Everything Q&A: How to create a valuable newsletter! Scam industries!

Transcript

This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is the James Altucher Show. Once again, I'm happy to bring you a new series on the podcast. This is my, q and a sessions with, my Instagram listeners, and I do these, Instagram lives every day, sometimes every other day, but I try I'm trying to do every day at at 2 PM Eastern Standard Time. And not only do I answer questions, but I also tell some stories that hopefully have some point to them. And in particular, in this one, I talk a little bit about how to make money making an online newsletter. And I start that conversation today, I go through all the basics about how to make an online newsletter, what kind of newsletters make money, some examples, how I've made money with newsletters, sort of best practices if you're making your own online newsletter. I do think if I was dropped into the middle of nowhere with no identity and no money, this would be the strategy I would most likely use to try to make a lot of money as quickly as possible. And, of course, in addition to talking about that, I talk about many other things, but enjoy. And then, tomorrow or the next time I do the IG Live, on the podcast, I continue by talking about online courses, a little bit more about newsletters, and so on. Almost have, like, a name for this show. The the the Robin and James Show. I'm putting your name first. Okay. Well, that's what you're supposed to do. Welcome to the Robin and James Show. Today is I don't even know what day is it today. Is it Tuesday? Is it Wednesday? Or is it Thursday? So much stuff to talk about. There's in in interesting thing is in the news. I wanna add, I've been kind of optimistic in almost every major crisis. Like, literally in 2008, 2009, they would laugh me off of CNBC because I was too optimistic. And he and I've mentioned this before. Even my mom called me one time and said, maybe you should stop smiling while the rest of the world is going broke when you're on TV. But I said, this is the absolute time to be optimistic because the market's gonna go up from here. And, yesterday, I think it was, Nuriel Roubini. I don't know. He's a famous economist. People call him doctor Doom because he's always pessimistic. He's predicted 30 out of the last two recessions, and he's always pessimistic. And yesterday, he was calling for a depression. And I'm like and I debated him in 2009. Sorry. In 2010, I debated him, July 6 July 6, 2010, and he said the market was gonna go down 40% over the rest of 2010 and 2011. The market never went lower than that point ever, and I was saying it was gonna go up. And so a few months later, there was a banker who wrote both of us and said, what you know, James was clearly right. When are you gonna invite James to one of your parties? And he has these huge parties. He has a I think a loft in the East Village, and he has giant vaginas painted on the wall apparently. And I've never been invited to one of his classic parties. And he said, I'm not inviting James until there's a recession. Well, now we're probably in a recession. We're definitely in a recession. And but he's predicting a depression. And by the way, he's also tweeted out repeatedly over the years trashing me. And I just wanna say, this guy's ridiculous. Like, we're not gonna have a depression. There's major differences between our economic situation now and our economic situation in the 19 thirties. The federal reserve is is releasing a ton of money into the economy. The, you know, in 9 in the 19 thirties, they were taking money out of the economy because they wanted to reduce speculation. Now they're putting money into the economy. We're sending direct checks to people. We're gonna have probably another stimulus package. So the economy is gonna change, but it's not gonna be a depression. And I don't say this often, but this guy, Nurielle Rubini, is just an idiot and and he's lying. So there's not gonna be a depression. I'd be happy to debate him again. I even wrote to CNBC and said, let me debate this guy, but we'll see what happens. And, Victoria, you're right. He's not he's not worthy. And, just just annoying guy. Like, if I search Norell and Altichart, he, like, trashes me repeatedly. But Beautiful. But I will say there's one thing, and you brought it up to me today too. There's one thing I'm a little pessimistic about, which is, you know, everybody's saying we can't reopen fully until there's testing and tracing. I don't think people understand what tracing means. And so, let me let me you know, if you look up a job description, right now, there's something called the Trace Force, Kinda like the Space Force but Trace. And the Trace Force is for people if you get sick, the Trace Force looks at your phone data and your privacy data, finds out who you are near, and starts calling them and suggesting they might need to quarantine. Well, ultimately, the Trace Force is gonna have the power, and we see this on the job listings, Google Trace Force Investigator jobs. They will have the power to contact people, escalate dangerous situations that they view are dangerous, and force you to quarantine or isolate even away from your family. Like I'll set up hotels and other rooms for you to force you to quarantine, away from your family. And if you don't do it, you could go to jail or get penalized. So I think this is a danger that's going to happen in this in this so called new normal that I'm a little bit nervous about. I think that I've never been really pessimistic before because I always assume there's innovation in the economy and there's inventors, and there's people who wanna solve problems and create new things. But when when you start hearing from the government that, hey, we might be able to force, you know, imprisonment, It just reminds me of the movie minority report with Tom Cruise where it's just clearly not a good thing. And that's not even the person that may have, you know, the c 19. It's the people that they're around. So you could just be somebody that you don't even know Right. Next to you that has it, and then you're gonna be called you need to be quarantined. And then you could go be quarantined for 2 2 weeks, and then go out and do something else. And they call you if if you're next to somebody else, and they can tell you you need to go quarantine again. So this could go on and on. They could quarantine one person if you're in a big city Right. Forever. Forever. By me. Or and by the way, they don't really have to give you a reason. They could say, hey. You were near someone who had who had a a virus, by the way, whatever the next virus is, it might not even be coronavirus. You were next to someone who's been identified as having a virus. That's right. They could be making it up. We don't know. Or they could just want to clamp down on people. You know, this is not unusual in American history either. Like, don't forget John Adams, the 2nd president of the United States, one of the writers of the constitution, he created the Alien and Sedition Acts, which basically put in prison anyone who criticized him. So he he put newspaper editors. This is in the 18/03. He put newspaper China. Or or 1799. Yeah. It sounds like China. He put newspaper editors who are critical of him in jail. Like, people actually went to jail on these alien institution acts until it was ruled, you know, essentially unconstitutional. They repealed they repealed these acts. So it's not unusual. And, of course, during World War 2, what do we do? We put into we imprisoned all Japanese Americans. You know, the civil war was imprisoning people all over the place. So it's not an unusual thing in American history, and the constitution doesn't really protect against it. So it's just something I'm a little pessimistic about. Well and plus, I know we've evolved, you know, over these years, but now I feel like we're, you know, regressing in in some ways, you know, with the tracing, with, you know, starting to be Yeah. I don't know. Let's just Yeah. I mean, it's you I almost wonder, like so just for the heck of it, on my podcast recently, 2 people used the phrase America 2 point o. Mark Cuban used it on and he's kind of been thinking of running for president on the Republican side. And congressman Tim Ryan, a Democrat, also used the phrase America 2.0. So I got the domain name, America 2 o.com. And I almost think it's time to come up with a new bill of rights to kind of maybe solidify what given how America has changed technologically and societally and just in terms of human rights and civil rights and and, you know, women's rights and and rights all over the place, workers rights. Maybe a new bill of rights is needed or at least clarify the old one because a lot of these things are constitutional. So here's a story. I don't know if you've ever heard of the mathematician, Kurt Godel. So there was a famous book, Godel Escherbach. Godel was this famous mathematician, and he and Albert Einstein were best friends when they both lived in Princeton. So at one point, Godel was gonna go, get sworn in to be a US citizen. He wanted to be a US citizen, and he he's on the morning he's supposed to be a new citizen, he goes up to Einstein, and Einstein says, hey. Are you ready? You know, they interview you. The judge interviews you to be a citizen, to just determine that you're loyal and then patriotic and everything. And Gortel's like, oh, yeah. That's great. I in fact, I'm gonna even help America out. I found a a contradiction, a mathematical contradiction in the US Constitution. And Albert Einstein's like, look, maybe I need to go with you to the court. And so they go to the court. This it's the same judge that made Einstein a US citizen. So so the judge is he his name's spelled something. I forget his name. The judge is interviewing Godel and and said and starts to get into, you know, do you swear to uphold the constitution? And Grotto was like, yes. And in fact, I found a contradiction in the US constitution. And the judge looks at Einstein and Einstein says, just say yes. And so Einstein had to correct his friend, the most famous mathematician in history, and Godel became a US citizen. But here's the contradiction he found which is still exists, which basically article 5 of the US constitution says any part of the constitution can be amended, and that's why we have all these amendments. But that means article 5 can be amended. And so it's a Godel was famous for what's called these recursive loops. So when something could modify itself, that's called recursion. And so the constitution can modify itself to basically be a more fascist version of itself. And that's what he was pointing out is that he's basically said the constitution could potentially lead to a fascist society. And that's the danger. The fact the constitution is almost like a blueprint, but if you followed exactly, it could be very, very dangerous, which is why there's always amendments and there's always the supreme courts deciding and it's very important who the supreme court justices are and and so on. So anyway, that's history lesson about Einstein and girl and the constitution. But I wonder if if you were I'm I'm curious. You could tweet this out or on this IG live or whatever. If you could make a new, a new bill of rights, what would be some of the rights that you would maybe include or amend or whatever? Put it on Twitter, tag either r altiture or j altiture. And I'm curious because because I wanna start compiling this and thinking about it. But it's something to always be aware of. The constitution is not necessarily there to protect us. We also have to protect the constitution in order for American society to work. And so that's why I'm a little pessimistic on this, tracing because I think everything starts off with good intentions, and then bad things happen. So for instance, the fact that in 1965, Lyndon Johnson passed all the laws so that the federal government will back student loans, that has really great intentions. Let's get all Americans to have a higher education. That was his philosophy. Great intention. But what was the result? The results were bad. The results were tuitions ever since he signed that law, tuitions every single year have gone up faster than inflation. So now why, you know, why do you have to pay I mean, tuition then was like $1,000. Now it's $75,000 a year, as I said yesterday, to go to Harvey Mudd College. Here's what happens in college. I don't need to I don't need to give a college $75,000 a year just so my daughters, our daughters, could have a lot of sex every year. They could do that for free, basically. Like, everyone says, oh, no. Socialization. I'll learn how to socialize. Trust me. If you put up an attractive 19 year old girl on the streets of New York City, they're gonna figure out how to socialize. It's not gonna not socialize. And by the way, college is the last time in your life that you're friends with people your own age. So does it like, are you we're not even the same age. We're we're you don't you're not friends with people your own age. I'm not friends with people my age. I barely know anybody exactly my age. So college is like a false sense of socialization. And people say, oh, well, college lets you learn the liberal arts. No. I didn't start reading until after college, and then I got obsessed with reading. When it became something I was you don't remember things if you're not interested in them. And and we've talked before about how to find your interest and passions, but, like, what else is college good for? My kids tell me, oh, college is good for getting a job. No. Mo a lot of big companies like Google, for instance, the biggest company has said, we're not gonna look at college degrees anymore to determine if you have a job. So skills and ideas are more important than a certificate you hang on the wall. I mean, one of the first things I don't know. I don't even know if Lisa's on this one, but one of the first things when I was throwing out all my belongings, the first thing that isn't throughout was my framed diploma and burned in the fire. Like, god, I didn't need it. What do I need it for? And, you know, when I when I had a problem I had a problem once with my credit score, and it's because after all the money I've given Cornell and I paid back my debt and everything, I owed, like, $1,000 in library fines. Uh-huh. And that was because of the interest. I really owned owed, like, $50, but over 20 years, it became $1,000. And that was affecting my credit score. I almost couldn't buy a house in 1999 because of that. And I had to pay a company $2,000 to fix my credit score from, like, 580 to 780, which by the way shows you how bulls**t credit scores are that I could just pay someone to have so I gotta have perfect credit. That is amazing. I didn't know that. Credit scores are a scam. Colleges are a scam. The FDA is a scam. The FDA recalls 45 100 drugs a year. So what good are their clinical trials if they're recalling all their drugs? It's all a scam. It's just though it's just part of the system. What do you think is one job that is not a scam? One job? Yeah. Just give not a scam? Yeah. I can't I can hardly think of any. Doctor? Well, doctors doctors are scam because because the doctor's a scam because they're entertained by pharma companies. Oh, here's the prescription you should you should prescribe. Everyone is painted. I'll no. I'll give you one. I'll give you one. So a busker on the street. Like, someone pay playing the guitar on a street corner and he has a hat out and you put a dollar in, I don't think that's a scam. No one's putting a dollar in unless he's a good guitar player. Right. What else is not a scam? Well, I don't know. Someone that really loves their job and maybe it's helping people. I mean, it just depends on the person. Right? That's scamming. Are you usually scamming for money? You know, I don't know. Yeah. Like lawyers are a scam. Maybe. Because, like, they're always defending if it does Psychologists, maybe therapists. No. Here's why I think here's why I think therapists are a scam is because the therapist is the one kind of doctor you go to where you're never cured. Like, you go to that doctor forever. And so they have kind of an incentive. Okay. Next week, we'll talk about your issues with your mother or whatever. No. That shouldn't be. So so like They all do that? Yeah. I mean, I everybody I know who goes to a therapist, been going to a therapist, including me, for 20 years. That's crazy. So but most doctors, you know, so that's the the and I'm not saying therapists are not good people, but I'm just saying the industry itself has this has elements of a scam. Again, I think my therapist is great, but the industry itself and I'm not saying every doctor is influenced by pharmaceutical companies, but the industry itself has some scam like elements. Lawyers that will just, you know, if some company just spilled oil in in the Atlantic Ocean, but they're willing to pay $5,000,000 for a law firm, that law firm will take the client. Yeah. So so what what's an industry that's not a scam? I don't know. I mean, research is needed, but, you know, of course, they're in the pockets of big pharma. Yeah. And also, science you know, a lot of research, they wanna monetize their research or they want funding for their research. So just think about I remember in the seventies eighties, computer science departments wanted funding from the Department of Defense. So what did they do? They created this phrase artificial intelligence, and eventually, computers will be as smart as humans. It's so ridiculous. Like, yes, you can have a computer that can beat, you know, any chess player, but it can't taste an apple. That same computer can't taste an apple and tell you if it tastes good. Like, there's no such thing as artificial intelligence and and yet they use that phrase to kind of, oh, we're gonna make robots that are like humans and it's just ridiculous. So that's all a scam. I don't know. I just think humans are just leaning more towards scamming. Yeah. I mean I don't know. I think because it's all about survival. The housing industry is all a scam. Like, the idea that you need, like, to live in the suburbs and have a white picket fence, which by the way is great for many people. But the phrase, the American dream, I think came out of a a Fannie Mae marketing slogan trying to convince people that the American dream was the white picket fence and the suburbs and commute to work. And the biggest source of stress for many people who commute to work is the length of the commute once they moved to the suburbs. Now maybe that'll be over when we work remote. Now that's part of the new normal is, you know, but what else what else is this scam or not? They're all scams, basically. Except for except for guitar buskers on the street. I don't know. We put John out on the street to play his guitar in China. Did he make money? Yeah. He made a ton of money. Well, see, Chinese people Well, I've never seen that before. Here's this this westerner, you know, blonde hair, blue eyed kid playing a guitar that's 10 years old. So so, basically, in China, what isn't a scam is being a white person and standing on a corner with a hat out saying, please give me money. That's not a scam. Because I don't think John's he's probably not a bad guitar player, but he's probably not, like No. It wasn't great. He's just learning, but he thought that was really great. Right. He just had so much. So it wasn't a scam. He he did something that he he bust and it wasn't his guitar skills. It was basically he was this unusual white person standing on a corner in Chengdu, China. Yeah. So He drew a crowd. There was so many people. And I feel like clothes, the clothing industry is a scam because have you ever been to a fashion show? It's the ugliest clothes you've ever seen when you go to a fashion show. Like the whole fashion industry is a scam. You know, the book industry, I don't know. I think that's getting more democratic with with Amazon, but movies are a scam. Now the only movies that that do well are, like, special effects. I mean, event the avengers is it was certainly a scam. Like, avengers endgame was a scam. I don't care if you saw it or not. Thanos wasn't a was a climate change environmentalist, and the avengers killed him for it. Thanos said the exact same thing Bill Gates is apparently saying in pandemic, which is that we need to cut the number of people in the universe in half, and then the environment of the universe will be better. And so he killed off half the universe. He he he you see him in the Avengers Endgame. He's just planting his gardens. That's all he wanted to do, kill off half the universe, and then he could be a farmer again. And then the Avengers, like, Iron Man has to kill him all of a sudden. Like, we gotta kill this environmentalist named Thanos. So Avengers is a scam. Anyway, I'm in I'm in scam mode today. What's not a scam? Jay, if anybody says anything not a scam, put it on the IG live link, and, let's see what's else on the IG live. H x c c one zero r. What biographies would you recommend reading? Really interesting question because I do think first off, let me darken the screen a little bit. Where's my screen darkening function? Hold on. I don't like to be so bright. Okay. I would read first off, I like I like books that are aggregations of many biographies. So read Robert Greene's book Mastery or the 48 Laws of Power, where he'll go over so many biographies when he explains about his concepts of power or or mastery and so on. Another one is, I just finished reading, These Truths by by Joe Laporte, which is the history of the United States, which is so interesting. But biographies are really interesting because you could read them and absorb the lessons of the person of, you don't have to live that person's life. You could be like a vampire and absorb the life into yours and take the kind of most important points of that person's life when you read a biography and and integrate that into your own life. So I've read a lot of biographies of investors. So Warren Buffett, you know, the book Buffett by Roger Lowenstein is great. The book, Titan about John is a biography of John d Rockefeller by Ron Chernow, Theodore Roosevelt by John by Ron Chernow, Lyndon Johnson. There's a bunch of biographies by Robert Caro. You know, there's a Truman by David McCullough, is interesting. I don't know. I'm trying to think, what other biographies I've read. Again, I've read a lot of aggregations of biographies, like Sick in the Head by Judd Apatow is not only Judd Apatow, the famous comedy movie writer and director, but he interviews all these comedians ever since he was a little kid, and he he writes about it. Tools of the Titans by Tim Ferris, chapter on me in there. I like I like that book. I'm trying to think of what other straight biographies I've read recently. I don't know. What have what have I got back here in this biography? I don't know. I'll think of more, but I like these aggregations of of biographies. I'll do another question. Here's oh, gray hair man 49. Hi, James and Robin. I enjoy your informative talks. One question. Do you read the Bible for quotes? I love the Bible for quotes. I love Proverbs. Yeah. Proverbs? The book the book of wisdom. Is is was Proverbs, like I think that's Solomon's quote. Solomon. Yeah. And And so there's 31. There's 31, chapters in, Proverbs. So it's, like, it's really a great book. Yeah. Mhmm. Who who do they think actually wrote the book of Proverbs? Is it someone in, like, Solomon's court? No king Solomon. Well, that's what they say, but I'm wondering if I don't have any idea. So so, there was a guy speaking of biographies, there was a guy, Harold Bloom, who wrote a a a a pseudo biography called the book of Jay, and it was about a mythical character named Jay who he assumed not j a y, not this j, but just the letter j. And he he assumed that someone working for King Solomon actually wrote the old testament, including Proverbs, but it's just it's just a theory. We don't know. Yeah. And I, myself, have not read the bible in a while, but I do like reading, older texts like the or the Analects of Confucius or Chuang Tzu's, book about Daoism or various Hindu books. And, again, I like them not just for the quotes, but for the stories, the inspiration. And I do think it's always interesting to read those books when you're writing your own book because you could kind of borrow from that structure. Like, we all we know that for 3000 years, people thought that this book structure was a great book structure. So I like so so it will work now too. It's just like the other day, yesterday, I was talking about if you if you take the song Staying Alive, the most popular disco song in the seventies, and put a nineties hip hop beat on it, it'll be a successful Yeah. Hip hop song, which is what the Fugees did. So if you take the structure of the Bible or the structure of the Tao Te Ching or a structure of a Buddhist famous Buddhist book, we know because that was the hit of Right. 400 BC. It'll be a hit now. So so for instance, Zen and the Art of Archery is a hit book. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a hit book. The Dao of Pu is a hit book. So the the inner game of tennis is a hit book, and it's based on Buddhist, theology. The Legend of Bagger Vance by Steven Pressfield is a now is a novel, and it became a movie with Will Smith and Matt Damon. It's a novel about 19 twenties golf players in in Georgia that the entire structure scene by scene is taken from the Bhagavad Gita without him mentioning it. And he only mentions it much later. So when you take these ancient structures that are successful or quotes and apply them to modern days, it's a very successful formula. It's almost like how a similar idea to how if you take a cert if you take Google, but then put it in Russia and they created mail dot ru, it's a successful model because it was successful here. It's gonna be successful in Russia. If you take Google here and you put it in China, which is Baidu in China, it's a successful model. It's a good way to come up with a successful business. It's take an older model that works somewhere else and bring it to somewhere it doesn't exist. Same thing with books or quotes. If I could take an aura of songs, if I can take something that's older that was a hit and bring it into the present day, boom. It's a it's a a success it's a formula for a best seller. So, let's see. Are we entering the post so this is from Yuranchy 99, y u r a n c y 99. Are we entering a post COVID 19 world? What do you think? Yes. Right now? I think right now, actually. Well, it's interesting because you go outside in New York City, everybody's outdoors. It's crowded. The streets are crowded, but the stores are closed. And I wonder if that's gonna kinda be the new normal, which is that a lot of stores are gonna close down, and at least in New York. In other states, I hear it's starting to be a little bit more normal. But everybody's still worried. Like, even in states like Arizona that had almost zero deaths, there's still the restaurants. I think it's maximum 50% capacity. You know, in Florida, people are still are wearing masks. And I shouldn't say still. Like, maybe it's appropriate, maybe it's not. Like, every day, I feel like the CDC and the WHO changes their mind about what's good for people Yeah. Which, you know, again, I feel like the whole area of experts is a scam because sometimes people are experts at epidemiology or experts at virology. So they might be experts on the chemical structure of coronavirus, but still don't know how the virus is transmitted. Everybody's kind of an expert down their lane, but they comment on all the other lanes. Right. You can't drive in 4 lanes at once. Yeah. No. You get a ticket. Speeding ticket. And then the hands are the pockets they're in their pockets of, these these people too, you know, the the governments and such, I think. Oh, yeah. Like Neil Ferguson, every day, he was coming up with new numbers depending on, I think, which government was paying him the most. Like, again, the whole mathematical modeling industry. We should set up here's a business. Let's set up a we're gonna call it the, a modeling agency. And but now it's like instead of, like, female pretty models, you just have for any cause, you have mathematical models. Right. And just present that to governments. You know, oh, you need a mathematical model that shows this? Here you go. I'll send over a model right away, scientifically based. But I do think we're in a, I I do think we're heading towards a post COVID 19 economy where, again, the the main important themes are acceleration. Everything that would have happened in 10 years is gonna happen now. So if if self driving was gonna happen in 10 years, self driving is gonna happen next year or, you know, or auto driving or whatever. If, you know, if JCPenney was originally gonna go out of business in 10 years, it's gonna go out of business now. If Barnes and Noble was gonna go out of business in 15 years, it's gonna go out of business. I'm absolutely sure. I bet you Barnes and Noble will be out of business within the next year. If couples were gonna get divorced in 10 years, they're gonna get divorced coming out of this quarantine. Divorce is gonna go through the roof after this quarantine. Anything with a shaky foundation. Yeah. And marriage could be very shaky. We're both on our 3rd marriage, but we're not getting don't unless she divorces me, we're not getting her divorce. Yeah. I'm not divorcing her Nope. Because I got lucky. And And so did I. You did you always say that It's true. You did not lucky. If I were you, I would not take that attitude into a casino or you will lose a s**tload of money. Like, you're not as lucky as you think. I'm the lucky one. Just just just leave it like that. But acceleration is an important theme. Remote is an important theme. We're gonna get instead of all of us meeting in person, we're meeting on IG Live, and remote work is happening all over the place. I don't think companies are paying lip service that people are gonna start working remote, less less affairs at the workplace and probably less productivity. Like, I think if I had a regular job, I would not work as much if I was working from home. Like, I wouldn't That's fine. I wouldn't give a s**t about work if I was working at home. I've worked, like, 12 minutes a day. And I do but I well, I do think people are gonna be a lot more entrepreneurial. I think there's gonna be a lot more side hustles. I think the skill you've got to develop is how to turn side hustles into a business. So for instance, if you're a virtual you know, here's a good side hustle. You could be a virtual assistant. So there are websites like zirtual and other sites where you could say, hey, I'll be your virtual assistant. I'll handle travel arrangements for you or I'll handle, buying gifts for clients or getting back to people, keep track of your schedule. But imagine if you're a virtual assistant and you say to people, hey. I've been doing this, this, and this for you, but I noticed you're not really updating your Instagram, your Facebook, your Twitter, your LinkedIn. I'll do that for you. And then you could take that service and start to scale it and do it for many people. And now now suddenly, you're a social media agency and not just a virtual assistant. And you hire people cheaply in India to take care of a lot of the basic virtual assistant stuff. And now you're suddenly an agency and you build a business. So I think any side hustle, you could potentially turn into a business. Let's stop to take a quick break. We'll be right back. So I wanna quickly talk about how to make an online newsletter because I'm blown away, honestly, by this one website I've been visiting. First off in the past few years, I've made a good amount of money creating an online newsletter business, And I'll I'll describe how I did it, but I think you should all check out substack.com, s u b s t a c k dot com. It it I was just playing around with it a few weeks ago. And within 5 minutes, I was able to set up a 4 k subscription newsletter, which kills me because in 2009, with a friend of mine, we actually created a software to do this, and we did nothing with it and let it die. But substack.com, it's really easy. You just sign up. You say, I wanna accept payment. I wanna charge this, and then you're done. It starts accepting credit cards for you. And then I used to think the only way to succeed with a a 4 pay newsletter, I used to think I don't think there's anymore. You have to be in one of 3 categories. Get paid, get laid, lose weight. So get paid means an investment newsletter like, an investment newsletter about stocks. Get laid means, like, you know, a newsletter to help people to help guys pick up girls. Women don't really need the help. And get, lose weight is a diet newsletter. So those 3 categories dominated the newsletter industry. But I go to substack.com, and there's a list of the top paid publications. And I can't believe, like, here's one called, here's one called Thinking Better. 1,000 of subscribers pay $8 a month. And and this person writes at the intersection of philosophy, science, and art. People are willing to pay $8 a month for that. Or here's one, Nicole Knows by Nicole Cliff. And the the subject is, I just feel like I can help your whole deal be a little better. And she has thousands of subscribers pay her $5 a month. Here's one news items by John Ellis, and it's just interesting important news. Thousands of subscribers paying $10 a month. Here's one, the ankler. I don't even know how he get got that name. The ankler by Richard Rushfield. The newsletter, Hollywood loves to hate and hates to love. 1,000 of subscribers, $10 a month. There was one I saw about parenting also. Here's one. Oh my gosh. This one's the macro tourist. It's an almost daily email. Oh, okay. This one's about markets. It's 1,000 of sub 100 of subscribers paying $35 a month. This one's a weird one. It's called the corners by Nadia Boltz Weber. 1,000 of subscribers paying $5 a month. What's it about? Grace for f**k ups. That's it. That's what it's about. And peep 1,000 of people paying $5 a month. Here's one. The 3rd most popular newsletter on Substack is called popular information by Judd Lagoon, independent accountability journalism. Oh, you would like this one. Get smarter about China. Sinosism. Sinosism by Bill Bishop. 1,000 of subscribers paying them $15 a month. You should start a newsletter. I know. Takes you 5 minutes. Yeah. We'll do it. I'm gonna do that today actually. Yeah. Just start listing the things like all the kind of scams happening Right. To be aware of. That I experienced. Yeah. Or So many. Or but you also know all the up to date information due to all your like c I CIA contacts and everything. You should just do the CIA China newsletter and charge $20 a month or something. I don't know. It seems like this is so here's how, if I was gonna start a 4 pay newsletter, figure out where you have a unique perspective. Again, is it investments? Is it diets? Is it fantasy sports? Is it China? Is it poker? Is it the you have an interesting twist on the news or if you or do you have fun movie and TV reviews? I don't know. Just the do you have great cooking recipes? Yeah. I don't know. And then here's always remember with a 4 k newsletter, I'm gonna tell you a list of what I think are best practices. A, create a lot of valuable content for free and put it everywhere. So go to medium, go to LinkedIn, go to Quora, go to the Huffington Post. As many places as you could find, post articles for free. Then drive people to a free email newsletter. You could set up a free email newsletter on substack. So it doesn't have to be for pay. It could also be for free. Drive people to a free newsletter where it's everyday, good, valuable content for free, and then use the free newsletter to drive people to a more premium 4 pay newsletter. So for instance, if I was gonna write about fantasy sports, I would just answer all the questions on Quora about fantasy sports. And every week, I would answer questions. Oh, pick this guy. Pick this guy. Then I'd say, hey. If you want more, here's my weekly picks. Go to my weekly free newsletter. And then, hey. If you want real detailed explanations of how what my resources are and how I'm finding my weekly picks and more advanced picks and how to think about the whole season and blah blah. Here's my for pay newsletter, $15 a month, and you get thousands of subscribers. So start thinking now, like, what are subjects like, for instance, here's a great idea for a duo newsletter about side hustles or duo newsletter about, coronavirus compliance, which we talked about the other day. Do a newsletter about, you know, new technologies, you know, in in in the new normal or or a newsletter about genomics, and here's the stocks for genomics in the new normal. What are some other ideas for newsletters? I don't know. I would I would put out, like, here's a newsletter idea, business idea of the week. So it's not just side hustles, but it's an entire business idea fully fleshed out. Or here's another one. A new 30 day book challenge every week. So yesterday I gave a 30 day book challenge. I don't know if anybody started yet, but pick a category you like, whether it's history, politics, golf, sports, business, billionaires, cooking, China, parenting, and then list on your waiter's pad, the 100 best people in history in that category. Here's the 100 best chefs in history, and then write the book, the 100 best chefs in history. So every day, let's say I'm gonna write the 100 best chefs because let's say I loved cooking and I love studying the history of chefs. The 100 best chefs in history, I'll put each chef, maybe a little bit of their bio, maybe some quotes that inspire me from them. If they have some of their favorite recipes, I'll put in the book. And then maybe my own story of, like, why I like them or what happened to me personally when I was making those recipes. And then in a month, you'll have your 100 best. Go to 99 designs.com. Look, get a cover, say, hey. I need a cover. I'm gonna pay a $100. I need a cover for a 100 best chefs in history, and then upload it to Amazon. And boom, you have a Kindle and a paperback. You read it in a studio, and you have an audible, and boom. And then by the way, at the back of your book, put a link to your newsletter to get the next 100 chefs.sub stack.com or whatever. Whatever you call it. That's great. Yeah. So there you go. Yeah. You could do the 100 best parent. We talked about this this the 100 best parents in history. Think of your category. You this is the time I don't wanna give anybody a homework assignment, but this is the time to do something like that. And you all the tools are available. By the way, just because Amazon exists, YouTube exists, something like Substack exists, these business models have existed forever. They're not just existing right now. Like, you you you in in the 19 twenties, there was a guy if you Google this, I forget his name. If you Google this, the little blue books, this guy would take books like, you know, war and peace, and he would summarize them in these tiny little blue books that you could put in your pocket. And and then he would publish them to, like, drugstores, and he sold over a 100,000,000 of these blue books. He basically took every book, and he would make the title as sexy as possible. Like, instead of being at War and Peace, he would call it, like, War and Sex. And and he would rewrite War and Peace and say buy Leo Tolstoy and summarize it and sell it to and you can buy it in drugstores. Yeah. And now people collect these blue books, but he sold a 100,000,000 Wow. Books that way. Yeah. That's really neat. And if people say, oh, I can't write a book in 30 days. Here's an example. Barbara Cortland, look her up. She wrote 760 books, romance novels. She was writing 2 books a month, complete novels. And because they had a similar formula and similar structure. And when she died, they found a 160 unpublished novels in her attic Wow. Because she just was so prolific. She died, like, at the age of 92 or something like that. Isaac Asimov wrote 467 books. So including some of my favorites, the foundation Mhmm. Trilogy, science fiction books. Let's see another question. So so danger h asked a question. How would you go about building a major career outside of a major hub city? So New York City, LA, Chicago, San Francisco, or like hub cities, You know, Miami is a hub city. Do an online newsletter or do one of these book challenges or be a virtual assistant, and we just gave you a bunch of ideas. But, look, you were in Austin. Right? And you started the biggest hair salon in Austin when you lived there. How did you do it? How did I do it? Well, I just had a a vision. I wanted to create something, an environment for people to come in and have their hair done and get their nails done and get facials. That wasn't really done back then. You know? There was there was a place that everybody could get everything? No. Not at that point. And and so so you're you were unique in that you were doing all these services. Right. We wanna offer all these services. And then how else were you unique? Like, what was your kind of how did people hear about you? Well, when I hired, my my employees, we well, first of all, we had 70 employees. 70 employees. You manage them. 70. Yeah. Well, no. I I hired a manager. But, so those employees came with a clientele. So we were, from the beginning, profitable. So so if you had a, like, a hairdresser who had a big client list, did you have to pay them more because they were bringing over their client list? Nope. Like, did you have to, like, bribe them away from some other salon? Like, how would you get them to leave where they were to to come to work for yourself? We offered them in terms of what the place looked like. We actually had health insurance. So, yeah, we did. We we did things for them that they didn't have at the other places. Like, so so health insurance? What do you mean, like, how the place looked? Like, did you have a It's very upscale. Very upscale. Yeah. And the location was great. And so yeah. They were able to get benefits and some of them, we gave them more commission. Some of them were on commission. Some are at least so Was it hard to manage 70 hairstylists? Very difficult. Were were any of the hairstylists, like, having sex with their customers? No. I don't know about that. You don't know about it? What about, like I always imagine, like, in a hair salon, everybody all the people hear all the gossip of the city. Like, what gossip would you hear? We heard a lot, but I can't say. Well, don't say anything specific, but, like, what's, like, the most extreme gossip you ever heard running a hair salon? Well, I mean, there were people that were running around and and, you know, I I I can't this is a while back. So, I mean, very promiscuous people Few. Would you would you find the male clients being more promiscuous or the female clients being more promiscuous? Males. So, like, what would how like, I would imagine that the hairstyle was mostly women. Like, what would happen? Like, how would you how would the men come in and tell you, oh, yeah. I'm with my mistress, I'm going here. And with my wife, I'm going here. Well, I don't think we would well, we wouldn't hear it that way. We would just hear it from the the wives. My husband left me, or my husband did this. Oh, yeah. And and what what was the most extreme? Like, would the wife hear like, my husband was cheating on me for 27 years and I never knew, or my husband was a sex addict and I never knew. Like, what was the most extreme you would hear? I I can't remember. A lot of that, I just you know, you're like a black hole when you're dealing with public like that. You just you just take it in. It never comes out. You can't. But they trusted you though. They did, and they they should. Alright. Well because I'll never tell the secrets. Someone just asked, who are business leaders I respect? And that's such an interesting question because on the whole, I don't really respect any business leader. Because even if you take Warren Buffett, Warren Buffett, at the exact same time he's saying, you know, America's great, he was selling almost half of his stocks. So you know, or I remember in 911 right after 911, he said he was on CNBC, and, you know, he always sounds like everybody's grandfather. He always sound like this nice Nebraska guy who loves to eat steak and French fries and Coke. And he was saying on CNBC, there's a 100% chance a nuclear weapon will be dropped on the United States within the next 50 years. And you think, oh my gosh. If Warren Buffett says it, it must be true. But then you realize he's owns the biggest insurance companies in the world. He started offering nuclear attack insurance for the Super Bowl, for the Olympics, for all these events. So he was just saying that to make money, and he's by scaring me and everybody else. So I kinda lost a little bit of respect for him, and I used to really admire him. I really admire, this guy, Joe Moglia. So he worked at he was you know, he's he's he was the CEO of TD Ameritrade, and he he made them into a multibillion dollar company from nothing. And then here's what I respect about him. He got tired, and he didn't wanna make any more money. And they kept offering him more and more money. He's like, no. No. No. I quit. And you know what he did? He wanted to be a football coach, and he couldn't get a job as a football coach. Even though he had been the CEO of this major bank, he couldn't get a job as a football coach. So here's what he did. He offered to be he went to the University of Nebraska team. The coach's name was Bo Polina, and he said, Bo, can I be a coach for you? And Bo was like, nah. I don't I don't need a coach. I'm the coach. And so he worked as an assistant. He would run get coffee for the coach. Wow. He'd get coffee for the players. He would take notes on all the plays. He would watch all the games and take notes and so on. He was just like an intern for the coach for a year or 2 years, and then he got a job for a small football team, then a bigger football team, and then finally, he was the head coach for Coastal Carolina University, and he helped he helped him win the Big South Conference. I don't know anything about football, but I like the fact that I respect the fact that he was on top of industry, the whole finance industry. He was like the king. He took 5 steps back. He he realized life is short. He pursued what he was interested in. I think he he might have gotten a divorce in the process, but I'm not sure. And he he he he went all the way back to his roots, and started from the bottom. Now he's there. And he became a top he only just last year, he retired, and he was a successful football coach finally after all those years. So I respect I respect something like like that. I mean, is there any business leader you read about that you respect? Well, I I really love, Condoleezza Rice. Okay. I mean, I just love her character. I she's brilliant. She's, you know, a very humble person. She's What's she doing now? Is she a business person? What she's doing now. But, yeah, she was, like, on the board with Chevron. She worked for Chevron and, of course, she, you know, was in government, but I don't know what she's really doing right now. She was also a She's amazing. She was also a concert pianist, and she was the president of Stanford University. So I yeah. She's a very smart woman. But She's very sweet. I can't respect anybody who got us into the Iraq war. And she was the secretary. Wasn't she the secretary of state then and Colin Powell's the secretary of defense, or was it the reverse? Or maybe she was the national security adviser, and he was the secretary of state. I don't know. Anybody who got us into the Iraq war, I feel that was a a 1000000 lives affected, and it's it's too much. That's the one that's the one thing I don't like. Yeah. But what other political leaders do you respect? Oh, wow. Well, I don't know. Well Yes. Really. I there's a a vice president. I don't know Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter? He's so sweet. Oh, but he's person. Okay. As a person, he might be okay. His all his, you know, the work that he's doing right now. The Iran hostage situation. I I know that. The coal miner strike. But what he does now is wonderful. Alright. I'll go along with that. Yeah. There was a vice president in 18/76, William Wheeler. And Rutherford b Hayes was the president won the presidency in 18/76. No he they've got to the convention, and it was for the vice presidential pick. It was a nobody had a a a nobody was a front runner. So they picked this random guy, William Wheeler, who was a congressman from New York. And when Rutherford b Hayes heard the name, hey. This guy is gonna be your vice presidential nominee. Rutherford b Hayes even said, I never even heard of this guy. But William Wheeler had voted against a pay raise for congress, and he actually he actually returned all the extra pay every year to the government. He refused to take the extra pay. And then, somebody, offered him, hey. If you switch over the New York delegates to me, I'll give you whatever you want. And he he would say no money. William Miller said no money in the world could pay for my dignity. And so he was, like, a real honest guy and, he's like the only person I could think of in American politics who was like totally non corrupt. Like every other president, if you Yeah. Say their name, I could think of some scandal that they've been in. But, even, I don't know, even like Jimmy Carter actually. So, I mean, Billy Carter was always in some kind of scandal, and I don't know. I know. Well, no one's perfect. We're all human. You know? It's not gonna be a Gerald Ford would have been an honest guy, but then who knows? He parted Nixon, so there's weirdness there. I don't know. There's just no perfect person. Well, hey. If I was president, I would be I would be perfect, but I'm unelectable. So, let's see if there's any more, questions questions of the day. Should you use pay okay. If you do a newsletter, good question. If you do a newsletter, should you use paid advertising? And the answer is oh, let me see who asked that. I'll say their name. Robert San Luis. So Robert San Luis, Robert, s a n l u I s. And the answer is so should question is, should you use advertising to advertise your paid newsletter? And the answer is absolutely. But don't drive people just to your most expensive product. Drive people to the free newsletter, and it's in the free newsletter when you could once they sign up then, you could communicate with them a lot more directly. That's how you sell the 4 pay newsletter. So do a giveaway, like, give away a computer or an iPhone 11 or 20 of your favorite books, do some sort of lottery contest. Use software. Here's a good kind of pro tip. Use software called KingSumo, kangsum0, in order to create a contest that makes your email newsletter go viral. And think of a giveaway. Do let's let's just imagine for a second it's a computer, like, a a a $3,000 gaming computer setup. And it's, you're gonna you're gonna give it away. You're gonna do a lottery. You're gonna give away 3 of them to to people who sign up for your newsletter. Do advertising. Hey. You know, sign up for a parenting newsletter and win a gaming computer setup for your children. Sign up right now and blah blah blah. Get people to sign up for the newsletter. Use KingSumo. It's a you'll see when you go look it up that it's a way to make email newsletters go viral. And then that's for your free newsletter. And then you start advertising on your and then you start on your free newsletter talking about your premium for a pay newsletter. And and that's how how I would do it. So I would advertise the giveaway and advertise the content of your free newsletter, get people to sign up, and then or maybe it's your 20 favorite parenting book, so it's at least subject relevant. Get people to sign up for the free newsletter, advertise the heck out of that, and then start mentioning your forpaid newsletter on the free newsletter because those are those are your captive audience, whereas the people you advertise to are not captive. I would advertise on Facebook, and I would advertise on podcast, like parenting podcast. That's good. I think podcasts where you have the podcaster read in their own voice, you know, you like, I have to approve ads for my podcast, and I read it in my own voice, and I I don't approve products I don't agree with. So, then you have someone saying, oh, sign up for Robin's parenting newsletter, and this is on a parenting podcast. And then the person will say, I've signed up. It's great. I like these headlines, blah blah blah. And by the way, she's also giving away, her 20 favorite parenting books. Sign up now. And then use KingSumo. You'll see what it is when you Google it Mhmm. To make it go viral. It's it's you'll see it's interesting. And then use your in your newsletter, every issue of the newsletter, you offer reasons for people to sign up for the for pay newsletter. And again, also, the best advertisement is if you write a book. So if Rob and I were to write my the 100 best parents in history, then that and then you include in the book a link to your newsletter because people will download the book or they'll read the book and write on the front. Hey. Sign up for my free newsletter if you like this book. And then boom. That's another way. And then writing a book gives you credibility. You don't need a publisher. You create x y z publishing. Get a cover that's professionally done, upload it to Amazon, and then make an audible book, and then make a podcast even. And then boom, you're using the whole, what I call, the spoken wheel technique. So parenting is the core. Is that the wheel? And then one spoke is book. Another spoke is free newsletter, another spoke is paid newsletter, another spoke is podcast, another spoke might be merchandising. So and and all that works together to drive people to your most expensive product, which is the 4 pay newsletter. You have the spoken wheel, the Altitude spoken wheel. Oh, yes. So Altitude is the decor. You, and I have the kids. I have the business. I have cooking. I have taken care of the house. So I'm I'm the I'm like the hubcap. Yeah. But by myself, I wouldn't be able to move very far Yeah. Because I would just get crushed by the weight of of the car. And you're like the the real wheel Yeah. That's inflated in every way. Have time to write a book, I will do that. And and that's what and that's what drives the car. You're actually what enables the car to move forward, forward motion in the car. Alright. I get it. I'm fine with that, by the way. I am too. I'm fine. Lovely job. Left to my own devices, I throw out all my belongings and live in Airbnbs. So it's certainly better if you're around. You're not gonna let me throw out all my stuff and just move from Airbnb to Airbnb. In fact, she moved in. I didn't recognize the apartment. Like, all of a sudden I came with baggage. You you lived you've lived all over the world. So I Not bad baggage, but I no. You had you had baggage. And don't Stuff. So so I go in. I come into the house after you move in, and it's like, like, everything like, you've lived all over the world. So it was like statues from Africa staring at me and China this Maoist, you know, figurines from Maoist China and stuff from the Middle East. There was there was a there was a gun. What was that gun? It was, like, from some general from the 1800, which we don't have anymore. Don't send the police over here. We gave it away. But who was that who was that gun from? It was, like, a famous gun. Well, we still have it. It's the, it's Jean Lafitte. Tell them we still have it. We'll send the police. So Jean Lafitte was Well, it's it's a antique that's It doesn't work. It doesn't work. It's from it's from, like, the 1200. Jean Lafitte. He no. It's not. He was a Camilla Camilla Camilla Yang says, how often do you suggest to publish the newsletter? Good question. Here's what I would do. People like when you stay in touch with them. So I would put your free newsletter out every single day or at least 3 times a week, no less than 3 times a week, and then the 4 pay newsletter, once a week. And that is the ideal ratio. If all you did was once a week, then your customers are not gonna be as eager. They're gonna forget about you. You have to have some content that reaches people each week. And so I will do a free newsletter, every day or 3 times a week and then a 4 pay one once a week. But people like to feel that you're keeping in touch with them. A friend of mine, oh, there's only 1 minute left. I could talk more about this tomorrow. I love the newsletter business. I think it's a great way. And I'm gonna talk about this in conjunction with online courses tomorrow as well. Maybe some stock stuff. Oh, and then I wanna talk about this other massive business idea I have cliffhanger, but you'll love this idea. Tomorrow, 2 PM, the I'm gonna save this to IG my IGTV, YouTube, podcasting. Jay will put it up on YouTube right away, and I'll put it on IGTV podcast. Robin, thanks once again for Oh, thank you. Joining us. Thanks, everybody.