Transcript
The nation's favorite car buying site, Dundeele Motors, is home to the largest range of new and premium used cars from all of Ireland's trusted car dealerships. That's why you'll find Frank Keane BMW on Dun Dundeele. Visit the Frank Keane BMW showroom on Dundeele to find your next car. Dundeele Motors, for confident car buying and deals to feel great about from all of Ireland's trusted car dealerships. Visit dundeale.ie today. This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is the James Altiger Show on the choose yourself network. Today on the James Altiger Show. What is your nonnegotiable? What is the one thing that you want more than anything? I did whatever it took to get there, to do that. So for people that are thinking about all the things that they wanna do, consider what your nonnegotiable is. And how do you how do you figure that out? Because like you mentioned, you didn't even know that. I didn't know. When you are looking at that journey and have to take that first step, that first attempt. You need courage. The confidence comes after the courage. We wait for the confidence to come so that we think we'll get the courage then and it's the opposite. So I'm so excited. Debbie Millman, welcome to the show. Thank you, James. Debbie, you have so many, credentials and acclimations, and you're one of the most successful designers, and I would say one of the most successful podcasters and and writers as well. You have, hugely successful podcast Design Matters where you've interviewed many of my heroes. So not only designers like Milton Glaser, but also guys like, Malcolm Gladwell, Seth Godin, and most recently, Tim Ferris. So, there's Chris Ware, the the graphic novelist. So so many people from so many different areas of life about not just design, but, of course, the concept of success and peak performance, which is something I focus on as well. And, of course, you were you were, president and helped build up a great design company, Sterling Brands. Some of the brand you can correct me if I'm wrong, but some of the brands you worked with were, Star Wars, Tropicana Orange Juice, Burger King, which I didn't know, but that's a beautiful logo you made for Burger King. Thank you. Maybe you wanna go out and have a burger, and I've I've been mostly vegetarian lately. It's really funny because in all my travels all over the world, I you see the Burger King logo everywhere you go. And when you're making something like that, you don't really, really understand the scope and the scale of what it means. You know that it's going to be everywhere. And intellectually, you can imagine it, but actually seeing it is quite another thing, especially when you see it in Arabic or Hebrew. It's kind of amazing. That's kinda true. I'd haven't thought about it that way. Like, I guess it must be like how when someone who writes a movie goes to see his movie. But that's kind of a hard experience, whereas you're actually going and seeing your your artwork everywhere. And people might say, oh, well, the Burger King logo's not artwork. It actually is because it it it makes millions or billions of people want to belong to this tribe of you know, like, if you think about it, I'm gonna I'm gonna just dive right into this. I'll get back to your acclamations in a second. This is better. Because what's so important about design, and what I really want to impress upon listeners, and and this is what's impressed upon me, it's not just about illustrating something. It's not about getting a task like, oh, draw something for Burger King, and then you draw it, and then they say great. It seems to me what a designer does and what design thinking is, is taking something mundane and almost like you serve the role of a translator. Like, you communicate it into something that 1,000 or 1,000,000 or whatever can can understand what this is, what this group or product or person is about. And then they can decide, well, I wanna join that tribe, or now I understand this more. Because think about Burger King. It's a restaurant that sells hamburgers with lettuce on it. And if you just think of it that way, it's no different than any other place. It's it's just a mundane restaurant. And, when you make a logo, when you when you have, this whole brand identity behind something, now it's like, oh, okay. I wanna wear this on my shirt and eat there. And it it's really you you tran you might translate it into something that's not true, but you're still being connecting dots. You're still translating it to something that millions of people can relate to. It it becomes telegraphic. You see it instantly, and you understand what it means. But redesigning that logo was an extremely fascinating and challenging journey. When we were first awarded the commission, we went to the Burger King headquarters in Miami. Celebrated though when you were awarded the commission? Yeah. Because at the time, it was a really big win. I think we had come just come off the loss of the Ben and Jerry's pitch we'd been involved in, and we were smarting. And we ultimately, many years later, ended up getting the Ben and Jerry's business. But Why'd you lose it the first time? I think because at that time, we were still just making a name for ourselves. We didn't have the big global brand experience to show them. We didn't have any insurance that we could provide. Like, look at that. You can see that that's super successful, and therefore, you could have some confidence that we'll be successful doing your redesign also. It's so fascinating because, you know, you think of Ben and Jerry's as, like, the scrappy up and coming, you know, ice cream ravel. Even then, they were owned by Unilever. And though Ben Cohen was in the meeting when we pitched the business, it was very much a corporate brand. It was it was no longer the scrappy upstart that changed the premium ice cream business. So so so you're you're smarting from that rejection. We were smarting from that rejection. So going to winning Burger King was somewhat miraculous. And we were really excited about it. We were celebrating. When we got to Burger King headquarters, I'll never forget this, we got into a fairly small elevator with the director of market research. Soon as the doors were closed, it was just the director of market research, very senior person, probably the senior vice president of market research, and me and my colleagues. The door closes, and he looks at us, and he says, don't get your hopes up. It's very encouraging. It's very hopeful. Like, okay. So so but Rara. This is very important because you never describe yourself as an entrepreneur. I have never seen it once used in a description of you. Mhmm. But here you are. You're, building up a a company that becomes a a fairly well known comp I mean, a very well known company, and you eventually sold to Omnicom. Yep. And, you were just rejected by a major brand. Oh, yeah. And you're going into another major brand, and you're told the first thing you're told is don't get your hopes up. People don't understand entrepreneurship is not about the big idea. Entrepreneurship is exactly about what you're telling me right now. It's about being putting your all into something, getting rejected, and going back into the next room, getting smacked in the face, and then what happened? Well, the reason he was telling us not to get our hopes up was unbeknownst to us, the Burger King logo had been there had been attempts to redesign that logo many, many times over the previous decade. We did not know that. He knew that because he was in the process of trying to make those changes over that last decade. And what he said was despite all of the heroic efforts of all of these previous branding consultancies, whenever they took the logo into testing with consumers around the world, consumers always picked the old logo. Kinda like, I think people don't for for the kind of classic brands that sort of, let's say, started the branding revolution, like, I'm gonna think Coca Cola or Burger King or McDonald's or, you know, you mentioned Morton Salt in in one of your books. Yeah. These kind of old classic brands. People don't want change. Like New Coke Oh, people don't want change. Riding in the streets. Absolutely. So if if McDonald's ever changed its main logo, it would be, you know, game over. Well, that's what happened when when the Tropicana package was changed. That package was the original package that we did with the straw and orange was changed. And and you'd think that a world war had erupted because of this change on an orange juice carton. But and I can absolutely talk about that story as well because it's fascinating how consumers people that that are are very proud to, declare that they don't care about branding. Or as one consumer said once in a in a focus group that I saw, well, I don't care what the chicken is wrapped in. It could be in a plastic bag, and doesn't matter what the logo is. Yeah. Let's see how how how well a a plastic bag wrapped raw chicken would do. In any case, back to Burger King. We we found out that I think the the logo had been attempted to be redesigned 7 times in the previous decade. And we looked at the logo, and the original logo was 2 hamburger buns. I don't know if if anybody remembers this or if you remember. Yeah. Yeah. Just 2 hamburger buns. The top bun was was slightly bigger than the bottom bun, and that was the previous change. The previous logo to that where the 2 buns were the exact same size. So this big sort of massive I don't even know why they they went to to make that change, but the top bun was made larger than the bottom bun, and they had this bubbly type. And the buns were sort of a gold colour, must be gold colour, and the type was red. And when we when we did some we did some testing. We did some very quick eye tracking and testing with the original logo. We wanted to see what what do consumers think about this logo. You you did this testing before the thing. Prior to doing any redesign at all. We wanted to get a sense of why was this so beloved. We found we could've put Tim Ferris' name between the buns, and people would see it in one second increments and think they were still seeing Burger King. People do not read first. 1st and foremost, they see color, then they see numbers, then they see shapes, And then then if you still have their attention and they understand what it is you put in front of them, then they will read. So they were looking at this thing, and because of its iconic shape and its iconic logo, the the the icon iconic bubbly sort of shapes, they they thought they were reading Burger King. So, of course, any redesign that took you far away from that, any revolutionary design as we'd call it in the biz, would be seen with contempt because people didn't understand what they were seeing. Well, can can I ask your opinion on on something? So with the idea that a a a brand or or thinking of yourself like, I like this brand versus that brand. Like, I like Burger King versus McDonald's. A lot of a lot of kids make that argument first. Yeah. Those are the brand tribes you were talking about. Right. And and maybe when you switch a logo, particularly on such a classic brand and we're talking about just hamburgers here, but this could be any kind of brand. It could even be personal branding. When you switch logos, maybe there's this kind of almost evolutionary response like Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Are you removing me from The Tribe? Are you taking The Tribe away from me? And that will spike up all the stress hormones in our body. Well, this is exactly what Seth Godin talks about. That's the lizard brain, the reptilian brain. People think that we can control the reptilian brain. We cannot control the reptilian brain any more than we could try and control our digestion or how we blink or the speed of our heart. We cannot control the reptilian brain. It is an involuntary part of our apparatus. When we walk across the street and nearly get hit by a cab, we can't will that adrenaline to to come up through our body. It comes up involuntarily. Anytime human beings are faced with any type of uncertainty, whether it be uncertainty about the future or uncertainty about a change, we will see that negatively. We will perceive that negatively. And I think knowing that is basically crucial for communication. Like, you have to know what all of these, I don't wanna use I feel like the phrase cognitive bias is almost overused. But there's all these kind of instincts in the brain that you have to cater to when you're communicating a message. Absolutely. Or else, you won't get your message across. And if you're a company, you won't sell products. If you're trying to establish a so called personal brand, you won't reach the the quote unquote tribe you wanna reach. This is very critical critical. People do judge books by their covers. And Without a doubt. I know this because, you know, I've done a bunch of books. Whenever I've had a good, professionally done cover design, people take people don't just say, hey, I read your book on Twitter. People say, hey, I read your book, and they have a photo of the book with it because they get associated with the design. Absolutely. In order for us to be able to create an identity that was evolving from the original identity that we started with, we had to keep some of that iconic some of those iconic elements. So we kept the buns. We just activated them, made them a bit more energetic. We tilted them to give it a sense of a sense of energy. We kept the bubbly type, but we started to sharpen up some of the edges to give it a more modern feel, and we added blue to the color palette to try to move it away from 50 other fast food restaurants that used red and gold or red and yellow, like McDonald's and In N Out and so forth. So that logo was then tested globally, and it was it it provided a statistically significant difference when people looked at it. They they preferred the new logo to the old logo with real significance. So I think also you look at the new logo, and, again, we're kind of honing in on Burger King, which almost seems like Well, it's just representative for any change you're making on any global brand. But but I think with with with this one and and with many of of the work much of the work you've done, in in logos and design, it's you still look at the new logo, and you say that's Burger King. There has an essence to it that feels It kind of kept the soul of the old logo inside of it. It just kind of dressed it a little different. It brought it. It made it a tiny bit more modern. You can do We wanna sort of get it to feel like it's the logo or the brand on its best day. You know, I think a lot of companies, they wanna say, okay, we're going to reinvent ourselves. And they change their names. They change their logos. And that almost tells me, okay. This is the end of the the business. The problem with that is that most people feel that branding is a journey, and it's not. Branding is a result. It is the result of sound strategic positioning. And so if you are doing exactly that, if you are dressing, as you say, then it's superficial. The only way that a brand will resonate with people is if it connects with them emotionally. And for all of the really complicated, really, highfaluting definitions that there are about branding, I believe that branding is essentially about deliberate differentiation. And that deliberate differentiation is created via positioning. And it's the positioning that is critical to the result which is a brand. Well, I guess I wanna unpack that a little bit. I I don't quite understand deliberate positioning like Deliberate differentiation. Deliberate differentiation. It is very deliberately deciding, determining how to create difference between one thing and another. So why is there why does this need to exist? Why does it need to be in the world right now? Do we really need another bottled water? Do we really need another peach flavored powdered iced tea? How do we create difference with what we're offering? It's a it's a good point because let's take water as a great example. So water is water with maybe minor differences in the chemicals inside or or packaging or whatever. But, obviously, the the value we pay for water is almost a 100% based on branding. Exactly. So, like, otherwise, I'll just open up the tap, and it's almost the same water pretty much. People will argue whether it is or isn't, but argue the argument goes in one direction. There is some difference in taste. Certainly, Evian tastes different than Fiji, which tastes different than Aquafina. But, yeah, for the most part, what you are doing when you create anything is determining what it stands for, what it represents. It's a construct, and that construct is created via deliberate differentiation. And I think this applies to a 100% of all communication. So even if I send an email to you, I almost have to ask the same question. Like, am I applying this concept of deliberate what makes my email different from all the other emails you've got? I think everything in this world is created via deliberate differentiation. What excites me so much now about the tenants of branding is how we're applying that to our culture. And I say as often as I possibly can that the condition of branding reflects the condition of our culture. And what we're seeing now, which excites me so much about what the intrinsic power of branding actually is way beyond any commercial value, is how we're using this now in efforts or movements like Black Lives Matter. Everything now is able to be communicated telegraphically instantly in the same way that people would understand Burger King via their own attempts at deliberately differentiating what they believe. And doing that via some sort of graphic or some sort of device or some sort of slogan or some sort of hashtag, all is about branding. And even the way that we declare what our religion is, our symbol, the beliefs, the books, all of that is branding. And it doesn't mean that branding is a commercial value. It's a basic human endeavor that we all undertake now to be able to determine one thing from another. And the fact that humans, people, nonconsumers, just people, can democratize branding by taking it over and using it to create a way to understand beliefs and movements, to me, is super, super exciting. So to some extent, the rise of social media has allowed people to kind of take control, a little bit more, and as you say, democratize the brands that they care about. Yeah. Of their own positioning and of everything around them. Because, like, I I'll I'll I'll take your example of black lives matter as an interesting one. Kind of the hashtag black lives matter kind of came out there on Twitter. There was some graphic, graphics around the concept. But then there was this entire debate on social media about what does this mean? Does this mean that, there's also an equivalent white lives matter? Does this mean does black lives matter include other minorities? Like, there was an ongoing discussion, you know, around this the why of black lives matter. And it kind of evolved, you know, over a very short period of time, but it kind of evolved through this sort of democratic, global discussion that was happening. Brand has conflict and conversation and dialogue and debate. So the fact that people might not necessarily agree on the legitimacy of something doesn't necessarily mean that it's not in existence, that it doesn't exist. Well, actually, if you question the legitimacy of something in a very It does. Yeah. Right. Exactly. And and it it certainly inspired you know, like, let's like, take Donald Trump as an example. And this is not a political podcast. People know I have never discussed political opinions. But just as a brand, he he obviously did something to create this massive brand for himself, and then people intensely argue it on both sides. So it seems like both sides are so intense about it. It's clear he's done something to make a brand Yeah. Whether you agree with the brand or not. Well, a lot of a lot of big tribal brands are polarizing. I mean and you see that just in the way that they're advertised, whether it be the Apple ads or the Itunes ads about the comp the comparison between the Apple guy and the Microsoft guy or who's standing in to be the Microsoft guy. And and you see that with the Coke and Pepsi, taste tests and fights. And and it even goes back to there was an ad, I I believe it was about 40, 50 years ago, where somebody was punched in the eye and and was talking about how they would walk a mile for a camel or something really rather dreadful but compelling. Well, and we do from from a business perspective and and from a communication perspective and from an an art perspective, we do remember as beautiful the ads that have most moved us. Like, think about, the 1984 Apple ad, which doesn't even mention the product in it, but we immediately associate Apple with the tribe of, like, yes, I'm young, creative, rebellious. Change agents. Yeah. You know, versus the stodgy, old, you know, fascistic But that's all positioning. That is positioning, which results in the perception of the brand. And and, you know, and and the other ad I I always think of, and and I love this ad so much, I I literally replay it, like, a few times a month on YouTube. But the classic Coca Cola ad, you know, where everybody's on the the hilltop, ad. Everybody's on the mountain top from different cultures drinking. And then they do 20 years later, the next generation, and all the kids come. And they kind of do it in various versions. And then mad Mad Men, of course Of course. Again, brought it back. It's the last scene in the series. So these things are are like you say, people say, oh, well, this doesn't really matter to me. I'll eat I'll drink brown sugared water anyway. But the reality is people wanna belong to tribes. We we feel this instinct, and you can't help it. And we just saw this at in the women's march with all the pink pussy hats. That was an instant brand. And I don't mean brand as in something that is providing some commercial value or return on the investment. I'm talking about how we as humans use these iconic we create these iconic symbols that we then are willing to wear, share, and be in order to feel more connected. So so so this is why I think it's so important to understand design thinking because it connects the dots from where you are to again, it might be this mundane store that sells hamburgers to becoming a global tribe somehow. And understanding that and the mechanisms by which it works, and it's very defined mechanisms combined with extreme creativity, I think really can change your life, like, people who understand this way of thinking. Absolutely. And we can see that in in the very ways we've elected our officials. Yeah. It's all it's all branding because politics is all branding. People say whatever they want, and then they'd establish a brand. And then if enough people belong to that tribe versus that tribe, that person gets elected for 4 years Yeah. Or whatever. I mean, I think branding has gotten a bad rap mostly because we've been, as a as a culture, perceived as using it only for commercial gain or some sort of duplicity. But in its heart, I believe that it is a basic human endeavor and is a profound manifestation of the human spirit. So so let's talk about that a second, and then I wanna reel back to your to your background. But I I do my gut is and maybe you're listening. Probably, like, 95 to 99% of branding is sort of duplicitous. Like, you take water as an example. And I'm just I don't know if if water's duplicitous or not. But the fact that you can pay $9 for a bottle of water versus, let's say, $4 on another brand, there's something happening that's triggering this need that might not be accurate. I agree. Because we are irrational because of these instincts. I absolutely agree. And and those executions and those engagements are taking advantage of what is possible with branding. Right. And this is what That that is very much something that I abhor. And I run a a master's program in branding where we actually teach the difference between using branding as a duplicitous tool via understanding the behavioral, economic, physiological, social sociological aspects of what branding actually is. And what the execution then becomes is something that's very much motivated by a company or a group or a person. But the actual ability to create this, to understand why and how it's done, is very different from the way it's executed. Right. You can have a a really profound way of of gathering humans via branding, which has nothing to do with any commercial variant at all. No. It it it's true. And, you know, I think in one of your interviews with Milton Glaser, you guys discuss his book, or or essay, the 12, ways to graphic design. Hell. Right. And, he talks about number 3 is, designing a classic logo for a brand new vineyard. You know, making it seem as if it's classic and been around for 100 of years when it just opened up. And, of course, that happens all over Washington. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. So so, you know, but but again, it speaks to the power that people with this, skill set have, which is that they can literally create a 300 year old company out of mythology that they put together. Absolutely. A fake 300 year old company out of mythology, and people believe it. Like, mass numbers of people believe it. So so, again, that's I'm sort of underlining over and over again the importance of of what you do and the skill set that that you teach. You you teach it not only in the school that you just spent you know, you you run the the master's program branding at at the School of Visual Arts here in New York City, but, you have the Design Matters podcast, and you've written 6 great books. I'm gonna try to I've I've read 4 of them, so I'm gonna try I'm gonna try to remember all the titles. So, Think Like a Great Graphic Designer, Essentials of Graphic Design, Brand Thinking, and then there's a subtitle. I always forget the subtitle. And Other Noble Pursuits. Brand Thinking and Other Noble Pursuits. I like that. The the, Think Like A Great Graphic Designer and Brand Thinking are mostly interviews Yes. With other graphic designers, but they're, like, the best ever, and they're very it's all about creativity and idea generation. And so I I idea generation is so important. I encourage people to to read those. And then I love your books, with your own design and art in it. Self Portrait as Your Traitor. Look Both Ways And let's go, please. Portrait as as Your Traitor. In both of those books, by the way, you do something and this is just a tangent, but you do something that I find very appealing, which is you're telling stories, but using handwriting in all these different ways and all these clever ways. And that's how the stories are are told, but it's still very readable, as opposed to you know, typing is extremely readable, and handwriting is a little bit harder to read. But they're very readable, and it and you get this, like, really deep nostalgic, sentimental feeling. So not only am I connecting to the words themselves, but I'm connecting to this the nostalgia of handwriting and index cards and the way you kind of connect the words in in some cases. So they're very, very beautiful books, that I highly encourage. But there's one story in, Look Both Ways that that really I I it was amazing to me as I was reading it how deeply it suddenly bursts these memories out of me. So you wrote this story, Economy Foam, about this, bedding store on the lower east side on Allen Street here in New York City. And in 1994, I was moving into my first apartment in New York City, and I remember my I had no furniture or anything, so my sister drives me to Economy Foam. And I got the absolute cheapest Economy foam mattress, and we we dragged it to my brand new apartment in Astoria. And foam mattresses, you have to understand, are disgusting. So, like, it was really it was a 100 degrees out, and there was no air conditioning. So I wake up, and, like, sweat is, like, just infested all through this foam. The foam absorbs all the sweat, and so that's my mattress forever after that. Oh, jeez. But I do remember that logo, the atomic foam. It was so, like, just beautifully, like, cheap, old school New York. And I just remember that feeling that I'm moving to New York right when it was transitioning from Yes. Gritty New York to Disney New York, and economy foam seemed to to represent the last vestiges of that. So you brought so so the way you tell that story brought back all these memories of my own initial journeys into New York, and that's the importance of thinking like a designer. Well, thank you. Thank you. You know, I grew up I'm a native New Yorker. I was born in Brooklyn. Then when I was 2 years old, my parents moved to Howard Beach, Queens. Then we moved to Staten Island. And my parents got divorced, and my mother took us to Long Island, and my dad lived in Manhattan and and also on Staten Island. But he was a pharmacist, and he owned his own store for most of my life. And I spent a lot of time in his pharmacy. And that was how I first became acquainted with brands. I didn't know that there was a career in branding. I didn't know that I could that I would grow up to be somebody who spent a lot of time thinking about the purpose and the creation of brands. So I would look at these brands in his store, and I would have that feeling that you just described about Economy Foam. They had meaning to me. I would project into them. I looked at and this sounds kind of silly, but I would look at the Stay Free packaging. At the time, there was a woman in a beautiful gossamer dress on the beach, looking at the ocean. And that somehow symbolized, I guess, the freedom that you'd feel using the product, which I was way too young to even understand. But I looked at that girl, and she was so pretty. And she had this beautiful dress, and she looked so serene. And I would project myself into these packages and wonder, what is she like? What is her life like? Where does she live? Well and and and think about, again, the idea of deliberate more than the differentiation here. Every aspect of that is deliberate. Oh, yeah. It wasn't like someone just drew Absolutely. It wasn't like the CEO said, draw me a picture of a girl on a beach. Like, and someone some guy just whipped it off, and here you go, sir. Like, it's it's work to know exactly every I'll use a more digital term, but every pixel in that needs to be in the right place. Absolutely. Absolutely. And somehow, I got the sense at that point in my life that if I used certain brands or if I engaged with certain brands, that somehow that meant something about myself. And I I write about that as well and look both ways. When I was in junior high school, I it was the seventies. I was desperate for a pair of Levi's. Desperate. All the cool kids were wearing Levi's. They were wearing sewing your own clothes. So we didn't have a lot of money. My parents were divorced. So my mother, when she got remarried, married somebody that was even worse off. And so and he had 2 kids, so we were 4 kids in a small house with 1 bathroom. We didn't have a lot. And so she made money as a seamstress. And so she taught me how to sew, and she would make a lot of my clothes, which really wasn't the way to get to be the most popular girl in middle school or junior high school at the time. Even though if you think about it, you know, I I think things change in that we are moving towards a society that, gives a little bit more credit to the makers in the world. Absolutely. But this was the early seventies and somehow wearing, red corduroy overalls with an embroidered butterfly on the bib, wasn't exactly going to get me to, be the best dressed girl in the school, especially when everybody was wearing Levi's and Lacoste Polo shirts. That was the that was a uniform. And I was wearing ridiculous outfits, that I was somewhat embarrassed by. But, finally, finally, my mother relented. 1st first, her her her, appeal to me was, well, why don't we get you a pair of dungarees, as they were called, and also a little red tag on the back pocket. Okay. Clever. Now, she didn't realize that would actually be worse. Okay. A faux pair of Levi's, faux Levi's. And then she also suggested that she get me, a polo shirt without any logos on them, and that I should go to the Lee Ward's craft store which was in my neighborhood and and look and see if I can find, like, a crocodile or some sort of reptile that she could sew on the shirt or iron on. And I did. I rode my bike, you know, drive to the light tiddly words. And the only thing that I could find was Tony the tiger, you know, and that was not the look I was hoping for. And finally, she relented. She found me a pair of lime green corduroy bell bottom Levi's. And I think she found them in, like, the triple markdown bin of the local in a local mall. But I didn't care because I suddenly had Levi's. You know, I would prance around my full length mirror in my bedroom, stick out my butt and think, I am cool now. I am going to be accepted. And I don't know that it really worked, not necessarily because they were lime green corduroy bell bottoms, more because of who was in them. But I it it buoyed an otherwise really fragile spirit and gave me hope. Let's stop to take a quick break. We'll be right back. Well, you think kind of associating more closely with a brand that other people considered an acceptable brand, an acceptable tribe, I think gave you confidence. It almost, like, releases serotonin when you move up in the hierarchy of the tribe you're in. Right. So it must give you happiness and confidence. But you know what? It's fleeting. That's a that's been on a hedonistic treadmill. Then And serotonin gets, digested or metabolized really quickly into the system. Yeah. Yeah. Quickly. And then you want more. You need to be the quarterback of the dopamine, actually, that is really pushing that addictive sense that, oh, I feel better about myself. So therefore, I want this all the time. And then it metabolizes because we are regulation machines, or humans are. And then you want more, and then you want more, and then you want more, and you're on this hedonistic treadmill. And this is the underbelly of branding that is really dangerous. And that is what is so important for anybody working in branding to fully understand because you don't wanna engage in that. You don't wanna do that to humanity. You don't wanna give people the sense. And Dan Pink has said this, and I'll try to quote him, that, you know, buying a big screen, flat, big screen TV is not the answer to happiness. It's not the way to find happiness. It's a fool's game because that wears off and then you want a bigger TV or a better thing. And every time you search for something outside yourself to provide lasting anything is a fool's game. Well, it's, it's interesting because, you know, branding and and and we we use the word branding, but I also like the word just communications in general. Because I think with the rise of kind of this global social media, a lot of our communications are not just through graphic design now, but we can globally communicate one to many through a tweet, or a Facebook status update, or an Instagram photo. Those things also are they might be easier to manage for adults that have not grown up through the construct of social media. But generation z, which is now actually sometimes being called generation d, d stands for depressed, are feeling and engaging their worth, their value based on how many Instagram likes they have or based on how many friends they have. Now, why do we need to know how many friends we have actually on Facebook or Twitter? Why do we need to know? Why do we need to know how many people follow us on Instagram? It's a really interesting dynamic because you'll think, oh, if I get to this many followers, that's enough. I'm I'm good. And then when you get there, it's never good. It's never enough. Human beings aren't wired that way. We always want more. So how do you fight? Dangerous component. How do you, so rather than how in general to fight that, how do you fight that? Because you've had instances of that in your career as well. So you applied at one point to the Columbia School of Journalism. You were rejected. I was rejected. Yeah. And, presumably, if you were accepted, you would've wanted the next thing, like, oh, I wanna work at the New York Times or whatever. So so how have you and and you have many stories like this. How have you combated that in your life? Awareness. Awareness and a good therapist. Those are the ways. Well, that that takes and that takes a lot of time. Like, I think I think awareness is something nobody really ultimately gets to. It's a constant battle because of these instincts in our in our brain. So, like, on a daily basis, like, let's say you did a a a let's say you did a podcast, and it got less downloads for you than other podcasts even though you thought it was great. Would you feel disappointed, or do you have new tools for dealing with that? That's a that's a really good question. I am definitely somebody that cares about what people think, and I have been a lifelong people pleaser. And it's become something that I'm I'm really aware of. It's still very hard for me to say no to people. It's still very hard for me to feel like I've hurt somebody's feelings or that I've done something to upset anyone. Anger scares me, and having somebody angry at me really scares me. So it's even more pervasive than the number of downloads on a podcast. My podcast tends to be pretty, pretty consistent. Occasionally, I'll get that huge surge of of some way. Another metric then. Like But no. But it's a good example because I'll get really excited about that, and and I'll want that, to to continue. But I because it's been so consistent for a fairly long period of time, I don't get as worried about 1 or 2 not doing as well. I tend not to look at the ones that are not doing as well but see the anomaly as the ones that do spectacularly well. But but just in general, I am constantly battling, am I enough? Am I good enough? Do I deserve this? Am I worthy of this? Will I ever get this? Sometimes it really bothers me that, I have to work so hard for things, which sounds so petulant and and and ridiculous. I'm gonna hone in on Matt said this. You have to work so hard for things. You have built and sold a company. You've had a podcast since, like, 2,005, like, 12 years of or whenever it started. I I forget the exact year, but It's been 12 years. Yeah. But but, James, what what I'm really talking about is having a sense of of deserving. And it has been a remarkable journey for me. But I have gone through so much rejection and so many kicks to the curb that there are times when I wish that I was more readily accepted early on. I'm in my mid fifties. So I didn't really get any type of success, real success, tangible success till I was in my forties. So the twenties and the thirties and the early forties were real longing, a real palpable sense of longing. Am I ever going to be somebody? Am I ever going to achieve what I have in my heart that I want so badly to do? Am I ever going to make a difference? Am I ever going to find my purpose? Am I ever going to live a life with meaning? And there are times now, especially when I still struggle over, am I doing something that's really valuable? Am I doing something that's putting goodness into the world where I wish that I didn't have that those questions? That's really what I'm talking about. But I I wanna I wanna even so so a lot of people deal with it. This is, like, almost a critical question of our society when, you know, you see sort of what I call the philosophy of corporatism is breaking down. Like, you know, there's no more loyalty between corporation and employee or between employee and corporation. Like, that that alliance has sort of disintegrated in the past 20 years, And there's been outsourcing. There's been automation. There's been financial crisis after financial crisis. So so you feel a lot of people now are kind of coming out of that and looking around and asking these same questions that you might have asked at a very early age. And I think they're struggling to figure out, a, what are those answers, and what are the steps to coming up with those answers? And so maybe start earlier in your life, like or or you could start wherever you want. But just what's almost a methodology for kind of coming up with what is the what is not as what is the meaning of my life, because there might not be one singular one, but what is meaning in my life? I think that we, as as humans and and and I'm just gonna say me, Debbie. I spent a lot of time thinking that I had compromised. And In what way? In that when I graduated college, I had always fantasized about a purely creative life so that I would come out of school and be a writer or an artist or do something that capitalized on what I felt was a modicum of of creative talent and fantasized about being an artist. And I as as I mentioned, I I didn't have a lot of money. I I I mean, I had no money. I came out of, a state school, University of New York at Albany, which is a marvelous school and I loved my time there. And very quickly realized that in order to live in Manhattan, which was what I wanted, I needed to make a certain amount of money to pay rent. And I realized very quickly that I wasn't gonna be able to make enough money as a bartender or a waitress or a nanny doing the things that might have given me a little bit more headspace to be an artist. I had to capitalize on my one marketable skill which was being able to do basic layout and paste up that I'd learned while I was at the school newspaper at Albany. And I started working as a designer and continued working as a designer. And there were a couple of times where I tried other things. I tried to go to, as you mentioned, the Columbia School of Journalism was rejected. I tried to get into a program at, the Whitney, an art program, and I was rejected. And there were a number of other rejections along the way. When that happened, like when you were rejected, from the art program at at the Whitney, which which probably even more closely aligned with your passions than Yes. The Columbia School of Journalism. When you got that message, that second, obviously, anybody would feel bad. But what did you what did you specifically do? How did you react to it? Mostly, I kept it to myself. I felt an enormous amount of shame at being rejected. Oh, I absolutely cried, but I kept it to myself. I didn't you know, when people say, oh, did you get in? And I said, no. My reaction wasn't, and I'm devastated. I'm inconsolable. I'm depressed now. It was, oh, you know, that doesn't matter. I didn't know if I really wanna go anyway. There was an enormous amount of shame in feeling that rejection. And I was terrified that if people saw that, that they think I was the loser I was. So I'd have to pretend that I wasn't. And I feel sad for that moment in my life where I didn't feel like I could fall apart, where I didn't feel like I could be inconsolable for a little while. So so it's interesting. So the thing you feel sad about right now about that moment is not necessarily the rejection, although that probably still lingers, but the fact that you didn't deal with it with your friends and close ones and maybe not close ones, you didn't deal with it in this authentic way? No. I was totally duplicitous. So shame somehow, which is kind of programmed into us from from early age, sort of propelled itself into being, you know, duplicitous and and not being honest and authentic about how how you felt about this with others. I mean, I think that that comes from I mean, I think a lot of people do this. I think a lot of people cover up their their feelings mostly because I think they think they'll never go away or they'll never stop. And and one thing that I can share is that even the deepest, darkest rejections you can recover from. Because those feelings are not unlike the same feelings we get when we buy a big flat screen TV. They're fleeting. So is it is it kind of reminding ourselves of that that they're fleeting? They won't kill us. They won't kill us any more than a flat screen TV isn't going to delight us for the rest of our lives. These feelings pa*s. And I think that part of the reason I couldn't or didn't want to confront them or share them was because I thought that they would somehow overtake me. You can't outrun these things. They will come back, and you will have to experience them. And I did. I went through a very, very, very dark time at the end of 2015. And Can you tell me can you tell me why? I my father died unexpectedly. I went through an unexpected breakup which has since resolved. So that's a good thing. I moved for the first time in 22 years. I was changing my role in my day job at Sterling Brands. That much change, I went into a downward spiral of sadness. Downward spiral of sadness. And and I think it's a good reminder that everyone one always thinks that, oh, when you achieve x, then you're kind of immune to feelings of of these downward spirals and and shame and sadness. But like you say, it always comes back. There's always can recover. I mean, you need you need to get help. You can't it's very rare where you can do something like that alone where you can pull yourself up out of that, spiral. I got a lot of help. I had a lot of people around me that were really, really caring, open hearted, generous that were really helpful to me. So being around good people that love you is a good way to get is a good technique. Yeah. I I I looked back at that time as as a shattering in a lot of ways. And I and I do wanna write something about after the shatter, what happens. Because I do feel that it was the first time in my life that I faced and experienced all of my the lifetime of grief and sadness of of so many rejections and so many things that hadn't gone my way. What why do you think, rejections sort of it's it's almost like they all live in this underworld beneath the consciousness. And then when you go back and visit because you're being rejected again, they all suddenly connect in this, like, more power. How that happens? It it it is They almost sort of join hands. So so so so, like, many people have had, like, a darkest moment. And and by the way, you did an excellent podcast with Tim Ferris where you talked about some of your darkest moments. Do you connect like, the end at the end of 2015, do you find some kind of subconscious to almost conscious connection back to your darkest moments even in a 2015 moment? Moments from childhood? Not quite in the same way. Mhmm. I think once you do experience that pent up that sadness, that grief, when you grieve, you then start to recover. And I think so many people are afraid if they start grieving that that grief will never go away. They hold it back in order to feel like they're not gonna die from it. So it's kind of like it may be a little bit of, awareness. Oh, I'm feeling this again. Embracing shame, sort of respecting the grieving process, seeing what comes out of that. You know, one phrase you use in in look both ways in one of the stories is the word experiment. And I think another thing people can do, particularly in terms of, like, rejection, is to view those types of failures as experiments. Because I see, if you don't mind me interpreting your life a little bit, I see kind of 3 interweaving patterns. There was, your enormous interest in journalism and writing, your enormous interest in being an artist, not just a designer, but an artist, and and obviously, your enormous interest in living in Manhattan. And despite all of your rejections, it's not like you got rejected from the Whitney, and you said, okay. That's it. I'm gonna be an accountant. Like, you kind of stuck with these these three interweaving stories of your life, and they become they they interwove together quite nicely. You're author of 6 books. You're at a design company. You have a design podcast, and you'll continue on to to bigger and better, obviously. So what do you think made you stick to a path as opposed to saying, okay. I'm gonna be an accountant. I'm gonna be a firefighter. Nothing wrong with being an accountant or a firefighter. Not at all. And those are really necessary things. There's 2 different ways you can look at it. I only applied to the Columbia School of Journalism. I only applied to the Whitney Independent Art Study Program. And when I was rejected, I abandoned those specific dreams. So I didn't give myself a whole range of options. It wasn't as if I didn't get into Columbia but then got into a CUNY school. I I really limited my opportunities in that regard. What I can say is the reason I feel that in many ways I was lying to myself when I was feeling the notion of compromising about whether or not I could or would or should be an artist, an artist in quotes, was that that wasn't my what I now call my nonnegotiable. And and this is what I I talk to my students about. My sense when I graduated college was, yes, I wanna do all these artistic endeavors and I wanna live an artistic life. But I also was very clear and very sure that I wanted to live in Manhattan. And I've talked about this. I did whatever it took to live in Manhattan. Now living in Manhattan at that time was considered the best possible place in the world to live. Brooklyn wasn't Brooklyn yet. Queens wasn't Queens yet. Long Island City wasn't Long Island City yet. It was only there was only one place to go to go. It was Manhattan. And I had my heart set on that and I wanted that more than anything. Now I could have very easily chose an artistic more artistic path and not had to worry about the exorbitant what felt like an exorbitant rent to me at the time in Manhattan. I could have lived with my mother in Queens. I could have found a place in Jersey. I could have stayed in Albany. There are a lot of different choices I could have made if being an artist was my non negotiable. My non negotiable was living in Manhattan. And I did whatever it took and made whatever sacrifices I had to without even thinking they were sacrifices. I wanted it so badly that it didn't matter to me that I was living in deplorable conditions, that it didn't matter to me that I had to walk through somebody else's bedroom to get to mine. It didn't matter to me that I was living in a 4th floor tenement walk up. I was living in Manhattan. I was doing whatever it took to live there. And do you think because, Manhattan was a nonnegotiable, because it's almost like this place where every other kind of second tier nonnegotiable could potentially happen in Manhattan. It's possible, but this is what I ask people to think about now. What is your nonnegotiable? What is the one thing that you want more than anything? And what I wanted more than anything and what I didn't realize I wanted more than anything and was willing to sacrifice everything else to get was to live in Manhattan. I'm not exactly sure why I wanted this so badly. It's just something that I've known since I was 8 years old. This is what I wanted to do. And I did whatever it took to get there, to do that. So for people that are thinking about all the things that they wanna do, especially if you're just starting out, consider what your nonnegotiable is. And how do you how do you figure that out? Because like you mentioned, you didn't even know that. I didn't know that that was even something to think about. And so that's why I ask people to think about it now. When my students are writing their 10 year remarkable life plan, which I talked about on Tim Ferris's, wonderful podcast, think about what that what is the first thing you need to do to make that happen? So so so describing that is imagine where you imagine as viscerally as possible where you are in 10 years Right. And kind of work backwards on that. First thing. Yeah. Reengineer it. Go backwards. What is the one thing? And it might mean being an artist, in which case then you live however it is you need to live in order to do that. And that's what artists do. They do whatever it takes and sacrifice everything else in order to achieve that goal. What are you willing to sacrifice? And most people, when asked what it is they wanna sacrifice, what are they willing to sacrifice to get this one thing? You very quickly realize what you really want, and you have to become honest about what you're willing to sacrifice. Are you willing to sacrifice your living conditions? Are you willing to sacrifice a relationship? Are you willing to sacrifice not having kids? Are you willing to sacrifice whatever it is in in in terms of your living conditions? And then I think you begin to understand what your deep seated bedrock foundation, motivation, and goal is. And how will that then motivate, okay, this is what I'm gonna do tomorrow? It it then gives you a sense of how to plan to get that one nonnegotiable. And it also focuses you, and so you don't have to think about the 7 or 8 other things that you'd like to get after the nonnegotiable, which sometimes distracts us because those things tend to be easier. Yeah. It's a it's a big theme in a lot of successful people. Like Warren Buffett talks about the the 5 25 rule. So take the 25 things you love the most, put the top 5 over here, put the other 20 over here. These other 20 are still things that you wanna do the most, but never ever look at them again. Right. Because they will all distract from the top 5. Right. But one thing I wanna I wanna add to to yours is, let's say you wanna be an artist. I think people have to always be respectful that they don't know what that means yet when they're first starting out. That's true. And and in fact, the field itself might not know what it means. Because if I say today, I'm gonna be an artist, that means after hard work, in 20 years, I'm gonna be or 15 years, whatever, I'm gonna be finally known. Now 15 years, the field's gonna change. Like, when in 1983, when you moved to Manhattan, digital design didn't really exist. And yet someone you might have decided later, oh, this is how I'm gonna be an artist. When when Andy Warhol was trying Andy Warhol was already a brilliant illustrator, maybe the best in Manhattan. And he had to say, well, what's nobody else doing? And he had to create to be an artist, he had to create his own field of art. And so I think there's a certain respect to, again, a deliberate differentiation has to be part of that has to be part of that dream every step of the way. And it takes time to understand how you can be different, how you can offer something that nobody else can, and it takes a lot of experimenting. And How do you do those experiments? It takes a long time, James. I think that we're living in in what I call a 140 character culture, and we expect immediacy. We expect instant gratification. And because we get those dopamine hits when we look and see how many people have retweeted us or how many people have liked a photo on Instagram, it distracts us from what it is we're really searching for, which I believe is meaning, which I believe is belonging, which I believe is about being loved and feeling purpose. And so it takes a long time to get good at something. There are the lucky ones out there that have so much talent or such a great idea or so much tenacity that they make it early on. I worry about those people because it takes so much to sustain that level for a lifetime. Well, I I like how in milk, you you know, you bring this out of Milton Glaser. Like, he is, someone who always kept fresh through a 50 year career. And he basically says to you, well, I'm constantly throwing he doesn't wanna pander to the past. Like, this worked in the past. I always he says, I always throw it out and look for some the things I don't know that I can get good at. But still keeping within that umbrella, I think, of art and design and and design thinking and so on. Yeah. I think anything worthwhile takes a long time. And it takes as much work to do work that you hate as to do work that you love. And I think that when faced with the choices that we're gonna make very early on, and I see this in my undergraduate students all the time and it's terrifying, that they begin to edit what is possible for their lives before they decide whether it's even possible. And they just What's an example of the editing what's possible when you're when you're too young? I'm not going to try for that job because I wouldn't get it anyway. I'm not going to try to go work there because they wouldn't like my work or just the the the same old tape that so many of us tell ourselves. I'm not smart enough. I'm not good enough. I'm not pretty enough. I'm not thin enough. I'm not rich enough. I'm not anything enough compared to x, y, and z person who I perceive to have the the much better life than I do. So so again, to avoid, editing the possible, obviously, awareness is important. Like, oh, I just edited the possible. What's another strategy? This gets back to what we were talking before about the reptilian brain because we can't will ourselves to have that adrenaline when we walk across the street and nearly get hit by a car. We are never gonna be able, as humans, to see uncertainty or the unknown with glee. We are not gonna be able to look at our future, and this is especially true with undergraduates, and think, well, I don't know where I'm going, but woo hoo. Can't wait to get there. They're worried about whether or not they're going to make it. They're worried about whether or not they'll able to take care of themselves. They're worried about whether or not they'll be able to make their rent and so forth. But just because you're afraid of doing something doesn't mean that that gives you a permission slip to not do it. I it's a good point. Like, I think people are afraid to feel feelings of pain in general, and fear is a big part of that. But, And this gets back to, well, what do you need to do to take that first step? And people are always like, oh, I need confidence. I need confidence. Confidence comes from repetitive success at an endeavor. That's where confidence comes from. You get confidence doing something repetitively successfully. You don't may not start successful, but the more you do it, the more you do it well. And then you have confidence that eventually you will get up to bat and be able to hit the ball with the bat. That's confidence. And as Danny Shapiro says, confidence is overrated. What is much more important is courage. When you are looking at that journey and have to take that first step, that first attempt, that's what you need. You need courage. The confidence comes after the courage. We wait for the confidence to come so that we think we'll get the courage then, and it's the opposite. It it is so funny how people kind of wait. Like, I remember one time, I rejected a job that was being offered to me for 2 years because I felt like, well, if I hadn't achieved, I wanted to write a novel. At the time, it was in the early nineties. If I hadn't published a novel, I'm too embarrassed to take this job, which was a stupid connection to make. Right. But I associated that with these two things that had nothing to do with each other. Mhmm. And, I think, again, it's it's hard to avoid getting out of that trap somehow. It took me years to get out of that trap in that one specific case. I saw something written on a wall in one of my travels. It was spray painted on a wall, and it said, nobody really cares if you don't go to the party. And I think that is a great slogan for embarrassment. Nobody really cares if you don't get whatever it is you're trying for because they're mostly concerned about what they're trying for. And so if we're worried about not doing something because of what other people are going to think, I don't think they think that much about it. I really don't. So, again, it's just, this idea of, you know, having some some visceral image of where you wanna be 10 years from now, working back reverse engineering that just to figure out what's going on tomorrow. And and I think what I see in your life is the things you were interested in almost as a child, like, from, let's say, 8 to 15, those sort of persisted to become and they and they aged with you. Like, the the the fascination with, you know, goodies, barrettes becomes a fascination with with art and design and branding. You know, the fascination with stories. All the books that you read as a child becomes a fascination with writing, and, you know, now you're the author of 6 books. Fascination with journalism becomes your your podcast, where you get to talk to all the people you really love talking to. And, I think that's that's part of it too. When people ask the question, how do I find what my purpose is? I think the the the the answers could be in this treasure chest of the past a little bit. I think that's true. I I also have after having interviewed now 300 people between my podcast and my books, what I find is that all of these great people have one thing in common, and that is a sense of not being sure that they're great. Very few people walk around thinking oh, really? Very few great people walk around thinking, I did it. I wow. I'm me. And I think we all strive for something bigger and better and greater because that's just part of the the human endeavor. I am endlessly fascinated endlessly fascinated, James, with the trajectory of a person's life. How do we become who we are? How do we determine where we're going to go? And so for people that are thinking about that path when if you're just starting or if you're reconfiguring, it's really that that step, that first step into the courage. But how do you how do you do it? You have to Like, what did you do at the end of 2015 that allowed you to take that first step when you were at a low moment after so much success? You have to want it. Do you want it badly enough to take the step? Do you want the thing more than anything? And and but, again, when you're in a a low point and even with therapy and awareness, how do you know what that what direction that first step even should be in? That is Like, I can say I want it, but what do I do? Well, I think you have to be clear that you really want it. And that's where this this nonnegotiable comes from because you always are making nonnegotiable choices. And every every aspect of a life, every arc of life has those moments of nonnegotiable. And at that moment for me, at the end of 2015, it was, do I want to live beyond the shatter? Do I want to now really face what is possible for me? Or do I wanna retreat into despair? And I didn't wanna retreat into despair. Even though I felt despair and I had to go through the despair, it was brutal. It was a slog. It was a street fight, but I wanted to prevail. And so so, really, last question because I wanna be respectful of your time. Now, today, you've gotten through that dark moment, but there's always this the moment every day where one says, okay, well, what's Oh, yeah. I mean, I don't want anybody that's listening to this podcast to think that I am just walking around with streamers and parades. It's a constant effort to want to create a life with meaning. And and what are you doing? What is your next thing? What is what what are you doing tomorrow to create a life of meaning in addition to continuing to be better at what you're what you're already good at? I think that for me, it's about making things. I have discovered that I am happiest when I am making something. And it could be a lesson plan. It could be a podcast. It could be a piece of art. It could be a piece of writing. That for me now, that nonnegotiable is making things. And you have enough things in your like like, you have all these different projects going on. Whenever one part gets a little stuck, you kinda move to the next. So diverse diversification of what you make and being creative about the things you can make sort of leads to that. Yes. And they all learn to each other. But for me, that nonnegotiable now is is being able to make things. Alright. Well, Debbie Millman, podcaster of Design Matters, you know, Uber designer of so many brands. I wanted to ask you about the Star Wars brand because I'm such a fanboy, but he's super versatile. And that's a friend of mine's hands holding the lightsaber. A wonderful, wonderful man named John Danziato. Those are his hands. In in what in what image? In the Star Wars packaging that we did for attack of the clones. Wow. Alright. I'm gonna have to to take a look at that. And, also the author of of 6 great books ranging from I I do think that the 2 interview books you did, the, How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer and, Brand Thinking and Other Noble Pursuits. I know they're both hand mouthfuls. Yeah. I do think those are excellent manifestos on creativity, which I highly recommend to everyone. And thanks once again for Jane, you are such a generous, generous interviewer. Thank you so much for having me on your show. It's it's such an honor. Thank you. Thank you. And I I do also wanna recommend, by the way, I Tim Parris' podcast with you is very good. People should listen to that as well. It's they they kinda pair well together, I think. And ditto. And your your interview with Seth Godin, your recent interview is just genius, and it's so, so appropriate for today's times and all times. It's an interconnected web of good podcasts. It's true. Thanks, Debbie. Thank you, James. For more from James, check out the James show on the choose yourself network atjamesaltiger.com, and get yourself on the free insider's list today. Hey. Thanks for listening. Listen. I have a big favor to ask you, and it will only take 30 seconds or less, and it would mean a huge amount to me. If you like this podcast, please let me know. Please let the team I work with know. Please let my guests know, and you can do this easily by subscribing to the podcast. It's probably the biggest favor you could do for me right now, and it's really simple. Just go to iTunes, search for the James Altucher Show, and click subscribe. Again, it will only take you 30 seconds or less. And if you subscribe now, it will really help me out a lot. Thanks again. 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