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I get up and I tell the stories and they're not my stories, it's [music] their stories.
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And the stories are told in their vernacular.
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They recognize themselves.
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They recognize their patients.
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They recognize their neighbors.
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Even if I'm in Mississippi and everybody's accent [music] is different, they still know they too have a Bob the oneeyed beagle in their town.
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>> If you want to get through [music] to somebody, right, you've got to entertain them.
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One of the sweet ironies of nobody reading and AI is that more people than ever are writing books. All right.
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I get asked all the time, how did you learn to write and tell stories?
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It was being down at the implement store listening to the farmers sitting around rolling dice and drinking coffee.
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They all had stories and they were storytellers and their stories had shape and form and flow and they often had a payoff. Well, hello everyone.
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It's Jim O'anosy with yet another Infinite Loops.
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As you are about to hear, my guest Mike Perry and I were having so much fun chatting that we skipped the usual introduction and jumped right in.
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Mike is a ridiculously prolific author, humorist, singer, songwriter, volunteer firefighter, and fellow Midwesterner.
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Unsurprisingly, Mike and I had lots to talk about.
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And after I chatted with him, I went and reread two of his books.
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I'm about to reread all of the others. I highly recommend them. Listen in to hear why. Enjoy.
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I've been watching some of your uh other uh interviews.
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I I just finished the big biography of Mark Twain and I couldn't help thinking of you >> and him because I just love, you know, as I was getting ready for the podcast, I'm like, you know what I ought to do is just let Mike talk the entire time and it might be absolutely the best podcast I've ever recorded. He was.
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Yeah, I've I've not read the new one.
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I've got two others actually.
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I can see them from here that are bricks.
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Um, and one of the things that he was really helpful uh to me for was his speaking because I, you know, and we may talk about this, but I've never, you know, I've done, I can't even say I've done better than I expected because I've never set a goal.
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I never dreamed of being a writer.
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I just wandered into it and discovered the thing I love.
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and I've never sold a million, but I've done well enough that I'm making a decent living and I'm taking care of my family and I um but I realized pretty early on that it wasn't my brilliance.
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It was there was hard work.
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You know, we can talk again, we'll probably talk about all this, but but there was some luck involved.
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Um and and Twain, of course, he would have these grand successes and then he'd blow it all on bad investments and then to recoup, he'd go on speaking tours. And I'm extremely shy.
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I don't ever want to come out of my little room here where I write.
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But I learned early on, no, you better learn.
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I I just got done listening, by the way, to your the episode you did on permissionless action.
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And I love that phrase because that's I look back and I go, "Yeah, that's pretty much what I was doing.
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I mean, I was writing letters to people I had no business writing letters to."
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And and speaking is another one where I really didn't want to.
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But I just realized that Twain would make up for lost ground by doing these speaking tours.
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and and honestly that has become one of our steadiest revenue streams.
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I keep writing books and they keep doing fine.
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But the the speaking and then the other way he helped me is that I remember the first essay I back in the 90s I sold a piece I think I write about it in the new book the improbable mentors book.
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I sold a piece to Newsweek kind of by accident and I got $1,000 and I had never gotten more than 75 for anything I'd written.
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And I had a buddy who had retired from the NFL and he was on the cusp.
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He was one of those guys where he actually made more money selling used cars after he was out of the NFL than when he was in.
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>> He must have been a lineman or uh well >> actually there's a great again just shut down. >> No no no go for it. Go for it.
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>> You're you're a Minnesota guy so you'll get this.
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Uh he was a linebacker for the Green Bay Packers for 10 years and and I believe was an allp pro at least one year.
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I mean very obviously very good.
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You don't start for the Packers for 10 years.
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The problem was and he tells this story on himself.
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He's he's no longer with us, but he would tell the story himself.
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He said the very first time he replaced Ray Nichki and that he said the very first time he was quoted in the new in the Green Bay sports section, he said, "I will make the people of Wisconsin forget the name Ray Mitchki."
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[laughter] And and he said, "Now, upon reflection, >> [laughter] >> But I but anyway, he was he was one of those guys that by the time I met him, he had a very successful car dealership and he had saved some of his NFL money, even though it wasn't huge money back then.
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And so whenever he took me to lunch, I was the broke freelance writer.
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There was it was one of those where he didn't even have to pretend who was getting lunch, right?
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[laughter] And so I sell this piece for $1,000.
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And I jokingly say to him the next time you see him, I said, "I got $1,000 for this essay I wrote."
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I said, "I should I'm I'm probably going to invest it all in a mutual fund."
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And he said, "You should."
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And he sent me to I think it was a Meil Lynch guy, you know, and I and he bought me some middle of the road something.
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But it truly was a remarkable moment because it was another five to eight years before I had any more money to put in there.
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But I do talk about that with a lot of my artist friends who just they don't want to talk business or they don't want to do self-promotion.
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And I'm like, man, I just want to make more art and and being able to take care of my family, being able to have some investments in and over to and again, we are not wealthy, but we're fine.
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And so much of that is because I joked with that guy and just and so anyway, a difference between me and Mark Twain, there may be others, is I took my money to Meil Lynch.
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I didn't invest it in a new typewriter. [laughter] So, Twain. Yeah.
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You you know the the one uh I just read I always and I'm mad at the author because it would I kept reading it but I kept getting madder because he he he kept you know clutching his pearls about >> Twain had this thing with young girls >> that in in today's world would be incredibly inappropriate.
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But but it there was never any suggestion of any wrongdoing or basically the way I read it is his daughters had left.
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They meant everything to him and and he just wanted to be surrounded by youth and beauty and all that kind of stuff.
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And so he would do these clubs where he would invite bright young women.
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Um and literally it was all very innocent.
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there's always a chaperon there and you know they would play billiards and he would read from his books and he just I I think he kind of loved to be adored >> especially like because that's his daughters adored him >> and his el his eldest would really give him great ideas for editing his manuscripts and so he relied on them.
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Anyway, he just goes like I every other chapter he's clutching his pearls kind of saying this is bad. This is bad.
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Even though and then he would follow it with even though we didn't find any evidence of any wrong, but he he was a he was a really interesting guy.
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Uh I've always been a big fan of Mark Twain, but I did learn a lot about him uh from this.
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you know, in the end he was like the the the bad investments, etc.
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He was really interesting because he would always blame, you know, the other guy, especially in business.
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Never in writing, which is I thought was really interesting. >> That's a great point.
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But in business it was always the other guy who by the way parentheses he had handpicked and and when he picked them he was like would go around telling his friends I have just found the most brilliant manager for a business ever.
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This guy is going to make me a fortune.
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You know six months later he's suing him. He loved to sue people.
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>> But what what what a what a talent.
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And and the you know the other thing that I knew but I didn't know how profound it was.
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He he was he put America on the map for authors >> and I didn't know how popular he was in Europe, in the UK, Germany.
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Like literally crowds would gather.
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He got invited like by the king and queen whoever was reigning at that particular moment.
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And he was weird because he was the ultimate American.
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You know how our diplomats are the only we're the only country I have to check this but uh from the last time I read we're the only country that does not bow.
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>> In other words, when other diplomats meet kings and queens and emperors and all that, they do the deep bow.
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And in the American diplomatic corps, you may not bow. >> Interesting.
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>> And Obama caused when he was president caused quite a stir because he bowed to uh a king or a queen out of courtesy, I'm sure.
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>> Uh but but like I I I was really struck by the vehements of some of the Americans don't bow. What are you doing? >> Exactly. >> Yeah.
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Well, yeah, you're right about twain because we were not viewed as capable of art. Capital A. >> That's right.
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>> And that's been a whole struggle.
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I don't mean that in a dramatic way, but with me, I come from very bluecollar people.
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I've written about this a lot.
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I wrote a book about Montaigne.
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And um I said in there where I come from, if you can't stack it or stack with it, it don't count.
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And so to make a living as a writer or a humorist or whatever it is I am, uh I've struggled with that over the years because my two brothers, you know, they can they got bulldozers and log skitters and uh big equipment and I loved hard lake.
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I grew up working on the farm and on the sawmill and I worked on a ranch in Wyoming and to this day like I stacked a bunch of firewood yesterday.
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I'm utterly at home stacking hay bales or straw bales, but I knew I wasn't going to be a farmer because when the tractor breaks, I can't fix it and I don't understand electricity. It's magic.
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And so, [laughter] so there is that that balance.
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And to this day, I struggle in one of my preface to I wrote a book called Million Billion.
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In the preface, I said I think of myself as a writer with a small W because I've just never been able to get into that whole capital A artist.
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And yet I try to invest, you know, my heart and soul into everything I do.
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So yeah, there's an interesting, you know, and I don't know how much of that is just because we're Americans or how much it has to do with being bluecollar.
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You come from the Midwest.
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You I've listened, one of the things I got a kick out of listening to you is you telling about the reaction when people find out I don't remember which degree it is, but they'll find out that you don't have a PhD or Yeah.
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Well, I've been in some, and I say this without ranker, this is just true.
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I've never been one of the literary cool kids, >> right?
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>> I've had just enough success that occasionally I pass through those circles.
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And there's this fascinating thing that happens that, and I know it happened to you because I've heard you tell the story where I'll be kind of in the corner with my cheese and uh and someone will finally say, "Oh, you know, who are you?
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I'll say your name, you know, and then they're like, oh, that's do you write?"
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I go, "Yeah, I'm going to write."
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And they go, "Do you have you done some books?"
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Yeah, I've done some books.
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Oh, do you have do you have a publisher? Yeah. Who's your publisher? Harper Collins. Oh.
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And then the conversation just all of a sudden you have value.
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And a minute ago I was just this doofus with a nursing degree from rural Wisconsin who's never got his teeth fixed, you know, and and it's kind of sweet because you're flying under the radar.
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And and by the way, many of those people have gone on to become very valuable friends, mentors, and everything.
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But there's just it's just so interesting what's valued.
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They they wanted one time some ladies at the bank in my hometown wanted to put me on a float for the for the parade with the sign that said writer.
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[laughter] I said I would get beat up by the time we're halfway down Main Street and by the way by my brothers, right?
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[laughter] >> I only got >> because I because I went on fire calls, you know, I mean I was an EMT.
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So that you know there's like he's like he's a writer.
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He goes to modern dance recital and poetry readings, but he goes into the barnfire.
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So anyway, uh well, I discovered you through montaining barn boots.
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Uh I I I love uh philosophy.
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um never took it uh in a university course, but uh just got really I I I tend to be uh excessive when I go dive down rabbit holes and and then my wife would just she can see me coming and she's like, "I really really love you, but I do not want to hear all about Montaigne.
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I I I don't want to hear about Kirkagard.
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I I especially don't want to hear about Spinosa.
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[laughter] I remember I had a dinner with my wife one time.
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This is back when we had just moved to this little farm.
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And I do remember with all clarity her just saying just very gently but firmly a tone I'm sure you're familiar with.
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>> No more talk about chickens.
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>> We're not going to talk about chickens. >> Yeah. [laughter] >> Yeah.
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But, you know, I think that's one of the things that why I find you what you write and and say so intriguing.
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There are so many incredibly wise just regular folks.
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That's another part of America that I really think that we we don't modern Americans don't really understand that America for like as it was becoming kind of the world's leader like everything was about practical wisdom.
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Everything was let's roll up our sleeves and figure it out.
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I'm reading about uh the early tycoons of the uh guilded age, a term Mark Twain uh coined with his book.
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>> Um and like literally Andrew Carnegi, no education, none, >> just very very practical, very hustle oriented, but kind of like you with the with the various uh you know diversions and and ways that you created your career. He did the same thing. He was just like, "Huh?
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Uh, I need to learn to be good at something really fast."
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And so he got really good at Telegraph.
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And the guy the guy who he was doing it for noticed, right?
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Because Carnegie is getting him messages faster than all the other people.
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And so what does the guy do? He's like, "You'll do."
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[laughter] And he hires him.
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And then like six months later, CargI is running the whole show.
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And then he's like, "Thank you.
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I I want to go over here and do this now.
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But it was like we've lost that I we do a lot of work with uh artificial intelligence and everything and and the fact that we have not trained AIs on that can do American spirit which really dominated this country like for most of our history and and our history was people like us, right?
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my my I I used to joke when I looked up our the Oshoknesi family history over there in Ireland.
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Uh you know, we were very powerful warlords in Galway, right?
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And I I was fascinated because I didn't know much about how that worked and everything and I'd lived there when I was a kid in the summer.
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Um, so I got really interested and so I'm looking at, you know, we're seeing the ruins of these castles that were oasi castles and everything and then I'm like talking to my dad and I'm like, "What? What happened?"
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And and then I learned that um the British who always had phones to pick with the Irish uh because the Irish were like, "No, you're really in our country. We're doing it fine. Not not your job."
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Anyway, so they came up with this very clever idea, what they called surrender and regrant.
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So what it was was the Brits would come and they'd go to an Irish noble and they'd say, "We've got a lovely deal for you.
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Surrender your Irish nobility.
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We will regrant you British nobility. Far better." Right?
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And so the whoever was the head of the clan was always called the Oshoki, right?
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And so all of the Oshocknnesses told the British where to get off until one guy, the guy who was the Oshani during the reign of Charles I did it.
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He accepted it and he gave them his Irish nobility and briefly, as it turned out, became a British noble.
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Then this fellow named Cromwell came along, chopped Charles the first head off and went and seized all of his viosy's lands because he was a British noble by the time of the restoration of Charles II. The that guy had died.
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There wasn't his son was now the Oanosi, an ardent nationalist.
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And when the Brits came back under Charles II and offered him uh British nobility again, he's like told him where to get off.
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So we went from warlords to dirt farming to on a boat to America.
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[laughter] Yeah, those paths are fascinating.
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I mean, I don't know a lot about my family.
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We're kind of one of those mix of so many different places.
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But I know that my grandfather grew up all over the Midwest.
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Uh poverty, lived in a railroad car for a long time.
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His dad was one of those itinerant start a shop here and then go farm there.
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And and then my grandpa wound up um in World War II.
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He was in he was on Euima.
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Um, and >> yeah, and well, he was a yman in the Navy and he always joked with us.
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He said, "I took you with a typewriter."
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>> That's the way to take it. >> Yeah.
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[laughter] Uh, but of course later we would learn that he was, you know, he saw hell on earth.
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But he then came back and got a like a secretarial degree or something and worked in an office supply company, but eventually worked his way up.
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He was vice president of national sales for National Presto Industries.
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So, the fry daddy and he brought you he brought you the pressure cooker.
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Um, but anyway, he >> he just was one of those self when he died, he left me his reading list and it was Plato, it was everything.
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It was Twain, it was the Bible, it was but the thing that and this may or may not come up. I wish.
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So he died just as I was starting to strike out on my own as a writer and he was very encouraging and and he he was one of the people because I wrote about this in the book because so many were like you have a nursing degree, you have a very good income.
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You what are you thinking?
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And I by the way had no plan.
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I jumped out of the airplane and started knitting my parachute.
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And so he he just was very encouraging.
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But I remember the thing that I wish I we had wonderful conversations before he died and I was at his deathbed.
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But the one thing I wasn't quite worldly or well read enough to comment on was I remembered later he had been promoted to vice president of national sales.
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He was a terrific salesman.
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He had had throat cancer, so he spoke in a whisper.
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And he would do sales conferences in very noisy sales halls, and he would always say, "Now, I'm I'm recovering from cancer." No, no.
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You know, because people go, "Oh, whoa, whoa." And he go, "No, no, no. I'm fine. I'm in great health. I'm great.
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I have nothing to be, but because I speak like this, I am going to have to ask you to gather in very closely."
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And of course, he would just sell sell sell.
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he would just sell sell sell. He also one time and this came into play to me as a writer especially doing non-fiction he said I'm aware of the the reputation that salespeople have but he said you can be a very success and he was a man of extreme character I witnessed it but
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he said you can you can be a good person and honest person and still be a very effective salesperson he said you you don't have to lie to sell something you don't have to deceive some someone to sell them something and then he got a little twinkle in his eye and he looked at me he said now telling the truth creat creatively. [laughter]
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[laughter] But anyway, the the point that I was going to make is that I remembered in retrospect he had been he made it to vice president and they wanted to put him up like number two or threes very high in that national company and he declined and he I just [clears throat] remember him saying I I've come farther than I ever I like what I'm doing you know we're we're weren't wealthy but they were fine grandma was in good shape everything.
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years later, I remember that on his bedside was a copy of the Peter Principle.
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>> And I remember the day that I twigged that and I went, I bet he he said, "You know what? I'm where I need to be."
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And that's so interesting because of course again to get back to America, we're all about get to the top top top.
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And it's like, no, sometimes you know that that might come up in our discussion today.
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I mean, I'm there are turns that I didn't make out of a choice that financially may have been a mistake, but here we are, right? So, >> indeed.
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Do you know what's funny?
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Another thing that you and I share is I on all my books am James P. O. Charlotte like you. You're Michael Perry.
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I know Mike that if you're like me, if somebody was standing right behind you and said Michael, you wouldn't turn around.
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No, [laughter] >> I would be equally disturbed because it would be my mother and she would be upset with me.
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And I just we just lost my mom here a couple of months ago and I'm sorry if she would truly be not only angry angry with me but back from the dead to say so.
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So >> yeah, I always said I'm I'm Mike every day.
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It just is a a matter of distinguishing things and and continuity to be Michael on my books and my billings and things like that.
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But I always said, "Yeah, I was only Michael when mom was mad at me."
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And if I This is probably true for you.
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And if if she threw in the middle name >> Oh, yeah.
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>> You were talking to dad later that day. >> Oh, man.
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Like I one time got my mother so angry that I got the full I got a confirmation name.
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I was raised Catholic even though I'm I'm agnostic now.
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even though I'm I'm agnostic now. Uh note agnostic not atheist because >> who that who the hell am I to decide >> for the exact same reason the thing >> but anyway the one time I can't I can't I can't remember what I was doing but obviously my mother was very upset with
24:06
me and I was outside and I might have been like hitting somebody with because we were doing sword fighting and and she saw me and she saw me going in right she didn't know that I had welts do and I heard very clearly James Patrick Ignatius Oaresi in the house right now. I went, "Oh man, I'm dead."
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I went, "Oh man, I'm dead."
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>> Robert had a conversation like I did with my dad one night.
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Then I had hit the Michael Lewis Perry level with my mom and I knew trouble was coming.
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My dad's a very gentle man.
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never struck us in anger or anything, but very firm and very strict and followed through.
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And so I was up in my room when he got in from chores or whatever, and I heard his foot falls coming up the wooden stairs and I and I just remember him opening the door, leaning his head in and saying, "I don't think you need to ask for the van keys for two week."
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And then he just shut the door and left.
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And I thought, "That's fine. No need for a scene. Copy that. >> Yes, sir. Yeah.
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When I I I too, my parents weren't physical at all.
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Uh but man, it was even sometimes I kind of felt like, why don't you just spank me or hit me or just because >> you're killing me here.
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>> We did lead relatively parallel lives.
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My So my parents, we did get spanked and I've written about that.
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that it was a a again different time, but also never I never ever received a spanking without a having gotten several warnings and very clearly laid out if you do A B will occur.
25:54
And then even then there was always a separate trip literally to the woodshed. >> Wow.
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>> And and then you would sit and he would explain to you what you had done wrong and why you were going to be punished and then you would be punished.
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And my brothers and I all agree on this and we we you know how when you grow older all of a sudden you have these conversations like were you thinking this too? >> Yeah.
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>> And all three of us said we we we all eventually hit a point where where we said could we just could we just skip the sermon and go straight to this banking because that's way easier to deal with. >> Totally. Totally.
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And of course our parents knew better and knew the sermon was the real punishment. Of course. [laughter] Yeah. >> What do you think?
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What do you think about that?
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Like I've been on the East Coast for so long that when I tell people that I grew up in St.
26:45
Paul, Minnesota, like out here in New York, they're kind of like, you did not think [laughter] I honestly did.
26:52
Um, what is it about the Midwest that, and obviously I'm very biased here because I grew up there, but what is it about the Midwest that produces these kind of practical yet very firm and often often very funny personalities.
27:16
>> Yeah, that's interesting because I'm thinking of my dad right now who's a very quiet, devout man, uh, but devout in my parents tried to teach us two things and two things above all, charity and humility.
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And by charity, I don't mean a buck in the jar.
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I mean charity towards your fellow humans. And then humility.
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And [clears throat] my mom just died at 84, dedicated her entire life to serving others.
27:41
Uh I was raised by definition in an obscure fundamentalist Christian sect.
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And I always say I like to say that because it makes people nervous.
27:52
But [laughter] and in fact that particular sect has you know run into trouble and withered and like so many do and I left it long ago and I no longer believe what I was raised to believe.
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But I am grateful every day I was raised in it. It was gentle.
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It my parents were kind and thoughtful and quiet.
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Our door was open to all of the people that were being turned away elsewhere including the ones who were being turned away for doing things that my parents didn't approve of.
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as long as >> we were welcome as long as you know follow the house rules.
28:25
>> But so I just I grew up watching that and so my dad was this very serious read his Bible every day thoughtful guy very intelligent.
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He would tell you he's just an old farmer but he's got a chemistry degree and he's he's brilliant.
28:36
Um, but he was my first teacher about telling stories and humor because my dad is that guy who will say something and about 2 minutes later you go that was funny and and he also has he's so great with the ry comment in one of my books.
28:57
So my mom taught me to read when I was four so I could read before I was in kindergarten.
29:00
Part of being in this church was no TV, no movies, no radio, no dancing, you know, no fun. I always say no fun. It's not true.
29:06
I had a I had I couldn't get it all done in my childhood. That's another thing.
29:10
Grew up on a rural Wisconsin farm with no TV, no radio, no movies.
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We we we couldn't get it all done in a day.
29:18
We were we were just out chopping down trees and riding bikes without helmets and and just doing stuff that we just were constantly occupied.
29:29
And I'm now off on another one of those tangents where I can't remember where I started.
29:32
But the point is, uh my mom taught me to read when I was four.
29:34
And the one thing despite no movies and TV, she filled the house with books.
29:38
So I grew up reading voraciously.
29:42
And I was very proud of the fact that I that I could read when I was a little four-year-old.
29:47
And dad tells a great story.
29:49
And I tell it I wrote a book called Truck, a love story.
29:50
And I'm I said we were walking across the yard toward the barn to milk cows and I was a little tikeke in my little green rubber boots and dad was holding my hand and we walked behind the neighbor's pickup truck and I pointed at the tailgate and I said, "Look, Dad. F O R D truck." [laughter] Yeah.
30:13
And so [clears throat] I was I was telling this story one night at a family get together and my father is down at the end of the table very quiet as he often is just observing.
30:24
And and he said, "Yeah, I I said I was very proud of myself for being able uh to read at the age of four."
30:29
And he then told that FORD story.
30:33
And then I said, "Yeah, I was very proud of being able to read at the age of four."
30:38
And he said, "As you still are, >> [laughter] >> So he's that guy.
30:48
So So I think part of it and in my case the storytelling I get asked all the time, how did you learn to write and tell stories?
30:54
It was being down at the implement store listening to the farmers sitting around rolling dice and uh drinking coffee.
31:00
Um they [clears throat] all had stories and they were storytellers and their stories had shape and form and flow and they often had a payoff.
31:08
They didn't think of it that way. They just did it.
31:10
Um I talk about sitting under the hay wagon that that we filled and we're waiting for the empty one.
31:16
And so you're taking five minutes to drink some water out of a alpha alpha chaff filled cup and you're telling stories and and again they all had shape and form and and the other thing I remember with my dad is he would tell stories about when he worked on a ranch in Wyoming or nutty things he did in high school and and they became favorites and you would ask for them like the greatest hits.
31:37
I remember as kids going, "Dad, dad, tell us about the one when you were driving the tractor and you grabbed the pitchfork handle instead of the clutch, you know, and it's and so I think part of that humor and storytelling is just we we didn't have a lot more."
31:50
And I'm like you, I'm that age.
31:52
I was born in December of ' 64, so I'm on that cusp of of either.
31:58
>> And it's, you know, even to this day, I'm the guy I'm not a lite.
32:00
I'm, you know, interested in AI.
32:01
I'm talking to you on a MacBook. All that kind of stuff.
32:05
And yet I don't have the innate sense of those things that my daughters 18 and 25 do.
32:08
So I was old I am old enough to remember when there just was more especially in the country visiting.
32:16
You just you dropped in you visited and you talked and how many conversations I had through pickup truck windows.
32:21
It's still my one of my favorite places to talk to somebody is through a pickup truck window.
32:27
So I think there was that just that general and then we also and there's a negative side to all of this as you well know too but we're big into not letting you get too big for your boots.
32:37
There's a you know humility cuts two ways and sometimes it's overdone.
32:42
Like one thing that I admit I've grown weary of is just the whole I don't need to know nothing about nothing. >> Yeah.
32:48
>> And you know what I am not the brightest bald but and and I have terrible retention.
32:52
One of my favorite things about Montaigne.
32:53
And the reason I wanted to write about him is because he said, "I've I've read all omnivorously and yet I can't remember anything." And I'm that guy.
33:01
Like when you start telling Twain things, I'm the guy that goes, "Oh, yeah, yeah, that's right."
33:04
Or if we're talking about Monty Python and the Holy Grail, I can't quote it.
33:07
I can just go, "The one with the rabbit, the teeth, the you know, >> that's a rabbit.
33:15
We're be having rabbit meat soon."
33:15
And then he cuts his head off. I love that scene. Run away. Run away. Run away.
33:24
But I think so part of it too is just that that I mentioned that where I come from if you can't stack it or stack with it, it don't count and and that includes a stack of books.
33:35
And so on the one hand, we're always overcoming that.
33:37
On the other hand, it is what allows us just to burrow down and get to work.
33:42
And you know, I tell a story in one of my books about one of my earliest memories, if not the earliest, is me getting I was we had come from church. I had my little Mr.
33:51
Sunday clothes on and I we we had gone to lunch at a at another family's farm and I was in their barn and a dog kept approaching me and I kept backing up and I fell backwards into the gutter and became drenched in uh what is in a dairy barn gutter.
34:05
And I always say that I'm so grateful for that memory because I can still see with utter clarity the whitewashed rafters as I'm laying in a in a puddle of of cow excrement in a gutter.
34:17
And I just say I'm so grateful for that memory because it's all up from there, man.
34:22
Uh and even that that Midwestern, especially rural ethic, my brother's a logger.
34:28
brother's a logger. And I remember one day I was on book tour and and my book had started to do well and so they were extending the book tour and [clears throat] I was in Louisville, Kentucky and it was a spring day or a winter's day and I don't remember the
34:41
temperature in Kentucky but it was above 40 and it was kind of nice and I was looking at the big weather map in the hotel lobby and I saw in Wisconsin it was 10 below and I knew that my brother was logging that day >> and my publicist from New York called and said uh we'd like to He said, "How how are you holding up?" And I looked at
35:00
And I looked at [clears throat] the weather map and I said, "And I thought about having to do a reading in a bookstore that night and I said, "You know what? I'm doing all right.
35:11
[laughter] I ain't logging in the 10 below snowstorm, you know." So, yeah.
35:15
So, I'm I'm trying to build now.
35:18
And and the one other thing, and again, I mentioned this cuts both ways and everything's always changing, too.
35:25
things are sort of leveling for better or worse culturally everywhere.
35:30
But I can't tell you, and it just happened to me in LA at Universal Studios, but I can't tell you how many times in New York City publishing, I run into someone and you start talking, they're from the Midwest.
35:44
These kids go to m they go to New York City and they're just used to showing up and doing the chores.
35:48
And I told my daughter, I have a daughter who's 25 now and struggled mightily with disgraphia and dyslexia was one of those kids that was super smart, tremendous.
36:02
I know it's a cliche, but just off the charts people's skills and you know her ACT scores and stuff were they I remember her weeping, you know, as as we opened them.
36:12
And I would always tell her I said, "You're you're going to find your way."
36:16
And I said, "If in this day and age, if you show up when you say you're going to show up, and if when you're done with your task, you find the person in charge of you and say, "What can I do next?
36:26
You're going to be fine."
36:28
And she just she's 25 now.
36:30
She just took a job with a a startup, you know.
36:32
So, it it's that kind of Midwestern thing.
36:36
And I, as I said, I don't like to overdo it either because it does get overdone.
36:39
Um, you know, we also not everybody around here has got the same work ethic.
36:48
[laughter] I think and and the other thing is I I always think at least maybe I'm just speaking for myself.
36:53
It's that positive aspect of imposttor syndrome.
36:55
I can't tell I was on Universal Studio Lots recently pitching a script that'll probably never see the light of day, but the fact that I was invited there because of what I do.
37:03
I literally, even after all these years, I'm sitting there going, "Holy crap.
37:07
[laughter] I used to clean calf pens, man.
37:10
I was just stacking straw bales with my dad two days ago in Chipa County, Wisconsin, and now there's that Universal Globe."
37:21
>> And yet, obviously, you know, I'm bringing it.
37:23
They wouldn't have me there if if if I didn't earn the appointment. So, >> Well, yeah.
37:31
>> No, no, don't don't be sorry at all.
37:31
I as I said at the as I said at the top, I thought my best strategy for this would be just to shut up and let you talk because you are so entertaining and you you do something that I think is a relatively rare thing.
37:47
Um, and that is you teach, but you make it really enjoyable.
37:55
Like I've always believed that if you want to um get get through to somebody, right?
38:01
you you've got to entertain them, right?
38:04
Because I don't know about you, but I I remember like the teachers that really did engage me were always the ones that like they were storytellers. That was it.
38:15
I I still remember a high school uh uh advanced placement uh English history uh teacher, Sai Turby's, and literally I had him right after lunch and on on the I guess I had him three days a week and on those days I would like eat really fast so that I could get into one of the first row seats because he just like all from memory But it was not in 1066, William the Conqueror invaded the UK and blah blah.
38:53
It was always like a Will Durant or Ariel Durant story. And it wasn't just me.
39:00
It was like all of the kids were just like this. And guess what?
39:02
We knew the most about English history because he made it interesting.
39:08
I'm beaming because of one of my top two uh high school teachers ever.
39:14
Um I quote I have this new book out called Improbable Mentors and Happy Tangents.
39:19
And I I quote him in there anonymously.
39:23
He was my history teacher and he taught me a lot about history, but he was also a Vietnam vet.
39:27
He'd done two tours, two Purple Hearts.
39:30
He flew choppers into the worst of the worst and in and out.
39:33
But he used to tell me a story about on weekends he would take gigs.
39:39
I guess they probably didn't call them gigs, but flying fighter jets.
39:43
And there were two things that I always remembered.
39:46
And he's he was not a cynical man.
39:47
And he was a very patriotic and he was a marine.
39:51
And um became a state trooper.
39:54
And after becoming a marine and a state trooper, he taught history in a small town rural high school.
39:58
So I think he did the proper preparation for us knuckleheads. I can tell you that.
40:04
>> [laughter] >> But I remember he would on weekends he took extra assignments to fly fighter jets.
40:09
And two things I never forgot.
40:09
One is he said that he spent most of his time circling the Shell oil uh refineries or outposts or whatever they were called.
40:17
And he didn't elaborate or editorialize but in just sharing that story he told you something about the way the world works.
40:24
And the other thing that I never forgot and it made it into in this in the book I talk about, you know, when do you decide to make a move and that sometimes actually it's okay to not make the move.
40:35
And the story I tell about him is someone said when they found out he took these extra sordies, I suppose you call them flying fighter jets, they said, "Oh, you must you're so patriotic.
40:46
You must be extra brave that you would take on this on this assignment."
40:50
and he said, "No, after flying helicopters into firefights all week long, I just like being in a vehicle that can retreat at 600 miles an hour."
40:59
[laughter] And so in in my new book, I like there's times when honestly it's better just to go, "Yeah, no, we're going to get out of this as quickly as possible." >> Yeah.
41:12
>> Yeah. Let's talk more about the happy tangents because I had a couple of weeks ago I don't know if you're familiar with his work but Ken Stanley who is an academic and and he wrote a book that really uh resonated with me called greatness can't be planned >> and he his thesis is basically your life it's it's he he he says the the people who have these very detailed blueprints right for then I will do this then I
41:42
will do this then I will you know they want to climb the ladder do all of that is like if you want to have a really interesting life don't do that [clears throat] and and what do you think it is about so many of us that
41:57
that like that's the norm and and people like us who you know just sometimes hey you can just try things you can just do things well it's it's kind of like you know Um, I'm sure you're aware that we have a publishing company. >> Yes. >> Yes.
42:15
>> And I had a good friend, college friend call me and he goes, "Yeah." So, Jim, yeah.
42:21
He goes, "Look, I I know that you've written four books and that two of them like were really successful.
42:26
I like you like uh I I heard you on another podcast joke about uh you know, when they introduce you as a New York Times bestselling author.
42:36
I I I had the same reaction.
42:40
because l literally mine was on the how-to part of the uh New York Times. So it kind of a cheat.
42:47
Um but he's like but so he starts really nice about the whole thing.
42:52
It's like yeah so like you had these really successful books and and that's really cool but um Jim Yeah, what do you know about the publishing industry kind of directly?
43:05
And I went, well, I know as an author all the things that I hate about the publishing industry.
43:13
And then I had a great conversation with Jimmy Sony, who's also an author and also hated exactly the same things, right?
43:22
And then as I was researching you, I love the fact that you you were, let's say, not terribly happy with the first round of publicity that your publisher had you do, but you did something that I absolutely love.
43:40
You were like, "Okay, let's be useful."
43:43
You sat down, you wrote out a very detailed, indepth explanation for how they uh should should run it.
43:48
Like the reason we started a publishing company is because we just saw all these really easy to do things that the authors would absolutely love.
44:01
And what's funny about it is Jimmy is I I I'm the executive chairman of it and he's the CEO and and editor-inchief.
44:11
But the response he's been getting and you know what his pitch is?
44:15
His pitch is, "Tell me what you hate about uh the current traditional publishers."
44:21
And he goes, "And let me let's make a game of this are," and then he'll fill in the blank.
44:28
The fact that they give you a two week window to market and then move on and never look at your book again.
44:31
Uh the fact that they don't get your finished manuscript back to you in like four months.
44:37
Uh do those are those on your list?
44:40
And and they're like, "Yes, and we got another author.
44:47
Yeah, I think again everything is got two sides and one is that I'm forever grateful to my publishers and I'm still under contract with one uh with Harper for a book that's very overdue and I I'm under contract with another publisher, but I also am back to doing that hybrid thing.
45:03
I self-publish a lot of things.
45:05
I'm just very, you know, pragmatism.
45:07
There's another Midwestern thing.
45:07
It's lovely to have cache.
45:09
It's even lovelier to have cash.
45:12
And [laughter] So, I love that I can say I'm with Harper Collins and um and it's true and I've had one of you know my life was changed by an editor at Harper Collins and and I've had tremendous support and I have a publicist there that have worked so hard on my behalf putting together a book tour is a nightmare.
45:31
So, none of this is sour grapes.
45:34
What it is is I identify areas where they're just not doing it right.
45:39
And it at some point it becomes clear it's not going to change and it's not personal and it's not animous. It's just the machine.
45:45
And so then the answer the timber of my voice is going up.
45:51
I always have to be careful because that tells me I'm getting self-righteous.
45:56
[laughter] >> It's a good tell. It's a good tell. >> Yeah.
46:00
It's also I just realized too I did that thing that so many of us autodidacts do. I said timber.
46:04
I think it's actually tomb bro.
46:06
[laughter] But I know >> you always correct me. >> Yes.
46:11
>> I know what it means and I know how to spell it.
46:13
You're gonna have Well, it's like when I wrote a book about Montaigne, I told all the all the public radio interviews I do, they all go Montia.
46:19
And I said, listen, >> I'm from rural Wisconsin.
46:22
If I say Montia, it's going to sound I'm saying Montaigne.
46:27
>> You know, that is so funny.
46:27
We really are brothers from different mothers because same thing like Monontton like all of the and just it makes me feel such like I'm just a fake >> and like I I I grew up in the Midwest. I'm gonna say Monte. Okay.
46:49
>> I can be respectful of it.
46:49
Like I I'm again this get back to I don't want to be that person going I don't need to change my way of thinking about nothing. >> Right. No. Absolutely not.
46:57
But there are just some situational situations where you go, "No, I I really need to just say Montaigne."
47:04
[laughter] Oh, what was I talking about?
47:07
We were talking >> Yeah, we were talking about publishing and you were on NPR >> and my tombra went up because I was getting self-righteous.
47:12
And what I was getting self-righteous about is that once I identify something that my publisher isn't doing well for me and I realize that it's not personal and that it's not personnel related, it's just the the big entity.
47:24
Well, then it's incumbent upon me to do what I can rather than sit there and and whine about it.
47:31
And so that's when I the the uh again in this new book, Improbable Mentors, I talk about one of the things when I I did a book called Population 45 about being a volunteer firefighter and EMT in in my hometown.
47:46
By the way, let's get this out of the way.
47:48
People from LA or New York find out that I'm still on the volunteer fire department and they say, "You must be very brave and noble."
47:53
And I was go, h, I've kind of got what they're looking for where I'm from, which is a uh a pulse and a valid driver's license.
48:02
[laughter] But anyways, >> and plus, when I moved back to my hometown, my two brothers and my mom were already on the fire department.
48:09
So, it [laughter] it was more a peer pressure situation than a hero situation.
48:15
But anyways, Population 45 is is a very uh if I may, artful, heartfelt memoir um about sense of place and life and death and mortality and spirituality.
48:31
It's also a goofy book about bunch of knuckleheads making fire calls and ambulance calls.
48:38
And so one of the frustrations that I had with my publisher back then is the book was doing great, but I kept telling them, you know, it's great to do a reading in a in a lovely independent book seller bookstore, and those folks hand sold me into existence, but I said, I got 20 to 30 people there on a good night, and there's also 10,000 other books for them to choose from.
49:02
[laughter] And also I said, "Well, if you really want to move this book, there are these hundreds of conventions across the US where tens of thousands of volunteer firefighters and EMTs and full-timers attend."
49:14
And I said, "If you send me there, we'll sell so many of these books."
49:20
And time after time, the response I got was a variation on those people just aren't readers. >> Yep.
49:28
And my response to that is I have made I've been in the back of an ambulance with those people.
49:32
I have gone into burning buildings with those people.
49:36
I have attended the dirt track stock car races with those people.
49:38
And statistically speaking, the publisher is not wrong.
49:44
[laughter] Those are my people.
49:47
But having said that, the point that I made to them.
49:49
So then I just started booking myself into these conventions and to this day I still speak at firefighting.
49:55
And not because I'm not an expert firefighter, but I get up and I tell the stories and they're not my stories. It's their stories.
50:03
And the stories are told in their vernacular.
50:05
And they recognize themselves.
50:07
They recognize their patients.
50:09
They recognize their neighbors.
50:10
Even if I'm in Mississippi and everybody's accent is different, they still know they too have a Bob the oneeyed beagle in their in their town.
50:18
And then so I and of course and then when I'm done, what happens in the back of the room by the exit?
50:22
That's a whole another discussion. it's in my writer. Um, is that a book?
50:27
There's a table with a stack of whose books? My books.
50:30
And I sell them by the hundreds to to those people who aren't really readers.
50:36
And what I tell the publishers, I said, it's it's a it's it's not about literature, it's about iteration.
50:43
If I stand at the at the door of a conference room in Duth, Minnesota on a on a Saturday morning when everybody's blurryeyed because they all were partying the night before and they got a cup of bad coffee and a donut and I stand at the door and I say, "Would you be interested in buying a a personal memoir examining?" [laughter] >> Uh, yeah. Um, let's walk right.
51:09
[laughter] >> But if you give me 45 minutes to tell the story in in their vernacular and in in a way that's not condescending, I mean, I don't change the text, the the the big words, the poetry, it's also actually served beside them.
51:23
So, that's an example of where the publisher just never would do that for me.
51:28
They it finally came to a head with the Montaigne book.
51:31
And when I say it came to a head, there was no scene or anything, but I I actually took the time to go to New York, lay out a whole plan.
51:40
Here's the things that have worked.
51:42
Here's the places that haven't worked.
51:44
Here are the places you haven't sent me that we might have a shot.
51:46
And they couldn't have been nicer.
51:48
This whole group of people at this conference room table.
51:51
Oh, this is such amazing information. Thank you for sharing. It's so helpful.
51:54
And a month later, they sent me my book tour, and it was the same 12 stops I'd made for the last one.
51:58
stops I'd made for the last one. And so I just remember I wasn't angry and I and I understand also publishing has changed so I don't have a platform and again rather than get angry about that I just go okay things are changing let's how are we going to navigation is so
52:15
important I think you got AI you know I'm I'm sure we'll get to some of that but um I talk to writers right now and and then especially in Hollywood and and people are angry about AI and they're fighting AI and listen I relaxed about AI as a writer and as a a creative, but I also just I'm the pragmatism again. It's like here it is. What are we going It's like here it is.
52:36
What are we going to do with it and about it?
52:38
And and and it seems to me doing your own thing still remains the key. >> Yeah.
52:47
And uh before we get to AI, because I completely agree, you know, so we had quill pens, we wrote with the quill.
52:55
Then all of a sudden we got typewriters and guess what? We wrote on those.
53:00
Then we got computers and we wrote on those.
53:02
They're all tools, right? Yeah.
53:05
And it's not the all or nothing.
53:08
You just reminded me too.
53:08
I'm back to now, like I said, I have a couple of books under contract with some legacy publishers and I love working with those folks.
53:14
But I also currently self-publish some things because there are certain books where I just realize this isn't the book for a big publisher and both of us are going to be frustrated if we feed it into their machine.
53:26
Now, when I self-publish, like I self-published a novella about a farmer, it's called 40 Acres Deep and it's the darkest thing I've I've ever written.
53:33
But it also is 100% me allowing myself just to be artful and try to be that guy that used to have nice long hair and uh would go to the coffee shop and write really bad poetry.
53:43
And I immersed myself in that book and I put my heart and soul in that book and you know we took it to some publishers in New York and they just it isn't even that they don't want it.
53:52
They don't know what to do with it.
53:53
First of all, it's a novella and it's a it's a grim book about a farmer in Wisconsin.
53:57
So I just again I don't get upset.
54:00
I just go it seems like I'm better off publishing this myself, you know, and the thing now has sold thousands of copies.
54:04
It's still, you know, it's kind of hit trickle stage now, but it is it has sold thousands of copies and I would just be frustrated if I left it with the big guys.
54:15
Now, the big guys, I usually sell far bigger numbers with the big guys because of distribution, but we can talk about royalty scales.
54:22
And we can talk about self-publishing and how when that nice lady bought my book yesterday on my website, The Money Was Waiting for Me This Morning.
54:33
>> It's such It's fascinating to me.
54:33
And again, it's so it's not all or nothing.
54:37
I'm I'm eager to finish my book for for Harper Collins and get it out there, but I'm also just as eager to, you know, I've got this new book out that we self-published, and there are just so many ways to do things if you're willing to just barge ahead, take a shot.
54:51
We again are sort of ridiculously sympotico.
54:56
Uh I I uh my biggest experience with the traditional first off like you I owe much of my career and I mean this quite sincerely to the fact that McGraill chose to publish my book what works on Wall Street.
55:14
It literally made my career and it was back in the 90s where you had to have the imperator of a well-known publisher.
55:24
And I wrote my first book was called Invest Like the Best.
55:27
And as I always joke, being the laziest human on the planet, I won't do anything until I know that like I'll get a contract out and publish.
55:37
So, I went I went to the bookstore and I bought one of those big Do you remember those big thick books on publishers and all they really contained were their addresses and >> the writer's market? >> Yes. Yes.
55:53
>> Finish your story because I got one. >> Okay, great.
55:55
So, I I'm there with my wife and I grab it and she's like, "What what what are you doing?"
56:00
And I went, "I'm going to write a book."
56:02
And she's like, "You're going to write a book?"
56:06
And I went, "Yeah, about, you know, this new way of looking at the stock market."
56:12
Uh, and and you're buying that because you're going to find a publisher through that. I went, "Yeah."
56:17
And she's like, "Honey, like I I love you, but that isn't the way the world works. Like, you need an agent.
56:26
You've got" And I'm like, "Well, let me just see. I don't know. I don't know."
56:30
So, what I did was still using Well, actually, no. I had a computer. It made it easier.
56:35
Uh, I just grabbed a hundred biggest publishers being an idiot [laughter] and and sent off a query letter to them saying what the book was going to be about.
56:46
And I' I'd love it if you would publish it. And I still regret this.
56:51
I kept all of the rejections.
56:54
It was the funniest file ever because some of the people like the high fallutin publishers I got a letter from one woman saying obviously you do not know who we are.
57:06
We are for serious literature and then and then she goes please never contact me again.
57:15
[laughter] But out of the hundred letters I got, 98 were rejections and two were Let's Talk.
57:26
And one of those two, the other one was WY, which was a big financial press at that time, but the other one was McGra Hill, which was a really big name.
57:33
And so I flew or actually I was living here.
57:39
I I went down to New York, had the meeting.
57:41
Uh, they gave me a contract.
57:41
I got a $5,000 chance and I felt like, wow, I like, wow, I just looking at the check, how cool.
57:52
And now I now I got to actually write it.
57:55
But so I owe so much to the traditional publishers.
57:59
But that does not stop me from being able to say, "Listen, best practices, but from 1925 are maybe you might want to update those a little bit."
58:13
And and so like that's what drove me into starting the publishing company just because there are so many new tools and you mentioned royalties, right?
58:26
Like you can you we'll make deals with authors where they get 70% of the royalties. >> Why?
58:34
Because technology allows us to do so many things that we don't have this huge staff that we have to pay.
58:40
And and like the economics, why why are we still letting the author whose work this is why why are we saying you should be thrilled with 15%. That's absurd. That's absurd to me.
59:00
>> Now, I want to hear your story.
59:01
[clears throat] >> Well, and first of all, two things.
59:01
Uh I love your letter uh about don't ever talk to us again.
59:07
I never got one quite that profound, but I I didn't keep my rejections.
59:11
I had so many I didn't see any point.
59:12
Um but one of my favorites was I had I was writing a series of humorous stories about life in a small town. And I made up the town.
59:20
It was called Foggy Crossing. It wasn't real.
59:23
you could definitely recognize my neighbors, but it wasn't real.
59:24
But these light little humorous tales and I re well I'm not going to go off on that tangent that that little endeavor has is still paying off 30 years later.
59:34
Um, but at the time I was pitching them to publishers as a collection of stories and I pitched to one uh small publisher and they sent me back a letter that said um until you are the stature of someone like a Garrison Keeler, we won't be interested.
59:53
And I remember even back then I was dead broke and I remember even back then still going, listen, if I'm the stature of Garrison Keeler, I'm going be talking to you people.
1:00:02
[laughter] the ships will never ever be.
1:00:06
We've clarified the situation considerably.
1:00:12
>> Uh but but the the reason I reacted so positively to the writer's market reference is I quit my I quit my job, my nursing job.
1:00:21
I took a job for six bucks and 25 an hour proofreading brochures.
1:00:23
I had to take a proofreading test. I aced it.
1:00:28
They said, "We've never we haven't had anyone who's done this."
1:00:30
I said, "I have a nursing degree."
1:00:31
I also remember when I I told them they [clears throat] kept I I had to interview three times for the proofreading job and on the third interview they brought in the vice president of the company and she said, "We're just baffled.
1:00:42
You you have a nursing degree.
1:00:44
We know what they're paying you over there at the hospital. What are you doing?"
1:00:48
And I said, "I want to be a writer."
1:00:49
And I just I said, "I'm a young nurse and I was working on neuro rehab with traumatic brain injuries, spinal cord injuries, strokes, amputations, that sort of thing."
1:00:56
I said,"I take that very seriously, and I'm not far enough into my nursing career where I can just go home and show up the next day and serve my patients well.
1:01:05
I actually need to prep and spend time getting ready."
1:01:07
So, in order for me to write, I just need a job where I'll do the best I'll do a good job, but I need to when I punch out, I then got until midnight to be a writer.
1:01:16
And so, finally, the last question the vice president asked is she said, "Well, where do you see yourself in this [snorts] company in 5 years?"
1:01:23
And I looked her in the eye and I said, 'Well, I know what I'm supposed to say.
1:01:27
I'm supposed to say I'm going to work really hard.
1:01:29
I'm going to move up and you'll hopefully get a management position and then but I said, 'But here's the truth.
1:01:34
I said, ' Every day you see me walk in that door, you know I'm going to be here at least two more weeks because that's how much notice I'll give you.
1:01:44
[laughter] And that was my I quit I worked that job for I think a little over a year or maybe two years.
1:01:51
And that 1992, that's when I got my last paycheck.
1:01:56
>> And so, but then where it kicks in is I I didn't I had no idea how to be a writer.
1:02:01
And I went there's a library 15 minutes from here. I went in there.
1:02:05
There was a giant thick brick of a book called The Writer's Market.
1:02:07
It was filled with where to in my case magazine articles.
1:02:11
I was and filled with submission guidelines.
1:02:13
But in the front of the book, and this is the part that drives some of my MFA friends right into a bridge abutment.
1:02:21
In the front of the book, there was a slim little section on how to be a writer.
1:02:24
And I just said, "Oh, all right then."
1:02:29
And I apologize if you got an MFA, but that's how I that's how I did it. Yeah.
1:02:35
By the way, um again, I always feel like I'm covering, but some of my greatest mentors and dearest friends are MFA folks and uh teach and everything.
1:02:42
So again, it's this is not a we're not casting aspersions on everybody, but there's just many paths and and that idea of not knowing any better.
1:02:51
It's what like I think I maybe referred to earlier.
1:02:55
I think of it as kind of the reverse imposttor syndrome. Yeah.
1:02:56
Like I don't know enough to be I've also said well people say what's your greatest attribute?
1:03:04
I go being too dumb to know when to quit.
1:03:06
[laughter] What did Babe Ruth say?
1:03:10
that you just can never beat the guy who won't give up.
1:03:14
>> Well, and then there's also there's so some of your audience and maybe you will be familiar there's a an evangelical finance guru Dave uh Dave Ramsey. Dave Ramsey. Yep.
1:03:26
>> And there was a time when I was out on book tours, I would listen to him a lot because, you know, eventually you come to understand Dave is is in the Dave business, but from a very fundamental point of view, there are some things if you listen to him for the first few months that are helpful and basic.
1:03:39
And I and I had a brother who was helped very much by by paying some attention to Dave.
1:03:46
that brother who's a farmer and a logger, he and I were standing together one day talking about how we both wound up working for ourselves and we just, you know, we're too stubborn to just take a regular path.
1:03:56
And and we said we agreed that Dave Ramsey has many sayings and one of them is don't try to outwork stupid.
1:04:06
[laughter] And my brother and I looked at each other and said, "That's really all I got going for.
1:04:10
[laughter] I do it every day.
1:04:18
So, >> but but but but you know, there's just so much truth and like I I'm fascinated by the the story about Oprah because when when I had the the I I got paid a big advance for my only book that I wrote for the general public.
1:04:38
All my other books were really written for fairly serious investors who already knew the basics and stuff.
1:04:43
And and this is in the late 90s when the stock market frenzy was like just at full boore.
1:04:50
I got I got a call from a guy who worked for me at my first asset management company and he goes, "Jim, I I thought of you."
1:04:58
He was in Arkansas >> and on a on a sales call and he goes, "Uh, I'm I am now officially panicking." This is in 1999. I went, "Chris, what? Why?"
1:05:10
And he goes, "Jim, I'm in a McDonald's in rural Arkansas and the TV has CNBC on." And I was like, "Oh, no.
1:05:23
[laughter] It's like uh it's like the shoe shine boys uh with with with Kennedy."
1:05:28
But anyway, so I get I get this huge advance and I was kind of like all full of myself, right?
1:05:36
Because I showed up in page six of the New York Post.
1:05:38
And for those people who don't know what page six is, it's where they do all the little gossip and and they tell stories about famous people in New York without naming them, but everyone knows who they are.
1:05:52
>> And anyway, so I I show up in in the New York Post as getting the highest advance ever for a personal finance book.
1:06:00
>> And and so like they they made a big deal at the conference.
1:06:03
You've been you've been here so you know exactly what I'm talking about. I got front of catalog. I got the whole deal.
1:06:10
I got the whole sales team behind me.
1:06:12
They put me on a satellite tour where I literally spent the day in a um office in New York doing uh uh morning radio and you start on the east coast and then you go all the way out to California.
1:06:27
And I don't know about you, but answering the same damn question 29 30 times in a couple of hours gets a little boring.
1:06:38
Anyway, so I got an opportunity to be on Oprah.
1:06:44
>> 4 months after the book had published, and mind you, the book had met their expectations.
1:06:49
It was on the bestseller list. It was doing well.
1:06:51
It was called How to Retire Rich.
1:06:54
Um, and anyway they o Oprah people called and said you know you want to come on and I'm like yeah now I said yeah without ever having seen an Oprah show right so this becomes important later in the story but anyway I say yeah and my agent calls and he goes well they're not going to do it and I'm like Wes slow down.
1:07:23
What do you mean they're not going to do what?
1:07:25
And he goes, "The minute you got confirmed for Oprah, I called the publisher who shall remain nameless in this tale." It was not McGraill.
1:07:31
Uh it was another publisher anyway.
1:07:34
Um and said, "He's going to be on Oprah.
1:07:38
You got to print extra books.
1:07:41
How many do you have left in the warehouse?"
1:07:43
And I think at the time they had something like I don't know 15,000 copies left in the warehouse.
1:07:49
And they're like, you know, it's done well.
1:07:53
we don't really want to do a reprint and like you know he's only got a five minute segment and I'm like wait so so they're not gonna and he goes nope and you know what happened I I spent my five minutes on Oprah um and literally uh I was an Amazon junkie because it was so new back then and I would just refresh refresh and it it like literally went to number one on Amazon and they sold out of the book. >> Yeah.
1:08:27
>> And and I'm just like, oh my god.
1:08:27
So, I had a good experience with Oprah, but I'm really intrigued.
1:08:34
And I really think, by the way, it makes me think much more.
1:08:37
Well, I thought highly of you before.
1:08:40
It raises you in my esteem by the fact that you turned her down.
1:08:43
And you turned her down for I think very good reasons.
1:08:48
But tell our listeners that story because I think it's fascinating.
1:08:52
>> Yeah, I was because I've been an uh an EMT since 1988 and I always have my kit with me.
1:08:59
I'm a first responder now.
1:08:59
It's a slight different certification.
1:09:04
Um, and I [clears throat] was driving up to northern Wisconsin to to do some late night recording with some musician friends and very remote.
1:09:10
And I came over a rise and there was a body in the in the roadway.
1:09:15
And so I pulled over and blocked the roadway so that no one would hit the body.
1:09:19
And then I went out and my headlights were on the body and I went out and it was someone who had been ejected from their car, terribly, horribly injured, probably dying.
1:09:25
But I had my stuff with me so I gloved up and I did what I could. Very bloody scene.
1:09:31
And uh eventually an ambulance came.
1:09:34
Took a long time, but they took them away.
1:09:35
And then I just went on my way.
1:09:35
I stopped at a gas station a mile or two up the road and washed my hands and noticed that I'd a glove had broken and I had a little bit of blood on my finger, but I washed up and went on about my business.
1:09:46
The next day, a sheriff's deputy contacted me and asked if I had been on the scene, and I said yes.
1:09:51
And um keep in mind, by the way, this is back in the Yeah.
1:09:54
the mid 90s, early to mid 90s. And I said, 'Yeah.'
1:10:01
And he said, 'Well, did you have a blood exposure?'
1:10:03
And I said, 'Well, I actually did.
1:10:04
And it turned out the gentleman had indeed died, but also was HIV positive.
1:10:08
Now, back in those days, there was just so much information, misinformation, disinformation, aspersions, negative connotation, you know, all this stuff.
1:10:19
And I just thought I was in my early days of writing essays and trying to place things in magazines and I thought, you know, I should write about um all of a sudden I wanted to learn a lot about HIV and I also knew that I was going to be getting tested for the next couple of years and and even though I was very I was actually quite comfortable with the idea that I w I was fine.
1:10:40
I I had checked I didn't have any skin breaks or anything like that.
1:10:42
But I will tell you when you go to the desk at back in those days, you had to go into the lab to get your results.
1:10:48
When that woman approaches you, you know, she's going to say one of two things.
1:10:52
And it's it's pretty exciting.
1:10:54
And so I just thought, well, I should write a piece about because right away, you know, I heard some jokes from some of my rough neck buddies and stuff and I thought, you know, I can try to write a piece that conveys the idea that this is not just a big city problem.
1:11:08
It's just it's not just a cultural issue. It's literally here.
1:11:12
we need to know how to deal with it is just with common sense and thoughtfulness.
1:11:16
So I I wrote this essay about the accident and what I did and and then about you know my little hope that we would all do the right thing and it got published in Newsweek and so uh at some point after that I I got a call from Oprah um not Oprah personally but >> yeah [laughter] >> and they said one of her many minions.
1:11:42
But what they do say is Oprah read your piece at Newsweek and she loves it.
1:11:44
I don't know if she did or not.
1:11:47
But anyway, [clears throat] >> I want to hear the rest, but I I can confirm she doesn't.
1:11:52
I'll tell you that part of the story afterwards. [clears throat] >> Yeah.
1:11:56
>> So, um but they said, "We would love to have you on."
1:11:59
And I just remember I had self-published two books at that time. They were pretty bad.
1:12:02
Uh but they were necessary.
1:12:04
That's a whole another discussion.
1:12:05
like I learned in public and I always say if you find one of those two books please bring the book to me so I can be the one to burn it.
1:12:12
[laughter] Uh but but yet it was a very essential step in the process. >> Sure.
1:12:19
>> And so at that time I I had these two little self-published books.
1:12:21
I'd written a few regional pieces.
1:12:23
That was the only national piece I'd ever read written.
1:12:27
But I knew enough to know that this is huge.
1:12:28
If you're a writer and you can get on Oprah that's massive.
1:12:32
And so I wanted desperately to be on.
1:12:35
But then the next thing the person said is she said, "Oh, oh, great."
1:12:36
She said, "We're doing a show about heroes."
1:12:38
And I just remember getting a sinking feeling in my gut because I had seen the Oprah show and I I just said, "Well, this isn't really about heroes and I'm not comfortable saying I I just did what I'm trained to do."
1:12:50
And I when you tell it, I know it sounds like the some dumb self-deprecation, but it's true.
1:12:54
It And they said, "Oh, well, we want you to talk about heroism and we think you're that's what they we think you're a hero."
1:13:02
And [clears throat] I just I remember this turmoil, but I just said, "No."
1:13:07
I said, "If if you want me to come on and talk about HIV and AIDS and and trying to educate ourselves out here in the hinterlands, I'll do that."
1:13:13
And and the short version of the story is that they just well, they hung up and I'm sure that three minutes later they had booked their hero. Right. >> Yeah.
1:13:27
And in the book Improbable Mentors and Happy Tangents, I talk about I'm I'm not here to say I made the right call. I think I did.
1:13:34
But the point was it was every writer's dreams to get on Oprah and I wanted to be a writer and be on Oprah.
1:13:41
But I also knew that a they weren't going to talk about the things that we needed to talk about and b I wasn't ready.
1:13:49
It would have been like a first year dance student trying to go out on the bullshoy or whatever.
1:13:52
I just I didn't have the chops.
1:13:54
And so in retrospect, it's a fun story to tell and I really truly am the only writer I've ever met who said no to Oprah.
1:14:02
Um, [laughter] but it's just one of those cases again we always talk about first mover status, you know, and sometimes first mover status is absolutely critical.
1:14:12
It's the only thing that gets you there.
1:14:14
And sometimes, and I write about this in the book too, as trained as an EMT and a firefighter, you have scene safety.
1:14:21
you look at the scene before you go in because you don't want to become a victim.
1:14:25
So your buddies now got to take care of you too.
1:14:26
And I tell a story about me going into a scene and finding myself in a very dangerous situation because I didn't assess.
1:14:32
So sometimes being the first mover is just the a way to become the first dead one.
1:14:40
[laughter] The the scene you uh referred to is there was actually somebody armed at the scene, right?
1:14:46
And you didn't know that. >> Yeah.
1:14:48
A guy with a terrible head injury, unconscious.
1:14:50
and and [clears throat] I was dispatched to the call.
1:14:52
The the dispatch information, and this was not the dispatcher's fault.
1:14:55
The wife of the of the man said that he had fallen off a ladder in his garage.
1:15:00
And so when I got there, I see him lying there unconscious.
1:15:03
I went directly to him, started to administer care, and it was a very clean, neat garage.
1:15:07
And I just remember all of a sudden she's beside me and all of a sudden I realized there's no ladder.
1:15:14
>> I said I thought he fell off a ladder.
1:15:16
And she said, "No, my son did this."
1:15:16
And I said, "Where is he? He's in the house. I said, "Is he armed?"
1:15:21
And she said, "There's guns in there."
1:15:23
Where I'm from, that's really [laughter] >> I don't know if I should tell this story, but now this has nothing to do with selling books or being smart or anything, but I I have a brother who's very much brilliant, can do anything.
1:15:39
Jack of all trades, a sawyer, a pilot.
1:15:42
He builds his own built his own cabin.
1:15:44
He's a he loads his own ammunition.
1:15:44
He can run every kind of heavy equipment.
1:15:49
and tear it apart, put it back together.
1:15:51
Uh, but he is a he is a believer in the Second Amendment.
1:15:54
[laughter] We were he lives in a very remote area in a tiny little log cabin and he and I are on the fire department together.
1:16:01
And one time we were working together on his place out there and our pagers went off and they said uh they were dispatching us to stand by while what we call an ERT team or a SWAT team basically was going to deal with a man holed up in his house with a gun.
1:16:18
And my brother who has this big beard and overalls turns to me and goes, "I don't see what the big deal is. That's me."
1:16:26
Every night [laughter] people ask me where I get my material from.
1:16:31
were like mostly my brothers.
1:16:34
[laughter] >> I had a >> you got that picture when I talk about just being so happy to do what I do.
1:16:45
That that's that's my life.
1:16:45
I mean, I'm hanging out with my brothers, you know, going deer hunting and and talking, you know, and having him say things like that.
1:16:52
And then a week later, I'm at Soho House in West Hollywood.
1:16:56
And boy, everybody there, I said I went to Soho House for a meeting one time with some film people, and I wish I could quote myself directly, but I'm not that egotistical, but I said something along the lines of how it felt to be there.
1:17:11
And it's always that balance of, as we've been talking about, being grateful for what these folks are doing, but also being able to just go, you know, the emperor has no orders.
1:17:18
[laughter] And I was in Soho House West Hollywood and I said the food, you know, there were derves were good, the chairs were soft, the view was incredible, but the general vibe was like a nervous breakdown in a razor factory.
1:17:35
[laughter] Everybody >> Oh, you've been there, too. [laughter] >> Yeah.
1:17:43
And I was And I'm there going, I don't know.
1:17:46
I'm going to go back and bail h with my dad.
1:17:51
But I will have one of those girkkins.
1:17:53
[laughter] Well, you know, that's the other thing.
1:17:59
like I believe that people who first responders like you, um, uh, special forces, uh, emergency room doctors, nurses, uh, uh, EMTs, you are as a group of people fascinate me because the wisdom that I have found by talking to those people like I, we were out in California and they there was a whole group of firefighters there
1:18:29
who were fight this is years ago but they were fighting those big forest fires and they were really close to us and I'm also I unlike you I'm like a I score 100 on the extraversion like it drives my wife crazy because she doesn't and like I'll walk up to anybody and like we were in Miami once and there was this very roughl looking guy as a uh bouncer. He was a biker. He had the the He was a biker.
1:18:52
He had the the the cut on and he had the chain and like he was vaping and this was just as vaping had come into uh popularity and so I start and my my wife was like don't go over there don't go over don't go over there and of course one of the salt of the earth guy had a great conversation with him why are you vaping because my old lady threw me out with the cigarettes and like I I needed I needed to do it.
1:19:25
But I ended up having this great conversation with him and like that I went over to the firefighters and I and I'm like, "Do you I I heard you.
1:19:34
Can can I listen in and ask you questions?"
1:19:36
And they're like, "Yeah, sure."
1:19:39
And I got to tell you, I learned more in that like 30 minute period about the real problems facing California >> from those guys than [clears throat] I could have been talking to governor after governor after governor who would have just BSed me.
1:19:56
And these guys were just so authentic, so real because they're the ones on the scene.
1:20:03
And and one of the things that I find is the reason I have such great admiration for people like you who do that is you can't around with the all of the nervous energy in a razor because you are literally facing life and death and so reality comes at you real fast and you learn to be very pragmatic.
1:20:29
>> It plays a big role in both keeping you grounded and in gratitude.
1:20:35
Um, and also sparing you that desperation, the nervous breakdown in the Razor factory where everybody's maneuvering and I got to get this gig and I got to get this deal.
1:20:43
And I don't get me wrong, I'd like the deal, you know. >> Sure.
1:20:49
>> But I I just finished an essay that I don't know if it'll find a home.
1:20:52
It's shopping around a little bit, but it's called Bailing in America.
1:20:54
And I do write about I wrote about I was bailing hay with or bailing straw with my dad who's 84, just lost his wife of over 60 years.
1:21:02
and I'm on the wagon just kind of watching him up there in the tractor.
1:21:06
But I'm also fresh out of LA and had a wonderful, again, I keep saying this, I love it.
1:21:11
I'm so happy to be out there and I love Ubering off to Universal Studios [laughter] and at windmills.
1:21:15
Um, but one of the things that EMS and Fire has done for me, and the reason, and by the way, I want to make it clear, I make maybe 10 to 15 calls a year at this point.
1:21:30
and I'm gone so much and but but I live in an area where they just need anyone they can get.
1:21:33
Um but it just never lets you lose your sense of mortality and I don't walk around filled with darkness or impending doom all the time.
1:21:45
[laughter] I am a Midwestern Scandin.
1:21:52
I'm a depressive optimist.
1:21:52
Things really just keep going.
1:21:56
Uh, but in all seriousness, just knowing that literally I don't know if I'm going to make it.
1:22:02
I'm in a little room above my garage out here and the house is across the yard and the back 40s out there.
1:22:06
I don't know that I'm going to make it back to the house today.
1:22:09
And and that's not drama. That's just a fact.
1:22:13
And when I was in LA this last time in the the 24 hours the 48 hours let's say before I went to LA where everyone was desperate and I was involved in a deal that went south and just watching people each other and in the 48 hours preceding that meeting I made three calls.
1:22:33
One to a suicide attempt uh one to a car accident and one to a farmer who was short of breath.
1:22:39
and all within 2 milesi of where I live here.
1:22:42
And I know that one day it'll be me.
1:22:44
And so when I'm in that meeting room and everybody's maneuvering or if I'm in Soho House and everybody's checking out who just walked in and what do I got to do, I just go, I don't know, folks.
1:22:52
You know, and again, I say and oh, it was in the essay.
1:22:59
I I've written so much stuff I forget where it all is.
1:23:00
But in the essay I said, you know, I've there's no question I also have lost ground in certain places or not gotten things because I don't have what I call that gimlet eyeyed drive where you're you're just like I'm going to do whatever it takes.
1:23:14
Like sometimes I go I'm not going to do that. [laughter] Yeah.
1:23:21
I definitely think though that the the special nature of not only the work that's being done but the people who are drawn to doing that work. >> Yeah.
1:23:35
And the other thing that Oh, I'm sorry. I No, no, please.
1:23:38
>> The other thing I thought of just now, too, it isn't just the mortality either.
1:23:42
The thing with me is and as a you know guy who works as a cowboy and grew up on a farm and everything um I have watched the the toughest baddest dude in town weep in pain.
1:23:54
I have watched the guy who was mean to everybody tremble like a little baby.
1:24:00
And that's not to make fun of him.
1:24:03
That's just to say I never forget that that could be me at any minute.
1:24:07
I don't care how tough you are.
1:24:10
And so again, that's kind of that almost sort of a a psychological pragmatism, if you will, that you're you're just saying, you know, I'm gonna put my stuff out there and I'm going to charge ahead fully aware that could all end in tears.
1:24:24
[laughter] Well, I mean, I think that's the thing, right?
1:24:27
Like because I was that gimletey guy and and and I was the like I'm going to use this book. I'm going to use media.
1:24:35
I'm going to do all of this stuff.
1:24:37
And yet back to Oprah, right?
1:24:37
So >> to close to close that that loop.
1:24:42
So I'm I'm literally there.
1:24:46
Colin Powell is in the green room with me.
1:24:49
I'm feeling like, man, I am I've made it.
1:24:50
And like, so then it was still being shot live then.
1:24:58
And so they take you between the green room and the studio.
1:25:00
They have blackout hallways.
1:25:03
And I mean blackout, >> right?
1:25:06
So most of Oprah's at the time producers were women.
1:25:09
And so it's me, right, surrounded by all these women. I can't see anything.
1:25:15
And I feel all of these pulling on my suit jacket and everything.
1:25:20
And it's the producers and and one of them is saying, "I'm sure you're going to do really great, really great, but um don't don't say anything too technical."
1:25:29
And I'm like, "Oh, can you can you give me an example?"
1:25:31
And she's like, "Uh, don't say things like GE ratio or Dow Jones Industrial Average." And I'm like, "Oh, damn. Oh, damn."
1:25:43
And she's saying this to me like seconds before pushing me out there.
1:25:47
And so like I have like under a minute between the the women taking me by both arms to and there's Oprah sitting there holding my book and Mike I can tell you by looking at her face it's the first time she's ever seen that book. And I'm like okay.
1:26:10
And then she goes, "You you got to think you got to come up with a phrase that because Oprah loves certain types of phrases, but you got to come up with something." And I'm like, "What? I'm screwed. I'm screwed.
1:26:22
I'm I'm just like I'm a wonky Wall Street guy and now I'm on the big show and I'm going to totally blow it."
1:26:30
And then suddenly it hits me like if you can change your focus, you can change your future.
1:26:35
And and I sat down next to open Oprah and she's like looking at the book and she's like, "Nice to meet you. I'm Oprah." And I'm like, "I know."
1:26:47
[laughter] And I like Jim.
1:26:47
And so she I wish I had the book here.
1:26:50
I'll just use this one as a prop.
1:26:52
She's like, um, so she's looking at it like this kind of dismissively, frankly.
1:26:56
And and she's like, "So, so what's this book all about?"
1:27:01
And I drop the phrase on like her entire face changes and the cameras come on and she's like my next guest and like she like she'd read the book eight times.
1:27:16
[laughter] >> It's that Oh, go ahead.
1:27:22
>> Yeah, just the followup is again not naming names kind of like you.
1:27:24
I got approached by a bunch of people who were like professional packagers, right?
1:27:33
And I and I spent a day with this guy about how I could be the next whoever the big guy was back then.
1:27:41
Dave Ramsey or whatever, Susie Orone and and literally my wife was sitting in with me and he's he's throwing around big numbers and like you you know we heard from Oprah's producers that she really liked you.
1:27:57
she'd be willing to have you on the show as a financial expert and like all this.
1:28:01
And at the end of it, I just looked at him and said, "Well, you know, we'll think about it."
1:28:08
And as we're walking out, I turned to my wife and I said, "Do you know what I'm going to say to you?"
1:28:12
And she goes, "Yes, you are going to say to me that that would be your personal help that you would never ever ever do that."
1:28:22
And I went, "Yes, we do know each other very well."
1:28:24
So, like I admire the fact that you were that one writer that said no.
1:28:30
And you said no for the right reasons.
1:28:34
>> Yeah, I think I said no for the right ethical reason and I also said no for the right pragmatic reason. I just wasn't ready.
1:28:40
A quick anecdote about people not reading your books.
1:28:44
I've only ever missed, as far as I know, one interview on book tour ever.
1:28:48
And it was in Omaha, Nebraska, because I can see the hotel room and what it looked like when I awoke at 7:55 a. m.
1:28:56
and realized I was supposed to be in a TV studio at 8 a. m. on the side of the mall.
1:29:02
And I turned on the TV and found the channel.
1:29:07
I called immediately and just said, I I I'm just horrified.
1:29:10
I I don't know what happened.
1:29:12
I'm not going to make it.
1:29:12
And it was one of those shows where the the very happy chirpy morning host uh lady talks to the librarian about the book of the week and they have the author on.
1:29:20
It would have been perfect, >> right?
1:29:24
>> And as you know, you learn early on you just take over.
1:29:26
And so unfortunately it was just them and they had population 485 which is, you know, a lovely book, but there's a whole chapter in there called death.
1:29:34
Uh there's scenes of accidents and fires and infernos and everything.
1:29:39
And neither of them of course had read the book.
1:29:41
And they said, "Well, this is our book for today."
1:29:43
The author was unable to make it.
1:29:45
It's called Population 485: Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time.
1:29:49
And then the librarian said something about And then the Chirpy Morning Lady leaned over and said, "Well, it's I see it's about firefighters, so I bet it's a book that kids would really enjoy."
1:30:03
And I remember sitting still in bed because I haven't even gotten up. Why bother?
1:30:07
thinking, you know, dude, this is your own fault.
1:30:11
You got no one to blame but yourself.
1:30:13
[laughter] Somewhere out there, a couple of kids, there's a couple of kids who are just traumatized beyond all belief. >> Oh my god.
1:30:24
[laughter] >> You know, again, what is fun for me, like I I I read a lot of your stuff.
1:30:29
I did a lot of research, but that led me to think, you know what?
1:30:34
Let's just go down a bunch of different tangents.
1:30:40
>> But but but now I'm going to actually ask you a question that I actually prepared before our chat and and and it's have you ever I love I love your idea about mentors and and they're not always the the best mentor is often not the person you think is the best mentor.
1:30:58
um it's often, you know, the the guy who's got real or woman who's got real domain knowledge and what you're seeking.
1:31:06
But but just share a couple of stories uh because some of them and I think I know which ones you're going to share, but I'm not quite sure uh about like the the the best mentor that was completely accidental and and yet taught you like an amazing thing for your life. >> Yeah.
1:31:30
I mean several come to mind right away.
1:31:32
The first one uh quickly is my neighbor Tom.
1:31:34
I wrote a book called Visiting Tom and which [clears throat] was about he just is a jack of all trades. Can make anything. He's a genius. He's an autodidact.
1:31:41
Makes his own cannons and shoots them.
1:31:43
And we're not talking we're not talking lawn ornament cannons. Okay.
1:31:48
The one the barrel weighs 300 lb.
1:31:49
Uh he he ran out of cannonballs so he fills Dinty Moore beef stew cans with concrete and shoots those.
1:31:57
But anyway, [clears throat] in the process of writing that book, I spent an entire better part of two years with him on a very close basis.
1:32:03
And he talked about his disappointments, his triumphs.
1:32:09
Uh his childhood farm was cut in half by an interstate that goes literally past his window or his living room.
1:32:16
And so I just had spent two years really getting to know this guy and and he's a crotchety old fellow.
1:32:22
And the final day, we're going through all the the final draft.
1:32:27
Last chance to correct errors, let me know if I made a mistake.
1:32:31
And last page is flipped over.
1:32:33
And I look at him and it it strikes me that we're neighbors.
1:32:38
We're going to see each other, but this may be the last time that we're truly going to be working together in this particular realm.
1:32:42
And so I just looked at him and I said, "Tom, all all this I gestured at the manuscript.
1:32:48
I said, "All this living, all this life, all these lessons, all these victories, all these failures, do you have any regrets?"
1:33:00
And he looked me right in the eye and he said, "Yep." And that was it.
1:33:06
And then I realized, "Ah, yeah, he does."
1:33:09
And he's not about to tell you about him.
1:33:11
And so the the point I made with that little chapter is that, you know, you can't necessarily seek wisdom. You can't seek a mentor.
1:33:22
It's like pushing a rope.
1:33:22
It's just going to kn up and trip you.
1:33:23
You just got to put yourself in their presence.
1:33:27
And of course, he had taught me plenty already.
1:33:28
Um, one of the I think of my nursing instructors.
1:33:32
I But when I was in nursing school, I had, you know, I said I was a voracious reader.
1:33:37
I grew up I read piles and piles of books.
1:33:39
I was reading well mostly my dad would tell you mostly Louis Moore cowboy books.
1:33:47
[laughter] He said he lost at one point my dad said I lost more manh hours to Louis Lammore cowboy books than to pickup trucks girls and football combined.
1:33:55
[laughter] But I also read, you know, I was reading the Bible because of our church and I was reading uh I read All Quiet on the Western Front in third grade and Gone of the Wind in fourth grade and and I remember getting in trouble for reading sneak reading Serpico in fifth grade when I was supposed to be doing math or something.
1:34:13
>> Oh my god, I read that too when I was right around that.
1:34:16
Oh my god, we really are almost related.
1:34:18
So, [snorts] as much as I as I read all these books, to me growing up a a a poor farm kid in rural Wisconsin, and when I say poor, I have to rush to point out by technically below the poverty line, but went to every night when I went to bed, I never went to bed hungry, and I always knew I was loved.
1:34:36
So, the two greatest privileges in the world, but it [clears throat] just never occurred to me that I could be a writer.
1:34:42
To me, authors were capital A people and they were from distant places and mysterious places.
1:34:49
So, I was well into nursing school.
1:34:51
I I had by that time figured out that I enjoyed writing, but I hadn't um I hadn't even begun to conceive of it as a as as a career.
1:35:02
I was studying nursing and nursing was they taught us human assessment, holistic human assessment.
1:35:06
In other words, you you yes, you check out the abdominal pain, but you don't get tunnel vision.
1:35:11
Yes, you get the the vital signs, the blood pressure, but you don't just look at that.
1:35:16
You you look at the whole person.
1:35:17
You ask questions, you know, socioeconomic situation, emotional situation, family situation, all of these things come into play before you make a nursing assessment.
1:35:28
And the line that I finally have come up with is that when I went to start writing, I found out that all these skills were directly applicable because nursing is human assessment and it's predicated on human assessment.
1:35:37
And what is writing but human assessment?
1:35:39
And then on a much more practical level, the the little anecdote I share is that I've mentioned I'm very shy.
1:35:46
I don't I've learned to function in public.
1:35:49
I love performing, but that's different.
1:35:55
But one of the things that's really hard for me is cold calling or and you have to do it all the time, especially back when I was doing magazine work.
1:35:59
And I always say that I'll pick up the phone and put it down 12 times before I call somebody.
1:36:05
But what nursing did for me is it taught me to go into a tiny little room with a complete stranger, ask them to take all their clothes off, and within 30 seconds ask them when's the last time they pooped.
1:36:18
And so whenever I would find myself going to have to interview whether it was a country music star or a CEO or even just the guy down the road, and I didn't want to, and I would just go into nurse mode.
1:36:29
I'm like, "No, you're just here as a pro.
1:36:30
Ask your questions and get on with it."
1:36:33
[laughter] >> I love that.
1:36:33
And also you you asked great questions too, right?
1:36:36
Because I love the story about how when you were traveling with the country music folks, the like everyone asked them the same question always the boilerplate.
1:36:45
You and I both as authors, we know we could recite ahead of time what we're going to get asked, right?
1:36:53
And so you developed your your kind of stock answer, but then you started getting great stories when you said, "Hey, tell me about the bus drive."
1:37:01
I love >> I was the freelance guy.
1:37:02
So I was last in line to interview all these country music stars and and the only reason I was even there I also tell in the book that I got a call out of the blue one day from an editor at Nashville who said are you the guy who writes about country music and I said yes I am.
1:37:15
[laughter] I wasn't but I was now.
1:37:22
And that led to this assignment where I would go to these country music festivals and my job was just to get the little 300word summary thing.
1:37:27
And I because I was the freelancer, I was last in line behind the radio people, the TV people, the big glossy magazine people.
1:37:36
And so I quickly learned they all asked the same four questions.
1:37:38
They got the same four answers and they printed the same stuff.
1:37:42
And I too had to ask those questions because that's what my publication wanted.
1:37:46
But thinking back to my grandpa who said, you know, there's ways to do this stuff, I was honored.
1:37:51
I honored what I was supposed to do.
1:37:54
I asked the four questions I already knew the question to, but then I answered to, but then I also knew I'm never going to have this person again.
1:38:01
So then, yeah, at the end, I just started saying, "Tell me about your bus driver."
1:38:05
Well, in country music, bus drivers are they have they're legends in their own right.
1:38:09
And of course, I would get people who couldn't wait to get out of the press tent who then were talking to me an hour later.
1:38:17
Vince Gil is the one I always remember that an hour later, 10:30 at night, he just wants to go uh get on the bus and he's still telling me bus driver stories.
1:38:25
So, yes, it's often the question no one is asking.
1:38:28
And I have to give a little shout out to a guy named Andy Andrews who uh helped me come up with that idea, too.
1:38:34
He's written about that himself.
1:38:36
We were trapped on a boat once and talking about the people who had influenced us before we realized they were influencing us and that led to this book. Yeah.
1:38:46
>> Uh so what's a question you never get asked that you should be asked?
1:38:51
>> Oh man, you stumped me right out.
1:38:51
This is only my second question and I'm already [laughter] uh what what is writing really about?
1:39:00
I think I would say and what is what writing is really about is not what you thought it was.
1:39:10
I one of the most heartbreaking things for me is I meet people every day who want to be writers.
1:39:17
I mean one of the sweet ironies of of nobody reading and AI is that more people than ever are writing books, >> right?
1:39:26
[laughter] And I meet people every day that say I'm a published author and I and I just smile and say yes because they are.
1:39:32
But then they'll start asking me questions and I realize that they are asking me questions about an industry that ceased to exist 40 years ago and even I have had to navigate that.
1:39:43
Uh, you know, my first book with Harper Collins came out in 2002.
1:39:49
And I remember that right around then there was this little company Amazon and and we were also everyone was very angry at Borders and Barnes & Noble because they were going to kill publishing.
1:40:00
It's like, well, what's check out over here?
1:40:02
That's that one's came out of nowhere.
1:40:05
Um, but it people and don't get me wrong in in that same that essay that I keep referring to, I wrote about wishing that I had been that I had my own movable feast.
1:40:16
I too wish that I could just go hang out in Paris and write.
1:40:19
I too wish I could be down in Key West in the early 70s. Um, and but it changed.
1:40:23
And so yeah, I think if people would ask what's it really about?
1:40:28
Because the one thing I see over and over, I get approached at my events and people say, "I've got this great idea for a novel."
1:40:36
And I say, "Well, you should write it." No, no, no.
1:40:37
So, so the deal is I have an accident. You should write it.
1:40:40
And and they don't want to hear that.
1:40:43
They want what they want is to say, "Well, here's the number of my agent.
1:40:46
Here's the publisher, and by the way, as long as we're at it, let's just get your direct deposit information."
1:40:52
[laughter] I think the thing, it's probably not my best answer, but it's the one I came up with, is just the the reality of what you're doing.
1:41:00
And that circles back to I talk a lot about being I call myself a self-employed writer because that's what I am.
1:41:07
And I'm willing to talk about promotion.
1:41:10
I'm willing to talk about I have a 2002 Toyota that I load up with a bunch of book boxes and some t-shirt tubs.
1:41:17
And I got a guy named Tony who's my merch dude and he comes with me and we do gigs in places like Gilman, Wisconsin. And you know what?
1:41:25
make a good living at it because again back to do you want cash or do you want cache and ready to play Carnegie Hall at this point I really could uh but it's probably not going to happen and so in the meantime uh Duth is good too.
1:41:44
>> Yeah up by that Lake Superior up there. Yeah, right.
1:41:48
>> Duth is actually Duth is actually an under the radar pretty hip place.
1:41:52
>> Yeah, I've been several times. Oh my god.
1:41:56
I remember like I used to joke when people would ask me about Minnesota, I used to say, "You remember the old USSR?" And they'd go, "Yeah."
1:42:07
And and I'd say, "Well, if we were the USSR, that's where they would send you." Yeah.
1:42:12
[laughter] Because literally I remember waiting for the school bus in a full Articat snowmobile suit with the full face mask and the goggles so the liquid in my eyes would not freeze.
1:42:29
>> Yes, we had snowmobile suit.
1:42:29
We didn't even have a snowmobile, but we had snowmobile suits.
1:42:32
That tells you where went.
1:42:36
>> I had to skid patch myself. Yeah, >> I had articat.
1:42:42
The thing about the just being pragmatic and business-like is that the thing I tell I just had this conversation with a younger person this week who wants to be an artist but is very troubled by capitalism and very troubled by self-promotion and and I I just explain
1:42:59
that in my case if I take care of the business I just am buying myself more time to make art and furthermore I'm not having to spend my time asking someone to help me do art and again one has to acknowledge all kinds of levels of privilege here and time and timing. I
1:43:14
I was able to break in, you know, even though things have changed.
1:43:18
When I broke in, I got lucky.
1:43:20
And but honestly, I, you know, when I get up in the morning, I think people, oh yeah, you said, "What is writing really like?" Here it is for me. I get up in the morning.
1:43:29
I come to this little room above the garage, which is filled with lots of chachki and things on the wall that are inspiring to me or evoke memories.
1:43:35
and and I have my writing desk and I I make I grind some beans and I make a wonderful cup of coffee and I sit down in my keyboard and I do QuickBooks [laughter] and I hate Quickbooks, but I got to do QuickBooks so that then the rest of the day I can do uh I can be a writer and I could be an artist and but my sales tax got paid so that I don't have to talk to the dad gum government.
1:44:02
[laughter] So, yeah, it's that I think if I could just tell them, it's that that so much has changed and that even bold-faced authors are having to reckon.
1:44:14
You know, it isn't just folks like me, you know, an unknown Midwestern midlister.
1:44:18
It's it's changed so much.
1:44:22
And so, we're back again to pragmatism.
1:44:24
You can you can be upset.
1:44:24
pragmatism. You can you can be upset. I I've watched so many of I didn't write about this in the book because this is the downside but so many of my I did write about it in the Montaigne book I think but so many of my trusted precious mentors uh in general life just my
1:44:40
elders and the people that raised me I watched so many of them become bitter and brittle and it's not and when I say brittle it's not about giving away your morals or your ethics but it's just navigation we're back to that just that idea that you know things are going to change and and so don't be bitter and don't be brittle. You can be disappointed for 20
1:45:02
You can be disappointed for 20 minutes but then you just get back to it and and find the new path I think is is kind of the key. I don't know.
1:45:11
>> I I no I I think that's like maybe the best advice ever.
1:45:14
I'm a huge fan of uh the da Jing written by Lu and uh that's one of the chapters right that which is brittle breaks.
1:45:23
When when a when an old tree the snow piles up on that limb, what happens? It breaks and it dies.
1:45:32
What happens when the snow piles up on a young reed? It bends. >> It doesn't break.
1:45:37
And like you've got to learn, especially as you're getting older, you've got to bend.
1:45:42
You know, life is life is a verb. It's not a noun.
1:45:47
And if if you if you are like no that you know that in my you know I never want to be that guy in my day you know in my day I had to go and actually get a book and type on a typewriter 100 letters and you're whining about not you
1:46:04
know you they didn't pick you up immediately but see it it is it's just kind of the way of things isn't it right like if you don't constantly understand and remember no no no I got a bend I've got to bend because I'll I'll break otherwise. I think also uh I already
1:46:20
otherwise. I think also uh I already said I don't have I have terrible retention so I can't site names and dates and things like that but um one of the things that really helped me during the pandemic um and by the way that's what really triggered my new self-publishing
1:46:38
>> everything shut down and half you know half of our income came from my live performances and so I just I had a bunch of uh newspaper columns that I've been writing for 10 and a half years and I said to my manager I said well time to break out the print press and it really got us got us through. Um, but during
1:46:52
Um, but during the pandemic and all the other things that are going on in our country, in our world, I read two giant biographies of Voltater. >> Ah, one of my heroes.
1:47:06
>> Oh, and what was so helpful apart from just him and speaking of navigating like he navigated lent money to people on both sides was brilliant.
1:47:15
[laughter] But one of the other big picture things and this is a completely unoriginal observation but I need this reminder.
1:47:23
I just remember reading those biographies and as they're talking about France in the 1700s you're just going check check.
1:47:34
Even AI I was someone was very upset about AI the other day and I said if you read about what was going on in France Voltater would write a book and then seven different people would steal it. Absolutely.
1:47:45
>> He never said and they would sell it.
1:47:48
So, not only were they defaming him or setting him up to be defamed, they were selling his work and there was no control over it.
1:47:56
And so, am I happy about the the digital equivalent of that? Of course not. Is it new? And can I plead plead? What is it?
1:48:04
Special pleading or whatever? No. >> Special pleading. Yeah. No, it's not new at all. >> It's It's here again. Yeah.
1:48:14
Yes, he was something else. That guy.
1:48:16
>> Oh, I love that guy so much.
1:48:16
You know, Candid, I always say I I always call myself a rational optimist because I'm always seeing Pang Gloss, Dr. Pang Gloss from Candid.
1:48:27
And you know his Pang Glossian No, no, no, no, no.
1:48:30
As as everything is burning around him, >> this is fine. >> This is fine. This is fine.
1:48:37
In fact, it's better than fine.
1:48:40
This is the best of the best of all possible worlds. >> Yes.
1:48:47
>> But you know when you I've read I've read that book so many times and I had it I had an insight the last time I read it and I'm like you know there is something to Panglos's attitude, right?
1:48:59
Like as as when you read it when you're a kid you're like god this guy's idiot.
1:49:04
Like this guy is just such a And and then as you get older, you're kind of like there's probably a little bit of wisdom in that in that outlook, right?
1:49:12
Like >> yeah, you just have there has to be titration, I think, in all things. >> Yes.
1:49:22
>> My brothers and I, we our father, we love and respect him dearly.
1:49:24
But we've, you know, he is our father and we've lived long enough that we've noticed certain ticks and traits.
1:49:28
And I mentioned earlier, he is a man of great humility and charity.
1:49:32
But one of the things that my brothers and I joke about is whoever you mention, my dad will say, "Oh, he's he's a pretty good guy."
1:49:38
And my brothers and I, when we finally got to the age where we go, "No, he's not. That's a bad man, Dad."
1:49:45
[laughter] >> Well, isn't it wasn't it wasn't it Montaigne?
1:49:50
I might be getting my citation wrong, but wasn't it Montaigne who said, "Wisdom is knowing what to overlook."
1:49:59
>> Let's just say it was him. >> Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
1:50:01
for for for uh I have a guest, Alex Danko, who's been on the podcast 10 times and we always have he's really a bright young guy and and so we never plan at all at all and I really mean that.
1:50:15
So it's just raw and and so the the current joke is we're just here training the AI models of 2125.
1:50:24
[laughter] So we did it the last show we did we that's what we did it was just like so AI in 2125 this is true we saw it with our own eyes and then we just burst out laughing [laughter] >> yeah you're telling AI check out this what are you going to do with this >> yeah well Mike this has been like even more fun than I was expecting it to be and we end every show um making you the emperor of the world just for a day. You can't kill anyone.
1:51:01
You can't put anyone in a re-education camp.
1:51:04
But what you can do is we're going to hand you a magical microphone and you can say two things into it that it's going to incept the entire 8 plus billion people on Earth.
1:51:16
They're going to wake up whenever their next morning is and they're going to say, "You know what?
1:51:20
I've just had two of the best ideas in the world, but unlike all the other times, I'm actually gonna act on these two.
1:51:27
What two things are you going to accept in the world's population? >> I'm going to do two.
1:51:33
I'm going to do a serious one and I'm going to do a ridiculous one.
1:51:36
The serious one is if there was one thing that I could convey to the world, it is that kindness is not weakness. >> That's it. Yeah.
1:51:47
>> That's it. Yeah. empathy just I just wish there was more and I wish that it wasn't seen as weakness and I see it all the time just bravado is a poor substitute for kindness and empathy now for something completely different
1:52:07
and only because you're from the Midwest I grew up on a farm and this phrase I think based on album sales has paid for half my house and half my daughter's braces If I could impart one bit of wisdom, hardearned, hard one from this farm kid from rural Wisconsin, it is this. Never
1:52:25
Never stand behind a sneezing cow.
1:52:35
[laughter] >> I can attest to you are correct. >> Yes.
1:52:39
If you're not familiar with this situation, uh cows are big animals and they're tall and if you're standing behind them and they sneeze, uh they projectile something out of their backside and it's not milk.
1:52:54
Um, and [laughter] the way that I explain it to my city friends is, uh, basically it's a situation involving several of the properties of physics, including contents under pressure, uh, ballistics, and the path of least resistance, and of course, inertia, although in this case, you might refer to it as [laughter] I don't know if it's ever happened to you, Jim, but it has happened to me, and I can tell you it is a jaw-dropping experience.
1:53:24
Mercifully, it has it has never happened to me, but I've heard about friends it did happen to.
1:53:31
>> It is a jaw-dropping experience.
1:53:33
Although that would not be your best move. No.
1:53:35
>> So, [laughter] >> Mike, this has been absolutely a pleasure. Really? I This was so much fun. >> I can't tell you.
1:53:43
I know you were trying to wrap.
1:53:45
I have just have to quickly say two things.
1:53:47
Number one, I mentioned at one point that someone had helped me by the first time I ever got $1,000. They help me invest it. >> Yeah.
1:53:56
>> Over the years, one of my amateur hobbies is to listen to finance people and finance podcasts.
1:54:01
And I've learned by osmosis.
1:54:04
And I'm not a genius in that regard, but it has been a fundamental help to me and my family.
1:54:08
And you and your son are two of the people that I have listened to over the years, long before there was any idea of any podcast.
1:54:16
And then secondly, I I work out a couple of times a a week in my unheated grainery out back here with some rusty old weights.
1:54:23
It's a it's a killer health club.
1:54:26
Um but many is the time that I've been sweating away out there or seeing my breath out there and listening to your podcast.
1:54:33
So, it's just been a thrill to to be on with you.
1:54:37
>> Uh well, I'm really honored to hear that. Thank you so much, Mike.
1:54:38
And I'll have you on again because we didn't get to any of my questions. >> Excellent. I can't wait.
1:54:45
[laughter] Talk to you next time. >> Thanks, Mike. Cheers. Bye-bye.