00:00 I first stumbled across you during a podcast with Mark Manson. Our guest today is Derek Sivers. I accidentally started a business called Seedy Baby, which became the largest seller of independent music on the web for 10 years. And after 10 years, I felt done. I did a bunch of Ted Talks in two years. And then Seth Godin called me one day and said, hey, I'm starting a new publishing company and I want you to write a book. I went, okay, Seth.

00:28 When Seth Godin calls you like that, you do whatever he says. But I sold my company for $22 million a couple years ago. I'm not coming to take anybody's job. I need some good leads. If we can't trust our own thoughts, Derek, what can we trust? And she goes, wait, all this time you thought that you hit me and that it was your fault? said, well, yeah. And now she started crying. She goes, it's so stupid, these stories. And see, I'm getting all like teary-eyed telling it. Yeah, that.

00:57 That story blew my mind.

01:06 Welcome to another episode of the We Have a Meeting podcast. So today, it's an absolute honor to be joined by this guest. I first stumbled across you during a podcast with Mark Manson, and I heard you say a phrase that made me pause and enter a very, very deep thought. And I had to pause it and rewind it and listen again. Our guest today is Derek Sivers. Derek, how are you? Good. Thank you. All the way from

01:34 New Zealand to England. Are you in Manchester? Where are you at now? am in rainy Manchester. I know that you're coming to the end of the winter period, but I'm sure it's still quite nice. No, it's smashing down rain this morning. Probably. Here we go. Probably. So Derek, I'm going to hit you with a big question that we ask all of our guests. Who are you and what problem do you solve? I, damn, I should have prepared that.

02:04 My name is Derek Sivers. I have been a musician for 15 years of my life. I was a full-time musician, completely obsessed with just being the best musician I could be. After 15 years of that, as I started selling my own CD on my website, back in 1997, when Amazon was just a bookstore and PayPal didn't exist, I took the three months to build the thing.

02:31 so that I had a buy now button on my website so people could buy my CD. And that was unheard of at the time. And so all my friends in the New York City music scene said, whoa, dude, can you sell my CD through that thing? And I went, yeah, all right, as a favorite of friends. But then their friends started calling, saying, hey, man, my friend Jeff said you could sell my CD. I went, okay, I could do that. So I accidentally started a business called CD Baby.

02:59 which became the largest seller of independent music on the web for 10 years. And after 10 years, I felt done. I was sick of it. I had said everything I wanted to say, built everything I wanted to build, so I sold the company for far too much money. And then I felt a little lost for a year. And I wasn't sure what to do. But I was watching TED Talks at the time, trying to expand my mind. And then I went, ooh, I want to do that. I want to be a TED speaker.

03:28 And so I did a bunch of Ted Talks in two years. And then Seth Godin called me one day and said, hey, I'm starting a new publishing company and I want you to write a book. I went, okay, Seth, because when Seth Godin calls you like that, you do whatever he says. So I wrote a book and it did well and people liked it. So I've written four more. uh, but what problem do I solve for people? I know this is what you're all about.

03:58 But I'm gonna be a little contrarian and say, I found it liberating recently to decide that I'm useless, that I am nobody's tool, that the difference between art and a tool is that art is useless. If it was useful, it would be a tool. But the thing that we...

04:27 call art is just that it's not used for anything. And I thought I've been of service a lot in my life. And I'd rather think of myself as useless, as nobody's tool. Currently. This may change in the near future.

04:48 I wasn't expecting that answer. What problem would you solve? I'm a useless tool. didn't think you were gonna... No, I'm a useless untool. Right. I'm a useless untool. Doesn't mean I'm a piece of art, but hey, it's a different mindset. I think I had felt the burden of every day thinking how can I be useful to others? And that is a very, very, very good mindset.

05:18 If you want to make money, if you want to please people, if you want to be successful. But I'm technically kind of retired right now. And it was actually a British visa border guy that helped me realize that. So I should actually tell this story quickly. I was in Brussels catching the Euro star train to London with my bicycle intending to just bike. I wanted to do the, that thing from the very

05:47 southwest corner to the very northeast corner of Britain. It's like Penzance to Land's End or something like that. I wanted to try to cycle that. And so I was bringing my bicycle and about to get on the train, you do the border control stuff in Brussels before you get on the train. So the guy said, all right, you know, what are you coming for? I said, I don't know, just going to cycle around. He said, well, who do you work for or what do you do for a living? I said, a computer programmer, because that was my answer I was used to using to shutting people up.

06:17 If you're sitting next to a plane on somebody, know, sitting next to an airplane, next to somebody that turns to you and says, Hey, what do you do? I, I think, I don't want to have this conversation. So I would always just say computer programmer as a way of ending the conversation. So visa border control guy says, what do you do? I say computer programmer, just instinctively, reflexively. And he said, well, who do you work for? I said, Oh, just this and that.

06:48 He said, well, who pays you? I said, well, whatever. I was just brushing him off. Like, come on, let me on the train. And finally he said, all right, look, mate. I said, I'm not going to let you on this train unless you can prove to me that you're not coming here to take a job. Cause it sounds to me like you're trying to hide the fact that you're coming here to take a job. And I went, all right, look, this is really embarrassing, but I sold my company for $22 million a couple of years ago. I'm not coming to take anybody's job.

07:18 I said, you can search the web, it's all out there, it's all public. And he goes, oh, why didn't you say so? He grabs his little stamper and goes, he said, look, next time, just admit that you're retired. And I got on the train going, whoa, admit that you're retired. Huh, so I've been digesting that one ever since. Because from a government's point of view, retired doesn't mean you're sitting on a beach wasting your life.

07:45 Retire just means you're not working for money anymore. And so yeah, I've thought about it a lot. Like everything I'm doing now is not for money. It's just for my own intrinsic curiosity and motivation. And so technically I'm retired, according to him. And so that's when I had to eventually say, I'm nobody's tool anymore. I can define myself as useless and not wake up every day thinking, how could I be useful to people?

08:14 I did that for too much of my life, and now I'm just, uh, following my own intrinsic curiosity and motivation.

08:24 from, from somebody on the outside, that's just kind of taking it all in. It feels like you're, you're not playing the wealth game. You're not playing a status game. It feels like you figured it out a long time ago. I listened to so many podcasts with entrepreneurs and they're chasing the, um, I've been listening to a lot of Andrew Wilkinson and a bit kind of never enough and stuff like that. Um, like how did you figure it out? Cause you, you seem to be somebody that's

08:54 got it all like nailed on but how did you know to stop when you you'd got there? Oh just it's just rational.

09:06 If I had, uh, one thousand bags of rice in my basement, like more rice than I could ever eat in a lifetime, and then somebody shows up to my door with more rice, I'd say, no, no, no, please do not give me any more rice. I have enough rice. Please give it to somebody else who needs it. And I also don't wake up in the morning going, so how can I get some more rice? It's just silly. It's just irrational.

09:34 to go pursue more rice when you have enough rice. So I guess I just think of money like rice. I've got enough. I'm good. you strike, tell me if I'm wrong, but you strike me as somebody that might have had a similar mindset before you had all the bags of rice in your basement. If we're going to go with that metaphor, let's say when I had no rice, I worked very hard to get rice. And when I had some rice, a little rice, I worked very hard to get more.

10:05 until it was clear that I had way more than I need. And then I said, okay, now it's just, I just had to reevaluate my actions and go, okay, now it's actually stupid to be pursuing more rice.

10:19 That's good. Could you hear the whole money doesn't bring you happiness, but until you have money, feels like you can't make that sweeping statement. Yeah. It sure as fuck does bring some good happiness up to a point. And then, yeah, I have a few super rich friends that are not very happy, mainly because they are still

10:49 pursuing it in a almost habitual can't stop kind of way or now that they're rich now they've got some mega rich friends and now they feel like a loser compared to their mega rich friends and they're like but I'm not a loser I gotta show that I can do it too if he can do it I can do it so they're pushing and pushing and it's not a happy place to be in to feel like you're not enough

11:19 So, yeah, I think I just really internalized that feeling of enough.

11:27 I am, read a tweet online. was, was doing a bit of research before the podcast and going back to what problem do you solve and thinking about you as, uh, I don't want to say an entity, but I read a tweet that somebody said, I never thought somebody that joined the circus that then went on to be a musician that then went on to be an entrepreneur, to be a Ted talker, to be a philosopher would change my life with their books. But I'm so glad they did.

11:57 And I thought like, yeah, like your life just seems like you're definitely somebody that's just said, fuck it, I'm going to do what I want to do, which is inspiring so many people and I think, get that from this. Okay. Well, lest you think I'm brilliant. Let's get rid of that notion. I was just surrounded by different people. Like as a teenager.

12:27 I wanted nothing but to be a musician. That's all I wanted. So I didn't follow any normal path. Like even in high school, I knew I wasn't going to college. So all I wanted was to be a musician. I went just to a music school after high school and there I got a gig on a circus. So suddenly I was surrounded by like jugglers and magicians and face painters and acrobats and people that also don't

12:57 follow norms, otherwise they would not be a professional juggler. And my boss at the circus was very proud that he had never spent more than $1,000 on a car. That he would only buy a car that was like run down that somebody had given up on. If it was under a thousand dollars, he would drive it for the final year or two of its life. Until then, if it broke, he'd trash it and put it in the recycle.

13:25 Scrap bin and buy another car for under a thousand dollars. And so I was surrounded by very resourceful people. My first major girlfriend, you know, like a the relationship that I thought was going to last for the rest of my life where I really became a part of her family. We were together for many years and really close. Both of her parents never had a job. They would just do various little odd jobs for spare change, basically.

13:53 and they lived in a little cabin in the woods that they built themselves. And so this was my family. And so surrounded by the circus and this extended family of mine, these were my thought influencers. So my life seemed pretty, like, let's say my decisions seemed pretty normal to me in the context of the people I was around.

14:22 So then if somebody who's just kind of gone through the normal ways and just went and got a job at this and worked at a big corporation, pushing papers from left to right and all that kind of stuff. if somebody like that were to look at my life, it would look like I'm really weird. But from the context I was in, I made sense. It was the norm. Do you ever think back to childhood and think about like some of the beliefs that you inherited from childhood that are like without those beliefs?

14:51 there's no way that I would have done X, and Z. Not from... Oh, okay. I was going to say no, but there is one. I thought we were rich. My family seemed rich to me.

15:09 because on my dad's side of the family owns, or owned or owns, a real estate development company. So they had properties, so I thought our family was rich. So I felt like I had a safety net, you know? So I could walk the tightrope and do somersaults on the tightrope. Now, I'm speaking metaphorically. I didn't actually walk the tightrope.

15:36 I could metaphorically do somersaults on a tightrope knowing there's a nice safety net down there. So I could try risky crazy things and if I fall, well hey, I come from a rich family. I'll be fine. And so I did crazy stuff. Only later did I find out that our family was never rich and there was no safety net. So it's kind of funny to, know, the...

16:04 sticking with the metaphor, telling the acrobat, yeah, yeah, go out there, don't worry. Do flips on the tight rope. Don't worry about it. There's a nice safety net down here. And then later you find out there was no net. So that influenced me a bit. I felt I could try risky things and be safe. But, but then I think very quickly that belief was replaced by a similar one, which is just trusting my own resourcefulness to know that no matter what happens, I can f-

16:33 figure my way out of it. I can be a good person and an interesting friend so that friends won't mind having me sleeping on their sofa if I've got nowhere else to stay. So taking risks because of that more than a rich family.

16:53 Good. I'd love to talk about your new book, Youthful Not True. So like I said in the intro, I heard it when you were talking with Mark on a podcast and I paused and I was just, it felt like a hundred ideas I'd thought about and like I'd been working around when I was saying to you before, but you'll hear working in sales, people say, nobody wants to talk to me today.

17:18 Or everybody hates me or nobody's picking up the phone or whatever. you hear all these things. You're like, is that a fact? Is that true? Is that assumptions? So useful, not true. I will butcher it if I try and explain it, Derek, but you give us what, that is and why you, why you create that work of art. Nice punt. like that. Um, you, you explain it. honestly, the same as you, I over and over again.

17:49 I've people dictate a worldview that was clearly just their perspective, that was not factually, objectively, observably, empirically true, but you'd hear them state it as if it's a hard truth, know? Nobody's hiring. You see the movie, uh, Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross? Mm-hmm. Okay. You know, it's all, I just saw it again recently.

18:19 I had forgotten it, I saw it long, long ago. It's all about these leads, Nobody, nobody, I need some good leads, come on, these leads are crap, man, give me the good leads. And they've just got this mindset that there's no way you can sell anything to these people. These people are trash, I want the good leads. And the movie didn't go where I thought it was going to go, which is this idea that you could give somebody a stack of leads that...

18:47 somebody else had said are bad leads. And if you give to somebody saying, okay, these are actually the best leads, these are the golden leads, these ones, anybody can sell to these people, here you go. And you could come in with this mindset of acceptance in advance. This idea of walking into a party deciding all these people hate me or walking into a party deciding in advance, these are all potential friends.

19:15 I, anybody I meet here is going to like me. These are all my future friends. It's self-fulfilling. That's the phrase we were getting at. That so many of these mindsets that you see every day are self-fulfilling. And yes, we've all heard those silly slogans, you know, whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right. That's a good catchy one. But along the way, seeing so many people

19:46 either failing or succeeding because of their mindsets. I thought

19:54 Any worldview is not necessarily true. Every worldview is just a matter of whether it's useful for you or not. And in fact, every belief, when people have these beliefs, like people are inherently good or people are inherently bad. Well, neither one is necessarily true. So how does that work for you? If you believe people are inherently bad, does that, is that working for you? Is that helping you be who you want to be? Maybe it is. I'm not going to criticize it because

20:24 It actually can make people a lot more cautious and less gullible. Maybe it's working for you to believe that people are inherently bad and somebody really has to prove to you that they're not a bad person before you'll trust them. It's not necessarily true, it's just rather useful. So I had been talking around this subject for many years. Whenever I would...

20:52 post my thoughts on business, for example. My first book called Anything You Want, the one I did for Seth Godin, I stated a lot of my opinions on business, but I stated them as truths. I said, well, business is a place to be generous, for example. And every now and then somebody would push back saying, but that's not true. I'd say, I didn't say it was true. I choose to believe these things because they're useful to believe, not because they're true. What the fuck is true anyway?

21:22 There are some things that are objectively, empirically, observably, absolutely true, but most things of the mind, or let's say all things of the mind, are not necessarily true anyway. So you just got to ask yourself, is this useful for me to believe this? Is this useful for me to see it this way? So finally, after a few years of talking around the subject, I decided to write a book about it. One of the lines that stood out to me that I loved was,

21:50 That's why people rarely share objective, unbiased facts. Actual facts are as boring as dirt. Nobody bonds over facts. You're the first person to quote that at me. I love hearing it. Thank you. love that line. It's just so true. You can eavesdrop in a cafe and nobody's just, it's not like top trumps where people are just throwing facts. Everything is biased. I think about like my life and I think about like

22:20 A lot of the beliefs of from my mom is like, every Christmas we'd watch it's a wonderful life. So it's a wonderful life. Everything happened for a reason. If it's meant to be or be, it will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end. Reading your book really makes me question. It's all a myth. None of it's true. But actually, would I want to swap that with a belief system or something that would be like, like you said there, some people say, well,

22:49 Everyone is inherently bad and that can be useful. Do you believe that it is a positive to be a pessimist or from your experience, people should lean more into the optimistic side?

23:07 I know enough people now to know that it just depends on the person. One of my heroes is an aerial artist named Erica Lemay. E-R-I-K-A L-E-M-A-Y. She's an amazing, I'd say acrobat, but somewhere between acrobat and contortionist, but ultimately doing

23:33 like physical poetry, think she calls it, hanging in the air from straps with her own weight. So I got to know her about six years ago and she's one of the most

23:47 distrusting pessimistic people because she has to be in her field. She used to be in Cirque du Soleil and many of her colleagues died because they trusted the rope and they didn't go triple verify that the winch had the clips on as needed and all that kind of stuff. And so they were up in the air, you know, whatever, 50 meters in the air hanging onto this thing. And then the rope snaps because the guy was taking a break when he was supposed to do his second inspection. And so the rope snaps and they die. And

24:17 Growing up around that made her extremely cautious and untrusting of everyone and everything. And it works for her.

24:29 It's helped her survive and thrive. And it even goes into day-to-day life where she doesn't believe anything that anybody tells her. She verifies it before she'll internalize it. And she's a hero of mine. I adore her. So I've seen how pessimism can really work for people. And I, of course, I'm an extremely optimistic person. I'm quite the opposite of her maybe, which is why I found her so intriguing. And so optimism...

24:59 And trusting people has really worked for me, even though it's gotten me screwed over a few times. So what? It's also really helped me thrive in the first place. don't let anybody tell you that one way is the way for somebody to say, no, Jack, here's how you need to be. know, everyone needs to be optimistic or everyone needs to believe that every thing happens for a reason or everyone needs to look at the bright side or whatever it may be. Anytime somebody's telling you.

25:27 that you should adopt a worldview. You've just got to translate it to hear it as them just saying, I like this. I like Marmite. I like tomato ice cream. Doesn't mean that you need to. They're just saying, I like it, but they'll say it like, you need this. Everyone needs to eat tomato ice cream. And they think it's a fact. They think that they're really...

25:56 improving the world by getting everybody to eat the ice cream that they like, but it's just something that works for them.

26:05 You talk about the brain inventing explanations. Could you give me, I guess, could you paint a picture on that? Cause I thought that was beautiful. when it comes to beliefs and facts and assumptions. Yeah, that story blew my mind of patients that have the split hemispheres of the brain that for some reason the

26:33 I forget what it's called, the thing that connects the left half and the right half of the brain. If it gets damaged in some way, for some people on earth, they've had to cut the connection between the left and right half of the brain. These people can function surprisingly normally. They have basically normal lives, but they make wonderful test subjects for neurologists studying the brain or psychologists, I guess.

27:03 the two halves of the brain are connected, you can ask a question to one eye. You can show a message in one eye and then ask the other eye a question and it shows you how the brain's working. So they showed a message to one eye, to one of these patients saying, please get up and close the door. And they got up and closed the door. And when they sat down, they showed a question to their other eye.

27:32 saying, why did you close the door? And they said, oh, thought we should, thought it shouldn't have been open. Sorry, was that allowed? Was that okay? They didn't know why they had gotten up. They were really convinced. No, sorry, I shouldn't say they didn't know why. They thought they knew why they had done it. They were completely convinced. Oh, no, I got up and closed it because I was cold. And they kept doing these experiments with different people. And the same thing kept happening that we...

28:01 are completely convinced that we know why we do things. We know why we chose to buy the thing we bought. We know why we choose our friends or why we chose to do the things we do with our friends, why we broke up with our ex, why we're in this field or chose this computer. But it's proven that it's bullshit, that we don't actually know why we do things.

28:29 It might coincidentally be true, but it's very likely not the real reason why you're doing anything. So it's amazing to realize that we can't trust our own thoughts.

28:44 And that feels a bit like, that was one of the groundbreaking moments, I think, from the book of we can't trust. If we can't trust our own thoughts, Derek, what can we trust? That gets back to the theme of only trusting your actions, meaning, actually, that doesn't make sense, trusting actions, only judging thoughts.

29:13 by how they affect your actions. If believing that everything happens for a reason makes you a better person or let's count a peace of mind as an action. So it doesn't have to be an active action. It can be a change in your state or behavior. So if believing that everything happens for a reason makes you go, okay, I'll stop obsessing about that thing that happened in the past.

29:42 I'll assume, or I'll stop being upset about it. I will trust that everything happens for a reason. Then you could say that that mindset works for you. It makes you happier. It makes you let go of what's out of your control. But let's say a different belief that if something's going to happen, it's entirely up to me. That belief might make you jump out of your chair and take action and go.

30:10 make some things happen instead of just watching TV. That might inspire you to stop procrastinating. And there's no point in arguing whether it's true or not that everything happens for a reason, or if it's true or not that if anything's gonna happen it's gotta be up to you. It doesn't matter if it's true or not. Don't even ask yourself that question. Just ask yourself, is this belief making me take the actions I wanna take?

30:39 or at least feeling at peace.

30:44 So I feel like this is a therapy session, Derek. I think this is brilliant. if people are listening to this and they create beliefs that they find useful that aren't necessarily true, I guess it probably has to come with a bit of a warning label. one of the things that I have a bit of a belief that I know is dangerous and can have a detriment is if I don't get up early in the morning and I don't start my day with a bit of a morning routine of working out or going to the gym or getting ready,

31:13 I feel like it will have a bit of a knock on effect to the day and the day won't be as good as it could be, which is useful because at half five, six o'clock, it drags me out of bed in the morning and it keeps me pumped up. that's a great kind of, I use that and a Marcus Aurelius quote, and that's a bit of like a goer for the day. But then on the days where something happens, the baby's been up all night, I can't jump out of bed. That could be quite dangerous as a...

31:40 But then, so how do you, how do you act in those moments of using it when it's useful, but then remembering it's not true when it isn't useful? mean, there's no right answer for this. That's a dangerous one, isn't it? Because sometimes to make yourself get out of bed, like you said, 5.30 or six, do your exercise. You need to believe I am screwed if I don't do this.

32:11 Therefore I need to, I can't just go, ah, it's fine, it's all bullshit anyway. Actually, there was, oh my God, an old friend of mine I hadn't talked to in five years. I saw her in my WhatsApp and I was like, oh wow, we haven't talked in years. It's kind of, you know, you've got some people that you used to be closer friends with. And so just, out of the blue, just called. And I was like, Tracy, what's up, how you doing? She was like, oh my God, Derek Simmers, how you doing?

32:39 I said, great, how are you been? What are you doing? And she, I actually just changed her name because I'm going to reveal something about her. Um, she said, she said, you know, last time you and I spoke a few years ago, she said, I was really addicted to smoking pot. was smoking pot like all day, every day. It had really become a true addiction. And she said, I finally kicked it. I stopped smoking pot. was really proud of myself. She said, then I got your new book, useful, not true.

33:09 And she said, suddenly I looked around me and I'm like, whoa, none of this means anything. This is all bullshit. She said, I was even standing next to a street sign, just realizing that's just some stupid name that somebody gave to the street. That's not what the street is really called. Somebody just put their name on this street. It's not true. And she said, the whole thing made me start smoking pot again. She said, she said, luckily that was two months ago. And she said, I kind of caught myself after a few days. And so I stopped again. She said,

33:38 Yeah, that book really messed with me. She said, yeah, it just really made me think that like, this is all bullshit. Nothing's true anyway. Nothing matters. So I think that's the downside. You still have to watch yourself. I'm not responsible for your actions. I'm just putting, I'm just introducing an idea here. Yeah. But, uh, you have to, again, notice, for example, Jack's example.

34:03 I need to get up at 5.30 to exercise. I really, really need to do that because I'm screwed if I don't. Maybe you notice that if you let go of that belief, you stop exercising and you start getting fat because you're eating a bunch of crap that you shouldn't be eating and you're not exercising. You have to say, it works for me to absolutely believe this. I need to absolutely believe. I think we can say I've proven through my actions.

34:31 that I need to believe that I have to get up at 5.30 to exercise because if, or and do my morning routine, because if I don't, I've seen what actions happen if I don't believe this.

34:44 That was helpful. And I think for people listening, that'd be helpful as well. And I think like with everything, there's a question mark over it and you have to find what works for you and what beliefs are useful. I wanted to talk to you about memory. There's a brilliant story in your book about a car crash and about the dangers of memories. Would you share that with the audience? Yeah. You want me to tell that tale?

35:12 Please, I think it was brilliant. I think I read it three times. Yeah, that was a big deal. I was 17 in Hiddensdale, Illinois. And do you have yield signs in the UK? No, I don't know what that but it sounds lovely. Okay, good. In the US, it's a triangular sign that says yield, which maybe is an assumption. you've got these rules, where whoever's on the right in the roundabout

35:42 gets the first dibs at the roundabout, right? You just kind of, you have, in the US there's some signs that are explicit where it says yield, meaning whoever's coming on this cross street gets the right of way. So we're not going to put a traffic light here, but yield to whoever's coming this way. So there was a yield sign at the end of my street that I always just blew off because there was never anybody coming the other way. So once again,

36:10 I blew off the yield sign, this time, big car crash. And, you know, in the days of all of that, I was taken away and went to the hospital. And then later I found out that the woman that I crashed into, that she'll never walk again because I broke her spine. And this was just a few months before I went off to university in Boston. So I just carried this weight with me like, oh man.

36:40 Somewhere out there is a woman who will never walk again because of me. Fuck, that's so messed up. And I just feel the weight of this for so many years. like 16 years later, in my early 30s, I went back to Hinsdale, Illinois, and I decided to find that woman. So phone book, good old fashioned white pages phone book. I went and I found her address and I just showed up at the door.

37:06 and knocked and this woman answered the door. said, hi, my name's Derek. I'm the guy that hit you 17 years ago. And I like started crying. Like this, this pent up guilt that I'd been carrying for 17 years. I just started crying on her doorstep and she's like, oh, sweetie, sweetie, don't worry here, here, come on in, come on in. And then she walked me into her living room, walked. And it took me a second to go, wait, she just walked me into her living room. Hold on. And so,

37:36 We started comparing notes and I said, wait, so you're walking? She said, yeah. I said, I heard that you'll never walk again. She goes, no, I broke a vertebrae, but I can walk. And she said, in fact, that accident really kind of helped me get my life together because I was overeating a lot. And she says, I was eating while I was driving and that's why I hit you. said, no, you didn't hit me. I hit you. She said,

38:02 And she sweetie, I was eating and not paying attention to the road. That's why I hit you. And she goes, wait, all this time you thought that you hit me and that it was your fault? I said, well, yeah. And now she started crying. She goes, it's so stupid, these stories. see, I'm getting all like teary eyed telling it. So.

38:23 It's interesting thinking about the past, which we think of as a fact. This is what happened. Here, Jack, let me tell you about my past. Here's the story of my past. Here's something that happened to me. Let me tell you about this person that screwed me over. Let me tell you about my hard childhood. Let me tell you about how I was abandoned. And people tell these stories as if they're facts.

38:52 You can realize that we never have complete information. That every story about the past is just a story, it's not a fact. It's one perspective based on incomplete information. At a certain point we just latch on to it and we say, that's it, that is the story.

39:13 Whenever anybody shares with me some like bad news, had they been through a breakup or a job loss, I always try and have empathy, but I always think afterwards or I'll speak to my partner and I say, I wonder what the other side of that story is. Because like you said, it's just wondering. So when you have situations like that, I guess, and like you said, like people were saying I was abandoned, nobody loved me growing up, all those things. Is it possible to change the story?

39:44 Definitely. I don't know about changing other people's story. I'm not trying to be a Tony Robbins life coach kind of guy. But I think if I was, that would be a big part of my job is helping to... Helping other people change their stories. Byron Katie, I think is her name. If you look up... If this subject interests you, and I...

40:13 mean you Jack, but also anybody listening. Look up Byron Katie, B-Y-R-O-N-K-A-T-I-E. She does something called The Work, which is all about basically doubting every one of these stories that you say out loud. know, if I don't get married, I'll spend my life alone. Really? Can you prove it? how to, and I think she asks this question, which is something I'm going to get this wrong, but.

40:42 Something like, if that were true, who would you be? okay, now if that were not true, who would you be? Or how would you be? And it's just asking yourself to just consider counterfactuals, consider other perspectives, just for a minute. Let's just assume for a second that that's not true. Let's just do some little imagination daydreaming for a second. What if...

41:10 You're actually going to have an amazing, wonderful life no matter, even if you're not married, can actually be the best thing that ever happened to you. Could that be? Now, what would that look like if that were true? Just asking you to go through it in your head to see which perspective empowers you or disempowers you. What, what, what charges you up or what drains you of energy. And I think that's,

41:38 It's a great experiment to do with yourself. Even if it's just private journaling. Sorry, I think I got unattentive. You were asking about, is it possible to change your stories? Absolutely. Through this process of imagination, whether it's in a journal, just talking with friends, just looking at your ceiling and thinking, what's another way to think about this?

42:05 And when you're talking about Byron Katie there, I was thinking of a concept in your book, but for other people, which is one abet, which I thought was brilliant. So when people will say something as if it's fat and it's, it's a case of kind of getting them to put their money where their mouth is. Yeah, that's from, what was that book called? It was a poker player. A poker player wrote a book about approaching life.

42:34 through probabilities. She says as a poker player, have to think in terms of probabilities of everything. She said, I find it very useful to apply that to the rest of life. So if I catch myself thinking, need to get out of bed at 5.30 and do a morning routine, otherwise my life falls to crap. She'll say, okay, want to bet? Or how much would you bet on that? What's your, how's your certainty there? Would you put down money to bet on that? Or somebody saying,

43:02 You know what man, the vaccines are hoax. The government is trying to put 5G chips into our bloodstream so that Bill Gates can control us. And I say, all right, want to bet? How much are you willing to bet on this? let's get an actual cash amount that you're willing to commit to that if it's proven that what you're saying is true, I will owe you this amount. And if it's not proven, you'll owe me that amount. Okay, how much are you willing to bet? Oh, okay, well.

43:30 Okay, well, you know, mean, 40 % certainty that I'm willing. Okay, okay, but not like a, you know, $10,000, but I bet, okay, well, $30, you know, it's interesting to put a numeric value on your certainty on any particular perspective. You mentioned a couple of them there, Derek, in terms of like questions when it comes to journaling. I know there's a section on your website that you're currently like, you're constantly updating, but

44:00 What questions do you find best when it comes to finding out for yourself what beliefs are useful and not necessarily true?

44:13 Anytime I'm feeling less than flourishing on any subject in my life, whether it's work or money or relationships or whatever, I turn to my general and I try to just challenge my whole subject around it. You know, why do I, what am I really thinking here? What's going on? Well, what's another way to looking at that? What am I assuming here?

44:43 There's no set question that I apply to everything, but there is a set process of skeptically doubting the whole thing of any, uh, anything that I'm thinking is a fact. I challenge it, even if it does turn out to be a fact, then great. It can stand up to some challenging and, uh, skeptic doubt. If it does in fact, prove to be true, that's fine. So you can really just take.

45:13 all of your assumptions, all of the things that feel like hard and true facts. I don't even want to pull silly examples out of my ass right now because I think they would be distracting. But think of any assumption that you've got in your life that probably doesn't even feel like an assumption, it just feels like a hard and true fact. And you could just take some daydreaming time, again, whether it's in a journal or just laying in bed thinking of these things and just challenging it.

45:42 Going, what if that's not true? What's another way of looking at this? Can I reverse that? So I think I do some classic brainstorming approach of like, now let's try the opposite. Now let's try a wacky left field. Look at this. What would a Martian say about this? What would somebody who's the complete opposite personality of me say about this? How would they approach it? I think I just.

46:11 with perspectives in my head like that. it's been extremely useful and strategic for me to often find out that the path I was taking, whether for health or money, business stuff, or even lifestyle things, sometimes the path I was taking was very indirect.

46:40 to go, to get where I really wanted.

46:46 So I think maybe actually if I were to say that there's one methodology that I use the most, it's trying to get to the direct path of what I'm really after. Like we talked at the very beginning about money stuff, about this feeling of enough and having enough stuff. Well, what's the real point you're after? Is it security? Is it ego? And what is ego anyway? Like feeling good about yourself? Feeling like you're worthy? Is it accomplishment?

47:15 It's interesting to ask yourself, what's the point of money anyway? What am I really going for? Because there's no right or wrong answer. It's for you. What's the point of what I'm really doing? What am I really after? I constantly try to make sure I'm not taking long routes, and I try to just go straight for what I'm really after.

47:36 That takes me on nicely to your book, How to Live. think when I first listened, I'll be honest, I nearly had a panic attack because every chapter for anyone that's not related, it's 27 different ways to live. And they're all brilliant. They're all like, it was very much like I was in an ice cream parlor and I was like, I want that one. Wait a minute. No, I want that one.

48:04 Thanks, Jack. By the way, we hadn't talked about this. didn't know that you had read that book. Thank you. Yeah, it was brilliant. But I remember listening to it thinking, oh, no, I forget the last life. No, I don't want to worry about being rich. I want to do nothing. want to, no, I want to create and I want to overtake my heroes and all these different, there's so many great thoughts in there that thought provoking questions and things like that. In terms of the way that you live your life, is yours an amalgamation?

48:33 Or do you pick one chapter and stick by it?

48:39 The end of that book has a picture of an orchestra seating chart with 27 different instruments, know, the cellos and the violins and the clarinets and the French horns and all that. And there are 27 instruments on the seating chart because there are 27 chapters in the book. And the metaphor for me, and you as a musician might be able to relate to this too, is that you use different instruments at different times.

49:10 You don't say, the French horn is what I just use for everything. You say, Sometimes you need the French horns to come in. Other times you do not. Sometimes you take the French horn and you combine it with the cellos and it's just the two of them, which is an odd combination, but it's kind of nice. And then other times they sit out for the whole piece. So I think of the different philosophies that you can follow your life or guide your life by, whether it's...

49:40 I need to be the best or I need to just chill and relax or I need to go experience the world or I need to keep my head down and focused on my work. These are conflicting philosophies and yet we do use them all at different times in our life. Sometimes many times a day, there is a certain mindset that Jack uses to get out of bed at 530 in the morning that is a different mindset than you use at 10 o'clock at night.

50:09 when it's time to go to sleep. You have to get into a different mindset, which means in a way following a different philosophy to help you sleep at night than you do to help you get out of bed in the morning. So I like acknowledging

50:25 that no one philosophy is the right answer and that we're using these different mindsets, these different value systems for the effects that they have on us.

50:39 And do you find that this chapter of your life that you tend to lean more into a particular mode? know that you're living out in New Zealand.

50:51 Yeah, I'm a... That's a question.

50:58 Let me think. I actually don't know what chapter I'm on right now. I just finished writing that book eight weeks ago. And then I took a trip for a few weeks to South America where I just met up with a bunch of people. And as soon as I got back, I've been doing some programming, some database programming of the stuff that runs my Sivers.com store and my database. And I've just been programming lately and I'm not really sure what chapter I'm on to next. I don't know if I've got

51:27 another book that I'm going to dive into, or if I'm just going to spend a year learning Chinese or something, I'm not sure. Do you, um, do you know the author Mitch Albom? He uses with Marie and five people you meet in heaven. He's a, he's a brilliant fiction writer. And he came on and he spoke about all of that. was like, he was like, Jack, I'm, I'm an older guy now. He was like, I'm 60 moving into 70. He was like, I won't be able to get all of the books left, left within me.

51:56 I guess what books do you feel like you've got left in you? What stories or what questions or what philosophies have you got left to explore within yourself and for the world? I'm really into this idea, as you can tell, of finding another perspective. Like, what's another way to look at this? And because of this, I'm really interested in

52:25 amateur anthropology. I love getting to know worldviews that are different from my American California worldview that I grew up in. Which at the time of course felt true. It felt like, well yeah, is right. And everywhere else I would go, like I moved to Singapore, it just felt like everybody was wrong. And it took me a while to go, oh wait, they're not wrong. And I wasn't right. These are just two. So.

52:54 I still find that fascinating. And I would love to go inhabit philosophies around the world, to go live in China and India and maybe even, you know, forbidden places like Iran, and to literally inhabit them and their worldviews long enough until I have truly internalized them.

53:23 And I can see things from the Iranian point of view or from the Kenyan point of view, which of course there's not a Kenya point of view, but you know what I mean? Like it's, let's say the different worldviews that geography helps amplify through isolation. If you're around a bunch of people that all think the same as you, it feels more true. So I'd like to, I'd like to inhabit those. I don't know if that's a book.

53:52 I'd fear being repetitive if I keep writing books on the same subject of, now what's another way to look at that? It's like, it becomes like the comedian, like, know, like a Jerry Seinfeld. like, you know, it's annoying. It's like when people start to become a self-parody because they just keep doing the same bit, you know, I don't want to do that. So I might just challenge myself to do something completely different instead. But I'll say that this subject does still fascinate me.

54:21 And that's the beauty of the subject of perspective is there are so many perspectives on it. I always think about as a young child, my mom talking about the fruit bowl. And if you've got a fruit bowl in the middle of the room and you've got 10 different artists, you're to get 10 different drawings of like, oh, I can see the banana in that one, but why is it just bananas? Well, no, the oranges are hiding behind it. And it's that kind of philosophy.

54:46 And smart mama. I love that. That's a beautiful metaphor to do the physical metaphor of like holding up any object, even if you imagine like a very multifaceted object you can hold in your hand and look at it from underneath or from the side. And it looks completely different from different points of view. And I think of the that is a metaphor for any subject you can hold up. What's the correct way to approach sales? What's the correct way to to turn a

55:16 cold call into a warm one or all that stuff that you guys deal with so well. It's all mindset, isn't it? It's all perspective. and like you said earlier, it is a wanky phrase, but you are right. Whether you say you can or you can't. I'd like, I just feel like, yeah, it makes sense. Like if you're going into the day of today's going to be awful, nobody's going to want to talk to me. It's going to be so awful, et cetera, et cetera. It probably will be.

55:45 And I think it goes back to that useful, not true. What might be the, we get our team to break it down of like the facts of like, on average, you have to speak to 22 people before anything happens. So then all of a sudden you're going into a conversation with like facts of like, Oh, right. How can be mad? I've only spoken to 17 people. course they've all told me to piss off today. Derek. actually.

56:13 Even the 22 people, thought you were going somewhere different with that. I thought you were going to say like, now they believe that, you know, there are only seven calls in. They've got to get to number 22 before they're going to get a good lead. No, no, no, it's good. I didn't think that I'd end up talking to you about sales and cold calling, but I think it all boils down to beliefs and things like that. I've loved this conversation, Derek. I've been looking forward to this for

56:40 Um, a while since we booked it into thank you for taking your morning in New Zealand to, um, come and talk about beliefs and, your books. And if people love this conversation, which I'm sure they will, where can they find you? What should they go and listen to? What should they start with? Don't be so sure they will. I don't know how much you don't want to bet. How much you want to bet people like this conversation today, Jack. Um, I'll put my money where my mouth is. I will do this was actually an exceptionally fun conversation. Uh,

57:10 Oh yeah, go to my website, anybody listening to this. Actually, if anybody listened all the way to the end of this conversation, you might be surprised that I really enjoy my email inbox. I meet strangers here and the hour or two a day I spend in my email inbox, I really enjoy it. So maybe it's because I'm isolated here in New Zealand that I really like hearing from people around the world. So if you listen to the end of this, please go email me, introduce yourself, say hello.

57:40 My website, I V E dot R S I'm not on any social media really. It's just my website and it's just my email inbox. So email me and say hello. Beautiful. Derek, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks Jack.