Modern WisdomTreat Your Life As An Experiment | James Altucher | Modern Wisdom Podcast 138
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
90 min read · 18,390 words- 0:00 – 15:00
... when you exercise…
- 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.
- 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-
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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-
- 15:00 – 30:00
Yeah. …
- CWChris Williamson
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?
- 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 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.
- 30:00 – 44:24
What's an example of…
- JAJames Altucher
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.
- 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."
- 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-
Episode duration: 44:24
Install uListen for AI-powered chat & search across the full episode — Get Full Transcript
Transcript of episode 1cLHVLncaQQ
Get more out of YouTube videos.
High quality summaries for YouTube videos. Accurate transcripts to search & find moments. Powered by ChatGPT & Claude AI.
Add to Chrome