do that at the standard rate. Well, gee, what would happen if we hacked the rate of myelination of nerves with the electrical currents or with nutrients so you could learn faster? Oh, my God. Maybe it's a 5,000 hour rule. Like, assuming it has to be 10,000 hours. It makes me mad. So you kind of blew holes in it in your book. And I like that. And that you have 10,000 experiments instead of 10,000 hours. I could get behind that. And I like that.

Yeah, because think about your career and bulletproof coffee. It's not like you became the quote, unquote, best guy out there or one of the best in the world at developing a food company. No, what you did and what many successful people do is they change the, the industry of what they're trying to be the best at. And so what you did was you basically figured out through hacking on yourself and through scientific research, you figured out what combination of nutrients and foods and drinks would, would create health for you and others. And then you create a food company around that. And if you go to any industry or career or passion or interest, the best people don't just become like, like the best guitar Player doesn't just become really proficient at guitar. He plays guitar in a different way or she plays guitar in a different way than anybody has previously. They change the nature of the industry and, or the interests that they're trying to be great at. And through experimenting, that's how you can do that. Oh, what if I, what if I'm Jimi Hendrix? I'm experimenting with playing guitar with my teeth or playing guitar so it sounds like a human singing. Well, suddenly I've just changed the way people listen to guitar if I'm, if I experiment enough with that. So. And that's true in every single industry on, on the planet. The 10,000 hour rule, you're right, is crippling. Like it takes 20 years. But if you could basically define, if you could really pursue what it is you love and know why you love it and then experiment with new ways to push the frontier in this new interest that you love, you're going to, you're going to be the best at how you now have individually defined the category.

You sound a little bit like Naveen Jain, another friend, the founder of viome, who's been on the show several times and guys mentored me.

And just Naveen, by the way, he's been on my podcast as well.

Okay, good deal. So your listeners and my listeners all know Naveen, but he's the same thing. He's like, you have to go to a new industry if you want to do something different because if you grew up in the industry, you'll just do the same as everyone else. So there's a great argument for kind of the thesis behind your book, but I want to know, why did you call it Skip the Line?

Okay. And it's interesting because I've changed interests and passions many times in my life and just sometimes I'm even sort of self critical, like, oh, maybe I'm just a dilettante. You know, when you try to be the master of many, you end up being mediocre at all and, and master of none. But you know, every single time I've ever changed careers, and I'm not saying, oh, I went from being a physicist to an astrophysicist. Like I went from being a computer programmer to pitching TV shows to being a venture capitalist, then a hedge fund manager, professional writer, stand up comedian, chess player, I professional poker player. I've done a lot of different things and I tend to get obsessed when I change interests. So I like have to be good and I always struggle it with this. And maybe you experience this. For instance, when I First wanted to get involved in investing and potentially be a hedge fund manager. I remember someone telling me, you know, you can't do this. Like, you got to work at a bank, you got to get an mba, then maybe you work at a hedge fund. Then maybe when people know, you know, 10 years later you could start your own small hedge fund and then build up like, you can't just start a hedge fund. Nobody can do that. You got to pay your dues. You can't skip the line. And the phrase you can't do that and you can't skip the line have been told to me every single time I've ever changed interests. Like I, I wanted to try being a stand up comedian. And other comedians who had been doing it for 15 or 20 years said, look, you, you got to pay your dues, man. You can't just skip the line. Like, you got to do open mics and you got to do this. And I'm like, I've been public speaking for 20 years. I have an audience. I'm going to, why can't I do it? And you can't do it. And they get angry. You can't do it. You can't skip the line. You got to pay your dues. Those things have been said to me every single time. So it starts off that this is basically a message back that, you know, after all is said and done, I have in many cases skipped the line. Now it takes hard work still and it takes some courage and it takes ignoring the people who say can't. And Dave, you discuss this in your book as well, like dealing with the cants I of like, well, I can't, you know, eat like this or this will be too much willpower for me or whatever. People don't understand that when other people tell you can't, they're really telling. They're really, they the ones who can't do it and they, they're just afraid of you changing and prove and leaving them behind when they can't do something.

I love that so much. In fact, I miss hanging out. I'm going to come and once travel is a little bit more doable, we're going to have to hang out again because, man, you, you just nailed so many things in there. I remember one of my favorite articles. So I came up with a new process for coffee about mold toxins in coffee and all. And it was on like, you know, Coffee Hacker, Coffee Snob, one of the big coffee websites. And this guy's like, look, I did my research on Dave Asprey and I have been a roaster for 20 years, and this guy comes from the tech world and he can't have done what he says he's done, because we've been thinking about this for a long time. I'm like, you douchebag, I flew to Guatemala and we put in different infrastructure, and I have, like, the presence of Specialty Coffee association. On camera. With me doing it, you tell me that I didn't do it right. And it's. That can't. But it's the same cognitive dissonance.

Yes.

They got people pissed off in your article about, hey, guys, we have a problem in New York because small businesses are. Are crashing everywhere and they're the foundation of the city's uniqueness. Right. So that cognitive dissonance, when you say you can and they believe they can't, I think it creates fear. And then when people get fear, they stop thinking and they start just sort of insulting, which is what you felt. And certainly, you know, we both have dealt with that from Changing Industries. What's the hack for that? I mean, should we just ignore the people who say can't? Should we, you know, make fun of them? Like, what's your best, your best advice for people who are doing things that they can't do that they're doing?

Well, first off, all of the above about the people who say can't and not that you should, you know, waste precious time thinking about all these people who are kind of rooting against you. They might not feel like they're rooting against you. They might kind of pretend that they're rooting for you, but the reality is they're rooting against you because they don't want you to change or literally skip the line. But the issue is, let's say you're passionately interested. Let's say you've been, I don't know, a dental assistant for the past 35 years, and now you figure, or let's say you just graduated college and you're tired of your major and you don't know what you want to do with your life. Well, the answer is if you start exploring the space of things that you love doing, there's always a way to a, get better at it so that you're in the top 1% of your field. And in order to do that, you also have to monetize what you're interested in. So there's always a way to monetize no matter what you're interested in. And people don't really believe that, but it's true. And I've seen it in every single industry. I'm sure you have as well. And so this book, Skip the Line, is about not only how to get better quickly, and I give many techniques for that, but it's also how to understand your field enough that you could skip the line as well. From a practical level, how do you. How you can monetize what it is you're interested in? Like, if you're interested in making TikTok videos, great. But. And there's. Now, there's also a different skill set involved in learning how to monetize something and then scaling it into a full business and. And so on. Like, if I had a new cup of coffee I was making, I maybe can make that new cup of coffee. Maybe it's the best coffee in the world. But I also need the skills involved to persuade people that this is a good idea. And I need to understand the basics of monetizing something and scaling something. So it could be a much bigger business. Like, for instance, you have with Bulletproof. So it's those two angles, basically, like getting great at something you love, which is always a pleasure. You know, mastery, a feeling of mastery, is among the cornerstones of positive psychology. And of course, if you want to devote that kind of time into something, you have to make money from it. And, you know, these are the two things I try to show in the book.

It makes a lot of sense, but I think you missed a major theme in the book when you just summarized it there. And you talk about the value of being curious. And Steven Kotler just came on the show. He wrote the Art of Impossible recently, where he's going to some neuroscience here. And it turns out being curious puts you in a flow state which magically makes it easier to acquire new skills faster than you're supposed to be able to.

So. So there's a lot of. There's. I write a bit about the neurochemistry of mastery in the book. And, you know, I've also spoken with Steven Kotler about the flow state and Andrew Huberman about neurochemicals and, you know, a bunch of other people as well. The whole point of doing a podcast is so that I could learn about these things and then incorporate them to make my own life better. And I've talked to a lot of interesting people about peak performance, including. Including a young man named Dave Asprey. And, you know, the. The reality is he. He's right. The flow state is important, but there are a lot of components to the flow state. And one thing is you have to, you don't have to love what you're doing to, to, to be good at it, but it really helps to love what you're doing. And this is related actually to something you and I have discussed about eating and dieting and particularly in regards your last book about fasting, which is that human life activity requires energy. And how you eat kind of, you know, changes your energy levels and how you sleep, change your energy levels. But also if you don't love what you're doing every day, you're going to have to, you're going to, it's going to require more energy to do the activities you have to do because you, the first piece of energy you have to spend is you have to convince yourself to, oh my God, I have to do this again. And you have to kind of talk yourself into doing something you don't want to do. Whereas if you love what you're doing, which is why it's important to love what you do, you'll require much less energy to get started and to do it and to explore the nuances of it and to truly reach mastery in it. And this is very important. Energy is everything in terms of success. The person who has energy competing against the person who doesn't is going to win. So that's why it's good to love what you do.

I love that. And there's kind of a debate. Gary Vee's been on Bulletproof Radio and he's kind of the king of if you don't like it, shut up and do it anyway because you're going to eat ramen for two years and eat caviar for 20 and starting to lean in and don't follow your passion. Make some money already and then follow your passion, you know, but, but really kind of the, the opposite of what you're saying. But then Dan Sullivan, who's a master run strategic coach who's done coaching for me, and he's like, look, set everything you do in three buckets. Stuff that takes energy, stuff that is neutral and stuff that gives you energy. Don't do anything that takes energy. Do the minimum amount of stuff that's neutral and do everything that gives you energy. Everything else, hire people. So I like Dan's approach and I'm allergic to Gary Vee's approach, but it seems like Gary Vee's getting some results. So are you sure that you have to only follow what you love?

Well, let me explain it in a different way. When you want to pursue something that you love, chances are you're not pursuing tic tac toe. Nobody says, boy, I want to be the best tic tac toe player in the world. Because it takes five minutes to figure out how to be the best tic tac toe player in the world. Anything worth doing is difficult. So if you want to be a professional race car driver, you're not just going to get in a car and hit the accelerator. You have to learn all the skills, and then you have to do the things I say in the book about experimenting and, you know, some of the other techniques I describe. You have to. And. And by the way, it's going to suck most of the time. Like, when you're just starting a business for the first time, it's going to suck most of the time. If you're. If you want to be a professional tennis player and you. You are rising up through the ranks, chances are you're losing more games than you're winning because you keep rising through levels of resistance. You play stronger and stronger players, and you're. You. You probably are losing a lot, and that's a miserable experience, particularly because you love it. If you're. If you want to be a musician most of the time when you're beginning, you can't play the music you want to play. You have to learn it. And so most things that are worth doing that you love are gonna suck most of the time. So you have to love something enough to. To break through the suck barrier. And I see what Gary's saying. And by the way, Gary loves business. So it's. He. He might not know what it's like to not. He's been doing things he loves since he graduated college. Like, he was selling wine. He loves wine. He was. He does business, he does marketing. He. You could tell he's a kid in a sandbox doing this stuff. Whereas I've had jobs I haven't liked, and I get depressed.

I get.

I. It takes too much energy. I start, you know, performing poorly at it. I go broke, which is something I've done quite a bit. And the flip side is, in, you know, the past 10 years, for instance, I mostly have focused on writing, podcasting, and then doing standup comedy, and I do business activities. But, you know, these things are not the sort of things where, oh, I'm going to make $100 million performing at a comedy club at night. No, it's something I love and I'm passionate about. And, you know, life is over at some point. And if all you did was, well, I started a hedge fund. I was miserable for 25 years. But now I garden every day as an 80 year old. That's not, that's not the life I wanted to live. And then I started hearing, particularly during this economic lockdown, people were being half. Half of workers or 40% of workers filed for unemployment insurance. People were being thrust onto the street and scared. But then I would ask, well, what do you, what do you love doing? Well, I've been an accountant for 57 years, but I really love cooking barbecue pork. So why not? I say why not rent space in a commercial kitchen and make your 10 favorite recipes, upload a menu to Uber Eats and Grubhub, and now you have a restaurant, give it a try for a weekend. It's an experiment. It can't. There is no downside to that experiment and the upside is enormous because if you get a lot of orders that weekend, maybe that'll encourage you to do it the next weekend or throughout the week or add to the menu or even start another restaurant. Because a restaurant now is just a menu. It's not a physical location. And so there's always ways to experiment and potentially get good and validate an idea and express your own vision of this industry that you love. Maybe you want to make sushi with barbecue pork in it. So you're combining your few, doing fusion of Asian food and Tex Mex or something, who knows? But it's.

You're going to piss off all of Japan and all of Texas with what you just said. I can't imagine the hate tweets you're going to get, man.

I keep telling people do sushi ritos, which is like a sushi burrito somehow. So they're pretty cool. Yeah, because that one and I discussed this. I have a chapter in the book called idea calculus, which is ways to take an idea in an area that again, that you're very interested in and sort of massage it in various ways to make an even a better idea or to make it uniquely you. And that's always key. Like if you go to. I love using comedy as an example because it's an extremely difficult skill. Like there's no skill such as stand up comedy. People say, oh, what if you have a good sense of humor? That's one micro skill of comedy. Another is, are you a good performer? Are you good with a crowd? Are you good improvising? Are you good with stage work? Are you good with doing voices? Are you good with, you know, writing? And just like business, there's no one skill to business. There's sales, marketing, Negotiating ideation, coming up with ideas. There's execution. All these things are. There's management leadership. All these things are completely different skills. If you're good at marketing, you're not necessarily a good manager of people. But doesn't mean you shouldn't be in business. It just means every skill can be broken into micro skills, and you should focus on the micro skills you love most of all. And so this is part of skipping the line, which is, like you just said, maybe outsource what you. What you don't necessarily love, but experiment with the things you love that you could really move the needle on and at least start off that way. And that's a good way to skip the line and make a presence in whatever industry you're in. So, you know, you. You had skills as a writer because you were able to explain what. What bulletproof coffee was. You had skills defending your position. You had skills ignoring people who said, hey, you're not a food guy. You're not a coffee guy. You can't do this. So you. You. You were able to go to Guatemala and figure this out and figure out what experiments to perform to prove to yourself that this works. And, you know, that's how then you catapulted. You're like one of the top coffee companies in the world outside of Starbucks. So, you know, there's a few other.

Bigger ones all owned by a couple big conglomerates, but at least it's a known brand. I'll give you that. I'm still working on, you know, out Starbucksing. Howard.

Yes. You'll do it.

Okay, this is. This is totally funny, and it's completely irrelevant to this interview, but I have to tell you. Cause you're gonna laugh. Years ago, I had hired someone as a consultant who was the first employee of Starbucks. Because I'm like, hey, I don't know this industry. I need someone who's got, you know, decades of experience. And this person ended up parking next to Howard outside his $10 million coffee shop in Seattle. And he hadn't seen her in a while. And he's like, hey, what's going on? What are you doing? She says, I'm at this company called Bulletproof, and they're putting butter in coffee. And quote from Howard Schultz. He says, I hope they paid you up front. So there you go. No, you just reminded me that I haven't thought of that in years.

So. So, yes. So. So a. He's telling, this is the biggest guy in the business just trying to squash you before you even begin. That's like a gut instinct for him is, oh, this person is even thinking of making coffee, he must be squashed. That's like a gut reflex for him. But you did something else there that's very important. And I write about this in the book. It's. It's called the plus minus equals technique. So you hired somebody who was the first employee of Starbucks. Who better for you to learn from? You don't have to take 100% of his advice, but who better for you to learn from than someone who's been through it and kind of is at the top of the ladder? Okay, so that's the plus side. Then there's the equal side. So, you know, the equals are other entrepreneurs who are at your level. And you compare notes like, okay, what are you doing for social media? What are you doing to track your email list? What are you doing to track, you know, to process transactions or to get new customers? So your equals are people who are rising up with you and sharing some of the same experiences. And if you surround yourself with good people, your equals are all hitting the, you know, edge of industries, just like you're trying to do. And then there, there, there's the minus, which is not negative, but it's just like, okay, well, who am I going to teach? Because if I can't explain what I'm doing, then I don't truly understand it. So just as much time as you get coaching from the plus, you also have to spend you doing the coaching with the minus. Or you did it through your books. Like you wrote the Bulletproof Diet, which was a great way to explain what it is you do. And that's what really got, you know, a huge wave into the business. So I'll give you a quick example. I, when I was a young kid, I was a chess master. And of course, you know, life then gets in the way and other things. And, you know, you have kids, you have mortgages, you have responsibilities. And so if you don't practice a game like that, like chess or tennis or poker, you start to lose your ability. It'll atrophy. And so I decided fairly recently, I want to get just as good as I once was, if not better, maybe even a lot better. So. And I figured this is a great opportunity to apply the techniques in my book. So in terms of breaking up the micro skills, the plus minus equal part, the 10,000 experiment rule, these are all things I didn't know when I was 18 and rising up through the chess world, but now I know them. So I quickly hired a Very good instructor. I also started giving lessons again for the first time in 30 years. And I started, I broke apart the micro skills and made sure I spent time at the micro skills that I thought were most important. And now probably after about a month or so I'm back to maybe my, my all time high strength and you know, now maybe I'll get stronger than that. So we'll see. But so far this experiment is going pretty well.

It's amazing all the little nuggets that are in the book about just not putting your head down and doing what you're told to do all the time because it seems like that's what a lot of people do. But oftentimes I wonder, are they as curious as me? Say to me a lot like Dave, you're, you're weirdly curious or like you're like a child and you have that too. You're just incessantly curious about things. Is that a character trait that you have that's driving a lot of this, or is that something that people can build?

I think a little bit of both. I think you're right. People don't get better if they don't have curiosity. But usually if you, and then another question is, how do you find something that you love enough to be curious about? Like if I, if I had to work in, I don't know, marine biology, there's nothing wrong with studying animals that live in the sea, but, but I'm not interested in that at all. So I would not be curious about anything. If I, if that was my job, I would not be curious about anything. And the person who was would quickly skip past me even if we started at the same level. But when you, when you love something, you figure, well, what if I try this? What if I try this? What if, what if I market like this, what if I give a talk at a tech conference about a coffee company? What will the reaction be? So you start, or what if I decide to put MCT oil in the coffee? What will happen? What will my blood look like a month later? So you start to, you feel eager to learn things and you, and yes, curiosity is critical because without curiosity you won't be able to construct good experiments. An experiment is something that has little downside, enormous upside, and is pretty fast to do. And I'm doing experiments all the time in every area that I'm interested in. And again, I'll use, I'll use comedy as an example. Where I was, I had two problems in the very beginning. One is every comedian in the world when they first start, gets occasionally heckled. So I need to learn how to deal with that. And then also comedians need to learn how to have a good punchline, and that will get people to viscerally laugh, people who are strangers to them. So here's what I did. I did a small experiment. Instead of waiting for the next appearance on a stage, I went into the subway and every subway stop, I went from subway car to subway car and would do standup in front of a by definition hostile audience in New York City. And I had to, I only had a few seconds to make them laugh. So I had to be really tight on the punchlines I was doing. And so this was an experiment for me. And you know, most experiments, yeah, it was. I went on there with a friend of mine who had a video camera and I said, okay, I can't do this. I don't, I'm. I'm too scared. And then I said, why don't you just turn on the video camera? And then as soon as he turned on the video camera, I started going at it. And you know, I don't want. The experiment didn't necessarily work. It wasn't like, oh my gosh, this is the greatest thing ever. I'm making all these people laugh. It was, it was as I expected it would be. But I got through the experiment. I learned. And that's the key, is that you look whether, whether you. Sometimes it's better to fail at an experiment because you learn what not to do and you have a story. Nobody wants to hear a successful story about. Hey, I was on the, I was, I was on the subway doing comedy and then they gave me a Netflix special. People like to hear, you know, and, and it's a great story to tell. Oh, everybody laughed at me, not with me. And then I made a little video of it and tried to make it like a late night talk show. And I showed it to an agent and he laughed at it, meaning at it, not with it, and so on. So experiments are always good stories. And you know, I experiment all the time with writing, with podcasting, with business, you know, and. And again, the key is if you have little downside, an enormous upside. You keep doing these experiments because eventually you'll. Not only will you learn from each one, but eventually you'll hit the huge upside part of experimenting. And those are always pleasurable.

In the book, you talk about failure porn and you say that it's, it's not good for people to, to indulge in it. What is failure porn and how Is what you just said not failure porn?

Yeah. So failure porn is when you see all these books or blog posts, like, oh, you know, 10 years ago, I had just failed at my first business and. And, you know, I was also a drug addict and getting a divorce, and then blah, blah, blah. Now, you know, because of that experience, I'm able to be a success. And I don't really think that's true. I think failure is miserable, and it's just the worst feeling in the world. Like, I hate it. I never want to fail at anything ever again. I do not think there's an upside to failing, particularly in a big way, unless it's part of this experiment mindset where there is no. There's no. There's no word for failure in an experiment. In a well structured experiment, you would never see a scientist saying, well, I guess I'm a bad physicist. I failed at this experiment. No, it just didn't work. So they learned something. So maybe stars weren't formed by hydrogen helium. Maybe they're formed by lithium, according to this experiment. So it's not bad to be wrong. It's not bad to fail. Someone asked Thomas Edison, how does it feel to fail 10,000 times because he failed? He tried 10,000 different wires before he made a light bulb. And he said, I didn't fail 10,000 times. I just learned 10,000 ways, not how not to make a light bulb. And there really is no failure in the realm of experimentation. And it's not. And I call it failure porn because I see too many people think that a criteria now for writing their success story is to write their failure story first, and it's just not true. Like, don't. Don't try to. Don't be proud of failure just because that's, you know, that was on the way to success. A lot of people fail and then don't succeed.

You know, it. It's funny. There's a proven recipe. It's called the. The hero's journey, right? And they actually teach this in influence courses and marketing courses. And you'll see, it's almost like they're filling out a form. Some people are like, I'm going to be an influencer. And then they have their. I failed. I looked out over the chasm, I closed my eyes, I leaped. And that's how something happened. And I mean, hey, mine's, you know, I worked out a lot. I was super fat. Everything was screwed up in my health. And, you know, I had to take some action. And this is what happened. But it feels like it lets you connect with people, though. And for about two years, I'm like, I've told this story so many times that I never want to say it again. Like, I feel like, doesn't everyone already know? So I did. For a couple years, I did a bunch of talks. I used to give, you know, three, 400 talks a year before COVID where I'd be traveling around just sharing stuff that I think matters. And when I didn't tell the story in the first 10 minutes, that experiment failed. People would just not connect. It wasn't believable. But you put in the. We'll call it the failure porn elements, where, you know, it actually did kind of suck to weigh 300 pounds. And this is what it was like. And. And it lets people connect. Why is that a bad thing?

That's not a bad thing. So when you. Like you said, there's a structure to every story, the arc of the hero. And when I write about business, I say, well, you know, first the hero is reluctant. That's the first part of the arc of the hero, is that there's a hero is very reluctant, and then there's some call to action. So when. When you were £300, you were reluctant to change the diet until you had some call to action. Maybe a health scare or a business scare or you saw how people treated you. There was a call. There was maybe a significant call to action. That's what began you on your journey. But that's just one part of the story. I think a lot of people sort of think failure is like the glamorous part of the story and how they survive something. So that's what makes it porn, is that it turns this. You know, people say, oh, I read porn for the stories. Like, it's usually a pretty bad story when it focuses just on that. And it's usually a pretty bad story when it focuses just on failure. You have to have, okay, here's who I met along the way. Here's what I tried along the way, you know, and you have bigger and bigger problems until you have. You finally achieve some success and you come back to tell the story. So. So the. The hard times, you're right. It makes you feel. Appear vulnerable, and it's just part of the story. It's not. It's not part of the story to glamorize. And also, a lot of times people say, you know, they kind of. They. They accentuate it because they think it makes their story exciting. But you could just tell it and it's just part. It's the first part of the story and that's it. It's not the end of the story.

I know a guy you should have on your show. He was on recently, Scott, Barry Kaufman from, I want to say, Columbia.

Yeah, yeah, I know Scott.

You know Scott.

Well, he's been on my podcast.

He has, of course. There you go. So we like to learn from similar people. But his idea of suffering narcissism is what, is what I'm hearing you talk about where we all know about grandiose narcissism. I'm so good, therefore I deserve. And suffering narcissism is I have suffered, therefore I deserve. But the reality is I have suffered and I did something about it, and therefore I deserve. Right?

Yeah. And I.

That little nuance between failure, porn and a good story, right.

Like, and I, I, I have fallen. You know, I remember one time I went broke and I was saying, I literally was saying to myself out loud, like, I was so upset and I was like, how could this be happening to me again? I think I'm a smart guy. How could I be dead broke again? And so, but yes, what gave me, let's say, a bounce back from that or some success after that was not that I had experienced failure, was that I really studied and examined what was happening in my life and experimented with different things I can do to see what makes me happier, what makes people call me back, what makes, what makes me move the needle in terms of success in an industry that I've just changed to. So I don't, I didn't learn that from failure. I learned that I had to. The only thing you learned from failure, really is that you've got to do something different, but you don't know what it is yet because you haven't done it. So you have to experiment to learn these things, and that really becomes the stories. So, you know, for instance, you know, there was one time I did an experiment, which, which I believe we've talked about before, where I threw out all of my belongings and everything, 100% of everything. And I just lived for several years in Airbnbs. I would live from Airbnb.

I think that was our first interview. Right.

It was fascinating. Yeah. And yeah, it was, it was an interesting, for me, it was an interesting experiment because I, I don't like to own a place and I don't even like to. In New York City, it's very hard to rent a place. It's like a full time job to try and rent a place. You need so much paperwork. You need, like, you need, like, high school teacher recommendations and your SAT scores practically, like, it's very difficult to renovate. And I figured I was going through something in my life. I didn't want to deal with all that, so I figured, why don't I just live in Airbnb? And I didn't want to put things in storage. I couldn't even deal with that. So I just said to a friend of mine, take all my stuff, do whatever you want with it. I never want to see it again. I'm never going back to that apartment. The lease is ending. And then I just started living in Airbnbs. That was an experiment I did for several years and then finished it.

So are you renting or did you buy?

I'm renting right now. So I'm renting in. And I'm experimenting with living in Key Biscayne, Florida, instead of my usual New York City. And, you know, it's an experiment. And now people say, well, if you have kids, what would you do? I have five kids between me and my wife. And, you know, the kids are a little bit older, but even when my kids were younger and I was doing this Airbnb, they lived with their mom, but when they stayed with me, they would kind of research the area I was living in. And if there was a lot of good stores or restaurants, they would come and stay with me longer. And, you know, so I always had to think about, you know, where, where would they shop, where would they eat that, that sort of thing.

And you're in keeper in some ways. The key is pretty much 90 New Yorkers anyway, though, right? Isn't it?

No, it's like 60% South American.

Oh, is it really? Some parts of Florida are heavily New York and some aren't, but my Florida geography is kind of limited to Fort Lauderdale because I used to work out there.

Yeah, no, it's Hispanic. And by the way, socializing is very hard for me. That's part of my experimenting as I fit into a different culture here.

Okay, so you're pushing your boundaries with experiments all the time, which is. It's amusing, at least for me. It is just always saying, I wonder what will happen if. And I'll try that. Okay, getting back to your book, there's a lot of wisdom in here. And maybe my favorite part of it was chapter 11, which you call frame control.

Yes.

What is frame control?

So at most of the time. So basically, it's an idea of persuasion that in a high stakes situation, let's say you're negotiating for your salary with a boss. Let's say you're doing stand up comedy, so it's you and a crowd of strangers. Let's say you're having a problem in a relationship. In some high stakes situations, it's not like you're trying to manipulate anyone or even persuade someone. But in those situations, at any given point, one person has the frame and the other person doesn't. So. And that decides who is basically in control of that situation. And most of the time that doesn't mean anything because like you and I, we don't have bad intentions towards each other, so we're allowed to share the frame. But let's say you're asking your boss for a raise. What? Your boss probably has the frame in the beginning and it's your job to sort of get the frame. So. So he feels almost obligated to give you the raise or something. And so that chapter is about all the different ways to kind of take control of the frame. When you're doing comedy, for instance, or any kind of public speaking, sometimes you could feel the audience start to drift. They're losing interest. You're starting to lose the frame. And the audience is an X ray machine. They can see that the speaker or the comedian is losing the frame. So they start talking louder because now the audience as a single body is, is in control of the frame and then it's all over for the speaker or the comedian or the teacher or whatever. So being aware of these techniques and frame control is very helpful in a lot of areas of life. And, you know, there's all sorts of techniques I give in that chapter about when to realize that you're, that you're not in the frame, that you don't have the frame, or if you're not in the frame, how to get it back. You know, like if you're asking your boss for a raise. One simple technique is what I call the advice technique. So let's say, Dave, you're my boss and I want $1,000 raise. I'll go in there and say, listen, you know, I'm not, you know, I've been working really hard. I'm a programmer working for you, let's say. And you know, I've been working double the hours because of these layoffs. And I think, but, but, but, but you're like the master of negotiating. Just give me advice, like pretend you're not my boss. Pretend you're a friend. Just give me advice. I want to ask for a raise. How much should I ask for and how should I ask you for it. I'm legitimately asking you for advice. So that's what I would say to a boss. And I've used this technique 25 years ago with a boss and you know, they, that now you're giving them status so they feel a little flustered. Oh, I've got all this status all of a sudden. And so they have a cognitive bias now to give you good advice. And, and then later they'll have a cognitive bias to not reject their own advice. So their odds are stacked against them on rejecting you for the raise. So that's like a frame control technique. Another one is to point out what someone is doing. Like, let's say, let's say I don't like to vote, okay? And I didn't vote in this last election. Let's say I told people I wasn't going to vote. Someone might say, well, you know, this election is the most important election ever. And if you're not voting, that's a vote for racism and fascism. And then you can say, listen, are we talking about racism or are we talking about how voting is one vote out of 150 million is going to change the election. Like, what are we actually talking about here? And so kind of just labeling that they're trying to move to a false equivalence is an important frame control technique. I'm not going to argue about voting. That was just an example. But you know those.

We talked about that the first time I was on your show. We talked about voting. Yeah, totally. Yes, that's right. You're a, you're an anti voter, right?

Yeah, but I'm not anti. So here's an experiment I did. So I wrote about not voting and everybody debated me and they said, well, you're not, you don't have the right to a voice if you don't vote, which is not true.

Voting is a false statement, right?

Voting is a constitutional right, but it's certainly. Taxes are an obligation. It's not a right, but voting is a right, not an obligation. And so the question is, why is everyone saying I don't have a voice? So on November 4, the day after the election, I went to FEC.gov, which is the website for the Federal Elections Commission, and I filed, I filled out all the paperwork and so now I'm officially a candidate for president in 2024, because, okay, I didn't vote, but now I'm officially running according to the US Government, I'm officially running for president, and maybe now I'm allowed to have a voice. To, you know, to all the people who said, I didn't have one like that.

And everybody, by the way, subversive and.

Hilarious, by the way, everybody should run for president and stay.

I love your views on your platform. That is truly awesome.

Yeah. And there's always things to do to experiment and to push and to move the needle like, like if business. You know, I had an idea during this lockdown. What if, you know, we're always wearing pajamas now because we never going into work. Well, pajamas almost by definition are the most comfortable clothes you can wear. You wear them to sleep. So what if I designed a line of clothes that was outerwear for pajamas or pajamas for outerwear. And you know, so you can wear them outside. But they have unique designs, but they're made of the same materials as pajamas. So for two or three months I wore nothing but pajamas. I wore them on planes, I wore them going to, you know, a restaurant or going to travel to somebody's house or whatever. So. And it was an experiment. I didn't make a clothing line. But, you know, that's what experiments of most experiments don't work out. They're just there for you to learn something that you're interested in. And there was no downside of me doing this other than looking a little silly sometimes, which is usually the case even when I'm not experimenting.

I love that just sense of relentless curiosity. It's a, it's a hallmark of creating cool stuff some of the time anyway. I don't think outerwear pajamas would have been on that list.

Well, it was even more than that. I was thinking of. I did, I was wearing copper infused pajamas. So I found fabric that was all that was made out of copper because copper is antibacterial. Yeah. So I figured maybe this will be a healthy thing.

Okay, that makes some sense. Now. Your book is full of knowledge. I mean, it's dense, it's very readable, but it's got a lot of wisdom in it. One of the other things that stood out was chapter 23. Towards the end, you say what to tell your kids, and you had a list of things to tell your kids. What are some of the top. Like, what are your top three things from that list that just stand out? Things that you think are most important for parents to tell their kids.

You know, I think it's important that kids not. And this is not specifically on the list, but don't follow the script. So your parents are going to give you a script of how you should live your life because they care about you and they think they know best. Your professors are going to give you a script. Your boss is going to give you a script. Your parents are going to. Your friends and peers and colleagues are going to give you scripts. People you read about, you're going to get scripts from them about how one should live life. And the important thing is you can live whatever life you want. You don't have to follow these scripts. Many people have been miserable trying to please their parents, teachers, friends, bosses, particularly when they try all at the same time. I was miserable doing that. And if you decide you're really just interested in sports and you don't want to be an investment banker anymore, then you could start using the techniques in the book to figure out, well, what does it mean that you're interested in sports and you're 48 years old, you're not going to be in an NFL star, but maybe there's something else you can do. And I kind of outline, well, here's how you explore the space of the possibility, space of, of how you're interested in sports. And here's how you could, you know, not follow script and be an accountant all your life or whatever it is you're sick of doing. So that's the important thing. And, you know, there's this idea too, of reach for the stars, but keep your feet on the ground, do what you love, pay the bills, and those two things are important, but nothing else is important.

Love that advice. James, your new book is. It's really. It's a fascinating read, I got to say. I get so sent books every week, like a stack of them, more than I could read. You probably are in a similar situation.

Yes.

And like you, I've done this show. We'll hit a thousand episodes soon. I've done it because it's the best way to learn, right? I get to talk to incredibly smart, cool people. And some books I skim and some books I read. Yours is definitely a reader. It's called Skip the Line. You can tell there's a lot of knowledge, a lot of study, and the relentless curiosity that, that James has drives him to take note of things that you probably don't take note of in your life. And that means when he takes note of them, eventually if they end up into a book, it's because it was a filtering process. That's a very long kind of a lifelong thing. So read Skip the Line. You can pick it up wherever you like to buy books, Amazon, wherever you like to go. Skip the Line. It's pretty easy to remember that. And, yeah, this is a book that it'll make you think for sure. And if you're trying to figure out what you want to do in the world and you're just getting going, this is going to be a strong book for you. And if you're just tired of what you're doing and you're dealing with all the coronavirus whatevers, there's some wisdom here. And it's from a very unusual life lived in a way that no one else has. And I can say that with assuredness. So, Reid, skip the line. James. Thanks, brother, for being on the show. I look forward to hanging out whenever all this travel garbage gets sorted out.

Me too, Dave. And thanks so much for having me on the show.

If you liked today's episode, you know what to do. Well, here's what to do. Go to Amazon, pick up, skip the line, and then pick up, fastest way, if you haven't already. And that way everyone who buys either book will see the other one, because Amazon's algorithms really aren't that smart, at least for that. And leave a review. Because if you would tip someone who makes coffee for you, what would you not leave a review for? An author? We actually really look at those, because that's our experiment. How did we do so? I appreciate your reviews and so does James. Have a beautiful day.