How to Become the World Champion of Your Favorite Hobby | Chris Ullman (Part 1)

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1:25Chris Ullman has had an amazing life. First, he was the world whistling champion. He won it four times. Second, he was basically the head of PR and communications for many successful, huge politicians, presidential candidates, governors, and advisor to several billionaires. He's in most notably, he worked for 18 years for David Rubenstein, who runs the Carlisle Group. He's been on this podcast quite a few times. And Chris just wrote a book for billionaires and a parking attendant. Lessons he's learned from all these different billionaires and politicians and lessons he also learned from a parking attendant.

2:10But prior to that, he also wrote a book called Find Your Whistle. And it's his adventures on the way to being the world whistling champion. So we talk about both topics. It's part one and part two. The first part is basically how do you be the best in the world at what you love doing? Whistling is not easy and being the world champion at any art form is not easy. We talk about that. Then part two, we talk about four billionaires and a parking attendant and the stories are incredible. At the end of part two, Chris also whistles for us. So let's start off with becoming the world champion at the thing you love doing.

2:51That's part one coming up. And then part two will be the next podcast. And it'll be all about lessons he learned from the billionaires and a parking attendant.

3:04This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is the James Altucher Show.

3:21so so chris we can really almost do two podcasts with you one is you were the world whistling champion several times many times which is an amazing thing in and of itself and i want to talk about that also you have a book that just came out uh four billionaires and a parking attendant and you've worked with all these billionaires and gotten great life advice or life learnings from them, and also a parking attendant in the parking lot where you often parked. So both of these folks are amazing, and you've had an amazing life still having it. I honestly don't know where to start. So let's start with whistling.

3:58You started whistling at the age of five. How does someone even become World Whistling Champion? Well, James, thanks for having me, first of all. It's a real honor to be on your show. And so my father was a good whistler. and you know so much of it comes down to can you whistle and it's very binary i've met a lot of people in my life who just cannot whistle they go nothing comes out versus that coming out and so i'm able to whistle and then you know since i do public relations for a living i i think in talking points i'm able to whistle i love to practice i'm competitive i'm good at arranging music for my instrument, the whistle.

4:40I'm a bit of a showman. And I found the International Whistling Competition back in, oh my gosh, 1993. Competed nine times, won it four times, came in second a few times. And it was a great run. And I don't compete anymore. I just perform. And I also whistle Happy Birthday 650 times a year for people, which is what I call my birthday a whistling ministry. Why do you whistle happy birthday to people? I want to honor their lives. And you know, what's so interesting about happy birthdays, usually you sing it for your family or your colleagues if you're in an office. But I actually get to insert myself into the lives of 650 people and bring them these little packets of joy.

5:31I just did three, literally. Five minutes ago, I whistled happy birthday three times, and I recorded on my iPhone a little voice memo and I just texted to them. And then people write back these amazing notes. They say, you made my day. My day wouldn't be complete if I didn't have a whistlegram from you. And so it warms my heart. And I'm just convinced that we need to stop thinking about ourselves and think about other people. If every day I have to be nice to someone through whistling. No, it's good. It keeps me humble. And, you know, as you describe in the book, your kind of domination of the whistling world, if you want to call it that, and, you know, it takes a lot of practice.

6:20You have a huge repertoire of songs you could whistle. You obviously have the talent and the skill, but you had to do a work at the skill. I'm curious, the process of becoming a whistling champion. It's really a champion at anything, but for you, whistling. The process of becoming a whistling champion, world whistling champion, do you think that helped you career-wise? And I'm asking in two different directions. One is because everyone's impressed that you're the best in the world at something. And number two, because of the discipline it took to become and the way of thinking it takes to become the best in the world at something.

6:59Yeah, that process of coming up with this idea saying, wow, I'm a pretty good whistler. Maybe I could be the best one day. So it actually sets you on a journey. So, I mean, first it's a mindset. You have an objective. And then day in and day out, you have to figure out how do I get there? You know, what are my strengths? What are my weaknesses? And this applies, as you just said, you could be a violinist, a trombonist, or a hedge fund manager like you. and um so you have to think what is it going to take to get there and with so with whistling it is for me at least it was a combination of making sure i had a really wide range in my peak form i had over a three octave range which is a pretty wide range and then the capacity to arrange music for your instrument.

7:56So I can listen to a Beethoven symphony and have to figure out a lot of notes going on there. I have to figure out how to catch the tune or the main theme. So I was very good at that. And just being relentless. And my new book, Four Billionaires and a Park Intendant, there's all these people in there. They are just relentless. They set their sights on something and just go, go, go. And like I did this crazy thing in 1996. I was training for the, training, you really do, for the international competition. Of course it's training. Wait, I'm just curious. Why did you almost seem a little ashamed when you said the word training?

8:39Because for years, people have said to me, do you practice? And I used to be insulted and I would say, what do you mean do I practice? How can you be good at anything if you don't practice? But I realized that people think whistling is just a silly little thing. And why would you have to practice to be good at it? So I've actually become a little insecure about it. So I'm glad you picked up on that. I wanna ask you about that, because many areas of life can seem frivolous, right? So let's say some people think whistling is that way. That's the reaction you got from some people. But also taking an inflated ball and throwing it through a net as many times as possible in a 60-minute period, that could be considered frivolous too.

9:26And yet some people make$80 million a year doing it. So I always wonder about this. Yes, some recreational activities are considered frivolous and some are considered worthy of$80 million a year. and the NBA has$10 billion in revenues a year. So money has sort of like set the bar on frivolity. And yet there's nothing to some, whistling is musical, it's creative, it's very difficult. There's nothing that makes whistling more frivolous than basketball other than the fact that basketball is a$10 billion industry. So we take it a little more seriously somehow. I'm just curious if there's anything else.

10:12And those are very good points. What's happened with the challenge with whistling, which is why people put it in the frivolous category or the novelty category, is that there is not a lot of music written for Whistler. Now, that may sound strange, but it helps legitimize an instrument. I mean, if you want to, if you go to the classical music catalog, with tons of music for violin and trumpet and cello, piano, but you'll find almost nothing for whistler. So for example, I reached out, this is years ago, to 50 orchestras and said, I can whistle Mozart's oboe concerto, can I perform with you? And two of them said yes, but 48 of them completely ignored me.

11:04And it's because they're used to hearing the Andy Griffith theme song or men catcalling women. And so there's been this group of us who've tried to legitimize whistling and take it from novelty to art. And with some success, I mean, I've whistled with 12 symphony orchestras and other whistlers. There's this guy in the Netherlands named Heert Chartreau, who's arguably the best whistler today. I mean, he's whistled with many orchestras. So there's a small little contingent of us who are taking it to the next level. But we don't have all that infrastructure. We don't have the music written for us.

11:49There aren't whistling schools. So we kind of train on our own. And you'll actually find that most whistlers are good singers because they actually learned how to make music by singing. And then that is very transferable to whistling. That's interesting. I wouldn't think it was because I feel like you could have a sense of, what's it called when you have perfect pitch? Perfect pitch, yeah. It's easier to have correct pitch with whistling, I would think, than singing because the vocal cords connection to the brain, it seems like it's not as fast. No, no. If you have perfect pitch, you can hum a note, you could sing a note, you could whistle a note.

12:34it really has or you could get a trombone and play it if you know how to play a trombone and hear you know get to the right note so um i don't have perfect pitch i have what i call a kind of perfect relative pitch and once i'm in the right key it can stay in the right key but there are people who you can say to them hum an a flat and boom they can just hum it in the absence of any reference point.

13:13Look, as a manager of people, as an employer, as an entrepreneur, and as even an investor in startups, I can tell you the most important thing for your business is the quality of the people you hire. The best part is that great candidates are already on LinkedIn. Employees hired through LinkedIn are 30 % more likely to stick around for at least a year compared to those hired through the leading competitor. And I will tell you that the great thing about LinkedIn is that you're not just looking at random people. You're able to see the people who your friends and trusted peers and colleagues who they trust and who they've hired in the past and who they recommend.

13:56And hiring doesn't have to be complicated. Realistically, when you have a business to run, you don't want to spend hours on hiring. You want to hire the right person as quickly as possible. That's why LinkedIn Jobs AI Assistant suggests immediately 25 great fit candidates daily so you can invite them to apply and keep things moving. Hire right the first time. Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash Altature, then promote it to use LinkedIn Jobs' new AI assistant, making it easier and faster to find the top candidates. That's LinkedIn.com slash Altature. Post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.

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15:04So again, people ask if you train, and going back to that, people ask if you train, and of course you train quite a bit. And by the way, I definitely, we're going to get to the four billionaires and a parking attendant. But I am just fascinated by excellence because it's very, very difficult to be the best in the world at anything. And what was your training regimen like on a daily basis? So I usually whistle around two hours a day. And then I would do crazy things like get in my car and I drove to Graceland once for a week and whistled for six hours every day for seven straight days. and the reason is that, you know, A, you want to practice your music, but B, and perhaps more importantly, you have to get your lips in shape.

15:47You may be familiar with the French words called embouchure, and it actually has to do with the shape of and the conditioning of your lips to play a wind instrument. It could be a trumpet, a clarinet, or any wind instrument. It's the same thing with whistling, is that to a pucker is not a natural position for your lips. So when you take this kind of complex musculature and stick your lips out into this very precise shape and then try to sustain that for minutes on end, I whistled Mozart's Ovo Concerto, it's 22 minutes long. If your lips are not in tip-top shape, they will get tired quickly and then you will lose the perfect positioning, that embouchure, to be able to sustain the note.

16:36So that's why conditioning is so important. And then practicing your actual song. Like right now, I'm working on Hummel's Trumpet Concerto. I'm performing with the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra later this year. So I know the piece well, but I have to get my lips in good shape. And so it's going to be real exciting to perform classical music with an orchestra. And when I perform with the National Symphony, I mean, this is a 70-piece orchestra at the U.S. Capitol in front of 65 ,000 people, and you are immersed in sound. It is probably one of the most exquisite experience of my life to have an orchestra enveloping me with sound and then 65 ,000 people in front of me, and then the U.S.

17:27Capitol lit up behind them. nothing will ever touch that in terms of this confluence of cool things do they have um a part written where you get to solo whistle for a few moments yeah yeah so in that particular song it's a song called on the mole which was written in the 1920s uh and it's a march and so i and it's written for whistler it's one of the few pieces out there actually written for whistler and uh so I performed it. And the really cool part was that at the end of the concert, they brought me back and I taught the audience the song and then we performed it again. And I conducted this mass whistling group of 65 ,000 people.

18:13And that was cool. And it's a really catchy tune and people loved it. I mean, that's amazing. Like on the one hand, we talked a little while ago about how you felt insecure about is whistling a worthy endeavor to spend thousands of hours on and compete in. And yet, look at this experience it created for you. Let's say one thing, everybody debates, what is life about? Oh, be a good person, be a happy person, do this, be a successful person, whatever. But maybe life is about creating these amazing experiences. and how many people, I can count on one hand, maybe people who've had an experience at that level of amazing.

18:57Yeah, well, I count my blessings every day. I never could have predicted or anticipated what whistling has allowed me to do. I mean, I've whistled in the Oval Office for the president. I whistle at Major League Baseball and basketball stadiums, the national anthem. I even whistle, this is totally freaky, at the top of the Washington Monument on the outside, 555 feet in the air. And then whistling happy birthday for people, done TED Talks. It has brought me more joy than ever imaginable, which is why I count my blessings every day that this has happened. Yes, I've worked hard and I've made a point of getting good, but life is strange.

19:47and you never know when crazy things are going to happen. So you've got to kind of revel in the moment. You know, my life philosophy is that, you know, it's not the destination, it's the trip. You know, that's not, you know, other people think that too, but I've embraced this philosophy since I was like 13 years old. And that's why you must, must kind of revel in the moment. I mean, there's always an eye towards the future, but the moment is critical. Well, you know, it's an interesting thing. I go back and forth on what you just said. It's all about the journey and not the destination because a lot of it is actually about the destination.

20:28Like you had a goal, which was to win the grand competition for whistling. I feel that the destination, A, it sets the path of the journey. So it defines, the destination defines what you do on the journey. Like if you're going on a quest for the Holy Grail, okay, you've got to get out. The knights of King Arthur's Court had to get on their horses and travel the world and seek out information about the Holy Grail. It created the journey. And when you won the competition, you probably felt better that moment than in any given day training for the competition. Well, you're totally right. And they are opposite sides of the same coin, arguably, is that having, you know, and the big part of the new book is about purpose, you know, having a destination you're going to, because I think having purpose gives us, you know, something to strive for.

21:27So I agree with all of that, you know, and having worked for some of the most successful people, you know, in business and politics, they all have purpose and an objective. All right. So I agree with that. But the challenge is when today slips away because you're so focused on tomorrow. And so in a perfect world, you have purpose. Yes, I want to graduate from college with a good GPA. That's a great purpose to have. But there are a thousand school days between today and that day. What are those thousand days going to be like until they hand you that diploma? And if you're fixated on when I pay off my mortgage, then I'll be happy.

22:20Or when I graduate, I'll be happy. Or when I retire, then I'll be happy, which can dominate the way people think. That's dangerous. So they're not mutually exclusive. Like if you had never won, let's say you had always come in second and third and you never took first at the competition for whistling, would you have written the book on whistling that you wrote? So the book I have here is Find Your Whistle. Yeah. No, probably not. So even though you're the second best whistler on the planet, number two sucks. Well, there is a fixation in our culture, and maybe it's the human condition for the best.

23:05And so I do appreciate that. And, you know, I am the kind of person that even if it had not been, you know, the pinnacle of whistling, that I would find purpose, you know, have that objective, but then revel in every moment. I mean, yesterday, I met a security guard in an office building who helped me figure out the elevator. I had a little fob and all that. I couldn't figure it out. Now I know her name. She has a beautiful smile. And she said, I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. And it would have been so easy to view that as just this fleeting transaction of I need to get in the elevator versus a human with a name, with a beautiful smile, who actually is looking forward to seeing me tomorrow.

23:58That matters. And arguably, the accumulation of those types of moments matter even more than these bogeys that you're shooting for. I mean, just yesterday, my 17-year-old daughter said, Dad, he's a little shy. And she said, I want to be more like you and just talk to strangers. She said, you can learn a lot. I see you talk to strangers all the time. You learn so much. I say, yeah, I mean, you know, we're not going to be best buddies necessarily, but you just never know. And, you know, that, those things matter. They, I mean, you can argue how much they matter, but I think they matter a huge amount.

24:44And, I mean, and arguably you're a, I mean, not arguably, you are a trained communicator. This is what you've done for billionaires for decades is you've been their right-hand man when it comes to communicating and getting their word out there and their message out there and their goals out there. And it's been your job to talk to strangers and billionaires and presidents and so on. And again, we'll get to that in a second. One more question I have, and again, this is related to the frivolous aspect, because I am fascinated by that pause that you had when you were training, but before you won, was there any point where you felt like you had to justify to your, I don't know, your wife or your family or your friends or colleagues or work colleagues that why you're spending hours a day doing this?

25:33Like you must've, did you feel bad at any point during that process? Because, Hey, I should be making a billion dollars and not whistling. Well, thankfully, I was single at the time because I could barely tolerate listening to that much whistling. And when I did that Grace Lake pilgrimage, the six hours a day, I was single and alone in the car. Actually, my wife doesn't even let me whistle around the house very much. She thinks it's fairly annoying. So if I were married with children and then I discovered this competition, I don't know if it would have worked out. So it was kind of providential that I was single when it happened.

26:13What about, though, like just your friends? Like, for instance, in my 20s, I left graduate school in computer science because I wanted to be a writer. I was writing all the time. And like any form of communication, it takes a lot of years, actually, to be a good writer. And my friends and parents thought I was completely insane. Like they really thought I was mentally ill for leaving one of the best graduate schools in computer science where my career was set if I got a PhD there, as opposed to doing something completely, who knows? Most people don't succeed at writing, and I was not a good writer at the time.

26:50So I had a healthy dose of Dunning-Kruger bias, so I thought I was good, but I certainly wasn't good. So I had to constantly question myself and answer their questions about why I was doing what I was doing. So I'm glad you brought up writing as this, And I'm going to juxtapose that with the whistling. There are tons of people who call themselves writers. And most people are used to reading things. It can be the newspaper or books or billboards. All right. So if someone like you says, I'm going to be a writer, a lot of people are going to say, oh, you're not hard at this to be a writer. Why would you bother with that?

27:31Now, with whistling, so I say to people, hey, there's a whistling competition. I'm going to try that. People are like, whistling? That's really freaky. That sounds cool. Let's hear it. So there are just so few of them that people are kind of drawn to it and view it as novelty versus the writing, which is kind of a dime a dozen. That doesn't mean you're not a good writer. But a lot of people say, I'm going to go be a writer or I'm going to go to Hollywood and make my fortune. But very few people say, I'm going to be a champion whistler. So people are more fascinated by it than poo-pooing it. Yeah, I agree.

28:11And I think people don't realize how difficult a skill it is to write, for instance. So everybody with a word processor now becomes a writer. Oh, you posted an article on Medium that got 20 likes. Now you're a writer. And people don't understand that, just like in anything, most things are bad. So most written material is not good writing. Like I always look for great, great writers to inspire my own writing. And it's very, very hard for me. Like it's thousands of books I have to look at for every one that I find that, oh, this is going to inspire me to write. And, um, it, it, you know, and this is over 30 years of writing almost every day now, but, uh, uh, I would imagine you're right with whistling.