Hello everybody, it's Sam from Financial Samurai and in this episode I want to talk about opportunity and what happens when you don't get the opportunity you think you deserve. If this is the situation, you need to stand up and fight for yourself. Let me share with you an example that I recently experienced.

When a producer from Penguin Random House contacted me about creating the audio version of my book, Buy This, Not That, he asked me a series of questions on who I thought would be the best fit to narrate my book. And he gave me three or four examples, all were okay, it felt kind of weird, why can't I narrate my book?

What's wrong with my voice? Is it just not smooth enough? Is it not authentic enough? What's wrong with me? And so I went down his list and I finally found some guy who I felt was pretty good. He sounded like a 10 year old version of me. Theodore Chin, my narrator, was a seasoned actor and I didn't look at any of the narrator's backgrounds before I chose them.

But when I finally chose Theodore Chin, it turns out he was very similar to me. He lived in San Francisco, he's Asian American and I thought, oh, I guess there is that right fit. So yes, I could have been one of the four white narrators. Yeah, I could have been a white man on audio.

I could have been an Indian man on audio. But instead, I chose the person who best fit who I am. But still, it wasn't me. So it wasn't 100% authentically me. And so I asked the audio producer, can we come to a compromise? Because I had surveyed my newsletter subscribers, and you can sign up at financialsamurai.com/newsletter, whether they wanted a professional narrator or me.

And about 70% of the respondents said they wanted me and 30% said a professional. And that was a surprise. But it made a lot of sense. Writers are writers first. We are not professional narrators. Even though I've been recording this podcast for over five years, I'm not a professional narrator.

Listen to my voice. Is it as smooth and silky as you hear on TV? Is it as professional as you hear? Well, I guess I could try to sound like that, but it's really not me. And a lot of the respondents said, writers who narrate, who are not professional narrators just don't sound as good.

It's just a little bit off, and they would rather have a professional. So that was 30% of the respondents. And so I came to a compromise because I did feel a little bit slighted. I said, what's wrong with me? What's wrong with me, the creator of the book? And the compromise was that I would narrate the introduction and the conclusion, so the book ends of the book.

And by the way, the audio book is about 12 hours and 50 minutes long. So it's a really long book. It's packed with a lot of information. If you get the audio, you're going to enjoy driving across the country with it, but you won't be able to see the charts and the art if you were to buy a hardcover.

So that was a good compromise, I thought. If listeners really hated my voice, then they could go to the professional for the meat of the book. And if listeners didn't like the professional, which I do believe they will like the professional narrator, at least I tried and offered almost 45 minutes of my own voice.

So the lesson here is to speak up for opportunities you think you deserve. As you go through life, you will probably be slighted, disrespected, and passed over for things you deserve. Therefore, to try to even the playing field, you must speak up. And also don't take things too personally.

As a writer, I like to be really introspective. I wrote a new post called "How to Convince Someone You're Bad When You're Actually Pretty Good" and it's a story about how a teammate disrespected me after doing very well in the regular season for my tennis league. I could have been all disgruntled and felt bad about myself for not getting the respect that I thought I deserved after having an 83% winning season.

But instead, I turned it around. I looked at the negative as a positive to think, "Hmm, if I could learn how to position myself as a mediocre player, as someone who is not a threat, I could then surprise on the upside and outperform and win." If you've ever watched any Chinese drama based out of mainland China, I don't know why you would but I do because I like to practice my Mandarin, you'll notice that all the actors and actresses are dubbed.

They are dubbed. And why is that? Well, the reason why is because China is a big country with over 1.2 billion people and there are different accents and dialects of the Chinese language all throughout the country. And the actors and actresses hail from all throughout the country. So they want to formalize the sound, the narration, the voices, so that when people listen, they're listening to "proper Chinese dialect and accents." So I thought that was really fascinating.

But that's also interesting, right? Because the audio producer didn't think my voice was the proper American accent. And maybe it's because of my name. Maybe it's because of what I look like. I'm not sure. But again, I fought for myself to speak up for my own book. And I hope you enjoy listening to it.

And I hope you enjoy reading it. If you pick up a hard copy, which will count towards the bestsellers list, you'll be able to see all the beautiful art by Colleen Kong Savage and the graphs and charts that I created. And if you order the audio version, I really believe you'll enjoy the hybrid narration.

It's a long audio book, folks, over 12 hours long. So if you are driving across state or going to that next three or four hour road trip, I think you'll really enjoy it. So please, the next time you find yourself in a funny situation, a hairy situation where you think you deserve an opportunity, please stand up.

Please speak up and ask them, "Why not me? Why not me too?" Ask yourself, "Why not me too?" Because chances are, you deserve it. Thanks so much. And you can pick up any version you want of Buy This, Not That at FinancialSamurai.com/btnt. It goes on sale July 19th.