'Secret Altucher' | Negotiation lesson from Eminem, Life Lessons from Bill Murray, Choose Yourself with Mick Jagger, and Hero's Journey with Stan Lee.

0:00Look, as a manager of people, as an employer, as an entrepreneur, and as an investor in startups, I can tell you the most important thing for your business is the quality of the people of people. 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.

0:42And 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 Altucher. Post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.

1:19This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is the James Altucher Show.

1:35In the movie 8 Mile, Now, Eminem provides a great example of using cognitive biases to win the final rap battle against Papa Doc. Cognitive biases are powerful manipulative techniques that can be used to win any negotiation, close a sales deal, win an argument, even win a rap battle, even win the presidency. Cognitive biases are essentially shortcuts that the brain uses to make decisions. These shortcuts bypass normal, rational thinking. And so you have to be very careful for not being used on you. Cognitive biases fight the myth that we actually have free will. A classic example is negativity bias.

2:28If a caveman heard a rustle in the leaves, they would assume the worst. It's a lion. And they would run without further investigating. This is why even now, newspapers often lead with negative news. Because they know it attracts our attention and we are likely to buy the newspaper. And even though humans are no longer running from lions, our brains can still be manipulated by the hundreds of cognitive biases that help us make quick decisions. Understanding these cognitive biases can allow people to manipulate, even control, the reactions of others so they are worth learning to not only win arguments or close a sale or win a rap battle, but also protect ourselves from people using similar techniques.

3:20In this video, we will look at the final battle of the movie 8 Mile. The movie is about a white rapper named V-Rabbit, played by Eminem. After a series of failures in earlier battles in the movie, Eminem successfully uses powerful cognitive biases to totally vanquish his opponent. We will look at these biases to see how they can be used in almost any situation. situation. Notice Eminem's first line. The 313 is the area code for Detroit. And not just Detroit, it's for the blue collar, black Detroit, where the entire audience and Eminem is from. So he wipes away the outgroup bias that might be associated with his race.

4:14And he changes the conversation to who was in 313 and who was not in 313. He puts himself in the same group as the audience based on the area code. He says, put your hands up and follow me. Everyone starts putting their hands up without thinking. So their brain tells them that they are doing this for rational reasons. For instance, their brain tells them they are now following Eminem. Another example of heard behavior is when someone yells fire in a movie theater. And then suddenly, instead of rationally leaving, everyone irrationally clogs the exits because of this cognitive bias. Now that Eminem has established who the in-group is, it's the 313 group, we have to start putting his opponent, Papa Doc, in the out-group.

5:06So Eminem says,

5:11In other words, even though Papa Doc is black, like everyone in the audience, he is no longer in the group that Eminem has defined and commanded, the 313 group. He has completely changed the conversation from race to area code. He doesn't refer to Papa Doc by name. He says, quote unquote, this man. In other words, there's the 313 group, which we are all a part of in the audience. And now there is this ambiguous man who's attempting to invade us. Watch, for instance, any presidential campaign debate. A candidate will rarely refer to another candidate by name. Instead, he might say, all of my opponents might think X, but we here know that Y is better.

5:57When the brain starts to view a person with ambiguity, it gets confused and can't make choices involving the ambiguity. So the person without ambiguity wins. Because the brain wants to take shortcuts, it will look for information more from people with credentials or lineage than from people who come out of nowhere. So for instance, if one person was from Harvard and told you it was going to rain today and another person told you it was going to be sunny today, you might, because of credential bias, be more inclined to believe the person from Harvard. Eminem does this subtly two lines later. He says, This is a direct line from Snoop Doggy Dogg's first song with Dr.

6:41Dre, Ain't Nothing But a G Thing.

6:47This is perhaps one of the most well-known rap lines ever. Eminem uses credential bias again when he says, and now the audience goes with him and shouts out, a reference from Mobb Deep, which associates Eminem with another huge rap group, this time Mobb Deep. But then he points to his opponent, Papa Doc, and he makes a gesture like his head is being sliced off and says, meaning that Papa Doc has no lineage, no credibility, unlike Eminem and the audience. One of the strongest sales or negotiating techniques is to list the objections before the other side does. If they bring up the objections before you, then it looks like you were hiding something.

7:38And if you bring up the objections first, then it looks like you're being honest and upfront and it removes their objections. So a great sales technique is to address all of the objections in advance. Listen to how Eminem does this in the next set of lines. He says, I know everything he's got to say against me. And then he just lists them one by one. I am white. I am a f***ing punk. I do live in a trailer with my mom. My boy's future is an Uncle Tom I do got a dumb friend named Cheddar Bob Who shoots himself in his leg with his own gun I did get jumped by all six of you jumped And so on. He lists several more.

8:18And at the end of that list, there's no more criticism you can make of him. He's addressed everything and dismissed them. Eminem says, You went to Cranbrook And then Eminem turns to his quote-unquote 313 group for emphasis as he explains what Cranbrook is. That's a private school. Bam. There's no way now that the audience could be on Papa Doc's side. But Eminem makes the outgroup even larger. His real name is Clarence. And Clarence's parents have a real good marriage. Bam and bam. Two more things that separate Papa Doc out from the crowd. He's a nerdy guy who goes to a rich school and his parents are together.

9:02Now it's clear Papa Doc doesn't live in the 313, which is originally stated somewhat humorously, but is now proven without a doubt. For the final cognitive bias, scarcity. Everybody, y 'all if you doubt me, I don't want to win, I'm outie. He makes himself scarce. After establishing total credibility with the audience, he says he doesn't want what they have to offer. He reduces the supply of himself by saying he's out of there. Reduce the supply of yourself while demand is going up. Basic economics, value goes up. Does it seem silly to analyze a rap song for ideas, how to be better at sales and communicating?

9:41I don't know. You tell me.

9:52Take a quick break. If you like this episode, I'd really, really appreciate it. It means so much to me. Please share it with your friends and subscribe to the podcast. Email me at Alcantara at gmail.com and tell me why you subscribed. Thanks.

10:13Look, 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.

10:56And 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 big 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.

11:34Bill Murray is a huge hero of mine. It just seems like his life is spontaneous. He goes with the flow and great things happen to him. He once said that in the beginning of his career that he wasn't rich, but he'll just pretend like he is. So he won't care at all. And he'll just see what happens. And he's been doing it ever since.

11:57So I just binge watched almost all of the Bill Murray movies. And he really does seem to play characters that are free and light and easygoing. The characters live the life I want to lead. I want to be like Bill Murray. I want to be unafraid. So I've gone through all of his quotes and interviews. And here are a few that have had the most impact on my life. Let's hear your story. It's hard to be an artist. It's hard to be anything. It's hard to be. What I learned from this is it's hard enough to live. And it's so easy to just slip into a boring routine every day. You wake up, you eat, you go to work, you go home, you watch TV, you go to sleep.

12:40But it's hard to give that extra push to make every day special, every interaction important, everything you do have impact. And with Bill Murray, he tries to do the push with every moment to make it special. You die in the improv set five times out of nine. So once you get over your fear of dying, nothing else really scares you. But it would be great to never care what people think. But how do you achieve it? You have to actually learn to be bad. You have to actually die at what you do. You have to actually fail over and over again until you realize it's not the end of the world. You know, as great evidence, Bill Murray certainly failed in some of his movies.

13:22As an example, The Razor's Edge, a movie he did right before Ghostbusters. Where the hell have you been, soldier? If you make others look good, you'll look good. Bill Murray says this is the secret to his success. He started out in improv. He didn't try to make himself stand out and look the best. He was on stage with John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, and others who went on to enormous fame. He always just tried to make them look good, and he kept moving up the ladder of success as a result. We came, we saw, we kicked its ass. If I see someone who's out cold on their feet, I'm going to try to wake that person up.

13:56It's what I'd want someone to do for me. Wake me the hell up and come back to the planet. So he's not talking about literally waking something up. He's talking about really helping someone realize that life is special, life is interesting. Each moment can be turned into a work of art. One time, Bill Murray walked up to a man on the street who was smoking. Bill took the cigarette out of the man's mouth, took a puff, then gave it back to the man and said, nobody's gonna believe you when you tell him this, and then walks away. So Bill Murray views all life as an opportunity to squeeze a bit more juice out of it by improvising on that moment.

14:33And why not? The more relaxed you are, the better you are at everything. The better you are with your loved ones, the better you are with your enemies, the better you are at your job, the better you are with yourself. This is the best advice ever. Whenever I'm nervous, I never perform as well. When I go to a social event, I'm nervous. When I give a talk, I'm nervous. Or on a date, or in a meeting, or doing stand-up comedy. Now that I've binge-watched Bill Murray's movies, I'm going to try to be more like him. Make it Suntory time. I live a little bit on the seat of my pants. I try to be alert and available for life to happen to me.

15:09If you're available, life gets huge. You're really living it. I'd like to be more consistently here, you know? I'd like to really get on our... I'd like to just... And I know it's not probably ever maybe possible, but because it's so improbable and so impossible, I'd just like to really see how long I could last as being really here, you know, really in it, really alive. This is about observation. Don't look at the ground when you walk. Look for those special moments. Look for the music in life. Really be present so that exciting things can happen. That'd be my only chance. This is not a dress rehearsal.

15:49This is your life. He's always about how you break the daily, normal routine of life that could end up being boring, and then the next thing you know, you're dead. How long are you going to wait before the real life begins?

16:08It's hard to win an argument with a smart person, but it's damn near impossible to win an argument with a stupid person. Friends talk, lovers kiss, idiots argue, but nobody wins in an argument. Bill Murray is known for cutting out immediately anyone toxic in his life. Total consciousness. It's really powerful to say no. It's really the most powerful thing you can say. We live in this FOMO world, fear of missing out. But Bill Murray has turned down starring roles for movies like Batman, Forrest Gump, Splash, Awakenings. Does he care? If you stick with the things you love, be with the people you love, and say no to the rest, everything takes care of itself.

16:50Say hello, where you coming from? All the quotes above are from Bill Murray that I've taken from various interviews that he's given. But this next one is Lainey says, I've killed myself so many times, I don't even exist anymore. I'm a god. In that movie, he lives the same day for 30 ,000 days in a row. But that's sort of a metaphor for how we all live our lives until we realize too late what's happened. We always think maybe one day I'll be good at life, fall in love, save the world. But in the meantime, I just want to be good at being Bill Murray.

17:41Now here for all of the youngsters of the country and Canada are... Rollin'. Rollin'. I have learned six important life lessons from Mick Jagger that I use all the time, every day in every area of my life. It started out because I was really curious, how did this band, the Rolling Stones, survive for 56 years? I mean, they're even on tour right now. And Mick Jagger has said they might go on tour again and again and again. He's 75 years old. The Rolling Stone has the same front man, Mick Jagger, same guy on guitar, Keith Richards, same guy on the drums, Charlie Watts. They just keep going. How do the Stones keep going?

18:24What makes them different? What makes them stand out? So many times you hear a young band and they just sound like every other band. Nothing that makes you want to say, hey, 56 years from now, I'm still going to be listening to them. They all met and bonded because they were obsessed with the history of music, specifically the blues. In fact, all of their original songs were blues cover songs. Keith Richards and Mick Jagger, childhood friends who lost touch, they actually ran into each other at a bus stop and Jagger was carrying a Chuck Berry record. Richards recognized a kindred spirit and they were inseparable after that.

19:00They were obsessed with learning every aspect of the history of the blues. Always learn the full history of whatever your interest is. Someone once asked me, what is better, to be good at a lot of things or great at one thing? The answer is perfectly exemplified by the Rolling Stones. They were good at every style of music, but then they became the greatest at the intersection of all of those styles. While the Beatles combined pop, Elvis, early rock, the Rolling Stones covered those forms plus blues and R &B. Things like this remind me of Bobby Fischer and chess, the greatest chess player who ever lived.

19:42But when he was a kid, he was considered a talented young chess player, but not the best ever. So he totally disappeared. He was around the age of 18. He did a comprehensive study of all of the games played in the 1800s. When he returned to play, he would play these old-fashioned openings from the 1850s, but he'd throw in his own subtle improvements that he had developed on his own. Within a year or so, he was easily US champion and on his way to being the world champion. By combining passions, it's not as hard to be the greatest in the world at the intersections of all of those passions. People just simply did not like Mick Jagger's voice at first and reviewers couldn't stand Jagger's voice.

20:24One reviewer said, very ordinary. I can't hear a word Jagger saying. Another reviewer said, fuzzy and undisciplined, complete chaos. It was also no secret that Jagger couldn't play any instruments at that time. So they simply weren't the best band out there, but they kept playing and they also had the extra quality of Jagger's charisma. My theory always in any career start, career change, or developing a passion is that it takes one to three years to do the studying required, and about two years before you're making any money at this new career, three to four years before you're making a living from it and five to six years before you are truly killing it.

21:03But it does require persistence each day, no matter what you're interested in. And the Rolling Stones perfectly demonstrated that. I'm always amazed at how groups of artists, businessmen, creators of any sort grow up together as a scene in their respective businesses. In writing, look at Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs. In computers, for instance, look at Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. In the art world. Look at Jasper Johns, John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, who were all living on basically the same block in downtown New York, exploring the art scene of the fifties. And it was no different for the Rolling Stones.

21:39One time Jagger and Richards decided they needed to start writing their own music. They had no idea where to start. So Andrew Oldham was wandering around outside and ran into Paul McCartney and John Lennon and explained the problem. Lennon and McCartney went up to the apartment Jagger and Richards shared. And basically they riffed out, I want to be your man to help the Stones put together the release that was their first major hit. The Rolling Stones said yes to everything. They would perform 200 places a year for almost no money in the beginning of their careers, even if it meant playing to crowds of just four or five people.

22:11This reminds me of when the Beatles were playing for almost 20 hours a day, seven days a week at strip clubs in Hamburg, West Germany from 1960 to 1962. It was the nonstop playing that gave them the experience and mastery. But the key to a good yes is to make sure you extract as much as you can from everything you're saying yes to. Sergey Brin, for instance, one of the co-founders of Google, used to interview every single potential Google employee. He explained later that he knew within seconds whether he would hire someone or not and would then spend the rest of the meeting trying to learn at least one new thing from the interviewee so the meeting wouldn't be a total waste of time.

22:50People all the time ask me how someone can make money from writing a blog or doing a podcast or writing a book. There really is no way. Most authors will tell you the fastest way to go broke is to spend years writing a book, but you use the content you create as a launching pad. The Rolling Stones are no different. They don't even own most of their most successful music. They mistakenly signed away all the rights to their music without even realizing it. The songs you know, like Painted Black, Sympathy for the Devil, and on and on, had their rights signed away to their manager, Alan Klein. So they don't make any money off of those.

23:26So how do they make any money? Tours. They made over$600 million on their last tour. They formed a company at the beginning of each tour, collect all the revenues of that tour, which includes sponsorships, tickets, clothing, record sales, et cetera. And then they dividend and out the proceeds at the end of the tour, all taking home a nice paycheck. Jagger, who went to the London School of Economics, is very analytical, even inquiring with managers about which currency would be stronger, the pound or the dollar over time. All this is to say, you can create your content, but think of all the ways to slice it off to monetize that content.

24:03The Rolling Stones is not my favorite band. I've never bought an album. I've never seen them on tour, but I'm fascinated by their longevity, the birth of their creativity, the glue that stuck them together and propelled them from despair to success, and ultimately the magic of creativity that infects anyone who reaches the status they've reached. I hope one day in my own way to achieve a tiny sliver of that.