Ep. 18: James Altucher on Saying No, Failing Better, Business Building, and More

James Altucher is an American hedge fund manager, entrepreneur, and bestselling author. He has founded or cofounded more than 20 companies, including Reset Inc. and StockPickr. 17 have failed, 3 have made up all the difference. He has published 11 books. Join us in this meandering conversation about just about everything. There are some gems to be found. Enjoy! Tim

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tim Ferriss?

  Ohayou gozaimasu. This is Tim Ferriss and this is The Tim Ferriss Show. To start off, maybe I'll teach you some Japanese. There's an expression in Japanese, "saishou de saigo." And "saishou de saigo" is something you can say when you do something once, you try it and you dislike it. There are other usages, but it literally means first time and last time. So "saishou de," like at the same time, "sai-go," the last time. So you could say, "saishou de saigo da." "Sore wa saishou de saigo da." Something like that. "Saishou de saigo." Hope you enjoy it, have fun using it, and you can confuse people at your will. Good use at the bar. Anyway, the episode that you are about to listen to is a fun one. It is with none other than James Altucher. And James is a friend of mine.

• 0:45Tim Ferriss?

  We've been friends for a number of years. He has an extremely eclectic resume. He's been a hedge fund manager, an entrepreneur. He's started multiple companies. By some statistics that I've heard, 17 out of the 20 failed, but of those that succeeded, he's made tens of millions of dollars, mostly in tech. He's published very widely and is a frequent contributor to publications, often in finance, so The Financial Times, The Street, Seeking Alpha, and so on. And in this conversation, we talk about a number of things focusing on saying no. How do you say no to the things in life you don't want so that you can get the things you do want? How do you say no to those invitations that come in? How do you say no to the wedding invitations?

• 1:30Tim Ferriss?

  How do you say yes to the big things by saying no to all the little things? For instance. So we focus on that. We talk about his business background. We talk about the economy at large, and this is currently July of 2014. Because he sits on the board of several public companies, he watches employment information very, very carefully, and we'll get into that. So it is a meandering, joyful discovery of who James is, what he believes. Many of his failures, many of his failings perhaps are weaknesses, and we all have them. So how do you manage to get around them and multiply your strengths? Focus on that output as opposed to... Constantly addressing your weaknesses.

• 2:12Tim Ferriss?

  It is a philosophical romp that I hope you enjoy. And as always, you can find all show notes, links, transcripts to these episodes at fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. Spell it all out, fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. And if you are enjoying these episodes, or enjoy this episode, would love your support to keep this thing going by going to fourhourworkweek.com/books. That is the Tim Ferriss Book Club, where I showcase roughly a book a month that has changed my life and really helped direct me. And there are only four or five up currently, but you can go check them all out, click through, it'll take you to Amazon or Audible, and that helps to keep this show running

• 2:56Tim Ferriss?

  and allows me to seek out the best guests possible and travel to do so if needed. It's a labor of love. I enjoy doing it, and I hope you enjoy this episode. Thanks for listening.

• 3:07Speaker 01

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question?

• 3:13Tim Ferriss?

  No, I would assume appropriate time.

• 3:17Speaker 02

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 3:26Tim Ferriss?

  Welcome to another edition of The Tim Ferriss Show, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for listening, as always. And I am so excited to have my friend, James Altucher, on the show. James, how are you, sir?

• 3:39Speaker 03

  Tim, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me on the show. It's really exciting. You've been like a rocket ship that's blasted into this podcasting world. I just want to know first, when we start, are you having fun doing it? Do you like all these podcasts that you're doing?

• 3:53Tim Ferriss?

  I am. I am having a good time. And it's really become, and started off as a labor of love, a passion project, just an experiment, like many others that I do, but I'm having a really good time with it. And I was always curious to see if I would enjoy being on the The interviewer side of the table as opposed to the interviewee. And it turns out that as long as it's just a conversation like this will end up being, I'm sure, I find it really fun. And there are so many things that I want to know, for instance, about you. But it's not so often that we get to sit down and I get to grill you like a Charlie Rose or someone like that. So it creates a format that allows me to dig deeper with people that I might already know or people that I don't know at all. So I'm really enjoying it.

• 4:37Tim Ferriss?

  And you are, you're on the other side of the planet at the moment, though. I just want to point that out, but it might not be obvious to those people listening. Why are you in Thailand at the moment?

• 4:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, basically, if you drilled a hole right now through the center of the earth, I'm like on the other side. So I'm in Thailand right now. And basically Claudia, my wife, is doing kind of advanced yoga training. And there's a specific place here in Thailand that she likes to go to. And I just tag along and hang out.

• 5:11Tim Ferriss?

  And you're, how are you managing the heat over there?

• 5:15Speaker 03

  It's, it's not good. Tim, I'll tell you, it's a big problem. I don't know what, like, you're, you're a traveler. So you're like the type of guy, if you go to Thailand, I'm sure you pick up on, I don't know, Mai Thai kickboxing or whatever it's called and become the world champion of it. I go to Thailand and like, if it's a degree over 90, I'm like, oh, I gotta, I gotta stay inside. I cannot go outside. And so I basically stay inside. It's like a chauffeur twice a day calls me for pad thai where I just like stuff myself. I've given up the slow carb diet while I'm here because when in Thailand, you have to eat pad thai. It's my one rule.

• 5:55Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, the go carb diet.

• 5:57Speaker 03

  Yes, exactly. It's the go carb diet. And then, and then I write and I read while I'm here. So that's it. I went, I went to the beach once and I'm 10 feet from the beach right now.

• 6:12Tim Ferriss?

  Man, I want to give people some context on who you are and I hardly know where to begin because you've had your successes, you've had your ups and downs in many different worlds, including of course tech, I mean you have a background in computer science, in investing, in building your own companies. Maybe we could start with, and I'm sure we'll talk about some of the outtakes, not just the highlights, but what are the successes that come to mind in business or investing that you could share with people?

• 6:44Speaker 03

  Sure, sure. And like you said, a lot of it's been sort of ups and downs, but I had a company in the 90s, it was a software slash web services company that I built up and sold. We did the websites for every entertainment company, and in particular, every gangster rap label, we did the websites for them because if anyone saw my picture right now, they could tell I'm totally gangster rap. So I sold that when I saw my little sister who was in junior high school at the time was studying how to make a website and I figured that's the end of this industry. And it's true, that entire industry died, or transformed

• 7:29Speaker 03

  within a year or two after that. And then I was a venture capitalist for a while, I started a hedge fund, I started a fund of hedge funds, then I created another business called Stockpicker.com, which I sold that business to TheStreet.com. Then I've been an angel investor for quite a bit, I'm invested in about 30 different companies, I'm on the boards of both private and public companies, I've written a bunch of books. But also along the way, I've been really, really stupid. I've been like... I've been like a drunken rock star on steroids. I would think to myself, okay, that's it. I'm done as a human. My goal as a human is finished. Now I could do whatever I want. I'm finished being a good guy and I could do whatever I want.

• 8:14Speaker 03

  And always I would immediately go broke, like total. After making millions of dollars, like enough money to like save the planet. I would then immediately go so broke. It was like I could have easily checked into a homeless shelter and nobody would have questioned it. And fortunately, I've been able to kind of take some inventory. I guess you would call it, or that that sounds a little 12 stepish, but of course I've been able to kind of figure out what was going on with my life and, um, you know, and and get things together. And now now for quite some time, things have been going very well. So so I'm happy.

• 8:48Tim Ferriss?

  You've you've made millions, then lost millions, then made it again, then lost it again, then made it again, then lost it again. Of course, it's very common to talk about or write about ways to make money. But I I find studying the losses really fascinating. What exactly is going on here? Is there are there recurring patterns? Are there any particular symptoms that you're about to lose? The money you've made. If you if you go back and do an autopsy on this this up and down roller coaster. What are the takeaways? What led to the losses? Are they the same elements recurring or are they different things?

• 9:26Speaker 03

  I think it's the same elements recurring and I, um, you know, I I write about this a little bit, but I think essentially I lose track of my health. And I don't necessarily mean like, oh, I stopped going to the gym and then I lose millions of dollars. I mean, all types of health. So I start eating poorly. I start, you know, drinking or doing whatever. I start emotionally, I start, you know, not spending time with people who are necessarily good for me. I mean, I do everything that's like almost cliche bad behavior. And then and just also I give up on trying to come up with new ideas, give up on trying to innovate. So all the things that I did while I was successful, like it's almost like you're training for the Olympics.

• 10:08Speaker 03

  And then you decide, okay, I'm just gonna completely let everything go now. Like, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna do this until I die, like. Just be a pig and I was a pig in every way. So I stopped being creative and I stopped being grateful for what I had. I I would automatically assume. Oh, I'm a I made a little bit of money, so I must be a genius. Instead of being like really grateful and respectful of, you know, this money I made and this luck that I've had and. You know, just letting it all go to hell. So so the way I would reverse it and this took kind of. I I went broke enough that it's like statistically significant that I could analyze it. So I I basically, I basically said, okay, I've got to get.

• 10:49Speaker 03

  You know, and I've talked about this with people before, but uh I I had to get. Physically healthy, emotionally healthy, be around people I love and respect. You know, they say there's a saying you're the average of the five people around you. I had to make sure it was a good five people. I had to keep being creative and innovative. And so every day I I I try to create and I try to share even in the smallest of ways. Uh and every day I try to be grateful for for what I have for, you know, gratitude and abundance, I realize. Are the same thing. They seem like they're opposites almost, but like when you're. Abundant in something, it's also good to be grateful for that same thing, or else there's a good chance you could.

• 11:29Speaker 03

  You could take that abundance for granted and lose it. And so what would happen is I would take my abundance and not even talking about just money or anything. But any sort of abundance like relationships or money or whatever, and I would take that abundance for granted and. You know, I would start taking risks with it that I never would have taken before and. That would, I'm not a good risk taker. You would think an entrepreneur is a good risk taker, but the key to entrepreneurship. And really the key to success is to reduce risks. Cause life itself is risky. Everything we, every day we wake up. It's it's amazing. We made it through the night like being born is like. A drag. We we went through that tunnel and we survived a bloody mess and were hit by a doctor and then we're alive.

• 12:13Speaker 03

  And then after that, everything is risk. So so the key to success is mitigating that risk. Uh so you can kind of rise above the competition and and enjoy the fruits of of not taking risks.

• 12:25Tim Ferriss?

  No, I agree. And it's always fascinating for me to hear how people define risk. Because if you look at, say, the covers of most business magazines, you see profiles of whether it's Zuckerberg or other titans of industry. And they're so often praised for being risk takers or throwing caution to the wind and throwing a hail Mary with everything they have. And while those make for good stories, I feel like the vast majority of top performers that I know in Silicon Valley, for instance, despite any outward profiles claiming that they're these rash and brash risk takers are actually very, very expert at mitigating risk.

• 13:09Tim Ferriss?

  Like you said, they're really good at quantifying the knowns and trying to quantify the unknowns, even if it means they're vaguely correct and not precisely wrong, which I think is one of the issues with Wall Street on some level. But for you personally, and I do have a question about one of the companies that you're on the board of in a second. But speaking from my own personal experience, you have all these external risks and you can address those in various ways. As a writer, and you're a very prolific writer, for my workflow, for me to be productive, for me to enjoy the work that I'm doing, I need to apply constraints and find rituals and routines that work for me. And when I stray from that and find myself improvising on a daily basis,

• 13:54Tim Ferriss?

  it's usually when I have a downward spiral of some type. When you're operating at your best, how do you structure your days or your weeks? What are the rituals or routines that help you to create your best self and best performance?

• 14:07Speaker 03

  Well, it's interesting because routine is a way to mitigate risk. Like if every day you say to yourself, "Oh, I'm gonna do something totally wild and different today, and at the end of the day, I'm gonna write about it." You might not do anything fun during the day or interesting, and then you might not be able to write at all because suddenly your mind is going in a million different directions. So if you're trying to get, you know, something done... Of course, you don't want to be boring and do the same thing every day. You don't want to be like me necessarily and not go to the beach today. But you you do what I do is I always make sure I sleep at least eight hours a day. It's one third of your life. Sleep is so important for rejuvenating the brain, for rejuvenating your whole body,

• 14:52Speaker 03

  for uh releasing all these endorphins and oxytocin in the body. So you're a generally happy person and and able to, you know, make decisions correctly. So I I always sleep very well. I then um I read. So I love to, before I write, I love to read and get inspired by four or five different writers who are who I consider to be great writers. Uh and I I'm reading different writers all the time, but each day I'll diversify a little and read four or five different writers. And then I uh start writing. And then once I'm finished writing after two or three hours, then my di- day is more free. Like then I could feel like, okay, I did the main thing I wanted to do today. I might do some business.

• 15:33Speaker 03

  I might have fun, but that's essentially the main routine of the day that I have. Then after that, I try to figure out other ways to be creative or improve or whatever. I sort of feel like I I try to get this mindset. I want to improve, you know, one percent a week, which seems like a small amount. But if you do that, it results in enormous improvements over the course of a year. And I I've really seen that by by doing this strategy and and keeping healthy in the way I described earlier, I feel like my life has changed a hundred percent every six months since I've started this approach. Like, and it's amazing the changes that have happened. Like, I've been really grateful for these changes, but there hasn't been a six-month period where my life hasn't completely changed.

• 16:18Tim Ferriss?

  What do, just to to dig into the specifics, for instance, today or yesterday, what were the the the writers that you read to inspire you prior to going into your own writing?

• 16:29Speaker 03

  Well, I read a little bit of Nassim Taleb's Anti-Fragile. It's a very good book.

• 16:35Tim Ferriss?

  Great book.

• 16:36Speaker 03

  I read, I don't know how to pronounce his name correctly, but Khalid Hasini, The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns. These are excellent novels. I read a book called Brain Rules by John Medina, who's kind of discusses how to keep your brain healthy. I'm very into games, so I always read chess books or chess strategy just to keep fit with that. And I reread The Power of No, actually, preparing for this podcast because, you know, I wrote it a while ago. And so you ever have that feeling like when you wrote one of your books and then it's published and people are asking you questions about it? And you're like, did I write that? I can't, I can't even remember.

• 17:22Speaker 03

  I handed that book in a year ago. I don't remember what I wrote.

• 17:24Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah.

• 17:26Speaker 03

  I reread that a little bit as well. And it was pretty good. I liked it.

• 17:31Tim Ferriss?

  Much better than any other possible response. The, just to, I'm going to come back to, obviously, I want to talk about The Power of No because there's just the hilarity of all the synchronicity that came together when we were exchanging emails, I think is amusing. But when you are reading these various books, you mentioned four or five books. Are you waking up and then immediately reading a little bit of each of these books? Or do you read one per day? What's the, I'm trying to figure out what the kind of recipe is, your general routine as it applies to ingesting this information. Because I find that how people manage ingestion of information

• 18:12Tim Ferriss?

  is very, it's very telling, I think, about how they manage other things. And in some cases, I think that it's very highly individualized also. So there's some people, for instance, I know venture capitalists who don't read at all. I mean, all they read is business plans or decks, investment decks. Then there are the opposite. Then you have hedge fund managers who read a book every two or three days, but it's one book at a time, never more than one. Then you have people who juggle many, many different books. So I'm just curious how you typically go about it prior to writing each day.

• 18:46Speaker 03

  Well, well, you know, it's very interesting you use the word ingest because I really do think. You are what you eat. And so a lot of people read the news, for instance, and so. I think the news is the worst form of junk food you could possibly ingest. Like, it's it's commentary on events that are almost certainly not important. And will have no effect on any decisions you make in your life. It's hastily put together by mediocre writers who were set who who were basically, you know, I've worked for newspapers, so I know what happens in the newsroom. You're basically told, find the thing that's gonna scare people the most. And write about it in as scary a fashion as possible. It's like every day is Halloween at the newspaper.

• 19:31Speaker 03

  And you you I so I so I avoid newspapers, I avoid like web surfing. You know, there's a few bloggers I read who are who are good writers. I always go to your blog, for instance, I'm not just saying that, but you know, there's. There's your blog, a few other blogs I I.

• 19:45Tim Ferriss?

  What are the what are the other blogs? Just uh just to to name those, I'd love to hear your your shortlist.

• 19:51Speaker 03

  You know, I like Steph Godin's blog, just for his, you know, he he's gotten shorter and shorter in the post, but they're oh, you know, he's always a smart guy. You can see the intelligence come through. I like uh uh the blog as is is funny. Uh so I like humor type of writing. Uh David Thorne has a has a, he used to blog, he doesn't blog as much since his books have come out. But he had a humorous blog, but mostly I I don't even really read that much blogs. I I read, I really like to read. Books that have been, they're like the heavily curated thoughts of good writers, because because as you know, a book is not just. A blog post, it's like a blog post that's been rewritten a thousand times.

• 20:35Speaker 03

  Combined with a hundred other, you know, blog posts. This is even a poor description of a book, but it's a book is just heavily. Curated and edited and thought out, and I like to start off with fiction because. These are the best writers, so that I make a distinction between, let's say, literary fiction and like genre fiction. I like, and in literary fiction. I like good. I like fiction that's so good, you almost wonder to yourself, huh, did this, is this nonfiction? Did this happen to the, to the author? Because, because the style that I write, it tends to be nonfiction, but people wonder whether it's fiction. Like, it's so outrageous, they wonder whether it's fiction.

• 21:12Tim Ferriss?

  Like the Yasser, like the Yasser Arafat story.

• 21:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, nobody, everybody was convinced I was lying. And, you know, except for, you know, some people who would then make jihad threats against me. But most people were, were convinced I was lying, which I wasn't at all. And I've never lied in any, in any quotes. But, but it's because I read these, you know, there's a certain class of authors who, um, write largely either first person or so close to nonfiction that you can't tell the difference. A classic example is like, uh, and this is an older example, but it's like Ernest Hemingway writes in this sort of, uh, almost nonfiction style. And, uh, you know, more recent examples are short story writers like Raymond Carver, or Dennis Johnson, or, um, Amy Hempel.

• 22:00Speaker 03

  Uh, there, there's a lot of writers I read, or these books I'm reading right now, The Kite Runner is almost in that, in that genre. Or James Frey is in that genre. So I always start off with really good fiction. The reason fiction also, as opposed to nonfiction, with nonfiction, you usually get a writer who is very good at what they did. So let's say someone was a very good, uh, you know, physicist. So he's a great physicist, not necessarily the best writer. So you'll, you'll read his book for the physics, but not for the writing. So I always start off with somebody I'm reading for the writing. And then I'll start reading, you know, interesting nonfiction.

• 22:38Speaker 03

  And there's a class of writers, let's say, you know, Nassim Taleb I mentioned earlier, Stephen Dubner, who was on your podcast, who wrote Freakonomics. You, you know, with your four hour books, Malcolm Gladwell. These are writers who have, it seems like they've both studied writing and what they've done. So, so Dubner's written a, a, a bunch of very good books even before Freakonomics. And then he teamed up with Stephen Levitt, who, The Economist, and they wrote these great books together. Nassim Taleb, you could see, you know, his first book, nobody's read, it's called Dynamic Hedging. It's about options trading. Very, very technical, hard to read book, impossible to read book.

• 23:19Speaker 03

  But then you could see in Fooled by Rant and this and The Black Swan, he's like, oh, this writing thing is interesting. You could see his, his process, how he got better as a writer. And now Anti-Fragile is a, is a very well-written book. Same with Malcolm Gladwell, he, he's, you know, his, his latest books always, uh, I really loved Outliers, for instance, is a, a well, very well-written book. So, so I focus on nonfiction where the writing itself also stands out. And then, um, you know, that, that's basically what I ingest. And usually at some point, I'll start to get an idea for a post while, while I'm reading. And I'll just, I'll get up and start writing when, when, when I have this kind of, uh, I'll, I'll always get inspired at some point while I'm reading.

• 24:04Speaker 03

  And, uh, I, I take notes while I'm reading on things, on ideas that I have. And usually I, I write down like 10 to 15 ideas and then I get up and start writing.

• 24:14Tim Ferriss?

  And when you write, I really enjoy your writing and I think part of the reason I enjoy it is that it's, it's so, you're very good at the lead, number one. I, and I think that having heard that you're reading fiction in some ways to, to prime the pump makes perfect sense now in retrospect. Because you, you, you always have, you have very powerful openers. You're really good at grabbing attention, but then you're very, you're very vulnerable in your writing. And I think much more so than I am. And I'd, I'd love to ask you, number one, why do you think your writing has grown so quickly? Or your, the blog, let's just say, in popularity? And I'll just mention a couple of things.

• 24:56Tim Ferriss?

  So what are the, what are the reasons that it's taken off in the way that it has, which I congratulate you on, I think is very well deserved? And then the second piece, and this is maybe psychoanalyzing me a bit, but one of my most successful posts in the last year was called, uh, Productivity Hacks for the manic depressive, neurotic and crazy, and then in parentheses, like me. And I very rarely do that type of post because I feel like. If I'm not prescriptive enough, it's sort of a self-indulgent exercise. It could become a self-indulgent exercise where I'm sort of airing my concerns and worries and frustrations, but without handing people a next action. How do you think about that?

• 25:37Tim Ferriss?

  How are you able to be vulnerable while helpful at the same time? And maybe that's a silly question, but it's something that I struggle with because I want to be vulnerable. I don't want people to put me up on a pedestal, some type of superhero. But I worry about what I've seen some writers succumb to, which is really just airing their frustrations or problems without helping their readership. And I'm not putting you in that category, but how do you think about these things as you're writing or thinking of writing a piece?

• 26:09Speaker 03

  Well, you know, and I think about that a lot because I think the goal should be, for any writing, yours, mine, anybody's, both a combination of entertainment, so this is how you keep their reader interested, and educational. So you have to provide some value. So when I become vulnerable, first off, two things happen. One is everyone's interested from an entertainment perspective because when I'm vulnerable, it's not like I'm saying, "Oh, my kitchen sink didn't work today. This is such a drag." I'm saying, "I lost a lot of money, and then my dad died, and I couldn't help him."

• 26:50Speaker 03

  So I'm saying something that's really, you know, something that's been personally emotional and sad for me, but also something that a lot of people at some level can relate to. Not necessarily the amounts or the type, but everybody's gone through a period where they've been on the floor, where they've been depressed, where they've been lonely, where they've been like, "Oh, my gosh, how, this just didn't work out. I failed again. How am I going to be able to face everybody who expected that I would succeed?" So I try to make the vulnerability, I try to really go a layer deeper, which is find these areas where I have been hurt.

• 27:32Speaker 03

  There, I'm pretty sure other people have been hurt in the same way. Whether it's financial or emotional, like when you, you know, for instance, a common thing is. We all have problems in relationships, so I have everybody's head, so I'll write about that. Or, you know, family relationships, or how do you deal with? A boss or colleagues that are just horrible to work with. So I always tried to find stories inside myself that have been really difficult for me to deal with. Eh, like, super difficult, like, not just, like, oh, it was very, eh, you know, I, I didn't know how to play basketball, so. I took lessons and then I got great at it. I tried to find things that were.

• 28:16Speaker 03

  Super pain points for me that I still remember as like painful. Because then I'm sure other people will remember their pain points. We all have, like, let's say. Two or three dozen, like, massive pain points in our lives that, uh, everyone can relate to. And I, I tried to basically write about those, and then I tried to write about how I attempted to recover from it. So I never give advice, but I say what I did. And what worked for me, and maybe that could work for others, and I find that over time. For my readership, I can see it's, it's worked for others, so, so that's made me happy and. I bleed, I, every article I try to bleed, but then I try to, to cover up the bleeding and show how I did it.

• 29:01Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's, it's a very uncommon combination of experiences and. Sort of literary style for me, reading your stuff, because you have a lot of investment shops, you've been. An entrepreneur and you've built companies and sold companies, you're on the board of a, you know, billion dollar revenue employment agency, we'll come back to that. Uh, yet at the same time, you're able to be vulnerable and it helps you as opposed to hinders your career, so to speak. Which I think is, which I think is awesome, yeah.

• 29:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, everybody thought it was gonna destroy my career, like, how can you say that? Like, they would say, people would tweet, this is like wa- watching a, a train wreck in slow motion. And then the exact same person would write to me and say, uh, don't tell anybody, but that happened to me also. And so, like, like, that happened across the board, and everybody was like, how can you? Do this, no one's ever gonna talk to you again. But I've found, since I've started writing in this style, I've had more opportunities than I could have imagined. Like, every, every day now, I have to say no to opportunities because it's too many. I just like to write. It's been great, some of the opportunities that I've said yes to have had, you know, helped me out a lot and I've been able to help others. And I always make sure, like, are you sure you wanna do this?

• 30:13Speaker 03

  Like, I've also messed up pretty badly in some cases. And they say that's exactly where we want, you know, your advice, or to bring you on the board, or you as an investor, or whatever. Like, I've started a lot of different companies. You know, we've talked about some of the successes, but I've failed at, uh, many more. So it's given me the full range of experiences. And fortunately, I'm like one of the only guys who's been totally honest about it. So people know I've got the full, I'm unique, I've got the full range of experiences. Most other people who, let's say, write about entrepreneurship, write about their successes, like, oh, how I made a billion dollar company. And, okay, well, if I'm at a startup, I don't necessarily need the advice of someone who built a billion dollar company.

• 30:55Speaker 03

  I need to know from someone who's failed at building twenty other companies and how he overcame that to then build a successful company.

• 31:02Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 31:02Speaker 03

  So again, people related and became, they're like, oh, I feel like I know this guy, so that I'm somebody comfortable they could talk to about their own problems.

• 31:12Tim Ferriss?

  No, I definitely, I mean, I think that everyone has, everyone has failures, stated or unstated, and everyone has skeletons in the closet. So if they at least know which skeletons they're dealing with, and you've been transparent about it, I'd imagine that lends a lot of, of credibility and they trust you. Now, you mentioned one thing, that's a good segue, and that is saying no. So this is something that everyone struggles with, uh, at a certain point, or at many points. It's something that I've struggled with. And, you know, hilarity of hilarities, the irony of The Four Hour Work Week is that when the book came out and it had an initial print run of twelve thousand copies, no one expected it to take off.

• 31:49Tim Ferriss?

  It takes off, has become this, this massive success, and it's made it all the more important that I actually follow the rules and techniques and principles in the book, including artfully saying no.

• 32:04Speaker 03

  Yeah. Let me ask you a question about that, because, like, when people meet you and they, let's say you're working pretty hard that week, do they say, oh, you're working a sixty hour week, you're not working four hours this week?

• 32:15Tim Ferriss?

  You know, the four hour jokes are never going to end. I think the most common misconception, of course, and you know, the reason that people in finance use the book, the reason that people, some of the top VCs and hedge fund managers and others use it is not because they want to work four hours a week, but because the objective of the book, first and foremost, is to provide a toolkit that allows people to maximize their per hour output. And then if they decide to, let's just say, get 40 hours worth of work in four hours, or do the same 40, or do 80, just at a higher level of competence, where they can be more effective in competing against others, for instance, then it's up to them. But I will get four hour jokes until the day that I die, and that's just the tax that I'm going to pay.

• 32:58Speaker 03

  That's funny.

• 32:59Tim Ferriss?

  But the, what I've found for myself, and you know, when you mentioned that you'd written this book with your wife, called The Power of No, and you explained the premise, I was shocked and amused, because as I mentioned, I had been and have been collecting notes for about a year, here and there, on saying no, and how other people say no, and how to say no, because I think it's such a critical skill, and it's only becoming more and more necessary and important with instant access and social media, and all of these different channels through which people can get to you, or anyone for that matter. So what, what led you to write this book? Because of course, I was like,

• 33:44Tim Ferriss?

  oh, well, that's fantastic. If I would want anyone to write it, I mean, I think you would be at the very top of the list. So I've been-

• 33:51Speaker 03

  We should have, we should have interviewed you before we started writing. You had, you had all the notes.

• 33:56Tim Ferriss?

  But what led you to, to write this book? Because I mean, I have, I have a lot of questions. We'll get to those questions. But how did you decide to write a book about, about no, and the power of no?

• 34:07Speaker 03

  Well, it's interesting. You said that you had a hard time saying no. And so then suddenly, the next thing you said was, so then you were going to write a book about saying no. And it's the same thing like your, your four hour work week. You mentioned in the book how you were working like 80 hours, and it was driving you insane. And so then, you know, you figure it out, and you write the book, The Four Hour Work Week. It's in, you know, the valley of failure that we sow our seeds of success. So if I was always good at saying no all my life, or if you had always worked a four hour work week, you never would have thought to to write a book about it because you wouldn't have understood any other way.

• 34:48Speaker 03

  It's like I tell people, I'm not gonna buy a book on how to pick up girls from Brad Pitt, because it's not gonna apply to me.

• 34:56Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 34:56Speaker 03

  Like, he, he's not, he's like, it's like a blind man seeing the color red. He's not gonna understand what I've been through.

• 35:05Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 35:05Speaker 03

  So you have, for me also, it was very difficult all my life saying no. I was a people pleaser and I was always afraid, and still afraid, to to disappoint people. Like, I wanna, I wanna say yes and help people and a lot of people are more, you know, giving rather than taking. And not that I'm such a nice person, but it's always been hard for me to disappoint people. So typically what I would do is if I didn't wanna do something that someone asked me, is I would disappear. I just would never contact them again and I would never talk to that person again. It might be like my best friend in the world, it literally just happened. My best friend asked me to his wedding and I just, I didn't know how to say no to him. I didn't wanna go to it and I have never talked to him since then.

• 35:50Speaker 03

  And it's, it's really horrible.

• 35:52Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 35:53Speaker 03

  So it was affecting my relationships, like my inability to say no. So I, I had to really figure this out. And like you, I was taking notes and Claudia also, my, my wife, we were both coming at it from, from different angles because we were, we were very similar in this respect. And, you know, gradually figured all these different ways. We kind of categorized all these different types of no that we were unable to say. And it was very interesting. So then we, we wrote the book according to those categories. Like, for instance, not saying no to things you don't wanna do. That's kinda like the basic no, like not being assertive enough. But it, it, it reached all the way towards, you know, not being able to say no to the myths

• 36:36Speaker 03

  that our parents or society or colleagues put on us. Like, you know, I'm not a big believer that. People should go to college. This is a big myth of society, like that you have to go to college. And then, and then you have to get the nine to five job in order to be successful and happy. So, how do you identify all these societal myths and say no to them? And then finally, there's things like we talked about, saying no to all the messages that are thrown at you all day long, the thirty articles of news, the ten thousand uh marketing messages, and so on, you know, so that you can find, you know, saying no to these things so you can have a little peace of and quiet in your mind. Cause ultimately what no does, it's the same thing as the four hour work week.

• 37:19Speaker 03

  It allows you to conserve your energy for the things you care about. So, if you could say no properly to the people who ask you things that you don't wanna do, then that will conserve your energy, so you can do the thing, so you have time to do the things and say yes to the things that you do wanna do. So, I didn't wanna be an actor in anybody else's story. I just wanna be me. And when you start saying yes to other people that you don't want to, you start to resent yourself, you start to resent them, you get angry, it costs you a relationship, and most importantly, you lose time. So, let's, uh I always use the wedding as an example. Let's say you go to a wedding you didn't wanna go to.

• 38:04Speaker 03

  I know now for a fact, if I lose a hundred dollars, I'll always be able to make that hundred dollars back. But if I lose five minutes, or a weekend, or a week, I'll never ever get those five minutes back. Like, people say time is money. Time is not money. You, time is much more valuable than money. Uh, uh, infinite times more valuable than money. And no gets you time. So, it's so important in life to, to know how to say no, and this is why I had to learn how to do it. And then that gave me the material to write the book, along with Claudia, my, my wife.

• 38:38Tim Ferriss?

  What would be, for instance, let's take the A generic email that comes in and it's it's not from a close friend. It's from an acquaintance, maybe someone you knew many years ago. And it's a generic, hey, it's been so long. Would love to get together and catch up. Like, when can you grab coffee? How about Tuesday at 1:00 P. M.? Like, what's what have you found effective ways to decline that? And does it matter if they get pissed or not? I think they're they're very closely related.

• 39:14Speaker 03

  Yeah. And, you know, you mentioned it's someone you you knew. So like, obviously, if it's someone you don't know who wants to grab coffee with you, you just simply don't have to respond. Particularly if, you know, what I encourage people to do. A lot of people say, well, how can I get a mentor? And what I encourage people to do is, you know, first provide a lot of value to people. And, you know, don't just say, hey, can I buy you a cup of coffee? Because chances are, he doesn't need a cup of coffee from you. But if if someone said, you know, Tim, if someone said to you, for instance, I have 10 ideas for how you could sell, you know, a billion more copies of The Four Hour Chef, you might say, oh, OK. And then let's say he actually writes those ideas down for you. He gives them to you for free.

• 39:56Speaker 03

  You might say, oh, I'm going to at least write this person back and say, thank you. And then let's say he writes 10 ideas for you for, I've got 10 podcast guests lined up for you that I think you you'd like to talk to, you know, let me know. This person, then you might decide to yourself, oh, OK, maybe I'm going to start to say, this person might not waste my time. I'm going to start to say yes to them if they ask for a cup of coffee. So, OK, so that's the person you don't know. But the person you do know where it's like, where like, you know, it's an old friend or someone you haven't seen in a while, but you you didn't use to say no to them. And they write to you, here's what I do. I just say, I just write back and I say, I can't. Now, it used to be I would write, I can't because I I'm out of town that day.

• 40:42Speaker 03

  You know, I might lie. Or I can't because.

• 40:46Speaker 03

  I'm out of town that day and I'm telling the truth. So I I used to give explanations. Why do I have to give an explanation like? It should be the case that like my my time is very valuable to me. Not maybe not necessarily to anybody else. People always say, oh, it doesn't hurt to ask. But it actually does potentially hurt both sides of the equation to ask. So it's it's just as much hurts them as it hurts me when they when they ask. Like I have to say no. And their relationship with me might change because they asked something that was inappropriate. Like they didn't respect my my time enough. So so I don't give explanations anymore and I tell them and I when I ca- I catch myself when I start giving explanations like, oh, I I I'm sorry, I can't make it.

• 41:31Speaker 03

  I have a a doctor's appointment that day. I'm really sick. I broke my leg over the weekend or something. So I I just say, I can't do it. You know, I hope everything is well. By the way, even when I say I hope everything is well, I don't lie there either. I try to make if I don't legitimately hope everything is well, I don't say that. But usually I hope everything is well with the other person.

• 41:54Tim Ferriss?

  Hope hope everything is not terrible.

• 41:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly.

• 41:58Tim Ferriss?

  Yours truly.

• 42:00Speaker 03

  Hope you live another day.

• 42:04Tim Ferriss?

  So there's the there's there's sort of two. I think a common source of overwhelm for people is the inbox and how to contend with everything that comes into the inbox. And if you happen to get what you hope for, which is probably success as defined subjectively in some capacity, chances are you're going to have more inbound requests or pitches than you can handle. So there's there's the question of how you say no. There's also the question of what you say no to. So I'd love to hear for you, for instance, when you look at your email, how are you currently deciding what to say no to and what to ignore versus respond to in some positive fashion?

• 42:46Speaker 03

  Well, you know, it's an interesting thing because I really, just like I don't like to read news, I normally don't like to read emails. I like to read only good, good books. And so I've actually outsourced most of my email reading to India. So, and the reason India, by the way, is because, let's say someone writes me a really personal letter. They're not, it's not like they're gonna, some random person in Calcutta is gonna know me enough and figure, oh, uh, I've got some juicy gossip on James. Like, I basically have trained a group of people what type of emails to send to me and what type of emails to ignore.

• 43:28Speaker 03

  And I'm sure they ignore, they don't even tell me the numbers and I don't look. Uh, I'm sure they ignore hundreds of emails. And they'll send to me something like if somebody wants me to speak at an event or if somebody wants to talk about a company I'm involved with or if it's from a group of friends and they know who to, to respond to. So i- in general, you know, and they might make mistakes, I don't know, but in general, I don't read my email.

• 43:54Tim Ferriss?

  Did you provide those rules to them as just a word document? How often do you refine those? What is in the categorically ignore group of email at the moment? I'm curious, what kind of stuff you view is currently not worthy of this non-renewable resource, which is time?

• 44:13Speaker 03

  Well, the most important being is, can you advise my startup? Uh, so I don't respond to any of those because, uh, I'm not interested anymore. I've already, I'm already an advisor in a lot of startups and I'm an investor in a lot of startups. And I really love what I do. I love writing and I love podcasting and, and, um, being creative. So I'm just not interested in business stuff anymore. And, uh, I ignore almost all of those. I mean, again, if it's somebody from a company that I'm already involved with, that'll get forwarded to me. If it's somebody who appears to know me, and you can usually tell that in an email, they'll forward that on.

• 44:57Speaker 03

  If it's a family member, they ignore it and don't send it to me. So.

• 45:03Tim Ferriss?

  Are you serious?

• 45:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, unless it's my daughters or Claudia, I don't really talk to, you know, it's be, here is the one problem with being vulnerable and I'll tell this, I've never really said this before. This is the one problem of being vulnerable is that, uh, and I'm assuming most of my family's not gonna listen to this podcast because they avoid anything I'm involved in, but, uh, they really were embarrassed that I was admitting all of this stuff that I was failing at, like, everybody in my family got really embarrassed about me, so it's not like I, but I talk to all of them, like I send out Thanksgiving invitations to all of them, but nobody responds to me in my family because of my, only because of my blog. I've never done anything to anybody, but because of my blog,

• 45:48Speaker 03

  basically my daughters talk to me and Claudia talks to me and that's about it. And even my daughters once had a problem with me and I had to really make up for it.

• 45:59Tim Ferriss?

  What was, if you don't mind me asking, what was, what was the problem? Was it cau-, it was caused by the blog?

• 46:05Speaker 03

  Yes, so I start off all my blog posts as Facebook posts because I wanna, it's a way to kinda test out if a blog post might have legs. And so, um, I wrote about my, one of my daughters and feel what my, I say, I wrote about one of my daughters farting so loudly, I asked her if she, I asked her if she had sharted. And so, and so the other daughter writes me at like one in the morning and she's like, daddy, you have to take that post down, like the other daughter's crying about it. And the other daughter's like, started saying, I don't know what I could say around you and trust you anymore. And I said, I promise I will never say anything embarrassing about you ever again.

• 46:49Tim Ferriss?

  Did you tag her on Facebook? Did you name her when you talked about the, uh?

• 46:53Speaker 03

  No, she's so young, she's not allowed on Facebook yet.

• 46:56Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, alright, alright.

• 46:58Speaker 03

  So she was really horrified because she really does read my stuff, like it's so sweet. I see it on, on her nightstand, like she's got choose yourself, she's got a galley of the power of no, she's got the choose yourself stories, which I've not even really marketed or anything, I just kinda threw out there. And, uh, so she's got all my books, like she reads my stuff and, uh, but she got really worried in this one case, like maybe the parent of one of her friends would see it and, um, so she was upset.

• 47:28Speaker 03

  And I didn't think she would mind. Like normally, I would take it. So I took it down immediately. And normally, when a family member is asking me to take stuff down, I take it down immediately. And I try never to say anything bad about anybody. It's actually the stuff I've said bad about myself that has embarrassed family members. Like, oh, my relative is a moron. So I'm never gonna talk to him again.

• 47:50Tim Ferriss?

  So I'm curious about the focus that you have on writing. Because there's really, it's hard to verbalize the joy that one feels when they actually hit the zone in writing. And I generally find writing very difficult. But in those rare moments of flow, it's just such an incredible feeling when you really put something down on paper. And maybe it's just a paragraph out of five pages that is just gold. You know, you know it's gonna resonate and you're happy with it. It's such an incredible feeling. But given that you have business experience, you therefore have relationships and skills.

• 48:29Tim Ferriss?

  And now you have an even larger platform that you could use hypothetically to generate more income of various ways. And it's kind of the business capacity. How do you prevent yourself, what is the self-talk? Or the way that you keep yourself grounded, realizing I am happiest when I'm writing? As opposed to advising the next 10 companies? You know, how do you prevent that fear of missing out? That is so pronounced in Silicon Valley, for instance, also in New York. But like, oh, my God, like, how could I possibly stop responding to startup emails? Because what if it's the next Uber? What if it's the next Google? What if, you know, and I have to keep this treadmill going? How do you prevent that type of positional economics dynamic?

• 49:14Tim Ferriss?

  Where you have people building businesses around you? That therefore lead you to pull away from what you know makes you happy? Which it sounds like is your writing. How do you prevent? Because you've obviously engaged in business a lot. And I'm sure that there were financial drivers for that. How do you prevent yourself from reverting to that person?

• 49:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's it's very difficult because sometimes some things seem so appealing. That you're like, how can I say no to this? But at the same time, I know that if I just stick to what makes me healthy and and so being creative. Is uh like you say, it's it's getting into that flow appeal uh that that flow. You know, is real physically like it's endorphins that rush into your brain and and. You know, make you healthier. It's like runner's high and. You know, I know that money is a side effect of being very healthy, being creative.

• 50:15Speaker 03

  Being innovative, being around good people. So I know that all those things lead to. Lead to abundance, lead to money, lead to wealth. And so I know if I just focus on. What's important to me today, the rest will follow. Like I don't have to plan out ten years from now. You know, whether or not I could uh you know, if things are gonna, I don't, I might be dead ten years from now, who knows? But I know today I'm gonna enjoy it if I write and spend time with Claudia and do the things that. I enjoy doing. Now, what if um the next Uber ends up in my inbox and. It's not forwarded on to me, which it's not going to be. I'm going to miss out on it. I've missed out on a ton of opportunities.

• 50:59Speaker 03

  I'll tell you, when I was a venture capitalist, there was a a company called, it was at the time was called Oingo. They were going bankrupt. I could have probably bought fifty percent of the company for a million or two million dollars. My my venture capital fund was was much greater than that. And they, we decide, we decided not to. I said, they were kind of in the. Search engine business where they would help uh rank how people are using keywords, like what are the most popular keywords? So anyway, they changed their name to Applied Semantics. They got bought by Google for one percent of Google. They became AdSense. So they they became the the what what is ninety nine percent of Google's revenues. And you know, it would have been a five hun- one million would have turned into five hundred million. So.

• 51:44Speaker 03

  And that's, you know, we all have examples like that. I have, I have a dozen examples where I missed out on like huge opportunities. But at the same time, I'm happy with the opportunities I did take and the things that I'm working on now. So I, I do have businesses I'm involved with now. And you know, that's it. Now I say no to everything else. I, I'm, I really enjoy trying to figure out how I can be creative today and, and I've, and I've outsourced my investing. We both know, um, you know, we both have a mutual friend with Kamal Ravikant and he, uh, is, is well-connected in Silicon Valley. So I said, here, just you find me the next Uber. You're better at it than me. So that's where I left it.

• 52:27Tim Ferriss?

  Now, do you, speaking of just looking hindsight being 2020, at say the applied semantics in that deal. I've missed some, some tremendous deals, of course, as we all have. Do you know, and we both have spent time with very wealthy people. Do you know anyone who was unhappy, made a bunch of money and then became happy? Uh, or do you find that people who can't find happiness without the money generally cannot find happiness when they have the money, if that even happens? So, because I wonder, in my mind, I wonder, you know, would, would you, James, be happier had that deal happened? I'm not convinced that it would make that much of a difference. I know it sounds ridiculous probably to a lot of people

• 53:12Tim Ferriss?

  hearing this on the podcast, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on this type of thing.

• 53:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, I, I think so, some money makes a big difference. So, so you, you, you wanna be able to pay your bills and you wanna, um, have some sense of freedom, but everybody defines that in a different way. So as a, a great example, Mark Cuban, who is a, seems like a great, happy guy, and I, I've interviewed him on my podcast. For him, I think freedom is the ability to buy the Dallas Mavericks and a plane and and do all sorts of fun things. He it seems to me that guy has a really fun life and he seems to be enjoying it. And he worked really hard for it. As he said to me on my podcast, he had a passion for to be rich and he got there.

• 53:57Speaker 03

  And and I never judge. So for me, I have different passions and having, um, you know, it's like it's like here I am in Thailand and it seems like such a stupid thing, but I just, um, again, I wasn't even exaggerating. I'm literally ten feet from the ocean. I've been here four or five days now. I I haven't put my toes in the ocean once. And so and so maybe some people are like, oh, I gotta go say hello to the ocean, you know, as soon as they get to a beach. I'm just not like that. So so I like to uh read, write, you know, talk to people sometimes. And I know that if I had like infinitely more money, it it I know for a fact when I had more money

• 54:41Speaker 03

  or you know, it's hard to say more, but at times when I wasn't healthy with myself, having more money only made me wanna have more money. So I always felt like envious of the next level and getting healthy made me realize, you know what? This is good. Like I'm in a really good spot and I'm gonna focus on the things I love because again, I uh I could die tomorrow. I I I have to do the things I enjoy today. Uh I'll tell you one one quick story. So I was having breakfast with someone who also was incredibly wealthy and but he was telling me about the breakfast he had the day before with a guy who was worth about two billion. Let's call this guy, the guy was worth two billion, let's call him.

• 55:23Tim Ferriss?

  Scrooge McDuck, no, Mike.

• 55:24Speaker 03

  Scrooge, okay, Mike, we're gonna go on Mike. So so so Mike, who's a very famous guy who's worth about two billion, runs like a a huge private equity fund, uh very well known. This guy was telling me the whole breakfast, he was complaining. And what was he complaining about? How is this kid Larry Page worth eighteen billion and I'm only worth two billion? Like he was complaining the whole breakfast. So what a waste of like all of that hard work and energy to make two billion and just to come just to use it to complain about a guy who made eighteen billion. So money tends to. It doesn't, some people say money magnifies your bad qualities. It doesn't necessarily ma- magnify your bad qualities.

• 56:07Speaker 03

  It magnifies all of your qualities. So, good qualities, bad qualities, and so on. So the key is, you know, we all have bad qualities and good qualities. The key is, for me, is to keep working on the good qualities and trying to starve the bad qualities. Because I, I have that tendency. I have a very addictive personality. I have that tendency, like, oh my gosh, I've gotta make more. I've gotta please people more. I've gotta impress people more. And a lot of times, I'll equate self-worth with net worth. And so I have to starve that quality in myself and, again, focus on, on the things that make me healthy and, and happy and peaceful. Uh, happy is a bad word.

• 56:48Speaker 03

  Because happy is related to the word, uh, happenstance, which is some, you know, outcome outside of yourself. So I prefer to be calm and peaceful even rather than happy.

• 57:00Tim Ferriss?

  Hmm. And the, of course, a big part of navigating those waters and sort of steering the ship towards things you want to do as opposed to things you don't want to do. Or away from things you feel obligated to do that you'd prefer not to do is saying no. What, what are some exercises that you would recommend, uh, to help people with no? Or to get, to, to get them started practicing saying no either?

• 57:28Speaker 03

  You know, it's a good, it's a good word that you use, which is practice, because it doesn't happen overnight. Like, if someone calls you up and say, oh, can you, we haven't seen each other in five years. Can you really help me out? Let me a thousand dollars. It's hard to say, you know, just hang up the phone or say no and that's it. I think people go through waves where first you can say, you know, let me think about it. And then you can ask other people for help. What should I do here? So now at this point, you know, uh, like I said before, you've surrounded yourselves. You, you know, you're the average of the five people you've surrounded yourself with. So you go to these five people and say, oh, so and so. Ask me for something, my gut is telling me no, but I don't quite know how to say it. So you ask for help from others.

• 58:13Speaker 03

  And one thing we say in this book is that while no is the most important word, help is the second most important word. And and not being afraid to ask for help or ask for advice on how to deal with situations is important. So you could always delay people and say, let me think about this while you ask for help. And then you can do no with an explanation. I'm not going to do this, but I could help you in these other ways. Or I can recommend you to other people. Or you could say, I just, you you know, you could, and this requires practice. You could, you could just say, no, I I don't think this is appropriate at this time. But that requires practice. So so the important thing is, there's no quick and easy answer where I'm all of a sudden going to be able to say no.

• 58:56Speaker 03

  So so the real key is understanding when you need to say no. So and and that again is this function of of health. And and also kind of learning not only compassion for others, but compassion for yourself. So a lot of people don't live what I would call, let's say, a gentle life. So they they are very hard on themselves. They'll they'll be very kind to other people, but they're very hard on themselves. And so that's why they open up every email, they return every email. They want to be nice to everybody. And they feel if they're mean, and I'm, I've been like this, so that's why I'm able to say this. So they they feel if they're what's called mean or difficult to one person, then that's going to reflect poorly on them.

• 59:40Speaker 03

  And one person's gonna hate me, and that that will be bad for me. So so what you're really practicing is not necessarily saying no, but practicing that you have to be kind to yourself. And you have to, you have to build up discernment uh through all these aspects of health, like, you know, physical, emotional, mental, spiritual. You have to use, this will teach you discernment of. Boy, this person is wasting my time or invading my boundaries. This is a situation where I need to say no. So you learn the situations where you need to say no before you actually learn how to say no. And then it just becomes practice.

• 1:00:21Speaker 03

  You practice until you get to the point where you say no without an explanation.

• 1:00:26Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, that's a pattern that I've noticed as well. I know Seth Godin does this. A lot of folks, I think the higher they get, the less explanation they provide, partially because, and I'm sure you've experienced this, when you provide an explanation, if more often than not, the other party, thinking that persistence will be rewarded, will try to overcome that objection or that reason. It's like, oh, you broke your leg? No problem. We can do coffee in two weeks. Oh, you don't have time on Tuesday? No problem. I can do Wednesday. And it turns into this pen pal type of ping pong, which is, can be extremely exhausting. So it's, the less justification,

• 1:01:11Tim Ferriss?

  the less labor you're gonna have to contend with when you say no.

• 1:01:15Speaker 03

  And also important to realize, let's take the basic example. Someone says, Tim, I need a thousand dollars. I'm in a bad situation. Can you lend it to me and I promise I'll pay you back? Now, if you say yes to that person, then, which, I'm not saying you should say yes or no, because it all depends on the situation. But let's say you do say yes to that person. Suddenly, you've just inherited all of their problems. So they had some problems that led them to the point where they had to ask you, can you lend me a thousand dollars? And now those problems are your problems, once you say yes to them. So you have to decide, what problems do I want to have? And most of the time, I don't want to have other people's problems. So it's not like I say no to everyone.

• 1:02:00Speaker 03

  I say, I say yes to my friends a lot. And I say yes to, you know, opportunities, you know, when they seem interesting, you know, particularly relating to the things that I'm interested in. And, but I always make sure that I'm not inheriting problems that are too big for me.

• 1:02:18Tim Ferriss?

  When is it a good time to say yes? And let me qualify that by saying that. I was very affected by advice that I would read in books. For instance, I think it was in Losing My Virginity by Richard Branson. There are many others who say like, say yes to everything. You know, say yes to everything and that will open the doors for you. That will create the opportunities for you. Say yes to everything. And I'd say, generally speaking, I feel that might be true in the very early days when you don't have a lot of inbound requests for your time. But that it becomes, there's this pendulum that swings over to the other side where you go from a high percentage of saying yes to a lower and lower and lower percentage of saying yes

• 1:03:03Tim Ferriss?

  to continue crafting a life that you want. I'd just love to get your thoughts on when it makes sense to say yes. And that could be when in someone's life, when in someone's career, or just when in general.

• 1:03:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I've been through this where, for instance, I had a policy, always say yes whenever a TV channel would ask me to come on. Because I wanted to go on TV. And so CNBC would always ask me to go on, even at a moment's notice. And I would put on a sports code and I'd say, okay, I'll be right there. And I don't think it ever really did anything for me or my career or anything. And it was never fun. They always, I don't have to talk about CNBC in particular, but TV and TV news in general, it was never fun for me to go on. But I would always feel like, okay, if more people see me out there, then this is a good thing.

• 1:03:59Speaker 03

  But much better for me would have been to say no, and let's say, start a business, or write a book, or do something that actually was creative instead of just a talking head on TV. So, you know, I've been through that where... You know, oh, you're supposed to always say yes to get opportunities. But the reality is, there's an op- a huge opportunity cost to saying yes. And I don't know how Richard Branson did it. I I I don't quite believe he always said yes to things. You know, I don't know. But there's a huge opportunity cost to saying yes. Let's say you go on a date and you kind of like the girl, but you're not sure. But you end up in a uh in a relationship because you kept saying yes.

• 1:04:43Speaker 03

  Um, well, now the opportunity cost is you might miss out on meeting the love of your life. If you had just stayed at home that night instead of going out on that second date. So this has probably happened to me as well. So me now now fortunately, I learned to say no, and I think I did meet the love of my life. Or, you know, I got married again, I'm I'm previously divorced. But uh, you know, I think there's a big danger to saying yes simply because of the opportunity cost of time. Every yes has to be treated with a lot more attention even than no. You can't make it easy for yourself to say yes, because you you'll lose too much time, too much opportunity cost.

• 1:05:27Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:28Speaker 03

  So so I don't I don't I don't believe in that philosophy, even even at any point in your career. You should always, you know, focus on your own health today. You know, every tomorrow is determined by what you do today. So saying yes to something you don't want to do will only give you a bad tomorrow. So I only say yes to as long as I'm not harming anybody. I only say yes to things that are good for me today. Cause I know then that it'll I'll have a good tomorrow. Now, this doesn't mean, I don't say this in a callous way, like if somebody needs help, I don't say no. Cause I always say no to people. But, you know, I make sure everything's, nobody's dying or nobody's, you know, suffering. And then I decide, I use my own discernment to say, is this good for me?

• 1:06:12Speaker 03

  Is this fun for me or or will this really help me along? And if it doesn't, then I definitely don't say yes to it. But some people don't know what to say. They don't know that TV is no good for them in some cases. Like for me, I didn't know. And so I would say yes to it. So you have to build discernment too. And we discussed that in the book a little bit, how you do that.

• 1:06:31Tim Ferriss?

  Mm hmm. So the, I'm going to shift gears a little bit. I have just a handful more questions I'd love to ask. But one that comes to mind is, given that a lot of people listening will know, doubt, be in the stock market or otherwise investing in different vehicles, different asset classes, you're on the board of a publicly traded employment agency. This is C R R S on NASDAQ. Would love to get your thoughts because I think you're much more macro aware than I am, you know, about what's going on in the world, where you see the economy headed. Obviously, this is not professional investment advice or anything like that. But it sounds like you have a bird's eye view of employment

• 1:07:11Tim Ferriss?

  before the government does. And of course, employment is a huge trigger for a lot of behaviors, a lot of the elephants, the hedge funds and so on, move based on employment. What are you seeing these days? And how might people interpret that?

• 1:07:27Speaker 03

  Right. So I'll qualify that what I'm saying has nothing to do with the company I'm on the board of because their information's private. But just what I'm seeing in general is that, and this is often publicly available information about this company and similar ones, is that essentially, the middle class is slowly being fired or demoted from their jobs. And it's a horrible thing. But we kind of went through 100 years of not capitalism, but corporatism. This idea that the corporation is going to take us from cradle to grave, from the time we leave high school or college to the time we retire, the corporation will take care of us. And then

• 1:08:12Speaker 03

  In two thousand eight, the tide came in and we saw that this simply wasn't true. Like the corporations started firing everybody. They went into a panic. There was no loyalty at all. Corporations simply just fired everybody they could. Uh, and everybody else had to work extra hours. And then you would think, okay, well, it's gotten a little better since then, hasn't it? Like unemployment has gone down, the stock market is at an all time high. Uh, so it must have gotten better. And the answer is yes or no. Innovation is is still happening in the economy. Like there are tech companies that are growing. Uh, the gatekeepers are going away. Uh, and by gatekeepers, I mean like

• 1:08:52Speaker 03

  you can self-publish a book, or you could get a car ride without using a taxi by using Uber. Uh, there's all sorts of ways in which in the internet is improving the quality of our lives. But at the same time, the reason the stock market is at a high is because everybody got fired. So companies became enormously more profitable. And the stock market is ruled by profits and dividend streams. So if companies are fired, if you're paid two hundred thousand dollars and you're fired, or if you're paid forty thousand dollars and you're fired, company has an extra forty thousand dollars. They actually have more than that because they don't have to pay your insurance. They don't have to pay for your computer, your desk space, all these things that they bake into your salary.

• 1:09:34Speaker 03

  So what happens is, but what, so why is the unemployment rate then going down? Is that all of these people are getting not quite fired anymore, but demoted. So they're getting outsourced to employment agencies. And and you'll see, you go to like a manpower, Kelly Services, or even CRS, the company I'm on the board of, uh, and again, this is public information. You look at the rise in their revenues and compare that to the rise in revenues of other companies in the stock market. There's no comparison. Like, these companies are going up like over the past five years, three, four hundred percent in revenues because it's not just.

• 1:10:14Speaker 03

  You know, people outsourcing secretaries, it's companies like the major accounting firms, law firms, businesses, outsourcing, you know, vice president level employees to temp agencies. And because they don't want to deal anymore with having employees because of whether it's too much risk if the economy goes down, or too much risk with changing regulations. Nobody wants to deal with it anymore. And once these guys are outsourced to an employment agency, their salaries are going to go down, their benefits are going to go down. We're still in this period where it hasn't been quite totally unveiled what's happening.

• 1:10:54Speaker 03

  But I, I think actually it's a bad trend in employment where you have to recreate yourself in a four hour work week sort of way. You have to find your own way to build a business along the lines of the four hour work week in order to survive in the coming decades. Because the, the big corporations will not hire you anymore.

• 1:11:13Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's a, it's an unfortunate illusion of security that leaves people oftentimes without the resources to be self-sufficient.

• 1:11:22Speaker 03

  I'm sure you've seen it a lot, like with the feedback you get from, from all your books, but particularly the four hour work week, people want, people now, I, I bet you at first people wanted that lifestyle, now people have to learn that lifestyle.

• 1:11:37Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's a, I mean, it's a set of survival tools almost. I remember one reader reached out to me and said that she bought the book, was planning on taking the leap into entrepreneurship and was criticized by her dad until after, I think it was forty or fifty years of employment, he was fired by, by a company that had been his lifelong employer. And he, he did not know what the next step for him could possibly be because he hadn't developed a safety net in the form of, of a, of a set of skills that he could adapt into being self-sufficient, whether that's, you know, moonlighting or being a full-time entrepreneur.

• 1:12:19Speaker 03

  I I I have to tell you, this is one of the reasons I had to outsource my email is I was getting, and I'm sure you get dozens of emails like that a day, and there's nothing I can do. But I would feel bad for these people, and I wouldn't want to write like huge emails responding like what I would do, because I like to write for a large audience and not just one person. So I I couldn't look at these emails anymore, but but I was getting a lot of them. This is what's happening across the economy.

• 1:12:50Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, no, it's very challenging. Well, let's let's do this. I would love to ask a couple of rapid fire questions, and then we'll find out where we can learn more about the book and and of course, find you online. But let me just lob a few fast questions at you, and then we can we can come to a close. So the the first is, who's the first person that comes to mind or who comes to mind when you hear the word successful and why?

• 1:13:14Speaker 03

  You know, nobody comes to mind. I don't I don't like the word success, because success sort of implies, like people say, how do how do you be successful? It sort of implies at some point they weren't successful, and then at some point in the future, they're going to be if they apply some method. I don't like to outsource my success to the future. Like, right now is where, when I think of success, I think of me, because right now I'm exactly where I want to be. So there can't be any other success other than that, because tomorrow, who knows? So so today, this moment, I'm successful. So it's so me, I'm the first person who comes to mind.

• 1:13:51Tim Ferriss?

  Good answer. What is the book or what are the books that you've given most often as a gift?

• 1:13:57Speaker 03

  Okay, other than my own books, because that would be, I I I've given my own books as gifts.

• 1:14:02Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:14:02Speaker 03

  But I really like this one collection of short stories by this guy Dennis Johnson, D E N I S, not one S. And it's called Jesus Son. There was a movie made about it, and it's a beautiful collection of short stories about this total drug addict. And I would say, first off, I would say I probably read it 300 times, this collection of short stories. And then I was reading an interview with Chuck Planik, I think you say his last name, he were Fight Club.

• 1:14:30Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:14:30Speaker 03

  And he said that the one book he's read 300 times is this collection of short stories, so.

• 1:14:37Tim Ferriss?

  And it's called Jesus Son, S O N?

• 1:14:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, and he's never, his real name is never mentioned in the book. It's an inter, it's all interconnected short stories about this one drug addict and how he deals with it. And it's just, the writing is so beautiful and amazing. It's a very thin book. I remember when the book came out, the day the book came out, it was in the early nineties, like ninety-two or ninety-three. And I was so excited because I had read the books. I read the stories in like obscure literary magazines and now they're coming together as a collection. And I still, I probably, I, I didn't read it today, but I read from it yesterday.

• 1:15:13Tim Ferriss?

  Wow, great, I'll check it out.

• 1:15:16Speaker 03

  I guarantee you, if you read, if you, if you even read like a chapter or two of that story or two of that book, you'll feel inspired to write something about yourself.

• 1:15:24Tim Ferriss?

  Great, I'll check it out.

• 1:15:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:15:26Tim Ferriss?

  You walk into a bar, what do you order from the bartender?

• 1:15:29Speaker 03

  Uh, water. I'm a, I'm a, I'm a wimp.

• 1:15:33Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 1:15:34Speaker 03

  So I don't, I don't drink at all, and if I do drink, I was an alcoholic, so I, I don't drink at all.

• 1:15:40Tim Ferriss?

  Yes, okay, that's a good policy. What do you listen to while you're working, if anything? Do you listen to music? If so, what, most commonly, or currently?

• 1:15:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't listen to any music while I'm writing for the simple reason that I don't think it's possible, or it's difficult for me at least, to multitask in any way. So when I'm listening to music, I really like to listen to it. And when I'm writing, I really like to, to write. But I really like almost every form of music, like from, from classic rock to heavy metal to, to rap. I like all forms of rap. Uh, I was just over my buddy Ice T's house doing a podcast with him. So I, I like, I like all forms of rap from classic rap to rap that came out yesterday, so.

• 1:16:27Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, any, any particular favorites? If you were to look at your, your iPhone or your computer at the most played list, what would be up at the top?

• 1:16:34Speaker 03

  Uh, this sounds kinda corny, but probably, probably Led Zeppelin, probably the Wu-Tang Clan, um, which is like rap in the nineties, Eminem, you know, Ice T, I like a lot of his stuff because he combines sort of metal and rap. I don't know, any, all classic rock, all, a lot of stuff from the seventies. But pretty much anything, I really like, I really like all forms of music. I'll, I'll listen to country, I'll listen to gospel. I like gospel that has like a beat to it. So I, I listen to anything.

• 1:17:03Tim Ferriss?

  If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

• 1:17:07Speaker 03

  I wish I had as much trouble as Brad Pitt writing a book called How to Pick Up Girls.

• 1:17:15Speaker 03

  So honestly, it's a it's a simple thing, but I just wish I looked better.

• 1:17:20Tim Ferriss?

  Got it. Do you have a favorite documentary or favorite documentaries?

• 1:17:25Speaker 03

  I well, I like and these are all from the 90s also, but HBO used to do these really good documentaries. There's this one called High on Crack Street. The producer is John Alpert. Very beautiful about it makes it seem like all I do is read and watch stuff about drug addicts.

• 1:17:47Speaker 03

  But it was very beautiful. Then I like Hoop Dreams, which is the basketball. You know, follow these two kids, you know, up in their basketball dreams. And, you know, I I don't watch documentaries as much. I like Comedian, the Jerry Seinfeld documentary when he went back on the road doing stand up after his run at Seinfeld. I really love that documentary. So those are three.

• 1:18:13Tim Ferriss?

  And this will be the last rapid fire. Favorite people to follow on Twitter or online in general?

• 1:18:21Speaker 03

  That's a hard question because I don't really use Twitter because I don't because I don't read news. Twitter is a great place to curate news. So if I did read news, I would use Twitter and follow, you know, the people who I trusted to show me good news items. So I don't really use Twitter for anything, you know, like I said, I follow your blog. Oh, you know, I follow Maria Popova's blog, brainpickings.org.

• 1:18:50Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, great, great, great site.

• 1:18:52Speaker 03

  And, you know, then it's just sort of random after that. It's not it's not that many. You know, if if Tucker, we have a mutual friend Tucker Max, if he writes a new article, I know it's always gonna be crazy. So I'll read that. And there's not much, not much else online I'll read.

• 1:19:09Tim Ferriss?

  Got it. Okay, since since that question was not very well pointed.

• 1:19:14Speaker 03

  I really bored out like a lot of your questions.

• 1:19:17Tim Ferriss?

  No, it's all right. It's all right. That's why I have to I have to bob and weave. If you had to name where you had the best meal of your life or one of the best meals of your life, what is the first thing that comes to mind?

• 1:19:28Speaker 03

  Uh, oh my God, it might be my lunch today because I had pad thai in Thailand, so.

• 1:19:34Tim Ferriss?

  No, that's perfect.

• 1:19:36Speaker 03

  This is like a bucket list item. Like, I've loved pad thai all my life, and then I stopped it because of you. Because I went on this slow carb diet. I can't have pad thai anymore. But in Thailand, they make it just right. I promise you, you don't even have that many carbs in it here. It's like they do it just perfect.

• 1:19:56Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I'd say, when in Thailand, do as the thai do. Certainly, I'm not gonna fault you for having pad thai. Well, I'm so happy that you took the time to chat with me today, and where can people?

• 1:20:08Speaker 03

  Thank you, Tim. And I want to tell you one tiny story, which was, it was real difficult for me to reach out and say, hey, we should, in both cases, because you've been on my podcast, I've been on your podcast, it's really difficult for me to ask things. And so, you've been like an experiment for me, actually, asking you to come on my podcast, and then asking, hey, I'll go on your podcast as well. So, you'll read about that in my next book, After the Power of No.

• 1:20:38Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I can't wait. I always have fun batting around ideas with you, and I think other people should, if they haven't, check out your work, and of course, take a look at the new book as well. Where can people best find you online and learn more about what you're up to?

• 1:20:55Speaker 03

  Sure. So, jamesaltucher.com is where I blog, A-L-T-U-C-H-E-R dot com dot blog. And, uh, at Jay Altucher on Twitter. I do a Q and A every Thursday from 3:30 to 4:30 Eastern Standard Time, where hundreds of people ask me any question they want, and I answer. And I've been doing that for four years. I've answered probably 10,000 questions. Uh, The Power of No is coming out July 15. If you preorder it, and you can go to, if you preorder it, go to powerofno.us, and Claudia and I are giving three free gifts out, so I encourage you to get those gifts before July 15,

• 1:21:37Speaker 03

  or if it's after July 15, I don't know actually when this podcast is coming out. So, you know, Power of No is a book I would highly recommend, and Choose Yourself, my last book, is a book I would highly recommend. So that's where, oh, oh, and my podcast, so The James Altucher Show, where you could find my interview with the one and only Tim Ferriss. And, and I have a daily podcast called Ask Altucher.

• 1:22:02Tim Ferriss?

  Awesome. Perfect. Well, plenty to chew on. And if, if people need a place to start, I would, I think some of your stories are really hilarious, and they're all the more hilarious and instructive when you know that they're true. So check out some of the most popular posts on James' blog. And thanks, everybody, for listening. Until next time.

• 1:22:21Speaker 03

  Thanks, Tim.

• 1:22:22Tim Ferriss?

  Have a great one.

• 1:22:29Speaker 04

  If you want more of The Tim Ferriss Show, you can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or go to fourhourblog.com.

• 1:22:34Speaker 05

  F-O-U-R-H-O-U-R-B-L-O-G dot com.

• 1:22:38Speaker 04

  Where you'll find an award-winning blog, tons of audio and video interview stories with people like Warren Buffett and Mike Shinoda from Linkin Park, the books, plus much, much more. Follow Tim on Twitter at twitter.com/TFerriss.

• 1:22:50Speaker 05

  That's T-F-E-R-R-I-S-S.

• 1:22:53Speaker 04

  Or on Facebook at facebook.com/TimFerriss. Until next time, thanks for listening.