Ideas are the most valuable currency of our time. Nothing else.
I had ideas first, wealth second. It only worked in that order.
YOU HAVE TO BECOME AN IDEA MACHINE TO CREATE ABUNDANCE
The 18 rules of Abundance:
ABS: Always Be Selling (both in a presentation and via copywriting)
ABN: Always Be Negotiating (which means win-win, not war)
The Idea Muscle Rule (take out a pad, write down a list of ideas, every day)
The Real Rules of Leadership (give more to others than you expect back for yourself)
How to Live by Themes Instead of Goals (goals will break your heart)
The Reinvention Manifesto (which will happen repeatedly throughout a life)
The Entrepreneur Rule. Not everyone is an entrepreneur, but learning these rules of entrepreneurship will help you choose yourself instead of letting others choose you. It’s this mastery over the gatekeepers that leads to the greatest successes.
The Monopoly Rule. Nobody can predict what will happen. But understanding demographic trends and how to use them to take advantage of the coming monopolies in society will be of great benefit.
Idea Sex (get good at coming up with ideas. Then combine them. Master the intersection)
The 1% Rule (every week try to get better 1% physically, emotionally, mentally)
The Google Rule – give constantly to the people in your network. The value of your network increases linearly if you get to know more people, but EXPONENTIALLY if the people you know, get to know and help each other. Note that Google measures its success by how quickly it sends you to other websites where you can help. But then…where do you return to when you need more help?…Google.
Failure is a Myth: how to fail so that a failure turns into a new beginning. Turn the word “failure” into “experiment”. Become the scientist of your life, the explorer of your future.
The $2 Bill Rule: simple tools to increase productivity
The Secrets of Mastery. You can’t learn this in school with each “field” being regimented into equal 50-minute periods. Mastery begins when formal education ends. Find the topic that sets your heart on fire. Then combust.
The Noise Rule: news, advice books, fees upon fees in almost every area of life. Create your own noise instead of falling in line with the others.
The “Save Big Rule”. Don’t save small. Save big. Big is a worthless college degree. Big is a house. Saving 10 cents on a cup of coffee is a poor man’s way to get rich. There is a myth that “saving a dollar is the same as making a dollar”. This simply is not true. It ignores the fact that you start off with money. If you start off with $100 you can ONLY save $100 but you can MAKE a gazillion dollars. Investing is a Tax on the Middle Class. There are exceptions, which I’ll show in the chapter “The Ultimate Guide to Investing”.
The Daily Practice. Discussed in Choose Yourself! but I’ll describe a little more here and the science behind it.
The only way to take advantage of that abundance is to learn the skills, the habits, the hacks, the techniques, the tricks, the wonders of how to succeed and accomplish in this new world of innovation and freedom.
if you don’t make your own choices, someone else will do it for you—and it won’t be pleasant.
The three biggest expenses in a person’s life—housing, college, and later on, healthcare—have all crushed the average person with their rising costs.
I don’t read the news. When people ask me about current events, they are sometimes shocked that I have no idea what they are talking about. Often someone who is trying to provoke an argument is really engaging in what I call “status junk-food binging.”
For evolutionary reasons we all try to find out where we belong on the status hierarchy. That’s how we’ve survived as mammals for millions of years. That’s one of the key ingredients that separate a mammal from a reptile. A reptile gets born and then hops on his way. He already knows how to take care of himself and he gets down to business. He doesn’t really care about status. He cares about survival.
Mammals care about survival, too, but they know their chances of surviving increase if they travel in a pack, a herd, a tribe, a city, a state, a kingdom, an empire, or whatever you want to call it. And inside the tribe, each mammal figures out where it is in line for food and for mates. This is neither good nor bad. It’s not like any ape says, “I wish I were higher in the status hierarchy.”
This is just a fact of our having been mammals for millions of years: your brain is going to spend a lot of time figuring where you are in the hierarchy. Then it’s going to govern your behaviour, often without your conscious permission, based on where it concludes you belong. The only way a mammal can choose itself is by fighting a mammal above it in the hierarchy and winning, even if this means maiming or killing.
So when you see a human trying to pick a fight, it’s really just a primitive form of this status clinging.
We are still status-seeking machines—there’s no way to escape millions of years of genetic programming. But we can choose the exact circumstances in which we want to define our status in.
You have to learn how to live in the new economy.
True wealth occurs when you don’t have to bow down to any gatekeepers—regardless of the money involved. Money is just a by-product. You are out of prison. You are free.
A cognitive bias occurs when our brains—in their well-intentioned attempts to protect us from the wild—keep us on the narrow path that has been deemed safe for various reasons. Some of those reasons are genetic. Some of them are due to the habits you’ve developed during your life. Some of them come from the company you keep (your “tribe”), and some of them come from people whom you admire. When an event that challenges your cognitive bias occurs, a neurochemical called cortisol shoots all over your brain. This is the same chemical that would get you to run as fast as you could a million years ago if you saw a lion.
Throughout this book, I talk about abundance, which often means money. And for the most part in this book you can assume it means money. But consider as well that abundance means gratitude
Abundance means many things. This book explains how I try to create abundance in every area of my life. Money is just a side effect of real abundance.
the only way to have success is to build the foundation for it.
My only three goals in life are To be happy. To eradicate unhappiness in my life. For every day to be as smooth as possible. No hassles.
aim for a one percent improvement a day.
Be around people who love and support you and whom you love and support. Ignore everyone else as much as you can. Engage with nobody who is bad to you. When you get in the mud with a pig, the pig gets happy and you get dirty.
Do this Daily Practice every day for six months, even just a tiny bit, and I guarantee your life will be completely different—for the better.
One question people ask me is, what if everyone does this? My answer: don’t worry about anybody else. As the title says, Choose Yourself! Choose what you love. Choose your passion.
Here’s a secret: you don’t have to worry about “finding” your passion. You’re naturally going to get passionate about what you are good at.
Information product.
There are a few billion people on the Internet and they all have credit cards (or PayPal, thank you, Peter). Remember this phrase: “Get Paid, Get Laid, Lose Weight”—because those are the three things people will pay for. I have paid for all three of those items at various points in my life in some form or other.
Why start a newsletter or other information product? For a few reasons: Monopoly. If you have your own twist on an idea, then you’ve just created a niche and can dominate it before you build into other markets. Scalability. You always make money while you sleep. Brand. If you become the expert in your niche, then you’re there for life. People will associate your name with the niche.
There are almost no costs to adding a new customer. Marketing is your main cost, but once you develop a good product you slowly build up by doing what is called A/B testing
Test ads out on Facebook to see if people click and buy. You can buy ads super cheap. And you can use not only Facebook, but any ad network.
when something works, scale it up.
If nothing works, start from scratch until you find something that works.
See books like Breakthrough Advertising, The Architecture of Persuasion, and Kevin Harrington’s (from AsSeenOnTV and Shark Tank) book Act Now, where he discusses the power of testimonials and infomercials.
you want to write for free as much as possible and for as many sites as possible to build up your brand.
Come up with ten ideas you can write newsletters about. They don’t have to be in the above three categories.
The Middle Class Is Dead
You’ve Been Replaced
Technology, outsourcing, a growing temp staffing industry, productivity efficiencies—these have all replaced the middle class.
Everyone is getting fired. Robots are the new middle class.
Corporations Don’t Like You
Money Is Not Happiness
People spend what they make.
Too Many People at Your Company Can Make Major Decisions That Could Ruin Your Life
I don’t like it when one person can make or break me.
diversify the things you are working on
start planning now to create your own destiny
When you do this count, make sure the number comes to over twenty.
The only retirement plan is to choose yourself—to start a business or a platform or a lifestyle that allows you to put big chunks of money away.
make the list right now, every dream, you can start to take those steps.
I want to be a best-selling author. I want to reduce my material needs. I want to have freedom from many of the worries that I have succumbed to all my life. I want to be healthy. I want to help all of the people around me or the people who come into my life. I want everything I do to be a source of help to people. I want to only be around people I love, people who love me. I want to have time for myself.
These are not goals. These are themes.
It starts the moment I wake up. I ask, “Who can I help today?
Abundance Will Never Come from Your Job
are truly enhancing the lives of the people around you
Enhance your family, your friends, your colleagues, your clients, potential customers, readers, people who you don’t even know yet but you would like to know. Become a beacon of enhancement and then, when the night is gray, all of the boats will move toward you, bringing their bountiful riches.
become an Idea Machine.
Ideas are the currency of life. Not money—because money can run out. Money gets depleted until you go broke. But good ideas buy you good experiences, buy you better ideas, buy you better experiences, buy you more time, save your life. Financial wealth is a side effect of the “runner’s high” of your idea muscle.
Every night, I’d have waffles for dinner and a bottle of wine and start writing ideas down. This is before I went paleo (no waffles allowed!) and stopped drinking alcohol (five years sober!) and I was writing ten to twenty of the most ludicrous ideas a day down.
How do I Start Exercising the Idea Muscle? Take a waiter’s pad. Go to a local café. Maybe read an inspirational book for ten to twenty minutes. Then start writing down ideas. What ideas? Hold on a second. The key here is, write ten ideas.
that’s all you want, a list of ideas
Here’s what I do often when I am writing down ideas that I think I might want to act on: I divide my paper into two columns. In one column is the list of ideas. In the other column is the list of “First Steps”—only the first step, because you have no idea where that first step will take you.
No idea is so big you can’t take the first step. If the first step seems too hard, make it simpler.
ten ideas for websites I wanted to build.
don’t be afraid to test, fail, test, fail, try again, repeat, improve, test, fail again, and keep improving.
I make a list of ideas and then I usually just throw it out. The whole purpose is to exercise the idea muscle. I know most of the ideas are bad ideas, so there’s no sense keeping them around. If one of the ideas is good, then I will probably remember it and build on it for the next day.
IDEA SEX. Combine two ideas to come up with a better idea
OLD TO NEW. Ten old ideas I can make new.
Ten ridiculous things I would invent (the smart toilet, etc). Ten books I can write (Ex: The Choose Yourself Guide to an Alternative Education, etc). Ten business ideas for Google/Amazon/Twitter. Ten people I can send ideas to. Ten podcast ideas I can do, or videos I can shoot (“Lunch with James,” a video podcast where I just have lunch with people over Skype and we chat). Ten industries where I can remove the middleman. Ten ways to make old posts of mine and make books out of them.
Ten items I can put on my “ten list ideas I usually write” list.
Ten people I want to be friends with and I figure out what the next steps are to contact them
Ten things I learned yesterday.
Ten things I can do differently today. Right down my entire routine from beginning to end as detailed as possible and change one thing and make it better. Ten chapters for my next book. Ten ways I can save time. For instance, don’t watch TV, drink, have stupid business calls, don’t play chess during the day, don’t have dinner (I definitely will not starve), don’t go into the city to meet one person at a time for coffee, don’t waste time being angry at that person who did X, Y, and Z to you, and so on. Ten things I learned from X, where X is someone I’ve spoke to recently or read a book by recently. I’ve written posts on this about the Beatles, Mick Jagger, Steve Jobs, Bukowski, the Dalai Lama, Superman, Freakonomics, etc.
Ten things I’m interested in getting better at (and then ten ways I can get better at each one).
Ten things I was interested in as a kid that might be fun to explore now.
Ten ways I might try to solve a problem I have.
Ten ways I can release more endorphins into my body.
Is It Important To Read Before Writing?
I don’t know. But I do
It takes at least six months of coming up with ideas every day before you are an Idea Machine.
Do I Give My Ideas Away For Free?
When you come up with ideas for someone else, always give all the ideas away for free if you think they are good ideas (remember: six months)
Take the word fail out of your vocabulary.
I’ve made more money than I know what to do with because I come up with ideas for people, for companies, for me, for people who have no idea who I am, for random anonymous things.
When you’re an Idea Machine, everything you look at breaks down into a collection of ideas, just as physical objects would ultimately breakdown into collections of particles if your eyes were subatomic microscopes
You have a product, and you want to give potential buyers the perception that it has more value than it truly does.
For the past twenty-five years all I have been doing is selling—products, services, businesses, and myself.
I needed to sell something because I had to pay my bills.
Adults sell for today. Professionals sell for life.
These are the new rules of the economy—and all of this is from my own experience.
Be A Friend Nobody is going to buy from someone they hate. The buyer has to like you and want to be your friend. People pay for friendship.
friendship outweighs almost every other factor in selling.
The only good outcomes arise when both sides like each other.
only do business with people I like.
Opportunity cost.
Supply and demand.
Over-deliver
If someone pays a hundred dollars you need to give them $110 in value.
People want to do business with people who give them presents. Over-delivering is a present. And it makes you feel good. Give and you will receive.
be a friend, however flimsy that connection of friendship is. Follow them on Twitter, on Facebook.
Say nice things about the person to other people. Never gossip.
Underprice
Be The Source
Often the best way to make friends and customers for life is to direct them to a better service or product than yours.
Be the source of valuable information rather than the source of your “product of the day.
they won’t just think of you as someone who sells to them. They will know forever that you are a trusted source. Trust is worth more than next month’s rent being paid. Trust builds a bridge that will never wear out. At some point in the distant future, when you are on the run in every other way, you may need to cross that bridge
Sell Everything
What you offer is not just your product. Your offering is product, services, your employees, your experiences, your ideas, your other customers, and even (as mentioned above) your competitors. So sell them all. When you are good at what you do, the product or service you offer is just the way people build the first link to you. It’s the top of a huge pyramid.
In the long run, nobody cares about your product. In the long run, it is the entire holistic view of your offering, your service, you, that you are selling
Sell The Dream
When you get in the door, do not sell your product. People make a decision on your product in five seconds. Sell the dream. Build up images of the dream. Give a taste of what the dream is like. Let it linger. Let it weave itself. Let the imagination of the buyer take hold and run with it. The dream has up to infinity in value.
Fire Customers
This applies not just to customers but everyone in your life. Everyone. If someone no longer has your best interest at heart, then in your own self-interest you need to back off. Now. A bad customer (a bad person) spreads like a disease inside you, your employees, your other customers, your competitors, your future customers, your family, etc.
Persuasion
Your best new customers are your old customers. If you need to make more money or build a new business, then go to your customers (who are now your friends) and tell them, “I need advice. What other service can I provide you or anyone you know?” It might be something totally unrelated to your business. It doesn’t matter. Do it. It might be that your customer is looking for a new job. That’s great. Make it your business to find him a new job. Now you have a new customer. It might be your customer needs a boyfriend. OK, introduce her to all of your friends who might be good for her. If you’ve been following this approach to sales, then your customers are now your friends, are now your family, are now the lifeblood of how you wake up in the morning.
I’m a salesman. And I’m proud of it.
You have ten seconds to pitch—the classic “elevator speech.”
Let People Know Who You Are
Before you even you’re your mouth, imagine what your body would feel like if your customer has already said yes. You would be standing up straight, smiling, palms open, ready to close the deal.
Body language affects your mindset and how others perceive you
Think about how you breathe when you are anxious and nervous. I will tell you how I breathe: short, shallow breaths in the upper chest. So do the reverse before a ten-second pitch.
Breathe deep and in your stomach. Even three deep breaths in the stomach (and when you inhale, try to imagine your stomach almost hitting your back) have been shown to totally relax the mind and body. People sense this. Again, this builds trust and relaxes you.
Lose The “Uhhh. Yeah. Uhhh. Mmm-Hmm. Uh-huh’s”
when they’re done speaking, wait for two seconds before responding.
Remember The Four U’s
The actual nuts and bolts of persuasion.
This is a way for you to consolidate your vision into a sentence or two and then express it in a clear manner
Why the problem you solve is urgent to your demographic. For example: “I can never get a cab when it rains!” So what’s the solution here? How does your offering address this urgency?
Unique
Why is your solution unique?
Useful
Why is your solution useful to the lives of the people you plan on selling to or deliver your message to?
Ultra-specific
User-friendly
Make it as easy as possible for someone to say yes. Give them a money-back guarantee, for instance, or a giveaway. Or higher equity. Or testimonials from people you both know.
Unquestionable Proof You can show this in the form of profits, or some measurable statistic
you have to satisfy the desires of the other person in order for them to say yes
people primarily act out of self-interest.
The less they know you, the more they will do so.
Otherwise they could potentially put themselves in danger.
Recognition Rejuvenation Relaxation Relief Religio Remuneration Results Revenge Romance
No time. (That’s OK. It’s on an elevator. So they have elevator-length time. The key here is to stand straight and act like someone who deserves to be listened to). No interest. (You solve this by accurately expressing the urgency of the problem.) No perceived difference between what you offer and what’s already out there. (But you have your unique difference ready to go.) No belief. (Offer unquestionable proof that this works.) No decision. (Make their decision as user-friendly as possible.)
Desire More Success for Others Than for Yourself
Everyone around you needs to ultimately become better than you. That’s how you lead.
If all the people around you achieve more than you, then life will be good.
Say “Yes, and…
I didn’t say, “Don’t do that. Do this.” I said, “Yes, and…” a technique used in improvisational comedy.
So I say, “Yes, and…” then elaborate on what is good about her idea and how I think it can be made even better and why.
Constructive criticism works like this: You say, “Yes, and…” List what’s good about the person’s idea. Describe how you would improve it even more. Figure out the vision that is the base of the idea that you are talking about. Connect the “why” of what you are suggesting to the initial vision. Does it work better than the initial idea? Always be open to the fact that you might be wrong
Show Gratitude
Follow The “30-150” Rule (AKA The Vision Rule)
An organization with less than thirty people is a tribe. if a tribe got bigger than thirty people, it would split into two tribes. A tribe is like a family—that is, you learn personally whom to trust and not to trust. You learn to care for their individual problems. You know everything about the people in your tribe.
A leader tells a visionary story. First you listened to people, then you took care of people, but now you unite people under a vision they believe in and trust and bond with.
Be OK with Change
Know The Importance of Dignity
I have a vision for my podcast. Everyone who comes on it is someone who has transformed their life and created the life they wanted. I want my guests’ stories to help my listeners.
Know There’s Always a Good Reason and a Real Reason for Everything, and Share It
A good solution solves one problem. A real solution solves a hundred problems.
Care About Your Health
Love What You Do
Warren Buffett says he skips to work and that he would do the work he does for free
Know How To Lead Yourself
Before I can lead anyone I have to lead myself. I have to read. I have to try and improve one percent a week
The definition of “success” for me is: “Is today successful?
Here’s the operating theory: you don’t need to spend 10,000 hours at anything to be the best. You just need to be pretty good at something (spend a couple of hundred hours) and then you need to know how to give a good talk in public. You will stand out, because so few people want to talk in public.
Watch Comedians
I watch great stand-up comedy before every talk. It puts me in a looser mood and makes me laugh, which relaxes me.
When possible, I will directly steal a joke from whatever comedian I’m watching.
After all, they’ve tested out the joke, so it’s probably a good one that will work for me as well. I even practice imitating their timing: the way they pause, the way they change voices and move around the stage, everything. Comedians are the best public speakers and are up against the most brutal audiences, so you must study them. Learn from them
Do Not Use Powerpoint
PowerPoint will only distract from the main attraction: you.
Wear Comfortable Clothes
Remember to Pause
inserting pauses allows people to think about what you are saying. It allows you to breathe, to be funnier, and diminishes the impression that you are rushing through the material. Take a drink of water. Walk from one side of the stage to the other. Do whatever you need to do.
Have a Q&A Portion
ABS—Always Be Storytelling. Never give advice in a talk. “Don’t believe me on anything. Try this out for yourself.”
is no such thing as credibility
Always be honest. Say what you want and why. Negotiation equals authenticity. Without authenticity you lose the tires on your car. Then you end up going nowhere.
Make Sure Your List is Bigger Than Theirs
Make a list before every negotiation. Make the list as long as possible.
Know Your Secret Value
If you can’t walk away from a negotiation, then you aren’t negotiating. You’re just working out the terms of your slavery.
If it’s Not Easy, Then Walk Away
Realize That Options Equal Freedom
Everything in life is about having as many options as possible so you can maximize your freedom.
Don’t let cognitive biases limit your options when you make decisions. If you spend $400,000 and twelve years of your life learning how to become a brain surgeon, you now have this huge cognitive bias that you must be a brain surgeon.
Think, “It’s Not Me, But What I Can Do for You
the negotiation is not about what you own. It’s about the value you can deliver to the other person. The negotiation should be about whoever is bringing the higher value to the table.
the negotiation should always take place on the side where the higher value is.
Remember: options equal freedom.
“How can I help others get ahead?
Connecting people who can benefit each other is the most useful skill you can have on the entrepreneurial ladder of skills.
You build a network by: Introducing people to others who can provide value for them. Make sure it’s “permission networking” (you get permission from both sides first. Otherwise, you are a burden and not a help).
Introducing people to ideas without any expectation of receiving something back.
Finding a meaningful connection between you and the other person.
Eight Skills You Need to Become a Super-Connector
Introduce two other connectors.
Introduce two people, but this time with a specific idea in mind.
If you can help two other people make money, then eventually good things will happen to you.
Host a dinner of interesting people.
my normal bedtime is about 8 p.m.
Follow up.
Reestablish contact
Show up.
Interview people.
Produce something of value
In order to connect two people, you must have people to connect. You have to meet them in the first place, and the best way to do that is to produce something of value.
I would spend time researching the business of each person I wanted to meet and come up with ten ideas to help them
that I would give them completely for free.
career. It also led to a habit of exchanging ideas with people
Once I started concentrating on producing something of value—without worrying about what I would get out of it—it started coming back to me. Pretty amazing, huh?
How to Master Anything
Having a Talent
Finding What You’re Talented At
Take out a pad. List everything you enjoyed doing from the ages of six to eighteen, before your life was ruled by college, relationships, crappy jobs, mortgages, kids,
Go to the bookstore.
Find a topic you would be willing to read five hundred books on.
Doing That Thing for Four Hours a Day
“I study four hours a day.” Former world chess champion Anatoly Karpov said the maximum he would study chess is three hours a day.
the peak productivity period in a person’s day is 2-5 hours after they wake up. After that, he says, there are declining returns on the work you put in.
Knowing The History
In any area of life you want to succeed at, you have to study the history.
Studying the history of how previous world champions played and trained in any sport is critical toward figuring how you can improve on that training and playing. In any business, studying the history of your focus industry, the biographies of the prior executives, and the successes and failures of those who went before you is critical for mastering that business.
Studying Your Failures
“Everyone wants to blame someone. They want to blame bad luck. Or they had a fight with their wife. But the key is to study your failures. You have to take notes about your losing hands and even your winning hands. You have to think about everything.”
Gaining Experience
Using Pattern Recognition
Loving It
Applying Positive Psychology
One reason most people in the world don’t get really good at anything is because they have no talent for anything that anyone cares about
When I was at my worst, the first thing I had to do was convince myself that I could succeed again. Then, and only then, could I take the first step back—the tiniest step that would release me from my fears and anxieties and allow me to move forward, if not to mastery, then at least to success.
Ego. Real belief that you can be the best, against all possible rational evidence to the contrary, against everyone trashing you simultaneously.
Realizing that there’s a way out.
Having Persistance
“What can I do right now to move forward, in this second?”
The Good News
Freud has said that our two goals in life are human connection and achievement.
Choosing yourself right now in how you treat yourself, how you treat the people around you, how you treat your efforts and your loves. Nothing is more important than this.
There’s always a gap between “what I have now” and “what I would like.” And that gap is all of your excuses. All it takes to close the gap is to be creative and work your way through the excuses. I repeat: this is all it takes.
anyone who needed anything, I would help for a fee). So my solution was to make sure everyone knew what my skills were and why they were needed.
“Why don’t you look in the mirror and repeat, ‘I am handsome’ until your brain is rewired.”
Come up with ten ideas on how you can escape the trap of the degree and demonstrate you still have value. Ideas for the company you want to work for, or the person you want to work with.
He created his network by introducing everyone else to one another. He was simply that guy in the middle.
Building a network from scratch requires three to four hours a day of work.
Well, build your network at work. Ask to lunch the assistants of people in different divisions. Come up with ideas for the heads of different divisions. Do one thing a day to help someone in your work group that you didn’t have to reach out to. Networks build exponentially and not linearly. Once one person is in your network—one single person—then everyone in their network is potentially in yours. Make use of that.
He studied games from the 1800s
He learned Russian
He played speed chess every day with his teacher, strong master Jack Collins.
goals. I don’t live by goals. I don’t have the goal, “do this by X date.” I have a “theme” that I want to have a high quality of life until the day I die.
Have Themes Instead of Goals
To-do lists are very goal oriented. They are the exact opposite of achieving themes.
Try making a themes list instead.
Make an “I Did It!” list.
Accomplishment releases all kinds of chemicals in the brain that then make you feel better. Very addictive chemicals. Dopamine, endorphins,
Trends: The Power to See Things Differently Than Everyone Else
It might indicate what stocks to buy. It might indicate what businesses to start. And for every one trend there are many different businesses you can start. If it’s a negative trend, it might suggest how you can position your family to survive. It gives you something to talk about with your friends. It gives you ideas that may morph into revenue streams that nobody has ever thought of before.
I think of ideas for other companies who call me, and my “business” is to them help them implement those ideas on their own and become massive successes.
If you combine the ideas that trends give birth to with an understanding of demographic trends, there are trillions of dollars waiting to made.
developing the skills of a successful artist/entrepreneur/world leader and using those skills to sculpt exactly the life you want.
A trend is a reflection that some way of life is ending and another way of life is beginning. For instance, Henry Ford could’ve said that the era of transportation by horse was ending, while that of the automobile was dawning.
Most of the trends I’ll discuss are based on two important ideas: All things end, and the better we prepare for that end, the more our legacies will just be beginning. Innovation takes place nonstop. Humans didn’t innovate for 2 million years, and then suddenly, with the arrival of the printing press, we began to innovate at faster and faster rates. Every year the level of innovation is higher than that of the year before.
Trend #1: Biotech
How can you take advantage of this trend? For one thing, you can buy stocks of companies that are involved in these new technologies.
I invest in companies that diagnose cancer. I invest in companies that I think can diagnose Alzheimer’s. I don’t like to invest in the cures but I like to invest in the diagnostics.
things. It’s important to be aware that the FDA and the pharmaceutical industries have a vested interest in charging some of us tens of thousands a year for a medicine, when we could be seeking more natural cures at a fraction of the cost. So billions have been spent to suppress useful information about many diseases.
Trend #2: Healthcare
Trend #3 : Observation
Trend #4: The Temp Workforce
Why would companies do this? So they don’t have to deal anymore with human resources, healthcare, etc.
Buying up stocks of employment firms that are getting more and more technologically savvy about helping to place employees, deal with healthcare issues, etc. Getting involved in companies that are being used to rehire the new temp workforce in ways they’ve never been hired before
Uber and AirBnB are hard to invest in right now because they are private. But figuring out how to piggyback on, or use, their model—which is becoming widely known as “the sharing economy”—will provide ways for people to make money. In essence, people are taking what they already have—homes, cars, time—and using these assets to create wealth.
Or, we can take it one step back: creating an information product that studies this trend and gives suggestions on how to make money is another way to generate income.
Trend #5: Robotics
Studying this trend will make you money.
Trend #6: Chemistry
weak. Alternative energy comes and goes. First there’s solar, then there’s wind, then we’re back to solar, and so on. But every change that finds its way back into alternative energy stocks starts off in a chemistry lab.
I like to be where the technology is happening, as close to the laboratory as possible, in order to understand where to invest or where to build.
Does this mean I need to be a chemist? Not at all. I barely know what the periodic table is. But I am able to read the latest reports and try to figure out how they are going to be applied. Understanding trends is not a day trader’s game. It’s the long game. But since trends are so hard to value at the beginning, there are enormous profits to be made.
Trend #7: Financial Technology
There are many things happening in the financial technology world. For starters, the rise of the cashless economy.
The global economy creates layers and layers of fees that are hidden inside almost every transaction that you make now.
Payday loans are another phenomenon in financial technology.
But here’s something that will never go away: people who live paycheck to paycheck, a rising phenomenon, often need money the day or days before their check arrives. What do they do? They go to a payday loan company that might charge them one dollar for a hundred-dollar check even though their paycheck may be there tomorrow. That’s 365 percent interest.
A payday lender charges much higher interest rates than the banks. Sometimes this is regulated, sometimes it isn’t. It’s a great business to be in but there’s one problem. Many people who borrow money are scamming the lender. There’s no check coming. This is not a frequent problem but it’s a problem in the industry and keeps margins low.
People are getting older The nature of the workforce is changing People want alternative energy The economy is getting more globalized. Robotics is being used for more functions. Wearable computing is generating larger and larger revenues.
Thinking of each trend and the things that fit under those umbrellas: stocks, new businesses, new information products, new ways to live your life, is going to be an important part of how to live a “Choose Yourself” lifestyle.
What’s been happening since “Choose Yourself” came out is that people are forming meetups in their cities to discuss not only how they are making use of the “Daily Practice” that lays the foundation of how to live a healthy Choose Yourself lifestyle, but also to share their thoughts and entrepreneurial ideas around these trends, and money is being made.
It’s just like-minded people getting together to help each other improve their lives.
I’ve made use of each one of the above trends to make my life better. For instance, when I saw the trend in employment, I went on the board of an employment agency, they’ve been implementing my ideas, and everyone makes money. When I saw the trend and people getting older, I started investing in startups that diagnose cancer and some of these startups have now gone public. Once you build the foundation of the Daily Practice, then develop the skills and habits described in this book, and then build or participate in a community of like-minded people, you will also be able to benefit from the trends that are affecting your and everyone else’s lives.
I spec’d out a website I wanted to make: a financial site that had no news on it but was focused on building community by exchanging ideas. When I say, “spec’d,” I mean I wrote down what all the buttons on the front page would do and what other content would appear on the front page. I completely defined the next five layers of the site and what buttons and actions and content would occur on each page
don’t be afraid to do things manually to get things going on your site. Even with user-generated content, it’s OK if you are the first thousand users if you expect a million users to benefit from it.
websites. This is how you get users back to your site
I created three areas of community on the site: a way for people to message and have “friends,” a user-generated forum system, and a Q&A system. The Q&A system in particular generated 40 percent of the traffic the day after it launched.
There are things you have to do when you start a company, no matter what kind of company it is.
No one cares about this venture like you do. You do all your initial hard work.
Provide Free Content on The Front Page
Outsource in Incremental Stages
First we designed pages, and then after we knew we were going to get big distribution, we made the rest of the site.
You save a lot of time and money when you can learn as you go and use what you know to make better decisions for your growing business.
Diversify Your Distribution
Ultimately I had traffic coming from about 20 different websites. Never let one company decide your fate. 1000s of businesses have been lost because of this one mistake.
Don’t Spend Time Worrying About Competition
I certainly didn’t. I cold-called Yahoo, AOL, and Forbes to get on their radar. In fact, I had a “negative network.
Make it as easy as possible for the other side to say yes before you ask them
Combine Interests
Make It a Business You Would Use
when I set out to make a website I created the website I would use.
One with no news, but tons of interesting ideas, perspectives, and community.
ABD—Always Be Deal Making
I would come up with ideas about the value I could deliver them and then I would offer up that value. Maybe Realize That Nothing is a Straight Line
First build a product, then get a customer, then get friends and family money (or money from revenues, which is cheapest of all) and then think about raising money. But only then.
Should I have a technical cofounder if I’m not technical? No. If you don’t already have a technical cofounder you can always outsource technology and not give up equity.
How do I market my app? Friends, and then word of mouth.
In a B2C business: release fast. Add new features every week.
Cutting costs every day.
When should I hire people full-time? When you have revenues
Should I pay taxes? No. You should always reinvest your money and operate at a loss.
If you have zero skills as a copywriter, then everything you write will be boring.
Yes. You must. Blog about everything going wrong in your industry. Blog personal stories that you think will scare away customers. They won’t. Customers will be attracted to your honesty.
Should I quit my job? No. Only if you have salary that can pay you for six months at your start-up. Aim to quit your job but don’t actually quit your job.
I have an idea for an app but don’t know how to execute. What should I do? Draw every screen and function. Then outsource someone to make the drawings look like they come from a real app. Then outsource the development of the app. Get a specific schedule.
Micromanage the schedule.
I want to buy a business in X. Is that a good idea? Rely on the three D’s: Death, Debt, Divorce. When someone dies, the heirs will sell a business cheap. When someone is in debt, they will sell a business cheap. When someone divorces, the couple usually has to sell a business cheap. Important: even if the industry trends are in your favor, you cannot predict the future. But you can use the past to help you get a deal. Always get a deal.
Do guerilla marketing. Read Newsjacking and Trust Me, I’m Lying.
I just started my business. What should I do? Sell it as fast as possible (applies in 99 percent of situations).
Should I even start a business? No. Make money. Build stuff. Then start a business.
Everyone is getting outsourced or replaced by robots or just downsized or demoted.
That Scott basically writes 2,000 words a day
“Take a concept you’re interested in,” he told me, “and break it up into a lot of parts and write a book about each part.
inflation is always going to rise faster than the value of money left in a savings account.
nobody can merely invest their way to wealth, not even Warren Buffett.
The secret: One page a day.
He writes a page a day. A page is about three hundred words words. A paragraph or two.
Domino’s brand is that it’s not a location restaurant. It’s a delivery service.
He just understood the basics of business and was able, fairly quickly, to make extremely simple adjustments, and because of that he made millions.
ideas are more valuable than money. The man with more ideas will be able to out negotiate the man with fewer ideas
It’s just a matter of identifying what the value is in the other side’s eyes and meeting that value
Remember: good negotiations are win-win. Both sides get what they want.
Thiel’s four attributes for a good business are monopoly, scalability, network effect, and brand.
Capitalism, he says, is about profits.
He therefore concludes that competition is anti-capitalist.
find your niche, then find a small or a nonexistent market where you can enter and dominate 80 percent of the market,
as if you were a monopoly.
that ideas are more valuable than money.
Scalability Can you “make money while you sleep”?
Franchising an idea makes something scalable.
Network Effect The more people who use a service, the more valuable it is.
Brand
Demographics
history. Here’s what I do to value a business. I look at all of the above: The Peter Thiel Four—Monopoly, Scalability, Network Effect, Brand (and I’ll add my Demographics) The Three D’s. I look at what is causing the problems: Death, Divorce, Debt, Delay (because they all add up to a fifth D: Desperation, which drives prices lower) The Marcus Turnaround Method. I look at Product, Process, People—each one of those will have a cost but each one of will improve a company in the eyes of the Peter Thiel Four.
Then, he called Boeing and basically leased a plane from them the same way you would lease a car. He knew that if the business wasn’t profitable, he could return the plane. He negotiated a route between Gatwick and Newark and he had a one-plane airline.
When you get freedom, you’ll have the energy to build more ideas, to generate more abundance, to live the life you want to live.
in order for you and I to cooperate, even if we are total strangers, we need to believe in a story together.
if you can become aware of the myths that people hold and the way they manipulate societies and cultures, you can write your own rules and create abundance for yourself.
live according to Systems and not Goals.
He had a lot of employees up there. You know what he said to me? “One day, computers will be doing what all of these employees are doing.”
Tip #1: Never invest big chunks of your money
A big chunk is more than 2 percent of your money.
Tip #2. The whole point. Stop paying your debt. Let me clarify. If you borrowed from a friend, pay your friend back. Be a good person.
Maybe by starting businesses, making inventions, feeling better, hiring people, and so on.
will. Don’t get a credit card ever again.
Only buy what you can afford. Don’t be an idiot anymore.
Who Makes Money In The Market Then?
People who hold stocks FOREVER.
Inside information has always existed and always will exist.
how can one make money in the market? I told you about: #1. Pick some stocks and hold them forever.
“if you think a company will be around 20 years from now then it is probably a good buy right now.”
No more than 3% of your portfolio in any one stock. But if the stock grows past 3% you can keep it. To quote Warren Buffett again: “If you have Lebron James on your team, you don’t trade him away.” No more than 30% of your portfolio in stocks (unless some of the stocks grow, in which case you just keep letting them grow).
And NEVER EVER read the news. The news has no idea about the financial world and what makes it tick.
Fact: Mutual funds don’t outperform the general market so better to invest in the general market without paying the extra layer of fees. Use the criteria I describe above, pick 20 companies and invest.
What Are Some Good Demographic Trends? The Internet. Yes, it’s still growing.
Baby boomers retiring. They need special facilities to live in. They need better cancer diagnostics and treatments. Energy. The more people we have, the more energy we will consume. Go for energy sources that are profitable and don’t need government subsidies. Whenever you depend on the government, you could get in trouble. Temp staffing. Every company is firing people and replacing them with temp staffers.
Batteries. If you can figure out how to invest in Lithium, then go for it.
It costs almost nothing to start a business. Find something people want and start posting information about it on a blog and then upsell your services on the blog.
Or write 1000 small books about different topics and publish them on Amazon.
Note: It takes a lot of work to find “passive” income but when it happens, it’s worth it.
These are some ideas. There are many others. 2. Invest in experiences rather than possessions. Figure out interesting and unique experiences you can have or places you can go to (but they don’t always have to be places). Experiences pay much higher dividends than an extra TV or a nicer car. 3. Books. Reading is the best return on investment. You have to live your entire life in order to know one life. But with reading you can know 1000s of people’s lives for almost no cost. What a great return!
Should I Save Money With Each Paycheck? No. Just try to make more money. That is easier than saving money.
Better to just make more with many streams of income so you don’t have to worry about going broke. And then saving will come naturally as you make more money.
“Gratitude” is another word for “Abundance” because the things you are most grateful for, become abundant in your life.
finally, write down 10-20 bad ideas a day. Or good ideas. It doesn’t matter. After exercising my idea muscle for six months, I felt like an idea machine.
1. Invest with someone smarter than you.
Remember that cash is king. Having a lot of cash leads to a stress free life. Invest as little as possible.
For wealth creation: Invest in hard-to-value companies that focus on ideas. For example: biotechnology (low revenues/big market)
For wealth-preservation: Invest in dividend aristocrats (company raising their dividends for twenty years in a row or more) that also follow rule “A.”
Allocate.
Follow the 3 percent rule: put no more than 3 percent in any one investment. And have 70 percent of your money in cash.
For private investing: Invest in at least TWO people smarter than you: another investor and the CEO of the company who has to have succeeded before.
The S&P 500 index is proven to be the best hedge against inflation except for hyperinflation.
Investing in you is the best hedge against hyperinflation. If you have a good business, you collect all the money.
Never invest in anyone else’s ideas of investing: mutual funds, ETFs, bank advisors, hedge funds, venture capital funds.
Never invest because of tax reasons: 401(k)s, IRAs, Roth IRAs, 529 Plans, insurance annuities, etc. These are taxes against the middle class where the money goes straight from your employer into the hands of the rich.
I own blue chip stocks that pay dividends for wealth preservation and I invest in some hard-to-value idea companies for wealth creation.
I spend money on experiences and not objects. I don’t really own anything except books, some clothes, a phone, a tablet, and a computer. But I’ll take my children on extravagant vacations or I’ll hold dinners of ten people who don’t know each other, or I’ll travel to California just to meet someone I want to meet. I don’t have a credit card. I don’t have debt. This is not because debt is bad. In fact, when interest rates are low it’s never a horrible idea to take on some debt. But money is a subset of “things that go BOOM!” and I like to be as stress-free as possible.
I use legalzoom to set up a company,.
I do hire accountants. I use an accountant to do my taxes.
I look for ways to give. I’m aiming to have fewer things in my life. I want to die with no possessions. But over the years I have accumulated possessions. So as much as possible I give as gifts things that are important to me but have a lot of value to the people receiving them.
I value convenience over luxury.
I value convenient travel.
I buy experiences and not things.
They will lose and forget the “things” in the long run. But they will never forget the experiences.
You can’t predict the future. Everyone thinks they can. But they can’t. This applies not just to trading but everything
Most of us would have much less stress if we let go of trying to predict the future. You can always seek to increase the odds in your favor.
Hope is not a strategy.
Uncertainty is your best friend. A hundred percent of opportunities in life are created because people are uncertain about almost everything in their lives.
almost every invention, product, Internet service, book, whatever has been created to help us close that gap.
Taking risks involves reducing risk.
Once you have a method of reducing risks, it’s easier to make trades or decisions about anything.
Diversification is critical.
When I was raising money to day trade, I probably contacted over 1,000 people.
Say no. If something is not working out in day trading—even if your heart wants it to work out—you have to say no and cut your losses
Your health is always important.
Laughter is essential.
It doesn’t matter if a trade (or a day, or a life) is good or bad
Antifragile is a book by Nassim Taleb. The word antifragile refers to a system that gets stronger as it gets hurt. This is different from being resilient. Resilience is if you get hurt and can stay the same. It’s not so bad to be resilient. But it’s better to be antifragile.
the ways Nassim works on his personal antifragility. For instance, he walks twenty hours (“hours,” not “miles”) a week
“Fasting is necessary and has to be random
build a successful business, figure out what you can outsource or what unprofitable (or barely profitable) clients you can fire, and then use your extra time to explore new ideas.
10,000 hours of “practice with intent,”
I’d rather spend 2,000 hours each on five areas of life with very steep learning curves, get in the top 10 percent of all of those, rather than spend 10,000 hours on one area of life.
Idea Sex
If you combine two areas of life and get reasonably good at both and then combine them, then you are suddenly the best in the world at the combination.
The 80-20 Rule
The One Percent Rule
If you try to improve in some area of your life one percent a day, then in one year you will be thirty-eight times better than you were at the beginning of the year
Be Impeccable with Your Word.
means if you say you will do something, do it. If you feel like you have to lie to make excuses, then just don’t say anything at all.
Don’t Take Anything Personally.
Don’t Make Assumptions
Always Do Your Best
You need: a teacher, a passion, read a lot of books, practice three to four hours a day for many days. There are no shortcuts to learning something.
One very important way we humans evolved is that the brain developed many biases as shortcuts to survival
we have a bias toward noticing negative news over positive news. The reason is simple: if you were in the jungle and you saw a lion to your right and an apple tree to your left, you would best ignore the apple tree and run as fast as possible away from the lion. This “negativity bias” is the entire reason newspapers still survive today.
In-Group Bias
Herd Behavior
Availibility Cascade
The brain has a tendency to believe things if they are repeated, regardless of whether or not they are true.
This is Availability Cascade.
Distinction Bias or “Out-groups” Bias Brains have a tendency to view two things as very different if they are evaluated at the same time as opposed to if they are evaluated separately.
Ambiguity Bias
When the brain starts to view a person with ambiguity it gets confused and can’t make choices involving that ambiguity. So the person without ambiguity wins.
Credential Bias
Because the brain wants to take shortcuts, it will look for information more from people with credentials or lineage than from people who come out of nowhere.
In-group/Out-group
Basic Direct Marketing: List the Objections Up Fron
Any direct marketer or salesperson knows the next technique Eminem uses. When you are selling a product, or yourself, or even going on a debate or convincing your kids to clean up their room, the person or group you are selling to is going to have easy objections. They know those objections and you know those objections. If you don’t bring them up and they don’t bring them, up then they will not buy your product.
If they bring it them before you, then it looks like you were hiding something and you just wasted a little of their time by forcing them to bring it up. So a great sales technique is to address all of the objections in advance.
In a rap battle (or a sales pitch), if you address everything your opponent can say, he’s left with nothing to say.
Humor Bias
People remember things that are stated humorously more than they remember serious things.
Extreme Out-group
Scarcity
He makes himself scarce. After establishing total credibility with the audience he basically says he doesn’t want what they have to offer.
Reduce the supply of yourself while demand is going up and what happens? Basic economics. Value goes up.
Don’t Buy Things,buy experiences.
A thing eventually gets thrown away. An experience is a memory you’ll have forever
Don’t Do Anything You Don’t Want to Do
Don’t Try to Please People
Nobody is more worthy of love in the entire universe than you. I Don’t Fall in Love With Someone Who is In Love With Somebody Else
Run, Don’t Walk
You build up your blood vessels. More oxygen gets to the brain. You get smarter. Life is better.
Don’t Wait for Them to Say Yes
Be honest. Honesty compounds until your word becomes The Word.
Don’t Consume Bad Things
I mean McRibs, but also I mean the news. And dramas that kill lots of people. And coworkers who gossip in the hallway, everyone trying to pull everyone else down.
Today it starts all over again. Every tomorrow is determined by every today.
Freedom is something that you practice every day.
Don’t plagiarize the lives of your parents, your peers, your teachers, your colleagues, and your bosses. Be the criminal of their rules. Create your own life.
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