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Hey everyone, it's Alex from Alex and Books, and you're listening to The Reader's Journey, the podcast that takes you on a journey to meet amazing authors, discover brilliant books, and learn valuable lessons along the way. Now, let's get started. Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of The Reader's Journey podcast. Today we have James Aldricher, the author of several books, including Choose Yourself. James, thank you so much for coming on the show today.
Alex, thank you so much. I've been such a fan for a long time. Thank you so much for having me on the podcast. And as you probably already know, I love talking about books and writing. And we could talk about any books, not just my books, of course.
And I know you're just a huge fan of reading and writing, and I think it's such a pleasure to interact with you this way. Yeah, I'm super excited. I love talking with people who, you know, not just authors, but they love books, they love learning, and I'm super excited to talk about your book, Choose Yourself. And James, I've been following your work for a couple years now, like your writing, your books, your podcast, but I'm sure a lot of listeners who are listening right now are new to you. Can you tell us who is James Altucher?
I guess broadly, I've been an entrepreneur for a long time and I've started and sold a couple of companies, but I've also failed at most of the companies I've started, which has been grueling. I've made money. I've lost money. I've been dead broke after selling companies and had to come back from scratch. I think that's,
If people have a story, that's definitely one of my main stories in the arc of my career. But I've also been a writer for many years, and I've been a podcaster for the past six years. I like to try lots of new things. I've been a professional investor. I've been a professional poker player. I am a professional stand-up comedian. I even own a comedy club, and I'm also a very active private and venture investor.
So I guess you could say I don't believe in having one label. I think, you know, as humans, we're not really supposed to be specialists. We're supposed to be generalists. And I think that's just I like to I like.
This is a long answer to your question, I know, but I like to make sure I'm not doing things for money, but I'm doing things I love that could generate money, which is probably the reason why I've gone broke so many times, but also I've been able to always do what I love doing.
Yeah, that's one thing that I definitely admire about you. You're kind of like this renaissance man. You're like, you're not afraid to try different things, go in different categories, especially like, you know, stand-up kind of came over, came out of nowhere in the last few years. And you have this like history of being a businessman and like an author. And I really admire how like you're not afraid to venture into new areas and try new things. And you know, when you, when you, when you venture into new areas, you're not afraid to try new things.
hate you for it. So everybody who knows you from your old area is like, what are you doing? You were, you could have done X, Y, and Z. You know, you could have started a huge business or, but instead you're going on a stage and telling jokes to a bunch of 12 tourists from Norway. And, uh,
I've thought about that a lot. Like, you know, I was talking to a friend of mine, Tucker Max has been on my podcast a couple of times and he's like, James, we all know you're funny. Like, what are you doing going on stage doing standup comedy up to 30 hours a week, some weeks. And, um,
I don't know the answer to that other than that I love it. And sometimes you make sacrifices in terms of, you know, making money. And so, you know, you only have one life to live and you want to do the things that you love doing. And sometimes it takes some time to fully appreciate the nuances of a new area. I would say the time I was least happy in life was when I was only focused on investing. For a while, I was just an investor. And that was such a painful, unpleasant period in my life.
Yeah. And James, I've seen you in person. I went to your shows and I have to say you're funny and I enjoyed it. So I'm happy you didn't just stick to investing and you know, you're making people laugh. So I'm glad to be there.
Thanks so much. I appreciate it. And I always tell people, if you saw me, I have like a sort of a Moore's law type of theory about improvement. And then if you're really, you know, like for me, when I'm really pursuing something, I tend to double in my knowledge every two or three months, at least when in the steep part of the learning curve. So if you saw me like,
do comedy before the pandemic, I can guarantee you I'm 100% different right now. Hopefully better. Not all the time. All right. Well, once COVID is over and done with, I'll definitely come by to see your show. So I'd love to dive into your book. And so I think a good place to start would be the title itself. Can you tell us what it means to choose yourself? Yeah. I mean, and it's partly related to what we were just talking about, actually. Like when you, let's say...
Well, we're talking about books. So let's say you want to be a writer. I mean, I don't know when you first started getting interested in books and dissecting them and doing podcasts about them. But in 1990, I'm 52 years old. So in 1990 or 1991, I became obsessed with books.
books and writing and I wanted to write a novel. I wanted to write the great American novel like many young people do. And I thought that would mean it would be easier for me to make friends and even girlfriends and all these things, all these great things. And of course it wasn't so easy. Like I started writing and I thought I was better than I was like, like, which is a common, uh, bias in many areas of life. And so I just kept writing and
Literally, I was writing 3,000 words a day. And I wrote four novels, dozens and dozens of short stories in just a few short years because I was writing so much. And I would start every day reading. And I would write every day. And I couldn't publish anything. I would send to 30 publishers, 40 agents. Nobody would even write back to me. I was so bad. I wasn't even worthy of a forum letter. And
And then I moved to New York City. I figured, oh, you need to get connections maybe because I thought I was great, obviously, and nobody could see my amazing talent. But it was just part of the process of getting better. And, you know, but eventually now fast forward literally 20 years, I had published a bunch of books and I was doing well.
And, but, but I didn't like the whole process of trying to convince a publisher to like me. And I thought, well, what about if I use this new feature that Amazon has, you can self publish. And it's not like vanity publishing where you buy in advance a bunch of your books and you try to sell them. It's print on demand. It's paperback, audible ebook, maybe hardcover. And, and
I had already published eight books or six books with mainstream publishers. And I decided to publish that book that you just showed, Choose Yourself, in a self-published way. But I did it very professionally. I hired a book designer. I hired an editor. I hired someone to help me with marketing, Ryan Holiday, who went on to also become a very successful author. And
And, uh, so I acted as if I was a publishing company, but I self published through Amazon and I became, it became the top ranking book ever. Uh,
nonfiction book self-published by Amazon, at least then, and ended up selling around a million copies and was very successful. But in a sense, this is again, a long answer to your question, but I chose myself to be, um, to publish instead of having to convince other people to choose me, an agent, an editor, a marketing company, a publisher, Barnes and Noble, all these people have to choose you to publish a book. Like, like,
an agent won't pick you unless they think Barnes Noble is going to like you. Uh,
and on and on. So I didn't want anybody to choose me. Or one time I was a computer programmer at HBO and I wanted to do a TV show, but I was just a computer programmer. So I came up with a way to just do my own TV show. And I almost got it airing on HBO for my very first attempt at a TV show, a fun
funded me to do a pilot and I did it as a web series. Perhaps that's the first real podcast, but they funded me to do it as a web series for three years. And choosing yourself to summarize is when everyone is telling you, you can't do it or you need to go through these gatekeepers, but you just go ahead and figure out how to do it anyway. So for instance, maybe you
you decide, oh, I'm going to take MIT's online classes. So there's a guy, Scott Young, who wrote the book Ultra Learning. Maybe you've even had him on your podcast. And he did a four-year MIT computer science degree in 10 months. He chose himself to get the degree. Now, they won't give him the degree, but he did all the work to get the degree. So he could just say, oh, yeah, I did a degree's worth of work here. So there's lots of ways. You give me an industry degree.
I can give you a way to choose yourself. Many ways probably to choose yourself in that industry. Yeah. Yeah. And it's awesome that like the kind of the whole message of the book is don't wait for the gatekeepers or don't wait for permission from someone. It's like, choose yourself. Like if you want to do something and just go for it.
And like, yeah, you don't have to wait for like permission. And what I found really fascinating is that like right now it's 2020, but you wrote this book in 2013. So you're definitely like ahead of this curve. So like what were some signals or clues that you saw that we were heading into like this choose yourself error? Well, it's it's there was a lot of clues. And the thing is.
It's always been possible to choose yourself. And you could argue that, you know, starting in around 2010, everything was a lot easier because of technology. So you could, for instance, Amazon let you not only publish a book, but start a store. Like if I want to start my own clothing line,
50 years ago, it would have been a lot harder. I would have had to like manufacture the clothes in some expensive way and then convince Sears or Macy's or whatever to to carry my clothing. But now I can sell direct on Amazon or Shopify or any other number of stores. Or if I want to do a TV show.
It used to be there was only three networks, ABC, NBC, CBS. But now I can make a TV show and put it on YouTube. And it doesn't have to be 30 minutes. It could be three minutes. I could do a three-minute TV show or a 15-second one on TikTok. I mean, there are people on TikTok who have 50 million followers doing 15-second videos. And those are real followers. Those people will follow them to the next platform and the next platform. I mean, with a platform like that, those people are set for life. And they're like 14 years old. So...
I would say this ability to kind of create your own platform, if you have something interesting and unique and stimulating to say, you will get followers. Whether it's 50 million or 10,000, it doesn't really matter the number because you
You could have 1,000 followers, but they're all CEOs of companies. That's a very valuable group of 1,000. Or you could have 50 million 14-year-olds. That's also a very valuable group, but they're just different. So the number doesn't matter. It's a quality thing, or it's a mixture of quality and quantity. But I will add, it's always been possible to choose yourself. I remember I did an article a few years ago about a guy in the 1920s who sold 100 million copies of
books that he called the little blue books. And there were these tiny blue books that he would sell in pharmacies. That would be like a summary of all of Shakespeare's books or a book on, you know, how
how to, how to get married, you know, for women or how to, you know, this is the 1920s or how to ask out a girl for guys. And he would write all these little books that were just like 10, 15 pages. I mean, I think he sold something like 120 million copies of these books for, you know, 10 cents a book. So there's always been some ways to choose yourself, but I would just argue now it's easier than, than ever.
Yeah, totally. Like with all the tools available now, especially social media, since everything's free and like there's so many ways to like choose yourself in life. And let's say someone listening to this podcast right now, like they want to choose themselves, but they don't really know like what their passion is. And like, James, you've done so many different things and you've gone into so many different like industries and fields. How do you decide like where to what to work on and like where to go in life? Yeah, that's such an interesting question because.
at any given point, even if you have something you're passionate about, you kind of look around and say, well, what else am I passionate about? Or what do I do next now that I found my passion? And
A lot of it is, and this is going to sound kind of corny, but you could mentally say, oh, well, I need to make money. So I need to be a lawyer and go to law school or I need to go to business school and then work at Goldman Sachs. And that's your, that's fine. That's your mind talking. Like it's sort of saying, here's my problem. My problem is I need to make money and then let's mentally solve it. But I think it works best.
And then you might say to yourself, oh, well, the times when I feel the happiest is when I'm
brewing beer in my backyard for my neighbors and barbecuing, you know, bacon and whatever. And that's when I'm happiest. And that's your heart talking. And so it's really great when your heart and your mind have a conversation. Often they don't talk to each other. Like your brain is there for like, oh, I got to use my brain to make money. And then your mind's there for the weekend. And when you're having fun with your family and your neighbors and friends. And, but it's really great when
Your mind and heart can talk and you don't try to predict so much what the future is like. Like I could say, well, stand up comedy is never going to make money, so I shouldn't do it. That's my mind talking. And my heart could say, well, I should do stand up comedy all the time because I love it. And that's my heart talking. But maybe I wouldn't be able to work on business stuff also and make money if I just did that.
And, and, but when they're both talking, you could say, well, I do a lot of public speaking and maybe if I spend some time doing standup comedy, it'll improve my writing. It'll give me stories to write about. It'll improve my writing skills and it'll also improve my public speaking skills. And it's also an interesting conversation to have in business meetings. Oh, I do this extra thing. And so, you know, if you couldn't figure out, and so, so the question is then how do you find those things where the heart and the mind talk? And so, um,
So I have a bunch of different techniques that I use. One of them I've written about quite a bit, which is obviously for those who don't know me, a big thing that I do every single day is, and this is every single day without fail. Like I do not ever not do this, which is I write 10 ideas a day down on a waiter's pad. I don't have the waiter's pad in front of me right now, or I'd show you, but actually the last pad, oh, here's a waiter's pad. Hold on.
So I have a waiter's pad and this one is, this list is cities 2.0. So it's ideas I have for what a city actually is and how cities work.
Right now, we think of cities as geographic locations, but in Cities 2.0, if they have these 10 qualities, they could be virtual cities as well and have just as much impact as a geographic city. So if you can go to some virtual place and get an education and meet friends and find experts and even find love and culture and make money,
That could be just as valuable as a city, even if it's in a virtual location like Facebook or a future virtual reality. Anyway, that was a list from the other day, and it's on my waiter's pad. And the whole point of these lists is not to have good ideas, but just to exercise this idea of muscle. Like when you exercise in a gym and you're lifting weights, it's not like everything you do with the weights is like –
perfect. Like you're, you could be in a bodybuilding competition. You're just trying to exercise the muscle and get better and better at lifting weights because it's healthy for you. Same thing here. You're just trying to be, if you don't exercise your creativity muscle, your idea muscle, it will atrophy and weaken. And I would say most people don't exercise it. And so this is a key skill for choosing, being, having the ability to choose yourself because if you're choosing yourself, you're
then everybody's going to be against you and all the systems in society will not let you choose yourself. So you're going to have to be creative about how you do it. And people say, oh, well, ideas are a dime a dozen, execution's everything. Actually, execution ideas are a subset of ideas. If you're not good at execution ideas, you'll be poor at execution. And I've seen that many times and I've experienced that many times in starting my own projects or businesses. So
So that's one thing, is that when you're exercising that idea muscle, you'll start to see ways in which you can pursue different interests. The other thing is, list the things that you loved doing when you were 10, 11, 12 years old, because those things have aged with you, and you still might love them, but in a way that has aged. So let's say I loved comic books when I was 10, and I loved superhero comic books. Well, now at the age of...
you know, 52, I could say, well, maybe I want to write a novel, uh, about a modern day superhero, or maybe I want to write a TV screenplay, or maybe I want to help people in some secret way that reminds me of the anonymous, uh, ways my favorite superheroes help people, you know, when I was 10 or 11. So that's, or maybe I want to be a critic and write about,
the latest comics or movies, or maybe I might want to make a game about super, I don't know. There's a million different ways to, to, uh, you know, or maybe the arc of the hero I learned from reading those comic books. So I want to write kind of a thriller with the same kind of arc as a superhero comic. I don't know. I'm just,
you know, comic books are, is something I was interested in. Or if you were interested in sports when you were 10, well, now you're over 50. It's not like you're going to be a basketball player, professional basketball player, but maybe you like fantasy sports. Maybe you like writing about sports. Maybe you want to be a sports agent and switch careers, which,
I know one guy switched careers from being a Hollywood screenwriter to writing blog posts for $100 a post about fantasy sports. And now he's made millions. He's the top ESPN anchor about fantasy sports, Matthew Barry. So it's never...
too late to change to an interest. So, so anyway, that's another way to find interest is just, you know, like for me, I was interested in writing actually as a little kid, I was interested in being a spy. I was interested in comic books. I actually was oddly interested in politics and reading biographies of billionaires. And, uh, I, I was interested in science fiction, you know, it's just worthy exercise. And then you ask yourself, well, how have these things aged? Um,
And so then another thing is when you go in a bookstore, is there any section that you gravitate to where you would be easily able to read all the books in the section because that's how interested you are in that section? So if you're an accountant but you always gravitate to the cooking section of a bookstore, maybe it's not a bad idea to –
See how your cooking's doing and maybe come up with interesting, unique ideas like, oh, I'm going to combine sushis with Mexican food. Okay, well, what are you going to do with that? Are you going to start a restaurant? No, I'm going to choose myself. I'm going to find a regulated commercial kitchen where I just have to rent space for, you know, a chef.
a one 50th of what it would cost to run a restaurant. And then I'll cook a little each day and I'll upload the menu to Uber eats and grub hub. And now I have a restaurant because I have a menu and people are ordering more people are ordering now than going to restaurants. So that's just having a menu where you could legally cook food that could be served to people for money. You have, that's a restaurant. So you always have to say, Hey,
What's the definition of a restaurant? Is it a physical location with waitresses and a hostess and waiters and bartenders and busboys and cooks and subcooks? Is that a restaurant or is it a menu of items
that's, you know, legally cooked and able to serve for money to people that that's also a restaurant. And it's much easier to do and try out without getting all the licenses and spending millions of dollars. And you get to see if you could choose yourself as a chef and a restaurant owner all of a sudden.
Yeah, I love that first principle of thinking you have there. And especially what you mentioned earlier about like if you were, let's say, locked in a library for 24 hours, like what section would you want to spend that time in? That's such a great way to kind of find out what you're passionate about.
And kind of looking back on my childhood, like when I first started like Alex and books, I was like, oh, I wasn't like a reader during my childhood. But then I look back and it's like I was a reader when I was like 10, 12 years old. It was only when I got to like high school that I stopped reading books because I had like a series of bad experiences with English teachers. So definitely like look at your childhood, see what you love and kind of reignite that passion because probably still there.
Yeah, like English teachers force you to read the Canterbury Tales. And like that might be fun for some people, but for 99.999% of people, reading some book written in the 1300s is really boring. And so I had the same bad experience as I'm like, oh, these are the worst books ever. And so I kind of stopped reading, even though I was like a huge reader when I was in fifth grade, sixth grade, seventh grade. And then I didn't. And then it was only after college when I decided I really loved writing that
I would read literally like a book a day. Like I just loved reading so much more than I ever did before or since, but I did it for years, like a book a day and then writing every day. And I was, I was a computer programmer for a living. I didn't have any money. I was a computer programmer living paycheck to paycheck. But the great thing about computer programming is I wrote a program and it worked. And so my only job was to basically sit around and wait for people to have problems, which they never did. And, uh,
I read and wrote. So, you know, you you always have to do multiple things. You can't just quit your job and say, OK, I'm going to be a painter now. You have to do multiple things while you're transitioning. And I guess, you know, here it is. Thirty years later, I'm still, you know, transitioning from one interest and job and industry to another. I'm always in the process of doing that.
Yeah, yeah. And I'm like in the same situation. Like, I think a lot of people might be thinking, oh, I got to choose myself, quit my job tomorrow and just go completely into like cooking, you know, sushi and Mexican food. But like you want to kind of keep your job and start that side hustle and then kind of like build it up until it becomes like a full time job. Would that be like a fair statement?
Yeah. Like I didn't, so my first business that I started, or I should say my first successful business that I started was I was in the nineties. I was making websites for big companies like American express and company, a lot of record labels, a lot of movie studios, but I didn't quit my full time job for 18 months after I started my business. I had, I had
like 40 employees and dozens of clients and 10,000 square feet of space in another building before I finally had confidence enough to quit my job. And even now, I'm always experimenting with new ideas and I don't quit anything. Like I just keep juggling. The important word is experiment. Like for instance, let's say I wanted to make James's Sushi Ritos restaurant. Okay, well, it's not so hard for me to first experiment
Just get the ingredients here in my kitchen and invite my friends over and charge them $10 just for the heck of it. And then, then make a miniature, you know, a fake Yelp page and have them review my James's sushi Ritos. And then I could experiment one step further and I could actually say, go to some legal kitchen and say, Hey, can I rent space here for a month? And yeah,
I cook stuff and I upload the menu to Rob Hub. Like literally you and I both could do that within the next month and experiment with owning an entire restaurant as far as any of the people ordering from it are concerned. Like I never know what the restaurants look like that I'm ordering from delivery. Aren't you ever surprised when you see like, oh my God, I've been ordering every night from that
sushi restaurant. That is the worst hole in the wall I've ever seen. Like you pass it accidentally and you're horrified and you can never order from there again. So it's easy to experiment with, with just about anything. If I want to, I did an experiment once I wrote a novel in a weekend and I published it on
on Amazon just as an experiment to see if I could do it. And it wasn't a good novel. It was just an experiment to see what could be done. And it's good to experiment. That's how you learn. Oh, yeah. Yeah. 100% like experimentation, trying new things is such an important part of life and choosing yourself. And
one thing that comes with that is a lot of rejection. Like you write in your book, like you have the last 17 businesses, 16 of them have failed, but like you didn't give up, like you kept going. And I kind of see you kind of like the business version of like David Goggins, like no matter what happens, you're going to keep going. So where did this like never quit, like never give up mentality come from for you? Yeah. And I like the comparison to David Goggins, although I will say it's a little different in that
David Goggins knows he's going to fail a lot. And he's he's let's say he runs 50 miles. So David Goggins, you know, he is known as this.
what would you call him? An endurance athlete. Yeah. So, so he pushes himself beyond the limits. And so he likes to get to the limit where he's about to collapse, where he's broken both of his legs and he still keeps running. And cause that's when he knows it's like what Mike Tyson says, I don't start counting. Someone asked him, how many pushups do you do a day? And he says, I don't even start counting until I feel like giving up. And that's when he starts counting one. And he,
So with business, I want every single business to succeed. And I'm usually extremely disappointed when they fail. And then when I've lost all my money on several occasions, it's not like I then said to myself, this is great. I just lost all my money. Now I know I'm really getting started. I usually feel like a failure and I get depressed and anxious. Like, how am I going to afford my kids diapers and stuff like that?
And so, so it's a little different in that. And I guess I keep going because there's no other choice for me now. I don't really know how to do anything. Like I wouldn't be able to get a job. For instance, my last desk job was at HBO, which I left in 1997. I don't know what I would do or who would hire me or if I would be good. Um, but.
But, you know, fortunately, there was one time in the 00s where I had nine businesses in a row fail. And I had a business partner, and he would – he was usually – he would put in half the money. I'd put in half the money, but I would do most of the work or a lot of the work. And after nine businesses, he was like, maybe we should just not do that 10th idea anymore.
And I'm like, no, let's just try it. Let's just try that one more idea. And it was the 10th idea that worked. And so you just never know. And again, the key is,
I've gotten a lot better at that through thinking of things in terms of experiments. So I don't risk too much on any one idea. Instead, I experiment a lot with the definition of experiment is you have very little downside. The upside is enormous. And the worst case scenario is you learn something. So I try to structure experiments around that idea. And, you know, the other thing is, is that I'm very much more careful about risk. So I would go broke when I would take huge risks.
Now I realize a key for investing in entrepreneurship is you start off with a good idea, but then after that, you focus very much on how to avoid risk, how to get rid of risk. And so, again, you could think of that in terms of experiments or you could think of that in terms of idealists for how to, you know, if your ideas are good on reducing risk, that's important. So, for instance, if you have an idea for a big virtual reality software product, before you raise money to
you know, make it and it's going to cost millions, figure out a way to test the idea without spending a lot of money. Like, again, I'll just use the restaurant example. Okay. Before I spend millions and a year of my life building out a restaurant, I'm
Uh, you know, have a sushi Rito party, uh, you know, several times with different types of audiences and see if it's a good idea. And then at the very least, you'll have a fun time with your friends. That's the downside. And the upside is you have the best restaurant idea on the planet and you can go forward.
Yeah, it's such a good idea. Like start small, like you want to cap the downside and you want to, you know, experiment, try new things. Like for instance, like with the podcast, I figured I'll just like do three episodes and people like that. I keep it going and people have loved it. So I just kept on going. And so that's like one thing, like there wasn't that much downside, you know, buy a microphone, buy some recording software and, you know, spend a couple hours doing it. And yeah, it's like there isn't any huge downside and there's a huge upside that you might be missing out on if you don't experiment. Yeah.
Yeah. Like, um, for instance, with podcasting is a great format to experiment in. Like, for instance, you could say, let's say you do one podcast a week and it's an hour long where you're analyzing books. Well, you could think, well, you know what? I'm going to try something else. I'm going to try every Sunday. I'm going to release a five minute podcast. Here are the three books I'm reading this week that I'm enjoying and that I were willing to recommend. Here's why. And it's just a five minute podcast. Well,
You might get just as many downloads on that as your hour long podcast, which means you could then sell ads on that potentially. And it could be a moneymaker and and who knows. And then you'll have authors sending you their books, which gives you more access to, you know, people, guests for your longer form version and so on. But that's just an experiment. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work.
Yeah, that's a good idea. I might actually try that one out. So thank you. And so, James, you mentioned earlier. Oh, by the way, that's another important thing. Sharing ideas is important. And people say, well, what if someone steals my idea? They're going to steal your ideas. And the more they steal, that means the better you are at having ideas, which means you'll never run out of good ideas. So share ideas as much as possible.
Yeah, and that's actually something you mentioned in the book. It's like you want to be the source of these ideas. Like you want to be Google so that way people keep coming back to you. And that's another form of value that you can offer to people. Right. And like, for instance, I even, you know, sometimes you have to be careful for other reasons. But I even willingly tell people what business ideas I'm working on, even if I think that they're unique or creative. Because if someone...
Like if I'm four months into building an idea and someone just hears me talking about it and builds it better than me, then I don't really deserve to be in that business anyway. Like being afraid to share ideas means you're kind of not confident in your own skill set, which, or you might not be good at some skill, which you should know sooner rather than later. So if someone could like just squash me instantly, then yeah.
best that i know it quicker than than later so uh i never have a problem sharing ideas or saying what i'm working on or whatever yeah i love that outlook that you have and another chapter i really enjoyed in your book is about the chapter about happiness and i think this is especially important coming from you because you've been on both sides of the coin like you've been super rich and you've gotten broke multiple times and like so what have you seen that brings actual happiness to people
Yeah, it's interesting because first off, making money does provide happiness. Like those days, oh, I just sold a business. Here's a big amount coming into my account. I'm happy. That's something I worked on.
turned into money and that money buys you, you know, you have less worries about how you're going to feed your family, how you're going to support yourself, what kind of places you're going to live and so on. But of course we know that, you know, that happiness is short term and you tend to, people tend to just go back to whatever their level of happiness is. But wellbeing, which is different than happiness, it's sort of like more about contentment with life. Wellbeing I think comes from
Um, a, when you, you have a good sense of community, like you have good friends and good relationships and so on B when you have, when you're mastering something that you love, for instance, if you're, if you love writing and you master it, or if you love playing tennis and you're getting better and better at it, that's a good consistent way to keep wellbeing high is always improving yourself and freedom knowing that, um,
you could make choices that you love. So even if you make a lot of money, but you have to work 80 hours a week doing something you don't love, you don't feel free and you'll end up being unhappy and you'll end up talking to your therapist the whole time about like, oh, I need to make all this money or, you know, my family will leave me, but I've got to work, but I hate my boss and I have to work 80 hours a week at a bank and blah, blah, blah. So we all know that makes people very unhappy and, you know,
leads to all sorts of things. So if you could find ways to, you know, monetize the things you love doing and that increases your freedom, your mastery and your community, you're going to be a lot happier than someone who's working 100 hours a week doing something they hate, even if they do make a lot of money. Now, I've been very miserable, too, when I've lost a lot of money. So and it's not like I say to myself, I'm miserable. So now I better work on my friendships.
Like, yes, I do that, but I'm usually also panicking. How can I make money? And I just have to step back and say, well, I got to just write 10 ideas a day. I got to make sure I'm as healthy as possible. I got to make sure my relationships are good. I got to make sure I appreciate the freedom I do have in my life and keep on improving things. Like I used to, I used to day trade. And when I had a bad day day trading at the end of the day, I knew I was going to be miserable. So I would start playing games.
something like chess or backgammon online because they knew if I was getting good at those games and
Uh, then i'd still have that feeling of mastery even if I was miserable at the making money that day And that's actually something I want to touch a little bit more upon It's like when you were you know, you talk about in the book how you struggled with depression and suicide and you're broke How did you kind of how were you able to like climb out of that hole? Like look towards the positive and like rebuild yourself over and over again Yeah, I think
I mean, I just remember there was like a couple of times, but all years and years apart, I would be so not only just depressed, but scared. Like, oh, my gosh, I lost everything. I don't have I had I had millions and now I have zero. And it's my own fault. I always take personal responsibility. I would never. I remember one time.
I lost everything. It's the very first time I went broke and I was losing my home and I was scared to death. Like it was a, it was the, the.com bubble had burst. Uh, and I had cash. I wasn't like, I lost all this money on paper. I had cashed out. I did everything smart. And then I just, uh,
I started investing thinking, oh, this internet is not going anywhere. It's going to be huge. And I just, I didn't know what I was doing. This is 20 years ago. And I lost everything and then some. And I lost my home. I lost everything. And I was just so crushed and depressed and suicidal. And I remember my wife at the time was saying to me,
Uh, and this wasn't a bad suggestion. Many people did this, but she was saying to me, why don't you, maybe you should sue your broker. Like, shouldn't your stock broker have told you not to do all these things? And I said, no way. It's, it's, it's always my fault. I could not ever blame someone else because I,
Whether it's your fault or not, taking responsibility is definitely the best way to learn and the best way to avoid making those mistakes in the future. And what was I going to make from a lawsuit? There are some people who spend their lives in courts, and I've never been in a courtroom in my entire life, and I'm much happier as a result for that. But
The way I came back, I remember that first time it was when I was always taking these long walks because I had nothing else to do. And I ran into a restaurant supply store and I just saw this box of waiter's pads, actually, that I could buy for $10, 100 waiter's pads. And I liked the form factor of them. I liked how they looked. I liked that they could fit in my pocket. And so I started taking them out with me, these waiter's pads and writing these. I would read a little and then I'd write these ideas and I
Somehow just connecting the dots in my brain, I don't know, must have released dopamine or something like I was happier. And that would help me coming up with new ideas and then starting to execute them on them. That would make me happy even if I was still dead broke. And, you know, just if I felt like I was accomplishing things, I felt like I was getting smarter and I felt like I was starting to have.
ideas that could have impact in the world, even though most ideas were bad ideas. And I guess that would start it off. But also, very important to not be physically ill because you can't be creative if you're sick in bed.
Very important to not have toxic relationships. And because, again, you can't be creative if you're arguing with your spouse or friends or coworkers or whatever. So all of these things are important, like writing ideas down, not you know, you also have to have it's OK to regret the past, but you can't dwell on the regrets or anxieties about the future. Like you have to kind of surrender to what you can't control, like
Yeah, it's too bad I lost millions of dollars, but it happened. I can't go back in time, and I got to just focus on
physical health, creative health, emotional health. And every time I think to myself, oh, I'm depressed, I'm suicidal, I've just got to get back to these things. And that's the only way to climb out of this. And I will climb out of it. Now I've done it enough and I've seen other people do it that I know for a fact, every time, even now. So because I don't get a paycheck for anything I do, some projects work, some don't. Whenever a project doesn't work out and I'm
about it, I know immediately I just got to get back to doing what I do, writing ideas down, sharing those ideas, spending time with people I love and being physically healthy and, and, and trying to not control the things that are not in my control. Hmm.
Yeah. So just a couple of things I noticed is like you have that kind of extreme ownership mindset, like the Jocko Willink has, like everything is my fault, take responsibility. And because it is your responsibility, that means you could change it with your actions, like such as coming up with ideas and, you know, pursuing those ideas and also focusing on like the fundamentals, like you said, physical health, mental health and all of those things. And like slowly, slowly, like you build yourself up and you're able to like rebuild yourself, which is really cool.
Right. And think about all the times people blame other things. Like, let's say you bought a house in 2006 and then the housing crisis happens in 2008 and you're fired from your job. So you need to sell your house, but there are no buyers. It's very easy to blame. And by the way, this all happened to me.
It's very easy to say, oh, well, who would have just my luck? There's a housing crisis right after I bought a house. Well, it's not luck. Like, you know, you could have you could have not that you could have predicted a housing crisis, although some people did. But I'm not as smart as those people. But I didn't have to take such enormous risks when housing had just gone up like a huge amount. And.
You know, you have to take responsibility for everything or or like I lent money to a friend once and he never paid back. Well, this is a guy who needed to borrow money after he was robbed at an ATM at three in the morning after going to his after losing all his money in a strip club. So, yeah, you know that. OK, yeah, he's always nice to me. He's always a good friend to me. But maybe this is not the right person. Maybe this person is a little toxic in terms of lending the money.
So these are things that are my responsibility. Right. And so we just talked a lot about being broke. So I like to go to the opposite direction. Like, for example, you talked about Sarah Blakely, the founder of Spanx, who's a billionaire. You also had several billionaires on your podcast. Is there like a common thread between them or some traits you see that like the traits of successful like billionaires? I think one common thread is success.
is what I call ready, fire, aim. So Sarah Blakely, you mentioned, so she's the founder of Spanx. I see Living With a Seal behind you on the bookshelf. That's by her husband, Jesse Itzler. Great book, great guy. And she's a great person, does a lot for philanthropy. But anyway, she's founded Spanx, which is kind of a women's undergarment slash fashion line. And
She didn't know anything about fashion. She was selling fax machines door to door. And then she made one sample to see, and she goes pitch. I forget if it was Neiman Marcus or Macy's, but anyway, the person wasn't getting it. The buyer at Neiman Marcus wasn't getting it. And Sarah Blakely was like, come in the bathroom with me. So the woman came in the bathroom, tried on the Spanx, and it's like, this is great. I'll order $300,000 worth. Now, Sarah Blakely was a...
door-to-door salesman of fax machines. She did it. She couldn't make $300,000 worth of Spanx. She didn't know anything about manufacturing or anything like that. And so, but she said, so what did she say? She said, yes, of course. And so that's, she was ready because she knew the product she fired. Like she said, yes. And now she's got to figure out
how to do it. That's the aiming. And she found, eventually she found a manufacturer and did it. Richard Branson, he was 27 years old. He was, and he was a magazine publisher. And then he's like, oh, I'm also going to start an airline. He didn't know how to start an airline. He didn't know, he didn't know he was a 27 year old, you know, long hair magazine, music publisher. And so what does he do?
He calls up Boeing and he just asked to borrow a plane. So that's, again, ready, fire, aim. He had no money. He had no landing strip. He had no, you know, airports to help him. He just knew he needed a plane and he needed a landing strip. And he figured out the most creative ways to get them. And then he started running an airline and raising money and all that kind of stuff. It
The normal way to think is, oh, well, if I want to start an airline, I need to get some experts. I need to raise a billion dollars and on and on and on. And he was like, no, no, I'm just going to call Boeing and see if they'll give me a 747 for free. And they did. So so you can argue, too, that these people are very one thing in common is they're very good at persuading. And obviously, they're very creative persuaders because Sarah Blakely was able to convince someone
a major chain to buy her products. Damon John, similar thing with his FUBU clothing products. Richard Branson was able to convince Boeing to give him a plane. And you'll find that in common too with all these people that they're very good persuaders. They know their customer. They know how to persuade people.
usually because they're very heartfelt and passionate about what they're doing. They're also very curious. They have problems, and they figure, well, I should be able to solve those problems. Elon Musk, he had a problem. Like, oh, I'd like to be able to get to Mars. And he doesn't just sit there and write letters to NASA. Hey, please fund a Mars project. He starts reading about
and rocket science, and he calls up all the major rocket scientists. It doesn't matter that he has money. He didn't pay them any money to ask them questions about rocket science, but he became, he fired. He made himself an expert and started a company to SpaceX to send people to Mars, and then gradually built up. He even almost went broke in the process of starting SpaceX. So he did very much a ready, fire, aim approach. Yeah.
Yeah, I love that. I love to have like all these people have like this kind of action bias, like I'll do it and then I'll figure out like how to do it or I'll say yes to it. Then I'll figure out how to do it. Like similarly with the podcast, I said, you know, I'm going to email three authors and if they say yes, then I'll figure out how to do it. And like they all said yes. And I'm like, OK, now I got to buy the equipment. Now I got to learn how to edit podcasts. I got to learn how to record them. And it's like, you know, say yes to the opportunity, then figure out how to do it and hopefully it'll work out OK.
You know, but think about it, too. Like I see you've got a nice some nice equipment. You've got a good mic. I've got a good mic. We probably both have good video cameras and all the usual equipment. But some of my first podcast I just did on the voice recorder on my phone back in 2014 while driving in a car. And, you know, the audio quality wasn't as good, but they were podcasts. You don't really need much to do to choose yourself to do a podcast.
Totally. And another thing I like in your book is like age is not like a limit to choosing yourself. You talk about Stanley, who was 44 when he created the Marvel Universe. Ray Kroc, who was like a milkshake salesman in his 50s until he started that whole McDonald's empire. It's like don't let age be like a factor. And it's never too late to choose yourself.
No, it's very important. Like I'm 52 and I think it keeps you young when you keep choosing yourself. Like I'm probably, you know, like Rodney Dangerfield, I think he was in his forties when he started being a professional standup comedian, by the way. Yes. I've been paid to do standup comedy, but it's not like I'm going to make this my career. Like it's not really that much money, but you know, people were telling me like, what are you doing? Are you going to be telling jokes on a stage when you're 60? Uh, you know, cause you're going to have to do this for 20 years before you get good. And
And I'm like, well, A, I'm not going to take 20 years to get good. I'm going to do it faster. I don't believe in the 10,000 hour rule. And B, I could just do whatever I want. I don't care what people think of me. And again, when you choose yourself to do something, people in like, I could tell you, comedians don't like that I'm doing this. And
My old friends from other industries don't like that I'm doing this. Nobody wants to see you change. And nobody in an industry wants to see someone moving into their industry thinking that they're all cocky and, oh, I'm going to learn, figure this out. And I really wasn't cocky, but still cocky.
Even years into it, people were telling me, you can't – don't think you can skip the line. Like don't think you don't have to pay your dues. And just the other day, someone said that to me. And this is – I've been doing this for six years now. So it never stops and you have to be kind of – have the armor for that as well. Yeah.
Yeah, I think that's an important thing you just mentioned. When you try something new, there are going to be people trying to hold you back or say you can't do this or you shouldn't do this. And sometimes you kind of just got to ignore them and kind of go for it and just listen to your heart. Yeah, my next book is called Skip the Line, actually, and it's coming out in February. And it's about how to, if you find some new interest or passion that you really love and you want to get good at it, it's because so many people have told me, you can't skip the line. I called the book.
Skip the line. And the first chapter, if I remember correctly, the first chapter is you can't do this. Um, because so many people would tell me you can't, you can't do that. Like even when I was at HBO and I wanted to pitch a TV show, I was, my title was junior analyst programmer. Like I was a,
like the it department was the least important apartment department at HBO. We were in a different building even. So I was walking between the buildings and I ran into the head of marketing and she says to me, where are you going? And I said, Oh, I'm going to visit the CEO. I have this idea for a TV show. And she literally said to me, you can't do that. You can't just go into the CEO's office, which of course meant that I had to do it. And, um,
Um, I did it and I started working on my project and, uh, you know, you, I never listened to the people who, who they can't do it. That's why they're telling you, you can't do it.
Wow. Yeah, I'm super excited for your new book. Can't wait to read that. So definitely going to preorder that. And so I want to be respectful of your time here. So the closing question I always ask my guests is what are two books that had a major impact on you and how did those books change your life? Wow. I mean,
There's probably hundreds of books that have had an impact on me. And every day there's new, new books that have an impact on me. Um, but I would say there's a couple of books that I've read and I felt like my IQ improved as a result. So I always love those books. And, um,
Again, there's a lot of them, so I'm just picking kind of at random. But I would say on the nonfiction side, there's a book, The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley. But really, any book by Matt Ridley is good. But he basically goes through kind of the history of pessimism and why everybody's always pessimistic all the time. But kind of being on the side of optimism, whether it's for technology, for the economy, for society,
He goes over every statistic and every historical point, and it's such a smart book to show that optimism is usually an important quality to have. And in addition to that, I learned so much about technology and the history of inventions and history in general. It's a great book. Although, again, just looking at my bookshelf now, I could think of hundreds of other books of...
you know, it's how I found freedom in an unfree world by Harry Brown. Some of those books you have on your shelf, they're like, uh, uh, extreme ownership by Jocko Willing, 12 rules for life by, uh, Jordan Peterson. These are all, uh, great books. Um, and then on the fiction side, and the reason I mentioned the fiction side is to be a great writer, you have to read great writers and the best writers are fiction writers because they spend their entire career learning how to write. So someone who like, uh,
Take Jordan Peterson, for instance. Well, he might not be a good example. You have a book there, Grit, by Angela Duckworth. It's a well-written book. I know Angela. She's a great writer, a great thinker and scientist. But it's not like Grit is... Nobody would ever say, oh, Grit's as beautiful as a poem or Hemingway or whatever. So you want to read...
because she spends her entire time studying about grit and science and fiction writers spend their entire time studying writing. So my favorite short story writer and short stories are great because they're sort of in between poems and novels. And so language is very important as well as plot and structure, whereas language is not as important for a novel and, and plot is not as important for a poem, but there's a collection of short stories about this guy who's a drug addict and
and it follows him throughout his addiction. And it's called Jesus' Son, and it's by Dennis Johnson. And the short stories are so amazing that this is the book that's most commonly on the shelves of other writers. There's a book called The Writer's Bookshelf, and it shows the bookshelves of all these great writers, and Jesus' Son was the most popular book on everybody's bookshelf. Chuck, well, here it is.
Chuck, Chuck Palahniuk. I don't know how to say his last name. He, the author of consider this, he says he's read Jesus son over 300 times, which is probably around the same amount of times, uh, I've read, uh, uh, that book as well. So that's a great fiction book.
Wow, that's incredible. I haven't heard of that one before. So I just want to say thank you for bringing that up. And James, I bought that book when it came out. I think the year it came out was 1994. I bought that book the day it came out because I had already read a lot of the stories when they were individually in magazines and stuff. And I last reread the book about a week ago. Wow, that's incredible. I'm definitely going to have to as soon as the podcast ends, I'll be ordering that book for sure.
So James, this has been a wonderful conversation and I appreciate you taking the time to talk with us today. I'm sure listeners will like to learn more about you and like connect with you. Where's the best place for them to find you? Well, first off, Alex, thanks so much for having me on the show. I was super excited. Again, I'm a fan of all the things you do and I love books. I'm always happy to talk to people who love books and people could find me anywhere really. Like, I don't know. There's no best place. You know what?
I never really use podcasts to market anything I'm doing, but I am really proud of this next book, Skip the Line. And so if people want to preorder that, it's on Amazon and that's fine. And we're listening to my podcast. It's all good. Yeah, definitely. I'm going to preorder and I'll tell people about it. And James, so right before we end, I just want to tell like a little choose yourself story because –
so about like, I've been working for a podcast notes for about like two years now. And it's such a great job. I love listening to podcasts and I love learning. And I always thought like, you know, it's such a cool job to be able to talk to your favorite authors and like just so many interesting people. So I started applying to all of like these podcast places. And one of the places I actually like, um,
I emailed is like your team, like your producer, Steven and Jay and both like incredible guys. And they just said, you know, we don't really have any opportunities right now, but thank you so much for reaching out. You know, super nice team. And like all the other places I applied to, they didn't like get back to me either. And, you know, I felt like really down and like I was like kind of sad for a little while. And then I thought to myself, like, what would like what kind of books can I turn to for advice? Because like whenever I have a problem, I try to turn to a book to, you know, to help.
And, you know, I remember your book, like Choose Yourself. And I thought, you know, what would James do? And it's like he wouldn't wait for like the gatekeepers or he wouldn't ask for permission. He would just go out there and do it. And so that's kind of why I did with this podcast. I decided to like choose myself. And the best part is that I ended up working with you and your team and I got to start my podcast. So I got like the best of both.
And it's all because I read your book, Choose Yourself. It's all because you wrote it. And it's incredible to come full circle and have you on my podcast. And James, I would like to say thank you so much. You're responsible for creating this podcast. So it just means a lot to me.
And thanks for sharing that, Alex. Like, I didn't know. And yeah, I'm so glad it worked out. And you definitely made the right decision. Like, it's really great that you're doing this podcast and you have your Instagram page where you feature books and podcast notes is so great. And, you know, congratulations on everything. Thank you so much, James. And everyone listening, definitely get a copy of Choose Yourself. And I'll be having, I'll pre-order your next book, Skip the Line, hopefully having you back on the podcast in the future. Anytime.
Awesome. Well, thank you so much, James. Thanks, Alex. I appreciate it. This is a lot of fun. Hey, everyone. I hope you enjoyed this episode of The Reader's Journey. You can learn more about what's covered in today's podcast in the show notes below.
If you enjoyed this podcast, the best way you can support it is by subscribing and leaving a positive review. If you're looking for reading tips or book recommendations, head over to alexandbooks.com. If you want to join my reading journey, you can follow me on Instagram and Twitter by searching for Alex and Books. That's all for now. Thank you so much for listening, and I hope to see you soon. Read on, everyone.