Male: This isn't your average business podcast and he's ...files.stansberryradio.com/files/Kamal Ravikant Transcript... · Page 3 of 35 Kamal Ravikant: Huh? James Altucher: – they

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Male: This isn't your average business podcast and he's not your average host. This is the James Altucher Show on the Stansberry Radio Network.

James Altucher: This is James Altucher at the James Altucher Show, and I'm

welcoming Kamal Ravikant. Kamal, welcome to the show. Kamal Ravikant: Thanks, James. Really happy to be here. James Altucher: Kamal, I don't even know how to introduce you. You've done so

many different things, and we talk about – we keep running into each other all over the country, whether it's venture capital stuff, personal improvement stuff, Internet marketing, whatever. You're involved in everything.

Kamal Ravikant: Yeah, or maybe I'm just talking here, right [Laughs]? James Altucher: Yes, it's true. So you're the author of "Love Yourself", "Live Your

Truth". You're a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, you're a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, you do all sorts of things with Internet marketing, so I want to talk about all of these things because, really, Kamal, the whole basis of this podcast is I want people to get the sense and the reality that they can free themselves from whatever's holding them back, whether it's a job or fears about their education or fears about whatever, relationships. And you've been through it all and lived to tell the tale, so I'm just gonna start asking questions, and you go for it.

Kamal Ravikant: Yeah, sure. And actually, one of the things is I was in the army.

It's like I mention it because I'm very proud of that fact and also, like, it just kinda shows – I'm in such a different place in my life than when I was in the army, but it just goes to show you how life – you can just end up anywhere you want and utilize the experience that you had even when you were 18 now at 42.

James Altucher: Okay. Let's start with that because why the heck did you go in the

army? You were eighteen years old, you could probably get into some school or whatever. Why'd you go into the army?

Kamal Ravikant: I was actually in a state school in Upstate New York for a year and

it was like 16,000 people, everyone was from Long Island, and all they did was drink, and it was 500 people in my classes, and I would never go to class, would just drink and get AIDS, and I was bored out of my mind.

James Altucher: I can't stand that whole getting AIDS thing.


Kamal Ravikant: Yeah [Laughs]. James Altucher: That's such a drag to get AIDS. Kamal Ravikant: Yeah [Laughs]. So I was just bored and I just wanted to be

challenged, and I was eighteen, like, just – and that seemed like the best way for me to be challenged. I just walked in the recruiter's office and he showed me photos of which – how bad it actually could be, and I was like, "Okay, this sounds right." And also I was – having being – I was born in India, but raised in the U.S., but being an immigrant and being a young immigrant, you feel a certain level of patriotism and, like, gratitude to your country that you want to pay back. And so I did that as well. So actually left school and joined the army.

James Altucher: Well, and what – Kamal Ravikant: ______ [Crosstalk]. James Altucher: – did you start out as, a private? Kamal Ravikant: Yeah. I did enlisted. I was _____ at Fort Benning, which is

infantry. I took the ASVAB, and that's a special test they determine what specialty you can choose, and I scored, like, 98 out of 99 percentile, so I could have chosen anything, and I chose the one that the people who basically fail the ASVAB _____, infantry, which is what is really the military's about, the soldier. And I tell you that was, like – it was a great training in life at eighteen to be, like – being taught, like, people shooting at lead and how to lead a team of men under stress like that. You carry that with you for the rest of your life.

James Altucher: Yeah, and this wasn't, like – even though this was during the –

kind of the end of the Cold War, I was sure it was probably not too many years after the Gulf War. So there was potentially a reality of going to war.

Kamal Ravikant: Mm-hmm. Yeah, but you don't really think too much about that

when you're eighteen, honestly. There's a reason why the – James Altucher: Which I think is the sad thing. Kamal Ravikant: – military recruits young men. James Altucher: Like, there's so many things –


Kamal Ravikant: Huh? James Altucher: – they send eighteen-year-olds too, whether it's college or war – Kamal Ravikant: Yeah. James Altucher: – that 40-year-olds would not go to. Like, I would never go – Kamal Ravikant: No way. James Altucher: – to college, and I would never go to war. Kamal Ravikant: True [Laughs]. I think both you and I spend our time talking to

people that are doing both. Yeah [Laughs]. James Altucher: Exactly. And yet people act like, "Oh, no, it's patriotic to join the

army. These people are defending you." I'm fine with that, but I have – whenever I put back the argument, "Okay, well, you're allowed to volunteer too and you're 45 years old", nobody ever says, "Okay, yeah, I'll volunteer instead of my child."

Kamal Ravikant: Yeah. James Altucher: So I – Kamal Ravikant: ______ [crosstalk] your actions, right? James Altucher: – applaud you for joining. Like, I think it's a great thing that you

joined, but I just don't see many 50-year-olds joining. Kamal Ravikant: No, but I recommend it. In fact, these days, people will ask me,

"______ eighteen-year-olds." And I'll say, "Listen, honestly, especially given the state of what'll happen, where you'll be sent, what might happen to you in military, you're better off just grabbing a backpack and a taking a couple thousand dollars and go to a country where you don't speak the language for a few months. You will grow just as much as you have in the military." It's the level of being thrown in situations where you're just not comfortable. Every day you're being challenged, which is what the military's really about.

James Altucher: I would say, too, that's a good choice for any eighteen-year-old,

even those eighteen-year-olds who are trying to decide whether or not to go to college. And I've talked about this on other podcasts, and you and I have talked about it quite a bit, but just in general,


getting life experience is incredibly value, as opposed to any organization or institution, which is gonna try to regiment you, which is either the army or college. But again, the one thing about the army, which I have to say and I wish I had done it, is that you get a very good workout for at least six months.

Kamal Ravikant: [Laughs] I'll tell you something interesting. I used to be very, very

undisciplined before the army, and that was part of the reason. I thought it would teach me to be disciplined because I never went to my classes and I just drank a lot, typical college freshman. And I learned something, which was in the army, they can yell at you, scream at you, and they can force you to do stuff, but in the end, you have to step up on your own and do it.

Like, I remember there was a – in boot camp your PT test by the

time you graduate, you have to score a certain amount on it. And if you score really high, peers had to call you PT stud. And I was, like, the smallest guy in my unit. Like, I was, like, the only brown guy in the – I think in the U.S. army at the time. This was 1990. At least _______. And so I had a bit to prove, so I kinda made a mental decision that I was gonna be a PT stud in my unit. I was gonna beat everybody's PT scores.

So I remember, like, we would come back to our barracks, like,

really exhausted and fall asleep at night, and while people would be sleeping, I'd be underneath my bunk doing pushups. There was no drill sergeant yelling at me, no one telling me to be in better shape, but it was, like, a little decision I made for myself, like, a little, like, commitment I made to myself that I was gonna be better. So I was actually doing that on my own on top of all they were making us do, and that was a great lesson for me.

James Altucher: And how many pushups would you do? Kamal Ravikant: I was able to do, I think, like, 90-something in two minutes. James Altucher: Oh, my gosh. And how many can you do right now, like, 20 or 30

years later, however many years later it is? Kamal Ravikant: Honestly, I can probably do about the same. James Altucher: I got to get in better shape. Come on. I do yoga occasionally, but

I'm not doing 90 pushups in two minutes. Kamal Ravikant: For that, I'll tell you something that changed my life. It was

meeting Arthur De Vany, the guy that has the Paleo Diet ______.


And he's an actual – he's a brilliant economist, and I got to meet and have dinner with him about five, six years ago, and he was, I think, 72 at the time. And I got to meet this man who's brilliant, really thoughtful and very Zen, very measured in his thinking. So I've always known I'll get better mentally and emotionally as I age, but I got to – but this man is in such amazing shape. He's, like, rippling muscles, chiseled at 72.

James Altucher: Wow. Kamal Ravikant: And I realize, "Oh, my God –" James Altucher: What does he do. Kamal Ravikant: – "I can get better as I age physically too." That completely

changed my life. I shifted my whole model of aging. James Altucher: So what does he do specifically? Kamal Ravikant: Sorry? James Altucher: What does Arthur De Vany do specifically? Kamal Ravikant: He's the one who came up with Paleo. James Altucher: So is it just Paleo or is he doing pushups every day or is he going

to the gym? Kamal Ravikant: No. James Altucher: Like, what does he – Kamal Ravikant: He actually, basically, lives what he calls the Evolutionary Fitness

lifestyle where he does brief moments of intense activity and then just leisure. Like, his workouts or are just –

James Altucher: Well, what's a – Kamal Ravikant: – like _______, very short, fifteen minutes, intense, then just

relaxing. James Altucher: Well, what might be that activity? Like, is it running or pushups or

– Kamal Ravikant: If it's running, it's sprints. There's a – if you Google him – and

there's a great photo of him sprinting at – when he was, like, 64 or


something and you would swear you're looking at a body of, like, a chiseled twenty-year-old Olympic athlete.

James Altucher: Well, how does he get chiseled? Is he lifting weights or is he

doing pushups? Kamal Ravikant: He's lifting weights and doing sprints. James Altucher: Wow. All right. Kamal Ravikant: Yeah. James Altucher: I'm gonna get started tomorrow. Tomorrow, though. Not today.

I'm a little busy today. So Kamal, let's – Kamal Ravikant: Huh? James Altucher: – I want to start going and go backwards. So right now you're a

venture capitalist in Silicon Valley and you're involved in a bunch of different companies, like, whether it's AngelList or Wanelo or lots of different companies. So what are you seeing out there? Like, everybody asks me, "Are we in an Internet bubble?" And my opinion is no, but what's your take? What's the Silicon Valley take on this?

Kamal Ravikant: Well, I'll tell you something. I was here during the first bubble. I

was working. I was helping build a company that people now know as WebMD. So I got to experience all that and I've been here since and I don't – it's not a bubble. It's blue times. It's blue times unlike anything that I've ever seen. This makes, like, the bubble back then look like child's play because of how you –

James Altucher: Well, why is that? Are you saying in bubble terms or in boom

terms? Like, I don't understand. Kamal Ravikant: I'm thinking in blue terms because bubble was the fact that it –

bubble is, like, irrational expectations when your companies – all these companies went public with negative revenues and significant burn and just pumping dump stock. Now it's like most of these companies are private, they'll never go public, they're gonna be acquired, and it's like one-man and two-men teams. What used to take, like, 80 of us to build to guys can build now.

All the infrastructure, everything is so well in place. For example,

AWS and Amazon. And also, back then, like, if you think about it, only about, like, 30,000,000 people in the U.S. were online. Now


everybody's got a Smart Phone and everybody's online. So, in fact, we're rushing to catch up to all these people who have all this demand. The demand hasn't been met. I think a bubble would be when we've exceeded the demand, and we're not even close. And there's always great innovation happening.

James Altucher: At that point – Kamal Ravikant: Sorry? James Altucher: So at that point then in 1999, you're saying we exceeded the

demand, but just in – I agree a bubble is where there's irrational expectations, but there – but the expectation that the Internet will change all communication and all commerce, that expectation was rational. It just happened to be –

Kamal Ravikant: Yeah. James Altucher: – that there was many companies trying to meet the dream, but you

have Amazon, eBay, Priceline, Apple, Yahoo!, Google, they met the dream. They were rational expectations.

Kamal Ravikant: Yeah. And now look at a lot of the companies that are coming up,

like, that are the modern-day version of ______ and that are doing great. I just met someone called ______ Rocket and that you now talked about. At that time, it was the technology was a limiting factor or the connection to the consumer. But now it's amazing. I can – you can build stuff that people in Africa in the middle of nowhere are using because they have a Smart Phone. It's absolutely mind boggling.

James Altucher: So right now you invest in companies, and what are the types of

things you look for? Kamal Ravikant: In fact, a great advisor of mine by the name of James Altucher

taught me that there's – James Altucher: Unfortunately, I don't know who he is. Kamal Ravikant: ______ [Crosstalk]. James Altucher: He's a _______ [Laughs]. Kamal Ravikant: Like, the main thing – actually, my model is a little bit different

than the rest, which is I want to be the dumbest guy at the table. So I'm fortunate to have been here long enough that I know, like,


the big players and I know people with the best track record in investing and they're friends of mine, they're people I love, people who love me. And in small markets, as you and I know, even in public markets, you have to be an insider to really have any advantage.

And so I invest with people I really – who know the stuff really

well, who's smarter than me, and I go in with them and I pick and choose out of that. So, like, my model is _______ [Crosstalk].

James Altucher: So just as an example, like, if Warren Buffet bought IBM shares,

then IBM might be a good investment. That's kind of, like, at a stock market level, the way you're investing at a venture capital level.

Kamal Ravikant: Yeah, but not just Warren Buffet. It has to be Warren Buffet and a

couple other people, plus it would have to then meet the needs of my fund.

James Altucher: Like, so you would look for, like, four or five good investors,

they're all kind of separately agreeing XYZ is a good trend, a good company, and then you would start considering that company?

Kamal Ravikant: Right. And then I would call up my friends at Google and so forth

who really know the space or whatever, the company that knows that space, and then get their real feedback on that as well.

James Altucher: And what sectors are kind of exciting to you in the Internet that

nobody knows about yet? Kamal Ravikant: That nobody knows about? Everybody knows about bitcoin, but

what's coming up – and right now I don't know if it's the time to invest 'cause no one really knows which one's gonna work, but the whole ______ block chain, which is what bitcoin is built on. That's , like, every smart person I know is so excited about because it's literally like the new Internet.

James Altucher: Well, let's explain that for a second 'cause I don't think most people

understand, actually, what bitcoin is. Like, bitcoin seems like this black box coin. Nobody really understands the software underneath it, and definitely, nobody understands what a block chain is. So I don't know if you can explain in a few sentences what a block chain is or how it works.

Kamal Ravikant: I don't know if in a few sentences I can, but I can tell you the main

thing behind it, which is a that there's no special authority. So you


can create a contract, you can create a company, you can create a currency, you can do transactions without needing _______ authority like a Visa, like a Federal Reserve. You get rid of the middleman, and it's all done through the actual underlying system that handles it.

It's almost like ________ coined it the Internet of money, but it

could be the Internet of anything. And what the Internet is, it basically allows you to communicate without a central authority.

James Altucher: Right. There's no post office – Kamal Ravikant: I think that's ______ [crosstalk] – James Altucher: – in the middle, there's no government in the middle. Kamal Ravikant: No government, no private company, no middleman. This is what

the dream of all of this was back in the bubble days. Get rid of the middleman.

James Altucher: Although, now you see things like the NSA are in the middle, but

they talk with Google – Kamal Ravikant: Yeah [Laughs]. James Altucher: – they talk to Yahoo! and so on. Kamal Ravikant: Yeah. Yeah, _______ c.

James Altucher: But with bitcoin, they can't because of the cryptography. Kamal Ravikant: Yeah, well, that's the theory. They're very smart people working

over there. But in the fact that – like, the ______, like, you don't need a Visa. Like, why should I have to go to a particular bank to be able to transact with you and give them a percentage of the fee when, like, a lot of times it doesn't really serve either of us?

James Altucher: Well, here's a great example. Kamal Ravikant: _______ [Crosstalk]. James Altucher: Here's a great example, Kamal. I'm sorry to interrupt. But let's say

– Kamal Ravikant: Sure.


James Altucher: – you're in China and you're selling me a car or you're selling me anything, even a digital product like a book. I have to send money to my bank who then sends money to the Regional Federal Reserve who then sends money to the Federal Reserve who then sends money to the Central Bank of China, and then it goes all the way down to the local bank, yours, in China. And every step of the way there's a fee.

Kamal Ravikant: Yeah. James Altucher: And all those fees added together, that's inflation. So if we can – Kamal Ravikant: Yeah. James Altucher: – wipe out all those fees by me just sending you a bitcoin because

it's cryptography, there's nobody other than me who can send you this bitcoin, like, there's no way to forge it, there's no way to fake it, it's impossible with current computers, that wipes out a huge layer of fees in the system and the global economy.

Kamal Ravikant: Yeah, and that's real innovation, and so that'll be very interesting to

see what happens here, though I wouldn't say anyone who doesn't know it to start investing in it. It's like often, you don't want to be too early [Laughs]. And as you know, in the market as well, if you try to short something that you know is just overpriced, will the market will just keep going on forever, and then when you run out of money, that's when you got to correct. ______ [crosstalk] –

James Altucher: Well, as Neval, your brother, once told me, "If you think there's a

one in a hundred chance that bitcoin will be successful, invest one-hundredth of your portfolio in bitcoin."

Kamal Ravikant: That's simple enough. James Altucher: Another thing is, though – is crypto currencies, in general, so

there's not just bitcoin, there's lots of different types of currencies based on cryptography, so if you are a picks and shovels guy, so opposed to the – let's say bitcoin's like gold. So instead of investing –

Kamal Ravikant: Right. James Altucher: – in the bitcoin, you invest in the companies that, let's say, help

people create stores for cryptographic currencies or help people create derivatives for cryptography currencies, these might be better investments than the currency itself.


Kamal Ravikant: In fact, I did invest in one, which does create the venues for crypto

currencies. Exactly. James Altucher: So not just bitcoins, but all crypto currencies? Or basically – Kamal Ravikant: Yeah. James Altucher: – have the model for crypto currencies? Kamal Ravikant: Mm-hmm. Yeah. James Altucher: So that's interesting. So bitcoin's one area to look into. And I'll

tell you where bitcoin's being used and where it's very interesting right now is Argentina because –

Kamal Ravikant: Oh. James Altucher: – Argentina currency is going to fail at some point. Everybody

knows it. So maybe that means it's not going to happen, but it seems like Argentina currency is doomed to fail. And there's such a big black market there that eventually, people are migrating more and more towards these safe, secure bitcoin currencies. And when that currency fails, it could be the case that Argentina bitcoin sort of comes online and essentially forces other countries that do business with them to switch to bitcoin. And that could – you could see that – who knows if it's one year or ten years from now. That could be the spread of the bitcoin.

Kamal Ravikant: Yeah, that could be the tipping point. It just takes one country,

right? James Altucher: Yeah, well – Kamal Ravikant: It takes one country to actually just let 'em use that for their

transactions and then it's done. And it's a great way, also, for people to move money out of countries that have restricted policies on doing so. It's always, like, a big thing where people are always trying to move money out of China and all these places where you just can't. So there's all these underground networks where you just _____ money in one place and their relative could do money in the other country ______ large chunks. And all that disappears with this.

James Altucher: I'll tell you, though, one thing, and then this is – like you say, this

is just the beginnings of bitcoin. But if somebody says – if some


listener says, "Well, how do I get bitcoin right now?", it's not that easy.

Kamal Ravikant: No, it's not. James Altucher: You can't just ______ [crosstalk] get it. Kamal Ravikant: Yeah, you can go to something like Coin Base or whatever. Like,

what happened in ______? People lock their stuff. It's still early, and when these things are early, there's gonna be a lot of dips and people come out of the woodwork saying, "See? I told you so. This is never gonna work." But that just – as you and I know, that means it's gonna work _______ [Laughs].

James Altucher: Well, Melgox failed, and bitcoin price did fall, but it still hung in

there between $400.00 and $500.00 per bitcoin, so that's not a failure.

Kamal Ravikant: Yeah, that's amazing. James Altucher: And Coin Base is backed by some pretty big venture capitalists, so

that's a little more secure. But look, we'll see what happens. So that's one sector. What's another sector that's interesting that most people don't really know about?

Kamal Ravikant: Well, my favorite tends to be, like, the intersection of online and

offline commerce. Using your phone – when I say online, like, you – now it's your phone. Using your phone to solve an offline ______. Like, in San Francisco, the taxi services is atrocious, but where I live in the neighborhood, they wouldn't come on the weekends or if they call – if you call and they would say they're coming and then a half-hour later you call them back, and they say, "Oh, the taxi driver picked up something along the way." It was horrible. So Uber started. There's a reason Uber started 'cause it was just – we were ______, we're just sick and tired of a really, like, an old antiquated system that we were dependent on.

And so Uber took off and now everybody knows about Uber, but

that concept about just let me pull out my phone and, boom, I can just order a taxi or a cab or whatever and then it shows me the person on the way and that person is rated, and I rate that person so there's customer feedback, and you know that this is not some guy that's gonna scream and yell at you or be drunk or whatever. They'll be put out in a second.


That's amazing. So that's happening with delivery. Like, one company I invest in called Ship, which does the same thing. It's Uber shipping. They come and take all my stuff and ship it and it doesn't cost me anything more than I would if I went to the post office. I love it. I never have to go –

James Altucher: Well, I don't get it. So let's say I call them. They'll just drive to my

– like UPS? Kamal Ravikant: No, it's actually an app. I pull up my app, I take all my items I'm

gonna ship, I take a photo of each item, I put in the address it's going to and then next, next, next, and then it says, "Okay, ready?" And I click ready, and it shows me, actually, the driver, the name of the driver, they're on their way, where they are on the map. It shows me they'll be here in twenty minutes. They come in twenty minutes. They take all my stuff, they ship it, they send me an email confirmation and bill my credit card. I have to do nothing beyond taking a photo and putting an address in.

James Altucher: Why isn't that like UPS? Kamal Ravikant: Well, for example, UPS is not gonna do that. I have to go to UPS.

I guess you could create an account with UPS and do that, but there's some people like myself who are not regular shippers. I just want to send packages here and there. For example, my books to friends. This is perfect.

James Altucher: Oh, that's great. Kamal Ravikant: I can then send someone a straw hat in Philadelphia who left their

hat here. I just to ship, I don't have to go to the post office. And companies like these are popping up, which are taking away the pain of going, standing in line, dealing with – trying to figure out which is the right shipping option and so forth. These guys just do it.

And there's a lot more companies like these that are solving this pain, whether it's for commerce or for health. You pull out an – you're not feeling well, you pull out your app, you put in the – and the doctors on his way and he's gonna come to your house and take care of you. Like, this is really interesting stuff that's happening.

James Altucher: So what can I do, like, now if I want to buy a – are there any stocks that I could buy to invest in like bitcoin or this Uber-like technology? Is there anything out there?


Kamal Ravikant: Stocks? James Altucher: Yeah, like, the – Kamal Ravikant: You mean in the public market? James Altucher: – Winklevoss twins that fought with Mark Zuckerberg – Kamal Ravikant: Mm-hmm. James Altucher: – in that movie – Kamal Ravikant: Mm-hmm. James Altucher: – they're setting up, like, a publically-traded bitcoin fund right

now. Kamal Ravikant: Ah, I don't trust publically-traded stuff, honest [Laughs]. James Altucher: I'm curious, though, when – if it's, like, a bitcoin closed-end fund

or something, that might be interesting, but I don't know. Who knows?

Kamal Ravikant: I don't know. There's so many smart people, there's so much

technology, there's so much, like, vested interest in the public markets who are ahead of me, like, I wouldn't know what to do there. I'm not smart enough for that.

James Altucher: Well, you know what's interesting is take AngelList. That is a way

for private investors to find companies that are private still and invest in them. I don't know if people really know –

Kamal Ravikant: Even better. James Altucher: – about that company. Kamal Ravikant: Even better. If ______ investor, which is – the requirements are

pretty low in the U.S., what you do is you go to AngelList and you find an investor with an amazing track record like ______ or who's the guy that started ______?

James Altucher: Kevin Rose. Kamal Ravikant: I can't think of his name. Yeah, Kevin Rose. They have a really

great track record and they have something called syndicates where, like, you can actually invest in what they got invested along


with them. But you can invest a small amount. You can invest $2,000.00, $1,000.00, $5,000.00 and just go in with them. So immediately now you have basically a portfolio at the same companies that these guys have, at the same terms they have. That's amazing. That's never been done before. So now you're going along with the Buffets and you're – he's investing in your money with you.

James Altucher: And that's at angel.co, dot C-O. Kamal Ravikant: Yeah. And I think the best part there as well is that these guys

don't just – it's not like they'll take the money from the syndicates and invest. They're investing their own and the syndicates are investing with them. So always they're putting their money where their mouth is.

James Altucher: Yeah, so it's almost, like, kind of a – Kamal Ravikant: But normally, what they would be putting – James Altucher: – stock market of private companies. Kamal Ravikant: Yes. And, like, whereas before Jason would be putting in 50K,

now he can put in 500K in a company because of a syndicate. And Jason's in Uber and all these other things and he's a very sharp investor. Like, Jason, Ken, Kevin, all these guys. That's really an interesting way. One thing to keep in mind is I started investing in angel . I used to work for Angel years ago, but old school angel and he was my mentor, and he was an amazing guy and he taught me, he said, "Angel investing is the easiest way to lose money. Just know that going in." It's like you say that, especially if you don't – Kevin had been in this for a long time. You get that. So ______ [crosstalk] –

James Altucher: Well, that's why I think the most important rule in angel investing

is always invest alongside a really good venture capitalist because then you know you're not just angel investing. Your also venture capital investing.

Kamal Ravikant: Yeah. Yeah, and go and be the dumbest guy at the table. It's the

smartest thing you can do. That's my secret. Let's see if it works, but I think it will.

James Altucher: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and also diversification helps, like, being in a

bunch of industries, the usual things.


Kamal Ravikant: Yeah. James Altucher: Kamal, I want to talk about your books now. So when we first

met, we were going back and forth, we were trying to meet, but you were really, really sick and –

Kamal Ravikant: Yeah. James Altucher: And then you came out of it, and I asked, "What did you do to stop

being sick?" Like, I thought you were going to die or something. Like, what happened?

Kamal Ravikant: This was when I was building my last company and, like, I went

all in, and it just really looked like it was gonna be a big hit and I put – I had all my money in it and my friends put money in it, family put money in it, and the whole thing blew up and I lost everything. I was in serious debt and people had lost money, I got really, really sick. I worked nonstop for, like, three and a half years. I think I – last year was when I finally started taking Sundays off from the office. Like, I had taken one vacation. It was just insane.

James Altucher: Did you have a girlfriend at the time? Kamal Ravikant: I was so ______ [crosstalk] – I did and she was wonderful and I

was an ass and, obviously, that didn't work out 'cause my company came first. I called her [laughs] and apologized about it afterwards and she's a great girl and she's moved on, I'm very happy for her. But a relationship can't survive and, like, a relationship – like, I was so – everything came first and, like, my company came first above everything. My social relationships, my – you name it, whatever, my spirituality, anything, my health. And so I burnt out and I got really sick and the doctors couldn't figure it out. It turns out I was sick for, like, six months and I'd just been going, powering through it and thought it was stress. And until I just, like – I was, like – I couldn't even get up in the – I couldn't walk properly. I was so exhausted.

And then so, like, I was basically bedridden for a while and

miserable, and my company was failing, I'd lost everything. I was just – I think, like – and this is honest. If I was depressed, it was a good day, it was an upswing. I was just pure misery. And there was one morning when I woke up and I just decided, like, "I can't do this. Like, I can't live like this. I'm just gonna get out of it or die trying because this is not worth it." And so I made a vow to myself, and I think maybe it goes back to, like, you know how we


talked about the commitment thing to myself in boot camp, that I was gonna be a PT stud –

James Altucher: Right. Kamal Ravikant: – and do pushups underneath my bunk at night? It was that same

level of intensity. I made a vow that I was actually gonna do something to get out of it, and what I chose was I made a vow to love myself. And trust me, I didn't even believe in the word love before this. I don't know where it came from. It came from a real place of desperation. But I was just gonna really just love myself, and every thought, every action, everything I did in every way I was cautious ______ focusing on loving myself 'cause I was really hating myself at the time.

And so started just trying things. I just started trying things. I was

locked up in my bedroom, and I just did things in my head. And somewhere I noticed started to shift my head, so I went with them. And after, like, about a little while, I came up with a practice that seemed to just make _______ [Crosstalk].

James Altucher: Well, what do you mean something shifted in your head? Like,

what was going on? Kamal Ravikant: Like, my thoughts started getting more positive. Like, I started

feeling better. And I just really noticed what worked and I refined it and what didn't work, I threw it out. And so in the end, I just came up with a practice that I did every day and I got well. And not only did I get well, my – I got – like, I got better in every way, like, emotionally, physically. Like, my mind started to get better, like, in ways that I couldn't quantify. Like, _____, I couldn't say that I made this happen, but just everything just started to get better.

I was like, "Ooh, I think I've hit something." So that's when we met, I told you about it, and I remember you saying, "You need to write about this." And I kinda, like, poo-pooed it 'cause I was like, "You can't talk about this in Silicon Valley." I had failed, and the last thing I wanted to do was write about, like, "Well, this guy failed, and he got better by loving himself."

And then I think in the end I wrote the book because I committed

to you and I won't let commitment go. And putting that book out, which I was so terrified of putting out, you're the one who told me, like, you don't put anything out, unless you're scared what people will think of you, and that's some of the best advice I ever got.


And so I put it out and within five weeks of being out, it's self-published, that book was the number one best-selling book on Amazon. No marketing.

James Altucher: And this was the book – Kamal Ravikant: And then people like you – James Altucher: – titled "Love Yourself"? Kamal Ravikant: "Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It". James Altucher: Right. Kamal Ravikant: Yeah. And it was very simple, very honest. I taught myself to

write over, like, fifteen years really obsessively, so I know how to write, how to get a message across simply. So I worked very hard on it, but in the end, it was just a simple, to-the-point book that, like, I get emails every day from people about how it's helping them change their lives. And the book – putting that book out changed my life, to show me the power of just really being your honest, real, wonderful self to the world. Being ready to be a laughing stock. And you know what the world does is just loves you. It just – people are so hungry for it. Putting that –

James Altucher: Well, I think people – Kamal Ravikant: – book out changed my life. James Altucher: – relate to it because everybody – I don't know about everybody, I

don't want to speak for everybody, but I think a lot of people are scared out there. Like, we live – even though you say times are booming and I believe that, we also live in this era of greater economic uncertainty than ever before probably because the notion of the, say, 9:00 to 5:00 job has been gone since 2008.

Kamal Ravikant: Yeah. Yeah. James Altucher: And so people have a hard time loving themselves. First they feel

like, "Oh, well, I've got to pay the bills first and then I need to love myself." Even though I think your book shows that the reverse happens.

Kamal Ravikant: Yeah. James Altucher: Like, first it comes from within.


Kamal Ravikant: Yeah, but that's one – probably the best I ever got was from a

friend who said, "Life is from the inside out." It's like working your inner self first always and the outer self just resolves itself. Whatever you want to believe in how that happens, that's up to you, but even if it's just on the fact that your attitude determines everything, to the – from the very basics, maybe there's more to reality than we like to think. Who knows?

James Altucher: So you wrote this book, which was very personal, and it was

basically how you got through this kind of period of sickness by telling yourself you love yourself and applying these exercises into practice. And the main thing –

Kamal Ravikant: Mm-hmm. James Altucher: – I have to ask is did a lot of women write to you after that and hit

on you? Kamal Ravikant: I wish. Actually, they write to me, but they write for advice on

their existential crisis [Laughs]. I need to write a book on sex or something for that.

James Altucher: Maybe that's true. Maybe that's just, like, Tucker gets those

emails. Kamal Ravikant: Yeah, right [Laughs]. And it's okay. Like, it's amazing how – I've

been – this is so put in my – I've really come to believe that people are fundamentally good. Just the emails I get from everyone, just everyone – people just want to share, they want to connect. I really have started to know that for a fact now that – despite the fact that I ______ really silly, stupid things, historically, fundamentally, people are good and that's what connecting with my readers has taught me. It's just such a gift.

James Altucher: Well, I also think it's the times too. Like, I think always people act

out of their self-interest, but I think it's more in people's self-interest now to be compassionate to others and to work with others because the normal structures we live in are breaking down. And you have to be compassionate to others so they're compassionate back to you. And again, it's not a totally selfish thing. Like, it turns out compassion reinvigorates all parts of the brain and actually makes you a stronger, smarter, healthier person, but it's really important now because the normal safety nets we have aren't catching us anymore.


Kamal Ravikant: Yeah, and I'm gonna actually look – remember how you built yourself back up? You would just everyday email people and give to them and expecting nothing –

James Altucher: Yeah. Kamal Ravikant: – in return. It's so – if that – that is the best way to build yourself

up in life. Like, if didn't work in your career or whatever, this will take care of it.

James Altucher: Well, this is – Kamal Ravikant: Yeah, you did some great blog posts on it, and also you talked

about you choose yourself, how you did that. And you gave and you give and give and people give back in amazing ways.

James Altucher: It's true. People – if you help others, they're – not everybody, but – Kamal Ravikant: Right. Right. James Altucher: – people who are really also in tune with themselves, they're gonna

– the people you want to are going to give back to you. And I have found for myself over the past four or five years an amazing community that I never had before only because I started doing my own version of what I call a daily practice of health for myself and of giving to others.

Kamal Ravikant: Yeah. And your daily practice, honestly, I think is the best thing

ever _____ on the Internet. I really do. James Altucher: Oh, well, thank you very much. Kamal Ravikant: I tell people that's why the Internet was created, for that one post,

but what is it, How To Be The Luckiest Guy Alive? James Altucher: Yeah. Yeah. Kamal Ravikant: That one post I think – I send everyone to post. In fact, my second

book, I have a chapter about it. Like, go _______ [Laughs]. Go read it.

James Altucher: Yeah. "Live Your Truth". So you wrote two books and talk about

that. Like, I think you've sort of – for me, you sort of changed the definition of a book because these were small books, they were self-published, you've made a good living off of them, they've sold quite a few copies, they both were best sellers. "Love Yourself"


still consistently sells quite a bit. What can people do to – like, what did you do to market these books, if anything?

Kamal Ravikant: Well, "Love Yourself" I actually hid underneath a rock and

pretended I didn't exist after I put it out. You wrote a blog post about it, which launched it, and then just it's like that's how – like, when you launch a product or an app or a company, anything, you can almost ______ the system if you want, but that's short term. In the end, if the product is quality and markets itself, as long as – the key is you put it where people are gonna be.

Like, I could have written that book as, like, 20 or 30 blog posts on

my blog and 20 or 30 people would have read it and that would have been it. I took that same book and – the same information, crafted it as a book and packaged it as a book and put it in the world's largest bookstore, Amazon. Everyone goes to Amazon to buy books. And what happened? People were there looking for this kind of information and that's – it was really that simple.

I tell people, "Do not try to be a special –" You and I talked about

this. "Don't try to be a special snowflake on the Web. Don't create your own little special fancy site and just think because Goolge exists, people will come find you. If you build it, they will come." Go where people are. Create something of value and that, ultimately, people will pass around, which is what happened with mine. Like, people Tweeted about it every day, people – and every once in a while I'll Google it and I'll find all these new blog posts people have written about it or all these amazing people just Tweeted on their own.

Like Cheryl Wikerson Tweeted about it, ______ Tweeted about it.

Like, they – I never asked them. I didn't even know Cheryl. That's how I got to know Cheryl was because she read my book and she found it through some other source. The key is really this simple: Create something of value that's more about giving to others than to yourself and then put it where the people are. If you're, like, creating videos or movies, put it on YouTube. Do not create your own special site. If you're doing – there's books, movies, a podcast, don't create your own special site and do podcasts there. Put it on iTunes. People on iTunes searching for podcasts. Go where they are, and I think that's, like, 80 percent of the _______ right there.

Create something of value, put it where people are, and that's the

beauty of the Internet. And what we built over there that's


available. You don't have to go to a studio executive or a movie executive or even a book publisher.

James Altucher: Right. Again – Kamal Ravikant: Like, _______ [crosstalk] – James Altucher: – it's sort of like what you were saying before about Uber. You

don't have to go to a taxicab company to get a taxi. You can just say – take your car out and join Urber's fleet of drivers, and now you're a driver.

Kamal Ravikant: Yeah. And actually, now a lot of the Uber drivers are made of

former taxi drivers who love it because they control their hours, they can turn the app on and off, work whenever they want, they get paid regularly. They don't have to kiss up to any dispatcher, they don't have to pay ______ fees, they don't have to worry about medallion. It's actually created a whole, like, system of entrepreneurs. Like, real-time, freelance entrepreneurs. It's a very interesting economy that's developing out of this.

James Altucher: Yeah, so it's interesting. So it's almost like the employment

numbers are not really telling the full story of what's happening in this economy.

Kamal Ravikant: Yeah. James Altucher: Because we also have this booming innovation economy as well

where people could be solo-preneurs, kinda one-man entrepreneurs and create these businesses, whether it's you writing a book or a driver joining Uber. I've seen some drivers get a fleet of cars and have their own kind of limo companies completely under the umbrella of Uber taking care of all the logistics.

Kamal Ravikant: Yep. Now you have, basically – you have – and fundamentally,

Uber is just a dispatch service that has a distribution. James Altucher: A dispatch service that anyone could plug into. Kamal Ravikant: Yeah. James Altucher: So I can – Kamal Ravikant: That's beautiful.


James Altucher: – take my car out – well, I don't have a driver's license. Claudia could take our car out and call Uber and say, "I'm joining Uber right now." And suddenly, they'll dispatch her to whatever the next closest rider is.

Kamal Ravikant: Yeah. And now then you have this beautiful Argentinian woman

driving you around. James Altucher: Yeah, I'm gonna have to call up all the time so no guys hit on her

or anything. So, again, though, with "Love Yourself" and "Live Your Truth", you always were giving me advice about bookmarking and everything, but one thing I thought was interesting is how many pages is "Love Yourself"?

Kamal Ravikant: Oh, God. The paperback, I think, is, like, I don't know, 50 or 60

pages. It's short. It's, like, less than 10,000 words. James Altucher: Right. So no publisher in the world would _______ [crosstalk] – Kamal Ravikant: Zero. James Altucher: – a 50-page book. Kamal Ravikant: Zero. James Altucher: And yet you were able to publish that and sell more copies than 99

percent of the books sold out there. Kamal Ravikant: Amazing, huh? James Altucher: And it changes the publishing industry. Kamal Ravikant: Yeah. I have, like, agents contacting me now and trying to get me

to go to publishers. I keep on saying, "What are they gonna do for this book that I can't do my – that, basically, Amazon is not doing for me=?" And no one's gonna be able to know that. "Eventually, it'll get in your bookstores, but then we'll also take most of – we'll own the book, we'll own the rights to it, and also we'll give you far less." It makes no sense.

James Altucher: So what do you think your next book will be? Kamal Ravikant: Basically, I'm following the Louis C.K. and George Carlin model

where I want to write one book a year based on everything I've learned from the last one. Just the last one. So not repeat, not like a "Love Yourself 2" or whatever. Whoever I am now, the things


I've learned, write that. So I'm kind of writing a book right now based on some of the talks I've given where I'm sharing new stuff I've learned and see what good comes – see if I can craft something valuable out of it. And so that's _______ [crosstalk] –

James Altucher: And what new stuff – Kamal Ravikant: – one book a year. Hmm? James Altucher: What new stuff have you learned? Kamal Ravikant: What new stuff have I learned? I think I've learned more – like, I

think you and I've talked about this. So we've been at the bottom a few times in our lives, and we can always write ______ a lot of things, but at some point, like, when you're on the upswing, you want to write about what you're learning there too. So writing more about that, about more of the entrepreneurship side, like, what it takes – and when I say entrepreneur, I mean, like, doing anything worthwhile in life, anything that's an expression of you. That's my definition of entrepreneurship. It doesn't have to be running a business. It could be writing a book, it could be raising a child, whatever. Just an expression of you.

And just I've learned – I'm surrounded by, like, some insanely

successful people, repeatedly successful people. I've had some success, I've had failures. Fortunately, I've learned from them. And I've learned it's all a mental game in the end. It's always a mental inside game. So I'm writing about what it takes 'cause you run into people all the time and they just stop with fear. And it's almost like, well, fear is part of the process, fear is the beacon, fear is like, "Oh, good, you're up to something." You have to – like, it's almost, like, take the same emotion, but look at it differently. So I'm kinda exploring that right now.

James Altucher: Yeah. I like that. I might have to steal all of that [Laughs]. Kamal Ravikant: Sure, James [Laughs]. James Altucher: I ________. So what was the business that failed? Kamal Ravikant: It was ad network. It was a very good ad network. I was doing

very well, but it's like I made some of the wrong choices in partners in the beginning. Once it was doing really well, I got people involved who were, like, showing me all the money that I was gonna be making and I got greedy. And so when you're greedy, when you're hopeful, when you're fearful, you choose the


wrong people. I didn't say no when I should have said no many times, but I just – actually, Tucker was in town this week and I had dinner with him and he said something very sharp. And Tucker's a great observer of human behavior and he said, "People tell you who they are." He said, "Listen to what they – listen to them. They tell you who they are."

And it's a lesson I've also learned in business, like, people – and

this is something that I've talked about ______ and a bunch of other seasoned entrepreneurs. Like, people are remarkably deficient in business. Like, if someone has a history of screwing people over, you will never be a special snowflake. Eventually, you will be part of that list. Just stay away from those people.

James Altucher: Well, that's very interesting. Like, what – when he said that, like,

what was he specifically referring to? Like a business or a relationship or what was his –

Kamal Ravikant: They were talking about women, actually. James Altucher: – example? Kamal Ravikant: Tucker's a great guy to talk about women [Laughs]. Yeah, we

were talking about women at the time, but then the conversation shifted to business where I was telling him, like, how I just – two friends of mine recently talked – _______ turns out they'd been screwed over by the same guy, the same entrepreneur who just screwed 'em out because of the contract he wrote. And they were just naïve and they trusted. And this guy has – I _______. This guy just has a history of it. And you find that certain _____ people do that. Stay away from them. You're not a special snowflake. You're not the one that they're gonna love.

But, like, I think when they make decisions out of fear and hope,

actually, is when we say yes when we should say no. And, like, saying no is one of the most important things we learn in life. So you say no to – so you can say yes to the right people. I think that – if I didn't – I made that mistake.

James Altucher: It's hard to say no. I think people – Kamal Ravikant: It's very hard. Yeah. James Altucher: – we're taught from early on to say yes to all of our teachers, to say

yes to our parents, and then we're taught early on to say yes to opportunities rather than really weighing them and deciding if


they're good for us or not. And you know what? Most opportunities and most people around are not that good for us personally. They might not be bad people, but they might not be good for us. And no –

Kamal Ravikant: Yeah. James Altucher: – no becomes very important to learn, particularly as I get older, I

realize I can always – and I've done this. I can always lose $100.00 or $1,000.00 or, heck, I can always lose multiple millions, but I can never – and I can make it back if I'm good and I work hard and so on. But I can never get today back. So this is the one day I can never lose to – I could lose today. Like, this is the day that could go. And time is very important and no is what protects your time.

Kamal Ravikant: And actually, you talk – I think you told me this or Claudia told

me, like, "Saying no gives a space for the yes with the right opportunity for the right person." So yeah, _____ think about if you keep – you cannot sell a full teacup. You have to – the teacup has to be empty for you to be able to fill it. If the teacup is full, if you're full because you said yes to the wrong people, then you want – the right people, the right opportunities won't appear or won't be available.

James Altucher: Yeah, that's really true. So switching gears to Silicon Valley

again, what's – I sorta feel like things like Twitter, Facebook, all of these companies they create hundreds of billions of dollars in value. Like, the whole West Coast must be booming with everybody buying, like – everybody spending all their new money.

Kamal Ravikant: Yeah. James Altucher: Like, we've had this IPO boom in the past year where – Kamal Ravikant: Yeah. James Altucher: – $300,000,000,000.00 in value maybe has been created. Kamal Ravikant: Yeah, the area where I'm living, I'm actually looking out my

window. It's like the rents are just up insanely, just absolutely insanely. And I'm looking out, there's cranes everywhere. So it actually ______ starting to feel like Shanghai. It's really weird [Laughs].


James Altucher: Does that trickle down into the economy in any way, like more startups getting funded or –

Kamal Ravikant: Yeah. Yeah. That is one of the beautiful things we have in The

Valley is, like, once you make money, you just become an angel investor and you invest in new entrepreneurs. That's something very special here that you don't see in most industries. You don't see once people make money in finance, they support other up-and-coming financial entrepreneurs or whatever.

James Altucher: They support a lot of brothels. Kamal Ravikant: And it's something that – they what? James Altucher: They support a lot of whore houses and things like that. Kamal Ravikant: [Laughs] Yeah, well, that's a whole different industry. It makes

money. James Altucher: Yeah. Yeah [laughs], the oldest profession. Kamal Ravikant: Yeah. James Altucher: Older than technology. So what else is going on? You're looking

at all these companies. Kamal Ravikant: Mm-hmm. So I'm running this fund, which is just great. I get to –

it's like talk about not getting old, like, you keep yourself mentally active, you get to meet all these entrepreneurs who are just doing great new things, and I get to learn from them and see what's coming down the road and hopefully ______ some of them.

James Altucher: Like, what's a typical day. Kamal Ravikant: And ______ [Crosstalk]. James Altucher: What did you do today? Kamal Ravikant: Today, actually, I meditated and I read because of the – I have this

podcast coming up and I get very – the funny thing is I get very, very nervous about interviews and especially ______ I'm terrified. I'm, like, literally petrified when I go on _______. But I end up doing well, I think, because of, like – actually, you gave me some great advice, which was – I didn't do that today 'cause I didn't have a chance, but you said, "Watch comedians and meditate beforehand." And so, actually, today I did that. And then after this


I'm gonna start working. I'm gonna get – there's a couple of companies I'm looking at. I have to talk to the CEOs and I'm doing due diligence on them and so I have to, like, call up friends of mine who know the space and just go through it with them.

And then I'm actually doing some research in ______ funding

because it's such an interesting thing. So I'm gonna spend about an hour or two just reading up on that and then just write for a couple hours. That's my day.

James Altucher: That's great. And you're writing on this new book? Kamal Ravikant: Yeah. Yeah. Really, the funny thing [laughs], I think I'm, like,

the laziest guy on the planet too. James Altucher: I doubt that. You're running a VC fund, writing books left and

write, like, it doesn't sound so lazy, but go ahead. I'll give ya that for a little bit.

Kamal Ravikant: It really is [Laughs]. There's, like, a positive to being, like, on

your own. There's also a negative to be on your own 'cause sometimes you just get lazy, you just sit around and read or whatever. I was –

James Altucher: But it's, again, the 80-20 rule, which is sort of identifying – for

people who work 60 hours a week, really only 12 hours of that provide 80 percent of the value. So it's a matter of –

Kamal Ravikant: Yeah. James Altucher: – discerning which twelve hours are the important ones and

spreading that over the week. It's only a couple hours a week. Tim Farris was telling me the original title he really wanted to do for "The 4-Hour Workweek" was "The 2-Hour Workweek" because that's how many hours he actually did spend on his business, but his publishers didn't think anybody would believe it.

Kamal Ravikant: Wow. That's great. That's great. James Altucher: And it sounds like that's – I was once reading an interview with

Anatoly Karpov who was the World Chess Champion. Anatoly Karpov was the World Chess Champion in the 1970s and the 1980s. And he said the most he could spend studying chess per day is tops three hours So that shows you. Here's a guy who was world-class level, he was the best in the world for a good fifteen


years, and for him, the top workday, the top, hardest working day he could do to really be productive was a three-hour day.

Kamal Ravikant: Wow. James Altucher: Yeah. So it's – Kamal Ravikant: That's amazing. James Altucher: – important to know that any hour, any minute after that quickly

loses its so-called marginal utility, to put it in economics terms. Kamal Ravikant: Yeah, that makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. Actually, you

had a great post about – or was a podcast about it was the second arrow that killed you, about this – the beating yourself up for the procrastination that killed you.

James Altucher: Yeah, or feeling like you're lazy. So – Kamal Ravikant: Yeah. James Altucher: – it's one thing you're not doing work, but then that may or may not

be good. Who knows? That's the first arrow. But the second arrow, feeling bad about it, that's the one that hurts.

Kamal Ravikant: Yeah. Yeah. No, that was a great post, one of my favorites. James Altucher: So I know you go to a lot of kind of these mastermind things where

you learn all the secrets of Internet marketing. Maybe describe what that is. Like, what do you learn in one of those? Because – and the reason I ask is let's say I wanted to start an Internet business, I had some product I came up with, and I wanted to start selling that product. What should I do?

Kamal Ravikant: Well, actually, the only left – I get invited to a lot, but the only one

I belong to is the one run by Ryan Deiss and Terry Belcher, and Ryan is a close friend I got to meet years ago ______ my last company, and we actually met at a bar. He was traveling to San Francisco. We just started chatting, and he just turned out to be such a good guy. I remember, like, I told him, "_____ the bar and close out the ______. I realize we're in San Francisco and this sounds odd, by why don't you come back to my place and I have a great bottle of wine. We'll just continue talking." And he came back and we stayed up all night just talking about his family and his kids and his wife and we were friends for, like, a year or two, but neither one of us cared what the other did.


And then one day he called me up and he said, "I have this Internet

marketing mastermind. Why don't you come? 'Cause you're a Silicon Valley guy, we could use, like, new kinda blood and a different viewpoint." And I went and it was amazing 'cause all these guys, they're in there, they're all very sharp, very – and a lot of very good people. I've met some great friends there. In fact, a bunch of LPs in my fund are from there who are just very good at ______ on how to basically acquire customers and convert them, which is fundamentally what every business is.

You get a customer and you convert them. Actually, and even

keep them. And that's what these guys – and they get together at these masterminds, and this particular one they all share with each other. Like, "Hey, how do I take my Facebook – like, how did I acquire customers through my Facebook campaign?" But not like, "Hey, I did this", but also, like, "This is the headlines I used, this is the landing page copy I used, this is a little trick I figured out how to, like, convert from five percent to twenty-five percent." Really sharp, interesting people.

James Altucher: So what are some of those – Kamal Ravikant: I love it. It's like – James Altucher: – tricks? Kamal Ravikant: What are some of those tricks [Laughs]? What are some of those

tricks? James Altucher: How do I convert from five percent to twenty – so I send out a list

to, let's say, 100,000 people or 50,000 people and I wrote a book, "Top Ten Ways To Survive After The Apocalypse". How do I get – and I'm gonna sell it for 30 bucks. How do I send this – how do I double my conversions from five percent to ten percent? What's the best way?

Kamal Ravikant: Actually, one of the smartest things I heard someone share there,

and, like, I don't think this is a big secret, but was the fact that what he did was he actually was selling a client's products on the client's website, and he was buying traffic from Facebook and very targeted traffic and sending them to the landing page. And it was converting something, like, half a percent or whatever. But then what he did was he just took the same product – and you'll get it the moment I tell you what he did. He took the same product, put it on Amazon and bought the traffic and sent them directly to


Amazon. And instead of, like, half a percent, it was, like, five percent, which is huge. And why?

James Altucher: So wait. Kamal Ravikant: Because – James Altucher: Let me understand. So instead of sending the traffic to a page he

set up, he said, "Send traffic to a page Amazon set up, letting Amazon take their 30% cut or whatever it is."

Kamal Ravikant: Sure. James Altucher: But the idea is everyone trusts Amazon, but nobody – Kamal Ravikant: _______ [Crosstalk]. James Altucher: – trusts some random website out there. Like, as you put it, the

snow flake that's out there. Kamal Ravikant: Yeah. It was like when I heard that, I was like, "Oh, my God.

This makes perfect sense. Why be a special snow flake, special snow flake on the Web?" Like, now I meet any _______ people, if they're not doing any – if they don't have their product on Amazon, I tell them they are shooting themselves in the foot. Like, that's the world's largest store. People, they're searching. You can even buy traffic and send people there and it'll convert better than anything else. Like, it –

James Altucher: What's the best way to buy traffic? Kamal Ravikant: It depends – I would say – I wouldn't say Google because you

really have to know what you're doing and most people who don't, they just lose money. Even most agencies don't. They just know how to spend your money. Facebook is still really good because you can really target people in a way that's still very interesting. And Facebook is still slightly inefficient. Google is so efficient with their pricing just like you're paying – you have to really know what you're doing on the buying tracker, but also the converting and retaining to actually make your money.

So right now I would just say Facebook. Twitter should be

interesting when they do their app install. I'm surprised they haven't done that yet, but that's such a big money-maker ______ with mobile. But right now it's just that simple. Like, if someone who doesn't know the Internet just like you can go to Facebook,


you can read up on how to do their stuff, and say, "I would like a $20.00 campaign" and see what happens. I would say do that.

James Altucher: And so let's say in my report – so let's say I have a report, "50

Ways To Survive After The Apocalypse". You're saying kind of constructed as a book somehow. What if my price is, like, way beyond what people consider a normal price for a book, but not necessarily way beyond what the normal price for an information product? Is Amazon still, like, the best place to send traffic to?

Kamal Ravikant: You know what? In that case, what you do is you create a low-end

product, and this is actually another thing I learned from Ryan's mastermind. And it's – those guys do a conference called Traffic Conversion, which everyone should go to. You learn so much there. You learn all of this there once a year in January. Is you basically create something called a lead magnet where rather than your $30.00 book, you create a 99-cent book, and it's really valuable content, but that's just a small piece of the bigger pie. You create that and you sell that or even do it for free. So people come to Amazon, get it, people love it, give good reviews 'cause it's valuable, it's cheap, but in there, you can talk in the end like, "Listen, if you want to learn more, here's the bigger one" and link up to that.

Or give me your email address and I will send you more and better

stuff. And once you have – email marketing is probably the – another thing I learned from these guy is it's the most effective marketing that exists, but you really – you have to know what you're doing there, but it can work better than anything else.

James Altucher: Yeah. Kamal Ravikant: Just one of those little ______ [Crosstalk].

James Altucher: That sometimes rings true for me. Kamal Ravikant: Yeah. So, like, you could create something like a low-margin,

high-value product, put it on your site, and use that to convert people into the larger-value product. People do that all the time. Like, one of the guys in there, Harry, talked about how he figured you can – if someone spent $7.00 on a product from you, they are much more likely to be a $1,000.00 product than someone who didn't spend anything. So get the people that spend that initial part, that initial small little part, and then they – and give them great value. You always have to give value. If you're not giving value, your scamming people and it'll catch up to you. Right?


James Altucher: Right. Kamal Ravikant: So create something of really high value, really low price point,

and then offer from there the bigger piece, the larger – the much bigger money piece.

James Altucher: Well, so now let me ask you this: Do you think you'll ever choose

between writing/Internet marketing and being a venture capitalist? Or you think you'll pursue both?

Kamal Ravikant: Well, I don't do Internet marketing. I just learn it because it's so

interesting. But I learn it so that I can help my – the companies I invest in and ______ customer acquisition and traffic, all this other stuff, stuff I wish I had known when I was building my company. Like, customer acquisition is such a fundamental basic thing of building a business and most people pay no attention to it. So, like, I learn it as it's intellectually really stimulating for me and also I can help companies here in The Valley. I haven't done anything on Internet marketing. I just play – I hang out with the best and learn from them through this mastermind.

As far as choosing between venture and books, I think I found my

calling with both. I don't think I want to be a writer, like, not full time 'cause I understand now why the great ones become alcoholics and kill themselves 'cause you're –

James Altucher: Why is that? Kamal Ravikant: – because you have to go into your mind and into your heart and

emotions and pull out – go through everything, stuff that most of us spend our lives avoiding. So you have to write – for a great writer, to be a great writer or artist, you really have to go into yourself. And we spend our entire lives running away from ourselves. You have to go through the gunk. And so I would do both. And I think I'm gonna be –

James Altucher: What are some of your favorite writers who have killed themselves

or become alcoholics? Kamal Ravikant: Oh, Hemingway. I remember when I read his biography by, I

think, Hodgkins. I actually – I cried at the end when he got – when he talked about when Hemingway killed himself. Like, but I got it. And in fact, writing, like, the kinda stuff also I write, I like to go – I have to go deep into myself and really figure out the truth for it to come on the page. I don't want to write from theory. And so


writing is – it's interesting. I actually blurted out the other day to my mom, like, "I think the only good thing I've done in my life is those two books." It was really interesting that I felt that, and I think I do because I think everything else I've done selfishly, and those two books I did for the world, like, to get.

James Altucher: Well, one – Kamal Ravikant: It's interesting _______ [crosstalk] – James Altucher: – contributes to the other. Like, your life is preparation – your

whole life beforehand is preparation for writing the book. Kamal Ravikant: That's a very good point. Yeah. Yeah. James Altucher: I find for myself, because of the – I sort of believe a blog post – so

I write a lot of blog posts, obviously, and I sort of believe a blog post doesn't have value, unless I can put my own personal story into it. And now I have over 600 posts plus many other, like, Facebook posts and email articles and stuff. It's almost like – there's only so much I can write about myself, and I run into the problem where I have to find other ways to get my story in there without writing my story. So I have to write, like, your story or somebody else's story or just have my own personal stance on something, but still be storytelling. It's very difficult to keep drilling down inside yourself.

Kamal Ravikant: Yeah, but it makes you better at your craft, and I think that's what's

acquired. I think it was like – I think – I read a thing about Picasso where, like, they wouldn't let him in museums because he would be in a museum and he would be touching up his paintings. Like, you always try to – you always work at getting better [Laughs].

James Altucher: That's really funny. I didn't know that about him. That's a good

one. Kamal Ravikant: Yeah. James Altucher: Well, Kamal, thanks so much for coming on my podcast finally

after – this is the sixth month – Kamal Ravikant: Yeah. James Altucher: – of my podcast. Kamal Ravikant: This was fun. I can't wait to see you live. Thank you –


James Altucher: Yeah. Kamal Ravikant: – for having me. James Altucher: Yeah. You'll definitely come on again. You'll be a repeat. Kamal Ravikant: I'd love it. James Altucher: We'll have you on after your next book or after your next big

investment. Kamal Ravikant: Okay. James Altucher: So all right – Kamal Ravikant: Sounds great. James Altucher: – Kamal. Well, thank you very much. Kamal Ravikant: Well, thanks for having me. James Altucher: And I will talk to you soon. Kamal Ravikant: Sounds good. Thank you. James Altucher: Bye. Male: For more from James, check out the James Altucher Show on the

Stansberry Radio Network at stansberryradio.com. And get yourself on the free insider's list today.

[End of Audio]

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Male: This isn't your average business podcast and he's ...files.stansberryradio.com/files/Kamal Ravikant Transcript... · Page 3 of 35 Kamal Ravikant: Huh? James Altucher: – they