Modern WisdomTreat Your Life As An Experiment | James Altucher | Modern Wisdom Podcast 138
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
90 min read · 18,390 words- 0:00 – 1:03
Subway stand-up: a high-discomfort experiment to sharpen one-liners
- JAJames Altucher
... when you exercise that creativity muscle, you're able to come up with experiments. How can I experiment to improve this aspect of my knowledge or life or whatever? So for instance, with comedy again, I was having a hard time coming up with one-liners. Like, I'm, I'm a public speaker for a long time, so that means I'm good at storytelling and humorous storytelling. But coming up with one-liners, it's one sentence that gets people to laugh, that wasn't an expertise of mine. So here's an experiment I did. Took a half hour. I went onto a subway and every stop I moved from car to car in the subway, and I would do standup comedy in the subway. And now no other person sitting in the subway wanted to hear me doing standup comedy. (laughs) So it was really difficult. It was really out of my comfort zone. Yeah. It's got to be a little uncomfortable- Yeah. ... because no one's ever done it before, so it's got to be uncomfortable. And I had to really tighten up my jokes super hard to get anybody to laugh, and that was an experiment that helped me improve my one-liners and, by the way, it also became a story I could tell, or a story I could write about.
- 1:03 – 2:46
You can’t think your way to passion—experience is the only test
- CWChris Williamson
One of the things that I was talking about recently was with an ex-Marines officer from the UK, and he was talking about his time over in Afghanistan. And he was a Somalia, uh, pirate hunter, Somali pirate hunter. Was, like, his second sort of, uh, career after he left, left work in Afghanistan. And, um, he was talking about just how different life is out there, and he said he was talking about singing the praises of travel and new experiences. And what you've suggested to there about the idea generation and how important it is, is you kind of don't really know what you like until you-
- JAJames Altucher
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... until you, you try to do something. And our sample size, the sample size of experiences that we're working with is so... it's such a fraction of the total potential number of experiences that you could have as a human, right? Like, uh, unless you try something, how do you know whether you do or don't like it?
- JAJames Altucher
Right. Like, people often think to themselves that they could think... uh, they, they can think their way to their passion. Y- there's no way to figure out what your passion is with just your brain. You have to do things. The- there's no thinking. You have to actually do in order to know, and that's critical. That's why, that's why travel is interesting. If you're, if you're the sort of person who benefits a lot from travel or, or, you know, if you enjoy traveling, travel to as many places as possible to see where you like, what you like to do, wh- what you like to do in each place. For me, I like to ex- experiment with these different ideas because again, I'm not gonna know until I do something. I'm not gonna know what it's like to write... Like, I could think b- uh, of a great plot in my head for a novel, but I'm not gonna know what it's like to write a novel unless I sit down and write it.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. One of the things this, uh, uh, uh-
- 2:46 – 3:08
School vs. real world: classroom skills aren’t life skills
- JAJames Altucher
Y- uh, uh, uh, but by the way, this... I'm sorry to interrupt, but this is a very important distinction because it's the difference between learning something in school and, and the real world.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JAJames Altucher
Because in school, no matter what you do, the thing you're most learning is... the thing you're most learning in a classroom i- are classroom skills. You can only learn real world skills in the real world. There's no other way.
- 3:08 – 5:30
Planning vs. pivoting: balancing structure with emergent opportunities
- CWChris Williamson
One of the things I've been thinking about recently, we're at the start of the, uh, new year, new decade, new year's goals. How do I relate my 25-year vision to my five-year epoch, to my one-year, uh, medium-term goals, to my daily habits and routines and blah, blah, blah. So I've kind of been swimming in the, the masturbatory world of personal development for the last little while, just 'cause I, I, I do quite like to look at that sort of stuff, and I speak to a lot of the guys on this podcast. And, um, certainly one of the things that it appears to be there is quite a top-down approach to how you should experiment with your life, that, um, getting distracted by shiny things and pivoting, as it's called, that's like, that's the, the Silicon Valley term for it, right? It's like, you can pivot with your particular brand direction or your particular goals. That should only be done at the end of particular review periods because you don't know whether or not you've squeezed everything out of the lemon in the interim. But the problem with that is, a lot of passions are emergent, not dictated. You know, like, your passions in life aren't, "I thought of this thing, and then I'll think about how to do the plan and the this, that, and the other." I could think it would be fucking great to do a podcast, which I did two years ago, but it wasn't until I did the podcast that I was like, "Oh, this is actually really, really cool. Get to talk to loads of interesting people. This is the sort of thing I want to do..." And then stupidly, at the start of last year, decided to linchpin myself to a twice-a-week publishing schedule. But I- now, uh, now, uh, now I want to do that, and now I'm like, "Oh, could I do three? Should I start doing YouTube videos? Should I start doing short form content?" Blah, blah, blah. But I don't know until I do that, and I do think a lot of the time we, we consider... I certainly know that I do, and the listeners might do as well, I consider the barriers, um, not necessarily the barriers to entry, but kind of. Like, the skill set that I need or the amount of planning and understanding that I need in order to be able to get an idea moving. It's like, "Oh, well..." You know, like you, the Trump thing, right? Uh, the Trump's card thing.
- JAJames Altucher
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
"Right. Well, if I sit down, if I, if I knock the back end of this week off and I don't go away this weekend, I could maybe sit down and begin to do a plan about what the brand name might be, and then once I've do..." Do you know, it's so pedestrian and so slow, whereas it seems like you're just pants off, gear out, jump into the pool feet first, here I am-
- JAJames Altucher
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... this is what we're doing.
- 5:30 – 8:15
Choosing experiments with the right friction: YouTube vs. TikTok
- JAJames Altucher
Yeah. Well, some things though are hard. Like, let's say from the podcast you want to say, "Well, I'm going to also make it big on YouTube." YouTube videos that really work and the YouTube channels that really work require a, a lot more production value than a podcast usually, uh, to succeed. And let's say succeeding means, you know, getting a million views on a, on a YouTube video, and may... And it also requires some consistency. You might have high production value for 50 videos in a row without any success, and then the 51st video becomes, like, wildly successful because you've started to find your voice on YouTube, and, and after that it's, it's all systems go. And you might say to yourself-... you know, you might, this is where you might think, "Okay, that's not an experiment I'm willing to try because I'm not that into it."
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- JAJames Altucher
Or, or, "It doesn't excite me that much. Yeah, sure, it'd be great to be, have a f- 50 million YouTube subscribers, but I just don't want to put the time in right now because I'm enjoying the time I'm doing on other things." So a lot of the experiments I described, I figure out, some make money, some of those don't. You kind of experiment on what will make money, what doesn't. And like I always think to myself, "Man, I wish I did, had more presence on YouTube." And I try, I experiment a little, but I can see it r- is gonna require more effort than I'm, than my personal compass is telling me to put in. That said, I just started experimenting with TikTok, which is totally different, and I'm kind of enjoying the creativity on TikTok, and so I don't really care how many followers I get or how many views I get. It's just kind of fun, and so, so if I have a f- a few free moments, I might try another TikTok video or something, 'cause it doesn't really require as much, as much effort, as much production value to create a, a decent TikTok video.
- CWChris Williamson
These low friction, low time and resource investment ideas seem to be the sort of thing that's quite fun to play around with. I have to say, you know, quite embarrassingly, I am, despite being a businessman/entrepreneur of one kind or another for the last 13 years, I, I'm certainly in the camp that I described, one that maybe moves quite sort of pedestrianally with things, very considered. Um, it's an attention to detail, but it's just, it's, it, it's borderline just, like, neurotic and, and, and, and very restricting when it comes to things like that. I certainly think if I was, um, you know, if I was able to move a little bit more towards that expedited, "Look, let's, this is, it's an idea. It's an idea. Just have a crack at an idea." Maybe d- "I wonder, I wonder what it would be like to do salsa dancing," or, "I wonder what it would be like if I learned to public spin. Oh, w- blah, blah, blah." And then just fucking go to a class. Like, don't think about, don't research-
- JAJames Altucher
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... which is the best class. Like, just go to the class.
- 8:15 – 9:43
Let your ‘inner compass’ decide what to double down on
- JAJames Altucher
Yeah, totally. Like, uh, a couple of years ago, I was, I took, uh, a bunch of ping pong lessons, by the way, and-
- CWChris Williamson
Is this so you could get good at spin?
- JAJames Altucher
I, p- potentially.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- JAJames Altucher
I was already pretty good, but I wanted to get better. And, um, I, uh, uh, I took classes in other things, and then I wanted to also, this was gonna be the year I was gonna sit down and write a novel. I've written a lot of nonfiction books. I hadn't written a novel. And then one day, I went up on stage and did standup comedy at a comedy club, and I loved it. And so, I, if I had made myself a goal, "Uh, this year, I'm doing a novel and nothing's gonna get in the way and I'm not gonna be distracted by shiny objects," I never would have tried standup comedy, and I loved doing it, and then it w- and it was a difficult skill to learn, but I decided, "You know what? I love this so much, my, my co- my inner compass is telling me this is a direction to go." So I said, "Okay, no novel, and I'm just gonna focus on this." And it's like five years later, I'm still... You know, actually, I'm headlining at a major club in New York City, uh, this weekend, so-
- CWChris Williamson
Congratulations, man.
- JAJames Altucher
... you know, thank you.
- CWChris Williamson
That's incredible.
- JAJames Altucher
Yeah, and so your, your inner compass kind of tells you which directions to go, and I, I gave up the ping pong classes. I gave up some other things I was trying. Uh, gave up writing the novel, and focused on this, on this one thing, without it hurting my business. I run an entire business without hurting my business, so, 'cause, you know, standup comedy's at night, and the business is during the day.
- 9:43 – 14:44
The intersection advantage: combining skills creates a unique offering
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. I think, again, having looked at the, the productivity world, and the listeners will be familiar with this, that they say your true calling in life is at the intersection of, uh, what you're good at, what you love to do, what you can be paid for, and what society needs. And trying to create this Venn diagram and map on this sort of weird polygon with all of the different attributes of whatever it is that you do and blah, blah, it does feel like kind of putting the cart before the horse a little bit with this stuff. It's like, look-
- JAJames Altucher
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
... like, if you just, if you just do the thing, if you just make the experiment, y- uh, reality will reflect back to you whether or not it's a good idea.
- JAJames Altucher
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
Your visceral day-to-day experience of it will tell you whether or not you enjoy it. The success that you have in it will tell you whether or not you're any good at it.
- JAJames Altucher
Right, because, because think about it. Like, let's take that Greenland experiment I did, I did earlier. The world w- didn't need me to do it, and, uh, I wasn't necessarily good at it. Uh, you don't really know anything until you start doing it and there's result- you get some feedback and you, and the feedback's good enough that you're like, "Oh, I wanna keep doing it." Look, here I am five years into the comedy thing. The world certainly doesn't need me (laughs) telling jokes to them, and the world ha- has, has not decided yet to pay me for it. So it's a matter of, uh, you don't really, you don't really know what that Venn diagram looks like until you're already there. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- JAJames Altucher
And then... A- a- and so you just have to kind of, like, try things and follow your heart. And this doesn't mean quit your job and only do things you love, it, but, but it does mean experiment a lot, experiment in some things that make money right away, experiment in some things that might make money 10 years in the future. By the way, it's the intersection of all of your interests where you'll probably find you make the most amount of money in the end. So you have to have, though, interests that you get good at, to have an intersection to those things, until you even know what's gonna happen at that intersection.
- CWChris Williamson
It's a unique offering, isn't it? You know, this is one of the, one of the things that I think about the totality of our experience, and as, as you get older, you know, I've just, I'm 31, I'm 32 this year, and I, I'm getting to the stage now where I'm able to actually s- genuinely say that I have, like, a curated list of different, different interests. 'Cause, like, at 25, you just get ragged around by life. It's like, "Oh, I found myself in a ping pong club, and then one time, I fell into a swimming pool and I swam for a bit." Like, you d- the, the, the, um...... uh, range, the broadness of your perspective of life experiences, there's not, uh, I don't feel like you have enough time to be able to piece together, "Well, this is a commonality between this and this," and, "Oh, shit, I actually know a guy that, uh, is a chef in a secret restaurant who actually plays ping-pong on the weekend and does all this." Like, you know, I, it's now starting to at least piece together where I can see some of the commonalities between these different things. And interestingly, I actually did an exercise today that was working out my core values, which I've never done before, and I found that to be really interesting to try and look back at what are the different things all of the, all the different stuff that I enjoy in life was involved with one of these five core values. It was, it was really interesting.
- JAJames Altucher
Yeah. And, and, and, you know, again, what happens is, is that trying different things, you're gonna... if you get good or even mildly good or even mediocre at, like, a bunch of different things that you've been experimenting with, you never know when the intersection of those things turns into something huge, even if the s- the pieces never made money for you or never got huge. But, but if everything's aligned with your core values, so that means the intersection should be aligned with your core values, it's gonna, it's gonna work out somehow at the intersection. So for instance, 30 years ago, I started writing every day. I didn't make a s- uh, I didn't make a single dime on writing until 11 year, 12 years later, and I didn't make significant money on writing until maybe three or four years after that. And, but also during that time, you know, about 20 years ago, I started investing professionally, and at first, I was very bad at it-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- JAJames Altucher
... and then I, and then I learned, I came up with ideas to, to learn and get better and better and, and better and better and more and more knowledgeable, 'cause I had a very untraditional path towards investing. Like, I wasn't, uh, uh, an MB, I never studied it, I had to really learn everything on my own. And after about 10, after about 15 years of that, I combined my writing with my investing skill and experience, and I, by that point, I had vast experience investing and knowledge, and I created an investment newsletter and that made me a significant amount of money. So, that made me far more money than investing ever made me, and that made me far more money than writing ever made me. Actually, by now, investing has caught up and made me more, but at the time, uh, th- writing, uh, an investment-related course, uh, made me a significant amount of money.
- CWChris Williamson
It's a unique offering, right? Who else-
- JAJames Altucher
Yeah.
- 14:44 – 18:34
Explore vs. exploit—and why “better” isn’t enough; you must be different
- CWChris Williamson
... is there that has that particular blend of experiences? It's one of the things that I... The nuance that I struggle with all of this is the explore/exploit paradigm again. So it's like, look, I don't follow, um, I don't, I, so I, m- for instance, my favorite podcast is Joe Rogan. One of the reasons I listen to him-
- JAJames Altucher
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... is because as far as-
- JAJames Altucher
He's great.
- CWChris Williamson
... I'm concerned, he's the best on the planet at asking... He's the best man on the planet at asking questions. I don't follow someone who is one-tenth as good as Joe Rogan, but also has nine other things that he is one-tenth as good as Joe Rogan, uh, as well. So what I'm saying is we follow people who are at the absolute peak within their ind... or we tend to follow people who are the very best within each individual section. And I know that there would be some people who would say, "Well, it's all well and good saying that you're going to experiment and that you can play around with shiny things, but you're gonna get out-competed by the person who has one fewer thing to do than you do and dedicates the same proportion of their time to it."
- JAJames Altucher
Right. But let's say, you know, let's say, you know, you found your Joe Rogan's your favorite for an interview podcast. So let's say someone came along who was a better interviewer than Joe Rogan. Uh, you probably wouldn't switch from Joe Rogan to this other guy because you like Joe Rogan and you like his style and you, you, you got to know his story through white, watching hundreds of his podcasts. But let's say now, uh, there was a great podcast that was a, um, th- they were telling a serial story about a murder mystery and, you know, they would call people up and it was a real, real true crime.
- CWChris Williamson
Have you listened to-
- JAJames Altucher
And they were calling people up-
- CWChris Williamson
Have you listened to Up And Vanished, James?
- JAJames Altucher
No.
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, man.
- JAJames Altucher
No, is it, is it good?
- CWChris Williamson
Up And Vanished is my, it's, it's qui- it's like maybe three or four years old. The guy, Paine Lindsey, the guy that created it, is just out of this world. This is a real-life 10-year-old missing person inquiry that had gone cold, and Paine Lindsey, this guy is just like, "Ah, I just fancy starting a podcast about this, this thing," and starts doing it, and then is investigating week on week as he's releasing episodes. So he's iterating live, releasing an episode about what happened in the last week, then there's a discussion forum, then he starts doing live Q&As, then he gets, like, legal experts in, uh, to do extra episodes in between these ones where they'll review the evidence, the case evidence, and then at the end of season one, which remember, this isn't, wasn't planned, this isn't like some sort of storyline with a fucking arc, at the end of season one, they're going to trial.
- JAJames Altucher
Wow.
- CWChris Williamson
Man, I'll link you to it once we're finished. It, it is phenomenal. But yeah, so we-
- JAJames Altucher
But this, but this is a great example of what I'm talking about. Like, I'm assuming that guy is a very good interviewer because he's able to interview enough to talk to witnesses and other people possibly involved in the crime and so on. So, he's a good interviewer, but he probably said to himself, "You know what? I don't wanna do an interview podcast. There's already Joe Rogan. There's already other people out there doing that. Even if I was better than them, nobody really knows if I'm better or not. Nobody could tell the difference between 20% better and, and 20% worse, so I'm not gonna do that. I'm gonna do something completely different." You can't, you can't succeed by just being better. You have to be different also. So, so that was the way he, he thought about doing a podcast, and that was the right approach. Like, th- and that's why he's much... If he had just done an interview podcast, he'd be like the other 500,000-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JAJames Altucher
... interview podcasts.
- CWChris Williamson
I get you. So what we've kind of swam around here is what we discussed before the podcast, something that I think you've been thinking about a fair bit recently, although I get the impression that you think about a lot of different things as well. So i- it, you, you, this may be like a, an eon away from you now. But am I right in thinking that you're working on, uh, how you can jump the queue with progress in life at the moment?
- 18:34 – 21:11
‘Skip the line’: redefining progress metrics and challenging the 10,000-hour rule
- JAJames Altucher
... yeah, because... Yeah, so we live in a... Like you, you mentioned before, like we're, we're, we're having... Because of this world of abundance, possibly there's this opportunity for an existential crisis, like, "Why are we here? What should we do?" And I don't think we're having that. Like just because there's less, you know, factory jobs doesn't mean we're struggling with our purpose in life. Most people didn't really wanna work in the factory anyway, but, uh, I do think that life is complex enough that we're switching careers and passions and interests very often in our lives. So I probably switched careers 12 different times in m- in my life, and I'll probably switch it 12 different times again, who knows? And you always have to say, "Well, but wait, I'm 40," or, "I'm 45," or, "I'm 60," or, "I'm 70." "How am I gonna possibly get started on playing golf now?"
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JAJames Altucher
"I'm never gonna be the best golf player in the world." So, so A, you have to... You have to figure out, well, what's, what's the metrics for success in my new interest, like why do I want to do this? And not as, not as a goal, but just like, how do I determine if I'm making progress or do I want progress? And then, um, if you do want progress, there's always a hierarchy. There are people who are a- the worst and there are people who are the best, and there's a hierarchy from, from first to last. So if you wanted to write a book, sure, you could write a book and never publish it, or you could write a book and self-publish it and have no sales, or you could write a book, self-publish it, have lots of sales, or you could write a book and get huge advances and sell millions of copies and so on. So you have to kind of decide where in the hierarchy, you know, y- y- you kind of want to be. And then no matter what it is, unless it's like, you know, you're seven years old and you want to be a professional basketball player, which is... You have to be realistic also, but let's say you have realistic metrics, then you have to decide... Everyone's gonna tell you, "You're too old," or, "You've got to do this for 20 years at least," or the 10,000 hour rule, "You've got to do it for 10,000 hours before you're in the top 1% of, of whatever hierarchy you're, you're joining," uh, whether it's professional this or, or professional ping pong or whatever.
- CWChris Williamson
Comedy.
- JAJames Altucher
And... Comedy. And, and my th- theory is, is that the 10,000 hour rule only works for very repetitive tasks, uh, like memorizing strings of numbers, for instance, or playing the piano, which has... Of, of course there's an artistic component of playing the piano, but a lot of it is repetitive, just playing over and over again, uh, the same pieces, and that's how you learn, and you get feedback. You do... You get feedback from an instructor, and then you play it again, you get feedback, you play it again. But my theory is you could skip the line
- 21:11 – 26:12
Differentiation through hybrid skills: comedy + rap, podcasting as a learning hack
- JAJames Altucher
with w- what I call the 10,000 experiment rule, which is... And there's various types of experiments you could do that are better than others, but essentially, every time you do an experiment in, in the area that you're interested in, you'll learn something, you'll get better, and you'll also start differentiating yourself and finding your own unique way of doing something that's different from everyone else. So for instance, um, you know, with, with, with comedy, there's a, a British comedian who I admire a lot. His name's Chris Turner, and he has what I call... He has skipped the line. So what he did was... H- he's been doing standup comedy. He's 27 years old, so nobody would say...
- CWChris Williamson
Okay.
- JAJames Altucher
Nobody in the comedy world would traditionally say, "Oh, he's 27 years old doing comedy? He should be the... You know, starring in every comedy club in the world." No, he's... They would say, "No, he's got to do it a few more years." But he also, if you give him five completely random words, he will do the most am-... Within seconds of thinking about it, he will do the most amazing freestyle rap on the fly. It'll be s-... And rap won't just be like rhyming the words. He'll ha-... It'll be so intelligent and so funny, and he just made it up and... And I've seen him do it with five random words, like I came up with the random words and he just did it right there. And now he's... Performs in any comedy club in the world that he wants to, because he's, he's not just a standup comedian. He also has this other skill. He, he differentiated himself. He skipped the line, 'cause he experimented with combining his interest in rapping with standup comedy, and that's given him this unique voice in the standup comedy world. Nobody else on the planet does that like he does.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JAJames Altucher
And, and particularly as intelligently as he does. Like even if someone else rapped, they can't do it as intelligently as he does. He's super smart. And so, you know, that's an example. And so for me, I've been able to skip the line somewhat. Instea- like I said, I'm p- I'm headlining at a... Caroline's on Broadway on Saturday. Uh, I've been able to skip the line because in part I've, I've made it a lifelong effort to learn how to learn, so I could pick up lots of different interests and learn very quickly, so I'll, I will start to use that technique on comedy, and then I combine my podcast with that, where I had some of the best comedians in the world on my podcast, and so I'm able to ask them any question I want. Like I'll think about the difficulties I've been having the past week in comedy, and let's say I have this world famous comedian on, I'll say, "Well, what if this, this, this, and this happened to you, what would you do?"
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JAJames Altucher
And now nobody else gets that opportunity to ask the top comedians very specific situations about how they would respond. I've gotten... I've... Every time they answer a question like that, it's like I skip months and months or years of learning in whatever it is I'm asking.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JAJames Altucher
And, you know, and then I've had other opportunities like that to... That, you know, has helped me skip the line quite a bit.
- CWChris Williamson
Are there some principles or some foundations to skipping the line that are universal or will be universally helpful? So I can think of some. One of them would probably be having some form of a platform online or some kind of notoriety that allows you to reach people. You know, that's enabled you to do certain things, p- get better podcast guests, um, y- uh, get when you release a GoFundMe to try and buy Greenland (laughs) uh, to garner a little bit of media attention, which then kind of becomes self-perpetuating and blah, blah. You mentioned about your ability learning to learn and stuff like that. Are there any other sort of foundational elements to this?
- JAJames Altucher
Well, I think foundational is come, exercising that creativity muscle and keeping the rest of your lives healthy, emotional, physical and so on. But when you exercise that creativity muscle, you're able to come up with experiments. What can I, how can I experiment to improve this aspect of my knowledge or life or whatever? So for instance, with comedy again, I was having a hard time coming up with one-liners. Like, I'm, I'm a public speaker for a long time, so that means I'm good at storytelling and humorous storytelling. But coming up with one-liners, it's one sentence that gets people to laugh, that wasn't an expertise of mine. So what I did was, here's an experiment I did. It took a half hour. I went onto a subway, you know, an underground-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JAJames Altucher
... train, you know, a subway.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JAJames Altucher
Uh, and in ev- every stop I moved from car to car in the subway, and I would do standup comedy in the subway. And now no other person sitting in the subway wanted to hear me doing standup comedy.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- JAJames Altucher
So it was really difficult. It was really out of my comfort zone. You have to be a little out of your comfort zone.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- JAJames Altucher
It's got to be a little uncomfortable because no one's ever done it before, so it's got to be uncomfortable.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- JAJames Altucher
And I had to really tighten up my jokes super hard to get, to get anybody to laugh. And that was an experiment that helped me improve my one-liners. And by the way, it also became a story I could tell or a story I could write about.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- 26:12 – 29:51
Designing measurable experiments: subway ‘late night show’ and short-form podcast tests
- JAJames Altucher
And in fact, I expanded it even further. I, I created the entire format of a late night TV show and I had on a guest, I had on a musical guest, all in the subway, you know, audience participation where I'd interview people, uh, sitting in the subway 'cause I was starting to get really comfortable with talking with people on the subway.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- JAJames Altucher
And so ... And you know, that experiment didn't really work in the sense that I, uh, you know, I put up a video of my, um, my late night talk show in the subway format, and you know, I could have kept doing that and made it like a real show, but, uh, I didn't really want to.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JAJames Altucher
But at least it was an experiment. I had to study the late night format, I had to get, get better at one-liners. Again, not great, 'cause you'll never be great down there.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JAJames Altucher
And, uh, uh, and it was fun. And then I have a story to tell from it. And look, if that first one was huge, that would have been a different story.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. It's, um ... The, the, uh, the main thing that I've got in my mind is, for the listeners, I'm gonna break the fourth wall for a second, uh, James' sound guy, the guy that sets up his sound is called Jay, and all that I've got in the back of my mind when you're talking about this subway thing is the nightmare that sound guy Jay would have with capturing clean audio.
- JAJames Altucher
Yeah. Well-
- CWChris Williamson
I've just got... I'm just thinking, like, Jay's, Jay's gonna have to, like ... J- James has decided to have this idea and poor Jay is there lugging along an entire sound desk in a desperate attempt to try and drown out the sound of the subway's wheels on metal.
- JAJames Altucher
I mean, the good thing is though, you could caption. So we captioned things and, uh-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, yeah.
- JAJames Altucher
... had mics on and, and so on. But it was, again, it was a fun ... 'Cause I did videotape it because you ... Uh, that's the other thing too, is you wanna be able to s- have some way of measuring your experiments. So I, for, so for instance, when I do comedy, I videotape it so I could watch it later.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JAJames Altucher
Uh, I try to do that every time. I don't always do it, but I, I try to do it, uh, because you have to be able to measure your, your progress. But a- a- a- again, like with, with anything, like even with a podcast, so I do two interview podcasts a week with, with guests. Usually guests who are somewhat celebrities, famous, whatever. But I'm experimenting with format too. So I'm trying ... I'm about to start trying a format that instead of it being an hour or two hours, it's 15 minutes where I just tell a little story and maybe there's a co-host who just asks basic questions, and then in 15, 20 minutes, it's done. So actually, we just did one. It was a little more than 15 minutes, but I had never done this before. Iran, the whole Iran situation happened over the weekend, so Sunday I call- ... I wanted to know more and I assumed my audience wanted to know more, so I called up a top, uh, military intelligence official, I got the complete breakdown about what was happening, and I ran that th- the very next day, on Monday.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JAJames Altucher
And I had never done anything. Like, that was an experiment. I'd never done that before, and that will be my most downloaded episode in the past two months.
- CWChris Williamson
Wow. How cool is that?
- JAJames Altucher
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
That's awesome. Yeah, the, the short form thing on audio is really interesting. I was having a discussion with Matt from Podcast Notes, who I know will be listening, and, uh, I, uh, I couldn't work out ... I, uh, like, uh, it's such a, a Wild West at the moment with this, but I can totally see a place for it. You know, N- like, Naval was doing those three-minute long podcasts that was a part of his, uh, How to Get Rich Without Getting Lucky, um, series, and you're like, "Who, who listens to these three-minute podcasts?" But then at the end of it, when he creates a three and a half hour omnibus collage thing of them all, you're actually like, "Oh, well, uh, yeah, actually that kind of makes a bit of sense."
- JAJames Altucher
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
So we've talked about, we've talked about Skip in the Line, we've talked about the fact that experimenting is an important part of that. What else, what else have you been thinking about to do with Skip in the Line recently?
- 29:51 – 35:51
Taking steps backward to move forward: ego-free strategies to jump hierarchies
- JAJames Altucher
Well, another thing that's important is to, to ... You know, whenever you're in a line or whenever you're trying to succeed at something, as I mentioned earlier, there's a hierarchy. There's, there's the worst going all the way up to the best, the best all the- going all the way down to the worst. And the best tends to look down at the worst and whatever. You, you know where you are in the hierarchy, we're, we're primates, primates tend to know where they, wh- where they are in the hierarchy. The benefit of being human is we could diversify our hierarchies a- as opposed to being stuck in one tribe. But, uh, uh, you know, there's all sorts of interesting techniques. So for instance, what if you're trying to succeed at something, but you take a step back and take a lower job, become the big fish in a smaller pond, but that allows you to then skip four steps forward when, um ... Because you become known as the best in this smaller pond?
- CWChris Williamson
What's an example of that?
- JAJames Altucher
So a friend of mine, uh, was a lawyer and he finished his law degree and he wanted to be in the CIA and, you know, the Central Intelligence Agency. And he, he, he couldn't for whatever reason, so he took an internship usually set aside for people still in their undergrad years, like their first or second year undergrad. Here he was, he's a lawyer, he went to grad school, got a law degree, whatever. He took an internship with the Secret Service, and they were like, "What are you..." The Secret Service, the Secret Service is the, um, part of the White House that protects the president, and it's like the guard. And they were like, "Why do you want to be in the internship program? That's only for teenagers. You're already a lawyer." And he's like, "Don't worry about it. I'm, I'm really interested." So they let him in, and because he was a lawyer, he was able to deliver legal documents to the president occasionally. And in order to do that, he had to get top secret clearance. So now he's the only intern ever who has top secret clearance. So he uses that to suddenly, uh, get a job at, I think it was actually, I think it was maybe the FBI or the CIA, I forget the exact details, but he got, he got a job at the internship program for the CIA because nobody in the internship program there had top secret clearance and was a lawyer. And then using that, in his spare time, he would listen around and he would look for what are opportunities. Oh, his boss's boss's boss was looking for some potential terrorist. He tracked, he had time, he tracked the person down, so now he pleased his boss's boss's boss. This guy said, "Who are you?"
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- JAJames Altucher
"Well, I'm an inter- I'm an intern, but I happen to be the only intern with top secret clearance and I'm a lawyer." So he got quickly promoted up to the CIA. So he moved much faster. He skipped the line to right where he wanted to be at the CIA by taking two steps backward each time. And that's another interesting technique, is to keep your ego out of it. Uh, sometimes you gotta take two steps backward to succeed four steps forward.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Such a good story. I wonder how much... Do you think that he had that perfect plan at the time? Because, you know, with hindsight, with the benefit of hindsight, it sounds like the most masterful idea in history.
- JAJames Altucher
I don't know if he had that plan at the time, although I will ask him. Uh, and, but I've known other people who have done similar things, and it, it always seems to be a pretty good technique that works. Like, uh, do you know Ryan Holiday and Ryan Holiday's books? So Ryan Holiday's a great writer, he's written several New York Times bestsellers. His last book, Stillness is the Key, uh, was number one on the New York Times bestseller list, it came out a few months ago. But he started off, he quit college and he started off, he just wanted to be an apprentice. He helped, he helped the author Robert Greene do research. So Robert Greene wrote 48 Laws of Power and some other great books. He, he simply did, was like a research assistant for Robert Greene, but he did really well at that. And then Robert Greene recommended to another company that Ryan should be their, um, head of, you know, uh, uh, you know, help run marketing. He ended up being so good at that he became the head of marketing, but then he took another step back, he became an intern for another writer, he learned a lot, um, he became, he, he started helping Tim Ferriss with his marketing 'cause his combination of writing i- internships with, you know, marketing experience, he helped Tim Ferriss. And then suddenly, he wrote a book, he knew all the right agents, he knew how to market it, he knew how to distribute it, and his books became bestsellers. So, you know, that was a great case of moving a couple steps backward to achieve his goal.
- CWChris Williamson
He's legit, man. Robert-
- JAJames Altucher
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... is a past, past Modern Wisdom guest and he's, he's, he's a fantastic guy as well. I mean, that is one baptism of fire I can imagine, especially seeing the size of Robert Greene's books. Like, 48 Laws of Power is m- m- th- they're 30 hours long, I think it's on Audible, something like that.
- JAJames Altucher
Probably, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
It's an absolute tome and a half. So there's, I can just imagine like a poor, young, slightly spotty Ryan Holiday like running around, going and getting, like going into dusty shelves, getting stuff down off the library.
- JAJames Altucher
Yeah. And- and he learned a lot. Like, and you could see the results of Robert Greene's teaching in the way Ryan puts together books. So it's a, it's a, it's a great technique. I mean, for me, I worked at a television company, HBO, and I might go, I wanted to make TV shows but I couldn't get a job making TV shows for HBO, I had no experience. So I took a job as a junior software programmer for HBO. I was just in the so- in the IT department, the software department, and but my foot was in the door. The, so I pitched to them, "Hey, why don't we make an original web show, uh, for the internet?" And they said, "Of course, that's a great idea." And so then I took that original web show, I showed how much traffic it was getting, and I used it to pitch an actual TV show and they gave me money to shoot it as a pilot. So-
- CWChris Williamson
Man, how cool.
- JAJames Altucher
... again, that was my, that was my way of skipping the line. Like, I was the only programmer ever in the IT department to be shooting a pilot for HBO.
- 35:51 – 39:29
Offer value with zero homework: the ‘10 ideas’ email and frictionless helping
- CWChris Williamson
Here's an idea that I've had recently. Um, so I'm starting to do some productivity and leadership coaching within some companies, uh, one's in Germany, one's in, actually in New York, um, so hopefully I'll be over later this year. Uh, and one of the ideas that I've been thinking about to just speak to new clients and to kind of just learn what it's like to give a speech to a room, I haven't done a massive amount of public speaking, was I was thinking of just cold emailing a bunch of big businesses who have high-powered sales floors, execs, you know, like real, real sort of go-getter companies, and just saying, "Look, do you want me to come in and just give a one-hour presentation on how everybody in this office can be more productive if they use a few tools and go about it with a, a couple of different, different approaches to the way that they view their productivity?" And I was thinking about that and I was like, well, that's, that kind of sucks. Like, I value my time at more than zero pounds per hour, but on the flip side of that, after doing a few of those, even if no one books me, even if no one decides to get coaching off me-... I'll have got a shitload of experience, and I'll have some cool stories, and maybe the boss'll need a, a guy that does a podcast in a couple of months time and a whatever, whatever.
- JAJames Altucher
Yeah. I don't think that's a h- I don't think that's a bad idea. I think one step easier and maybe better, we'll see, is study the company, study what they might be, wha- what maybe they could do better, d- do your 10 ideas thing and say, "Oh, uh, here's 10 ideas to improve your sales at this company. I'm not charging anything. I'm happy to come in, talk to you guys or not. Um, but here's 10 ideas. I, I, I'm a customer of your company, and I really love your product, but I see where things could be a little better. Here's 10 ideas you could just have for free, and they're uniquely catered to you. Uh, knock yourselves out. See you later." And just give for free. And you know what w- will happen is some of them are gonna respond to you and say, "Hey, we'd love for you to come in and see what we're up to and maybe talk to us more about this."
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JAJames Altucher
You know, if you write, if you write 20 emails like that, three or four will certainly respond and say, "Hey, why don't you come in and, um, hang out a little and, and, and w- we'll just talk about this."
- CWChris Williamson
You had a really interesting example on, uh, Impact Theory where you were talking about how there's quite a lot of friction even when someone thinks that they're doing something nice, and they say to you, like, I think your example was, "Hey James, like, I'd love to come and be your intern." But then there's actually a whole load of work attached to you.
- JAJames Altucher
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Like, 'cause now you gotta find this, this intern. "Well, what do you, what are you good at? What do you want me to, what are yous gonna do? Do you clean the floor? Do you check the emails? Do you respond to the Facebooks or whatever?" Whereas you were like, "Look, if you go to someone and you're like, 'Look, ready-made, here's 10 ideas of how I can help you.' Do you want me to help you?"
- JAJames Altucher
Yeah. Or yeah, exactly. Like, if you... Don't give them homework. Like, if they-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JAJames Altucher
If you say, "I could come in and speak, uh, to you," they gotta arrange that now. And, uh, instead, I wouldn't even say, "Here's 10 ideas I could do for you." I would say, "Here's just 10 ideas to make your life better or make your job better, or make your sales better, whatever. See you later. Nice, nice knowing you." And some people will respond. Like occasionally I get that. Occasionally some peop- somebody will send me, "Hey, I, I think here's 10 ways your, your website could be better." Or, "Here's 10 ways, here's 10 ideas for your podcast." And, and not just... People all the time throw 10 guests at me, but that doesn't help me, but...
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- JAJames Altucher
"Here's 10 ways to get, here's 10 ways to get in touch with them."
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JAJames Altucher
And that helps me a lot. That's, I've, I've met, I've had a lot of meetings where people have definitely offered value in their emails, and I said, "Okay, let's talk more about this."
- 39:29 – 44:24
Exponential networking: introductions as compounding social capital
- CWChris Williamson
I love that concept. I think certainly to differentiate yourself, we've been talking a lot about differentiating yourself, y- how can you use the uniqueness that you have as a person? And one of the most unique things that we have as a, as, as people is our networks, right? Like there's only you, there is precisely only you that knows all of the people on the planet that you know, and now you know-
- JAJames Altucher
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... one more because you know me.
- JAJames Altucher
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
Like, there's precisely you, and that is it. So the power of networking when you look at that is, i- is y- one way to out-compete every single other person-
- JAJames Altucher
Right, an-
- CWChris Williamson
... is to utilize your networking correctly.
- JAJames Altucher
And here's the thing what people don't realize. This is the difference between linear power from your network and exponential power from your network. So I can view my network as me... Let's say I know 100 people. I, there's like... Draw a line between me and all those 100 people. That's 100 lines. But now what if you draw lines between all of them, n- not even including you? So, so let's say you give your n- your connections to your entire network. So now instead of 100 lines, there's 10,000 lines because all 100 are connected to all other 100. And that's... When you introduce two people that you think could help each other, they're not gonna forget who introduced them.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JAJames Altucher
You're still there even though it's a little more vague.
- CWChris Williamson
Yep.
- JAJames Altucher
You're still in that connection there, and that's the real power of your network is when you give each e- e- each other to each other, and, and, and it's the same thing with ideas. You just gotta, like, view an idea as a component of your network. Give your ideas freely to people who you think could use them and who would be receptive to them, and give it in as a simple way as possible so there's no work on their part. So for instance, the very first time I got paid for writing anything, I wrote to a guy who was a writer, and I said, "Here's 10 I... I love your articles, but here's 10 ideas for articles I would love to see you write." And I described the articles completely, so it would be almost trivial for him to write the articles.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- JAJames Altucher
And, and, and he wrote back and he said, "These are great. Why don't you write the articles?" And that was the very first professional writing gig I ever had.
- CWChris Williamson
That's awesome. That's such a good example. Uh, yeah, as you were talking about how you're linking people in together, I was thinking about Kamal, mutual friend of mine and yours, and Michael Caju, who all of the, the listeners will know, CEO of Brute Strength, and I linked both of those in yesterday. I was like just chatting to Michael about something, and it just came into my head, I was like, "Fuck, you need to get Kamal on the Brute Strength Podcast." Linked them in, and now, now they're away. Michael, I sent... This is a cool one. So I had Aubrey on the show. Um, Aubrey Marcus is the most-
- JAJames Altucher
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... difficult man on the planet to get a hold of, by the way. But his assistant managed to get in with him, and he's in Austin, and Michael, my buddy, CEO of Brute Strength's in Austin, and Michael's, like, kind of into this self-development space as well. And him and his missus Adee, they do loads of stuff. And I was like, "It would be awesome. You should totally link up o- on it." Then they, he went, Michael went, and I think Michael's wife went and did a podcast with, uh, Aubrey's, uh, ex-missus, Whitney, and now, and I was like, it... The exponential thing. I didn't even link those two people in, but because of the first iteration of that, and then, you know, it's, it is a, and it's a good feeling as well. So-
- JAJames Altucher
It's, it's, it's, it's valuable because it makes you part of the club. It makes you part of the scene that everyone else is trying to build.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JAJames Altucher
And it's really important. It's an important skill in today's society to kind of not feel scarce about your network. Like, "Well, I don't want him knowing him. I only wanna know each, each of them." Like e- even the first time you and I spoke, I didn't know you were gonna have... I didn't know you knew Kamal, and I said, "Oh, you should have Kamal on your podcast." Like, just having a reflex of just anybody who can help anybody else-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JAJames Altucher
... just don't hold back. Like, it's a world of abundance, and, and don't be afraid of, of losing connections by giving them to someone else. That's not how it works. You don't really give a connection to someone else. You copy the connection and give the copy to someone. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Tha- that's a beautiful way to put it. Look, James, man, we've been going for forever. I've taken up so much of your day, but it's...
- JAJames Altucher
Um, it's been great. I, I... Thank you so much. This was a great podcast, uh, i- i- y- you're a great interviewer, and, uh, I was really happy to come on.
- CWChris Williamson
It's been an absolute pleasure. If the listeners want to find out more, where, where should they go to hassle you online or find out your stuff?
- JAJames Altucher
Uh, check out my podcast, The James Altucher Show.
- CWChris Williamson
Will be linked in the show notes below as will Choose Yourself! on Amazon. You know what to do if you've enjoyed the episode, like, share, and subscribe. Definitely go and check out James' podcast. Man, it's been awesome. Thank you so much.
- JAJames Altucher
Thank you so much, Chris. I, I will talk to you soon.
- NANarrator
(instrumental music plays)
Episode duration: 44:24
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