1614: [Part 2] The Magic of Idea Math by James Altucher on Creativity as a Skill

[00:00:00] This is Optimal Work Daily. The Magic of Idea Math, Part 2 by James Altucher of jamesaltucher.com Idea Exponentials Today I wrote down 10 ideas that could be the outline for a book. Tomorrow I'll write down 10 ideas for each one of those ideas. The next day I'll write down 10 ideas for each of those. Then I fill in the blanks between all the ideas. Then I have a book.

[00:00:26] If you are lazy, you can even outsource to Freelance.com the last part of this. Idea Exponentials can lead to a book being written in 5 days. Negative Ideas I wrote an article that was very popular called 10 Reasons to Quit Your Job. So then I wrote 10 Reasons to Keep Your Job. I wouldn't contradict myself, although there's nothing wrong with that. The aliens won't care after they invade us.

[00:00:50] But I would suggest ways to be an intrapreneur within your workplace, so you can stand out and maybe create multiple streams of income while you are at your job. I was an intrapreneur before I was an entrepreneur. Negative ideas are more realistic. Idea negatives challenge me to be open-minded. Challenge me to carve out new space in the world. Challenges me to break rules. Challenges me to see multiple sides of something that is beautiful. Idea Multiplication Idea Multiplication Taking one idea and replicating it. Scaling

[00:01:21] Example, let's say I write successful advertising for a local dentist. The ads double his business. Now I have a track record. I can go to every dentist, maybe not in the same town, and say, here's what I did for this dentist. For X dollars, I can do it for you now. So you take the same idea and multiply it many times. Then you can even multiply that. Sell, here's how I made a million dollars helping dentists in a webinar.

[00:01:44] Amazon is a great success at this. They sold books online. And they said, this works. So now what other industries can we be the backbone of all e-commerce for? Shoes, flowers, food, music, movies, etc. Then they said, we built the computer infrastructure to handle millions of requests. Now we can resell that to all industries. And that became the Amazon cloud services. Idea Division

[00:02:10] This is critical for business. Peter Thiel is an excellent example with PayPal. PayPal was initially a way for people to pay for anything they wanted by using their Palm Pilots. Well, nobody has Palm Pilots anymore. And it was hard to educate everyone in the world to accept payments electronically.

[00:02:25] So he divided and divided again until PayPal became the way to pay for any items bought on eBay, a tiny, tiny company at the time. Their entire focus was eBay. They became a monopoly, even beating eBay's internal competition, and then expanded from there. First divide so much that you are a monopoly, then build. When I was building my first business, we made websites for companies. But it was hard to call any company and convince them they needed their websites.

[00:02:53] We first focused on record labels and movie companies. We divided our idea down into a niche we could dominate. Suddenly, we were the guys for the entertainment industry. We divided further. We were the guys for gangster rap websites. Then we expanded and did larger and larger websites. And of course, ideas. Ideas.

[00:03:13] When the Fugees, an already popular rap group combined rap with the Bee Gees song, Stayin' Alive, it was only a mediocre song. Go listen to it. It's okay. Not great. But because it was one big thing combined with another huge thing, it became a huge hit.

[00:03:28] Ideas is hard to fail. When you take two good ideas and merge them into one. Ideas shortens the 10,000 hour rule. People say it becomes 10,000 hours to be world class. But if even I, and I wish I could capitalize I even further, took a hip hop beat and sang the Bee Gees song, Stayin' Alive, I can make it a hit in just 10 hours.

[00:03:49] It takes 10,000 hours to be world class at any one thing. It takes 1,000 hours to be world class at an intersection. It takes 100 hours to become world class at the intersection of three or more things. I keep telling Claudia to create Tango Yoga. Heck, I'd take it just because of the name alone. Which reminds me. Gotan Project. A great band. They took an electronic beat, combined it with tango music, created hit after hit. Are they Argentinian? No, they're French.

[00:04:19] Idea subsets. People say execution is everything. I can tell you it isn't. If you can't come up with ideas, then you'll never be able to come up with execution ideas. When I had an idea for a website once, 2006, the next thing I did was come up with 10 ideas for pages on the website. Then 10 things on each page. Then 10 ways I can execute on this. All of these were subsets of the initial idea. Eight months after that list, I sold the company. St. James Place.

[00:04:49] If you want to win a monopoly, own St. James Place. I like to think they named it after me. But the reality is, when you get thrown in jail, it's the place you are most likely to land. Atlantic City plus capitalism equals monopoly. And in Scrabble, it's good to know that chi means life force. Don't forget to just play.

[00:05:13] You just listened to part two of the post titled The Magic of Idea Math by James Altucher of jamesaltucher.com. And thank you again to James as well. We always love to hear his unique perspective on things. And I'm going to keep this ending pretty short for you today for this Sunday episode. I'll just say that if you haven't done so already, please do subscribe to this show in your favorite podcast app. That helps us, and of course it helps you, by giving you the new episodes automatically so you're always all caught up.

[00:05:40] You can also hit the follow button depending on what app you're using. Either one of those would be great. We are now in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, as well as Audible, Pandora, and more. And that'll do it for today. I thank you so much for being here and for supporting the show. And I'm going to be back with you tomorrow for the Monday show, where your optimal life awaits.