This isn't your average business podcast and he's not your average host. This is the James Altiger Show. Today on the James Altiger Show. Great stuff came up on the Q&A. First off, I've been making a list.
One of my daughters wants to do a side hustle. Not only this next summer, but over the next year. And I realized a lot of these lists of side hustles are generic and stupid. Just telling somebody, oh, you could do Uber Eats. That's not really a good idea. You get three cents for every mile you drive.
So I wanted to figure out side hustles that could turn into actual sources of making a living. It may be even businesses. So I've been working on that list and I shared that. I also talked about how did the Rolling Stones, the band that's been around for 50 years, how did they go from worst to first? I talked about my own particular productivity methods.
I talked about how to validate an idea, talked about Andrew Yang and what I currently think of him. Actually, I've upped my opinion considerably recently. And then, and this is an odd one, but why does chicken have flexible rubber in it? Specifically, why flexible?
That and more listen to the Q&A here. And if you have any more questions for me, I will be happy to answer them. Ask me by texting me at 203-590-8607. Enjoy. Oh my gosh. So much stuff going on. I feel like it's been forever since we all hung out. What do we do this weekend?
We come to Florida, this weekend, or we've been here. When did we fly? I think we came on Thursday. Thursday? We did? Yeah, we did. So we've been here like four days. So lots of stuff going on.
Just I want to start off again with the BS non-headline of the day. And what really bothers me is that you go on CNN. All the news is virus and Trump and Trump said this, Trump said that. They don't run. Most people don't care anymore. Like we just want to know that we're going to be safe. And I get it. If we wear masks and we stay indoors, we're going to be safe. Fine.
But this morning, I saw on one outlet that I'm very curious about the Chaz. The Chaz is the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone in Seattle. It's in this kind of, there's a lot of stores there. It's kind of this gentrified neighborhood. The Seattle mayor has said she's not going to do anything about it. The Washington governor said back, I don't know if it's a he or she actually is not going to do anything about it.
And I don't understand because in the Constitution, the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution says you cannot have life, liberty, or property taken from you without due process. So of course, all the businesses that operate in the Chaz are suing because they can't open their businesses. So how could the government be okay with this? And then you would say that the Seattle mayor says, and I don't know, she's a Democrat. She's a Republican. It doesn't matter really, but I don't know what she is.
She says, oh, it's like an arts festival there. It's okay. It's all peaceful protesting. Well, last weekend, some kid got shot. A 19 year old died in this morning. I don't know if you saw this this morning at like three in the morning, some kid got shot and killed. And it's horrible. So I go on CNN, CNN.com is supposed to be our main source of news.
And I search Chaz. Chaz, where there has been an article since June 25th, it's June 29th. So they think like what Trump ate for breakfast this morning is news. Where it was a Katie Perry is depressed because of her recent breakup with Orlando Bloom. Like that was a headline. But like Chaz or Chaz, where people are suing each other, people are getting shot and killed.
Like it's obviously not a peaceful protest. Zero news. What is going on? And you can't get get upset about it because if you get upset about that, you'll get upset about everything that's happening.
There's so much hypocrisy in the world right now. I think it's really important. And I was just guilty of it. Like I pointed out some hypocrisy in the news. But I think it's really important to catch yourself and say, you know what? I'm not going to get, there's nothing I can do about it. So I'm not going to get upset about it. And I'm only going to focus on the things that I control. I can only focus on the things I'm getting.
I can get better at or I can learn, you know, right now. There's a great time to we're in this kind of reset world. And it's such a great time to better ourselves, even though it's usually the best time to better yourself is when it's most difficult. So difficult times create strong people. And that's kind of a cliche.
I want to avoid cliches or too many self-help cliches out there like on Twitter and Instagram. But I find for me the way I'm improving myself is by it's so clear to me and to you also. That's why we're all hanging out here. It's so clear where the hypocrisy is. And it's not Democrat or Republican. It's all of it. It's like the world's being run. I'm not going to get into it. I'm just catching myself right now.
Let's focus on some fun stuff. And so I'll go back and forth between some fun notes that I have and you sent me some news articles that were fun and I'll answer some questions. By the way, whatever questions I don't answer, I will eventually answer somewhere. And we'll answer directly via text. So you can text message me or Robin, but me goes to my phone. 203 590 8607 8607 J. Hey, Wally, how's it going? J will put the number up there.
And so here's the first question from IG live questions. Unique name. Hi James. Any business ideas that focus on the isolation, people are experiencing and how to connect them. That's a great question. And so there are business ideas and then there are just general ideas.
So for instance, right now, who are the most isolated people? So we all, Chris, Lisa, Max, who are the most isolated people right now? We're four months into the lockdown and a lot of the states are open. All the states to some degree are open. But there are some people that are sadly still locked down. And with good reason, it might be people who are over the age of 70. It might be people who are immunosuppressed in some way.
So there are a little bit extra nervous about getting this virus. I mean, on the one hand, they should understand there's 300 million people in the country, 120,000 deaths. So it's a relatively small, very tiny fraction of people dying. But that doesn't mean you want to get this illness, particularly if you're afraid you're not going to be asymptomatic. Everybody wants to avoid it as long as possible.
So there are some people who are old, like older people, immunosuppressed people and so on. So I think it's a good idea to create like an exchange. Like, let's say I'm eight years old. I can sign up and say, listen, I love talking about history. I love talking about TV shows. I love talking about classical music. I love talking about politics.
So you know, and I'm on this exchange. And then other people can sign on. And the person can say, I'm willing to pay $10 an hour to just have a Zoom conversation with people. And there are other people who can sign up. And you know, it's a side hustle. They want to make $10 an hour. And they also can talk about history, classical music, and so on.
And there can be, it sounds almost prostitute like, but you know, there can be reviews. So if someone signs up and like doesn't know anything about history or classical music, the eight year old could say, oh, there's person was just trying to make a quick buck. You know, so there's review on both sides that can be reviews. And you have people who legitimately, it might be actually other people who are locked down.
There are young people who are locked down who are immunosuppressed and maybe, you know, they want to talk to older people or they want to learn from them or older people want to talk to the younger people or so there could be people who want to just talk to other people who are locked down for free. So build this exchange. Maybe there's a sign up fee to join the exchange. So there's various business models. There could be advertising, you know, buy these gloves and masks and you know, that could be advertising on this platform.
So you can create an exchange where people who are locked down can reach out to other people who are locked down. So that's one business model. The other thing is that you could arrange, like, zoom parties. So for instance, I can say sign up if you're locked down or if you're immunosuppressed or whatever and every Friday night or every night, we're going to have a trivia quiz.
So some people will want to join the history for the quiz. If you will want to join the old movies trivia quiz, other people will want to join the music trivia quiz. So every night there could be trivia quizzes with some parties. Maybe like, and some giveaways, I mean, like gift cards or whatever and people could communicate and break out rooms on this exchange.
So if you're immunosuppressed, if you're locked down, it could be a whole advertiser. Sign up for, you know, nonstop trivia parties with the immunosuppressed, with the lockdowns. And it could be just a party all day long. And maybe you pay a subscription, like $10 a week to join this as long as you're locked down. And again, you have these trivia quizzes or watching parties or whatever where there's games that are played where, you know, there's awards won or whatever.
But the other thing is you don't necessarily have to make this a business model. If I was locked down all the time, there's plenty of zoom.
不过另外一件事是你不一定要把它作为商业模式来做。如果我一直被限制在家,有很多的视频会议可以使用。
And just in the past three days, I've been to two zoom hangouts or meetups. They had over 200 people on them.
最近三天我参加了两个 Zoom 聚会,每个聚会都有超过 200 人参加。
And they were really one of them I gave a talk at. And it was a lot of fun. And you meet people and you chat and so on.
他们真的是我参加过的其中一个演讲会。那真的很有趣。你可以认识人并聊天等等。
And then also you could play games online at various game sites. And you can meet people that way. There's chess sites. There's back admin sites. There's poker sites.
So it doesn't necessarily have to be a business model.
那么这并不一定是一个商业模式。
The other thing is a lot of people haven't been able to go out on dates. So you can create like a zoom and this already exists.
另外一件事是很多人无法出去约会。因此,您可以创建一个 Zoom,这已经存在。
But you could find to it. You can make zoom related dating apps. So people who are extra locked down, but want to meet people, you know, create a dating app just for them.
And for you, what's up is you're locked down. So it's nothing's up. You're down. And so you want to meet the other people who are in your boats. There could be dating apps just for this.
Anything else for for I think you've covered a lot. I mean, for me again, I like being locked down.
还有其他需要吗?我觉得你已经涵盖了很多内容。我的意思是,对我来说,我喜欢被锁定。
First off, I'm locked down with this beautiful woman. But second off, my ideal since I was 19 years old, so I was 17 years old.
首先,我跟这个美丽的女人住在一起。其次,她是我从19岁时就开始理想化的对象,也就是我17岁的时候。
My ideal day is just to play games all day. And now that this big computer in front of me, I could play chess, poker, I could read, I could write like, yeah, I'm living in the dream.
If it wasn't for the fact that 100,000 people are dead and that military style protesters were taking over cities and murder hornets are invading and team levels getting hacked. And over the weekend, Chase Bank was hacked.
And today Iran issues a subpoena for or for Donald Trump's arrest. And India and China are about to start World War Three. If it wasn't for these little things.
I'll open that one. Oh, yeah, there's a sandstone coming from the Sahara now. And we just arrive in Florida. Florida becomes the epicenter of the virus.
And there's a sandstorm coming from the Sahara desert for the first time in like 6,000 years. It's like biblical. Like what the heck is going like 2020?
Here's okay. I'm going to tell you, I'm just in a flassey. Here's why Donald Trump should get reelected. And it has nothing to do with politics.
嗨,没问题。我要告诉你,我有点不安。以下是为什么唐纳德·特朗普应该连任的原因。这与政治无关。
On our other, he has engineered that we are all living in a gigantic science fiction novel right now. Like this is the creed. This is like dune or like some kind of weird neuro mancer type of science fiction novel.
This is like Lord of the Rings with Sohran. Like it started off Australian wildfires. What the hell happened? Did Australia burn to pieces? Like what is going on?
And then Iran, we went to war with Iran. And now I thought that was gone, but now they're arresting. They're just one of the even sent a police officer to the White House. Like how are they going to do that?
Nobody can tell me who everybody says the protests are mixed with other groups. So if you talk to Democrats, the other groups are white supremacists. If you talk to Republicans, the other groups are George Soros funded. So why can't a reporter just go and ask them who are you?
Why can't anybody figure this out? It's such a big mystery. Like if I was a reporter, that's what my job would be.
为什么没人能搞清楚这件事呢?这真是个大谜团。如果我是一名记者,这就是我的工作了。
Like CNN doesn't report on, you know, I can get an Airbnb in the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone and I can get a plane ticket to Seattle and I can go right in there. But somehow no reporter has been able to go in and figure out who killed who in all of these different shootings.
And what the heck is Rassamon doing? So I looked at Rassamon's account today. He's the warlord at the Chess. If I'm going to take a Chesscation, I want to make sure that the warlord is a decent guy, right?
You don't want to make sure that the warlord is your enemy. I think you can have coffee with him or something.
你不要确定那个军阀是你的敌人,我觉得你可以和他一起喝咖啡或其他什么的。
So his latest tweet this morning was another snuff video. I'm like watching a TAs like everybody watch this.
他今天早上发的最新推文又是一段残忍的视频。我就像个TA,跟所有人一起看着这个视频。
So I'm watching this video and it's the police. I didn't know if it was the police or people from the Chess or whatever.
我在看这个视频,是警察的。我不知道是警察还是棋类或其他人。
So apparently though it's a 2019 video and the police are walking up to this guy who's in a bus shelter and the guy in the bus shelter is yelling like, at you to the police and the police is like, why are you still there?
And then they start shooting and they kill the guy right in front of me. Like how many snuff videos does Twitter, they're going to ban everyone else except like Twitter is literally the snuff social network.
Like, you could watch as many dead people as you want on that.
像这样,你可以在上面看无数死人。
And then here's the thing. Rassamon should be worried about the people dying in those little kids dying in the Chess.
然后这件事情就是。Rassamon应该担心那些在棋子里死去的小孩。
He put, I saw, of course, I was disturbed by this video because nobody likes to watch someone shot to death. So I googled what was going on. When I tracked it down, it was a 57 year old man in a bus shelter in Albuquerque, not in Seattle, in Albuquerque in 2019.
So it's old news, but it's important news. And here's the thing, the guy, again, raised his image. It's horrible, but the guy was white and he was mentally ill. And so I will point down something really interesting, which is that 60% of the people killed accidentally or inappropriately through negligence by law enforcement, 60% are mentally ill.
And I know this because I am a co-founder of a company that is building a device to help police. It's basically a non-level weapon to restrain people. It's to replace taser because taser kills too many people so they're not not on level anymore. So I've seen a lot of these videos, but I've learned that 60% of the people killed by the police are mentally ill.
Some white, some black, but mentally ill is the defining thing. This guy had severe autism, couldn't respond correctly. And so they shot him. Instead, if they had wrapped him, by the way, Andrew Yang to his credit on Friday, he tweeted out the gun, not the gun, but the weapon, the device we created and said police need to start logging at this because it wraps around you and it doesn't hurt.
I've been wrapped. You've been wrapped. It doesn't hurt.
我被包裹了。你也被包裹了。不会疼。
I just spit on you, by the way. You're probably going to get coronavirus. I need to like, I need to hide. Was that a viral load? I did hope. I've got to have you viral load. Oh, yeah. Look at all the new vocabulary words. We've got viral loads, viral shedding, R-N-U-T, P-P-P.
By the way, speaking of PPP and copper and health, the number one trending kickstarter project right now, as I was with a few days ago, was about an extra hygiene brass doorknob made out of copper.
So people are on to it. The copper thing. Copper doorknob. Yeah.
所以人们知道了。是铜制的那个。铜门把手。是的。
Just looking at the copper pajamas, 43rd day in a row wearing pajamas. No one even asks. No one says, oh, what are you doing? Are you insane? I wore it on the plane. War to the keep of skiing. Yacht club yesterday. We're not allowed in, but we had friends who let us in because they don't like juice. No, just kidding. Just kidding. Don't worry. I don't want to insult anyway. They love juice.
This is like people. So somebody asked though on community because Andrew Yang tweeted about this and I've wanted an interview, Andrew Yang. And I reached out to him.
Why do I have to have Andrew Yang on? The answer is I don't know.
为什么我必须邀请Andrew Yang上节目呢?答案是我不知道。
He actually agreed to come on many months ago and then I never heard from him again. I would love to interview Andrew Yang. I do think, you be I, universal basic income, it's not a Democrat or a Republican issue, no matter how you try to make it.
UBI right now is the most important stimulus package you could do.
现在实行普遍基本收入是你可以采取的最为重要的刺激方案。
I spoke with Congressman Tim Ryan about this. He's a very great, he's a good Congressman from Ohio, Democrat, but you couldn't tell from his issues. He actually opposed Nancy Pelosi for the speakership job. He lost that race, but he's an up and coming Congressman.
He's in favor of a UBI. Started off, try a three month UBI, try a six month UBI. I wrote to Larry Kudlow, who's the National Economics Advisor, a Republican. And I suggested, look, just try this short term because direct stimulus to people is how you will spike the economy.
Don't just give it to hotel chains or airlines. The airlines are just going to go out of business anyway. Give it to people who need the money and it will be spent.
You don't have to worry about whether they have incentives to work. So I would love to talk to Andrew Yang about UBI law enforcement reforms. Automations happening now faster than he could have possibly predicted.
So I would love to talk to him about automation and his current concerns because right now society is in favor of automation because it's more hygienic.
我很想和他谈论自动化和他目前的担忧,因为现在社会对自动化比较青睐,因为它更加卫生。
You know, if you have robots, disinfect surfaces, if you have robots doing surgeries, if you have drones doing deliveries. So automation is not a bad thing and I am in favor of a UBI, but there's nuances.
Here's my ideal ticket. Like I don't give a shit about the parties. And you know, Trump, Biden, like, first off, nobody really likes Biden and people seem to either love or hate Trump.
And so whatever, let's think about 2024. Here's my ideal ticket. And I'm curious about where Dan Crenshaw, Nikki Haley for the Republicans. Dan Crenshaw's like, I have to match. Seems like such a common sense guy.
And Nikki Haley is the, you like her. And on the Democrats side, Andrew Yang, and I don't know, maybe Tim Ryan. I got to like Tim Ryan. That's my ideal ticket.
And by the way, for the libertarians, I don't know much about Joe Jorgensen, although I'm trying to get around the podcast. She's the presidential nominee. Spike Cohen. I love that name, Spike Cohen. He's like a hard, he's like Jewish with a Cohen, but Spike, he's like, somehow he's going to kick your ass. Meanwhile, he's like, he's also immunosuppressed. He's the VP candidate for Libertarian Party. So he's been locked down because of his immune system. He's got multiple, what is it, sclerosis? But he's been on my podcast. Super smart guy. I highly recommend it.
People don't realize that a lot of the Democrat ideas right now come from the Libertarian Party. Deep on the police comes from the Libertarian Party. And it doesn't mean no police. I love people looking up, but just get rid of the police that just give you driving tickets for no reason or the police that are just there to file your insurance claims or whatever. Like, just keep the police that solve crimes and handle domestic violence and stuff like that. That's all they're saying.
Anyway. I like to just take a picture of you like when you're driving and you do something wrong, they just take a picture and like, I don't know, they send you a ticket. Yeah. You know my photos I have of me like speeding right through a red light. I can make a whole like Facebook album of that. Like I should make like a poster or something and hang it up. Like, oh, I look really bad in that one. Like, oh, I should have crushed my hair before going through that red light.
So this was, but this was the actual BS headline of the day. Pilgrims pride, which is like the biggest maker of chicken nuggets in the world. Pilgrims pride recalled 60,000 pounds of chicken nuggets today. 60,000 pounds. Why did they do that? They said there was, they found there was too much flexible rubber in the products. What the heck? Why they're flexible rubber? Huh? China? China. Yeah. You, okay, yeah, probably China. I do think that's correct actually. I do think they make it in China and it's packaged here. No, the did put melanin in the melt there. So when we were there, somebody is putting flexible, first of all, isn't all rubber flexible? Like why do they have to mention it's like is non flexible rubber? Okay. Like if the rubber is too flexible in the chicken nuggets, why did they mention the word flexible?
And that's the oddest thing to put out in this press release. There's too much, what they could have just said, there's too much rubber and I've been like, that's disgusting. Too much flexible. What can they just say? There's just rubber. That's too much. Is that too much? Yeah, right. Yeah, there's too much. They could have just said there's rubber. Right. Please return. There's this too much of it. And by the way, we still would have made fun of it. But the fact that they had to say, look, it's the rubber flexible. Just avoid these packages have regular rubber. These packages, the rubber is too flexible. What does that mean? Like you're not going to be able to shit it out or something? Like, it's gross.
It is gross. Like, it's another thing. And so that was the BSL out of the day. And I'll just, because I've been skipping lately, I'll do the. I said this before, but I remember when we lived in China, they died the pork red so that. and then they would sell it as beef, especially to the wigars in the northern. Yeah. Which are muslim. So it's known. And the only pork. So they would do that. The Chinese would actually do that. And they've been doing it for years and they got caught while we were there.
By the way, I used to have a domain name, Jews who love pork.com. I think it's. The pork is like a gift from God. And unfortunately for the two. These two major religions in the world, Islam and Judaism. They. they more. The about members of these religions do not eat bacon, they're lost. But. Yeah. It would be horrible. I would tell. I would be able to tell if someone died my bacon red. It was really bacon. It was really horrible. Like, Turkey bacon is the worst. Um. It just shows you where there are more compasses. That's not terrible. I. It's just. All 1.2 billion people. So.
顺便说一句,我曾经有一个域名,Jews who love pork.com。我认为猪肉是上帝的礼物。可惜的是,世界上两大主要宗教——伊斯兰教和犹太教禁食猪肉。这些宗教的成员不吃熏肉,他们是失落的。但是,是的。这将是可怕的。如果有人把我的熏肉染成红色,我能看得出来。这是真的熏肉。真的很可怕。像火鸡熏肉是最糟糕的。嗯。这只是显示了道德标准的不同。这不是可怕的。我认为在12亿人中有所有。所以。
Okay. Another question. Um. oh, just what. there's Andrew Yang on what kind of things. You'd still don't agree with him? I actually agree with Andrew Yang on lots of things and I think he's a smart guy. I just want to talk to him about automation.
So. Uh. Let's see. This is a great question because a lot of business people go through this or writers go through this, artists go through this, parents go through this, teachers go through this, someone asked me, Hi James, how can someone disrupt the patterns in their head that tell them that the business idea they have has already been done? These thoughts keep playing in my head and are keeping me from moving forward.
So by the way, it's a really interesting question. So let me summarize the question. How do you tell if an idea is a good idea? What's interesting to me is that he used two or three sentences to ask that question. So it's almost like, yeah, he said, how can someone disrupt the patterns of their head that tell them? So it's almost like he's worried, like maybe the idea is good but his psychology is somehow obsessively thinking his idea is bad so he's not able to get through the psychology to see if the idea is good.
So fine. And he also says, not whether the idea is good, whether the idea has already been done. Which is a good sign to me if it's already been done and it's successful. Yeah, if an idea has been done and you can improve it, that's. I think. Yeah. And then. So it seems like the wrong question. Like, you can Google if an idea has been done.
Like, if I want to make an electric car, I'll Google electric cars and I'll see Tesla. If I want to make an electric bike, I'll Google electric bikes. If I want to make electric flossing on my teeth, I'll Google that. And by the way, that's also a trending project on Kickstarter. If I want to Google, so the person who asked earlier, what business ideas can help connect people who are alone or locked down? If I want to Google, oh, here's an idea. Sex-related subscription crates. So every month, you get a new box in the mail that has all these sexual toys for you and your wife or whatever.
I can Google it and I did. And it turns out, it's a huge trending item on Google right now. And B, there's all sorts of stuff. But I can't find my. Oh, here it is. There's the big O-box. There's the mystery pleasure box. There's the love drop. There's seductive pleasure. There's novel erotics. There's king crate. So you can just Google things. So that's not really the question. The real question is, how do you validate a good idea?
And the way I can validate a good idea is by asking people. There's several ways. And so I'll go through some of the ways. One is, I can simply ask people, do you need this? If I make this, will you buy it? So for instance, if I say, if I told you, look, here's a couple of things right now. We're in this total lockdown period that might last for years for all we know, it's semi-lockdown whatever.
If I told you, what if I could make you super comfortable clothes that will also protect you maybe from getting bacteria and maybe from getting viruses, maybe from getting cold, well, pajamas are the most comfortable clothes. So what if I told you I can make pajamas that look like outerwear but are actually pajamas. So what's great is I can just come into the house and just go into the bed and I'm asleep. I don't have to change my clothes or anything. And then I can just wake up and go to the computer and go on IG like, and I can have nice designs. And what if I could told you all, I can infuse them with copper. And there's a lot of evidence that copper is antimicrobial, antibacteria, antibiral.
That's why the brass door knob is trending on Kickstarter. And then I can say, would you buy it? If I just gave it to you for free, would you wear it? And then I can learn. You would say yes. Here's another way. What if I create the first version of this product for men and women? And I put it on Kickstarter. So on Kickstarter, I can say I'm raising $100,000. I'm going to make a whole line of this. And then Kickstarter, you give incentives. Oh, if you give $10, you get a one pair.
If you get, or you get socks, if you do $50, you get one pair. If you do $100, you get $12 pairs. If you do $1,000, I'll give you pairs every year for the rest of your life or whatever. And you Kickstarter is not only a good way to raise money, but it's a good way to validate your idea. People will see a working version of the product of your idea and they're willing to put money in. And they're your first customers. They're your strongest customer base.
So Kickstarter and other IndieGoGo, these are great ways to validate ideas. Another way is I can get a Facebook ad for just $20. And I can target, let's say I'm making a game for people who like Star Wars. It's going to do cards against humanity, but it's going to be the dark side of the forest versus humanity. Or whatever, or Yoda versus humanity. And so I can target people, young people who like Star Wars, and I'm going to sell in this game, Yoda versus humanity. And you can see them, or let's say I'm going to make the game, we were talking about this even Trump versus humanity. And you target people like Biden and you see if they click on the ad. And that's another way. If a lot of people click on the ad, you know you have some interest. So you can sell. So there's all these different ways.
Kickstarter和其他IndieGoGo都是验证想法的好方法。另一种方式是我只需支付20美元就能得到Facebook广告。 我可以选择定位人群,比如我正在为喜欢星球大战的人制作一个游戏。它会像Cards Against Humanity一样,但会是森林黑暗面与人类对战,或者是尤达与人类对战等等。 这样我就可以定位喜欢星球大战的年轻人,然后销售这个游戏。 你可以看到他们的反应,或者我要制作的游戏是特朗普对抗人性。你可以定位像拜登这样的人,然后观察他们是否点击广告。这也是另一种方式。如果许多人点击广告,你就知道有一些兴趣。所以有很多不同的方法。
When I was starting one company, my first company recently made websites, we just asked around to every local business, do you need a website? And would you be willing to pay? Our first customer was a diamond dealer, small guy. We did a website for him for $35,000. And boom, I had more money than I had ever had in my life. But we simply asked around. And then he spread the word about us. Other people spread the word. We had work to show. Suddenly, word of mouth went around. And boom, we had a business.
For another business, I made this sort of business. I wanted. I made an investment website with no news. Just information about stocks and best investors and ways to communicate. It was like a quora for investing. So I knew it was a good idea because I needed this website. So that was another way to validate the idea, which you never really see in all these articles about validating ideas, make the business that you would use.
So, you know, and then with this wrap gun that I was just mentioning, the non-lethal restraining device, we knew we talked to 100 police officers and police chiefs from all around the world, not just the US. I think they just announced today, 28,000 orders from Indonesia. So we knew that the police would be interested in this device. So we did that so thoroughly. We just asked every police department, would you be interested in the device? 100% said yes. So if you just ask people, you know there's an urgent problem. This is part of the cock rating. There's an urgent problem, which is that this was in 2016. There was an urgent problem, which is that I think it was the Eric Garner had just been killed. And again, not only was there an urgent problem because of the brutality and the killing and the murder, but it was all cities don't want to do it because they get sued and so it cost them billions of dollars. So we knew it was an urgent problem. We knew this was a useful solution because there was no device that was not lethal. Taser kills one or two people a week. We knew that it was ultra specific, like I'm using all the techniques from cock rating, to validate this idea. It was ultra specific because here's how it works and I'll show you a video of how it works. We knew that it was user friendly. You just have to press a button and there's a little laser so it tells you where you're shooting. So it was user friendly. I always forget what all the users are, but we have whatever it is. We have unquestionable proof because we've wrapped hundreds of thousands of people now, we did a million tests with all sorts of subjects, people running, people running at you, people running away, people running side to side, people waving their arms. And now every day police departments call us and say you just saved another life. So we have unquestionable proof. So that's how you validate an idea.
Let's get to something a little bit on the fun side. I was talking to one of our daughters. We have two daughters graduating and two other daughters trying to figure out what to do this next year. One of my daughters, one of our daughters, to her credit, a year before this all started, she dropped out of college. She worked to be an actress and I kept telling her, okay, fine, go to college, but are you going to get more experience acting in your shitty little drama department at Dickinson College or if you moved to New York City where there's Broadway. Now unfortunately, Broadway's closed down for the year, but she's thinking of side hustles and things she could do. So I'll just tell you what I'm telling her to debt literally today.
So because everybody always lists side hustles and I've done this too, but then when you start to look at it, like I was looking at one side hustle where you use her test websites that are being built and you make like a dollar an hour who wants to do that.
So you were telling one of your daughters get a real estate license, which is a great idea now that one part of the country is living up and moving to another part of the country right now. And so we'll see if she does that, but that it's not a side hustle, but it's a good idea.
The contact tracing is a job, you know, every city in the United States is hiring tens of that. I think New York State is hiring like 100,000 contact tracers, Washington DC alone. It's hiring like 250,000 contact tracers. So those are the people who if you got the virus, they will interview you and then contact everybody who's been in touch with you and get them to test for the virus and quarantine and so on.
So contact tracing, by the way, is a job you could do from home and it pays between 30 and 16,000 dollars a year.
顺便提一句,接触者追踪是一份可以在家里做的工作,年薪在30到16,000美元之间。
Great for a kid who's 20 years old and is not going to college and wants to pursue acting. She could do it from home. I did warn her though, the danger and I'm going to warn you, you, you, you, you, the danger of contact tracing is that it's the first step into 1984 world.
So if you have an iPhone, for instance, you have recently downloaded software without your awareness, you have recently downloaded software that allows Apple to do contact tracing. So if Robin has coronavirus and I happen to walk past her and then she, they find out a day later, she has coronavirus, they could see through the cell phone towers and GPS and stuff, who are all the people who walked near her and oh, who is this guy James Altatur?
如果你有 iPhone,例如最近你不知情地下载了软件,你最近下载了允许 Apple 进行接触追踪的软件。如果 Robin 患有冠状病毒,我碰巧经过她的身边,然后发现她的病情,他们可以通过手机塔和 GPS 等东西看到所有接近她的人,包括这个叫 James Altatur 的人是谁。
Let's put him in the database. Okay, contact tracer, make sure, visit his house and make sure he takes a cro, an at home coronavirus test. Oh, he has it. Make sure he's quarantined. Oh, he doesn't want to quarantine. Well, he has to quarantine. So you take it, we'll send the police, we'll take them to this quarantine facility and boom.
So con contact tracing and maybe you can argue, this is a good thing. Maybe you can argue, well, look, we need to lock down these people, they need to care about society.
因此,进行接触者追踪可能是一件好事。也许您可以说,我们需要封锁这些人,让他们关心社会。
Okay, fine. But what about the next level is she says something bad about Donald Trump or Joe Biden. Oh, who was standing next to her within 10 feet of her when she said that because we can, the phone can hear everything we say, right? Alexa can hear everything you say. Who was near her? Let's find out. Well, she had a rally. Who was near her? Oh, this guy James was near her, called James up and until we figure out what his political situation is, we need to quarantine him also and we're not telling him why.
So this starts to get into 1984 or minority report. Like I'm not against the idea of contact tracing, but be very, contact trace with the Spanish flow. But now that the technology is there to have so much more control over our lives.
Like, for instance, they could say, James, you don't want to quarantine. Well, guess what? We just shut your phone down. Guess what? We just turned off your email account. Guess what? We just froze your bank account. Now you have to quarantine until we decide you can get you let out. So I think the tech, the scariest, what someone says, we are in 1984 in the USSR or whatever.
We already have the US right now has the technology for even a better 1984 than 1984. So it's a dangerous weapon that our leaders now have their hands on and we just have to hope that they're responsible and that they can do this.
And you know, everyone says Trump is fascist or Biden is fascist or whatever. Let's just hope it's just talk and then it's not really true that they're just trying to win an election and then so they can continue making billions of dollars and ripping off the American people.
I'm fine with that. That's what presidents have always done. There's no secret that the that every president like the Obama family is worth 200 million dollars now. The Clintons are worth 200 million. They're probably billionaires. The bushes are billionaires and all they did was go into politics. So I don't care. Let them make all their money. Let them be corrupt.
I just don't want them escalating into 1984. And that's what I'm really that's the only thing that really scares me right now. And it's really the dictator. It's not like the individual doing it, but it's the party that's doing it.
Yes. You know what I mean? It's like we our presence can only go like four years or eight years at the most. So you know, they can come and go. So we don't have a dictator. But I believe it's sort of starting to be like the party is the dictator. Yeah.
Does that make sense? Yeah, because look, we all know like we all know anyway that Biden, you know, sadly both of them, if they whoever gets elected might not live one term. So their choice of vice president is really important. By the way, I'm betting on Val Demings, but I no longer think she's a get it. I think Tammy Duckworth, the center of Illinois will probably be that BP choice. I should probably bet on her as well. But yeah, I don't think anybody cares who's president. I think they care how much they can control.
So okay. So anyway, real estate license. I'm also telling my daughter, everybody in New York City is leaving all the major cities. New York City, Chicago, Illinois, I sorry, Chicago, San Francisco, LA, everybody's leaving. Everybody I talked to is moving out or having a summer home or we're getting an Airbnb in Austin. I just I've spoke to three people today who are going to Austin. So they're going to have homes that are empty for a while in New York City or LA or San Francisco. Where do they get to do with those homes? They're going to Airbnb them. So I told our daughter start look start contacting the recent listings on Airbnb and tell them you'll manage the air. What when they move to Puerto Rico and they to get no federal taxes and they can't come back to New York State for 186 days, they need someone to manage the Airbnb for them. So start advertising your services. Manage the Airbnb. You let gas in, you clean the place up and you get paid a good amount of money for that. So that's another thing.
I'm telling you also look at flip a dot com find an e-commerce site that makes a little bit of money that you're an expert in an area or an expert in that you think you can improve and that's for sale for a cheap price. I'll lend you the money to buy an e-commerce site and then you'll pay me back out of the profits and that's a that's a legit side hustle idea or you know I we talked about the sexual subscription boxes. Okay, if I needed to set up a subscription box like to that, let's say I want to go in the subscription box business like the ppp subscription box business. You get new disinfectants every month. You get new masks, you get new gloves, you get the new ultraviolet light. That's going to be a huge subscription box business.
Well, I don't know how to I James I don't know how to set up a subscription box business like you have to get all the products and you have to get them cheaper than you're selling them all in this monthly subscription and then you have to package the box up and you have to send it. Learn how to do all those parts and then this is meta help people set up their own subscription box business. I think you can charge $10,000 per business you set up like that. So plus ongoing maintenance. So that's that's maybe the multi-million dollar business idea of the day actually. Here's another one. A friend of mine came to me with an idea that I thought was pretty good. You know, it was an idea for a store in a very specific niche and since he told me the idea I cannot share the idea but I thought it was very, very good. I did some research. I thought it was a good idea for an e-commerce store.
I went on to Shopify just to see how easy it is for him to set up a Shopify store because I figured if it's easy for me, it'll be easy for him. I got about halfway through and then suddenly Shopify wouldn't reload. It said come back later and then I hit reload. I hit reload and all the information got lost. So clearly it's not so easy to set up a store and Shopify is supposedly the easiest. So I said to our daughter, learn how to set up Shopify stores. Everybody's moving towards e-commerce. Then go to every local business that you could find in New York City and say, hey, I'll set up a beautifully designed Shopify store for you. Pay me $5,000 and I'll do it and I'll take her on it. Once she gets good, it'll take her two or three hours per store to do it.
These are real side hustles. Not the bullshit like, oh, I'm going to drive for Uber Eats. You make ten cents a mile driving for Uber Eats. It's not a good idea. So whenever you Google side hustles, there's all these bullshit side hustles. These are real ones. We'll start to make a living and you can make wealth. So, oh, and then our daughter is an artist or she likes to draw and I said, and she's even had people approach her like, hey, can you draw me? Can you draw this? Can you draw that?
And I said, you know, try doing some of your drawings on t-shirts and then set up a store on t-spray or Shopify. Again, we want to validate the idea. Do three shirts. Set it up on t-spray. Send it out to all put it on Instagram and send all your Facebook friends to see if you get any orders. Boom. It's a great way to validate an idea. So anyway, another question.
So, that's a business question, but I will see if there's another question that's not business related. Oh, dear James, you are so damn productive. Thank you. Not as productive as you think. I spent the entire day yesterday playing poker online, much to her Shagrin. Did we go out last night? No, we went out last night before. Yeah. We went to dinner at the airport. Oh, we went out to dinner. Yeah, last night. Yeah, last night.
Dear James, you're so damn productive. How do you manage your time? Do you map out your days in advance? What tools do you employ for time management? Thanks very much. You're helping me build wealth. I really appreciate it. It's named Jonathan.
Jonathan, thank you so much. Here's the key thing. A lot of people do to-do lists. I do not do a to-do list. I do have a calendar. I use Google Calendar. So, for instance, on my Google Calendar for today, the only thing that's there is 2 p.m. Instagram live Q&A with Robin. That was the only thing on my calendar today. Oh, maybe I had a phone call also. But then at any given moment, I have two choices. Like, let's say when this is over. I have two choices. I can either waste some time or a three choice. I can either waste some time. I can spend time with Robin, which is always a good choice. Or I could figure out what's the most important thing I have to do right now.
Is there a phone call after return? Is there an article I have to write? Like, what am I- what is causing me some- a little bit of anxiety if I don't get this done? So, at any given point, I don't need a list. You don't need a list. At any given point, you know what the most important thing for you to do is. Like, you don't say, hmm, what should I do now when you actually have like an important assignment to the next day? You're very much aware that you have that assignment to the next day. It's very rare that you actually don't know given a particular moment what the most important thing for you to do is that moment.
And then if you have a two-hour to do list, it's too stressful. Like, I used to do a two-hour to do list and I'd have like 70 items on it. So, you never finished the things on your to-do list. So, it was too much stress. So, now I just ask myself every moment what is the most important thing for me to do right now? The only exception is, is in the mornings, I always try to spend one to two hours reading and then one I've been doing since 1990 every single day. I love it and nothing gets in the way of me doing writing or very rarely. Like, I schedule podcasts for the afternoons. We do this IG live in the afternoon. I don't return, I don't even use, I don't even look at my phone until the afternoon. I'm just about writing and it's not even about getting writing done. It's about getting better at writing. So, it's very important for me to try to get better every day.
And the only way to get better is to do it. Speaking of that, sad news for me, I just found out one of them and thank you for texting this to me. I just found out one of my podcast guests and a guy I admire, admire very, very much. Andrews Erickson, he's the professor who's the creator of the 10,000-hour rule. And that's the rule that if you do something for 10. I don't agree with this rule, but it's the rule that if you do something for 10,000 hours, you get to be the best at it.
Anyway, he just passed away. So, I'm sorry to hear that about him. He was a really good guy. He was on my podcast. We would email back and forth all the time. Even when I started doing comedy, I wrote to him and we conferred like, how can we apply the 10,000-hour rule to comedy? And that's when I realized the 10,000. It was really that email discussion with Andrews Erickson was very important to me because I realized then that he was wrong. That the 10,000-hour rule is really great for improving things that you do over and over and over again, like a golf swing. But it's not good for creative things like comedy or writing. And Julia Cameron, who was on my podcast, she's a great person also. She wrote a book called The Artist's Way. She once sent to me, she said, oh, you poor, poor baby. You are locked in this prison created by this 10,000-hour rule. You need to break out of that prison. And she was right.
And I started thinking what really helps me learn to be the best at any area is what I call the 10,000-experiment rule. So instead of just repeating something over and over again and getting feedback about it, you experiment with different ideas. So if I'm writing, maybe I'll write an article in the second person instead of the first person. So the second person is when you say you instead of I, or maybe if I'm playing chess, I experiment with some crazy openings. Or maybe if I'm doing business, I experiment with validating an idea on Kickstarter. Or maybe if I'm doing publishing, I'll experiment with doing a 10-page book, self-published on Amazon.
So every experiment, and I came over the whole, once I had this conversation with both Anders Erickson and Julia Cameron, I came over this whole philosophy of how what an experiment looks like, how you can learn as much as possible, whether you fail or succeed. And I've spoken about this before, but Anders Erickson, for better or for worse, has been very instrumental on my thinking because for so long, I just beat myself over the head about the 10,000-hour rule. How do I, how do I crack the code? So I don't have to do 10,000 hours. And he was pushing me at it. And finally, after tons of conversations, I was able to do it.
So anyway, rest in peace, Anders Erickson, you're a really good guy. His book, Peak, I highly recommend, and my next book called Skip the Line coming out next March. So forget about it now, but it's all about how to skip the line and be the best without spending Anders Erickson's 10,000 hours. I owe the whole concept of that book to him. So I was very sad to hear that he had passed, he had passed away.
So, oh, let me see. Oh, is there anything you wanted to bring up specifically? Well, no, I'm just going along with the whole way. I'm shocked that he died. He's a very good guy.
Obviously, Malcolm Gladwell popularized the concept of the 10,000 hours in his book Outliers. And then Anders Erickson thought he got that Gladwell got it wrong. So that's why Erickson wrote Peak. And I think that was pretty much the only podcast he wanted to go up on. He flew actually from Florida to New York. And he wasn't really that healthy then. It was several years ago. And we had such a great time. Anyway, we kept in touch.
But the way Malcolm Gladwell popularized the 10,000 hour rule, he spoke about the Beatles and how the Beatles in the early 60s. Before anybody heard about them, the Beatles worked for something like 10,000 hours in these strip clubs 24 hours a day almost in Germany. And that's how they just, they put in their 10,000 hours. But when I spoke to Erickson about this, he said, no, no, it was more like five or six thousand hours. Gladwell got it wrong.
But then I started thinking about the Rolling Stones. How did the Rolling Stones get good? They actually kind of sucked in the beginning. Like Mick Jagger, Quinn and play instruments. And he wasn't a singer. He was an honorable singer. If you look at the very early reviews of the Rolling Stones, they would say that the reviews that I can't understand a single word. He says out of that ugly mouth. They would say that. And nobody could figure out, and they weren't even like a great group. So how did they get good?
Well, here's, and it was very interesting studying the example of the Rolling Stones. First off, they did Idea Sex. So Keith Richards and Mick Jagger were obsessed with the Blues. So they combined, they're the first group to really combine the Blues with Elvis Presley, which is sort of a modern version of the Blues at that time, with the Beatles, which was like pop music. So they combined the Blues with pop music. And so Idea Sex, they were the only one in that intersection of a pop version. They, you know, their first ten songs, their first album was all Blues music, was covers. They were a cover band.
Their first time they had a hit in the top ten was a cover of a Buddy Holly song. Then, this is very important for getting good at something. They had their plus minus equals. So their plus was obviously Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly. There's virtual mentors that they studied, ever since they were little kids. Keith Richards and Mick Jagger, many each other on a train going into London. Mick Jagger was studying at the London School of Economics. Keith Richards was some kind of drug addict loser, and they were both carrying Blues albums with them. So they had a common interest, but it wasn't just that. They, so they had their, their virtual mentors. They had their plus, but they also had their equals. So one time they were going to a gig and they shared a car. Nobody had a car. So they shared a car with two other people. We're also going to the gig, two other like 16-year-olds who were also going to that gig. Eric Clapton, who became, you know, the head of group cream and Jimmy Page, the guitarist for Led Zeppelin.
So they were friends. All of these guys, this whole group of like rock, like they grew up together. So they had their equals that they competed against and compete, so you always have to find your equals that you're you're both learning from and competing against.
When, when Mick Jagger and Keith Richards tried to write their first song, they were failing. They couldn't do it. So they ran into on the street to where their friends from the, from the club scene. These friends were John Lennon and Pomm McCartney. So John Lennon and Pomm McCartney said, hey, how do we all just work to, well, let's all hang out in your little studio apartment and we'll figure it out. So that first, the first original song that the Rolling Stones ever put out, I think it was called I Want to Be Your Man, was written by Pomm McCartney and John Lennon.
So it's grown up together and meaning these, these greats that are just in the beginning stages. You know, when you look at the art movement, you have, you know, Jasper Johns, Robert Roushenberg, they were roommates and they lived right next to John Cage and who was also this abstractionist in the music space, or you look at, you know, all these different group Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Steve Wazniak, Paul Allen, they all hung out together when they were kids. So Picasso, Picasso and Marlowe, all these artists from in France, Fitzgerald, you know, F Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemway, John Dose Passos, Gertrude Stein, all hanging out in Paris in the 20s. So you find your equals and you find your scene, not your tribe, but your scene that you grow up with, tribe means something different than a scene.
The other thing they did, it's very important. When they're young, you say yes to everything. When you're older, you say no to everything. So Mick Jagger, they would say yes to every single gig. They did 200 gigs a year in the early 60s and that's how they, again, that's the part with a 10,000 hour rule comes in. They just did as many gigs as possible.
Now, here's something interesting. How do they make money? Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones, all of them, they don't own the rights to their music. They kind of sold those away. In 1966, they sold the way all the paint at black, simply for the devil, all the satisfaction, all the songs that we know, they sold them to their manager, Alan Klein. So here's how they make money. Every year, they go on tour. They form a new company, they go on tour, the company collects all the money and then they dissolve the company at the end of the year and split up the money into four pieces and their last tour made $600 million. So that's how they make their money.
现在有一件有趣的事情。他们是怎么赚钱的?米克·贾格和滚石乐队的所有成员,他们都没有音乐的版权。它们已经被出售了。在1966年,他们把所有的音乐都卖给了经纪人艾伦·克林。那些著名的歌曲,例如《Paint It Black》、《Sympathy For The Devil》、《Satisfaction》等,都被出售了。现在他们是如何赚钱的呢?每年他们会举办一次巡回演出。他们会成立一个新公司,开展巡回演出,这个公司会收集所有的资金。然后在年底解散公司,把钱分成四份。他们最后一次巡回演出赚了6亿美元。这就是他们赚钱的方式。
So you always have no matter who you are, whether you're Mick Jagger or someone sitting at home writing a book, you always have to do what I call the Spoken Wheel approach. Their music is the wheel, but the tour is one of the Spokes. Mick Jagger also produces TV shows. They also produce other albums and they own rights to other musicians. So on and on, they have a Spoken Wheel.
Also, it helps to have breadth of knowledge. So the first words of sympathy for the devil, I forget the words now, please excuse me, blah, blah, blah. But that's a line from a book by Mikhail Bulgakov, the master in the Margarita. So Mick Jagger was an avid reader of literature and he took lines from his favorite novels. So again, using ideas, using other things to combine and you know, these are just a few other things.
It's worth studying the careers of the people who are at the best and you could see this relates back to Andrews Erickson just riffing on this. You could see how where the 10,000 hour roll comes in, but also these other things. You know, they experimented. Mick Jagger experimented with playing the guitar experimented with different types of music. They experimented with having different drummers. Brian Jones, they threw him out of the band because that experiment wasn't working. So they also did experiments. They experimented what should they say yes to? What should they say no to? So and so on.
Unfortunately, they're not very good at saying no. They're still playing at the age of 73. Mick Jagger thought he was going to retire at the age of 33, but don't make gold and shows you the uselessness of goals. You could have a goal for five years from now and then five years from now, you could say, yeah, that was a stupid goal. I wish I knew that. What I could know. I'm going to make a new goal. And make a new goal.
So but in any case, thanks so much for your questions. Any questions I didn't ask I will try to ask answered directly on SMS or in one of my articles or in a future IG live where I didn't want to mention the good headline of the day, but I'll say it for tomorrow. Tomorrow also more business ideas, more historical examples of experiments and ideas. Sex.
Hey, RL by the way, I thought you never you told me two days ago, you're a horrible cook and then you made like the best apple pie in the world. Was it frozen?
嘿,RL顺便说一句,我记得你两天前告诉我你不会做饭,但你却做了世界上最好吃的苹果派。它是冷冻的吗?
Hi. I saw the mystery. I thought she was like this incredible cook all of a sudden and it's been lined with all this time. But the truth comes out.