Um, all right. So I got a question from me. Hmm. As long as I have you, uh, in the studio from me on behalf of my listeners. Uh, so you've spent most of your career as a journalist and freelance journalist, writer of books, you're on, this is four or five, five, five, okay.

Five books. Um, you've got cool stories, right? I mean, you reported from talk about earlier, you were stationed in Argentina earlier in your career, you did a book about Jewish delis where you were traveling the seaboard, trying out different delis for revenge of analog, you went to all these cool places.

It was first person journalistic. A lot of the article. This is, I think, romantic to a certain subset of my listeners. The idea, the autonomy and the adventure of being a writer, traveling, going to interesting places, being able to write books about it, then to be able to like travel and like you're seeing me now because you're traveling, talking about the book, right?

This is romantic. Um, and we know that this is romantic. It's well, yeah. We've been talking about the sex spurts and now we're going to talk about the romance of David and I being in the same room. Um, so what I'm wondering here is like, let's, uh, let's say two answers.

What's the reality checks? Like what's the elements that, okay, it's not as romantic as you think, but so that we're not too dour, maybe give us a taste of what actually is as cool as you might think about this sort of full-time autonomous writer's lifestyle. Yeah. So the, the, the negative side, cause you know, I get this a lot.

I'm, I'm a mentor at my old university. So I have all these students and they don't have a writing program or journalism. So they send them to me, right. The wayward souls. Um, it's look, it's, it's, it's a difficult way to make a consistent living, uh, financially speaking. Um, you know, the financial rewards are not steady and consistent.

I'm someone who's successful at it relatively speaking. Um, but you know, it took me a while to get where I am. And that happened as the sort of industry, especially the magazine and newspaper industry has, has imploded as this sort of ad sales. It's the reality now you really need is books and speaking, what's going to be the.

The primary income source is the, is the freelance writing fees small enough now, if you're going to make a go at this, you can't imagine it's just going to be from the magazine piece of what's the... No, yeah, that, that, those days are done. Yeah. Um, I think there are people who, who still manage to eat that out, but they're doing other things.

Um, books are relatively consistent and steady. Yeah. Um, and the speaking, you know, relates to the success of the books or, or the topics of them. And that's always, that's always sort of good. Um, so that's, that's the downside. And then there's of course, all the downsides of being a writer, um, the rollercoaster of emotions and, you know, self-hatred and, you know, my book came out today and last night was amazing.

We did a great event. You, you, the, the, the, the, the, the sun God of Cal Newportness just brought all these wonderful people from DC who were friends of yours, fans of yours, listeners of yours. Um. Hometown, hometown crowd. Hometown crowd. Yeah. You, you brought it, you brought it.

And, uh, and it was a wonderful way to kick off this book tour. And then it was today, it was like, oh, someone isn't responding to my email about an op-ed and wah, like, you know, I'm like, well, maybe I'll just click on the Amazon. It's like, you don't click on the Amazon ranking on your first day.

I'm like, well, I. You can't. My book's 124,000. So that's, oh no, forget it. Um. But it was 126,000. So I think that's what's important. It's on the up and up. Yeah. It's a mover. It's on the up and up. It's a mover and shaker. So that's. You can, you can get infinitely discerning by the way that with your Amazon, like, well, it moving in shakers in this category on Tuesdays was actually in the top 1000.

Yeah. There you go. There's always a one, uh, a number one thing. Right. But up and down, up and down. Yeah. But I think, you know, the, the, the thing that I always tell people is like, when you, if you're able to do it in a way that you're able to support yourself and like, I'm not advocating that, like you should do it and lose all your money.

That's ridiculous. But like you gain the ultimate freedom and access. You've never had a normal job. Is that right? I've never had a normal job. You've never gone into an office building on a regular basis. I had one job when I was in my first summer of university. Um, that was a regular job.

I got a job at a office that made newsletters for dentists in Toronto. So you've had two different dream careers. Yeah. Is what you're saying. My job, I went the first day. I'm like, okay, like I want to be a journalist. I'm going to write these stories about dentists.

You're like, nope, you're going to go in this room. Here's a stack of the newsletters. Here's a printout of like, um, the addresses. You're going to tape the address onto the newsletter here, where it says, or the name of the dentist, Dr. Calvin Newport, you know, 606, whatever way.

Um, you're going to place this on this Canon image runner copier, and you're going to make 200 copies of that one. And you're gonna make 300 copies of that one. And you can do this all day, eight hours a day, seven days a week in this windowless room until the day when you notice smoke coming from the Cam and Gin runner.

Cause you've been running it so hot and so much, you've been slamming those copies that it catches on fire. And the guy from Canon comes in. He's like, I have never seen anything like this. And then you're moved to data entry. Uh, by the way, I love your dream denied in this story is writing articles about dentists.

I would probably still be at that company. This is what was taken from you. So anyway, that was, yeah. Yes. So I've never had that. Right. So, so what have I gotten out of, out of my career when, you know, other friends of mine have had more steady jobs or even steadier careers in journalism.

Like my friend, Mike came out to the bar last night, he works for Reuters. He's like a beat reporter on defense. Right. And he's like, I, he was like, you know, I loved, I would love to do what you do. It's I have the freedom to go anywhere and do what I want.

And as long as someone is willing to let me go there and say, yeah, you can come to my restaurant, interview me. Yeah. You can come to the, the record pressing plant in Nashville and walk around with us. Yeah. You know, you can, you can come to Jack White's recording studio and, and talk to his people and, and see how he does all that stuff.

Um, then I'm good to go and no one's telling me what to do. I can ask whatever questions I want. I get to have conversations with anyone I want anywhere in the world, um, uh, without limitations on them. So. So, so what's the game plan then if let's say.

Game plan. Undergraduate. Yeah. I'm invite, I do advice here. We get specific. Let's say you're an, a college student and the goal is I want to write nonfiction books that'll allow me to go to interesting places and report an interesting thing. So, so like the books you write. Um, how do you maximize the chance that you're like, okay, I want to give you a game plan, no guarantees, but let me build from pull from David, my David Sacks wisdom.

And like, this is what you should, this is the steps. Here's what you should focus on. What are you, what are you telling that student? This is what I tell, um, the students that I mentor. So the same thing, right. Is, uh, there's many different paths to it. So there's no one way.

Um, don't go to journalism school, uh, because you're just going to spend a lot of money sort of doing stuff that you can learn as a trade, um, right. Wherever and however you can. So if you can get an internship or you can sell stories to your local hometown paper or website or, you know, some other thing, do it.

Right. The more you write, start a blog, start a sub stack thing. Um, right, right, right. Because first you're going to just have to learn how to do that and learn how to pitch your ideas to people, which is the most important part. And then you're going to have to figure out what you're actually interested in writing about and what you're good at.

Like you're going to have to develop some sort of niche or expertise. And that doesn't mean you have to spend like 20 years studying, you know, Etruscan ruins. Um, but you're going to have to develop a knowledge around a certain area so that you see an idea that's big enough for a book when it comes to it.

Right. So when you're, when you're selling that book, if you can point to your journalism profile, and even if it's a lot of small things, it may be a bigger thing here and there. If there's a clear thread through it, you know, I'm writing about outdoor adventure sports a lot.

Like I'm, I'm in these places. Then when you pitch the book on that, like, okay, this makes sense. This tracks. It makes sense that this person is, but you have to give them that thread. Why does it make sense that this person is writing this book? Exactly. Yeah. And sometimes, you know, you have to convince them, right?

Like I, my first book was about, um, it's called Save the Deli and it was about, you know, why were Jewish deli disappearing and why, why did that matter? And what were the cultural forces? I mean, I, I came up with the idea when I was in university and it was a paper I wrote for a class.

Um, and when I pitched it, I was, I don't know, 25, 26 years old. And it was like, well, why is this guy doing it? Well, I'm like, look, I I'm interested in food. Here's a few things I've written, but it was like, okay, well, he understands this idea enough.

We can see in his writing that he knows how to write this, or we're going to take a chance on it. Um, it actually gets harder as you get more successful because you have a track record and they're like, oh, Cal Newport, you're the digital minimalism, digital work guy.

What do you mean you want to write a book about like 19th century ballet? Look, man, like that's, yeah, we'll give you a flyer or whatever, but, um, you know, this is the goods like you're, you're, this is the industry, right? Yeah. No, it's hard. I mean, I remember when Ryan Holiday years ago, I first heard that he was going to write a book on stoicism.

I was like, come on, why are you writing a book on stoicism? Your last book was about marketing. You're in the marketing world. You did this growth hacking ebook, like that is your world. This is a crazy idea. And this is why I'm terrible at giving advice to people, but he had a hard time.

I asked about that on the show. Exactly. What you're talking about is publishers like, I guess we'll publish this. We're not going to pay you much for it. Right. Kind of annoyed about it because we want to get back to what you're doing. Quantity for. Yeah. But I think, and that's the thing about the freelance writer, like just as soon as you get that sort of success around it, people like, oh, good.

You're the analog guy. I'm like, yeah, but I'm going to throw you a curve ball now. Cause like, I don't want to be put in some sort of hole where I'm writing the same book over and over and over and over and over again. Yeah. Um, and, and you see that and there's people who are successful at kind of weaving through that, like, you know, Rich Cohen.

Uh, name sounds familiar. Rich Cohen's written many books. Um, he's also written for vanity fair whenever, and he's always just like something that interests him and something different. And he's like, some stuff sells more and some stuff sells less. He's like, but I'm following the thing that I want to write about.

And that's the, that's, that has to be the definition of success because the commercial success is so out of your control. It's very hard. It's very hard. And then try to like consistently have high commercial success. That's like a whole different, that's a whole different type of career. I'm like half in that world and it's a, it's a lot of, it's a lot of hard work, but it's a lot of managing, uh, it reminds me of film, film directing.

Yeah. It's like a kind of a complicated thing for the film director. So, you know, like this movie was very successful and having to navigate the projects. And if this movie doesn't do well, I have one more I can do to try to prove it. It's a complicated and it's not a straight linear thing.

Right. And I think the expectation that it should be that success is this straight linear thing of like, this thing is going to do this. And then the next one's going to do better. And the next one's going to do better. It doesn't work like that. And so, you know, there is an element of like artistry to it.

And I don't mean we're artists, but it is this type of thing where it's, where it's like at the end of the day, the, the goal, the goal is not to lose money. You still want to make enough money to like afford the Subaru and its gas. Um, uh, but you know, you, you, you don't want to give up that independence cause that's the thing that got you into it in the first place.

Yeah. Um, so it's like the nonfiction axiom, I say nonfiction, like selling seven figure copies of a book. It's like hitting a major league fastball. It's like one of the most difficult things to do and no one can do it all the time. Yeah. There is a handful of writers out there, you know, nonfiction like Malcolm Gladwell, Michael Lewis, but you know, they're not moving seven figures.

Okay. Then no. Yeah. How about it's hard. Well, but then some people do it's this, what's so hard? Like it's, it's very feast or family. Like a James Clear will move 4 million copies. See, I don't even know who that is. Atomic habits. Okay. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Mark Manson, 18 million copies.

The business book. Yeah. But like no one can consistently. Celebrities don't count. Yeah. Uh, that's right. But celebrities don't consistently write books. So like it's very, in fiction, you can do it. You can be Grisham in the nineties. Grisham in the nineties. And you're going to move a lot, but he wasn't.

Yeah, I guess he was moving seven figures pretty consistently. Uh, units. Units. Units. Units. SKUs. SKUs. SKUs of SKUs. SKUs of Southern lawyers. Yeah. So you can go crazy. You can go crazy chasing that. Like. But it's out of your control, right? I don't think Stephen King's like thinks like that.

Yeah. And I'm sure his books are up and down. I mean, they also a lot of copies, but. Yeah. I think some kill it and some. Sedaris. Sedaris. Sedaris probably the same way. No, I think Sedaris just gets out there, tell some crazy stories about his family and then goes on tour and, you know, charges like 50 bucks a ticket to go see him.

And. Well, that's why he doesn't care about like. The books have to do well and they do well. Yeah. But like he loves touring and he makes a lot of money. Yeah. And what does he have to spend his money on, but like a new stick to pick up garbage with in England?

Like it's. I mean, don't they have, doesn't him and Hugh have like a. They have many. French countryside house and an English house. We could geek out on Sedaris all day here. Yeah. Well, I've been trying to get them on the show. I can't imagine what, no I'm joking.

It's like, huh. Productivity, digital culture. This is right in my wheelhouse. I'm sure he, he does write about how he works. And, uh, he has a very specific way about it. Yeah. Yeah. Be great. Yeah. But you wouldn't get him. All right. So that's good advice. So, um, the summarize then I always paraphrase.

So you're, so you're saying, uh, the book writing, it's hard, financially hard, but you can make a living at it. It has its pluses and minuses. If you want to get into it, right, journalistically, right. Articles anywhere you can develop a niche. Then that's super tight. But I will say the other thing, there's the other path to it too.

Yes. Go live your life, go have another career and then write on the side, right. For, you know, a magazine for a hobby you have or a blog or something like that. And then later on, when you feel like you have an experience or something to tell, you're going to have that lived experience.

That's that is it. So it's not just writers who get to do that. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Lives. And if you want to write pragmatic nonfiction, then do something that's useful and then you can write about it. That's easier. Yeah. If I want to give advice on something, uh, go do that thing.

Well, it's like a much easier formula than if you want to report on Jewish delis, like, what can this person write? And does, you know, as it makes sense, he'll be right on that. Right. Yeah, yeah, exactly. All right. Well, David, this is a, this has been great. This has been useful.

Thanks for stopping by the studio and help me tackle some of these questions. And, um, I think we have to go find a deli. I think we do. It's a pleasure. Great to be here. I'm freezing. Turn the heat up.