I dont always drink river wine in the sunset, but when I do... its Laissez Faire.

The past few weeks have brought me to Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. In this time, Ive had a chance to reconnect with nature, the roots, the wild. Where it all began. Where those wild things unself-consciously hoot, holler, catcall, give birth and die all out in the open. Theres no protesting nature. No forcing it to behave. Theres no running outside with a stick and a placard with weird symbols on it and demanding the bears be fair to the trees and the fish, that the poor pheasants get their fair share from the mountain lions, and the buffalo not roam in the carpet grass.

It gets back to the source. When you are involved in the process of turning the wild into food, for example, its real. Not wrapped in plastic. From catch to kill to cut, its right there. Food has a face again.

This wildness runs parallel to the anthropocene. Its wisdom cant be found in the latest iPhone. The cleverness of man, hard as it tries, wont supersede the long and storied wisdom of the wild. Its right outside, but billions of years away. The wild world is inherently one of risk, change and action. Powerful institutions have done their best to try to breed that wildness out of us. To try to temper the beast. But its made us restless. Because something fundamental is calling for us to reconnect. As Bryan Ward of Third Way Man puts it: For you know in your bones that your wild underpinning is not counter to civilization, but the animating force that upholds it. Such is the journey of straddling both worlds. Reconnecting, to be sure, isnt about turning your back on the world in a raccoon-headed loincloth. Its about embracing the cleverness without letting it rip out the roots of what it means to be human. Of re-awakening to simple animal pleasures, while, at the same time, being a king of your own castle. To use progress, and not let progress use you. You are wild. As long as you are alive, theres no killing the root. And it can be rekindled at any time. Well talk more on straddling these two worlds -- and my unconventional project in the works to make progress wild again -- in future episodes. Today, to show you how to buckle down and build a life of your own choosing, we invite two powerhouses of change-ism -- James Altucher and Gary Vaynerchuk. Here is, distilled down, ten things Altucher learned from Vaynerchuk. Enjoy. [Ed. note: Tomorrow, well be announcing James Altuchers latest project. It has to do with the Wild West of crypto -- and specific ways to take advantage of its meteoric rise. Stay tuned.]

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TEN THINGS I LEARNED FROM GARY VAYNERCHUK

By James Altucher

 

1. MAKE A MANIFESTO. THEN LET THE WORLD COME TO YOU. WHICH IT WILL!

Gary set up this example: Pokemon. Imagine this is your passion. You set up a blog. Then it becomes a video blog and then a podcast. You become the foremost Pokemon gal, Sally the Pokemon Gal. Its your passion. You love it. But what will happen next? Heres the thing: something ALWAYS happens next. Youre owning it. You go to Comic-Con, you get random sponsorships on your blog. Youre getting by. And then, Pokemon Go comes out! Youre now on CNN and FOX. Youre getting paid five grand to give a talk. The world has just walked in to you. Everybody whos listening right now is looking for trends. Theyre trying to walk to where the world is NOW and by the time they get there, the world moved on. If you go to your thing and set a f*cking flag on your thing, THE WORLD COMES TO YOU! I look at every interest that created success for me. It only created success because I fell in love and I CREATED before anyone else knew there was something to create. Dont worry about the outcome. Immerse yourself in the process. TODAY.

2. DONT CREATE. DOCUMENT.

Instead of trying to make Threes Company or MASH, try to make the Kardashians, Gary says. Why would he say that? That almost seems like make garbage instead of make art. Hes talking about documenting instead of creating. Process is art. Gary documents every moment of his every day. We no longer want to see just the final outcome. We want to see how the movie is made, the art is created, the business started. We want the origin story. We want the arc of the hero as he or she creates a business. We want to know how, what, where, why. Process is Art. This is the mantra of all success right now. Dont just write an article of how to do something. Tell the story of why this is important to you. Why you need to do this. How you are doing it. What will you do next. What tools you used. How you failed. What tools you are learning. Let us peek inside your heart. Process is Art.

3. BE MACRO-PATIENT

Nobody has ever built anything meaningful that hasnt taken an obnoxious amount of time, Gary said. Hes planning on buying the Jets. This is his lifelong dream. And everyone knows it. But hes not buying them in the next year. Not even in the next ten. You have to be macro-patient, Gary tells me. Ive done hundreds of interviews with the best in the world: Tony Hawk (skateboarding), Garry Kasparov (chess), Sara Blakely (business), Ken Follett and Judy Blume (writers who sold 100s of millions of copies), and on and on and on. Everybody took shortcuts. Thats how you succeed. You find the fast ways to learn. I love learning how to find those shortcuts. BUT THEN, time + persistence + love + creativity = success. What is success? Its always finding new ways to explore what you love. Every day. Does this mean you wont have success until 20 years pass? No! Of course not. Celebrate the small successes along the way because they will be there. Gary, for instance, had Wine Library, then his first books, then his first clients in VaynerMedia. And maybe much later..the Jets. Celebrate small successes. Be patient. Process is Art.

4. I LIKE LOSING

In Garys words, he eats shit for a living. This is his profession. Hes an entrepreneur. And Vayner Media is an enormous success. But being an entrepreneur is stressful. I can say: it is pure pain. Everything is your fault. You have to like losing. And you lose everyday. A true entrepreneur fails almost every day. And its what they do with that failure that determines success. Stephen Colbert was recently talking about being on stage. When you are bombing, he said (and I am paraphrasing), learn to enjoy it RIGHT THEN. Thats how you succeed.

5. WHATS YOUR PURSUIT?

You wanna hear something weird, Gary says. I dont celebrate shit, he said. I didnt understand. I like celebrating everything. All the little things. He told me this: I hate that people think that Im built around buying the Jets. They dont understand, its the pursuit. I still dont believe him. He celebrates the pursuit. I celebrate getting to write this article. And later today, interviewing on stage one of my good friends about the topic of creativity. I celebrate how every day I try to do a little bit more of what I love than the day before. Loving the pursuit allows you to be creative about the process. Celebrate every day.

6. THE PEOPLE WHO LOVE WHAT THEYRE DOING WILL BE GREAT AT WHAT THEYRE DOING

Gary is making Vayner Media the Death Star of marketing. Its a machine. And one day hes going to buy Puma, Hersheys, Keds, all the classic, nostalgic brands he loved as a kid. This is how hes going to buy the Jets. By linking his life today to his life as a kid. And carrying that into the future. Theres a real correlation around doing things you love, Gary said. It makes it easier when things are bad. If you do not do what you love, thats on you. EXERCISE: list the things you loved from ages 6-14. Figure out what you can do around those interests right now. This is a good way to kick-start building your idea muscle. Come up with 10 ideas a day for next week around creating content or business around the things you loved as a kid. Come up with ideas for those companies if they are around now. Just like you shouldnt ignore the people you love, to please the people you dislike dont ignore the things youve always loved to do in order to pay the bills. The person who is doing what they love, will always out-compete, out-succeed, the person who is just doing it to pay the bills.

7. SELF-AWARENESS OVER HUSTLE

If you dont know who you are its over, Gary said. What does that mean? Exercise: Write down the ten things you value most in the world. Do you really value them? Dig deep. Write them down again. Dig deeper. What are you doing about them today?

8. DOUBLE DOWN

Gary doubled down on documenting because he realized he has the responsibility to help young people who might get sucked into the wrong message. I cut through the bullshit, he says. For me, this is why I STOPPED writing about finance. I find most finance writing to be boring and BS. But I did double-down on my own stories of failure and how I came through the other side. And then I double-downed again and again. For me, telling stories honestly was a way of doubling down and has opened so many opportunities for me.

9. YOU HAVE TO DO IN ORDER TO COMMUNICATE WHAT YOURE DOING

Theres never been a day since I was 22 that havent been operating a business, Gary said. Gary V is my side hustle. I dont spend 100% of my time building a brand. He operates and runs businesses because he knows he couldnt talk if he didnt. Too many people lecture or write about entrepreneurship or art without actually DOING it a single day in their lives. Everyone's a critic. Only a few people DO. Personal Branding is a way of lying. Dont change yourself into a brand. Personal branding will kill you. Personal DOING will save everyone around you.

10. SUFFOCATE WHY NOT?

Years ago, no one believed you could choose yourself. You needed gatekeepers. You NEEDED someone who was not qualified to say, I like you. Now we have YouTube, Instagram, self-publishing, easy tools for entrepreneurship, and many platforms to choose yourself. Now its the standard, Gary said. If you cut out all the reason why you cant do something, then you cut out all the infrastructural and financial problems stopping you. The only thing left is your f-cking head. [Ed. note: This article was adapted from James Altuchers podcast, Set a Flag on YOUR Thing, on James website at this link.]