"USE THESE SECRETS Everyday If You Want To Be HAPPY, HEALTHY & WEALTHY!" | James Altucher

Find people who are your level, who are rising up, who are equally passionate as you, who can challenge you, and you exchange ideas and you learn from them.

Dude, I am eager to jump into your new book. You know, it's not often that I haven't that a new book causes me to ponder and think like a lot. And as you're going through the book and doing the little experiments and stuff like that, I found myself wandering all over the place, which I guess is part of the process. But one of the things I love most about it specifically is you blow up, explode, devastate. This 10,000 hour rule thing, which I've lived my life by for the last 40 years. So tell us why you had to do that.

Yeah, you know, every time, first off, in life we switch passions, we switch careers quite a bit. Everybody. I mean, it used to be the case that from college to death, you had one career, you retired and whatever. But that's kind of like an old story. Everybody knows it's an old story right now. You know, I get emails from people in their 20s saying, hey, I'm 27, I don't know what I should do with my life. My parents want me to do this, but I want to do this. Or at 47, or even at 67, I get those emails like all the time. We want to do what we love doing. We want to get good at it. And we want, and most importantly, we want to monetize it so we can keep doing it and feel good about it.

Yeah.

And, you know, but all the time we're told we can't do that. And there's a lot of reasons we're told that sometimes people don't want us to do that. Like our, you know, our parents or professors say, you can't do that, you need to get special training for that. Or you can't do that. You, you know, you won't make money or you can't do that, you can't skip the line. There's a lot of other people who have done it, you know, before you, and they're better and blah, blah, blah. And, and. But one of the reasons why we're often told we can't do something is like, oh man, have you heard about this 10,000 hour rule in Malcolm Gladwell's books? You know, it takes 10,000 hours to be good at something. And this is just total bs And I think it, it hampers a lot of people from learning things that they love. Like if you, if you love something it shouldn't, it doesn't take 10,000 hours. Maybe it takes 10,000 hours to the best in the world. But, but it doesn't take 10,000 hours to be in the top 1% in the world. It doesn't take 10, 10,000 hours to monetize something. There are many people, you know, a classic example is E.L. james. So she wrote the book 50 Shades of Gray which sold like 200 million copies. And, and she made four movies. And she didn't, she clearly did not spend 10,000 hours writing, I think, and I don't even want to make fun of her writing because there's a lot of good writers and there's a lot of bad writers. But she, I will tell you what she did do is she is the best selling author ever, pretty much. And certainly, you know, she's probably a billionaire from her books at this point. And so, so I'm sure she's like, yeah, call me a bad writer, I don't, I don't care. And you know, so, so, so what are, what is it then? There's, there's, how do you learn something from scratch that you love? And then so, and then the other lane that you have to go down is how do you monetize it? So there's learning skills and, and I'll, I'll describe what I mean by, you know, learning skills because it's, it's not the 10,000 hours of delivered practice. There's many other techniques that are far more successful and faster. And there's also learning the field, learning the field, the industry better than anybody else. So this way you could take those skills that you have that you, that you've learned very quickly and monetize them very quickly. And I don't know of any other book that covers both, but both skills and field are needed to be successful and to be happy and to be free and to find a community and to achieve mastery at something. And you know, there's so, there's so many examples. Like, you know, you look at, you look at the Wright brothers. Okay, I'm going to take a classic example from the past. You look at the Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur Wright. They ran a bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio. And they were competing against, and they had no money and they were competing against, you know, Samuel Langley, who was being funded by the US government to the tune of about $2 million, which is probably $50 million in today's money.

Yeah.

And of course they beat out the guy. Like they, they figured it out. They skipped the line. They completely skipped the line. They didn't need the money. They didn't need Samuel Langley's experience as, you know, some kind of engineer. They just ran a bicycle shop. And so that's an example of somebody who. Of two people who skip the line in skills and then were able to monetize and, and, you know, achieve success. Thomas Edison is a classic example. You know, there's many examples from history, but even, even you're probably an example. I'm an example. Many people are like, I've switched careers five or six times. I've been gone from rich to broke to rich to broke because I just can't seem to hold on to money after I make it. And, and I have to switch interests and careers and get good at it and figure out how to make money at it. And so I finally just took all these experiences and, and wrote a book about it and all these stories that I've heard from my podcast and research and combine them all in this book. And it's got about 20 techniques or so of how do you learn skills quickly and then how do you monetize them quickly?

Yeah. Yeah, I love that. Yeah. That's what I want, though. I want to hear, right, like I said, I've been digesting this book now for probably the last week. And you're right. There are so many examples that you give. So when I say you obliterate the 10,000 hour rule, you're not saying, hey, look, I have a new concept. You can skip the line and don't worry about the 10,000 hour rule. You're like, oh, no, here's an example. Here's. Here's an example. Here's an example. Here's an example. Here's an example. Here's an example. Here's an example over and over and over again, which just does nothing but inspire the fact that, yes, you can skip the line if you take the time to do so. And one of the primary things that I think that you kept coming back to over and over again, it's one of the reasons I love the book so much is because of this essence of fear and the approach to fear that you've personally used. It's very similar to what I personally used to talk a little bit about, fear and how that's holding people back is as it relates to them skipping the line.

Well, you know, there's so many. There's so many aspects of fear. Like, there's the fear that, oh, my gosh, my colleagues, my professors, my teachers, my parents, they all say, I can't skip the line. I can't do this. I can't quit my job as an accountant. I've got to wait till I've saved up enough money and then I can finally do what I really want to do, which is to be, you know, have a food truck and, and make, you know, sushi ritos.

Burritos with sushi in them. That's my dream. But everyone says I can't do it. And so there's that kind of fear. There's also the fear like of the unknown. Like in order to really, the fastest way to skip the line in any industry is to have something unique to say. If you say like, let's say again, writing is a good kind of domain to, as an example. But if you're going to write the same thing everyone else is writing, then why are you writing? You have to, you have to be like, before I hit publish on anything I write, I have, I do a double check. Am I afraid of what people will think of me if I write this? And if the answer is yes, I hit publish. If the answer is no, I think about why am I writing something that I'm not afraid of what people will think of me? Yeah, because otherwise someone else has written it. Probably someone. If I'm not really afraid of what people are going to, how people are going to react to this writing, what's the point? I have to say something new and something interesting and it can't just be new and boring. It's got to be new. And you know, I have to challenge some conception whether, whether it's through a fictional story or nonfiction or an opinion or whatever. And you know, there's also the fear like, okay, what if I try to do something and I'm not good at it? What if I, you know, like for, for a while or not for a while, but for like six or seven years and I'm still doing this. I, I got really obsessed with doing stand up comedy and I wanted to get good at it. And so I did, I did an experiment and one of the things I talk about in the book is what I call the 10, 000 experiment rule. But it's more like a hundred experiment rule. They just like the sound of the 10,000 experiment rule had a 10 exit, right? Yeah, 100 exit.

And.

You know, I wanted to get good at dealing with a hostile crowd and I wanted to tighten up my one liners. Like basically the time it takes between the time I make a joke and the time time I start a joke and the time people laugh. And so if I just wait for going on stage. I won't have time to really get better at this. I'll need 10,000 hours. So I did an experiment. I went on a New York City subway, and every stop I went on a different car. And I just did stand up on the subway. And you can't find a more hostile audience than a new subway audience during rush hour. And also you have to be very quick because they're going in and out and there's new people and they don't like you. And that was an experiment of doing stand up. I didn't prepare any material and I just did stand up right there on the subway. And so the quality. And so what happened was, is that a. I was incredibly scared. Like, in fact, I was with someone who was videotaping me. And I told this person, forget it, there's no way I'm doing this. And then I thought about for a few seconds, I said, just turn on the camera and let's see what happens. And when she turned on the camera, I started doing my standup. And some subway cars hated me, some liked me, some laughed, some cried. And, you know, and it was scary. But what, but this is what an experiment is, is that A, it should be cheap because you may need to do a lot of experiments. B, it should be easy to set up. There should be very little downside, if any downside, and there should be enormous upside. So the upside in this case was I would get better at dealing with a hostile audience and I would get better at, you know, telling one liner jokes. The downside is some random stranger laughs at me. It was certainly easy to set up. And, and not only that, the downside wasn't even what I just said. The downside was I got a story out of it because I'm telling you a story and it's like weird and everything. And not only that, it was fun. I started thinking, huh, this is kind of interesting. It's almost like the monologue of a weird late night talk show that takes place in a subway. So I did another session where I found a musical guest. It was a guy just playing garbage cans like drums outside the subway. And I got a friend of mine who had just written a book and he was like my guest for the talk show. And so I videotaped the whole like mini talk show and pitched it to an agent. And what was the downside to that? He rejected it. But the upside, you know, the upside could have been I had, could have had a massive talk show. But the real downside Is again, more story. I had a video and I learned about talk shows and I also interviewed my friend about his book and I turned that into a podcast. So it was. Yeah, it was fun. And. And those are experience. Thomas Edison famously experimented with 10,000 different wires before he made a light bulb. And a reporter asked him, how does it feel to fail 10,000 times? And Thomas Edison said, sir, I did not fail 10,000 times. I learned 10,000 ways not to make a light bulb. And of course, his upside was he created General Electric, one of the companies ever.

Not too shabby. Not too shabby at all. Yeah, I love it, dude, because, you know, it's funny. Growing up, high school, dropout, ged, adhd, end up homeless. I was told my entire life, my entire life that I was destined for absolute failure because I didn't have the education, I didn't have the parental. I didn't have the financial resources. I was given a list of all the things that I didn't have, except for the one thing that I did have, and that was the authentic self that you talk a lot about, which I love so much. One of the things that I love that I took away from the book, especially the earlier chapters, is as you're trying to overcome fear, there's this essence of you're giving yourself permission to do what you refer to over and over again as these little experiments, which you give examples of. And as I was listening to it and then later reading it and highlighting it, because I think I mentioned before we went on air that I got the audio and the ebook because I was like, crap. I need to highlight that.

I need to highlight that.

When I did that, it took the pressure off. Like, it. I wasn't worried about being failing at something or being a failure at something. It was more along the lines of, hey, no, it's just an experiment. It takes so much pressure off of it. I love that.

Yeah. And you can view anything as an experiment. Like.

You just have to follow. I don't want to call them rules, but make sure it's easy to set up, it's quick to do.

And it's cheap because you all could only do if. If you don't have those three things. And there also has to be huge upside. If you don't have those things, then. And you have to be able to learn. You have to have a theory that you're testing and. And if you don't have those things, then it won't work out. But if you have those things, you keep experimenting and. And everything could Be an experiment. A new job could be an experiment. Or if, let's say I'm interested in sports, but I'm also interested in finance, we'll have us starting a newsletter that's about interesting financial stories in sports. Like how do you value a baseball stadium? Why did the weekend in the super bowl halftime not take any pay and actually use $7 million of his own money to, to produce the show? So this guy I know during the pandemic, he, before that he was a bond trader at church. J.P. morgan. And he still was a bond trader. And he started, but he loves sports. And everybody said to him, well, you know, you're not an athlete, you're in your 40s. What are you going to do in sports? So he just for the fun of it, started a newsletter about sports and finance. And within, you know, he started this about eight months ago. Within eight months he has 27,000 subscribers. And he quit his job at JP Morgan because he's making enough money on ads and other things and he's doing now what he loves. And it started out as just an experiment. The upside for him was huge.

Yeah, I wouldn't we look at, When I go back and look at my life, you know, I'm, I was, you know, like I mentioned before, I wasn't supposed to succeed. I wasn't supposed to own multiple businesses or have hundreds of team members. None of that stuff. And if I asked, it caused me to reflect and look back and see all the little mini, what I refer to as the many miracles along the way. Not because it's not one giant miracle, it's like this little one. And at the beginning of each of those there was an experiment or a testing or just trying. I'm just going to try and see what happens. And you know, so when it started breaking down, the 10,000 hour rule versus the skip the line approach, I was like, I can totally see that. I can totally see that. I can see it in my own life. I can see it in the people that I've been trying to help. And there was one element that kept coming up in the book that I loved as well. There's so many, but one that I really love, which is this curious creative curiosity. I think what you refer to as creative curiosity, like you don't, you're not approaching any of these major life events or hurdles with any kind of judgment. It's like, hey, I'm curious about what would happen. So much so that, I mean, you eventually did, you went around, I think it was New York City and interviewed people at 4:00am and then. Yeah, yeah, out of it, you know.

So, yeah, like, so I was a, a computer programmer at a small company called hbo. And.

My title specifically was junior analyst, programmer, something like that. And I had this idea that just like this was in the 90s, so it was when the web was first kind of bubbling up. And I had this idea just like HBO does this great original program, original TV shows that, you know, like, you know, at the time they weren't doing the Sopranos, but I think they were doing like the Larry Sanders show and other shows. And they were so great. They were the best shows on TV. And I, so I started going to the CEO's office to say, hey, you should do web shows, web original shows. And on the, on the. Even going there, I would run into people. I ran into this one woman and she said, you can't, you can't do that. Like he. And you know, you have to go through your boss and, and, and just this is how low I was on the hierarchy. Jeff Bukus, who was the CEO of HBO and later became the CEO of Time Warner, he was my bosses, bosses, bosses, bosses, bosses, bosses, bosses, boss. And, and this, this, this friend of mine stopped me. Like, you can't just go into the CEO's office. Like you have go to Bruce, your boss, and he'll go to his boss and you'll go up the chain. And I knew that would not work because everybody along the way would say, you can't do that. Let's just calm down a little bit. So I went into what could be the downside. Was he going to fire me for, for pitching him an idea. So I went to Jeff Bukus's office and I pitched him my idea. And he said, great, do it. And that's it. Like, he look at me. And I went back to my boss and, and told this idea and he's like, oh, no, you can't do that. And I'm like, well, no, Jeff Bu has told me the CEO told me to do it. And he's like, oh, okay. And he got. So I did it and it was like, you know, it made the news. I did it for like three years. I'd interviewed. It was called 3am it was a web show. But then they actually also gave me money to shoot it as a pilot. And, you know, which is the upside of these experiments. I did it for three years. I interviewed thousands of prostitutes, drug dealers, homeless people, whatever, at three in the morning in New York City. And I mean, it changed my life. And what was the harm in just doing an experiment of pitching this idea to the CEO? There was. It cost me nothing. It was easy to do, and there was enormous upside. And I learned, like, an incredible amount about making content, being an entertainer, being an interviewer, making websites. I mean, I ended up starting a company making very creative websites for entertainment companies. And so there was just enormous upside in that little experiment. And it was so much fun. And. And that's how I switched careers from being a programmer to being in entertainment, to being an entrepreneur, because I started a company around that and, you know, it led me on a different path and I skipped the line. Like, suddenly I was doing a show and I was a computer programmer, and not even really a very good one. And all my friends who were computer programmers were like, what the hell did that guy just do?

That's supposed to take 20 plus years and then 20 more years of training.

Yeah, well, they're like, you know, people go to Hollywood and spend like decades trying to rise up, to be, you know, to have a show, and you just, like, did it. And then there was one time I wanted to start a hedge fund. I had never done anything in the finance industry, and my investing experience up to that point was not so good. In fact, I lost a lot of money. So I needed to learn the skills first. I didn't have the skills, so I used what I realized now were the techniques in this book that I just published, Skip the Line. I used the techniques to learn the skills, and there's quite a few techniques to learn, even something like finance and investing super fast, so you could be in the top 1%. But then I had to learn the field. How do you raise money for this? What's a hedge fund? How do you. How do hedge funds raise money? How do they. What's the most successful hedge funds and what are their best practices? So I learned that too. And there's a lot of techniques in the book for learning the field. And with, you know, of course, there's always somebody who will tell you you can't do that. So I had quite a few of those people. And then a year or two later, I was running not, you know, the biggest hedge fund was maybe like, I raised about 50 or 60 million, but I was making a living from it. And I did that for a few years until I started an Internet business in the finance space because of all the connections I made through the hedge fund. And, you know, one thing kind of leads to another, and that was a successful. There was a lot of experiments along the way there and it worked out well. But, but I've, I've switched career quite a few times and I'm always scared when I.

These aren't, and these aren't small career shifts. These are massive career shifts. Yeah, I went from total opposite, like career fields.

Yeah. Completely and even. I mean, and you know, the, the hedge fund stuff led to. I was always interested in, in writing. I'd been writing every day since I was in graduate school. I got thrown out of graduate school because I was writing instead of studying and whatever. I stopped going to classes. I was just writing all the time. But then because I was doing the hedge fund stuff, I was able to get a book deal. And then once I had written a few books, people trusted me to write about whatever I wanted to. So I stopped writing about finance. I started writing more personal stories like the Stuff and Skip the Line. And I started doing a podcast. And, and since I started doing a podcast, I had opportunities to do TV shows or radio shows or whatever. And I've made books out of transcripts of my podcast. That's not skipped the line, but it's other books. I've written 25 books altogether. And it's just, you know, that's another thing, writing. People think, oh, it takes, you know, 20 years to, or five years to write the great American novel. And you got to get an MFA at, you know, you have to study writing. You don't have to do any of those things. Writing is another great way to skip the line.

Yeah.

Here's another experiment I did. I didn't know if this was possible, so an earlier book I wrote called Choose Yourself did very well. Sold over a million copies and someone, not me, but someone else, wanted to do a documentary about the principles in it. So they followed me around for a few months and they made an eight series documentary called Sorry, an eight episode docu series called Choose Yourself and. But they didn't know what to do with it. And I said I had an idea and I don't know if this will work. I don't know if you can do this, but, but let's just upload it to Amazon the way we can. The way one can self publish a book. You just upload it to Amazon. Let's just upload a TV series to Amazon. And so now if you search my name on Amazon or Amazon prime and you'll see, in addition to my books, you'll see this TV series.

That's cool.

The Choose Yourself TV series. You can't tell. There's no Way to tell that. I simply just uploaded a TV series. It looks like an Amazon prime series. So as far as anyone knows, this is a real. I mean, it is a real series actually. And.

Yeah, don't be so short.

Yeah, yeah, no, exactly, you're right. That's the problem is that there's a lot of stigmas when you do stuff like this. Like, oh, it's not real. Like Amazon prime didn't choose him. That's the whole point of the book. Choose yourself. And. And it did very well. And it's got reviews. And. And then I decided to do another experiment. This was during the pandemic and obviously most movie theaters, almost 99% of movie theaters were closed. But I found one chain of movie theaters that was, that were open. And so I said, hey, can I. I'll combine two episodes of this eight episode series and I'll have. Choose yourself the movie. Can I put it in your movie chain? And then I'm going to write about it so it'll be publicity for you. And. And he did it. And it was because there were no movies coming out. It was in the top 10 box office for the country. So I've not only did I make a TV series on Amazon, an Amazon Prime TV series, but I also made one of the top box office movies of, you know, like a July weekend last year. And you know, how many people get to say they had a top 10 movie? But that was just an experiment. And it worked.

I loved it. I loved it. You know, I was really surprised, you know, in this book that you got into sex. You got into a lot of sex there, man.

I did I forget.

Break down purpose.

Did I make it up? Was that fiction? Fifty Shades of Gray. Oh, I did. Did I write about an experiment? I did both 50 shades of gray. But anyway, go on.

Yeah, yeah, we have to break down the concept purpose sex, because that was it. It made me.

Oh, yes.

And made me ponder all at the same time. So we got to break down purpose sex.

Yeah, so. So I told that story earlier about the guy who was trading bonds at JP Morgan, but he loves sports. So when he had some free time during the pandemic, he basically had sex with those two purposes in his life, sports and finance. And he said, what if I make a newsletter about sports and combining sex with those two concepts? And the little purpose baby that came out of that was a newsletter that was so successful he completely changed careers and now he just is. He's just the happiest guy in the world. He's Doing what he, he, he loves. And that happens all the time. Like Scott Adams, the guy who wrote, who makes the cartoon. Dilbert's the most syndicated cartoon like on the planet right now, I believe. And he, he even told me he was like, I was pretty good at drawing, but not that great. I was pretty good at understanding, you know, the corporations, but not really that great. I had a pretty good sense of humor, but not that great. But the, the intersection of all those things put him at the top of the world of that intersection, which is the cartoon Dilbert. And so, you know, I have another friend.

Who, he's a stand up comedian and I want to give him all credit. Like, he's a decent stand up comedian, but he's only 27, so he's very young, but he performs anywhere he wants. And why? Because he's also not a great rapper, but a pretty good rapper.

So part of this, I love the story. Sorry, go ahead.

But part of his act is he'll go to the audience and he'll say, give me five random words. And they'll shout out five random words and he will say, okay, dj, give me a beat. And he gets a beat and he starts rapping the most insanely intelligent, creative rap, incorporating all five words and connecting the dots between them. And a lot of people say, oh, that must be fake. He must have planted people in the audience. So I had him on my podcast and we made him do it like we gave him five random words. It was like volcanoes on Mars and you know, Malaysia and Brexit and my podcast and boom. Seconds later he starts rapping like this incredibly intelligent, like, well thought out rap. And so, and it's hilarious. So now he could perform. He, he skipped the line. In comedy, you're supposed to be, you know, do it for 20 years and you start out open mics and then, and then all these bad clubs and then you can be an MC every now and then on and on there's a huge line and, and he just skipped the line. He could perform anywhere he wants now. And not only that, he can perform not only in comedy clubs, but in, you know, music halls. And even somehow it's related to magic, perform in magic clubs. So it's, he's done a great job. And that's, that's how you build a career. And again, it's not just the skills because maybe a lot of people have that skill, maybe people are even better than him, but it's also understanding the field. Like how you get booked on a comedy club. How do You. You know, for me, I had to understand the career of even, like with the web shows and TV shows, I had to understand the brand of HBO enough. I had to understand how to pitch something. So. So I have all these chapters on how to build skills really quickly, like super quickly. And. But I also have all these chapters on persuasion and I have another chapter on how do you decide what ideas are better than others when you want to make a career? I have a chapter called the Spoken Wheel Approach. How do you identify good ideas? And so on. And I have a section on idea calculus, which is all the different ways you could manipulate ideas to come up with even more ideas. And it's been really pleasurable because this is the book I wish I had read when I was younger.

It's so good too. It really is. It's such a good book and it's such a good book for a lot of different ways. It's not just you get practical principles. It's not that you get fun and interesting stories that kind of illustrate the principles. There is. I found myself with various AHAs through the thing, which is why I moved from audiobook to a digital copy so I could actually highlight and make notes and kind of keep that stuff going, which I thought was awesome. One of the principles that you discuss and talk about, I never heard it kind of spun this way is this principle of plus minus equals, plus minus equals, breakdown, plus minus equals.

Well, and this is really great because I'm, you know, so. So in the past few months, I've been actually using a lot of these techniques and in particular, plus minus equals. And I even learned some things about this technique in the past few months. But.

You know, so in the past. So a long time ago when I was a kid, I got very good at chess. So I was New Jersey's junior chess champion. I was a chess master, but I only studied. I studied from the ages of 17 to 18 and from 28 to 29. So the last time I studied chess was in like 1997 or 1998. And when you stop studying something like let's say you play golf or. And you don't study or you don't practice for 23 years, you're going to get not so good at it again. So I'm. No, I was no longer any good at chess, but I was. So I wanted to use the ski. I wanted to specifically use the skip line techniques to not only get back to, you know, chess mastery, get back to as good as I was, but even get better. And one of the techniques I've been focusing on, among others, is plus, minus, equals. And it's working really well. So plus means find a coach or a mentor. Could be real, could be virtual. And they teach you new things and they give you feedback and you practice with them. Equals is find people who are your level, who are rising up, who are equally passionate as you, who can challenge you, and you exchange ideas and you learn from them. And so you see this in artistic movements and literary movements, even see this in the computer movement. I mean, Bill. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak and all these other people, they were kids almost, you know, at the homebrew computer club, kind of growing up in the industry together. So those are your equals, and they're important. And then the minus is not as negative as it sounds. It's actually maybe the most valuable part of this is you find people to teach. So back in the early 90s, I gave chess lessons to some people. Actually the professor who threw me out of graduate school giving him chess lessons. I ended up being his teacher. And so I called him up, he's like the dean of Georgia Tech right now. And I started, I said, hey, do you want chess lessons again? So now I'm giving chess lessons once or twice a week to him and his son. And another guy who's of a former World Series of Poker champion is playing in the chess tournament. So he reached out to me and asked for some lessons so he wouldn't, as he put it, so he wouldn't suck. So I've been giving some lessons, and it's fascinating because.

I. Einstein even said, if you can't explain something simply, then you don't really understand it. And I'm going over these basic concepts, but I'm for myself because I'm preparing the lesson and then explaining it. I'm learning these very. The basics of chess at such a deep level, it's giving me an understanding I never had before. And right now I'm back to the level. I was probably at my peak or close to it, and now my next goal is to get better than I was at my peak. And I'm using other techniques in the book, but that's been a very valuable one for me and the guy who told me that technique. And by the way, throughout the book, I don't. I don't hog my techniques. It's like I learned this one from this guy, this one from this guy, this one from this guy. But Frank Shamrock was the. For 10 years, he was the mixed martial arts Champion of the world. And, and mixed martial arts is what the name says. There's a lot of martial arts. So he had to learn very quickly new become black belts at every martial art. And so he used this plus minus equals technique. He's the one who told me about the technique. And by the way, I do not want to take credit for it because he will kill me if I do that.

So I had to give credit, power to do so.

Yes. He could like do a mental mind blast and tai chi me to death. Like that's how powerful he is.

Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Dude. Again the skip the line was, it was such an inspiration, it was such a thought provoking and it was fun. Like most learning that we get nowadays doesn't come across as fun. This was fun. Like the learning, the like reading.

Thank you so much.

Like it was all fun, fun, fun. Learning is easy learning in my mind. Right. So we do share one thing in common. You mentioned. Well, we actually share a lot in common. But this one thing specifically stuck out. This, this need or desire to have ultimate self awareness or to constantly growing in your self awareness. I used to say that the three most important questions in life were who am I, Why am I here? And what do I do about it? But you have your own three questions of life that I thought were, were awesome. Break down the three questions of life or self awareness that you have.

Yeah, you know, who, who are you? Why are you? Why now? And, and it's very close to what you just said. And again I, it's like you, you pick up things in life that resonate with you. And I heard those, I heard, I heard those questions.

Asked of a comedian. Like in order to be a good comedian, you have to be able to answer those three questions and not just be like everyone else. So, so I see a lot of comedians and the average mediocre, it's a bad comedian, but still good enough to get on stage. They'll say like, man, you know, dating sucks, here's why. Or Tinder sucks, here's why. Or don't buses suck, here's why. And, and they're not really saying anything new. So, you know, who are you? Like you mentioned in the beginning of this thing, you know what really? You know, you, you were a high school dropout, but you've started multiple businesses. So okay, there's something, there's something unique in that, in, in what you have to say. And then what, why are you? Well, why that I, I don't know the answers to those but you'd have to say, well, well, what? What is it about the world and me and my relationship to the world that made it so? Not only am I a high school dropout, but also started all these businesses and there's other unique things. And then why now? Like, why now do you do this podcast? Well, we're in a situation in the world where everything's very volatile. Everything in the past doesn't count anymore. It doesn't matter where you're from. It's how you survived this pandemic, how you made the most of your time, or didn't, by the way. Maybe you could say, oh, I didn't do anything, but okay, that's okay too. It's, it's how you interpret these. There's no, there's no bad answers. Yeah, it's like, it's, it's. You build up your unique voice by constantly wondering these questions. So, so, like, you know, who am I? Like, I am someone who is passionately interested and curious about lots of different things, but also I'm kind of a screw up. Like, I've gone broke so many times and I'm really bad at following up with people and sometimes people think I'm weird and if I write stuff that, that people hate and I don't know, and then, you know, why, why am I. Well, I'd have to even. It's a, That's a hard question. Like, I never really was happy just with the status quo. And maybe, maybe it's because I'm lazy, actually, because I don't want to just work 40 years at something and, and then make, you know, a retirement and live off that in a. Yeah, retirement community. Or, you know, or, or maybe I'm a dill top. Maybe it's hard for me to be interested in the same thing for 40 years. And so I'm a jack of all trades, master of none. So, so part of this book is how I could be a master of some instead of a master of none.

And why now? It's again, everybody is, you know, 55 million people were just laid off from their jobs in the past year. And so why now? Well, everybody's pursuing their interests or at least asking, what can I do now? Where can I live? I can do anything. Or can I? Does it take 10,000 hours maybe? I can't. Everyone says I can't. So why now? Well, now is really an important time where the world's shaking up a bit. And I think these, these questions help you really figure out, you know, what, what you Uniquely bring into something. So like for instance, you could then apply it to chess, for instance, or writing or comedy. Like, like, you know, who am I? Well, I just said I'm so.

Or what?

You know what? Why am I? I'm someone who, you know, I kind of, it's not that I like shortcuts, but I don't want to spend 10,000 hours learning something. So let's say I'm going to learn Scrabble and I want to beat everybody I know at Scrabble. Well, I'm not going to memorize every seven letter word, so I can get lots of points in Scrabble, but I will memorize the 104 legal two letter words. So when I have a, when I'm stuck with a Q, I'll know qi is a legal word in Scrabble. Xi, Xu, K, a za are all legal words in Scrabble. If you just know that you're going to win, you're going to basically be all your friends. Scrabble. And, and so, so knowing, knowing how to learn things and how to, and what things are important, what things aren't, is, is what I like to do so I can get good as quickly as possible at something.

Yeah, I mean, I think. Who, who am I? I'm a guide to the people who have given up. Why am I? Because I believe that the greatest purpose in life you can have is serving the person you used to be. And the why now is because the vast majority of the world is lost and they have no idea who they are. So therefore they're having a hard time finding their purpose.

Yeah, I agree. Like, look, you say you were a high school dropout. High school is just one big babysitting racket. Like.

The truth is you can only really remember things that, that you're passionate about. And the re. And the reason for that is not the passion itself, but passion allows you.

Everybody has a limited amount of energy. And so you can use the energy you have to convince yourself like, oh, I gotta learn European history now, but I hate that. Or you could use the energy you have to say, I love European history. I'm going to remember and analyze these things. So if you don't love something, you could take a European history class and you will not remember a single thing about it unless you love it. And you can only love so many things at a time. And so passion is really important for energy. So I, I was talking to somebody the other day, actually one of the founders of a major Internet company and he told me he majored in European history. That's why I bring it up. And I said, okay, he, here's a question for you. You major in European history. Tell me when Charlemagne was born. And Charlemagne was arguably the most important figure in European history. He was the first king to unite all of Europe, almost recreating, like, the Roman Empire and so on. So he's a very important king. And I've asked this question in conferences, in comedy clubs of this one individual. Nobody ever gives me a correct answer within 500 years. Within five.

I can't give you an answer in 10,000 years.

Yeah. And for even me, like, I asked the question all the time. Probably about once a year, I have to go back to Google and look it up because I forget and I can't answer within 500 years. So it's the answer 754. Most people say 1200, 1300. And. Or I'll ask a question like, who was the 15th president of the United States? So most people know Lincoln was the 16th president. So this is the president, arguably one of the most important presidents ever. The Civil War happened on the eve of his presidency. No one could tell me who the 15th President, United States is. The ruler of the world, the president, United States. Which also underlines how useless it is to have a legacy. This guy was the president, and no one could even remember him. And so you just have to do what you love and, and focus on that. And that's the best education is, is learning the things you love. Then you're going to really, not only will you learn the things you love, but you'll learn how to learn and you learn how to succeed doing what you love. And those are, those are the two most important things.

Oh, my gosh, dude, I have loved this conversation. I could talk to you for hours upon hours and maybe need to get you back on the show so we can finish up our hours. Yeah. Because we have some fun. Where can everybody get the book? Because I obviously, I've got two copies myself. So where can everybody else get it?

You get it at any bookstore. You get on Amazon. You get it on Barnes and noble.com or bn.com you get it anywhere you can find books, books in general. You get it on Audible. There's an audio book that I read and it's fun. I, I, I like, I, I don't usually say this about my books. I'll tell you some of my books I do not like. I don't think we're good books. I think out of 25 books I've written A couple of good ones. Choose Yourself was one. And this one is really my favorite book that I've read, so I'm really proud of it.

Well, I. I know I'm. I'm proud of it. I enjoy reading it. It'll be.

Thank you.

Pick up two or two or three more times. Just because there's so much in there, it's hard to unpack it all at once. So there's. There's so many practical principles to help you kind of move forward and skip the line. I mean, ultimately, that's what people want to do. Why spend 85 years trying to do one thing if you could spend two years of focused energy, put your emotion behind it and make it happen? Like, Yeah, I just think that's brilliant, so. Well, dude, I've loved having you. We got to do it again.

Yeah, anytime. Just let me know you need guests for a week. You're running low on guests, just give me a call, and I will hop on the.

Well, I don't have to get along with guests to have you back on that. That's. That's one thing we don't have to do. For sure.

Excellent. Well, thanks a lot for having me on. I really appreciate it. You're a good interviewer. This was a lot of fun, and I will talk to you soon.

Awesome. Sounds good. See you, buddy.

And we're done. Did you have fun?

Excellent. Yeah, yeah, it was great. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it again.

Yeah, man. We definitely have to do it again. I love your energy, and I love. I mean, obviously, you. You're a thinker. Like, you think of different techniques and strategies in a whole different way that most people think. So I think that that's a very beneficial trait, for sure. It's probably your. It's one of your superpowers.

Yeah, maybe. Yeah, I. I. For better or for worse, it's gotten me into trouble sometimes.

Well, that's. That's what. That's what experiments are, right?

Yeah, that's true. That's true. All right, man. Well, thanks so much. I appreciate it. And, you know, I'll. Let me know when it comes out, and I'll tweet it everywhere, and I'll put it on my email list and stuff like that.

Rock on. That'd be awesome. See you, James.

All right. Talk to you later. Bye.

Bye. You got to make sure you pick up your copy of Skip the Line. But in the meantime, if you love that interview, I know you're gonna love this one right here. Check it out. Nobody has an excuse. Steven. Steven, no one has an excuse. If they do, they're. They're just. They're not seeing that they can actually get there. For some reason, they're stuck. And we've all been there. But you have to find a reason to get to the next level.