Derek Sivers Shares His Deep Thought and Profound Insights

Derek Sivers, it is a true pleasure, a thrill. And I know when you had first emailed me, I had written back to you that this would literally be like your favorite musician emailing you out of the blue.

Did you say that? I forgot of that. It's funny because, like, I reached out to you first, didn't I? Because somebody. The animator. No, not an animator, but the guy that edited your video. Is that. Was that Tommy Lee? Was that his name?

Tommy Lee? Yeah. Amazing.

Yeah. And so he. I was working with Tommy Lee or talking with Tommy Lee about him doing a video for me, and he said, well, let me show you some of my past work. And he showed me a Land Geek video, or more. I think more than one. I was like, these are great. Who is this guy? Land Geek. I love this. So then, yeah, I reached out to you thinking I was like, cold emailing you to say, hey, my name's Derek. I'm just. I'm a fan of what you're doing. I think it's really cool. I love what you're doing. And then you surprised the hell out of me with your reply saying, oh, my God, Derek Sivers, I know you. It's like, that's such a nice feeling.

Yeah. Yeah. So, all right. This is not going to be a podcast with me just kissing up the entire time, listeners. And so I want to start with a quick question because you seem to be unapologetically clear on your purpose and how you invest your time. How did that type of clarity come about and what, if any, difficulties arose out of it for you?

I think it helped. Let me see. It actually changed partway through. That's why I think I have two different answers. First, I had a clarity when I was really, like, monomaniacal, laser focused, driven on just one thing. So for many years. Well, let me figure out how many. For 15 years, all I wanted was to be a successful musician. So I was, like, notoriously focused among my friends. Like, I didn't hang out. I didn't go to parties. I didn't read, watch movies or even read books. All I did was every minute of every day was just completely focused on becoming a great and successful musician. And I did that for 15 years. Friends would tease me for the fact that I didn't, you know, I had never seen their favorite movie or read their favorite book. And I wouldn't come to the parties with them. I wouldn't hang out. I would just focus on that. And then I started CD Baby, which was really a complete reversal from changing the focus to being entirely on myself. For 15 years now, I was entirely focused on others. So for 10 years of CD baby, every waking hour, seven days a week, 7am to midnight, all I did was like, serve my clients with CD Baby. I didn't want to do anything else. I didn't travel. I didn't do anything but work. So then when I sold CD Baby, I was up in the air for a while. But then I think my new. I think the kind of focus you're talking about or this. How did you put it? Like, a strong sense. Yeah, it's like how I invest my.

Time clear, like, these are my boundaries. I want to be the best musician in the world. I'm not getting distracted with all of you and your lives. I want to build CD Baby, and I'm not getting distracted with anything else. I'm working just with a singular focus. And that's got to be a very difficult thing, I would think, because you said, like, my friends hazed me. I can imagine other relationships, you know, just people trying to get in and you're just like, no, no.

It just comes from. Okay, it's not difficult. It comes from a strong sense of yes. Oh, so by the way, so sorry, I was going to describe the third transition. So kind of post CD Baby, when I've just been writing, I've been much more of a generalist than I used to be. Well, I guess I didn't used to be at all. I am now being a bit of a generalist, whereas before I was laser focused. But I do have this sense of, like, I know that I've contributed to the world and made it a better place. And that's a cool thing to be able to say to yourself, to know, like, concretely, I have improved the world. And so now when somebody's upset at me for refusing a dinner invitation or whatever, I can just wholeheartedly shrug it off because I'm like, all right, so one person's upset that I'm not coming to dinner. I don't care. Like, I know that I've done net positive things for the world, so I really don't care if somebody's upset. That's a really, really nice feeling. And I think that's where it comes from. It's like this wholehearted knowing that I've made the world a better place. But lastly, the stuff you're talking about before that, the laser focus, I think anything to whether you want to lose weight or get rich or whatever it may be, you have to have a huge yes, that's pulling you forward to help you say no to everything else. It's when you don't have a huge yes that you end up saying these little tiny yeses to everyone else.

Yeah, I love that. And, you know, having that, that clarity of purpose, that huge why that this is what I want to do. And to be so clear about it, I mean, where did that come from? Did you have any mentors in your life or any examples? You said, well, this person can do it like this, I can do it like this. Or was it something more organic? And you just looking back, you're like, well, this is just what I want to do. This is how I want to live. I'm being useful to other people and good enough. Sorry. Partiers in the rock.

Yeah, I think, I mean, an early role model for me was Prince, which is funny because when he was my role model, he was kind of famously straight edged, right? Like, if you would read into the details of how he worked, he was like an absolute workaholic. He would stay in the studio for like 38 hours at a time and they'd have to bring in three different engineers in 12 hour shifts to work alongside him because he just wouldn't quit. No drugs, no drinking, would kick people out of his band if they were caught with drugs or drinking. And I loved that super focus because it felt to me like the way that, imagine if you were 16 or something and your coach is telling you that you could be an Olympic gold medal winner in your athletic field if you focus and you know to be an Olympic gold medal winner is something that a million people want, but only one in a million is going to get right. So you know that you need to have that one in a million focus and drive and discipline to be that one that wins the gold. Right? So to like, that's how I was feeling as a musician. Like I wanted to be that one in a million and I was that driven and that focused on achieving it. Not just fame, you know, you can quickly get famous by shooting the president.

If it's not, if it's not fame, it's not money, it's not women. What, what was that, that intrinsic motivation to be the best?

That was it. It was the intrinsic motivation to be the best. It was, it was the intrinsic motivation.

To be the best. There was nothing else there.

Because you want to. I mean, sometimes it's. I don't know if you've ever made music. I mean, I know you write, you wrote your book, you write your blog, you create this. You have a You have, like, a vision inside of how something could be. Maybe you have, like, the start of an idea for a song in your head, and you think, ooh, if I do this, right, this could be great. Like, I've got the tiniest seed of a melody, and I can kind of hear the groove in my head, man, if I. If I, like, turn this into reality, right? It's going to be amazing. And. And so there just song per song. There's this intrinsic drive to, like, make this song idea what it could be, and then make the recording as good as it can be, and then make your performance on that recording as good as it can be. You know, to sing your best or perform your best or whatever it may be. And then there's the bigger picture of, like, I think with the right focus, I can become a truly great songwriter or musician or performer, entertainer, whatever your niche may be. And if you're fascinated and driven by that goal, then, yeah, it's its own intrinsic motivation, the desire to be great at something. It's also like creating beauty. It's putting something great into the world and then seeing if you can do it. It's like a personal challenge. Can I do it? Can I become one of the world's greatest performers? Writers, authors, right.

But, you know, as someone who has. Who's written a book, and I'm writing my second book, at some point I have to lock the manuscript, and I have to just live with the fact that this is just the best I did at this time. And maybe I'll think of something a year from now that would really improve it because of some, you know, experience that I hadn't have a chance to experience yet. Do you ever have that difficult moment of saying, well, it's time to ship?

No, I think I'm always so eager to be done with it. I think by the time I've, like, spent some time on it, I'm like, oh, please, just. Just get this done. I just want to move on to the next thing now. I want to move ahead. I mean, that said, that's how I internally perceive it. I'm sure somebody else from the outside would say, dude, you spent four years on one little book that's only 118 pages. I think you have a hard time letting go, but I think that's not what I was doing. It just took that long to explore every angle. Sorry, I'm referring to my newest book, how to Live. It just took me that long.

How to Live.

It took me that long to explore all the angles. I Wanted to explore and edit it down to the succinctness that I wanted. It just took me four years of work to do it. But that wasn't like a. That wasn't a fear of letting go or a reluctance to let go. I think I was super eager the whole time to let go. I really wanted it to be done.

Yeah. Now anything you want. Was that 2014, 2011, the first time I came out?

Yeah. And I just have a new. Actually I haven't even announced this yet, that there's a. A new 10th anniversary improved edition that's going to be out any day now.

Okay, great. I mean, yeah, fantastic. So that was the first book of yours that I read, but more recently, like the last few years, I started with, I think it was your music and your people. And then hell yeah or no, it's worth doing. And then, I mean, my favorite of all favorites and my most recommended book is how to Live. But before we get to how to live in hell yeah or no, there's one of my favorite chapters. And when anybody asks me about their life or what they should do or any kind of advice, I always say Derek Sivers wrote the most amazing two page chapter on this called Happy, Smart and Useful. And it's a theme I discuss so often with, with young people especially who think in sort of a more myopic way. Can you just talk a little bit about that chapter?

Yeah, I'd love to. I have to keep reminding myself of this all the time. Sometimes that's the reason to write something publicly is so that the public can help echo it back to you, to help you remind you of something that matters to you. So I very often find myself in a position of asking what's worth doing. You know, I have three different options on my plate or 10 different options or two options and which one should I do? So for me, I realized it comes down to three things. What would make me most happy, what would be smart, and what would be most useful to others. And ideally, smart. Yes, smart is having a smart strategy. Yeah. Is there another word for that? Effective? Yeah, smart. Let's say that that's like a synonymous with effective because let's do an example of somebody not being smart. And this is an easy one to pick at. But if somebody wants to help eliminate poverty, and so they are working as a lawyer in Wall Street, Manhattan, and they quit their job as a lawyer because they feel that it's not helping poverty. So they quit and they move to Kenya where they're helping to thatch roofs on houses, okay. That might make them feel better. And technically they are doing something good. So they're, they're happy and they're being useful to others, but they're not being smart. Because the most effective thing they could have done if they really wanted to help eliminate poverty is to keep their job on Wall street, keep making as much money as they can, and then donate that money to people that are already in Kenya and just use money as the way instead of getting on a plane and grabbing a hammer and helping. So that's an example of being happy and useful, but not smart. So I have to think about that with myself too. Like how I'm achieving something. Like, if I want to help people achieve tech independence is like a recent mission of mine. There are dumb ways to do it and smart ways to do it. So am I, am I, am I doing this in a smart way? Am I setting out to. Am I pursuing this goal in a smart way? So, yeah, happy is pretty obvious. Doing something that makes you just feel warm and fuzzy happy. Because you could do something smart and useful that doesn't make you happy. We all know examples of that. And you can do something that makes you happy and is smart, but it's not useful to others. So those are those people that just spend all their time on SEO and crap like that, that they're really just doing nothing of any use to anybody else. But hey, maybe it's making them money and it's making them happy, but it's not useful to others. To me, those, those ideas ultimately feel empty. So, yeah, happy, smart, and useful. Trying to find the intersection of all three of those.

Yeah. And then, you know, I'd like to. The, the idea in the book of the person who's smart and useful is like that real, that tiger parent that tells your kid, right. Go to the Ivy League school, get that, you know, crazy job on Wall street, or become a doctor, a lawyer. But that's not what they really want to do to make them happy. And it saps, yeah. The joy out of life for them.

And then I think it's also like, it's like rusted the engine. Like the, the perfect engine would be like a perpetual motion machine, right. That has no friction, that should just go. Could go forever. I find that when people do things that are useful and smart but don't make them happy, that it's like a lot of friction in the engine. Like every day is hard for them. They're doing things smart, they're being useful, but the engine is grinding, you know, It's. There's a lot of friction there. So that's why it's important. It's just objectively important. It's not being foofy, you know, individualistic, hedonistic, to focus on your happiness. It's actually just good strategy because whatever makes you happy will make you into a very effective engine of productivity.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And when I'm doing a project and I'm feeling like, oh, this isn't making me happy, I immediately outsource it or delegate.

Nice.

Unless it's something worth really going deeper with. Like, well, I just have to embrace the suck on this.

Right. Because there's shallow happy.

Yeah, exactly. Sorry to interrupt. Yeah, right, you're right. Yeah.

Shallow happy can be like, this makes me happy right now. Deep happy could be like, all right, this makes me unhappy now, but happy long term. Right. So the obvious example is it would make me happy to eat a bowl of ice cream at every meal, but it would make me long term unhappy to be carrying around that ice cream in my belly. And it would make me less happy short term to just have a bowl of sprouts for lunch. But it might make me deeper happy long term to have had that discipline and better health.

Exactly, exactly. So you write, the difference between success and failure can be as simple as keeping in touch. Now, why do you say that? Now? You write about your system, but can you expand on that?

Yeah. It would help to know that I'm coming from the bias of being in the music business for 15 years, where it's a gig economy. Jobs happen because of somebody you know. It's like, because the friend of a friend will get you a gig. And now you're writing songs for, you know, today's biggest pop stars that can come because of somebody you knew that knew somebody that's working in the recording studio where that pop star is recording. So different fields are different, but the field I was in was all about who you know. And I think a lot of other industries have this as well. It's over and over and over and over and over again. I would find that the best opportunities came from not only somebody I knew, but somebody I had just recently talked with. So, say, I hadn't talked with a friend of mine in three months. A guy I knew, just an acquaintance that works at a radio station or something like that. We meet up, we have a coffee, and the very next day he would say, like, oh, hey, Derek. I was talking with a friend of mine who's a booking agent, and he Was asking me, who do I know such and such. I really want you to meet him. These things would always happen just like a day or so after I had reached out and got in touch with somebody because I was at the forefront of their mind. And when they encounter somebody else, they're thinking of me because we just met yesterday. So that's when I realized the importance of not just knowing a lot of people, but keeping in touch with them so that you can stay at the forefront of their mind. So when they're out there also meeting other people, they think of you and can refer you to opportunities. So that was from a real observation in my own career that all my great opportunities came from someone I knew and more specifically, somebody I had just recently been in touch with.

Yeah. And I could argue that that really applies to every aspect of life. If you want to be successful, whether it's with family, friends, business, your profession, we're all interconnected. If you really, truly want to be smart, happy and useful. This is like the ninja tactic that no one does. I was just talking to a buddy last night. I'm like, how good are you at keeping in touch? He's like, oh, I'm terrible at it. I got terrible at it too. I'm like, derek Silvers has a system. Could you talk a little bit about the system?

Yeah. So this came, by the way, from going to conferences. I used to go to a lot of conferences and I was blown away by the fact that even when I was like a VIP running CD baby, like a hundred people would hand me their business cards or let me turn that around, I would hand out my contact information to like a hundred people, and I would only hear from like one or two of them afterwards. And to me, they had missed the whole point of the conference, which is like, you're just there to make initial connections, but everything happens in the follow up afterwards. Yeah, you're just at the conference to make a quick face to face, like, oh, hey, you're Mark. I'm Derek. Hey, nice to meet you finally. You know, shake your hand, have that like in person thing instead of just put a name in the email box. But then all the real stuff happens afterwards. Right. So my system for keeping in touch actually came from a book. Sorry, are you talking about the ABCD thing?

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So that came directly from a book I should give props words to called Guerrilla Princess with guerrilla spelled G U E R R I L L A P R by Michael Levine. And the book is outdated now because it's actually pre Internet, which is funny how that just changed everything. It's actually kind of weird to read a book about productivity, concrete tactics that was written pre Internet. But Michael Levine was a publicist in Los Angeles who he shared this, his method of the A list, B list, C list, D list. So he said the A list are the people that are the most important to your career. Make sure that you're in touch with them like every week or two in some way. He said the B list are people that are somewhat important to your career. Keep in touch with them every couple months. C list are the people that are just the rest. So make sure you keep in touch with them every, you know, maybe twice a year. And the D list, let's say those are people you've demoted a bit, but you don't want to lose touch completely. So just once a year, check in and make sure that you have their current contact info. So, yeah, I just made this into a system when I was an aspiring musician that I had my ABC list and I would just kind of go through and I would just tag. Like the last time I contacted this person, I'd reach out, get in touch, and then when they replied, I'd say, okay, 15th of November. And so I just tag it. So I knew that two weeks later, all right, it's the 30th of November, it's time to reach out to this guy again because it's been two weeks. So it's just a good system to make yourself do it because we usually don't feel like it. But if you think, ah, here we go. Shallow happy versus deep happy, right? Like immediate happiness. Yes. You'd rather just watch a movie. Long term happy. I think you'll usually be thankful long term that you reached out and kept in touch with people.

Absolutely, absolutely. And you have now re inspired me to set up this system. And in fact, I was thinking about it last night and I just texted my aunt Sherry, who I haven't talked to in like three months. I'm like, no, this takes literally a second and meant the world to her.

Just a quick update.

So it really affects every aspect of your life. Okay. Your music and people, creative and considerate fame. I hate this title. And I'll tell you, tell me, I'll tell you why. Because you're excluding all the people that really need to read this book, that art and music. It is one of, if not the best marketing books on the planet. Everyone should read this book if you are marketing. And Derek has the best spin on marketing. As being considerate. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah. Well, first, thank you for the honesty about the title. I chose that on purpose because long ago I read a book called the Inner game of Tennis that also many people in many fields have said, oh, my God, this is one of the best books on performance strategy. Even though if you've never played tennis and have no intention to, but by somebody using the example they know of tennis, you can read it metaphorically and apply it to whatever you're doing. So, yeah, I had written your music and people directly to musicians during my 10 years at CD, baby. It was directed at them. And I thought, you know, I could make this more generic for a generic audience. But no, fuck it. Like, I don't need massive fame. I've had enough. I'm going to keep this niched. I'm going to call it your music and people and smart people like Mark will have to read it metaphorically. And if somebody is unable to do that, well, I don't care. Maybe they'll leave it to people like you to share out the message to your industry, which is kind of cool. Like, you can read your music in people and then you can translate it to land geeks. Okay, so sorry, I forgot the second half of your question.

Well, yeah, I mean, you definitely answered that question about, oh, consider it.

The definition of marketing is being considered.

But it's also in the book. Like, you want to exclude a lot of people. And I think your title is doing that, which, by the way, is great marketing. And then let the people that do get it say, oh, no, this is not a book about music. This is about marketing.

Yeah. Which I love when people catch on to that. So, yeah, marketing is being considerate. I probably got to give biggest props to Seth Godin for this mindset. I used to study marketing a lot, and Seth was one of the biggest influences on me. But also there was a whole series of books called Guerrilla Marketing. J. Conrad Levinson, I think was his name.

Yeah.

And I think that was the underlying theme in all of those as well, which is like, the essence of marketing is to think of everything from the other person's point of view and make it as appealing and enticing and fun and memorable to do business with you. Like, that's what marketing is really about. It's not about spamming or advertising or any of that other crap that gets mixed in. Like, the essence of marketing is to be considerate of others. So I would just apply what I learned from years of studying marketing in general. To my work with musicians and try to show them how they can try to reach people's hearts and minds better by thinking this way.

Yeah, I love it. And one of the great lessons in your music and people is the value of being quirky. Do you have a favorite story where someone was quirky and it really made a big impact, not just on you, but on their business as well? And, you know, certainly we can talk. I mean, I'll link to. We don't even talk about it. It's been talked about ad nauseam and probably everybody knows about. When you got a CD baby receipt. Oh, yeah, the email just Google CD baby.

Yeah, CD baby confirmation, shipping email.

Yeah.

Which I love, by the way. So, yeah, those of you searching for it. Yeah, it's 1999. In 10 minutes, I wrote a really quirky post order confirmation email. And what's fun is that. Yeah, that was 10 minutes of my life in 1999 and still including, like, yesterday, somebody said. Somebody sent me an email saying, dude, I just bought this overpriced toothbrush from this, like, boutique toothbrush company. And you got to see the shipping confirmation they sent me. And it was a totally, like, a spin off on my email. It was just. It's. Some people think, like, you should be upset somebody's stealing your idea, but I am so flattered. It's 2022, and some people in a toothbrush company somewhere are still making a version of my email that I wrote in 1999. That is such a great feeling. That is so badass. So, no, I love that. Yeah. The email has been spread widely, but even better, it's been imitated. In fact, I live in New Zealand now, and I just bought some. What do you call them, compression socks. They're supposed to be good for circulation when you're exercising. I'd never tried them before, so, like, all right, let me try some compression socks. And I bought some. Bought these socks from a company called lxr, I think. And so I get socks, and then I get the confirmation email that says, like, your socks have been picked from a pack and put onto a satin pillow. And I said, wait a minute, is this. Is this. Are they sending me this because they recognize my name? And so I had to reply back saying, hi, my name is Derek Sivers. You just sent me this email. Can I ask you, like, is this the same email you send to everybody? And she said, yeah. I said, oh, my God, thank you. So it's like. It was my. It was my email from 1999 coming back at me from a sock company in New Zealand that had, like, just made a version of my email. I'm sorry. So, no, you wanted an example of being. The benefits of being quirky, I can tell you from. Do a more concrete example of real world, not just online, is when I used to go to all these musician conferences, or, let's say, music business conferences, and meet a lot of people. A lot of people are just trying to be normal. They're just like, okay, hi. They shake your hand, they dress well, and they try to have good manners, and they look you in the eye and they say, well, it was really nice to meet you. And they. They're very professional. And then every now and then, you meet some that just, like, come out, like, smelling bad, looking all over the lake. Hey, motherfucker, what's going on? You look like the kind of dude that likes to party, man. You know what I'm gonna give to you? And like. Like, just that kind of outrageous behavior is obviously way more memorable. And so I'd go to a conference, like, south by Southwest. I'd meet a thousand people in a week, and a week later, the only ones that I remembered were the extreme characters. And. Same thing. Even when I would get calls on the phone, you know, everybody else is acting professional. And then you have that one guy that's like, hey, motherfucker, what's going on? It's you from Texas. You rem. That's right. You remember me? Fucking spit on the ground next to you. That's right. You remember me? Yeah.

You remember a part of you.

And those people, of course, stand out. So I think when all of us are trying to be professional and thinking this is what we need to do to be successful, it helps to remember that. Actually, no. In fact, it's counterintuitive. But the ones that stand out with outrageous behavior often have a competitive advantage over those that are trying to be normal.

Yeah. Yeah. I love it. I love it. Okay, so my favorite book of all the books you've written is how to Live, which is my favorite title because it really just gets down to the essence of. First of all, I love stoicism. And really, the stoics were trying to teach people how to live, and somehow it got lost, and now it's coming back. And so tell us about how did you write this book and what was your process?

Sure. Okay. How to Live is an homage to a book called Sum S U M by David Eagleman. And I highly recommend everybody read it. It's my single favorite book of all Time if I had to pick just one. It's a tiny little book you can read in two hours or less. And what I love about Sum is its format. Its subtitle is 40 Tales from the Afterlives. And it is 40 Tiny Little Short stories, like little fiction stories, all answering the same question, what happens when you die? And so one chapter will say, when you die, you're suddenly in this big giant mansion and it's alone, and you walk around for days and da, da, da. The next chapter will say, when you die, you find out that in your last life you chose to be a man, but in fact, you can choose to be any animal you want, any creature you want. So you decide to be a horse. And it tells this great story about that and. But what I just thought was breathtaking was the format to have the essence of the book be one question, what happens when you die? And then for each chapter to answer the question completely differently and deliberately conflicting with the other chapters, right? So you're like, wait a second. Chapter three just said, when you die, this happens. Now, chapter four is saying, when you die, something completely different happens. So which is it? How cool to have all of those in one book where it's like, we're used to each book having one point of view, right? Like, anybody who listens to this podcast, you've probably seen a lot of books who say, you know, the way to live your life is to have atomic habits. No, the way to live your life is to not give a fuck. No, the way to live your life is to, you know, do everything in four hours a week, whatever it may be. Each book generally disagrees with the rest and says, no, no, no, no, this is the way. And so I loved the book Some by David Eagleman so much, and I read it twice in two years. And shortly after reading it the second time, I just had that, like, lightning bolt of inspiration. I went, oh, my God, I need to write a book called how to Live in that same format where every chapter is going to disagree with all the other chapters. So it's like the. The question of the book is, how should you live? And chapter one will say, you should live for the future. Everything is for the future. Serve the future. Chapter two will say, you should live completely for the present. Everything is, you know, there is only now. There's no such thing. You know, the past is your memory. The future is just your imagination. All we really have is now. Then the third chapter would say, here's how to live. Live entirely for others. Fourth chapter Would say live entirely for yourself. And so, yeah, with this kind of lightning bolt of inspiration, I spent the next four years of pretty much full time work, sometimes like way more than full time, just making that original idea happen. And I think I did it. So I spent two years putting all of my ideas into this like 1300 pages of a rough draft and then having to categorize them into like how many chapters I thought this fell into trying to merge these ideas, saying, okay, well this is all generally around the subject of getting rich. Or this is all generally around the subject of getting famous, for example, is one chapter. And then I had a big verbose lengthy thing that I wouldn't want anybody to read. So then I spent two more years editing it down to this tiny little 118 page thing that I just adore it.

Yeah. And if, if you want to see the essence of something in the writing, it is so pithy. I really, I mean, maybe I'll do another podcast which is reading a chapter. So for people to, to, to, to understand how, how much wisdom is packed into this little book. Brilliant. And I don't know how you did it. And my next question is like, which chapters? Vote for you. Which were the hardest to write? And did anything not make the cut? I mean, these are 27 conflicting answers and one weird conclusion, which I love the conclusion.

I had two, actually. It's funny, I just last week looked at, I remember that I had cut two chapters and so, yeah, nobody's ever asked this. The two chapters that I cut was one just about leverage. It was about working through others. Saying, the way to live is to. You're not going to make a dent in the universe by doing everything yourself. In fact, do it yourself is the opposite of how you should live. You should work entirely through others to leverage the labor of others. And I wrote a whole chapter on that, but there wasn't quite enough to say about that. So I took its best ideas and I put them into other chapters. So they applied then. Oh, then I had a chapter that's just on imagination saying, we are like your unique human capability in this world. We are the imagining creatures. Beavers make dams, you know, cheetahs run fast. Whatever it may be humans imagine. We can do counterfactuals and thought experiments and imagine things that don't exist. This is our unique capability in the world. Therefore, this is what you should spend your life doing to be uniquely human. You should spend your time imagining. But then I realized a lot of my best points in that could fit into other chapters instead. So, yeah, those are the two chapters that didn't make the cut. So up until the last minute, yeah, it's 27 now. I think there was a rough draft of a cover that accidentally got spread that said something like 29 conflicting answers. So, yeah, at the last minute, I chopped it down to 27. And even then, when I thought I was all done, I gave the book to some friends. And one of them pointed out that the chapter on mastery, like, here's how to live. Like, pick something difficult and spend your whole life mastering it. She pointed out that that chapter was almost twice as long as the others. And it felt like I was giving an unfair bias to that one chapter, as if, like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, all these other chapters. But yeah, this is the real one. And I went, oh, yeah, I definitely don't want that. So I looked again. I went, oh, God, yeah, I am kind of putting a little more personal bias into that chapter. So I looked at. Looked carefully at that, and I chopped that one down to half in length. So now it's the same length as the others. Because I really wanted the reader to. To feel that every answer was equally true so that you'd get caught up in each one. So that. Because that's how it was with writing it. That every. Every time I'm working on a chapter saying, here's how to live. Live for the future. Like, move to Korea. Move. Where everything is about innovation, where all the new stuff is happening. Live only for the future. Whatever chapter I was writing, I would get so completely convinced that this is, in fact the answer. I know that there are other chapters in this book, but in fact, this is the one that really has the truth in life. And then the week later, I'd be working on the next chapter and I felt the same about the next chapter. Like, oh, you know what? No, never mind that last one. This. This is truly the answer. You know, live, Follow the pain. The answer to life or the way to live is to follow pain.

Yeah, I'm just, you know, just for the listeners. Just so you guys know how. How wise this book is, how to live. I'm just gonna go through the chapters because they're so good. Be independent. Commit. Fill your senses. Do nothing. Think super long term. Intertwine with the world. Make memories. Master something. So this master something was the one that.

It was too long ago. I indulged in too much. Yeah.

Let randomness rule. Pursue pain. Do whatever you want. Now. Be a famous pioneer. Chase the future. Value only what has endured. Learn, follow the great book. Laugh at life. Prepare for the worst. Live for others. Get rich, Reinvent yourself regularly. Love, which I want to talk about in a second. Create, don't die. Make a million mistakes. Make, change, balance everything, and then a great conclusion. And I do not want to spoil it for the reader and talk about the conclusion. And I. And I'd like to just know if you made that weird conclusion, knowing in advance that it was going to be subject to people's interpretation.

Oh, yeah. Um. When I told you I had that flash of inspiration to write this book, I did not know how it was going to end. And for the first year or two, I was kind of flummoxed about God, how am I going to end this? I know I want to present these different views, but I think the book, some by David Eagleman, also doesn't. And he just presents the last chapter on here's what happens when you die, and then the book's over.

Yeah, but I thought, God, I should.

Do something to wrap it up. But then I thought, you know what? No. That's what all these fucking business books do is they try to wrap everything up with a conclusion. It's actually my least favorite chapter of every nonfiction book is the last chapter that's trying to wrap up everything. And you're just looking at it going, I know, I know you're not telling me anything new. You're just. You're just doing this because you feel some sense of like. And therefore, that's why I say, once again, I just want to reiterate, I hate the last chapter of every nonfiction book. So this isn't a business book. I was like, this is actually more like art than business. And the best Bob Dylan lyrics, the best films are the ones that leave you going, huh? I think they meant this, but it could mean this. And that ambiguity is so beautiful. So, yeah, about two years in, I went, ah, I know how I'm going to end this. And yeah, for those listeners, it's. The book ends with just two images. So after 27 chapters of words on how to live, the grand conclusion is just two pages long with one image per page. And those two images leave you with my ambiguous conclusion to wrapping up the book.

Yeah, I. I love it. Okay, let's talk about love. Now, that is that every. Every. I mean, honestly. And I'm not sustaining to kiss up the whole book, every sentence is really powerful, but for some reason, every sentence of the love chapter really resonated with me. But I couldn't. I tried to just pick one Sentence and just have you expand on it. It's not necessarily my favorite sentence, but I just love this idea you write. Work is love in action. What do you mean by that?

Okay. The essence of the love chapter is defining love as connecting. And I think I got that idea from Steve Pavlina, who wrote a really interesting book called Personal Development for Smart People. I think that's where I got the idea of, like, love is connection. Like, it's when you love somebody, you're connecting in every definition of the word. You're, like, getting into their mind, you're getting to understand them, you're giving them your full attention. And so it's the same thing with, say, a place you could. You could go get on a plane and go to Paris and take a picture of the Eiffel Tower and find a McDonald's and get on a plane and go back home, but. Or you could go to a place and like, really connect with it. It's like a different way of traveling to. To stay at somebody's house, to stay at a local's house, to try to, like, see everyday life, or to kind of live, you know, get away from the tourist circles, to try to really connect to the place, to watch films from there, to read books from there, and like, to really connect with a place, to try to understand what it is to be somebody growing up in this place. So then with your work, I think that, yeah, you can just kind of, like, you can push papers from one side of the desk to the other, you can answer emails and whatever, and you could just be annoyed. Or you could really connect with your work, which ideally should be about serving others, doing things that are valuable for other people, that they. Sorry, I guess I'm talking about business work right now. But, you know, doing things that are valuable to other people so that they reward you with this social, neutral thing we have called money, that it's like this neutral transfer of value. So they can say that, you know, that was valuable to me. Thank you. Here's money in return for what you've done. And giving your work your full attention is a way of, like, loving the world in a way. You know, like, if your work is really serving others and you. You give it your full attention. Like, I'm talking about, like, you really connect with what you're doing, then. Yeah, then doing your work is like love in action.

I love it. I love it. Okay, you brought up travel, and I know you've lived all over the world and you've immersed. I am actually planning on Going around the world and channeling my inner Derek Sivers. Selfishly. What's your best tips for seeing the world and immersing.

Ooh. Ah.

And then we're gonna get back to the get rich chapter.

Okay. No, this is fun. I was actually just before, like, half an hour before you and I hit record on this, I was talking with an Indonesian friend of mine living in Mexico City about this exact subject.

I was just in Bali, by the way, and it's so magical.

Cool.

Magic.

Yeah. Okay, so my best advice when traveling, Everybody has different goals. A lot of people travel for different reasons. Some just want to, like, go to somewhere warm and veg out. Some want to, you know, party with strangers. But my advice for traveling, like me is to everywhere you go first, stay a long time. And you need to find a long time. Well, see, this is like my nomadic thing. Ideally, like, six months. Like, I think of everywhere I go as, like, moving there. I don't really think of it as travel. I think of it. It's like, this is my new home. So that's my biggest advice is that even if you're only there for a week, try to imagine that this is your new home now. This is it. This is where you live. Try to live like a local would like, instead of staying at the Four Seasons Hotel or some posh thing, try to live like most people there live and see if you can do, like, a homestay with somebody and have them bring you around on their daily routines to their market and show you their groceries and explain to you the mindset. And every culture has its. Or every place has its own ways. You know, that's what I love about going to vastly different places is it's like a living philosophy. You know, you can read philosophy books by Nietzsche versus Heidegger versus, you know, Immanuel Kant or whatever, and you can just read it and furrow your brow at it and go, hmm. But to me, to, like, go to Rio de Janeiro or Singapore or Mecca, it's like, these are living philosophies. Like, people in these places have, like, a top to bottom philosophy on life that they are embodying and living every day, and it works for them. And the philosophy of Singapore may not or probably would not work in Chicago, and the philosophy of Chicago would not work in Calcutta, but these places work. And that's what's so cool, is that we grow up in a certain place where we have a sense of what's right and what's wrong. I grew up mostly in Chicago, and I Felt that this is the way things are done, and you have peanut butter sandwiches and you do this, and you drive this kind of car and you live this kind of life, and this is how you live and. Or even just like, say, the, like the American individualism values. This very. Like, me, me, me. Entrepreneur. Yeah.

I said to the guy in Bali, I said, hey, do you want to switch places? He's like, no, I couldn't. I could never leave my family.

Yes. Yeah. Even the family thing, like when I got to Singapore and really made it my home. So, yeah, to those listeners, I moved to Singapore in 2010, and I intended to stay forever. In fact, I became a permanent resident, which is just like one step below citizenship. My son was born there. I made him a permanent resident, too. I thought that he was going to not only live there, but every male Singaporean has to do two years in the military at age 18. So I thought my son was going to serve in the Singapore army for two years in the year 2030. And I was committed to it long term, thinking like, this is it. This is my home. This is where my son is going to grow up. Singaporean. But then after two years, yeah, my wife just hated it for some reason, and we decided to move to New Zealand. So then New Zealand became like, all right, looks like we're going to live here instead. And I've been here for years and became a citizen and fully get the New Zealand way of life. Oh, but sorry, but let me go back to Singapore. While I was in Singapore, there were a lot of local values that were really clashing with my American, particularly the California American values, where I really thought, like, no, no, no, you're doing it wrong. Singaporeans, here, let me show you how to live. And they finally, you know, my Singaporean friends, I spent a lot of time mostly just with, like, I had a lot of really, really dear friends in Singapore that I spent a lot of time with and. And traveled with and really got to know well. And they really slowly explained to me the mindset, and it slowly finally made sense. It's, you know, like, I imagine it would be really hard for somebody who was born, like, raised very Catholic to really understand Buddhism or somebody who's raised completely Buddhist to really understand Islam or something like that. It would be really hard to switch religions. Right? And that's what it feels like, going to another culture and really getting into it like a local. It's like, okay, show me. Like, I'm just be humble. And it's little subtle things like saying, we Instead of they or you, it's like instead of saying how do you do this here instead of now? You say things like, well, how do we do things here? It's like, this is my home now, this is where I live. So sorry I took too many little side tangents there. But my main point was my single biggest travel hack to get the most out of your travel is try to live as local as possible and really try to convince yourself that you live here now, that this is your home now. And what you would do if you needed to completely assimilate into this culture. And if you do that even for one week, even if you only have one week, I think you'll come away so much of a better, more interesting experience that expands your sense of self and your self identity and your understanding of the world than if you just stayed at a nice hotel, had some nice breakfasts and saw some wow things and took lots of pictures.

I totally agree with that. And that's what I'm really most excited about is just expanding my perspective and learning more about the world, which will then help me learn more selfishly about myself. And I think there's a lot of value to that and just being super aware of like these stories we tell ourselves and I'm this or I'm that. But no, it's just the way I was conditioned or we were conditioned.

Yes, that's. It helps so much to find to realize, not just intellectually but like viscerally in your body to to understand that where you grew up was just circumstanced by the fact of where your grandparents happened to be when your parents met. And so that's where they live. And that's why you believe such and such. That's only circumstance. It's not because it's right or it's true. It was just the accident of your birth and where your parents happen to live. So it really helps to go somewhere else and really internalize and go, oh, I could have grown up here in Zanzibar, whatever, and I would have had these beliefs had I grown up here. So therefore like I could live here now and adopt these beliefs. And these are also right. And yeah, it just, it helps you put your original beliefs in perspective. And I think ultimately the reason I'm fascinated with all of this is philosophy. That it's my favorite thing in philosophy is to understand a different point of view that I had never considered. That helps me look at not just my present, but my past and maybe my future in a different way through this new lens. And I think Traveling is a great way to, to do that, to immerse yourself in another philosophy.

Yeah. I have so many follow up questions because you brought up philosophy in different lenses, but I wanted to be respectful of time.

No, don't worry. Let's go. Keep going.

Okay, okay. Okay. So. All right, well, let's just talk about then. Can you think of something recent where you were exposed to a different lens or different philosophy and the light bulb just went off for you? You're like, oh, interesting, huh? I never thought about.

Okay. While traveling or just like reading or anything?

Anything either. Anything.

Okay.

Just in your life.

Yeah. Well, just a few days ago. Oh, I see. Well, here, I'll just give you the first one that comes to mind and tell me if this is what you were asking about that just a few days ago. Maybe the reason I just gave like two Islam examples as we were talking about travel is I just finished a book called what Everyone Should Know about Islam. It was very much like a high level, like Islam for Dummies. But I learned a bunch of stuff that I didn't know. And I think it's fascinating, this idea that's like in the year 630 that the Quran was written as like the direct word of God. God told Gabriel this, or you know, through Gabriel told Muhammad this written down word for word in Arabic in this book. And that's it, that's the final message and sorry, that's not what's fascinating to me. What's fascinating is that there are many countries that follow Islamic law where it's like instead of law being something that's constructed through popular voting and lobbying and debate, it's this idea like, no, it's done. It was decided. Like what is written in the Quran is the law of this whole country. It's done. And we all just follow this. And I was thinking it gives a, a very kind of peaceful uniformity to understanding to say like, no, this one book is everything. That's it. That this explains how we live, these are our laws, this is our approach to living. This is everything is answered in this one book from the year 630. I think that's fascinating and very.

I think it's congruent too, and you actually write about it in how to live in the two chapters Follow the good. The great book, the good book and only read what has endured.

It is a combination of that, you're right. But I think it interested me politically. Now I think I understand just the tiniest bit the concept of Islamic law of a country's laws being just based on the Quran. And even the book explains, like, there are kind of four different courts of Islamic law in four different parts of the world because they've kind of adapted to local situations, but it's still essentially following the same stuff. And I think there's even something in the Quran that says something like, no mistake can be made on something where, where more than one agree or where most, where most agree, then there's no mistake or something like that. Whereas to say the, the four courts of Islamic law around the world may have. There's some other local differences, but they all agree on the core stuff. And so that's kind of cool to say, like, no, this core stuff is we're all agreeing. So I'm not, to be clear to anybody listening, like, I'm not subscribing entirely to this, but I just found it really interesting, this idea of congruency. Whereas, you know, like, right now in America, it's a very incongruent, divided culture politically. And how interesting it would be to live in a place that's just by definition, all agreed on this one book.

And I think it's fascinating. I wonder if while you're reading it, did you notice any judgments coming up? As in, oh, my, this is really a rigid way of thinking, why not be more flexible as times change and we evolve? But, wow, this is just pure wisdom. And this is how to live. Did that, did thoughts like that ever come up?

In short, no. Like, as I'm reading it, because I'm like this with everything. I mean, I try to read about cultures that I don't understand. And so I try with everything to, to really try it on. Like, I, yeah, it's like you're handing me clothes, I'm going to put them on. I'm not going to look at them and go, like, that's not what I usually wear. Just I'm. Everything I'm reading, I'm. I'm putting it on. Yeah, I'm going to wear it while I read it. I'm going to try to get into that mindset. So, no, I think I've done this so much that whether it was reading the, the book about Islam last week or, I don't know, just a couple months ago, Jordan Peterson's 12 more rules, or whatever it's called. And I think, and right now, like today I'm finishing up a book about a guide to Nietzsche. And so it's like I'm trying to understand his mindset. So with. No, I don't think I. I don't have the you're wrong reaction anymore. With everything I read, I just try to go, all right, it's working for somebody. Let me try to think about this.

Yeah. And for those of you that are listening, you're like, oh, seems like Derek Silvers is really well read. He is. And I have a link to all the books that he not only reads, but he actually writes these amazing summaries. And Derek, like, a lot of the books, if not all the books. Before I buy a book, I go to your site first. I see how you rated it. Like, oh, if it's four or lower, I can. I can skip that. But if it's, you know, five or higher, and it's interesting to me, I read your summary first. I'm like, oh, maybe I don't need to read that based on the summary. Or I want to go way deeper into this. And. And so I have, like, I always know my next book based on what you've, you know, read and rated and reviewed. And so it's just a very easy way for me to keep going with my education. So thank you for that.

Thanks.

So I was listening to this podcast. I thought, oh, my gosh, I gotta bring this up to Derek. And he says, everything that feels soulful in life is inefficient, from vacations to food. And he brings up Hinduism. He's like, Hinduism is just not standardized religion. It's like this open source religion and it's spread through birth. And so he says, standardization is the killer of soulfulness. So when you scale, you lose the magic. Think of your local coffee shop or your local burger place versus Starbucks and McDonald's. And the reason I wanted to bring that up to you is because from 2014 to 2018, while you're on sabbatical, you answered 92,354 emails from 33,776 people. Derek, this does not scale.

No, it doesn't.

How do you think about things that don't scale? Hmm.

Okay. Well, there's two. Wow. You brought up three interesting things at once. The soulful things, not scaling. I would push back on that idea a little bit to say that some of the happiest cultures in the world are very monoculture. Like Iceland, for example, has, like, virtually no crime because there's like, it's. Everybody knows each other. It's small enough that people know each other, and there's. It's quite a monoculture in Iceland. And I think it. It's made them really happy. Whereas some of the Most diverse cultures are some of the most conflicted because you have very different groups of people with an idea of what common sense is. Like. When everybody's idea of common sense disagrees, you get a lot of upset. So I wouldn't. I think standards help very different people interoperate.

Okay. So I. I think he's. He's saying this in the terms of business, not necessarily of culture. I think he was bringing up Hinduism as a religion, but not in the cultural basis. Just as far as, you know, when you standardize something, it's really easy to compete and replicate, but when it's open source and it's hard to scale you, it's very hard to compete against that.

Okay, interesting. Okay. By the way, can I ask, what source did that come from? Do you know?

That was Kunil Shah and he was talking on the Shane Parrish podcast.

Cool. Okay. So the scalability thing, to me, it comes from. First you have to know, what's your idea of enough that would you be happy to have $1 million? Would you be happy to have $10 million? Would you be happy to have a thousand true fans or 10,000 true fans? Is that enough for you? Or will you not be happy until you're the most famous human on earth with a mega hundred billion? You have to know that about yourself and be honest about that up front before you set out. You have to know why you're doing what you're doing. Because it's very different strategies to be a billionaire than to be a millionaire. So for me, I knew early on that I did not want to be a billionaire. I didn't want to be. Even as a company, I feel like, for example, I didn't want to go public. Like, when CD Baby was at its height, people were trying to convince me to go public. I was like, absolutely not. They're like, but you could make so much more money. I was like, I don't care. I don't want that life. Because. Sorry, it needs to be said sometimes as a reminder that the reason we do anything is to be happy. Right. The reason somebody listening to this wants a million dollars is to be happy. Whether it's because of what the million dollars could buy or what the story that you could tell yourself to say I'm a millionaire or to prove it to people that said you couldn't or whatever it may be, the real reason is not the digits in the bank account. The real reason is the happiness it gives you. And I'm defining happiness loosely, fulfillment, whatever you want to call it. And so along the way, there are some strategies or paths you could take that might not make as much money, but would make you happier. So you asked about my emails. Over 90% of the emails I get are just joy. There are people who say, oh, my God, I read your book, and it made a big difference to me. And it's just. It's so nice to hear that. Why would I want to, like, shut that off or outsource that?

It is overwhelming. It is 92,354 emails. You are famous. That would be like, Justin Bieber responding. That's true visually, to every single one of his fans. Okay, okay. But then by the hundred thousandth fan, at some point, he might. There's, like, a law of diminishing returns on that Joy.

Right. So I haven't quite got there yet, and.

Okay, sorry, go ahead. Yeah, so. No. So you haven't quite got there yet. Could you imagine a time where, if you get there, how would you respond?

Okay, there are two. Well, first, it depends on the kind of quality conversation you're having, too. If I can imagine if I was Justin Bieber, I wouldn't want to hear a hundred thousand times, you know, squeal, squeal, squeak, you're so hot. That would, like, you don't want to hear that too much. But if the people that you're communicating with are, like, brilliant in their field, like, oh, my God, Mark. I mean, I'm talking to you like, I'm a fan of what you're doing. How badass. That, like, were in touch because. Yeah, I reached out to you because I just loved what you were doing with Land Geek, and I saw these videos and then read the book. I was like, wow, this is. This is really, really interesting. And so how cool that your email box is open to receive that message from me. And how cool that mine was open to see that for you. And how cool that we're in touch now. It's like my. What I was doing publicly. And. And hell, I always say, like, the reason I do podcasts is because of the people I meet when I do. Right. So I'll just say it now instead of later, since we're talking about it. That, like, my call to action always. For everybody listening to a podcast, it's like, please, if you've listened to this whole thing and you liked it, email me, because if you like the stuff I'm talking about, you're my kind of person. I'd like to know you. And I've gotten such joy out of the people around the world that I've met, like, especially the ones that are in strange places. I just decided on a whim to go to Helsinki, Finland, a couple years ago. Like, really, like, on a Thursday morning. I was like, I feel like going to Helsinki tonight. And so I left that night, not knowing what to do. And so then I get in at, like, Thursday night at midnight in Helsinki, and I reached into my database. I'm like, all right, who do I know in Helsinki? And there were, like, 38 people in Helsinki that had reached out to me over the years. So I emailed the 38 people. I said, I'm in Helsinki for four days. Would you like to meet up? And I met up with probably, like, 14 people from Helsinki in groups of three or one or two at a time. One of them took me to a sauna. We're sitting there naked in a sauna on the ocean. I'm like, this is so cool that this person is showing me the finished life. And this is just somebody randomly that emailed me after reading an article of mine and liked what I said. And so to me, it's like, it's so damn rewarding having this open communication with the world. But then you're wondering, I can hear, like, kind of operationally, how to.

Very soulful. Yeah, operationally, you're right.

That's right.

Because you're. Okay, let's go to the beginning of the conversation. You're super, super focused when you have a project. You're clear. And now I'm imagining, like, I don't even want to email you because, like, oh, he's working. I don't want to distract him from his work.

There are times when first I don't do my email every day. I don't have it on my. I have never had email on my phone. In fact, I've never had email, email, or a social media app ever installed on my phone, ever. So I really just use my phone for phone calls and texting friends. But. So I keep everything on my computer, and I only go to my inbox when I feel like it. Like, if I've had my head down in programming or writing for a number of hours, I'm like, I need to. Like, I need to shake it off. I need to do something else. Then I go answer all my emails. Even if it's, like, only five days sometimes. Yeah, it might take me a week to reply to an email because I was just fully engrossed in my work for six days. And on the seventh day, I felt like a break. And I'LL do a week of email. But also operationally, it helps that I've made a lot of shortcuts for myself. I built my own email system, my own email client, and I built in 36 shortcuts of my 36 most commonly used sentences. So A to Z is 26 characters. Zero to nine is another 10 characters. So I hit the backslash key and it opens up a menu of my 36 most used sentences. So usually most emails only take me a few seconds to answer. I read it, okay, it takes me maybe 10 seconds to read, 20 seconds to read, and then with four keys, I've answered it and click send. You know, and I fully, like, I did communicate with that person. It's just like, it's just like I'm a motherfucker of a typer, you know, it's like it wasn't fake. It wasn't like those companies where you say, like, you know, sorry, how do I close my account? And they send you a reply saying like, thank you for your business, you know, we appreciate all you. And you say, oh, you didn't even read my message, didn't you? You just sent me the wrong form letter. So I'm never doing that. I'm reading people's emails. But I've just learned over the years that whenever I've typed a sentence more than three or four times, I need to assign it a hotkey. So that's how I logistically am able to answer emails in like 30 seconds each. And so 30 seconds each, that's what, 120 per hour, is that right? Yeah. And so I can go through 500 emails in a few hours and enjoy it.

I think that could be your tip of the week for sure. Okay, hotkeys, Absolutely. Yeah.

You don't even have to write your own email client. I think most computers, whether Mac or Windows or Linux or whatever, everything has some kind of, like, hotkeys where you can assign a macro key to a whole sentence or phrase.

I use a text, and it saves me so much time with doing so many different types of emails. But as far as personal emails, now I'm going to start doing that because there are certain phrases I use consistently and it wouldn't sound hollow like a big company responded to you. You.

Because it's your real sentence. It's the very thing that I've said repeatedly. It's just like when I found that I've typed out a sentence multiple times over multiple days or weeks, it's like, oh, time to just give that sentence.

One key yeah, no. Okay, so let's get back to how to live, because in the get rich chapter you write, nothing destroys money faster than seeking status. And my question is, was this a hard one lesson, or were you able to avoid the status trap? And if so, how? Because let's face it, like the first half of life in your 20s and 30s, you want especially I can imagine in your circles of musicians, you want status. And that could be, you know, just signaling, like to the ladies, hey, I got it going on. Check out this car. Check out this watch, you know? Or did you have any influences that helped guide you with this?

Yeah, I actually, I would be curious to ask somebody why I never had that. In fact, talk about like a culture that I don't understand. I do not understand people who want status. I don't get it at all. Like, you just said the thing about the car and the watch. I don't get it at all.

Businesses based on just status that are billion dollar businesses, like, think about, I think he's like the wealth, like one of the wealthiest people, like top three in the world is lvmh, that just owns all these luxury brands like Louis Vuitton and Gucci. He owns all of them. Those people that's third in the world status. It's huge. You missed it.

Yeah, I mean, well, look, maybe somebody could tell me that I'm, I'm signaling status in my California style of the T shirt and ripped jeans through the like the anti. Signaling the anti mimetic. Maybe that's the case. Maybe it's a product of my times. I actually just recently read an article that was like, looking back at the 90s and its concept of selling out. And the movie Reality Bites, which was a big hit movie in the 90s, kind of focusing on. And they're saying, it's funny to watch this now 30 years later where everybody's worried about selling out. It's like. And people reflecting, going, oh yes, selling out is a thing we haven't really said since the 90s. And I was thinking, I wonder if that's because of hip hop, that hip hop made it like, put it into the, the popular culture. This idea that's like, you know, get all the money you can, get all the. Get the best stuff you can. Whereas like a lot of what, like, we'll just pick somebody like Kanye west was doing 10 years ago would have been like, absolutely, like scorned and discussed in the 90s. It just like didn't click in with like mid-90s culture of like wanting to be like, remain cool and independent and not sell out to the man. You know, make the. Make the cool choice, not the money choice, you know, so maybe I'm a product of my. Of growing up, being in those times, but maybe it comes from this thing that I said at the very beginning of the call that. That knowing that I've contributed like, net positive to the world makes me thoroughly, to my core, not give the tiniest shit what anybody on earth thinks about me, because I know that I've done my thing. So I have zero desire to signal. In fact, I think of this thing often when somebody's telling me that they're thinking of doing this thing, whether it's launching a project or traveling the world or going anywhere. I think I actually sometimes just ask them, do you still, or would you still want to do this? If you could not tell or show anybody that you've done it, if it truly remained a secret, would you still do it? Because a lot of people are just making their career choices and purchasing choices and everything, choices based on how it looks to others. And I think that's ultimately proven to be a bad motivator for decisions. It's going to leave you feeling empty or on a. On a treadmill of the hedonic treadmill. So I think you should be very aware of that. So, no, I've never understood the status thing. I don't get it. I've never felt the need for it. I don't know why. That's my guess.

When you see it happen in your personal life, does it turn you off?

Does it? Yeah, I just don't understand it. Whether it's like the. The girl posing for Instagram photos or the. The guy driving the Ferrari or whatever. I just. I just think for who, for what? And who are you trying to attract? Like. Like if what there's so many, like.

The kind of doing with this money, right?

Or just like the kind of person who's going to be attracted to a Rolex watch? Do you really want that person in your life? Is that your ideal mate is somebody who is wooed by a Rolex watch? Is that what you really want? I don't think so. I think it's some kind of shallow imitation of others. Like you don't really know who you are, so you're trying to do what others have told you you should want. I don't know. Maybe it's because I've always just been really insular and reflective. I just spend a lot of time in my diary thinking about what I really want. And I don't spend a lot of time caring what other people think.

Well, what you just said was very wise because I'm always constantly thinking while reading your books, how the hell does he come up with this stuff and then make it so pithy? And I think you might have just answered that question, which is that you think deeply while you're writing into your own private thoughts in journal. And then I can imagine, because you're so well read, you're having all these different influences come to you, and then you're like, oh, this makes a lot of sense. And I can say it in a very pithy way where, you know, someone else might take them three paragraphs.

Well, yeah, those are two different things. Wait, so the reflecting? Yeah. I spend a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of time in my journal. Hours a day, just writing, questioning myself. I'm often asking myself questions like, why? Why am I doing this? What am I really after? Is that what I really want? What have I done that in the past? Did I like that in the past? Did I find that rewarding? You know, what do I really want now? What am I lacking now? And I try to answer all these things and ask more questions and just really reflective a lot. But then, okay, the craft. Once I have an idea that feels like, ooh, this is an idea worth sharing, then you know where the craft of being so succinct comes from, I think was my 15 years as a songwriter. Because as a songwriter, you have a melody that goes, you know, da da da, da, da, da, da. It's like, okay, 1, 2, 3. Okay, seven syllables. I have seven syllables to say what I want to say in that melody line. Okay. Damn. How am I gonna. Yeah, so it's like, I've got this idea. How am I gonna. It's like every syllable counts. So I did that for 15 intense years of my life, was just spent writing over a hundred something songs.

Do you care if I ask?

Constantly crafting.

Yeah. Because I've always wanted to know this, and no one's ever answered this for me definitively, but you are the one person who could answer it for me definitively. Is it harder to write a great song, or is it harder to write a great book? And why? Ooh. I've been thinking about this for years, and I could not. I've not ever found someone who has written songs and written books that could answer the question for me definitively.

Huh. I'm gonna say book because it's. It's funny if you define great as other people love it. That's the tough thing, too, is it's like to please yourself versus please others.

Let's define great as pleasing yourself. You've pleased yourself, but then you also get that validation from the world. Like, oh, I not only just put that stuff, but, wow, it does seem to resonate with other people. So I am validated because otherwise you just write for yourself and you wouldn't ship it to the world.

It feels like it's. Having done both, it feels like much, much, much more work. To write a whole book, it feels like writing a book feels like writing like three albums worth of songs. You know, having done both, it would almost be like the comparison. It would be a more apt comparison to say, is it harder to write a great book or a great album? That's a little more. Apples. Apples.

Okay, let's go to apples. Apples, then. I will rephrase the question. Album or book?

Damn, now we're. Because to write a great album. It's funny, we don't really think in terms of albums so much anymore in this streaming age, but to write a great album, you don't just do the 12 songs that are on the album. Most of the great albums you've heard were like, you know, they recorded 40 songs and then picked the best 12 for the album.

Yeah. I love that Lil Wayne quote. It makes so much music. Some of it's even good.

Wait, what? Say that again.

Lil Wayne has this famous quote, says, I make so much music, some of it's even good.

I like that. I hadn't heard that.

Yeah.

Huh? Yeah. I'd say a great book and a great album, maybe two albums are about equal. And what's interesting is that there are crafty things that really help with both. Talk about. You said earlier in this conversation, like, there's this thing that nobody talks about. You know, this thing. Oh, there's keeping touch. You said, this thing is so important, but nobody does it. I feel the same way about the craft of writing. I've studied, like, the craft of songwriting a lot. I'm fascinated with. If you go to any bookstore and look up, oh, my God, how could I forget its name? Perricone. Jack Perricone. P E R R I C O N E. Jack Perricone's books on the craft of songwriting. Pat Pattison, P A T T I S O N has books on the craft of lyric writing. It's two different things. So Jack Perricone focuses a lot on the craft of melody writing and harmony and the structure of just the Melodic musical content. And then Pat Pattison is completely focused on just the lyrics. And there are some other. If you started those two, it's a starting point because they're the first ones that come to mind, because I know both of those guys. There are many other books on the craft of writing great songs.

Right, but that seems more complex than a book because now you've got two different layers.

No, but ultimately you're doing something that's still just three minutes. It's almost like writing a great song is like trying to write a great article, like a great blog post.

Well, maybe a great album, though. That has to be completely different. Maybe you can't use the same qualities. There's a lot of variation creatively that you might be in your head about where the book might be a little bit more linear. This is a deep philosophical question.

Yeah, well, I mean, it's. Some people say, like, hey, to be a great songwriter, you got to have something to say. Sometimes I disagree with that. Like, often, some of my favorite music, I. It's in another language. I don't even know what they're saying. I just love the music. So if they have something to say about the politics of their country, I don't care what they're saying. I just love the sound of it. But to have a book, a good book has to have something to say. But okay, so I also just finished reading two books about the craft of good story writing. Specifically, they were meant for people writing Hollywood screenplays, but damn, they have so many good insights into the craft of writing itself. So good, so inspiring, so fascinating. Because, you know, writing good fiction stories can kind of echo the story of our life and what makes a good life. And like these. These natural. We tend to unintentionally shape our lives into stories or judge our life as we would judging a story. Did the story have a good ending? Did it go somewhere? We think of ourselves as the hero in our story. So reading these books about the craft of story writing is great. So sorry. The point is, whether you're trying to write a great book or trying to write a great song or an album or trying to write a great article, I think most people don't study the craft enough and try to apply this very. What do we call it? Left brain. The kind of very uncreative structure and craft of improving your writing. People don't do it enough because they think like, oh, this idea came through me, or this is from my heart. But God, sometimes just changing one single note in a melody can make it like, make a song succeed or fail. That you change one note might make this melody fascinating, whereas not changing that note will make this melody boring. And you can't make the argument like, oh, but it's from my heart. If we're really talking about the deal, you know, fail versus succeed is the difference of one note. Well, then, craft wise, you should study the craft to make sure that you are keeping your melodies interesting or keeping your lyrics interesting or keeping your books interesting. God, when I read anything by. Neil Strauss. When I read anything by Neil Strauss, dude, I cannot say the only times Neil Strauss has put out a book in the last 10 years. Each time I did not sleep that night. I picked up this book going, oh, yeah, I've read his stuff. Let me check out this new book. I start reading it at 5pm and I'm like, I can't stop. I'm up until 3am because I cannot put this book down. I'll miss a meal because, like, oh, my God, the guy is such a captivating writer. And that is so, like, that's craft. That's. I mean, we both have something to say, but damn, Neil Strauss has, like, the most amazing craft as a writer that keeps you gripped. And that's why we love Paul McCartney melodies. After all these years, that guy had the craft of writing melodies that stick on our head. Like, we all have hearts, we all have something to say, but those that do it with craft are the ones that captivate us.

Yeah, I think that's so wise because I had just hired a speaking coach, and for years and years and years, I would go and I would do my boot camps and I would be good enough, but I knew nothing of the craft of speaking. I'm a land investor. And so I just sort of powered my way through these presentations, and I got enough validation saying, oh, this is good, and the content is good. But when I got to a Hall of Fame speaker and he went through my presentations, it changed everything. Everything has changed. And now I see the world completely differently based on that craft, or that is the world. But at least what I'm the way, I was doing those presentations completely differently. Just not even being aware that, oh, my gosh, there's a craft to speaking, there's a craft to writing, there's a craft to marketing, there's a. There could be a craft to everything in our lives. And if we can smart cut it and find someone who's, you know, really done it well and emulate that, you can. It can really make a. Just an exponential difference in what you do.

Yeah.

Do you. Do you agree?

Totally. I love this. It's. You should never be so. You should never be so proud that we can't hire another teacher to teach us more, teach us better, and study and just be humble enough to pick up a book on the craft of something, even if you've been doing it for over 10 years, to learn more about the craft of doing it and how to improve.

Yeah, absolutely. I believe that's one of the. The chapters in the book about that. That sense of pretending you don't know anything. And I don't know. I don't know if that was in how to Live or Hell yeah. Or no, but it's in the books. You have to get all three books anyways. Which leads me to another question, which I want to talk about books that you like, but I also want to talk about the way you sell books. I think I have a bone to pick with you about it. I don't think I do, but I'd like to discuss it if you. If you don't mind indulging.

Great.

Please. Okay. Well, first of all, I, you know, as being a huge reader, and because you often pick my next book based on your ratings, if you could only have three books on a desert island for three months, which would you pick from your list? And why?

Ooh, they'd have to be bigger ones. So I could see rereading. Thinking fast and slow. I felt like that was big and dense. The Guide to the Good Life, the book about stoicism.

William Irvine. Do you subscribe? The Waking up app. By the way, William Irvine has a great, great thing in there about stoicism and reframing and all these stoic principles. And his voice is very soothing and sort of grandfatherly, and he talks about things in his life personally. It's just. And he's just great. Go ahead. So you got.

And then I'll maybe cheat for the third one and I'll bring War and Peace or something like that. I should read, but I think I wouldn't read unless I was stuck on a desert island for three months. How about that?

That's fine. Because during COVID I'm like, I'm going to get Infinite Jest started reading it. Started, Loved it. Did not finish it. Yeah, Just too big.

I haven't tried. But yeah, there's some like that that I know that I should like War and Peace and such that I haven't yet, but I hear is worth it. So, yeah, strategically, that would be smart to bring to a Desert island where you're stuck. You'd have to read it. But anyway, sorry, Go ahead.

Okay, let's talk about the way you sell books. Okay, so I buy the book. Included with the book is every format imaginable, including audio for free. A marketer would have a big bone to pick with you about this. That being said, the people that buy your books absolutely love it. And you make it so easy. If you buy the second book, it's like five bucks or something. Ridiculous. Four or four bucks. It's almost like you lose money on shipping. I think you lose money on the book.

It is my break even cost. Exactly. The $4 plus postage covers my break even. That's all I wanted to do.

So you're breaking even on the second book. So as a fan, the only books I gift are your books.

Cool. Perfect.

But as an entrepreneur and also someone who wants to sell books. Come on, Derek, walk me through the logic.

Okay, see, this is an example of like time in my journal. This is actually. Okay, this is a real practical example of when I stammered around earlier and I said, like, why do this? Why do this? You know, what am I doing? What am I doing? So when I decided to sell my own books, even the decision to be self published came from a lot of personal reflection. Because my first book in 2011 called Anything youg Want was an accident. I never intended to write a book, but Seth Godin asked me if I would. I said yes. I wrote him a book in 10 days, and then he put it on his own little personal imprint called Domino Publishing. And then two years later, he sold that to Penguin. And the book has sold very well for Penguin. And so Penguin told me that, hey, anything you do next, we want it. We want all your future books. Yes. So here I had a publishing deal with Penguin, and I loved them. They were great. I loved my main contact there, Nikki Papadopoulos was wonderful. But after a lot of reflection, I just thought I'd rather do it myself. I enjoy doing things the way I think they should be done instead of just punting off to. Off to Amazon and Audible. So when I asked myself, okay, well, how do I want things to be done? It's. I get upset at this idea of like having to buy a book twice because you want two different formats. So to me, I just want.

I want the Kindle version, the Audible version, the hardcover, the paperback, right?

So to me, it's just all of this is just a bit of delivery nonsense, a bit of delivery friction to just get the ideas from your brain. Into my brain or as a writer, to get the ideas from my brain into your mind. That's all I want to do is share these, get these words into your mind, whether that's through your ears, if that's convenient to you. I even imagine that someday I'll have like a video movie version of these books. Because some people don't want to read and they don't want to listen to audiobooks, but they will click on the TV each night or the screen and just like watch something that's their preferred thing is to watch while eating. And for those people, if they'd rather get my words through watching something on video, I'd like to deliver it that way. But the delivery method shouldn't matter. I don't really care. I'm not in the business of selling dead trees. I don't care about the paper. I just want to get my words to you. So Therefore I thought, $15 is a fair price to me for a book's worth of my thoughts, from my brain to yours, how you choose to get them. I don't care if you want the ebook on a Kindle, if you want the HTML on your computer screen, if you want the MP3 in your phone, or if you want a video, or if you want the paper book, I don't really care. But the paper is the only one that costs me money. So then after I hired this woman, Saya Leawood, who's just amazing. Her website is S A E a h dot com. That's how you spell her name, Sayya. S A e dash a h dot com is her website. She is a book producer. She's a total book nerd that nerds out on like the binding and the edges and the fabric and all that kind of stuff. Yes.

Yeah, it feels really nice.

Yes. So that's all thanks to Seiya. So I let her nerd out on paper quality. She worked with all the printers and like tried a bunch of printers to find the best ones. She worked with a bunch of fabric houses to find the best fabric. Even like the embossing of the title. Okay, so she nerded out on that. So all in all, each hardcover book or paperback or hardcover about the same cost me about $4 to print and take care of everything. So I'm happy to just sell you that for cost because I don't care. Just here, if you want paper, here's the paper. So then there's this idea of multiples, right? So if you want 10 copies of one of my book, I don't think you need to pay me $15 10 times because I really just want you to pay me once to get the words for my Brandiras. Now if you want more paper copies, I mean in theory you could just download the PDF from me and print it out on your own printer. But if you want my paper, well then again I'm just going to charge you for the cost of the paper. So that's why it's like after you've paid me the $15 for the contents, then all future paper copies are just $4 each. So yeah, you could buy, after you've paid me the 15 bucks for the contents, you could buy a hundred copies for $400 and spread them to 100 friends. And some people have done that and it's really fun like for oh. Because that was it through self publishing. That was one of my discontents with being on Penguin is every now and then I would get a request from like a conference in London, wants to buy 900 copies of my book to give to all their attendees. And they'd say can you do this? And I'd be like, yes, please, here, whatever, break even, take them. But because it was published through Penguin, my first book, I'd have to go through Penguin to ask and they said, well just tell them to go to Amazon and order 100 copies. I'm like, no, that's awful. To pay retail price 100 times, no, come on, can't we give it to them as a break even? And they'd say sorry, we don't do that. So I thought damn, when I self publishing someday somebody wants 900 copies of my book. Damn right they're going to get it for just basically the price of the paper because that's spreading my ideas to 900 new people. If somebody wants to gift my book, I want to encourage that because that's making a new long term relationship with whoever reads my words then emails me afterwards.

Okay, well for the 10 of you that are going to read Dirt Rich 2 the next plot, I am going to think deeply about this new book selling model and see how it, how it fits for me different for everybody. I love it because to get back to your music and people, right, creative and considerate fame, it is being. It's not about me, it's not about you, it's what's best for your customer, your tribe, your audience, however you want to define it. And if you can create your own utopia like that, then yeah, maybe you break even on the book. But the dividends of goodwill, you do not know the payoff of that back end. Goodwill.

Yes.

Yeah. Derek, do you want to speak to that?

Sorry. Mark. Yeah. Do you remember in youn Music and People there was the chapter about the. Emphasizing the meaning over price, about the live CD example where there was a. I think his name was Terry McBride, was the manager of this band that told them, like, do this new strategy. Just try this out for me. Trust me on this. Instead of selling your CDs for 15 bucks each at your shows. Yes. Put them on sale for 15 bucks. But then tell everybody at the show, like, look, before you go, tonight, we've enjoyed this concert with. With us together. You know, you shared this, this event with us tonight. Please, nobody here leave without bringing a CD with you. If you don't have the money, that's fine. Just come up and tell us you don't have the money. We'll give you a free one if you have the money to spend. You got 15 bucks, we'll take it. But what matters most to us is that nobody here leaves without a cd. This means the world to us. And that sounds like a counterintuitive strategy. Like, what, you're giving it away? These CDs cost you whatever, $2 each to print up. He said, no, but these people are walking home with a souvenir. They're going to remember you. They're going to spread it. They're going to think of you in the weeks after the show. They're going to have this thing in their house, keeping you in mind. And then, sure enough, as that band kept touring America, every time they would come back to a city where they had insisted that everybody take a free cd, attendance in those cities doubled and they were making more and more fans because people left with a free cd. So, yeah, I do have this thing where I really just want everybody on earth. Well, okay, no, take that back. I want everybody who likes my writing to have one of my books. Because I like. I like, poured my soul into this, especially the newest one, how to Live. Like, I really put my soul into that. That's my whole soul in there. You want to know who I am? That's. That's who I am. That book is like, if I did nothing else in my life but that one book, I'd think that was a good life. Of course I want everybody to have a copy.

Yeah. And I 100% agree with you. And it is one of those, like, there's always transformational books that come around, and this is one of them. This is one of those books you could read every day and you might know it intellectually, but until you internalize these lessons and these different varying points of view, it's. It's hard to actually put into. Into words you have to experience. It's. It's an experiential book. The words I would give it won't do it justice. And. Which is. Yeah, I don't know what else more I could say glowingly because again, I don't want to just keep going on and on in front of Derek, but it's like he's the author, but he really, he really did. You know, when you meet an artist who's actually put out something to the world, very, very special and very, very personal and something that can really move the needle in your life. It's, it's. You can't. There's the words, really don't give it to justice. So I will not try. Thank you.

That's the best compliment. I really appreciate it.

My pleasure. Okay. Okay, my last question. And you've been so gracious and so giving to spend this much time with me. It is a quote. It says, Abraham Maslow says musicians must make music, artists must paint, poets must write. If they are to be ultimately at peace with themselves. What human beings can be, they must be. They must be true to their own nature. This need we may call self actualization. My question is, number one, would you consider yourself self actualized? And number two, what is next?

Ha. Oh, Maslow was such a badass. I love him. I was like 16 years old in high school when our high school psychology class like mentioned Abraham Maslow and showed that pyramid of self actualization. And it like, I like gasped and it resonated with me. And I've thought about it ever since. There have been major decisions I've made in life because of Abraham Maslow. Quotes and things. I hadn't heard that one. Or if I had heard it, I've forgotten it. But that's really sweet. And it kind of answers your question, doesn't it? About when you asked where did my drive come from? Like that single big yes, it was that you just said it. It's Maslow's. It's our pursuit of self actualization. Am I self actualized? I mean.

No, you maybe are from the. As an outsider, you are. Because you like based on your story, you must create music, you must write, you must create, create, create. You're not a. You're not consuming regularly. You. It's just you're creating and you're doing it in a way where Most people would not have that intrinsic drive of working from 7am to midnight. That's like an Elon Musk self actualized person. Because at some point it's all internal. It's something you must do.

Yeah. And that is, you're right, that is the real drive. It's like I would do the same thing if it was secret, you know, if nobody ever saw it, I would still do this because it is just completely intrinsic. That said, I really get a joy out of serving others. So that's why I still answer my emails is that it makes other people happy and that makes me happy. And actually, you know, my big drive from 7am to midnight every day for 10 years of CD Baby was like the joy of serving others. So there's some kind of mix in there. I don't know. It would take longer for me to think about that. Intrinsically motivated to serve others. That's a weird thing to say.

Well, I think it is a weird thing to say. And I think if it was, you know, if you boomeranged it back to me, I would be like, no, I'm not. But I think when it's like when you, when you, you see it, you know it and I think you as an individual probably aren't aware of it. And it's, it's a great gift to the world when self actualized people give it away and, and create for us and our other focused and they're not just, you know, playing in their garage and they're loving it. They must create. They must create music but they're not necessarily sharing it. And so I think it's one of those things. The only reason came on this podcast was so I could tell you you're self actualized.

That's the only reason I'm here. Sorry, wait, you had one other question.

Given that.

Oh wait, what's next?

What do you, what must you do next?

I don't know, I'm not sure. The I'm still driven by the desire like I'm still that thing that you just said, the Maslow quote. You just said the writer must write I or the I must philosophize. I must question. I'm still just so, so, so driven by this desire to understand different points of view, to embody different ways of living and then to be the best writer I can be to help communicate what I've learned in a succinct and enticing way that still drives the hell out of me. Yeah, I get up at 4:30 or 5 every morning. No alarm that's just when I get up and I just, like, I come straight to my keyboard and I start writing at 5am and I'm not doing it out of any sense of, like, I should do this, you know, it's just like I have. Yeah, I have this drive to create, so that's still there. But as far as, like, what's my next consumable output for people, I'm not sure. That's kind of the lesson of hell yeah or no, isn't it? That it's like, you should deliberately leave space in your life so that by not saying yes to little things along the way, then when you get that big giant thing that makes you go, oh, yeah, hell yeah, this is what I want. Like, now you've got time to throw yourself into it. So, yeah, that's what I've got right now is the I poured everything I had into the how to live books. And so what's next? I'm not sure. I'm in the wonderful open space right now.

Wow. I love it. And I could obviously selfishly talk to you for hours.

This is a really fun conversation. Thanks, Mark.

Yeah, thank you so much. And dear listener, if you're getting value out of this, please do me the favor of rating or following rating. Reviewing the podcast, Send us a screenshot of that review. To support thelangic.com we're going to send you for free a signed copy of Dirt Rich, which I does not scale because I actually go and sign them myselves because I do think that there's something about me actually doing it that is transferred to the reader, even though I don't really write much in it. But I do it. So, Derek, are we good?

We're good. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. This has been a true gift, a pleasure. And they say the cliche is you should never meet your heroes because you find out, oh, they're just another regular flawed human being. Derek, I can tell you with 100% authentic honesty, you have not disappointed me. That cliche BS meet the heroes.

Thank you.

And thank you so much. Thanks.

Thank you. That's really sweet. Thanks for listening to the Art of Passive Income podcast. Are you ready to learn how you can start building a passive income without renters, rehabs, renovations, or rodents? Schedule. Schedule a free consultation@thelandgeek.com forward slash training.

Let freedom ring.