James Altucher dives deep into the future of creativity, AI, and personal reinvention. From his early days as a programmer to becoming a bestselling author, Altucher shares candid lessons on career pivots, financial missteps, and why “choosing yourself” matters now more than ever.
He explains how AI is reshaping jobs, what skills will thrive, and why creativity is the ultimate competitive edge in a rapidly changing world. James also breaks down simple, practical daily creativity exercises you can start using today to expand your thinking and open new opportunities.
The Karol Markowicz Show is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Wednesday & Friday.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Marcos Show on iHeartRadio.
My guest today is James AL Toucher. James is an entrepreneur,
best selling author, National chess Master, and host of The
James L. Toucher Show. He is currently also involved in
two different companies. So nice to have you on, James.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Carol is so great to be here. I know we've been.
I feel like we've been planning to plan the talk
for us years we are.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
I love it. You know, it's so funny. You know,
I got your bio sent over and it doesn't even
mention you're the author of twenty books out where? How
do you do this? How do you even find time for?
Like life?
Speaker 2 (00:46):
You know?
Speaker 3 (00:46):
I think if you if every day you kind of
move the needle forward and whatever it is you're passionate about,
you're going to get a lot done over the years.
Like take book writing, for instance, a thousand words is
you know, a couple of pages? Yeah, maybe three pages.
And if you write a thousand words a day, which
(01:07):
is again three pages, maybe it takes a couple hours
a day. So you wake up an hour or two
early and you go to sleep instead of watching TV.
You write for an hour, you're going to end up
with three hundred and sixty thousand words by the end
of the year, which is the equivalent of six books.
So just take the best sixty thousand words and now
you have a book, and then over twenty years you're
going to have more than twenty books.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Actually make it sound quite easy. I've written a book.
It didn't go like that. It was great, It was great,
I was a bestseller. I can't complain, but I will
never do it again. It was extremely difficult.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Ever since my very first book, which was in two
thousand and four, I have said every single time, I
am never going to do this again. I'm never going
to write a book again, and then the next year
I end up writing another book.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
What was your first book?
Speaker 3 (01:54):
What was a very financial oriented book called Trade Like
a Hedge Fund. My first couple of books were very financial,
and then I started moving into more really kind of
this sort of writing that I enjoyed reading and the
kind of issues I wanted to talk about as opposed
to just financial stuff, which I kind of find boring.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
So which one's your favorite of the twenty.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
I have a book called Choose Yourself, which kind of
was a philosophy that became very important to me when
I realized, Oh, I was always waiting for others to
approve of me, whether it was a boss or let's say,
a publisher please pick me, or a TV producer or
a girlfriend or whatever.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Like I wanted.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Everyone to choose me. And I finally realized, you know what,
if I really wanted things to happen, I need to
start choosing myself. Like, okay, instead of being just the
best possible employee for a boss, maybe I should start
a company. Or instead of waiting for a mainstream publisher,
maybe I should self publish. Now, of my twenty books,
(02:58):
maybe half are with me mainstream publishers and half are
self published. But by far the best selling ones are
the self published ones. So choosing myself was financially successful
for me. And the same thing too, like, oh, instead
of waiting for this group of people to like me,
or this this social hierarchy that I want to be
a part of to approve of me, you know, always.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Look for ways.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
Usually if I'm unhappy, I realize the roots of it
are because I'm not quite choosing myself. I'm not quite
confident enough that I could be create or creative enough
to choose myself.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
And that's what that.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
Book is about, starting from times when I went broke
waiting for people to choose me, and you know, the
only way to get out of it was to choose
myself because I had no other opportunities.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
It sounds like a much better version of the let
them you know, Mel Robbins thing that's going on right now,
which is like, don't wait for other people to you know,
pick you basically. But you sound like that book is
about pick yourself first, which is I think an even
better message.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Yeah, and it's really important, particularly now we're in this look.
I wrote that book in twenty thirteen, but I can
easily write a version of it now. Like everybody's nervous
because you have things like AI oh Ai is going
to take all our jobs. AI won't take your job
if you focus on the skills that have always created success,
which is, you know, creativity, and then learning all the
(04:18):
tools that will make you help you make your creativity manifest.
It's the same skills that worked in nineteen twenty eight
when silent movies went to talking movies, and it's the
same thing now, like or you know, in every generation
before and after, Like, AI is not coming to take
(04:39):
your job yours. If you're creative, you're going to succeed.
And it doesn't mean creative like oh, I'm going to
be Picasso or the greatest artist of all the time.
It's easy to be in the top one percent of creativity,
you know, just by focusing on a little bit each day,
as like we were describing earlier.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
So you're optimistic about A Oh, very optimistic.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Yeah, I love AI.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
So what do you think is gonna I mean, I'll
ask you my prediction question down the road on this interview,
But what do you think is because a lot of
people on the show that come on are very worried
and they think that the economy is going to take
a giant hit, and not everybody is creative, not everybody
is really smart. What happens to all those people? Why
are you optimistic about it?
Speaker 2 (05:21):
I'm optimistic?
Speaker 3 (05:21):
Well, first off, if it wasn't kind of a net
positive for the economy and for individuals, it wouldn't be
as popular as it is now. I mean, the fastest
growing companies in the world now are the ones, you know,
building AI tools for consumers to use, and consumers are
using them. And by the way, when companies use them,
companies get more profits.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
What do they do with their profits?
Speaker 3 (05:44):
They invest in new companies and new industries and new ideas,
and that creates new jobs. The unemployment rate. You know,
despite the rise in AI over the past three years,
the unemployment rate has got there's more employee people than
ever people are. We see in the headlines, Oh, there's layoffs,
but what we don't see is that there's tons of
(06:06):
new businesses starting and again, a number of employee people
has actually gone up since the rise in AI. I
was just speaking at a conference to the movie industry
where I feel like they're torn in the movie industry.
Is this gonna replace movie screas? Is going to replace actors,
It's going to replace writers, and to some degree, it
will replace a lot of just like the Internet replaced
(06:29):
a lot of industries, and computers replaced a lot of industries,
and cars replace the horse, you.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Know, driving industry.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
AI is going to replace some industries. Yeah, but think
of it as a tool. Think of it as a
tool to be more creative and more productive, and you're
going to you know, you were always competing a little
bit against other you know our colleagues and other people
in the workforce. If you're the one using AI and
master these skills, no matter what your age, you're going
to do well. And by the way, it doesn't mean,
(07:00):
you know, people at Polaroid Camera didn't suddenly get another
you know, didn't suddenly get a job at a digital
camera company. Maybe they went off and did something completely new,
something that they wanted to do, or or maybe they
were tired, you know, they set expectations differently, they downsized,
they were tired.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
But then Polaroid came back around it became cool to
be this older thing, you know. I also think there's
some of that, like people are going to reject the
just AI movies and go back to like I don't know,
I don't know what silent films, but back to kind
of basics with movies. I think it could bring a renaissance.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
And also, by the way, there's there's something called microdramas
where a lot of the videos you see on just
you know, scrolling Instagram or YouTube, you see these microdramas. Yeah, yeah,
those are a lot of those are produced. They're not real.
Like I'm always wondering are those real or not? But
a lot of them aren't real, but we love watching them. Like,
you know, the the outrage ones like oh this woman
(08:01):
won't sit next to somebody with an airplane with a
MAGA hat right well over were all produced videos.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Yeah, they completely are. We're going to take a quick
break and be right back on the Carol Marcowitch Show.
What was your first job? Like, what was your what
did you want to be and how did you get here?
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Well?
Speaker 3 (08:23):
I really wanted to be a writer. I wanted to
write novels. But I went to school for computer science,
so I was a programmer. So so okay, I had
some random jobs. But then my first real job and
took me to the big city in New York City
was at HBO. I figured that's going to be my
back doorway into the entertainment industry. So I was working
(08:44):
in the IT department. My title was like junior programmer analyst.
Nobody would talk to me. I could barely do the
job well, but I figured, okay, this is my back
doorway into writing novels that will get published and being
in the entertainment industry, which was sort of true because
what happened was there was no intern there was no web.
(09:05):
I mean, the web was just starting. So I convinced
HBO to make a website and convinced them to let me,
this lowly guy on the totem poll to do their website.
And from that I both built a business making websites
for entertainment companies, but also allowed me to be more creative.
I created web shows for HBO, something they don't currently do.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Actually, now nobody knew what to do with the web.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
Now it's a big marketing slash e commerce environment. But HBO,
I said, oh, let me do like creative web shows,
just like you do creative TV shows. And so I
did that, and that way really was my first exposure
to the writing and the entertainment industry and even and
I wrote a whole bunch of unpublished unpublished but I
should also say unpublishable novels, and then ultimately built a
(09:52):
business sold it. Had no idea what to do with money,
so I went completely broke like just like I went
from million like generational wealth to one hundred and forty
three dollars in the bank because they didn't know anything
about investing, always self investing, to the point where then
I was running a hedge fund.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Yeah, I was gonna say, I see you as a
finance guy, and then like looking into your background, it
turns out you were like this creative writer guy.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
Yeah, Like I wasn't a finance guy at all, but
then I got interested in it and I got passionate
about it and learned everything I could after I went
broke and and I wrote software to help me trade
the markets. And this was early on when people were
starting to do that kind of like quantitative trading, and
I just got immersed in that, and that became you know,
(10:42):
writing about finance and then also managing money was an
early part of my career after building websites and you know,
and then I started writing books using my I think
you when you take the intersection of your interests and skills,
that's a very powerful way to be number one.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
So they weren't that you happen to have the ones
that like, you know, the the tech and the finance
and the ability to write, Like that's a very good intersection.
Not everybody has that kind of intersection, right, So.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
I could be like money is made, like like I
could be a finance person who then programs my ideas
to see if they were but then write about them,
to communicate them to the world. So so it was
like like I was like a one man band, you know,
you see the guy with I love It flow on
the tub of them, but also playing the harps.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Chord or whatever.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
And I built a career doing that. But then I
got interested in other things, like more and more things,
and combined these these intersections in very interesting ways. And
but I've always been able to ownly my weakness with that.
All is I could only do what I'm passionate about.
Otherwise I'm just really bad at whatever it is I'm
asked to do.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
What would have been a plan be like had this not.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
Worked out, probably suicide like James like, And I'm not
encouraging that behavior from anyone, but.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
But I don't know. I never really like, I never
had any plan B. When I applied to college.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
I only applied to one school, and I like, looking
back on it, I can't even imagine what I was thinking.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
I had zero plan B. And you know, I remember
going broke.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
And I was thinking to myself, well, should I get
a job here? I had started the company, sold it,
and then I just was dead broke, I was losing
my house, I was really depressed as my family had
didn't generational wealth again, but nothing, you know, I had nothing,
and I was I just I couldn't get myself to
(12:36):
like look for a job. I just had to start
another business, and I started many business I had a
policy of starting businesses and failing them very quickly so
that I could I didn't waste time on any one
business idea. And that process worked. But then I went
broke again, Like it was hard for me. There's three
skills to money. There's there's making it, keeping it, growing it,
(12:59):
And I would would have a hard time keeping it,
you know, for a very long time, for like a
decade or more, I kept making it and then losing it,
and you know, it's all these skills are very difficult.
Money is a very psychological thing, and it's hard to
deal with all the issues around around money often.
Speaker 4 (13:17):
Yeah, did you grow up like middle class or yeah,
I would say like lower lower middle class, Like middle
class almost had a different definition when when we were kids,
like you could you could actually be middle class and survive.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
Now I feel like middle class you almost like how
would you survive in New York City as middle class?
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Now you can't really, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
It's impossible. Actually, yeah, I don't know anywhere. Really, I
think it's gotten so difficult to be middle class.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
Yeah, because you just look at you, like, for instance,
a lot of people send their kids to school. Well,
the price of a college tuition has risen faster than
inflation for fifty years in a row, so not even
like on average, but just every year inflation might be
three percent, but tuitions are going to rise.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
And that's happened every year for fifty years in a row.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
So now college is completely unaffordable to middle class unless
you borrow enormous amounts of money.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Yeah. Yeah, and the colleges aren't even doing that great.
There was like this piece in the Wall Street Journal
about University of Chicago is like not broke, but they're
they're definitely scrambling around for money, and it's like, how
do you guys not have money? Just yeah, the whole
system makes no sense.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
It makes no sense.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
I personally think they should just force all the colleges
to shut down.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Like, do you tell your kids, I don't know how
old are your kids, do you tell them not to
go to college?
Speaker 3 (14:34):
I did tell them not to go to college, and
they didn't listen to me, and then one did leave
college after two years and the other graduated in three years,
so they both ultimately kind of paid attention to me.
But I beg them not to go. Of course, I'm
not going to like deny them going, because you know,
you can't argue with I'm a dad, I have two daughters.
(14:55):
I can't argue with with my daughters. But now they
agree with me. But I think think, I think now
also it's a legitimate conversation now. Wasn't a legitimate conversation
twenty years ago. It's a legitimate conversation now. Hey, are
there alternatives? Maybe I can start a business, Maybe I
can learn from AI or the con Academy or these
other online places and get a Google certificate for it
(15:16):
or whatever. Right, So I think there's much better choices
now than college.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Yeah, I see college as just for socializing, and I
realize I'm going to have to pay a lot for
my kids to go socialize. But I see it as
maybe somewhere where you might meet your future spouse, or
where you make lifelong friends or professional connections. But I
don't see it at all as somewhere that you get
an education.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Can you remember anything you learned in college. Zero.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
I remember the things I lied about, Like I found
a paper that I wrote, and I remember writing this
paper about how like the family is an outdated concept.
And I was a lifelong conservative. I never believed the
family was an outdated concept, but I had to say
it in college in order to get the A.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
So that's what I Yeah, you have to be like
a socialist to survive, to make in college.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Yeah, exactly. What are you most proud of in your life?
Speaker 3 (16:05):
Probably this book that I mentioned earlier, Choose Yourself only
because so much like I might even like even to
this day and age, Like I was at an airport
the other day and someone came up to me and said,
I read your book.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
It changed my life. Thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
And when you get that kind of feedback, it feels
really good. And and I get that all the time
from you know, from from from many of my books,
but that one is the most and and I and
it was something of philosophy I really believed in that
that works for me to this day, Like, whenever I
find myself in a rut or going down some path
that's making me unhappy, it's usually because some aspect of
(16:43):
it of some I'm not really following my own advice
from that book. And usually even now when when when
I find myself unhappy, so getting back into the advice,
it always makes me my life better. And again I
see that with other people too, So I think that
that book is the best thing I've ever done. Also,
I mentioned HBO earlier, there was a project I proposed
(17:05):
to them. Then it was called three Am, and it
was a web show on the website. This is in
the mid nineties where I would go out in New
York City at three in the morning on a Wednesday night,
which is sort of an odd night to be out
there in the morning, and I would interview random people.
And I did this for like two and a half years,
and I think that was the funnest I love that
thing I've ever done.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Wednesday nights in New York City were actually the best
night because it was the locals night. It wasn't you know,
nobody coming in from anywhere to go out. It was
very very fun night. And whenever I head off from
school on Thursday, Wednesday would be the best night to
go out.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
Yeah, if you if you were out on a Wednesday night,
you were up to something and then on a Saturday
night was out whatever, right, crowded?
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Your parents are out on Saturday, you know.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
Yeah, Like but Wednesday night that was like you're not
a civilian anymore, Like you're you're you're doing something.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Absolutely Yeah, give us a five year out prediction. It
could be about the country, the world, music, art, whatever
you want.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
Well, you know, I'm very I am very optimistic about AI,
and I do think what's going to happen is all
of our lives are going to change. Like, let's just
take the most obvious. Medically, every disease is going to
be diagnosable by AI. Wow, within seconds already the AI
is there. But of course there's a lot of regulatory
(18:26):
hurdles that medical devices have to get through.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
But I see it.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Through my own investing, in my own research into AI.
But even furthermore, like AI is changing every job. AI
is going to create a lot more jobs, brand new
industries we can't even think of. Just like when the
Internet was started, nobody could have dreamed of Uber or
companies like that. There's going to be things we can't
even dream of that AI AI is going to supply.
(18:52):
And I'm optimistic also about crypto, not in this kind
of like scammy, you know, make a gazillion dollar buying
this weird crypto, but more like the financial system, like
every industry needs to evolve, and it hasn't really evolved
that much in the past one hundred years. Like you know,
when you put money in a bank, they're just killing
(19:13):
you on transaction fees, and they take your money and
give you almost no interest and they lend it out
at six seven percent interest to people want to buy houses,
Like why are banks in the way of everything we
would want to do with our money. Crypto sort of
removes these intermediaries and gives people more power over their
own money. And I think I think that's going to
(19:34):
be very revolutionary in ways that we haven't we haven't
truly discovered yet. So the combinations of AI, crypto, biotech,
this is going to change life as we know it
in a good way. And I would encourage people to
embrace that because like, don't fear it. Yes, there's gonna
be scary things, just like the Internet has some scary things,
just like nuclear energy has scary things. Just like there
(19:56):
are a million car accidents a year, so cars aren't
always great, but ultimately these are all positive forces.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
I love it. I love your optimism. I really don't
feel like I hear enough optimism about AI. I'm kind
of neutral on it. I like wait and see, you know,
but I hear so much doom that it's very rare
for me to hear a very very positive perspective like yours.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
Some things AI is not going to be able to do, so,
I mean, people think AA is gonna be able to
do everything. But you know, AI is just a gigantic
way of doing very sophisticated data analysis. And we've never
had this before, and we've never had this kind of
apple to the in front of us.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
Yet.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
It's very exciting because there is a lot of data
out there, like, for instance, data about medical diseases, data
about you know, I don't know any kind of analysis,
any kind of analysis.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
That you would want to do. AI is going to
be a great tool to do that.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
I love it. I can't wait to see where this goes. James.
I have been a fan of yours for so long.
I have loved this conversation. I just I find you
so super interesting. I can keep this going forever. Leave
us here with your best tip for my listeners on
how they can improve their.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Lives every day.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
Take a small little book. Okay, it could be a
small little notepad. There's my small little notepad fits in
your pocket. Go and have a cup of coffee and
write down ten ideas. And the point ten has to
be ten tens a lot. It is a lot. And
the thing is they could be ten bad ideas. The
(21:30):
whole idea is that creativity is a muscle, and like
any muscle, if you don't exercise it, it atrophies, and
the atrophies very quickly, like any muscle. And so write
ten bad ideas a day down by the way around idea.
The reason is in ten is important is around seven.
It just happens to me every day. I always think
I'm done and I count and it's just seven, and
(21:53):
it's the final three.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
It's where you start sweating the hardest ones. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
Yeah, you could feel your brain sweating. And so you know,
maybe it's ten ideas for chapters in a book you'd write,
or ten ideas for books you'd want to write, or
maybe I write down ten ideas for the Carol Markwick Show,
or ten ideas of Amazon how Amazon can improve just
could be about anything, and it's the whole idea is though,
it just exercises that creativity muscle again. You can quite
(22:20):
write just nothing but bad ideas. It doesn't matter. It's
just about exercising that muscle.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
I love that. I'm going to try it. I'm going
to let you know how it goes. I don't know.
Ten might be hard, but I feel like I'm gonna
give this my best shot. He is James L. Tucher.
Thank you so much James for coming on check out
his James L. Toucher Show.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Thank you, Thank you, Carol
Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Marcos Show on iHeartRadio.
My guest today is James AL Toucher. James is an entrepreneur,
best selling author, National chess Master, and host of The
James L. Toucher Show. He is currently also involved in
two different companies. So nice to have you on, James.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Carol is so great to be here. I know we've been.
I feel like we've been planning to plan the talk
for us years we are.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
I love it. You know, it's so funny. You know,
I got your bio sent over and it doesn't even
mention you're the author of twenty books out where? How
do you do this? How do you even find time for?
Like life?
Speaker 2 (00:46):
You know?
Speaker 3 (00:46):
I think if you if every day you kind of
move the needle forward and whatever it is you're passionate about,
you're going to get a lot done over the years.
Like take book writing, for instance, a thousand words is
you know, a couple of pages? Yeah, maybe three pages.
And if you write a thousand words a day, which
(01:07):
is again three pages, maybe it takes a couple hours
a day. So you wake up an hour or two
early and you go to sleep instead of watching TV.
You write for an hour, you're going to end up
with three hundred and sixty thousand words by the end
of the year, which is the equivalent of six books.
So just take the best sixty thousand words and now
you have a book, and then over twenty years you're
going to have more than twenty books.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Actually make it sound quite easy. I've written a book.
It didn't go like that. It was great, It was great,
I was a bestseller. I can't complain, but I will
never do it again. It was extremely difficult.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Ever since my very first book, which was in two
thousand and four, I have said every single time, I
am never going to do this again. I'm never going
to write a book again, and then the next year
I end up writing another book.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
What was your first book?
Speaker 3 (01:54):
What was a very financial oriented book called Trade Like
a Hedge Fund. My first couple of books were very financial,
and then I started moving into more really kind of
this sort of writing that I enjoyed reading and the
kind of issues I wanted to talk about as opposed
to just financial stuff, which I kind of find boring.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
So which one's your favorite of the twenty.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
I have a book called Choose Yourself, which kind of
was a philosophy that became very important to me when
I realized, Oh, I was always waiting for others to
approve of me, whether it was a boss or let's say,
a publisher please pick me, or a TV producer or
a girlfriend or whatever.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Like I wanted.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Everyone to choose me. And I finally realized, you know what,
if I really wanted things to happen, I need to
start choosing myself. Like, okay, instead of being just the
best possible employee for a boss, maybe I should start
a company. Or instead of waiting for a mainstream publisher,
maybe I should self publish. Now, of my twenty books,
(02:58):
maybe half are with me mainstream publishers and half are
self published. But by far the best selling ones are
the self published ones. So choosing myself was financially successful
for me. And the same thing too, like, oh, instead
of waiting for this group of people to like me,
or this this social hierarchy that I want to be
a part of to approve of me, you know, always.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Look for ways.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
Usually if I'm unhappy, I realize the roots of it
are because I'm not quite choosing myself. I'm not quite
confident enough that I could be create or creative enough
to choose myself.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
And that's what that.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
Book is about, starting from times when I went broke
waiting for people to choose me, and you know, the
only way to get out of it was to choose
myself because I had no other opportunities.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
It sounds like a much better version of the let
them you know, Mel Robbins thing that's going on right now,
which is like, don't wait for other people to you know,
pick you basically. But you sound like that book is
about pick yourself first, which is I think an even
better message.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Yeah, and it's really important, particularly now we're in this look.
I wrote that book in twenty thirteen, but I can
easily write a version of it now. Like everybody's nervous
because you have things like AI oh Ai is going
to take all our jobs. AI won't take your job
if you focus on the skills that have always created success,
which is, you know, creativity, and then learning all the
(04:18):
tools that will make you help you make your creativity manifest.
It's the same skills that worked in nineteen twenty eight
when silent movies went to talking movies, and it's the
same thing now, like or you know, in every generation
before and after, Like, AI is not coming to take
(04:39):
your job yours. If you're creative, you're going to succeed.
And it doesn't mean creative like oh, I'm going to
be Picasso or the greatest artist of all the time.
It's easy to be in the top one percent of creativity,
you know, just by focusing on a little bit each day,
as like we were describing earlier.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
So you're optimistic about A Oh, very optimistic.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Yeah, I love AI.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
So what do you think is gonna I mean, I'll
ask you my prediction question down the road on this interview,
But what do you think is because a lot of
people on the show that come on are very worried
and they think that the economy is going to take
a giant hit, and not everybody is creative, not everybody
is really smart. What happens to all those people? Why
are you optimistic about it?
Speaker 2 (05:21):
I'm optimistic?
Speaker 3 (05:21):
Well, first off, if it wasn't kind of a net
positive for the economy and for individuals, it wouldn't be
as popular as it is now. I mean, the fastest
growing companies in the world now are the ones, you know,
building AI tools for consumers to use, and consumers are
using them. And by the way, when companies use them,
companies get more profits.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
What do they do with their profits?
Speaker 3 (05:44):
They invest in new companies and new industries and new ideas,
and that creates new jobs. The unemployment rate. You know,
despite the rise in AI over the past three years,
the unemployment rate has got there's more employee people than
ever people are. We see in the headlines, Oh, there's layoffs,
but what we don't see is that there's tons of
(06:06):
new businesses starting and again, a number of employee people
has actually gone up since the rise in AI. I
was just speaking at a conference to the movie industry
where I feel like they're torn in the movie industry.
Is this gonna replace movie screas? Is going to replace actors,
It's going to replace writers, and to some degree, it
will replace a lot of just like the Internet replaced
(06:29):
a lot of industries, and computers replaced a lot of industries,
and cars replace the horse, you.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Know, driving industry.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
AI is going to replace some industries. Yeah, but think
of it as a tool. Think of it as a
tool to be more creative and more productive, and you're
going to you know, you were always competing a little
bit against other you know our colleagues and other people
in the workforce. If you're the one using AI and
master these skills, no matter what your age, you're going
to do well. And by the way, it doesn't mean,
(07:00):
you know, people at Polaroid Camera didn't suddenly get another
you know, didn't suddenly get a job at a digital
camera company. Maybe they went off and did something completely new,
something that they wanted to do, or or maybe they
were tired, you know, they set expectations differently, they downsized,
they were tired.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
But then Polaroid came back around it became cool to
be this older thing, you know. I also think there's
some of that, like people are going to reject the
just AI movies and go back to like I don't know,
I don't know what silent films, but back to kind
of basics with movies. I think it could bring a renaissance.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
And also, by the way, there's there's something called microdramas
where a lot of the videos you see on just
you know, scrolling Instagram or YouTube, you see these microdramas. Yeah, yeah,
those are a lot of those are produced. They're not real.
Like I'm always wondering are those real or not? But
a lot of them aren't real, but we love watching them. Like,
you know, the the outrage ones like oh this woman
(08:01):
won't sit next to somebody with an airplane with a
MAGA hat right well over were all produced videos.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Yeah, they completely are. We're going to take a quick
break and be right back on the Carol Marcowitch Show.
What was your first job? Like, what was your what
did you want to be and how did you get here?
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Well?
Speaker 3 (08:23):
I really wanted to be a writer. I wanted to
write novels. But I went to school for computer science,
so I was a programmer. So so okay, I had
some random jobs. But then my first real job and
took me to the big city in New York City
was at HBO. I figured that's going to be my
back doorway into the entertainment industry. So I was working
(08:44):
in the IT department. My title was like junior programmer analyst.
Nobody would talk to me. I could barely do the
job well, but I figured, okay, this is my back
doorway into writing novels that will get published and being
in the entertainment industry, which was sort of true because
what happened was there was no intern there was no web.
(09:05):
I mean, the web was just starting. So I convinced
HBO to make a website and convinced them to let me,
this lowly guy on the totem poll to do their website.
And from that I both built a business making websites
for entertainment companies, but also allowed me to be more creative.
I created web shows for HBO, something they don't currently do.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Actually, now nobody knew what to do with the web.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
Now it's a big marketing slash e commerce environment. But HBO,
I said, oh, let me do like creative web shows,
just like you do creative TV shows. And so I
did that, and that way really was my first exposure
to the writing and the entertainment industry and even and
I wrote a whole bunch of unpublished unpublished but I
should also say unpublishable novels, and then ultimately built a
(09:52):
business sold it. Had no idea what to do with money,
so I went completely broke like just like I went
from million like generational wealth to one hundred and forty
three dollars in the bank because they didn't know anything
about investing, always self investing, to the point where then
I was running a hedge fund.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Yeah, I was gonna say, I see you as a
finance guy, and then like looking into your background, it
turns out you were like this creative writer guy.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
Yeah, Like I wasn't a finance guy at all, but
then I got interested in it and I got passionate
about it and learned everything I could after I went
broke and and I wrote software to help me trade
the markets. And this was early on when people were
starting to do that kind of like quantitative trading, and
I just got immersed in that, and that became you know,
(10:42):
writing about finance and then also managing money was an
early part of my career after building websites and you know,
and then I started writing books using my I think
you when you take the intersection of your interests and skills,
that's a very powerful way to be number one.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
So they weren't that you happen to have the ones
that like, you know, the the tech and the finance
and the ability to write, Like that's a very good intersection.
Not everybody has that kind of intersection, right, So.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
I could be like money is made, like like I
could be a finance person who then programs my ideas
to see if they were but then write about them,
to communicate them to the world. So so it was
like like I was like a one man band, you know,
you see the guy with I love It flow on
the tub of them, but also playing the harps.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Chord or whatever.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
And I built a career doing that. But then I
got interested in other things, like more and more things,
and combined these these intersections in very interesting ways. And
but I've always been able to ownly my weakness with that.
All is I could only do what I'm passionate about.
Otherwise I'm just really bad at whatever it is I'm
asked to do.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
What would have been a plan be like had this not.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
Worked out, probably suicide like James like, And I'm not
encouraging that behavior from anyone, but.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
But I don't know. I never really like, I never
had any plan B. When I applied to college.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
I only applied to one school, and I like, looking
back on it, I can't even imagine what I was thinking.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
I had zero plan B. And you know, I remember
going broke.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
And I was thinking to myself, well, should I get
a job here? I had started the company, sold it,
and then I just was dead broke, I was losing
my house, I was really depressed as my family had
didn't generational wealth again, but nothing, you know, I had nothing,
and I was I just I couldn't get myself to
(12:36):
like look for a job. I just had to start
another business, and I started many business I had a
policy of starting businesses and failing them very quickly so
that I could I didn't waste time on any one
business idea. And that process worked. But then I went
broke again, Like it was hard for me. There's three
skills to money. There's there's making it, keeping it, growing it,
(12:59):
And I would would have a hard time keeping it,
you know, for a very long time, for like a
decade or more, I kept making it and then losing it,
and you know, it's all these skills are very difficult.
Money is a very psychological thing, and it's hard to
deal with all the issues around around money often.
Speaker 4 (13:17):
Yeah, did you grow up like middle class or yeah,
I would say like lower lower middle class, Like middle
class almost had a different definition when when we were kids,
like you could you could actually be middle class and survive.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
Now I feel like middle class you almost like how
would you survive in New York City as middle class?
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Now you can't really, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
It's impossible. Actually, yeah, I don't know anywhere. Really, I
think it's gotten so difficult to be middle class.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
Yeah, because you just look at you, like, for instance,
a lot of people send their kids to school. Well,
the price of a college tuition has risen faster than
inflation for fifty years in a row, so not even
like on average, but just every year inflation might be
three percent, but tuitions are going to rise.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
And that's happened every year for fifty years in a row.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
So now college is completely unaffordable to middle class unless
you borrow enormous amounts of money.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Yeah. Yeah, and the colleges aren't even doing that great.
There was like this piece in the Wall Street Journal
about University of Chicago is like not broke, but they're
they're definitely scrambling around for money, and it's like, how
do you guys not have money? Just yeah, the whole
system makes no sense.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
It makes no sense.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
I personally think they should just force all the colleges
to shut down.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Like, do you tell your kids, I don't know how
old are your kids, do you tell them not to
go to college?
Speaker 3 (14:34):
I did tell them not to go to college, and
they didn't listen to me, and then one did leave
college after two years and the other graduated in three years,
so they both ultimately kind of paid attention to me.
But I beg them not to go. Of course, I'm
not going to like deny them going, because you know,
you can't argue with I'm a dad, I have two daughters.
(14:55):
I can't argue with with my daughters. But now they
agree with me. But I think think, I think now
also it's a legitimate conversation now. Wasn't a legitimate conversation
twenty years ago. It's a legitimate conversation now. Hey, are
there alternatives? Maybe I can start a business, Maybe I
can learn from AI or the con Academy or these
other online places and get a Google certificate for it
(15:16):
or whatever. Right, So I think there's much better choices
now than college.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Yeah, I see college as just for socializing, and I
realize I'm going to have to pay a lot for
my kids to go socialize. But I see it as
maybe somewhere where you might meet your future spouse, or
where you make lifelong friends or professional connections. But I
don't see it at all as somewhere that you get
an education.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Can you remember anything you learned in college. Zero.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
I remember the things I lied about, Like I found
a paper that I wrote, and I remember writing this
paper about how like the family is an outdated concept.
And I was a lifelong conservative. I never believed the
family was an outdated concept, but I had to say
it in college in order to get the A.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
So that's what I Yeah, you have to be like
a socialist to survive, to make in college.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Yeah, exactly. What are you most proud of in your life?
Speaker 3 (16:05):
Probably this book that I mentioned earlier, Choose Yourself only
because so much like I might even like even to
this day and age, Like I was at an airport
the other day and someone came up to me and said,
I read your book.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
It changed my life. Thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
And when you get that kind of feedback, it feels
really good. And and I get that all the time
from you know, from from from many of my books,
but that one is the most and and I and
it was something of philosophy I really believed in that
that works for me to this day, Like, whenever I
find myself in a rut or going down some path
that's making me unhappy, it's usually because some aspect of
(16:43):
it of some I'm not really following my own advice
from that book. And usually even now when when when
I find myself unhappy, so getting back into the advice,
it always makes me my life better. And again I
see that with other people too, So I think that
that book is the best thing I've ever done. Also,
I mentioned HBO earlier, there was a project I proposed
(17:05):
to them. Then it was called three Am, and it
was a web show on the website. This is in
the mid nineties where I would go out in New
York City at three in the morning on a Wednesday night,
which is sort of an odd night to be out
there in the morning, and I would interview random people.
And I did this for like two and a half years,
and I think that was the funnest I love that
thing I've ever done.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Wednesday nights in New York City were actually the best
night because it was the locals night. It wasn't you know,
nobody coming in from anywhere to go out. It was
very very fun night. And whenever I head off from
school on Thursday, Wednesday would be the best night to
go out.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
Yeah, if you if you were out on a Wednesday night,
you were up to something and then on a Saturday
night was out whatever, right, crowded?
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Your parents are out on Saturday, you know.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
Yeah, Like but Wednesday night that was like you're not
a civilian anymore, Like you're you're you're doing something.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Absolutely Yeah, give us a five year out prediction. It
could be about the country, the world, music, art, whatever
you want.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
Well, you know, I'm very I am very optimistic about AI,
and I do think what's going to happen is all
of our lives are going to change. Like, let's just
take the most obvious. Medically, every disease is going to
be diagnosable by AI. Wow, within seconds already the AI
is there. But of course there's a lot of regulatory
(18:26):
hurdles that medical devices have to get through.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
But I see it.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Through my own investing, in my own research into AI.
But even furthermore, like AI is changing every job. AI
is going to create a lot more jobs, brand new
industries we can't even think of. Just like when the
Internet was started, nobody could have dreamed of Uber or
companies like that. There's going to be things we can't
even dream of that AI AI is going to supply.
(18:52):
And I'm optimistic also about crypto, not in this kind
of like scammy, you know, make a gazillion dollar buying
this weird crypto, but more like the financial system, like
every industry needs to evolve, and it hasn't really evolved
that much in the past one hundred years. Like you know,
when you put money in a bank, they're just killing
(19:13):
you on transaction fees, and they take your money and
give you almost no interest and they lend it out
at six seven percent interest to people want to buy houses,
Like why are banks in the way of everything we
would want to do with our money. Crypto sort of
removes these intermediaries and gives people more power over their
own money. And I think I think that's going to
(19:34):
be very revolutionary in ways that we haven't we haven't
truly discovered yet. So the combinations of AI, crypto, biotech,
this is going to change life as we know it
in a good way. And I would encourage people to
embrace that because like, don't fear it. Yes, there's gonna
be scary things, just like the Internet has some scary things,
just like nuclear energy has scary things. Just like there
(19:56):
are a million car accidents a year, so cars aren't
always great, but ultimately these are all positive forces.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
I love it. I love your optimism. I really don't
feel like I hear enough optimism about AI. I'm kind
of neutral on it. I like wait and see, you know,
but I hear so much doom that it's very rare
for me to hear a very very positive perspective like yours.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
Some things AI is not going to be able to do, so,
I mean, people think AA is gonna be able to
do everything. But you know, AI is just a gigantic
way of doing very sophisticated data analysis. And we've never
had this before, and we've never had this kind of
apple to the in front of us.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
Yet.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
It's very exciting because there is a lot of data
out there, like, for instance, data about medical diseases, data
about you know, I don't know any kind of analysis,
any kind of analysis.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
That you would want to do. AI is going to
be a great tool to do that.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
I love it. I can't wait to see where this goes. James.
I have been a fan of yours for so long.
I have loved this conversation. I just I find you
so super interesting. I can keep this going forever. Leave
us here with your best tip for my listeners on
how they can improve their.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Lives every day.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
Take a small little book. Okay, it could be a
small little notepad. There's my small little notepad fits in
your pocket. Go and have a cup of coffee and
write down ten ideas. And the point ten has to
be ten tens a lot. It is a lot. And
the thing is they could be ten bad ideas. The
(21:30):
whole idea is that creativity is a muscle, and like
any muscle, if you don't exercise it, it atrophies, and
the atrophies very quickly, like any muscle. And so write
ten bad ideas a day down by the way around idea.
The reason is in ten is important is around seven.
It just happens to me every day. I always think
I'm done and I count and it's just seven, and
(21:53):
it's the final three.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
It's where you start sweating the hardest ones. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
Yeah, you could feel your brain sweating. And so you know,
maybe it's ten ideas for chapters in a book you'd write,
or ten ideas for books you'd want to write, or
maybe I write down ten ideas for the Carol Markwick Show,
or ten ideas of Amazon how Amazon can improve just
could be about anything, and it's the whole idea is though,
it just exercises that creativity muscle again. You can quite
(22:20):
write just nothing but bad ideas. It doesn't matter. It's
just about exercising that muscle.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
I love that. I'm going to try it. I'm going
to let you know how it goes. I don't know.
Ten might be hard, but I feel like I'm gonna
give this my best shot. He is James L. Tucher.
Thank you so much James for coming on check out
his James L. Toucher Show.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Thank you, Thank you, Carol
Host
Karol Markowicz
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