Rule 62 Part 2

Two stories:

Many years ago, I was invited on a prominent financial podcast. You have probably heard of it. I was excited to go on—some of the guests were the biggest names in finance, and it was an honor to be asked. Unlike most podcasts I go on, I actually did a little preparation.

So this was in the years before Zoom. Nowadays, when you do a podcast, you can typically see the person you’re talking to, which helps. But we were just doing this over Skype. No big deal. So I go on the podcast, and there are some brief introductions, and the host starts going: Mi mi mi mi mi mi! Harrrumph harrumph harrumph. Mi mi mi mi mi mi! Clearing his throat like he is some kind of opera singer.

And then when he starts talking, he’s talking in this overly exaggerated Howard Cosell/Ryan Seacrest voice, like he’s the color commentator on a Knicks game or something like that. I was dying. I actually did terrible on the podcast, and I was never invited back, because it was all I could do to keep myself from cracking up about this ding-dong who took himself so damn seriously.

The second story is shorter: I was at a financial conference and I was looking over the program with a friend, and we are looking at the lush, airbrushed, black-and-white photographs of the presenters, and he says to me: “Man, these people take themselves really seriously.”

I do not take myself seriously at all. At all. At least not in the finance world. I am a person in a position where I have to make forecasts, and sometimes the forecasts don’t work out, and then you have to acknowledge that they didn’t work out, which takes a fair bit of humility. If you’ve ever spent any time in this world, you know that people really hate admitting when they are wrong, and will either ignore that they were wrong or try to spin it in such a way that they were right. I see this over and over again. It’s all because people take themselves too damn seriously. If they had a lower opinion on themselves, it would probably be better for business. My newsletter has what is probably the highest renewal rate in the business, averaging around 85%. Humility goes a long way.

But the funny thing about humility is the financial pundit business is that humility is actually counterproductive when you’re trying to acquire subscribers. People are impressed by the lush, airbrushed, black-and-white photographs, the string of winning trades, and the testimonials. It’s good marketing. I am not the worst marketer in the world, but I am pretty close. Frequently, people go on TV. TV is show business, you know, it is a performance, and I am not so good at performing. You know who is? Scott Galloway. He was recently on MSNBC to talk about his new book, The Algebra of Wealth, and he went on a very articulate rant about how young people have been totally screwed in today’s economy, and the clip went viral. That is good marketing. I think he is a professor of marketing, after all. The only piece of viral content I have ever created in my life was that anti-CFA piece I did when I was at Bloomberg. And maybe the “Buy Everything” piece I did when I was at Lehman. Humble content does not go viral. Braggadocious content does—this I know for a fact.

All of this is code for a word which we have not yet mentioned: ego. And I have written about ego before. I’m not saying I’m wholly without ego—I take myself seriously as a writer. I’m past the point where I care about Amazon reviews, but if someone whose opinion I cared about took a shit on my writing, my ego would probably get hurt. But I am getting used to that, too, after all the rejections I have received in the last year. Even though I don’t have much of an ego, that doesn’t mean I don’t block people on Twitter, because I don’t want the same dickhead taking shots at me over and over again. You might have heard the term antifragile. Ego is fragility. One thing I keep seeing over and over again on American Idol is that these kids read the comments about them on social media. Don’t do that! Never read the comments. But they are young, and they are unaccustomed to being public figures, so it is still like they are in high school, and they read the mean things people say about them online. I guess there is such a thing as exposure therapy—if you keep reading the mean comments, you will become immune to them over time. But these are not people whose opinions you should really care about. You will get no helpful feedback.

The guy whose podcast I was on, well, yes, it was a pretty big finance podcast, but in the realm of all podcasts in the world, it was a pretty insignificant podcast. I’d guess about 30,000 downloads per episode. If your ego is going to blow up to the size of Omaha over having a small-to-medium-sized podcast, I don’t know what to say to you. Joe Rogan has the biggest podcast in the world, and he acts totally normal and smokes weed half the time. I’m a big man. Pay me respect. Give me a break. I will tell you who I respect—I respect people who do things that I’m unable to do. I am unable to do a quadruple toe loop. I am unable to host a cable news show. I am unable to hit a 103mph fastball. I respect the discipline and the dedication it takes to do these things. You, with your rinky-dink podcast? Beat it.

When you take yourself too seriously, you have a deep-seated need to impress people. Quick story: I was in Miami recently, and I was sitting down to lunch with a bunch of New York people. Some of them I knew, some of them I didn’t. I was sitting next to this guy I didn’t know, who was involved in tech somehow and had made a bunch of money, and was pals with Richard Branson and spent a lot of time on Necker Island. I was sitting there quietly, as I usually am, and someone at the table mentioned that I had written some books, and the guy perks up and goes on Amazon and sees all my books, and says to me, “You’re just the silent assassin over here!” I just shrugged. I don’t feel a need to talk about myself and my accomplishments in social situations. I’m not a self-promoter. In fact, I am allergic to self-promotion. I believe in a philosophy of attraction, rather than promotion—keep putting out good work and you will attract the right people. You might attract people with promotion, but some of them will be the wrong people. Everything I write or say is from the heart, and if it’s unpopular, too bad.

I’ve said this before, probably, but the worst words in the English language are: “Don’t you know who I am?” This is most commonly heard in airports. You’re boarding in Group 6 and they’re going to check your bags and you have a meltdown. Don’t you know who I am? Yes, I do, you are nobody special, because if you were, you would be flying private, or at least in Group 1. Shut your piehole. Every once in a while, you get wronged by some customer service person and you feel it is your responsibility to make their lives miserable. Don’t do this. You’re nobody special, you’re a bozo, the extra half hour out of your life is not going to kill you, you have nothing you need to do that is that important; relax. That would be my advice to you, especially in an airport. I was in Ruth’s Chris one time in Myrtle Beach and some $125,000-a-year jackass sent his steak back three times because it wasn’t up to his standards. Cringe-inducing. I have never, ever sent food back in my entire life. You could serve me up a plate of rat’s asshole and I would eat it.

Do not, under any circumstances, take yourself too seriously. You are a knucklehead. I don’t care how important you think you are, you are a knucklehead. Internalize that. You don’t deserve special treatment. And no matter how successful you think you are, there is always someone more successful. Unless you’re Elon Musk, and then you get to act like Elon Musk. But the only person who gets to act like Elon Musk is Elon Musk. Some people get it right. I know someone who made the New York Times bestseller list, and he is one of the most grounded people I know. If NO WORRIES had made the NYT bestseller list, I probably would have been an insufferable prick.

P.S. I’m pleased to announce that my new book, NIGHT MOVES and Other Stories will be released in November. A collection of 16 short stories. You’ll be blown away. Just putting it on your radar—I’ll remind you again in a few months.