Starting from Nothing – The Foundation Podcast

Guest Name Interview – James Clear

Introduction: Welcome to Starting from Nothing – The Foundation Podcast, the place
where incredible entrepreneur show you how they built their businesses
entirely from scratch before they knew what the heck they were doing.

Dane: In this episode of Starting from Nothing, you're going to learn all of this. If
you’re listening on your mp3, I’m holding up two pages of notes on an
incredible interview with a guy who’s doing about 500,000 uniques a month
to his blog. He’s not paying for any traffic.

You’re going to learn how he writes blog posts that get published on
Entrepreneur, Inc., and Lifehacker. You’re going to learn his three or four
little tricks to staying – not really tricks but ways of being that allow him to
live incredibly successfully.

You’re going to learn how he emails super important people and finds some
of the best people in the world to be a mentor to him where he has about 20
to 40 mentors at any given time that he can reach out to. You’re just going to
see a whole lot into the essence of success and what it really looks like. I
can’t wait for you guys to watch this interview and I hope you enjoy.

What is up friends and family, Dane Maxwell here from Starting from
Nothing. We’re the official Foundation podcast. We have an incredible guest
on, a good friend of mine and a very, very, very successful blogger; over
500,000 uniques to his site last month. Hundreds of thousands of people
coming to a site every month. He started all from nothing and we’re going to
learn how he did it today. James, what’s up man?

James: Dane, thanks for having me. Happy to be here.

Dane: Yeah, man. I want to just skim through this bio that I have in front because I
want people to know all about you in the shortest time as possible.

James Clear is an entrepreneur, writer, speaker, weightlifter, and travel

photographer in 20 plus countries. James works at a variety of topics, but the
central idea that ties it all together is simple. If you can master your habits,
you can master your life. That’s inspiring.

James used behavior science to share ideas for mastering your habits,
improving your health, and increasing your creativity. As a writer, his work
 has been featured by dozens of major media outlets including Business
Insider, entrepreneur.com, Fast Company, Forbes, the Huffington Post, Inc.,
Lifehacker, Psychology Today, and US News and World Report. It will be
interesting to see how he got on those. We can find that out today.

As a photographer, James has created street photography and landscape

photography in dozens of countries. His travel photography has been
featured in magazines like Travel and Leisure and Wend’s Traveler. You can
learn more about his site at jamesclear.com.

I want to read this quote that you also have here, James, I love it. It says, “I
believe that the world would be a better place if we had more people who
are athletes, entrepreneurs, and artists. In other words, I believe that the
world will be a better place if we had more people who were putting their
sweat, their work, and their vision out into the world.” Quote by none other
than James.

I’m guessing James that you’re saying when you say putting their sweat, their
work, and their vision out into the world that probably has its foundation and
habits?

James: Yeah, for sure. It’s great to do anything if you put it out once or twice, that’s
great. It’s awesome that you have the courage to do that. But, of course, one
of the central things for me is how can we make this consistent, how can we
make this the mastering of a craft that you do week after week, day after
day, rather than just a one time I got motivated and tried this thing.

Dane: What are some of the habits you have right now?

James: I’ll give you a couple ones that I have and a couple ones I’m working on.

Two of the ones that dialed in pretty well are writing and weightlifting. I write
new articles on jamesclear.com every Monday and Thursday. I’ve done that
for over two years now. I think like 220 some posts in a row, and then
weightlifting. I train every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I’ve gone at least
a year and a half now without missing a schedule workout. I don’t hold
myself to some unbelievable standard. What I mean is that when I travel, I’m
allowed to not work out for that week or something like that. Yeah, those
two have been pretty honed in.

Some that I’m struggling with, sleep is a big one. I don’t cheat myself on
sleep, I do get a fair amount, but I have this tendency to work and just keep
working late at night. That pushes me off the next day, then I get all thrown
off. I tend to do my best work in the morning, not at night. Getting – I guess I
should say the habit is getting in bed at 10:00 or 11:00 or 11:30PM. I’ve
gradually, over the last couple of weeks, tried a couple of new strategies that
have taken me from going to bed at 1AM down to about 11:45. So I’m
creeping in that direction but it’s still something I’m battling with.
Dane: One of them is sleep. Are there any other habits that you’re struggling with?

James: Yeah, sleep is one. I’ve tried a bunch of different – I mentioned the
weightlifting habit. Well, the other kind of half of exercise and training is
nutrition. I eat okay but I think most of the time we delude ourselves about
how well we eat or how healthy we eat. I definitely fall into that camp.

Although I’m not necessarily worried about my weight and because I train
enough it doesn’t bother me too much that way, I feel like there are a lot of
gains to be had that I’m not enjoying because I don’t track my nutrition well,
or I don’t have great cooking habits, or anything like that. I’ve tried a couple
different things to track calories, track protein, carb intake, all that stuff. I
haven’t been able to stick with them. I tried a couple apps, I tried food
journaling once. I don’t know. I’m not sure what the solution is.

I’ve actually recently looked into just getting the meals prepped for me and
delivered with a certain number of calories and protein carb fat in each meal
already pre-determined. I would put the work in on planning the meals but
they would be created by someone else. That may be a good solution but
that’s definitely been one that I battle with.

On a business level, there have been a variety of things I’ve done well with
creating content, and making consistent changes, and reaching out to people,
building a network and so on. Creating products and selling I guess you could
say consistently, that’s been one that I’ve struggled with as well. For me,
that’s been a very spike and then stop, spike and then stop, do a launch and
then take time off.

I would love to – I don’t know if I want to say automate but develop a routine
where I’m putting stuff out for sale consistently, week after week. The same
way that I’m putting articles out every Monday and Thursday rather than do
a spike, do a launch, and then head back down.

Dane: So many questions I want to ask just from all that. Let me make sure I heard
that all correctly. Struggle with sleep a little bit and you’re actively engaged in
working on that. Then making meals that have the specific amount of
proteins, and carbs, or whatever you were saying.

James: Yeah.

Dane: The other is creating products to generate revenue.

James: Yeah. I think I’m pretty – What I tend to gravitate toward is naturally building
systems. I guess that fits with my mentality. I like this system of working out
Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or this system of writing Monday, Thursday. If I
had a suite of say ten products, then I am fairly confident that I build a
system to sell those.
 As it is now, I tend to do – we were talking before we started recording, just
got done doing an event which went very well. The launch was great. The
event’s over now, and it’s done. Now I got to build either the next thing I’m
going to sell for this next launch and spike type thing that I’m mentioning, or
do I build a variety of products that I build a system around.

Dane: Do you have any income goals for yourself? How much do you want – how
much do you need to make to live comfortably and happily?

James: I don’t mean to make any more than what I’m making now. To live
comfortably and happily, I don’t know. $100,000 a year is I guess a very easy
basic number for me personally. The other thing is – this is another
interesting side of this. I am not really driven by money. I guess if we’re going
to pick vices, I’m more driven by power than money. With power I don't
mean being able to control people so much as having influence, or having an
impact, or being able to reach people. That’s having a powerful message.

I would say that that drives me more than income does. It’s easy for me to
just put income on the back burner and keep adding email subscribers, and
reaching more people, and stuff like that. I think that, from an internal
perspective, that’s one little distinction.

Dane: Would you mind if I ask possibly a vulnerable question?

James: Sure, man.

Dane: You don’t have to answer. Do you have any blocks? Do you think you have
any blocks or issue, limiting beliefs, or thoughts around making money?

James: Yeah, for sure. For one, I didn’t grow up in a poor family but I didn’t grow up
in a family with a lot of money. When I was young, I think that I associated
this idea that having money meant you were privileged and being privileged
meant you were entitled. If you were entitled, you were a jerk. I associated
money with being a jerk, but that’s not what it means at all. You have to like
break through that. That was one barrier that I already had to work through
in the first couple years of entrepreneurship.

Now, the next one is this idea that – I write a fair amount about habits but I
also write about having the courage to create, and being a person of
integrity, and trying to develop and improve ourselves. Because I think about
integrity a fair amount, like every March I publish my annual integrity report
which sort of asks these questions about how and where in my business and
life am I displaying my values and where could I improve that. Because I do
that stuff and take a public stance with it, I think sometimes it’s easy to over
think it and be like “Oh, I shouldn’t sell things. There are sleazy sales men out
there, I don’t want to be someone like that.”

I think that that’s definitely a block for me. That I say, okay, it’s easier to
default to being a servant leader, and giving things away for free, sharing
 your message every week with the world, and doing an occasional even to
make money and make your lifestyle but not being in front of people selling.
It’s easier to do that because no one’s going to complain, they’re all going to
be like, “Wow, look at all the stuff you give away. That’s great.” But the idea
of charging for that same content, it’s like I run the risk of not being a person
of integrity. Whether or not that’s true, we can debate, but that’s I would say
yeah, that’s a mental block.

Dane: I so appreciate the honesty. I feel a lot of resonance with this. I feel really
engaged in the conversation right now. I’m just kind of looking off the site
with some notes that I’m taking. Give another thought that’s present right
now.

James: No. I think that gives you a pretty good idea of where I’m sitting with it.

Dane: How is it to share all that right now?

James: I’ve talked about some of the stuff before it’s been. Last year was when I
started to realize that some of this was an issue, I guess. I don’t know if issue
is the right word. I realize it was something I want to work through. If I
wanted to grow to the next level of entrepreneurship, it wasn’t just about
getting a million people to read my site, or building an email list of a hundred
thousand people, or all this other stuff. It also required me to build a very
successful business, revenue wise.

By doing that, that would enable me to hire people that would raise my
standard of work so that what I was delivering for free or paid was better.
Also, give me the opportunity to do projects that I would not otherwise be
able to do that hopefully will motivate, inspire, and be useful to people that
otherwise would not happen or would not get off the ground. I saw that, I
realized that that was true, last year, but I still had all these mental blocks to
work through.

As far as how it feels to share it now, it feels good. It always feels good for me
to talk about this stuff because I think that’s the only way that I’m going to
improve. It’s not the first time I’ve talked about this. This is something that’s
been very top of mind for me for the last, I would say, six months or so.

Dane: You use the word issue but then you were like, “I’m not sure if that’s the right
word.” Do you have a word that may feel more accurate than that?

James: I think issue – The reason I hesitate with that issues – and this is true, I think,
with anything that we struggle with personally; whatever the barriers that
you’re working through in your life right now.

The word issue kind of has this connotation that, oh, there’s something
wrong with you. There’s an issue that you have. I don’t necessarily feel like
I’m a broken person in any way. I think that this is just part of the growth
process. No matter what point you are on the growth curve, there’s going to
 be the next thing for you to work through if you want to continue to move up
that curve. This is the thing for me right now.

I guess I didn’t want to term it that way because I still feel very self confident,
I feel like I have some respect, I feel like a good person or a complete person
but this is something that I need to work through if I want to continue to
improve and become better.

Dane: Hell yeah. What is the word that you think would be a more accurate
description than …

James: Challenge, I guess, or …

Dane: Challenge is good. I like that word too. I was like, hmm, what would we use.

James: Every person who’s going to improve always faces some challenge, right?
There’s always the next challenge to go through the battle.

Dane: Yeah. I like challenge, man. It feels great to me because it’s like what you’re
stepping into. It’s like you’re going to rise above this challenge.

You said you had a few blocks around money. One was that you had this
association through money, through entitlement, through being a jerk. You
also mentioned it could be sleazy sales. I don’t want to be a sleazy sales guy. I
can imagine how much those would initially kind of – For me, those would
shut me down when it comes to the point of asking for money.

I first want to commend you for just launching the habits product. How did
launching that habits product do for you? You can share whatever you’d like
to share in terms of numbers or whatever. How did it do there but then how
did it impact these beliefs that you’ve been [unclear 00:14:34] …

James: As far as the beliefs go I felt great about it just because the feedback has
been so positive. I haven’t received a single piece of negative feedback yet.
Even if a couple people do complain at some point, the overwhelming
majority is, okay, this was a good thing. This is worth doing. Yeah, I feel very
good about that.

Revenue wise was great. I did standard ticket price for the – The seminar was
like two hour workshop or online event. Standard ticket price was depending
on when they paid, when they got early bird pricing or regular price or
whatever. Some are between $39 and $69 and sold almost a thousand
copies. I feel pretty good about getting people to sign up and join, and be
able to share that with them. Yeah, I don’t know …

Dane: That’s good. That’s pretty good. That’s what I wanted to hear.
 I want to go into how you started from nothing. To do that, I want to go back
before you even started James Clear, and then back before maybe you even
started Passive Panda. What’s the origin of James getting online?

James: The story has two parts. The first part is … so I was an athlete growing up. My
dad played minor league baseball in St. Louis Cardinals, so growing up I
wanted to be like him and play professionally and everything. I played a
variety of sports growing up, ended up playing baseball all the way through
college. Then I graduated and went to grad school. I was looking for this
outlet there, started doing Olympic weightlifting and some of the stuff that I
still do now. I worked in a medical practice as well. I had all these different
touch points of health and wellness. I was a science guy; studied
biomechanics in undergrad, mostly Chemistry and Physics stuff. That’s the
first part of the business background.

Dane: What does biomechanics mean?

James: It’s the study of how the human body moves.

Dane: That’s pretty cool.

James: That’s the first part. It’s just like health and wellness, athletics piece. The
second piece started when I was in Grad school. I was getting my MBA, and I
– my job was in the Center for Entrepreneurship and my graduate
assistantship was there. My job was to analyze venture capital investment in
the region. I was looking at all these guys, rolling out interesting companies,
and getting started, who’s getting funded, and whatever. That was where I
got the itch myself.

Now I had roughly known that I was interested in being an entrepreneur, but
that was when it first started to become real. I was like, “If all these guys are
starting something, maybe I could start something too.”

I graduated, and the first thing I did was try to launch an iPhone app. At the
time, a bunch of people were making money with iPhone apps so I thought,
“Oh, well, I’ll hire this development firm. I got some development company
off of Elance,” I think I paid them $1600 to develop this iPhone app. I did the
design which in Photoshop and they built the thing. It wasn’t a terrible idea, it
wasn’t a great idea, but it was executed terribly.

The idea was to do this photo app. It wasn’t Instagram, it didn’t have any
social component, but I kind of have the filters and you can make comic strips
out of your photos and stuff like that. That was the idea of this photo app. I
was going to make money on advertising on the app. The execution was
horrendous.

I created the design which was questionable at best because I’ve never done
anything like that before. Then they did the programming. They did what I
asked but it just wasn’t – it wasn’t very clean, it wasn’t super useful. I
 launched it and I thought, “Okay, I built this thing, iTunes will just do the
rest.” Nothing happened. To this day – it was only on the App Store for a
year. To this day I made $117. I lost $1500 right off the bat with my first
business idea.

Looking back, it was a good thing, it stunk at the time. I realized, “Oh, I don’t
have any audience to sell to.” I have no one to reach, no platform, no way to
market this, no interested customer base.” Because I didn’t know who to sell
to and didn’t have an audience to send it to, of course it failed.

That was when I started reading more about building a platform, or

marketing, or building an audience. That was what led me to blogging
because people were talking about building an email list. That was pretty
clearly the number one piece of advice was build the list as soon as possible.

Dane: Well, you said “when people said build an email list,” what people?

James: Just stuff I was reading online. I was doing a bunch of research about
bloggers and how to grow a successful blog or how to market something,
how do you reach people, whatever.

Dane: What were the significant, like the first – who were the people you’re reading
that? You still remember their names.

James: The very first bloggers that I saw that were doing something – there were
three people: Chris Guillebeau, Leo Babauta, and Trey Ratcliff. Chris
Guillebeau and Leo Babauta are still very big bloggers today. Trey is a
photographer but had a huge following and I as a massive following on
Google Plus and Pinterest and stuff. But at the time, he was – his website was
fairly popular with some photography techniques that I was playing with at
the time.

I saw these three people and I was like, “Well, these guys can make money
from it.” Actually, this is kind of funny. I remember looking at one of Chris
Guillebeau’s articles and reading it and being like, “That was okay. That
article’s alright but I think I can probably write something as good as that.”
Then, I sat down to write and I was like, “This is really hard.” I was like, “This
is not nearly as easy as it looks like.” I read that article and thought I can
write something like that. Then I wrote something and I was like, “This is
terrible.” That was an interesting lesson too. It may look easy on the surface,
but it requires a lot of hard work.

Anyway, I looked at those three guys and I started looking at what they did,
how they’re building an email list, what calls to action they put first. I didn’t
even know it was a call to action at the time but that’s what it was. How they
had their website laid out. As I started looking around more, I saw that the
email list was important. One of the best pieces of advice that I got early on
was try things until something comes easily.
 That first year, I probably tried, I don’t know, three or five different ideas for
websites and stuff. I had this design company called Dark Brew Design that
was up for like a month. I tried Passive Panda which ended up working. That
site was about marketing advice for small business owners because I was
doing a little bit of web design stuff on the side. Anyway, I tried probably four
or five other ideas.

I had this one – I bought puppypresent.com and the idea was – because my
girlfriend loved puppies and so I was like what if you could rent time with
breeders and buy your girlfriend a gift of an hour with six puppies, or
something like that. That was going to be the idea for the business. I bought
the domain, put the site up, and then started calling breeders around to see
if I could get some. Everybody I talked to was like, “This is a terrible idea. I’m
not going to do this.” That was shut down. I had a variety of ideas that were
bad I think is the moral here.

That piece of advice, “Try things until something comes easily,” was very
useful on a broad scale for trying business ideas because some offers are
better than others. That sounds so simple. Some offers convert differently
than others but that is so important. Just test different offers and sometime
you’re going to come across an offer that is compelling to the market. It’s
almost impossible to predict what people love beforehand. You have to ask
them to find out what they want.

Anyways, that was one thing that helped. Then that same idea of try things
until something comes easily really helped with building Passive Panda which
ended up being the site that I doubled down on instead of, “Okay, I’m going
to stick with this.” At this point, I have this site. Alright, I’m writing about
marketing advice for small business owners. I know what I’m writing about,
but the problem was I didn’t have any traffic.

This is the next part. It’s like, okay, I know I need to build an email list. I tried
to design the site so I have these calls of action to join the email list, but I
don’t have any traffic at this point. I started trying all this stuff. At one point I
remember I saw someone say, “Oh yeah, I get a good amount of traffic from
writing solutions to Yahoo Answers Questions.” I was like, “Okay, I’ll do that.”
I spent a week answering all these questions on Yahoo Questions or
whatever. It was terrible. I got one visitor. There were all sorts of things like
that, that people were like, “Oh, this is working really well for me.” Then I
would try it and nothing would happen.

Eventually, after trying 50 different strategies, I found one or two things that
did drive traffic for me. The one that worked for Passive Panda at the time,
and again this was years ago –

Dane: Hold on, this is where you pause and you make an offer to sell something to
teach people these two methods.
James: Great point. Good lesson in sales copy there.

Dane: Please, go on.

James: At this point, the one that worked well was guest posting for Passive Panda. I
started writing articles for outside outlets and then they would drive back
some traffic to the byline. Anyway, that was the method that I took to
building Passive Panda’s email list up to – I think I got it to 20,000. It took
about two years or so. Eighteen months to two years, somewhere in that
range.

That’s my first email list that I built. First thing that kind of went. I had a
couple products that I sold. The first one was how to email important people.
I had spent the first three months of being an entrepreneur. This is kind of an
important caveat to the story. I don’t have any entrepreneurs in my family. I
had no one to look to. I had no friends who were close entrepreneurs.
Because of that, I didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing. I didn’t know
what I didn’t know.

I made all sorts of mistakes, which everybody does. I also didn’t know
anybody who was doing what I wanted to do and so I spent the first three
months emailing as many people as possible who were already successful
and kind of had a site like what I wanted to build. A fair amount of them
didn’t get back to me, but I ended up getting to know say 20 to 40 of them
within those first three months.

Then after those first three months were up, at least I had 25 people I could
go to with a question if I was struggling with something on my site where we
could set up a Skype call and we could talk about things. That was important
in the beginning because, like I said, I didn’t have anybody else I can go to.

I did that. Because I had sent so many cold emails, that was what I created
my first product around was how to get people to email you back. That was
one and that fit in well for small business owners and marketing advice too
because people always trying to pitch their products or develop better
network.

Then I created a membership site like partnering with businesses that could
do marketing for you, so kind of developing these partnerships that drove
leads your way. I maybe have one or two other small little products, e-books
and stuff.

That was about the first 18 months of the story was I would blog every now
and then whenever I had time, and I would put a lot of effort into it. I’d
probably put ten to 20 hours into each post. It would usually be two a month
or three a month. Then I would spend time guest posting and I’d build a
couple products.
 It took me probably six months before it was profitable and then month six
through 18 where I start to transition a little bit. And eventually I think about
around month ten I have enough money where I could just live off of it, pay
my rent, buy food, all that stuff. Then, by about a year and a half in was when
it was like, okay, now you’re starting to make say, I don’t know, $5,000 to
$8,000 a month, somewhere in there. It probably took a year and a half to
two years before I hit that type of revenue.

Dane: With Passive Panda?

James: Right.

Dane: That revenue came from what?

James: From the products that I created. The Email Important People product, the
membership site, and a couple – maybe one or two other small e-books, and
some affiliate stuff. I have pretty much from the beginning, I’ve avoided
affiliate stuff but there were a few things that I did. I did an interview with
you for The Foundation. I did one thing with Natalie Sisson, I don’t even
remember what it was. Some product that she doesn’t even sell anymore I
don’t think. Then I would do Amazon affiliates. I think I did some affiliate stuff
for one of Chris Guillebeau’s e-books and that was it. Very little of that, but
that was part of it too.

Dane: You just promoted the best stuff, like ours.

James: Right.

Dane: What was your most popular product? How to Email Important People, the
membership website or …?

James: Well, most number of copies sold, How to Email Important People; most
revenue, the membership site. Because I think the membership – Just
because it lasted for longer. Because I think the membership site only had
200 or 300 people – I think it had 250-ish was about what it had in it each
month, 250 people or so. What’s the numbers on that? Yeah, that’s about
right. It had about 250 people in it and it was $29 a month.

Dane: What do they get for that?

James: Membership sites are interesting. My theory on them, and I don’t know –
that’s the only one that I’ve run, it’s nutty, and I don’t even run it anymore
since I work on jamesclear.com now – which is kind of the punch line for all
of this stuff. Anybody’s listening to this searching for Passive Panda, Passive
Panda doesn’t exist anymore so you’re not going to find it.

The membership sites for me, I think, offering less is usually better if you’re
going to do the content treadmill thing. It needs to be one good offer but not
 as much content as you would think. This serves everybody in a better way I
think.

First of all, say you interview – I don’t know what this membership site would
be about. Let’s say you have a membership site about weightlifting and
you’re going to teach people how to improve their weightlifting technique.
You can get people to pay $50 a month for one video with a world renowned
expert on technique or something. That’s it. Don’t do anything else. You
don’t need to send them bonus guides, or extra posts, or emails each week,
or reminders about workouts, or workout programs and schedules or
whatever.

Or you could do – this is actually a very successful business, there’s one called
Paleo Plan. All they do is send meal guides like grocery lists and recipes, and
that’s it. They just send you those each month for $10 a month. They have
thousands of subscribers. This idea that figure out the one offer that people
are willing to pay for and just focus on that thing rather than trying to
overlook them with a bunch of bonus stuff.

Sometimes I do agree that bonuses we often use to justify the initial

purchase, like to get you off the fence and buy it the first time. As far as
ongoing value and content goes, people don’t need that stuff every month.
Furthermore, I found that a lot of people didn’t want that stuff every month.

My setup in the membership course was I would launch a new lesson which
was usually a ten to 20-minute video every two weeks, and there would be
one PDF or worksheet or some piece of homework with that. It got to the
point where … The main reason that people would churn and leave the
membership site is because they would say this is too much, I can’t keep up.
That was one lesson every two weeks.

The thing to realize is you spend more time on your site than anybody else
does. Most people are not spending – you’re spending two hours on your site
everyday or however amount long you spend looking at it and working all this
stuff. Most people are there for two minutes. They have the rest of their life
to live, they have all this busy stuff. So give them the one thing of value, the
one offer that they’re willing to pay for in the smallest package possible and
then just do that. It makes your life simpler and it also gives them the stuff
they need without overwhelming them or, I don’t know, giving them too
much. That’s probably the main lesson I had with the membership site. As I
said, that was the only one I’ve run so I’m certainly not an expert on it.

Dane: There’s a lot of wisdom in that. Are you thinking about a membership site for
James Clear?

James: Not right now. It’s not the initial – it’s not going to be the next step that I
take. It’s possible at some point but I have probably four or five products I’d
like to create before I do some type of membership thing.
Dane: As just kind of just think about it out loud, you’ve got a thousand people
paying anywhere between $29 to $69 for a product, and then they just
expect two hours of stuff and then it’s done. The next month, you could
launch another offer and make a similar amount. And then you’re not on the
hook for recurring. You may not have as much people pay but I actually think
you may have more because of the event urgency.

I’d be curious to see if you’d launched a product a month for example versus
a membership model; a combination of more enjoyable, more inflow, and
more money because money’s not the same. You could put ten $1 bills on
the wall, and one of those dollars could be very easy to make, and one of
them could be completely miserable to make. I’ve always want – the best I
can go for the …

James: Want the easy dollar? Yeah, I totally agree with you though. Those dollars can
be enjoyable, right, or they could be, like you said, miserable. It’s not so
much like let me just get a quick buck which I know isn’t what you were
saying. It’s also like how do I get the most meaning and value and enjoy out
of that dollar as well? What’s the format for that?

Yeah. I agree. I’ve also seen the event based – I don’t know if you want to call
it event based marketing, or event based urgency or what but that does work
well. The fact that I had the workshop on X, Y, Z date and they had to buy a
ticket before that date if they want to go, drove a lot of people to buy that
would not have otherwise jumped off the fence because they’re like, “Oh, I
don’t want to miss out on this.” Yeah, doing one a month, that would be an
interesting experiment for sure.

Dane: I’ve got a number of notes written down. Initially, just kind of zooming back, I
want to go to how you became – I want to come to some questions first and
then come to how you eventually transition from Passive Panda which is a
small business stuff to James Clear which is weight loss … or fitness and
creativity and habits. I’m doing a bad job explaining your site so it –

James: That’s pretty accurate. It’s like how to build habits that stick and how to
master your craft. Those are probably the two main themes.

Dane: Couldn’t be more of a world apart from Passive Panda. I want to actually get
to how you made that transition into what I imagine is more of your passion.
But before I do, you start with this photography app and I’m wondering how
you got the idea for it. You mentioned during this also that you had a passion
for photography.

James: Yes. Let’s see. This is still common advice online. Especially at that time, it
seemed like everybody that was starting a blog was starting a blog around do
what you love, follow your passion, and all that type of stuff. I think I was
being inundated with that type of advice.
That’s not bad advice but I think it’s incomplete advice. What I mean is that
yes, you should do something that you enjoy, but often times we enjoy things
because of the time we put into them, not necessarily – I don’t know
anybody who has become passionate about something just by sitting on the
couch and thinking about it and they’re like, “Oh, that’s what I’m passionate
about.”

I was really, really passionate about baseball when I finished my career, but
that’s because I spent 17 years playing and developing a skill set, and
investing time, and sacrificing for this. It came to mean something very
important because of the time I put into it.

There’s that famous quote from The Little Prince by Saint-Exupéry where it
says, “The time you’ve wasted on your rose is what makes it so beautiful.” I
think that’s kind of what we’re talking about when we talk about passion as
well. It’s like the time that you put into this craft is what makes you so
passionate about it.

I would say, yes, do something you enjoy, something that sparked your
interest, something you find interesting, or useful, or enjoyable, but focus
just as much on mastering your craft or building a skill set that is valuable.
Those things will allow you to translate into doing stuff that you really are
passionate about, or enjoy, or whatever.

The punch line to this, to answer your question, is I had spent a fair amount
of time taking photos by that point. I got my first camera about two years
before I graduated, and I had taken over 100,000 pictures in the first year. I
was pretty interested and passionate about photography at the time. That
was why I was like, “Oh, I should do some business around photography. That
would be kind of cool. I would like that.” That was one idea.

The other reason that I did it is because I was reading all these articles.
Looking back, you realize that this wasn’t that great of an idea. I was reading
all these articles about people making money on iTunes with those apps and
nearly all of them were about games now that I’m thinking about it. They
were almost all about like, “Oh, I built this game and then I made $600,000 in
the next month.” I was like, “Oh, I can build an iPhone app and do well too.”

There were no photography apps that were doing that really. Even
Instagram, they weren’t around at the time but they didn’t have a business
model in the beginning, they were just a free photo app and then they got
acquired.

I wasn’t trying to build the next tech startup and I wasn’t building a game, but
I just thought, “Oh, I’ll build this photography app because I like photography
and I’ll put that up and it’ll do well because iPhone apps make a lot of
money.” It was a pretty poorly strategized approach.
Dane: I prefer to say action is the answer. It also seems like action is what action is
to learning. When you said you lost $1500, what came to me is that sounds
more like you learned $1500.

James: Yeah, that’s exactly right.

Dane: Then, Instagram also, if I remember it correctly, they didn’t start as a photo
app either. They had this whole other thing and then they started talking to
customers. They’re like, “Oh, all you want to do is share photos?” And they
pivoted, and then boom, they took off.

For those listening, it’s not like, “Oh, you just got to come with Instagram.”
No, you need to do things that The Foundation teaches, or Lean Startup
teaches, or Customer Development teaches where you talk to customers and
find out what they want and give them what James set up here. Figure out
the one offer people need. Instagram makes this entire thing then they figure
out, “Oh, people just want to share photos.” So they pivot Instagram to the
one thing people need.

Also, you said, try things until something comes easily. You said you tried
about 50 different things to create traffic and then you figure out the one
was guest blog post. I’m curious what your commitment to yourself was, and
to your life was, and to your purpose was that had you keep going when
you’re at 50, when you’re at 51, which you would’ve – What was your
commitment, man?

James: Here’s the way I would summarize my first year of entrepreneurship. It was
really, really hard and it was as easy as it could’ve been for me. What I mean
is I didn’t have a family to provide for, I wasn’t in debt because I gotten full
scholarships for undergrad and graduate school so that put me in a really
good place to start a business. I had saved up a couple thousand dollars to
start – that $1500 that I had saved.

I entered this international competition about three months before I

graduated. The long story short is I ended up winning it. The first prize was
$10,000. That was the money that I used to launch my business. Without that
money, I don’t know what I would’ve done. I just would’ve gotten a regular
job, I guess.

So what I’m saying is it was easy for me. I had money saved up, I didn’t have a
family to provide for, I didn’t have debt. But it was still really, really hard and
there were a lot of very – Dark is maybe too rough of a word to use but it felt
like there were some dark days when I was going through it.

I was constantly a week or two weeks from not being able to pay rent. I was
sitting there with this website – I was like I don’t even know what I’m doing. I
had no entrepreneurs to look to, I had nobody to – I didn’t even know what
mistakes I was making because I didn’t know what I was supposed to do.
There was all that stuff that was built onto it.
 Then, I am – I don’t know – I don’t need to talk about every piece of my
previous life but I’ve succeeded in a fair number of things I’ve tried to put my
mind to. This idea of being successful in things, and achieving things, and
then trying something totally new like entrepreneurship where you
completely fall flat on your face, is really just – I don’t know. Annoying,
depressing, hard to deal with.

It creates this roller coaster ride where one day you send out an email and
you get some response from some kingpin in your industry and they're like,
“Yeah, let’s chat. This is awesome. I love your new project.” You feel like
you’re on top of the world. Then the next day you try this new traffic strategy
and two people visit your website and you feel like everything’s crashing and
burning.

That roller coaster ride of emotion was the first 18 months for me where you
just feel like it’s back and forth, I’m trying a bunch of stuff. There were
multiple times where I had conversations with parents where they were like,
“You should just go get a regular job, or get a part-time job so that you can at
least do that.” I, from the day that I started being an entrepreneur five years
ago, had never had another job.

I don’t know if that’s a point or pride or not, but the idea that I was
committed and dove in from the beginning, I think it helped me work through
some of those really tough time because I was like, “You have to make this
work, and you are going to find a way to do it.” I guess some of it it’s just like
trust in yourself that there’s –

To me that’s like entrepreneurship. There’s continual uncertainty, but being

an entrepreneur is about trusting yourself enough that even though you
don’t know what’s coming or you don’t know what the solution’s going to
look like, you trust that you’re going to be able to figure it out. That’s really
the only thing I can say about that whole period is that I made tons of
mistakes, and struggled a lot, and didn’t know what I was doing, but I trusted
that I would be able to figure it out.

Dane: When you were in those periods of – when you’re in that roller coaster which
we talk about in-depth within The Foundation program, you had this
recurring voice that says, “James, you have to make this work, and you’re
going to figure this out.”

James: Yeah, I would say – I don’t know if I so much said … I know I just said you
have to make this work but I don’t know if I so much put it like an ultimatum
on myself like that. As much as I said like – I trust myself, basically. I trust that
I’m going to be able to make it work. More than I knew that I would be okay,
that I would figure something out. I wasn’t going to die. That was really hard
and it was uncomfortable, and it was uncertain. I had this vision that I wanted
to share with the world but then no one really cared about at the time, but
 that I knew that I’d be alright regardless. I think that was probably the thing
that helped keep me going.

I’m very lucky in that I have very supportive parents, and friends, and I was
able to rely on the people around me to talk through some of this stuff when
I was on the verge of tears and felt like I was just completely flopping around
and all my friends were like, “Yeah, I heard you started this website. It’s kind
of cool. What are you really doing?” It was obvious to everybody that it
wasn't going well.

Dane: Apologies for talking over there, talking you over there a minute ago and
interrupting you.

James: That’s fine.

Dane: I trust myself because I knew I would be okay.

James: Yeah.

Dane: How is that to hear?

James: It’s great. Anyone listening, I feel like it gives a fairly good indication of what I
believe about myself or how I feel as an individual. I think I’ve always – for
me, I think a lot of that self-confidence or the self-respect, or self-assurance
was developed as an athlete. I wanted to be the guy who was on the mount –
I was a pitcher – who was on the mount at the end of the game, and the
game was on the line. I either won or we lost and I was able to bear that
responsibility. I knew I would be okay. I was the leader who’s going to make
that sacrifice and be that person. If it meant that I had to be the one to
shoulder the burden when we lost, then that’s fine. I’d rather be that guy
than not be playing. I think that level of confidence translated a lot to this
experience.

Dane: I really relate to this passion – you create passion by putting your time into
baseball for 17 years. I really relate with try things until something comes
easily. When you couple that with I trust myself because I knew I’d be okay
and you develop that skill by developing it as an athlete, by bearing full
responsibility for the outcome as a pitcher and bearing the full responsibility
of the outcome, it makes sense why that would be the grounding foundation
for you to become successful. You also mentioned that you had no
entrepreneurs in your family. I really have a heart for you when you say that.

James: Yeah, that’s tough. It’s not that – I don’t know. You look back and looking
back now, I did a variety of entrepreneurial things growing up. I never sold
candy bars, or started a lemonade stand, or sold newspapers, or whatever. I
didn’t do that stuff. In college, for example, I designed my own major.
Biomechanics was not technically offered. You get all the classes for it:
chemistry, physics, orthopedic assessment stuff were all offered, but they
hadn't been packaged into that vertical. I went and pitched that to the
 academic affairs council and they ended up approving it which, looking back,
that’s a relatively entrepreneurial thing to do. To look at all the majors and be
like, “Nah, I don’t like those. I’m going to create my own.”

I think that there were indications that that was kind of like in my personality
a little bit. It felt natural enough for me, even if it was uncomfortable and
hard at times but, yeah, just not having someone to go to. When I struggled
with stuff and I was talking to my parents about it, especially in the beginning
where I was just like I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m trying this stuff. I know
they wanted to help but they couldn’t help that much more either because
they were going through it for the first time too, through me.

No one really knew how to deal with all the emotions, and stress and the
uncertainty of it which is … to some degree is fine because I don’t really, to
be honest, know how much that stuff could – it would be useful and nice I
guess to be able to sound off of somebody, but I think this is one of the
reasons why we repeat a lot of mistakes in life. People look at history and
they’re like, “How come history repeats itself?”

I think one of the reasons is as humans we need to experience some things to

learn them. In order to learn how to overcome uncertainty and how to deal
with the fear of failure, and how to move past your mental blocks and
barriers, you kind of have to experience all that stuff. You got to walk through
the fire if you want to learn how to get through it. I think that although it did
make it hard that I was the only entrepreneur, it’s probably hard for
everybody.

Dane: Yeah. And you aren’t what I would call a conditional entrepreneur. Like, “Oh,
I’ll be an entrepreneur if …” it’s like you’re unconditional in that
commitment.

I’ve got a couple things starred here and I’ve got a number of things I still
want to talk to you about. The first before I get in the others is you said you
were driven by power. That power is not necessarily in terms of exerting
control, or money, but actually more power in terms of – if I may stretch,
commanding attention.

James: Yeah, that’s – I would say that’s a more reasonable way. That’s an alignment
with what I’m thinking. The word that comes to me is impact.

Dane: Driven by impact.

James: Yeah, I actually – The slogan for Passive Panda for a while was something
along the lines of, “Building a Job for Yourself That Was Focused on Impact
and not Money.” That was one of the main slogans of the site early on, which
is funny because now that’s very much what I’m focused on as more impact
than – Passive Panda was very much focused on revenue for small
businesses.
Dane: Let me pause you for a second because that’s a really important point. I’ve
noticed from my life that the mindset that I have, the results follow usually
within the next zero months to a year, depending on where I’m at. You’re
running Passive Panda and you’re like, “Start Businesses Driven by Impact.”
and then you’re doing this revenue thing. But then your mind catches up to
that. The way that you’re thinking, your body and your life catches up to that
and now you’re more of an impact. The point of this is like, “Hey, if you’re
wanting 10 grand a month and you’re thinking 10 grand a month, you could
expect it. If it’s like me within zero to 12 months.”

James: Check back in 12 months.

Dane: Yeah. That’s pretty awesome. What is it about being – what is it about impact
that’s so important to you, if you could dig deep into your soul.

James: I think, one, there are a variety of arguments for this. I think it provides
meaning and value to my personal life where I enjoy hearing from people
who I impact or who find my work useful or practical for their own life. A guy
sent a tweet to me the other day who’s like, “Hey, I was at my doctor’s office
and they had your article printed out and laminated on their wall in the
waiting room.” I was like, “Oh, that’s cool.” That idea of having this ripple
effect on how a doctor’s office is running and how their patients are being
treated because I decided to put an article up on the web. That type of stuff
is what – I don’t know. Hearing about those things every now and then, that
keeps me going and is useful for me personally.

Dane: Let me interrupt you for a sec. I think that answer is sufficient because I want
to go into what was that article on the wall? What was the title of it?

James: The title of the article is This Coach Changed Everything His Team Did by 1%
and Here’s What Happened, or something like that. It’s about the power of
1% improvements and small gains.

The story, which will only take 30 seconds to tell, there’s a guy named Dave
Brailsford, he was hired by Great Britain’s Professional Cycling Team, Team
Sky. When they hired him about 10 years ago, they had never won a Tour De
France and they said, “We would like to win a Tour De France. What’s your
plan for this?” Brailsford said, “Okay, I have this thing I call The Aggregation
of Marginal Gains, and it’s the 1% improvement in nearly everything that you
do.”

They improved a bunch of stuff you would expect by 1% like they got slightly
lighter racing tires, the bike, they improved the ergonomics of the seats, they
had their indoor or their outdoor riders wear indoor racing suits because they
were lighter and more aerodynamic. So, all these little adjustments.

But then they also did things you wouldn’t expect. Like they found the type of
pillow that led to the best night’s sleep for each rider, and then they took it
on the road with them to hotels. They taught their riders how to wash their
 hands to reduce the risk of infection and keep them safe and healthy. They
found the type of massage gel. They basically split tested massage gels to
figure out which one led to the best recovery.

Brailsford’s thought was, “Okay, if we can do this, if we can make these 1%

gains, I think that we can win the Tour De France within five years.” He ended
up being wrong, they won the Tour De France in three years and then they
repeated again the fourth year with a different rider. When he coached The
Great Britain’s team at the Olympics in London in 2012, they won 70% of the
gold medals available.

The basic message of that article or that post is not only are 1% gains
important, and small habits and small improvements important, but they can
actually add up to be something very significant. Often, we think that, “Oh, if
I want to achieve a significant result, I need to put in significant effort.” But
really, it’s the consistency and this commitment to 1% gains that can lead to
something very profound at the end. That was what the article was.

Dane: I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but you actually just did the counter
intuitive thought provoking framework. Have you ever – do you know what
you just did there?

James: I don’t. Yeah, I don't know that framework but I do – that basic structure that
I went through of telling a story, leading people down some path, providing
an alternative explanation or whatever, maybe something is counter
intuitive. That is something I try to work into my post a little bit. I should look
up the counter intuitive framework thought because it probably help with
designing some of these stories.

Dane: I just like playing it out because it’s like, “Hey, I would like to welcome
everybody to the Unconscious Competence of James Clear’s mind where he’s
subtly bending your mind and he doesn’t even know he’s doing it. He’s that
good.” Did you read – In terms of your article creating process, did you read
that in a book and then put your spin on it?

James: There’s another article I wrote about the – he’s not a mythical figure, he’s a
wrestler in Ancient Greece named Milo of Croton. He’s a famous wrestler.
That article gives you a good idea about my process.

I had a point that I wanted to make which was that small improvements like
continual improvement can lead to significant strength and health and
wellness, and so on. That was sitting in this ideas folders, this is the first part
of the process. I have this ideas folder, just snippets that come to me,
potential things I read, titles for a potential post, whatever. Just dump it all in
there.

This idea that the post was built around was in there. I was reading an article
– actually I had a friend who’s a reader and a friend who sent me an article
from The New York Times. I was reading that article and in that article, there
 was one sentence that mentioned Milo of Croton off handedly then it was
related to the topic he was talking about. I was like, “Huh, that sounds
interesting.” I went to Wikipedia, looked up a little bit more about it. I was
like this is a good story that would match with that idea that I had. Then, I
took the story, paired it up with the idea, and wrote the post.

For my best post, that’s usually the process. I either start with a story, or start
with a main point that I want to make. Then I’m just waiting until I get the
other half, and can pair it up, and write the article.

Dane: Oh, that’s really cool. That process of waiting. Do you see that as some
serendipitous law of attraction?

James: The best one, like the most popular article I’ve written in the last six months
is called the Martha Graham on The Hidden Danger of Comparing Yourself to
Others. It’s just about comparison. I had this main point that I wanted to
make which was keep your eyes on your own paper, was basically the main
point. It was like, focus on your work, do the work. It’s not your job to judge
the work.

I had that sitting in there for a year and a half, it was just sitting there. I’d
pass it. Every time I was going to write an article I was like, I could write
something on this but I don’t have a good story. Then I was reading an article
online and someone mentioned the story that I used to start that post. Again,
it was again just a little snippet. It was two or three sentences in a paragraph
and I went and searched the whole story out and used that to start and just
mash them together. Yeah, that’s probably the little piece of magic, I guess,
that happens when good posts come together.

Dane: It’s occurring to me that – I would be interested in paying for a course just so,
you know, on how you run a blog. It’s half a million uniques a month and how
you create the content. I also want to get to how you drive the traffic for
your blog that you’re running now.

Before we do, you have these articles. You mentioned at the beginning of this
podcast, you have a couple habits that you write articles every Monday and
Thursday on your blog. The process that you use to write your articles, are
you thinking of points that you want to make throughout the day, you’re
writing them down, then you’re waiting for the story to accompany them?

James: Yeah. Something has to get out on Monday and Thursday, so that’s the first
thing. I let the schedule drive my publishing, not my emotions. For a long
time, I only wrote whenever I felt motivated or inspired to write.

I was telling a friend of mine named Todd Henry about this. I was like, “Todd,
what do you think about this idea that I get my best ideas whenever I feel
motivated or inspired so I should just write then” right?” He was like, “Well,
that makes sense. I only write when I feel motivated too. It just happens to
be everyday at 8AM.” I was like, “Oh, this is the difference between
 professionals and amateurs.” Professionals do things on a schedule,
amateurs do things when it’s easy for them or when they feel motivated or
inspired to do it.

The caveat here is you have to have a schedule you can sustain. For me,
Monday, Thursday was a pace I could sustain. I had someone else tell me,
“Oh, you should write five days a week, more content, better results,” blah,
blah, blah. I tried that for a month and burned out. I couldn’t handle it. The
balance between write every three or four weeks whenever you feel
motivated, and write five days a week for me was Monday and Thursday.
That’s a pace that I could stick with over the course of years. That’s the first
thing is that schedule drives everything.

What I’ve realized is that – Creative Genius shows up when you show up
enough times to get the average ideas out of the way. If I show up every
Monday and Thursday, that means I’ll write two articles a week, eight or nine
a month. If I write eight or nine a month and try my best on each one, then I
know two or three of those are going to be decent. I don’t know which one’s
going to be but I know that if I show up with those eight or nine, then the
good ones will be there.

That’s kind of – It’s driven a lot of results for me because not only am I
showing up consistently but also when you have good pieces of content,
every marketing strategy is easier. I can go to entrepreneur.com, or Business
Insider, or Lifehacker, whoever, and be like, “Hey, I wrote this article on X, Y,
Z topic. It’s a perfect fit for your audience. Would you like to run it?” It’s way
easier for them to say yes when it’s good. The only way for me to get good
stuff is to write eight or nine a month then I know that two or three good
ones will be there.

Dane: Also, I thought of another money-making idea for you. I can’t shut it off
sometimes. Have you thought about on the 1% gains article an offer at the
bottom of that for a 1% gains product?

James: Yeah, that’s a good idea. I am going to do that basic strategy what you’re
talking about where once I build products around certain ideas or certain
verticals, use the content that’s popular as basically a sales page, right? So
you get to the bottom of the article, here’s the offer. Because, you know,
those people will be fairly qualified.

I do like that idea, I plan on doing that. I haven’t thought about a 1% product
specifically but the focus of the book that I’m working on right now is – the
working title for the book is Tiny Gains. It’s all about this idea of how small
habits have a surprising power to them, I guess. Lead to significant
improvements.

Dane: That’s awesome. And I know you mentioned that you have a hard stop about
three minutes ago. Do you have an official hard stop?
James: I can go for another ten if we need to.

Dane: Cool. There’s so much stuff here.

First, I want to make you aware of the counter intuitive framework real quick.
It’s really easy to share. You think in a certain way of thinking, but really
counter intuitive rationale. If you just do counter intuitive rationale, then
you’ll have whatever it is the customer’s end result is. You think that to start
a business, you need to come up with an idea, but really starting a business is
about finding painful problems. If you just make your business about finding
painful problems, then you have all the business ideas you could ever want.
That’s the counter intuitive framework. You can write blog posts with it, you
did it, and you’re bending my mind. It’s like, “Oh my God, he’s doing it to me
right now.”

James: That’s good. I like that.

Dane: I can mention to you it again too.

The next thing you mentioned is that you publish articles on Entrepreneur or
Inc. What’s that process like, and can you kind of mould that into the concept
of How to Email Important People?

James: Sure. Let me make the jump from Passive Panda to jamesclear.com so that
we’re all on the same page.

I wrote on Passive Panda for 18 months or two years, and then I decided to
transition because … I knew that I was going to transition from the beginning,
basically. Passive Panda was a place for me to cut my teeth and make a
bunch of mistakes, and also a place for me to hide from my fears. What I
mean is I knew that I wanted to create a site about habits, behavior change,
performance, personal improvement, whatever, but I didn’t want to write
about that first because I really cared about it. I figured whatever I do first, I’ll
make a bunch of mistakes on it. If I make mistakes on the thing I care about,
then that’s going to hurt.

I kind of hid behind Passive Panda for a year and a half, but I also used that
time well to develop a skill set, learn how to build an email list. So that when I
started jamesclear.com although I started from scratch, I had a skill set that I
didn’t have before. One of the other ways that have really helped, habits
would not be as big of a theme on jamesclear.com if I hadn’t done Passive
Panda first because to make Passive Panda successful, I had to study direct
response copywriting, consumer psychology, and all that stuff.

As I started studying consumer psychology, that was where I was like, “Oh, all
these psychology concepts could apply to building better habits in the gym,
or my nutritional habits,” or whatever. That was when I went down the
psychology rabbit hole and these things all kind of came together.
Dane: Can I pause you for a second?

James: Yeah.

Dane: You touched on one of the most critical things by why I think The Foundation
is so phenomenal for people. I have to – I’m bad. I’m supposed to pause and
say how do I do this. I’m so bad at this. We have to have a sponsorship for
each of our podcasts and our sponsorship for The Foundation is The
Foundation. Maybe I can even turn it into a tax deduction.

If you’re looking to have the mentors that James had, to build the skills of
real entrepreneurship and do that while building a software company. And
even do that thing, James, where you mentioned you kind of hide but you’re
not hiding, you’re more incubating your skills while you find the real thing
that you’re doing.

James: There you go. That’s a good one.

Dane: Yeah, I love this. If you want to incubate your skills and learn the skills of
entrepreneurship while you build a software company, and then along the
way you find your real purpose, you can do that at thefoundation.com. We’d
love to see you apply.

That being said, thank you for taking time to listen to our sponsors. James,
please continue.

James: Bam! Yeah. No, that’s a good way to put it. I incubated my skill set for a year,
or a year and a half, or whatever. Then November 12, 2012 was the first date
that I published on jamesclear.com, that was a Monday, then the Thursday
after that I did it, and kept publishing every Monday and Thursday since.

Dane: Your email list is what size now?

James: One hundred and thirty – I think it was like 134 or 135 today. Something like
that.

Dane: Boom! In what period of time?

James: It’s been 26 months.

Dane: Great. That just completely chomps ours. I think ours is 45,000 or something
after three years. You’re welcome.

James: Thanks. It’s definitely the fastest thing I’ve created so far. I think that, like I
mentioned, having that skill set in the beginning, so knowing what to design
the website like and all those stuff I learned doing the other projects before
helped.

The other thing is traffic. When you get – Last month, I think the last three
months I’ve averaged about 12,000 emails subscribers a month. It’s a lot
 easier to average that if you’re getting 400,000 uniques, or 500,000 uniques.
It’s not like my percentages are that much higher conversion than a lot of
other sites. It’s just that more people are coming through now. Part of that is
a consequence of showing up every Monday and Thursday.

As one example, my search engine traffic has doubled in the last year. Well,
I’ve been at it for about two years. So the first year I created, let’s say 100
articles, the second year I created another 100. The amount of content
doubled. It stands the reason that the search engine traffic would double.
There’s not really any magic to it, it’s just I’ve showed up every Monday and
Thursday for two years.

I don’t want to make it sound like, “Oh, just do that and you’ll get these
results,” because that’s not the truth but that is a big part of it, right, is
showing up.

Dane: How do you get the 500,000 uniques a month? Where’s that traffic coming
from?

James: It’s split in a variety of areas. There’s no one place that makes up 80% of
traffic or anything. If I’m giving you the big buckets, search engines have –
Google – has become a big refer this year. It wasn’t as big last year. Last year,
let’s say, it was at 30%, this year maybe it’s closer to 45% or something like
that.

Dane: What are people looking for on Google when they find you?

James: All kinds of stuff. If you want I can look up and tell you what some of the top
terms are.

Dane: Please. In the meantime, can you tell me the other buckets while you’re
looking that up?

James: Yeah. Search engines. I think my biggest opportunity is social. There are some
sites that give as much traffic as me or more. They get 40% to 50% of their
traffic from social. On any given month, Facebook and Twitter make up –
Facebook is like 5% or 6% of my traffic in a month. Twitter’s like 3% to 5%,
somewhere in there. They’re in my top 10 refers but they’re not some major
chunk. I think that’s a big opportunity but they’re big. And then the other
ones are the syndication outlets or the republishing outlets. Like I mentioned,
Life Hacker, Entrepreneur, Business Insider, and so on.

Those places are important too because they’re sending users that are very
qualified because there are people who’ve read a full article on that site and
then they come over. Although they only account for, let’s say 20% to 30% of
the traffic, they account for higher percentage of the email subscribers,
maybe 40% or 50% because they’re more qualified. Whereas search engines,
they send 50% of the traffic, maybe it’s only 30% of the email subscribers or
something like that.
Dane: They don’t care about you a whole lot yet.

James: Yeah. Here’s some of the top search engine terms. “Internment and Fasting,”
I wrote this really long article about internment fasting and nutrition and
health. “Positive Thinking,” “James Clear,” “How to Stop Procrastinating,”
“How to Get Motivated,” “Positive thoughts,” “How long does it take to see
results form a workout,” “Junk Food.” I wrote this article on the science of
junk food, the psychology behind it, and how it’s designed to get you to eat
more. “How to Achieve Goals,” “how to start working out,” “How to achieve
your goals,” “how to deal with haters.” I wrote an article about dealing with
criticism. “Stop procrastinating,” “how to stay focused,” I’ve written a variety
of articles about focus and concentration. Yeah, that gives you an idea.

Dane: This is awesome. Those are like, I think, the core human dilemma. Those are
awesome. How do I take action, how do I stop procrastinating, how do I get
motivated, how do I deal with haters along the way. You can join The
Foundation. It’s a great place to do that kind of stuff. That’s the stuff that you
had to deal with when you were starting out, James.

James: True, yeah. That’s stuff we all have to deal with. That gives you an idea of the
transition from Passive Panda to James Clear, and then the showing up every
week has made a big difference. Then it just becomes about – I, a lot of time,
think about myself as an artist, not as an entrepreneur. What I mean is –

Dane: Have you read that book The War of Art by Steven Pressfield?

James: Yeah, I have.

Dane: Okay, because I heard you mention amateur versus pro and that was in that
book. Go on.

James: Yeah.

An artist is a craftsman, and a craftsman wants to master their craft. They

don’t necessarily care about driving the maximum amount of revenue, or
profit, or whatever; all the business things. They might be side effects of that.
What they really want is to master their craft. For me, that’s what lights me
up is how do I make an impact, how do I master my craft. Those are the two
things that I think about the most.

I try to be an artist with that. Okay, if I’m going to put an article out every
Monday and Thursday, how can I make that article a work of art? No matter
what job you have in the world, no matter where you spend your time, you
can bring a certain level of energy and enthusiasm to your work or your day
so that you make that a thing of beauty, or you make that a work of art. That,
I feel like, is the pinnacle of mastering your craft. That’s kind of what I want
to do.
 I would say that the consistency paired with that focus on mastering your
thing, whatever that happens to be for you, for me it’s right in these articles
in telling stories that help people. Those two things together have made the
biggest difference for me. I show up consistently and I’m always focused on
how can I make that 1% gain, how can I master this craft in some way today?

Dane: When you publish the syndicate, the articles, on like Lifehacker and stuff, are
they the same content that you already have on your blog or are they unique
articles just for that outlet?

James: Yeah, they’re the same. This was something I was going to get into a little
more about the guest posting of Passive Panda. One of the issues that I ran
into with that is that it doesn’t scale. I can write … Say I write two articles a
week that are guest posts. Those can be good articles. If I write ten, they’re
all very average or bad.

Furthermore, as I’m writing these guest posts for other outlets, I’m not
spending time writing for my own audience. I either have to choose between
driving people to my site so I can do the marketing and the guest posting, or
serving the people I already have. Because my time is limited, I couldn’t do
both, and I didn’t have employees in a lot of stuff.

Because of that limitation I was like, “Okay, I know I can write two good
articles a week. Why don’t I just write two good articles and then try to get
other outlets to run them so …” I kind of like give my articles legs so to speak
and let them do some more work for me. That strategy has worked much
better.

I have never actually written a guest post for jamesclear.com. Everything

that’s run by different place has been republished or syndicated from my
site. All of it runs on my site first, which I think is important to establish me as
the authority and also if you want my stuff, just come here. This is where it all
lives. Then, occasionally, there will be a piece published by an outside outlet.

My biggest fear was SEO stuff. I’ll duplicate content, whatever. I’m not an
SEO expert by any means so I don’t want to pretend like – all I know is my
search engine traffic has increased every week since I’ve started doing this. I
haven’t seen negative effects to the –

You can use the rel=canonical link or whatever to point back to the original.
As much as possible, I have every outlet do that. Then also if an outlet is
going to republish an article for me, I ask that they put a line in at the
beginning or the end that says, “This article originally ran on jamesclear.com”
and they link back to that.

Between those things from the SEO experts I have talked to, they say Google
is smart enough to figure that stuff out.

Dane: You put rel=canonical within the href link, is that what you’re talking about?
James: Yeah. I can’t actually add that myself. It needs to go on the header of the
page so it has to be done by the outlet themselves. Yeah, I ask them to add
that and point back to the original version on my site.

Dane: I don’t even know what that means. You just ask for rel=canonical?

James: Yeah. It’s an HTML code thing. It’s like canonical, and it’s a signal to Google.
The readers never see it. It’s a signal to Google search engines that, “Hey, this
is published here but the original piece is over on this site. If you’re going to
rank something, rank that piece, not this one.”

Dane: You just saved my life. I’ve been writing two articles for – you just saved my
life. I was so worried about duplicate content and all that stuff, so that’s
great. I can spend more time –

James: I don’t want to act like there’s no risk because Neil Patel has written about
this. Apparently, his search engine traffic went down when he started doing
this. Again, from my own experience from doing those things, I’ve seen no ill
effects.

Dane: Thank you.

We are at time, James, and I just wanted to let you know, it’s amazing to see
how your mind thinks. I’m really in awe of it. I’m just looking at my notes, I
love that you say you’re a system’s thinker. It’s really clear. James Clear, it’s
very clear that you do that.

I love that you write an annual integrity report. I love that you shared your
blocks about money. I love that you shared that you incubated your skill set
and that you started and learned from Kiss Guillebeau – Chris not Kiss, but
Chris Guillebeau and all those guys. I love that you just started with this app
and you let that be a $1500 learning. Then you even tried this puppy
breeder’s thing that’s absolutely hilarious.

James: Let’s never talk about it again.

Dane: Never will I ever mention puppy breeders, or puppy breeders, or puppy
breeders, ever again.

I also love that you mentioned passion by putting your time into it. Now you
try things until something comes easily, and how you move from the
photography app, and sorry I mentioned again the puppy breeder’s thing, to
more of a customer development oriented product creation cycle where
you’re actually figuring out what’s important to people. And you have this
crazy amazing sentence that could probably be the business advice for the
rest of your life which is figure out the one offer people need. I love that you
shared that you had 1.5 years to getting your income replaced. I just loved
following your journey along the way.
 The only thing we didn’t really get to touch on was How to Email Important
People. While we’re in closing, would you just want to give a quick tip or two
on that as we wrap?

James: Sure.

The first thing is make it about them, not about you. You’re emailing people
because you want to get in touch, or expand your network, or have some
idea for why they’d be helpful. Spend the time to – There are just a variety of
things I could say off the bat. One, don’t bulk email people. Write a custom
email if you’re going to email somebody important. Make it about them.
Spend some time to figure out what’s important to them and how could you
be useful ,or help out, or at least provide something interesting.

The third thing, this is probably the thing that’s made the biggest difference
for me is … I don’t know what else to call it so I just call it the power of
project. What I mean is if you’re just a fan boy or a fan girl and you email
somebody and you say, “Hey, I really love what you’re doing. Do you want to
hang out? Do you want to get coffee? Do you want to have a Skype chat?”
Whatever. You’re making it about them but you’re not – you don’t give much
of a reason other than I really like what you’re doing. I’d like to learn about it.

If I email somebody and say, “Hey, I’m James Clear. I love the work that
you’ve done on Psychology and behavior change. I write a popular blog about
habits and behavior change over here, here’s a list of three of my popular
articles. I’d love to talk to you about your strategy for X, Y, Z,” something
specific. Because I came to them with a reason it’s like, “Oh, he’s another
person who has this project in the space.” Or, “Oh, this is an entrepreneur
who’s building a project on this, that’s why they’re reaching out.”

It makes it so much more valid. They don’t have that question of - Because
the first question anybody has when they get an email is why is this person
emailing me? What’s this about? What’s the context? That project gives you
validity and credibility in context. I would say that is useful. And then also
length, of course. I rarely go more than six or eight sentences total. Probably
a paragraph with two sentences or three sentences, a paragraph with two or
three sentences, that’s it.

Dane: The 20 to 40 you got. How many emails did you send to get those 20 to 40,
roughly?

James: I’m getting fairly good now where I’ll get, say, 25% to 50% of people. The
code will reply back and we’ll set something up. In the beginning, it was
probably like 10% of people. You send 100 emails, ten will get back to you.
You may even have more – By get back to you, I mean a positive response
like, “Yeah, let’s chat.” You probably have a fair amount of people that are
like, “Oh, nice to hear from you,” but then nothing comes with it.
Dane: If you would reach out, you can find James at jamesclear.com. Send him a
thank you for going over on both the time commitments he mentioned. Sorry
to keep you over, James. It’s been an incredible time chatting with you.

For those of you listening to The Foundation podcast, one of the things I love
that James mentioned is that he had 20 or 40 mentors to go to and keep him
good advice when he needed help. That’s one of the things that we love to
provide you at The Foundation. If you’re in need of something like that, you
can do so at thefoundation.com.

James: Awesome. Dane, thanks so much for having me, man.

Closing: Thank you for joining us. We’ve taken this interview and created a custom
action guide so you know exactly what action steps to take to grow your
business. Just head over to thefoundationpodcast.com to download it for
free. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next week.