Adam Cole
host: Adam Cole
book development, Useful Not True, media and reality, belief systems and perspectives, self-marketing, audience engagement
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Transcript:
Adam
It is nice to meet you finally.
Derek Sivers
You too. We’ve got so much to talk about. Five. No, ten minutes ago I got from back from a very sweaty 90 minute hilly hike. Just took a cold shower that I got out of five minutes ago, threw on a shirt and stepped into my recording booth. So hopefully I’m not too red faced.
Adam
No, no, no, not at all. Looks like my face is redder than yours in this thing. Wow. So, I don’t even know where to begin. How do you--
Derek Sivers
Are we, uh, like on air? Are we recording? I mean, I know we’re recording. Are do you want to air this? Have we begun?
Adam
We have begun.
Derek Sivers
All right. Hello, audience.
Adam
Hello, everybody. Yeah, I created a separate introduction video that I’ll put before this, but other than that, it’s just us talking. So cool. What do you want to talk about?
Derek Sivers
Well, you were now the second person to ever see most of my new book.
Adam
Yeah, yeah.
Derek Sivers
On Useful Not True. And I’ll admit that’s most of what’s on my mind right now. For two years I’ve been formulating this book. For two years, I’ve known that this is what I’m writing now. I’m writing a book called “Useful Not True”. On this subject that I have some things to say about, but I want to learn more about. So I spent a lot of the last two years learning more about the subject, reading so many books on philosophy and religion and theology and beliefs and psychology. And then just in the last few months, I’ve just been on an absolute crunch. Not like a deadline, but just so fascinated with this subject. Like this morning I woke up at-- I don’t know, 5:30 in the morning, suddenly thinking about the International date line and how that’s a metaphor for conversation and how the difference between the physical reality of the world and what our screens are showing us. Because just two days ago, I was talking with-- there were some programmers in a forum online that were talking about how Siri gets its weather information from a source that can have a little bit of lag time between its prediction and the reality. So multiple people were in this forum saying that sometimes they’ll say, “Siri, is it going to rain today?” And Siri will say, “It’s raining right now.” And the person will say, “No, it’s not.” And Siri will say, “Yes, it is.” And I was thinking, that’s actually an interesting metaphor for the media, for their own financial benefit. Telling us that things are horrible, that the world is awful. It’s terrible. And tune in at 11 to find out the shocking news you need to know. And if you just step outside, look, no, everything’s fine. Yeah.
Adam
Yeah. Well, for some of us, not not for everyone, though.
Derek Sivers
Not everybody on Earth. But, you know, they’d have a different weather report. But I’m saying there’s so many people that are believing what they see on the screen instead of their actual reality.
Adam
Well, right, right. It’s very difficult because we want to have information, but the information is always manicured and, um. I don’t know that-- I mean, at this point, we’re all swimming in it like the fish in the fishbowl, and we can’t see the manicure anymore. I mean, I’ve got this show of my own, right? I’m manicuring reality right now. It’s like what we do at this point. You know, the 15 minutes of fame has got to be the most brilliant thing anybody ever said. Who said that?
Derek Sivers
Andy Warhol.
Adam
Andy Warhol. I swear, he was absolutely right. Except now it’s 15 seconds, you know? I did read the book. I did read it today. So, I have a question for you now. I found it useful, but is it true?
Derek Sivers
Absolutely not. I’m planning on that being the last sentence of the book to say basically, obviously nothing here is true, but hopefully it was useful.
Adam
Yeah. Because what’s interesting to me is that it comes across the way you were writing the book. You are writing it as if it is true. I read it, as you know, you’re you’re trying to convince me of this at some point. And so there’s a bit of a danger. You’ve sort of set a trap for yourself. I mean, I know you can get out of it simply by saying at the end it’s useful, but not true. But I sort of suspect as a reader that you think it is true.
Derek Sivers
Yeah I do. In the same way that a religious person thinks their beliefs are true, and we all have beliefs that we think are true. That perspective I’m sharing in this book. I think it’s true.
Adam
Well, if you think it’s true, So do you want me to think it’s true too? Or do you care?
Derek Sivers
That’s a good question. Yes. I want to persuade you. And by you, I mean anybody reading it. I want to persuade you of this mindset because I think it’s very useful. This whole idea of-- sorry, you know, audience. Hello, for context, we’re talking about my next book called “Useful Not True”. Adam is the second person ever to see a draft of it, and the first half of the book is all just pointing out how many things are not true. Almost nothing people tell you is true. Everybody shares perspective, not facts. Facts are as boring as dirt. People don’t bond over facts. They bond over perspectives. So people share their perspectives because we communicate to bond with others and then it goes from there to saying, by the way, your own thoughts are not true. Like, now that we’ve disbelieved everything other people are saying. And now it’s time to disbelieve your own beliefs and realize that all these things that you hold as true, especially the disempowering ones, the ones that you hold as true, that are empowering for you, hey, no need to change those. Those are working for you. But if you believe disempowering things like, you know, I can’t do that, or I wish I could. Whatever, quit my job and move to Paris, but I can’t. Right. Well, that’s not true. And it’s really helpful that I think that the book keeps hammering home this point of like, no, that’s not true. That’s not true either. Look, unless it’s a physical reality, you know? There we go, I clapped my hands three times. That’s true. That’s just an objective fact, everything else is perspective. And therefore the real point of the book is it’s all about reframing. Once you realize that almost nothing is absolutely true, then you realize that almost everything is open for reframing and reinterpretation in a way that serves you better.
Adam
May I challenge that?
Derek Sivers
Please.
Adam
Is there an element of privilege in that perspective?
Derek Sivers
How so?
Adam
So let’s say I’m in a ghetto, I have zero money. Let’s say I’m fearing for my life. Let’s say I’m starving. I suppose there’s a possibility I could go to Paris, but is it likely? I mean, deciding whether it’s true or not is like a privilege. You know, my reality right now is, that is not going to happen. So even accepting the possibility that it might be true, I’m just trying to survive. Talk about that if you can. I mean that aspect. Do you see the privilege question there?
Derek Sivers
I think that somebody in that situation would need this philosophy the most. Because they would be surrounded by people saying, you know, “Just accept your fate. You can’t.” And I think the so many great people have come out of situations like that where everybody around them is telling them that you can’t do this because you’re the wrong color or gender or you’re in the wrong place. It’s just not your lot in life. You have the wrong parents, you can’t. And I think somebody in that situation has the most motivation to separate the concrete reality from the belief system. So somebody could say, “Okay, I live in a favela. I’m in Rio de Janeiro. My parents are gone, I have a dollar. That doesn’t mean that I can’t become the greatest singer the world has ever known. This doesn’t mean that I can’t become president.” These kind of things do happen. People do come from nothing and do amazing things. And it has to start with the belief that they can, which comes mostly from disbelieving all of the things that people are telling you that they can’t. Because, look, whether you’re like, privileged or not, there are always people around telling you that you can’t do things. Let it go. You’re not going to do that. That’s not going to happen. And I think we need to disbelieve the limitations, and I really do think that applies for everybody.
Adam
This gets back to the useful aspect of what you’re saying. Whether or not someone can mindset their way out of a problem may not be true, but it’s useful. It’s a foundation for making a change in your life. At the very least, this is something you can do. You can examine your beliefs about yourself. It may not get you to Paris, but guaranteed, if you don’t, you’re not going.
Derek Sivers
Right? Yeah, right. Won’t necessarily get you there. But not believing will make sure you don’t.
Adam
Well, the reason I’m pushing on this is because, you know, I’ve long been in the process of trying to remake myself. I mean, this is a 30 year plan of mine, and slowly I have changed dramatically. I mean, I had a long, long way to go. And I’m kind of in a place now where I’m really working hard on some really bottom of the barrel, powerful, change my mind about myself stuff, you know?
Derek Sivers
Can we talk about that stuff after you tell me this?
Adam
Absolutely.
Derek Sivers
Okay, good.
Adam
But the thing that I struggle with is and that I try to communicate also to my subscribers is that there’s this balance between mindset and the work. That it’s very easy when there’s people talking to you all the time about how it’s just your mindset if you just get your mindset right, you just got to get your mindset right. Well, that’s a ticket to, “I suck. Things are going horrible. It must be my mindset.” You know, it’s very easy to beat yourself up because you can’t get your mindset straight. And so for me, I have to strike that balance between saying, “Okay, I got to accept I’m working on my mindset, but the mindset is a piece of the puzzle. But there are times when my mindset can be bad and I can still move forward. In fact I have to, time to get the work done and the mindset will follow in that situation. I can even be telling myself this is never going to work. And I do, I’m afraid. It’s what my therapist calls the passionately held bad fit where you absolutely believe something that is no longer useful to you. You know, and sometimes the only way out of that is to get out of it and see that it’s no longer true. And then you can point back and say, “See, you have no experience to prove that.” So this is why I push back on useful, but not true. Because if that’s all you have, it can also beat you down.
Derek Sivers
What do you think of the idea that the only purpose of beliefs is to improve your actions. So it’s never just about the mindset. It’s all about the mindset. But for the purpose of improving your actions, there is no point in holding a belief if it doesn’t improve your actions.
Adam
Yea. Being Jewish, that sounds very familiar. It’s a Jewish kind of thing. You know, what you do is much more important than what you believe in, at least. The religion that my part of Judaism and you know, I pray to a god that I don’t necessarily believe in wholeheartedly. But I will say that by praying, I have to think about what am I praying for. What am I asking for. I can feel a little voice, if I pray for the wrong thing, I can feel it in me. I’m like, that’s not-- you know, it’s really kind of interesting. My mind plays a little dance with me, and I am forced to focus on the thing, I mean, I can pray for $1 million, but then my brain says, “That’s not what you want, pray for what you want.” You know, it’s very interesting and like I said, I’m not stupid. I’m not going to pray for a unicorn to appear in my yard and expect that I am going to pray for something that I can attain. And I think there are people who are anti belief and anti-religion and say that’s circular thinking. I suppose so, but for me it has a flavour of the belief is part of the motivational process to the action. Yes, you can do the action without it. You can just go logic, you can just go data. But I mean that’s also another kind of belief in a way. It’s basically information for you. The belief is a different kind of information upon which I act.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Like okay, as a musician, when you are working hard on a new piece of music or even practicing a performance to perform something better. Inside of you, you have to have a belief that somebody’s going to love this. People are going to care. This song is going to make a difference. People are going to love this song or people are going to notice this great performance. You have to believe that somebody’s going to care. That’s like an inner belief that’s almost mandatory in order to do the hard work necessary to make the best piece of music you can write.
Adam
Well, that happens to me naturally. That’s something that just came with my brain. So that’s not something that I think some people have to cultivate that for me, I just have this raging ego that takes care of me in that way that says, “Yeah, you go ahead and write this piece because it’s going to be great and people are going to love it.” And it actually really hurts when they don’t. But--
Derek Sivers
Oh dude, I’ve got a good question for you. Think about one or 2 or 3 of your best pieces you’ve ever written, or best recordings you’ve made. Do you love them? Do You think like that is one of the best songs I’ve heard in my life?
Adam
Yeah.
Derek Sivers
Oh, that’s so nice to hear.
Adam
Yeah.
Derek Sivers
I think a lot of people never get that.
Adam
Really?
Derek Sivers
Yeah.
Adam
But it’s frustrating too, because then I feel like I’m sitting on a treasure trove. Did you ever see that movie Phenomenon with, what’s his name? Gosh, I’m so terrible when I try to remember a name. John Travolta, the guy that--
Derek Sivers
I didn’t.
Adam
Okay, so this is a fascinating film. Basically, it’s this guy. He’s just a mechanic in a garage, and one day he sees these lights come out of the sky and something hits him in the forehead, and all of a sudden he becomes incredibly smart, like, smarter than everybody on the planet. And he tries to use this incredibly growing brain of his to help people. But the more he tries to help people with his new intelligence, the more he alienates himself from them. And so they get afraid of him, and he tries to go to a university, and the university professors won’t talk to him. And he has all these ideas that are going to change the world. And he gets frustrated because he’s got all this stuff, but no one will talk to him. And that’s how I often feel about my creative work, like this stuff is great, you know, but you can’t even get people to listen to 30 seconds of it these days. Very painful.
Derek Sivers
Oh, man. You just opened a few interesting subjects here, including the lights in his head should have taught him a little more about effective communication, because I think if you’re constantly going around being misunderstood, it’s your fault. And by the way, that just happened with me three days ago. I wrote a new chapter for my book that I was so happy with. I was bursting with pride. I said, “I can’t even wait for the book. I’m putting this out on my blog right now, and I’m emailing everybody on my list.” And so I did. And Adam, like 98% of the people misunderstood it because I used AI as a metaphor.
Adam
Oh, is that the thing you posted recently about--
Derek Sivers
Yeah, three days ago.
Adam
So I thought that was so cool.
Derek Sivers
Thank you. But for me. AI is not a loaded subject. I’m a programmer, I understand it, I’m not scared of it. I don’t anthropomorphize it. I don’t think it’s magic. It’s just a program. I get it, I get what it’s doing. But a lot of people are really freaked out by AI. So just the fact that I used AI as a metaphor freaked them out so much that they didn’t see that it was a metaphor. And all of the comments, if you look at the post, were saying things just like, “Yeah, man, AI and Big Tech is, you know, in our lives, you know, this is bullshit. The privacy.” I was like, “No, no, no, it’s a metaphor. I could have used a sock or a carrot, but I chose AI. It’s not about AI, look, it’s a metaphor.” So I did something I’d never done before, which is I basically redacted it at the top of the page now is a big giant yellow notice saying, “Never mind this, this post has been replaced with an updated one.” So I basically rewrote it using the mirror in Harry Potter instead.
Adam
How?
Derek Sivers
The mirror in Harry Potter that shows each person their deepest desires reflected back at them. And so we all know that’s like Harry sees his parents, Dumbledore sees his long lost friend, Ron Weasley sees himself as the head of the Quidditch team or whatever. And they’re not arguing about what’s true or not. They’re not saying no. The mirror is showing the Quidditch team. No, the mirror is showing my old lost friend. They know this is what the mirror is doing. The mirror is showing each of us what we need to see. So I argue that, you know, that’s how life is too. That you see what you need to see in order to help you do what you need to do. Be who you want to be or feel at peace. And we shouldn’t be arguing about, “No no no no no. Your belief is wrong. My belief is right.” It’s like, no, no, come on, it’s the mirror. It shows us all what we need to see.
Adam
I missed it too. That’s what you were after with that AI thing. It was such a different kind of post for you. And when I read it, I mean, okay you redacted it, but I hope you didn’t destroy it because it’s--
Derek Sivers
No, I’ll leave it up.
Adam
Yeah. No, I mean, it really is fascinating. Perhaps you could make the metaphor part a little clearer so that it wouldn’t be-- because there was no there was no scaffolding in it. But I was like, wow. It’s like a cool science fiction story.
Derek Sivers
Okay, so now beliefs about your music. So you just love the music you make?
Adam
Yes.
Derek Sivers
When you write a great piece, you really do feel like, hot damn, this is one of the best pieces of music ever written, but only the frustration on it.
Adam
I have to work, the production has got to be perfect.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, right. Oh, and then the John Travolta. So then it feels like a communication problem. Like if nobody at the university will talk to John Travolta. Well, then use a little bit your brain to figure out how to communicate better. And I think that’s my challenge that I throw down for musicians is yeah, we make some music that we love. And now it’s your job to try to figure out how to communicate it to the world in such a way, so you can see it through their eyes instead of only through your own. It’s hard.
Adam
Especially when you are attached to it.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. And like my little example of the blog post three days ago, I’m so thankful I posted that early because otherwise, can you imagine if I would have put it in the book, you know, chopped down a bunch of trees to print those paper books, and then people read it and went, “So you’re talking about media and AI now” I’m like, “No, it’s a metaphor.” I’m so glad that I got that instant feedback. And because I just realized, like, “Oops, I’ve communicated that wrong.” Like you said, no scaffolding. Right? So it can be the same with our artistic creations or music or whatever. It’s like sometimes we can be communicating it wrong. Somebody can put all their heart and soul into making great music, and then the way they present themselves to the world is just like, “Hi, my name is Mark. Here’s my music. Check it out.” Like, come on. That’s bad communication John Travolta.
Adam
Well, he’ll find the people that are receptive to that. Some people like that I think.
Adam
You know, but I was thinking, I have a little passion for contemplating hits and what makes hits. And what’s usually it’s interesting, you know, you got these bands with careers of 17 albums and they have one song that we all remember, and it’s usually the song-- you know, and I’ve talked to producers and stuff about this too. It’s usually the song that had the most collaboration on or maybe the song they didn’t have all the control over, you know.
Derek Sivers
Right, right.
Derek Sivers
Oh, interesting. I hadn’t heard that. Okay.
Adam
I mean, you think about that song “Take on Me” by Aha. Went through three versions of that song. I don’t know if you knew that. And it’s only the third version that hit. And there were a lot of decisions made about that song, and I don’t think the band made those decisions. I think essentially someone came in and said, you need to do this, this, this, and this because the band was too close to that song. You know, artists are too close to their music. So the more collaboration you have, if you have a really good producer, if you have a band that’s putting their input in, then you have a lot of different people. One person gets the credit, Billy Joel gets the credit. But, you know, Phil Ramone is back there working and his whole band is out there suggesting ideas and that’s what gets you past that stuff, that blind spot.
Derek Sivers
Well, you know, I’m so thankful that when I was 17 years old, I heard Smokey Robinson describe the process of writing my girl, “Boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom. I got sunshine.” You know, it sounds like a simple song now. He said, “You don’t understand. That was six months of work. We flew back and forth from Detroit to New York City with--” I forget the two guys, uh, that he co-wrote it with. Oh, well, he said, “The three of us went back and forth from Berry Gordy to the record label to the guys in New York and back again, and each time we would change just a few notes.” Yeah. And try it out on somebody. And they would say, “There, now I like it better. But this part is still losing me. And we’d work for weeks to change a few notes until finally, after like months of work, we had the song My Girl crafted the way it is now. And now everybody loves it.” It’s like that’s how much work it can go into making something so simple and catchy.
Adam
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And it takes a lot of different views, like for me, I think the revelation was when I heard Paul Simon talk about his Graceland album, and I had not realized how the song Graceland, how many cooks are in that kitchen, man. He had so many people messing with his stuff. And perhaps that’s the difference between his best work and his just it’s just Paul Simon controlling everything work. You know, and that’s when I started to think I need to just open up and now the recordings I’m doing most recently are the ones with the most collaboration, and they are the most satisfying to me.
Derek Sivers
Interesting.
Adam
So, I was going somewhere with that. But anyway.
Derek Sivers
I don’t know. That is such an interesting subject. It’s really nice to hear you say that you love your work though, because a friend of mine is one of the most successful illustrators in India, and she’s one of my best friends. We talk every single day, and she laughs when I tell her that I’ve written this new thing that I really love. And she goes like, “Oh, you’re so crazy. Like, I like, I don’t love any of my work. I can’t believe that you say you love your own work. That’s so weird to me.” She puts herself out in the world, and other people love it, but she never feels great love for her own work. And then that’s crazy to me. How could you not? Aren’t you making something that you love? But I guess not. Not everybody does.
Adam
She doesn’t dislike her work, right? It’s a job for her. Isn’t that what it is? It’s a craft. Like she knows what she has to do and she’s satisfied with her work, but she doesn’t love it.
Derek Sivers
Well, in her case, her illustrations are very, very personal. Well, I’ll just say her name. It’s Alicia Souza. Alicia Souza. Yeah. So look her up on Instagram. She’s a big hit. And her work is very personal. It’s very much her and her husband and her kid and her life. She’s illustrating her life, and people love it. It’s very personal. But maybe it’s kind of like we don’t all wake up and go, “Oh, I love myself.” You know? Maybe it’s almost too personal. It’s like she’s just showing herself, including, you know, warts and okay, actually not warts. But she does have things about like little illustrations of, you know, farting in the morning or something like that. And her foibles. And that’s part of the charm that people love about her illustrations is she’s showing a whole picture of herself. So, yeah maybe it wouldn’t be really sensible for her to love it like you love your music or I love the things I write.
Adam
Well there’s a dark side to my loving my music. And that is that for a long time, for decades, I had no sense of self at all, really. I was hollow inside. And so the only way I could really love myself was to produce something beautiful and love that. And so, I mean, that’s not the case anymore. I mean, I have done enough work that I feel like I have an inside now and that I do love myself. And it’s changed the way I work. It’s allowed more collaboration, for instance, that we were talking about. But really it was very important for me to create stuff and work hard on it and get it as good as I could, because that was going to be something I could look at. You forget about selling it, just something I could read. This is the novel I spent 17 years on. It’s got to be perfect so that I can read it and know that I’m worthwhile human being. So that’s the dark side of that.
Derek Sivers
Do you feel so at the time, or is that just--
Adam
Did I know--
Derek Sivers
A tale to tell looking back?
Adam
No no. I think I knew it. Okay. I mean, to some extent, I don’t know if I could have articulated it as clearly. I think I probably was aware that there was a-- I know for a fact that at least in my 30s and 40s, I knew there was a hole inside of me and that the creativity was a way of healing that hole. Or at least giving me something about myself to love. What’s interesting that I didn’t know about my creativity was it was also guiding me towards the path of healing, like I was sending myself messages through my work and maybe the love was the sugar coated pill to get it in there. Like, you need to keep reading your stuff at him because you’re trying to tell yourself something. You’re trying to tell you.
Derek Sivers
Oh you mean actually literally like, were you actually writing things that your future self needed to hear?
Adam
Yes. Yes.
Derek Sivers
Interesting.
Adam
Yes. And it’s only recently, as I’ve finally come to realise those things that I’m like, “Oh yeah, all my creative stuff was about that. I was trying to tell myself that all this time, but I couldn’t understand it.”
Derek Sivers
I wonder how many of us do that? Like, I just read yesterday that Billie Eilish, I think she won an award for her song for the Barbie movie. And it was a couple years ago, they came to her and said, “We want you to write a song for the Barbie movie.” And she did, and she just did it writing for Barbie. You know, her, like the lyrics were something like, I’m a doll and you, you dress me the way you need me to be. And she said completely that had nothing to do with me. I was writing the song from Barbie’s voice, she said. But now, two years later, I’m like, “Oh my God, that was me. I was writing about myself. I just didn’t realize it until two years later.”
Adam
Yeah. So you’re you’ve been blogging for 25, 30 years and your blogs are very concise and polished. Have you been talking to yourself all this time?
Derek Sivers
That’s just an aesthetic I love. Any of us who have read a nonfiction book know the annoying feeling where you’re reading a 300 page book that really should have been just 20 pages and you’re just like, “Ah, come on, enough with the examples. Yeah, I get it. Come on, keep it going.” And you’re done with the book. And you’re like, “You know, it was all right, but it was so much fluff, couldn’t you just say--” Or okay, we’ve all heard the quip, you know, “Sorry to write you such a long letter.” I didn’t have time to write a short one. It takes more work to make something short. So I just decided long ago, I’m doing the work to make it short. I write for hours a day in my diary with no filter at all. I do a ton of journaling to myself, but when I’m going to put something out into the public, I’m doing the extra work to make it short. So yeah, audience the average length of a chapter in my new book, the one that Adam was just the second person to see. The average chapter is 20 sentences.
Adam
No, it reads very well.
Derek Sivers
I craft the fuck out of those sentences like Smokey Robinson. I chisel those fuckers down so tight, over and over and over again. Yeah. I mean, the rough draft is always five times longer, and I just chisel it down to, like, there’s not a single word that doesn’t need to be there. And then I feel like I’ve made something beautiful, you know? So maybe I’m like a minimalist composer, right? Like, this is the art form I like putting out into the world. Obviously, when we’re talking like this, I’m not so damn succinct.
Adam
Well that’s fine. The aesthetic that I mentioned was really just incidental. I was more asking, when you present your-- it’s not that you’re concise, but that you and it’ll sound insulting, but you sound like you have all the answers when you blog. And the question I’m wondering is, you know, like, I mean, I like that because your answers are great. I enjoy them and you’re not arrogant, you know? I mean, you clearly come across as a learning person, but all that journaling must be where the struggle comes in. There’s no hint of struggle in your writing. And I’m wondering, you know, what are you getting at? What have you been getting at in these 30 years? Has this benefitted you at all to do this, and has it only benefiting you in your mind? And anything else is incidental. Like I’m glad you’re getting something out of it, but I’m doing it for me. What have you been doing this for?
Derek Sivers
It is first for me. We have the phrase in a nutshell. And we say in a nutshell when we’re about to summarize something. But it’s a nice metaphor because an actual like walnut shell is really easy to carry in your pocket. And you know, when it’s hollow and you could put a little thing in there, it’s a really good way to carry something small around. And I think of the work I do to craft these ideas down to a nut shell makes them easy to carry. And I want these ideas to stick in your head and travel. If I were to be too verbose. Well, you know, I was thinking this, but then I thought to myself, that’s not right, is it? You know, if I was to give the long, verbose version, it wouldn’t fit in your pocket. So I want to make these ideas communicate. I want them to be catchy. I’m trying to write a catchy book. Yeah.
Adam
Yeah like a catchy tune.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. And you know that there’s a a craft that you do to craft a melody. So that it’s not meandering so that it’s mhm-mhm-mhm-mhm-mhm-mhm-mhm-mhm-mhm-mhm-mhm- mhm. Like that is a well structured melody. That’s like damn that’s catchy because it was crafted to be catchy. It wasn’t just a blathering of words that came to mind. It was a really memorable shape to those notes. I try to do that with my words too, to make them memorable and catchy.
Adam
Yeah, well, they clearly resonate with people. I’ve always been astounded by the number of replies you get to the things you send. Jealous is probably not too strong a word. I mean, I tried for many years to to do what you did and blog regularly for ten years I blogged. And I was lucky if I got maybe one response every five months, you know, and I would look at you and they’d be like, “Yeah Derek. Yeah Derek. Wow Derek. Oh, cool. This is what I think. Derek blah blah blah.” I’m like, ah, what I wouldn’t do for some of that feedback. You can feel sorry for him if you want to. But I really wanted to reach people like that. And maybe I missed the essential, which was the nutshell, perhaps, you know, like, I’m still proud of those blogs. I put all the blogs into a book, you know, I was like, “Yeah, these are good.” And I liked them. But again, it’s the Hhenomenon thing. It’s like I’m saying these things and I’m working hard to to say them well, are they reaching anyone?
Derek Sivers
Right.
Adam
What happens next, you know. And the fact that people will respond to you, that’s the magic. That’s your magic, you know, and I’ve long contemplated it.
Derek Sivers
So an old girlfriend of mine, like from when I was 19. We were together for a few years. And she got back in touch after, like, I don’t know, six years of not talking. And one of the first things she said is, “Do you remember when I asked you if you would make music if you were the last person on earth?” And I said, “No.” She goes, “You don’t remember that?” So I said, “No.” She goes, “Well, okay. Let me ask, would you make music if you were the last person on earth?” I said, “Oh fuck yeah. I’d have all the time in the world. I’d have no obligations. I would just sit there, make music all day.” And she goes, “That’s unbelievable to me. How could you say that?” And I said, “What? What are you talking about? Like, to me it’s a no brainer. No people on Earth, a bunch of instruments. Hell yeah. I’d sit here and play.” And she goes, “No, I can’t fathom how you could even think that way.” I said, “What do you mean?” She said, “The only reason I make music is for other people. If there were no other people, I’d have no reason to make music.”
Derek Sivers
I went, “Oh no. Ultimately, everything I do is for me first. And if other people like it, great.” And she said, “Ah, everything I do is for other people first. And it doesn’t matter what I think.” Oh, interesting. So it’s just a different approach to--. So apparently, in the six years that we hadn’t talked, she’d been going around telling all of her friends and getting into this conversation many times with fellow musicians about this ex that she had named Derek, that said that he would make music if he was the last person on earth. And how weird is that? And everybody said, “Yeah, that’s completely weird. I can’t even imagine that.” And so she found a bunch of people that agreed with her and apparently thought I was the weirdo for doing it this way.
Adam
Well you know, I understand why she said that, but I also understand where you’re coming from. I don’t know what I would do because, like I said, you’ve already heard me talk about my feedback loop like I would be making music as a way of bouncing off the wall so I could hear myself and see myself because it’s difficult, right? But at the same time, I don’t particularly like to play unless I’m preparing for a performance. Some people I know will sit in front of a piano and just jam and play jazz or all that. I’m a highly studied jazz musician. I know how to do lots of things on the piano, but I will not sit and play. I don’t enjoy just sitting and playing and listening to myself. I did for a little while when I was maybe 18, 19, but after a while, I don’t do that anymore. On the other hand, I will compose, you know.
Derek Sivers
Okay. That’s because I was going to say, don’t you want to explore ideas? Don’t you ever say like, “Hmm, what would it be like if I combine this with that?”
Adam
What happens to me is usually I’ll either get an idea or a dream of some kind, a seed of some kind, and then it becomes a problem for me to solve.
Derek Sivers
Yes. So well put. Thank you for saying that.
Adam
Well I learned that my primary way of thinking is problem solving. And so for me to write a piece of music is to pose a problem to myself in music and to solve that problem in the piece of music. Yeah. And that’s what gets me going. That’s what gets me finishing a piece, you know, like, I’ve got to solve this problem. This piece has got to hold together. It’s got to satisfy me. And hopefully I’ll be thinking the way other people are thinking and it’s got to satisfy them. And as I’ve gotten better, I think I’ve gotten better at writing pieces that do satisfy other people. In the beginning, I was solving problems and I was satisfied, but they weren’t listenable because they were just, you know, satisfying to me. As the craft has improved, I’ve been thinking more about now, the problem has expanded to what will other people think of this. And that’s fun.
Derek Sivers
Where do you live?
Adam
Atlanta, Georgia.
Derek Sivers
How long have you been there?
Adam
My whole life.
Derek Sivers
Okay, why don’t you have a southern accent?
Adam
Well, I mean, the truth is that Atlanta has as long as I’ve been around and I’m 55 and I’ve been here. The Atlanta accent has always been a washed out. It’s been sort of a neutral accent. There are people in Atlanta with thicker accents, but the further out you go, the more they are pronounced. That’s it. It’s a metropolitan area that’s why.
Derek Sivers
Okay. You know, I grew up in Chicago where people really did talk like this. And, you know, I didn’t even realize it until I left. And then I go back and I hear people from where I grew up and I’m like, “Wow, I wonder if I ever talked like that.” And I think that’s in the city, too. Anyway, what’s my point? Oh, the act of seeing yourself through strangers eyes. I think doing it in life is related to doing it in our art, right? Like my distracting metaphor I used of AI a few days ago like, oops, I’m really glad I saw myself through others eyes, because in my eyes that was a beautiful metaphor. And everybody else’s eyes it was too distracting. There might be something you’re doing musically that’s like, all right. Yeah. You know, you and I were trained musicians, like, you understand what’s going on harmonically here and why it’s badass to somebody else they could just go like, “Huh? It’s kind of noisy.” You know? They don’t know Gary Burton, you know, the vibraphonist Gary Burton?
Adam
Sure.
Derek Sivers
While I was at Berklee, he said, ‘To most people, listening to music is like a cat in the window watching cars go by.” He said, “We’re like mechanics. We see a car go by and we’re like, ‘Oh, that’s a V6 engine. That’s a new hybrid.’” He said, “For a cat, they just go like, well, ‘That one’s blue. Now that one’s loud. Yeah, that one was fast.’” That’s what music is for most people. Cars going by.
Adam
Yeah I’m in the Chili’s and you know, I’m listening to the music that’s playing over the last, like, “Oh, yeah, that was a hit in 1973.” And people are like, “We’re not talking about that. What’s wrong with you?”
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Once you’re too trained as a musician, there’s no such thing as background music. Everything that’s on in the background, I’m analyzing it harmonically. I’m thinking, “Oh, whoa. They just changed key there. Interesting choice. Okay. All right. Oh, I see what they’re doing production wise there. Interesting. Rolling the treble off the high hat to get the hum. All right, reverb on the snare, but not the kick.” And people are having a conversation about, you know, what they did yesterday, and I’m lost because there’s fucking background music on. Yeah, right.
Adam
No such thing.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, yeah.
Adam
Well, you might find this interesting, having gotten to a place in my life where I feel relatively whole and sane and healthy, I am now leaving the inside and going out, and I’m working specifically on money things. And that is in particular, I’m now trying to think about how people think about what I’m saying and doing. But the art isn’t there. It’s purely marketing. Marketing is like music without the music. I’m seeing myself through other people’s eyes, but I don’t get art to do it. I hadn’t thought of it that way. But now that we talk, this is how I’m thinking about it. It’s like, this is really what I have to do. This is my marketing struggle. I am seeing myself through other people’s eyes, just like I did with my art. But I don’t get the art, you know? And that’s perhaps where the struggle has been all this time.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. It’s so hard to put yourself into the frame of mind of a cat in the window. Or to me, when I moved to Singapore for two and a half years, I initially got there thinking that everyone was wrong, that they’d say things like, “Oh, I wanted to do music, but my parents said I had to be an engineer, so I’m an engineer.” I’m like, “No, you have to follow your dreams. That’s wrong.” And it took me a while to realize that no, I’m coming at that from a very American point of view in which my value system says that’s wrong, but my value system is not correct. It’s just off on the far edge of things. The Singaporean mind view is also correct. And it took me a long time to see that. And then, yeah, I think it continues to be hard to wonder what I must seem like to other people. Well, even just as a person, you know, let alone like my writing. But even just like me, how the hell do I come across to other people? I have no idea. Yeah. Weird.
Adam
Well, I’ve been trying to tell you. I mean, gosh, you come across kind of Buddha like, in some sense. Yeah, but I don’t know if that’s what you want. I mean, that’s how you present yourself in a way. It’s not arrogant. But it is somebody who knows stuff, has illuminations and wants to share them. So I mean, it really does have a sense of you sitting on a hill sharing things. That’s how I see you, in a way. You know and that must be very odd for you to hear. But I mean, we’re talking about 25 years of me experiencing you this way, reading your blog. Thinking about that Derek guy who he answers my emails. Does he know me? I have no idea. But he always answers my emails. It’s like you pray to somebody and he answers your emails.
Derek Sivers
I mean, okay. The sitting on the hill like I’ve got it all figured out thing. May not be dead on, but I guess what I am doing is like I spent hours and hours a day like in my journal. Now that’s a straight up fucking privilege. The fact that when I sold CD Baby. It wasn’t until a visa border guy told me that I was retired that I had to realize I was retired. I was trying to enter the UK and I wasn’t sure how long I was going to stay. You know, a few weeks, few months, I’m not sure yet. And he said, “What do you do for a living?” And I was just really ambiguous. I was like, “Whatever this and that, I don’t know.” And I said, “Come on, just stamp it. Let me in.” And he finally said, “All right, look mate, it sounds to me like you’re coming here to take a job and you’re being cagey about it. So unless you can prove to me that you’re not coming here to take a job, I’m not going to let you in.”
Derek Sivers
I was like, “All right, all right. It’s embarrassing, but I sold my company for $22 million. You can search the web and see it’s all out there. I’m not coming to take a job.” And he goes stamp, stamp. He said, “Why didn’t you just admit you retired? From now on, just just make it easy for everyone. Just admit you’re retired.”
Adam
And you were how old?
Derek Sivers
Yeah. 36 I was like, “Thank you sir.” I was like, oh, admit you’re retired. So anyway, that’s a crazy stroke of luck. I won the lottery and but because of that I spend a ton of time just thinking about life and how it works and how we are and how this all works. And then when I come up with something that I think is really helpful for me, then I try to communicate it in a way that other people could use it too. So yeah, maybe that is like the guy on the mountaintop sharing--
Adam
That is how it feels. But you’re not the only one of course. I mean, lots of people are doing this. How do I see you as different? Because these people are littered across the landscape. Some are successful, some are just people who think they have something to say, and they’re terrible at it. But usually I can’t think of a time when what you said wasn’t useful. Like I said, the conciseness of it is the nutshell. You know, it doesn’t take long to read. You want to know what I think, that’s fun. I mean, you felt like a friend really, all this time. That’s nice.
Derek Sivers
Good. We’ve been emailing for a very long time.
Adam
We have. I wasn’t sure to the extent that you remembered that because you answer all of your emails. Well, you say, of course. Yeah. You answer thousands of emails a month, right?
Derek Sivers
I mean, it doesn’t feel like that many to me. Also, it helps that at least for the last 12 years, I’ve been living in a very low stimulation environment. I live in New Zealand, which is like Vermont. You know, I’m very remote from the rest of the world. And so I love my email inbox. I love these human connections. There are more people in my inbox than there are in my neighborhood, you know? Yeah. And I love that this is my connection to the world. So I give it my full attention.
Adam
Yeah. And you’ve always given my emails your full attention, which is, again, very gratifying. I mean, I’ve asked you some serious questions over the years, and you have never shied away from them. One time you told me what you focus on is what gets bigger. And I’m still contemplating that, you know?
Derek Sivers
Cool. Way back near the beginning of the call, you said that you’re working through some shit now. Yeah. And I said, can we come back to that? And you said yes. So can you tell me what?
Adam
Well, I started to I mean, it’s really the marketing thing.
Derek Sivers
Oh okay.
Adam
I mean, I’m hugely prolific, freakishly prolific, books and songs and essays and poems and blah, blah. I mean, just when I die, nobody’s going to want to come near my collected works because it’s just too much. But I haven’t made any money off of that stuff. Really. It’s been a miserable experience trying to get it to people, and I have tried very hard. You know, in terms of publishing books, doing the covers right, entering books in contests, putting songs on. I have album 9 or 10 albums out, you know, sharing them, making contacts with people trying to sell songs, you know, getting joining taxi. I mean, I’ve really tried, but there has been something missing always in my efforts. Perhaps it was a-- I mean, I’ve been fortunate financially so that I’ve never been at a risk of starving, ever. I’ve always had some money to live on and fall back on. So I’ve always been somewhat secure. So that make it or break it thing has never been a part of my life. It’s coming to that point now where my children and my debts are like knocking on my door, saying, if you don’t get your shit together, there’s going to be a crisis. It’s time. Figure out what’s going on. So this is what I’m doing now. I am trying to learn how to to sell myself, you know, to sell what I do, to have relationships with people where they pay me for my value. That’s the best way to put it. I’m not asking them to give me money for nothing. I’m asking to be paid for what I do, you know, to be valued, essentially.
Derek Sivers
Well, okay, that was wonderfully put. Thank you. Yeah, that’s a huge challenge. It’s the struggle of what’s useful to others or what’s valuable to others is not always what’s valuable to us. So it’s tough finding that intersection, that some of what you create is for you. You want to create it, you like it. It doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks, you love it. Then some of what you create is for others. And ideally then it’s tough finding that intersection of finding the stuff that you like to create that is worth somebody opening their wallet for.
Adam
Yeah. I’m in a group I think it’s called 20 bucks to 50K on Facebook. And it’s basically a self publishing group. I’ve been self publishing books since before there was print on demand. I actually created a print book and was selling it in Barnes and Nobles. This is 30 years ago. So I’ve been on the self-publishing train forever. But I’ve never made a lot of money at it. Just a little here and there. These are people that basically figured out how to make lots of money self publishing books and what they do is they write 40 or 50 books a year and they’re all in a series and people buy them because they’re interested in their books. And I’m like beating myself up because I’m not going to do that. I could, I have the writing skills to write these books. And I used to tell my wife, but they’re bad books, and she got all mad at me. She said, “They’re not bad books.” And she’s right. They’re not, because nobody’s going to read a bad book. What they are is good books. But I don’t want to write good books. I want to write great books. I have to write books that I think are the best I can do. And that takes time. You know, that’s me going back and combing it again and again and again and that’s where I can’t do what those people do. And so that’s the difficulty I’m finding. I’m always in I really--
Adam
Care about what I’m putting out there.
Derek Sivers
Right.
Derek Sivers
Oh, you said it just as I was thinking it. I was in my head. I was like, it’s the caring. And then you said, care. Yeah, sometimes caring too much can be a hindrance that some of these people even, let’s say, real estate developers, they’re just like bucket build a bunch of houses, just, you know, make them the minimum to code and get them done, get them sold. Those people will make a lot of money. Whereas somebody is like, “I want to make the most beautiful house.” It’s like, all right, well, you might make it for $2 million and sell it for $1 million. Yeah, lose a ton of money, but boy you made a beautiful house. And then it’s tough finding that intersection to be the Frank Lloyd Wright that makes beautiful houses that people are willing to pay a mint for. But yeah, I know a dear friend of mine also one of my best friends is one of those Kindle book writers. She’s a young woman from Romania. Oh, God. Dude. Classic. You talked about the privilege earlier. She and I talk about this exact thing, she grew up in, like, fucking nothing in Romania. And, like, abusive dad, alcoholic mom. She left home at 13, walked across the border to Hungary and found a nunnery that would take her in and let her live there for free because she basically had no valid parents and then saved her money, like, put herself through school and at the age of 19, realized she could write Kindle books.
Derek Sivers
She met somebody that was like making $1 million selling Kindle books, even though he had no business doing so. You know what I mean? Like, he was no genius, but he just figured out the formula on how to do the Amazon advertising and see what people are looking for. So she met this guy. They dated for a while. He showed her the ropes, and she’s just made $1 million now. She just showed me her Amazon royalty statement showing her collected. And I was like, “Whoa, $1 million. Dude, you’re making way more money than me.” And then I saw that it’s like, number of books. 75. I was like, “Wow, you’ve written 75 books.” It’s amazing. And she’s 29, something like that. And it just cranks them out and has a system using Amazon ads to see what people are searching for. And by the way, I should say all this in past tense. Now that she’s made $1 million, she’s focusing entirely on a long fiction work that she’s really excited about that’s making no money at all. But she’s got enough savings. You know, that’s what.
Adam
My grandma always told me I needed to do that. She’s like, “You can write whatever you want after you’ve made some money.”
Derek Sivers
Right. But then, no, it is the struggle, though, isn’t it? There are some-- you mentioned Paul Simon earlier. Paul Simon tried to make the best album he could with Graceland, and it worked, and people recognized that it was a great album and a ton of people bought it. And there are many things like that. I mean, there’s so much precedent. I mean, come on, so much precedent for people who make something great. And that’s why it sells well. Great movies.
Adam
The opposite is so true. Do you know a band called The Producers? Have you ever heard of The Producers?
Derek Sivers
No.
Adam
Yeah, it’s the sad thing. Okay, I’m going to tell you that without a doubt, The Producers first album is one of the finest records ever created. It’s just a beautiful piece of 80s pop. It’s flawless. It’s better than anything the cars ever put.
Derek Sivers
Wait a minute. Wait a minute. 80s pop producers. Hold on. This is sounding more familiar. Can you tell me anything more that would ring a bell about them?
Adam
Tom Werman produced them and they had a few hits like “What’s He Got that I Ain’t Got?” *Singing* “What’s, he got that I ain’t got.”
Derek Sivers
This is sounding more familiar now. Wow.
Adam
I found these people because I interviewed Tom Werman and spoke with him several times. And he describes The Producers as the saddest thing in his life because basically this is a band that they just had it all. This band produced this beautiful first record and a really good second record. But then they fell in the cracks in the industry and I’ve gone on a bender and just listened to hundreds and hundreds of records by hundreds of artists. And I would say that, you know, 80% of them are really good, and some of them are top notch, and you’ve never heard of them. And it’s a killer, you know, it’s a killer.
Derek Sivers
So imagine this. I’m 20 years old. I just graduated Berklee College of Music. I moved to New York City ready to be a successful musician. And I get a job at the entry level, tape room guy at Warner Chappell Music Publishing, which the main office was in LA. So the New York City office was right there in Rockefeller Center. And it was just like 13 people. And so the music library in New York was this huge room with every piece of music that Warner Chappell Music Publishing owned. And that was my room. I was the guy, that was my room. And so anybody needed anything, any piece of music, a copy of anything, they got it from me. Any new music came in. Well, all the new music that came in every week went to me for archiving. And so dude, I saw thousands of brilliant albums. That were not just brilliant, but like they got signed, like they had the record release party, they had the celebration party that they got signed to Atlantic Records or Warner or whatever. And there was the album and not just the album, thousands of these albums that I’d never heard of. And I was, you know, very well versed in the world of music. I’d never heard of these people. And there was one in particular. It was actually Wendy and Lisa who used to be with Prince’s band. Made a great record around 1990 called Eroica E-r-o-i-c-a. I loved that record. Genius, a brilliant arrangements, great songwriting, and like, nobody bought it, you know, same thing.
Derek Sivers
And then every now and then, it would happen. Check this out, I remember in yeah, 1991, I was working at Warner Chappell Music Publishing and two new artists came our way. They had done video demos. One was these three girls from Atlanta that were doing a hip hop group, and they had these three loud personalities, like one was over the top, crazy kooky. One was doing the sexy thing, and the little and one was just doing the, like, hard ass thing. And I was like, “Oh, man, this is great. They’ve got so much personality. This is wonderful.” Everybody at Warner Chappell was like, “Nah, no, don’t hear it. No, not a hit.” So that was TLC. And then I was like, “See, I knew they had something.” And then the other one was this piano player with this giant raging red hair doing this like little sensitive songs on piano with these weird, poetic lyrics. And again Warner Chappell, like the other people in my office are like, “Nah, don’t hear it pass.” And that was Tori Amos. So it was nice to see that every now and then, like somebody that sometimes you can recognize something brilliant and the world does respond to it, but other times you see something or you hear something wonderful and brilliant and the world does not respond to it. And you’re just like, yeah, well.
Adam
Tori Amos worked way-- like you find out when you look at some of these people, just like how many years, sometimes decades before. You know, like with Bruce Springsteen, I always thought for him, it all began with his first record, but he was touring, you know, and all up and down the East Coast with a band for ten, 15 years before that. You know and Tori Amos also the same thing, like 2 or 3 albums before that, you know, these people kill themselves to get that chance. And if they’re lucky, they get it. And there is some luck involved. And it’s heartbreaking. You know.
Derek Sivers
Maybe it’s just that the thing you’re talking about, your main mission now is the Serenity Prayer. The things that I can control, affect. And the wisdom to know the difference.
Adam
Yes, yes.
Derek Sivers
Sometimes how the world perceives you is just out of your control. It can be timing, luck. But on the other hand, it can also be crafted that I think there can be an art to crafting a public persona. And I think some postmodern-- do we call them that? Artists like Andy Warhol, David Bowie, even Miles Davis crafted their public persona as part of their art. They were not just natural, they weren’t just being who they were. Right? They crafted the way that they came across to the world as part of their art. It’s like the framer on the painting or it’s the presentation. That’s what I love about Brian Eno. Brian Eno talks about this shit. Actually you know what you might like, I never really promote it much, but it’s just a free thing I made back in 1999. musicthoughts.com so m-u-s-i-c-t-h-o-u-g-h-t-s.com
Adam
Still there. Yeah.
Derek Sivers
Is a free website that I put as a collection of all of the most inspiring quotes I had ever heard about music, and a lot of them were from Brian Eno. He was the main inspiration that I read a lot of Brian Eno interviews, and he gets really wonderfully philosophical about music and art and how the way that you present your art to the world is part of the art. He said, “Just imagine a painting that is at the bottom of a river, and the only way you can see it is to put on a snorkel and a mask and go down there. That’s an artistic statement that is not just the same painting that’s hanging on a brick wall.” So how you present your art to the world is part of the art. And it sounds like that’s the big challenge for you now, is to focus on that more meta level of how you’re presenting yourself to the world. So that it’s almost to find out what’s the disconnect here? Why am I working so hard on things? Why am I valuing this so much more than other people are? Or how can I get them to see it in such a light that they value it as much as I do?
Adam
I agree, and of course there’s a piece of that where you involve other people. I’m going to see Adam Ant, if you can believe that in just about 3 or 4 weeks and I liked his 2 or 3 hits. But when I realized he was coming to town and that he’s made a big comeback and that he was bipolar and he’s made a big recovery, I’m like, I need to learn about him. So I listened to all his albums, watched a bunch of interviews with him. Fascinating, fascinating guy. Here’s a guy that he really had the stuff to do, whatever he wanted. But his bipolar was such a weight that it really dragged him down. It really made it impossible. So all the manic energy that allowed him to do everything, also the depressive energy stopped him and got him into trouble. But he said in an interview that he got to hang out with Michael Jackson and he asked Michael Jackson, you know, because he was he was trying to do the same thing as Michael Jackson, craft this really amazing image dance. You know, all this. And he said to Michael, “How do you do it?” And Michael said, “I only work with the best.”
Adam
Simple. But if you think about Michael Jackson. Yeah, right. That’s it. You know, he just worked with the best. He didn’t craft that image himself. He had the best people in the world doing that for him. And you don’t see those people, you know? I don’t know who Bowie had working for him. Maybe Bowie did that himself. He could have. He’s he’s got that kind of brain. But most of these people have people doing that for them because they can’t. They can’t see themselves. Can you forgive me for bringing up Springsteen again? I think I’ve mentioned this in a couple of interviews. Springsteen was with Terry Gross on Fresh Air, and Terry Gross asked him, “What is it like to be up on stage and people want to be that guy up on stage?” And Springsteen said, “A lot of times I wanted to be that guy.” And then I was like, “Oh, that’s not him as a person.” This thing he’s created is a thing that he’s created and he’s got people helping him create that, you know? And I don’t take that for granted anymore. But I’m not going to spend $50,000 to hire somebody to do that for me right now.
Derek Sivers
No, but we can get started ourselves. You can get started yourself. I could get started on myself, on this separation between authenticity and consideration.
Adam
Well put.
Derek Sivers
Thank you. Authenticity. A lot of people think it’s important to just be who you are naturally, but I think in a way that’s inconsiderate. Because that’s not what the audience wants.
Adam
No. Right.
Derek Sivers
I learned this with my first gig with the circus. When I was 18 years old, the circus hired me to be a musician in the circus. But it was a small little circus. It was basically a performing troupe of, like six people that would go around New England. So they said the previous musician just quit, and we’d like you to, uh, do the gig. And so I was just thrilled to get this job as a musician. But then after a week or two, they said, “Hey, so the previous musician used to go out at the beginning and sing the theme song and kind of get everybody in their seats and welcome them, and could you do this?” And I said, yeah, of course. All right, “The previous musician used to close the show with a big dancing number with this and get everybody up and jumping around. Can you do that?” And this is like, you know, one week at a time, they were adding these responsibilities and then they said, “So the previous musician used to go out in between every act and kind of like, get everybody ready for the next act and introduce it.” And eventually it became clear that I’m the ringleader. I’m the MC. If you were to come see the show, you would have thought it was my circus. And I was 18 years old, and I was being authentic. And I was terrible because you don’t put an authentic 18 year old in charge of a circus, that people are there to be entertained.
Derek Sivers
And so my boss at the circus just kept pushing me like, “No, be more sensational.” Because I’d go up there like, “Hey, everybody. So yeah, everybody, get in your seats and guess we’re going to begin pretty soon. Yep. Okay. Cool. All right, well, show is going to start soon. Sit down.” You know, and that was me being authentic, right. And they said “No, no, no, come on, just be more sensational.” So finally, after a few weeks of them saying this, I went out angry. I was like, I’ll show them. I’m gonna go so over the top that I’m gonna ridicule their request. And I went out. Just this cheesy persona, “Ladies and gentlemen, what you’re about to see is the most amazing show. We are going to have. And the elephants are gonna be coming out dancing because you might see a parachute with a snakes coming out, and the monster is about to be in three minutes. Take your seats now.” And I went backstage like, “There, is that what you wanted?” And they were like, “Yes, finally. Thank you.” I was like, “Oh, really?You actually want me to do that?” They’re like, “Yes, that was it. You nailed it. Oh my God, that was great.” So yeah, for the next ten years, I was the ringleader mc of this circus where I put on that persona.
Adam
So that didn’t disgust you. You got it. And you did it.
Derek Sivers
Oh, yeah. I mean, because then you realize it’s all just a silly game, you know? And I think that anybody in entertainment has to kind of see that delineation between their true self and like putting on the monkey suit because that’s what the audience needs. I wonder that with those things like the Oscars, you know, like, wouldn’t it be hard to not laugh at yourself if you were dressed up, if you were at the Oscars and you had to dress up in the fancy thing and then stand there like this and that as they took your pictures on the red carpet? I would just be like, “Oh, just never mind, I’ll just skip the whole thing.” But no, that’s part of the job. You just go do it. You play the part, you act like a movie star for 10s of the photos and then you move on. It’s part of the gig.
Adam
Was that your first lesson in useful, but not true?
Derek Sivers
Ooh. I don’t know, maybe. I feel like “Useful Not True” is a theme in between what I’ve been saying and thinking for years. You’ve seen me post things in the past, like even ten years ago, I would say things like, “I’m going to assume that men and women are the same. I know they’re not the same, but believing it helps counteract my bias of assuming that men and women are more different than they are. So to help counterbalance my bias, I’m going to assume that men and women are the same.” And there’s always somebody in the comments or the email that replies like, “But that’s not true. They’re not the same. They’re different.” I’m like, “I don’t care that it’s not true. I’m choosing to believe it because it’s useful for me. Not because it’s true.” Like we don’t choose our beliefs because they’re true. Because what’s objectively true anyway, like I said, okay, I clap my hands. That’s true. Everything else that people can tell you, you know, “Murder is bad. It’s important to be loyal to your country. This person, this public figure, is a bad person, and that public figure is a good person.” None of it’s true. It’s all just a perspective. It’s a viewpoint. I don’t believe in, you know, nothing of the mind is true. So, anyway, yeah, I choose beliefs because of the effect it has on my actions. Going back to what we said much earlier, it’s like, I just think there’s no point in beliefs unless they affect your actions. So when you were saying that it’s frustrating to have all these people saying like, “Hey man, you just need a better mindset.” That it’s pointless unless it turns into the actually better actions.
Adam
How does this work into this when you have-- I’m sure you’ve experienced this people lying to you because or maybe they don’t think they’re lying, but they’re telling you that they’re going to do something that you need. Yeah, “I’m going to come see your show.” And they’re not going to come see your show. That’s neither useful nor true. Or is it is it useful in any way?
Derek Sivers
Here’s my take on it. I lived in New York City for ten years. And then I moved to LA. And I remember everybody in New York telling me how fake people in LA were. So I moved to LA during the peak of CD Baby. It was 2002 and CD Baby was toast of the town. It was a great time for me to move there, but I got a crash course in flaky LA culture. And here’s my take on it is, when somebody tells you that they’re going to be at your show, they mean it. They absolutely optimistically think that they will be there. I was like, “Yeah, sounds great. All right. Thursday night, 8:00. See you then. Cool.” They actually in that moment it’s sincere. They really think they’ll be there. And then in the eight days leading up to it, they get other people asking them to do things. And then it’s Thursday. They sit in traffic for an hour. They get home at 6:30. And they see this thing that says, “Go to Adam’s show at eight.” And they’re like, “Ah, I’m tired.” And they’re just like, “Maybe he won’t notice.” And so they flake. But they weren’t lying. I think they’re just the most optimistic people on earth. I think that America is an optimistic country and California is the most optimistic part of the country. And so that’s why I encountered so many people optimistically saying they would be there to help you, saying they’d show up at your show, saying they’re going to buy your thing or whatever, saying they’re going to introduce you to this person, and then it never happens. They’re not lying. They really just were optimistic, too optimistic.
Adam
I would assume it’s useful to them to be optimistic.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Well, I mean, hell, for an industry town like that, that thrives on its creative output. Yeah, it’s back to that belief, when you’re making something, when you’re working hard to create something, it really helps to have a belief that people are going to like it. If you didn’t believe that. You probably just wouldn’t stick it out to do anything or make it great. You have to believe that people are going to like it. So yeah, optimism is necessary.
Adam
Oh, I see, I see. Because everybody over there is a creator. Everybody is selling something. So even though they’re responding to you there, it’s that optimistic mindset in them that’s interesting. That’s very interesting. I’m glad you told me that. That gives me a little compassion for these people. It’s really helpful.
Derek Sivers
That’s how I explained it to my New York friends. They were like, “How could you move there?” They’re, you know, like, oh, look, you gotta understand-- once I got to know them, I realized that. But then, you know, I had to explain to my LA friends why New York people are so harsh. I’m like, “No, they think they’re doing you a favor by telling you the raw truth. It’s a bonding thing they want to show you that they’re a real friend by not being fake and saying, ‘Great, you’re selling donut holes. Sounds like a great idea. It’s like, no, that’s a shitty idea. A friend of mine tried to sell donut holes. It it bombed. You’re gonna lose a ton of money. Don’t do it. It’s a stupid idea. Nobody’s gonna like it.’ They’re trying to help you by saying this.” They’re like, “Yeah, but they’re just killing my buzz, man. I just want to be excited about this thing. And they’re just shooting it down.” I’m like, “Yeah. They believe they’re doing the right thing.”
Adam
The way I heard it expressed was, “New Yorkers are kind, but not nice. And Californians are nice but not kind.”
Derek Sivers
Reverse. Wasn’t it the opposite of that?
Adam
No. Because you’re being kind when you’re telling somebody the truth.
Derek Sivers
Oh, okay. Interesting. Oh, nice. Is the surface. Kind is the under the surface okay.
Adam
I think I just lost all my New York subscribers, but that’s okay.
Derek Sivers
Hey, I think it’s really healthy. Do you remember that there was that song called Wear Sunscreen?
Adam
Oh, yeah. It was like. Absolutely.
Derek Sivers
It’s supposed to be like Kurt Vonnegut talking. Just talking over a beat.
Adam
Always wear sunscreen.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. And the joke is, it was actually written by a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times. It was a woman, but somebody misattributed it to Kurt Vonnegut. And then a dance music producer hired a guy that sounded like Kurt Vonnegut to speak it over a dance beat.
Adam
That was a hit it was on the radio a lot.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, yeah. But my favorite line from it was, where they said, like, what’s the one we’re just talking about? They said, “Live in New York, but but leave before you get too hard and live in California, but leave before you get too soft.” Something like that.
Adam
That’s exactly what it was. I remember that very much, because I’ve. I’ve never moved and lived anywhere except Atlanta and Ohio. So I’m always like, should I have tried living in New York? Should I have tried living in LA, I wonder?
Derek Sivers
You don’t actually have to live there, but I think it’s good to experience a bit, you know.
Adam
I’ve definitely been to both places.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. So, yeah, probably enough.
Adam
Well, you may be tired. It’s been a really great conversation, I don’t know.
Derek Sivers
Yeah. Thanks for this.
Adam
Yeah.
Derek Sivers
It’s fun, no preset structure. Two guys that love music and love ideas riffing on life.
Adam
Yeah, well, thank you for being willing to do this. It’s really. I’ve been wanting to talk to you for a very long time.
Derek Sivers
I feel like we have been talking for a long time. But you’re right. It’s just like, we didn’t really have this kind of voice and face connection, so nice to have a real two way. But anybody listening to this, you know, if you listen to the end of this thing, go to my website. Like Adam said, I answer my email and I enjoy it, as I said earlier. So yeah, I really like it when--
Adam
What is that site? Because I didn’t give it in the intro.
Derek Sivers
It’s just my last name with a dot in it. So sive.rs Or just search the web, you know. But everything is on my website. I don’t really do the socials. I’ve just got my own website and that’s enough for me. I don’t need to post on platforms, so go to my website. There’s a big link to email me. It goes to my eyes only. I answer everybody.
Adam
He does,
Derek Sivers
I enjoy it. Dude, I got an email yesterday from a guy in Gaza. They grew up in Gaza that is a fan of my work and emailed me. I’m like, “Oh my God, we got something to talk about, please.” You know, I had so many questions for him. And I hear from like a guitar builder in Slovenia and I hear from whatever actors in Beijing, I love my inbox. It’s so much fun. So I really like when people introduce themselves and say hello.
Adam
Well, the next time I send you an email, I’ll know that you actually know who I am. And that that makes me happy.
Derek Sivers
Yeah, yeah, I think I know you by now.
Adam
It’s been a long time. Well, cool. If you ever want to do this again, let me know. We can do this again.
Derek Sivers
Thanks Adam. Thanks for having me.
Adam
You bet. See you later.