TuckerMax.me

Some people asked for more examples in this post about how to find a mentor; specifically, they want to know how to figure out how to provide enough value to a prominent person to be able to even get started on a relationship. I could go find a bunch of examples involving other people, but instead, one very specific one popped up in my life. It’s the opposite of what most people are expecting. Instead of showing how someone came to me to establish a relationship, I’ll show you how I approached a hero of mine to establish a relationship: Steven Pressfield.

Steven Pressfield is, in my opinion, one of America’s best living writers, and his writing has been hugely impactful on my life. My Most Influential Books has his The War of Art on it because I credit that book, more than anything else, with helping me understand what it meant to be a professional writer. His other books have been incredibly influential on me as well, especially Gates of Fire, Virtues of War, and The Afghan Campaign (I grew up in a single mother household and those three books were part of how I learned what it meant to be a man). When I think about it, an astonishingly large amount of what I think about responsibility, manhood, art, and hard work, I give him some credit for helping me to learn.

So yeah, you could say I like the guy a lot. And of course I’d love to know him and be friends with him and maybe learn something (else) from him, but I never really had a reason to contact him or invite myself into his life, until I read on his blog how he was going to be publishing the sequel to The War of Art, called Turning Pro, AND he was going to do it through his own publishing imprint. Now, betting on yourself is something I know a lot about, especially in the publishing arena. This was a golden opportunity to contact him, because now I had real value to offer: information.

[Plus, I had another in: My old assistant, Ian Claudius, owns the domain TurningPro.net. In fact, Ian started blogging under that domain right before he started working for me. I told him to read The War of Art, and he did, and he internalized the message, and decided to apply it to his life. The blog at TurningPro.net was his way of forcing himself to do something every day, to demonstrate his performance and understanding. That original blog is, in fact, the very reason I hired him to be my assistant--it showed that he was persistent in the face of failure, something that cannot be taught (I can teach you information, I can't teach you desire). He's since taken that blog down and replaced it with this, because well--he turned pro (once you're a pro, you take a different approach than when you're trying to become a pro, but that's a different post).]

I sent this email to Steven Pressfield:

Mr Pressfield,

Let me start this email by offering you something that I think you might find valuable:

I own the domain TurningPro.net. My old assistant Ian used to use it for his personal blog which he’s now moved to a different domain, and it’s now just sitting there, unused. Since you have a book coming out soon called “Turning Pro,” I thought this domain might be something you’d like to own. Ian and I are both huge fans of you and your books, and we’d be happy to transfer to you for nothing, just as a show of appreciation for all we’ve taken from your writing.

There is another reason for this email though. I also read your blog, and of course I’ve noticed you talking about doing your own publishing endeavor. I think I can help you with that. Let me explain:

[I redacted a bunch of boring 'how the sausage is made' publishing details here, basically I just told him precisely what I know how to do that would be useful information for him to have].

Anyway, if I am right and you are going a route similar to what I did, then I’d love to sit down and discuss all of this with you and your agent. I think my experience might be of use to you as you start down this path. And since I am going to be doing this in future again, I’d love to trade notes and ideas with you, and hopefully make both of us are a little bit smarter at this new way for authors to publish.

Is this of any interest to you and your agent? Regardless, the offer to transfer TurningPro.net stands, and Ian and I will remain steadfast fans.

Thanks, Tucker Max

Simple, clear, and to the point. He responded right away, and we set up a meeting for a week later.

I know what you may be thinking: “Yeah, but you’re Tucker Max, you have a ton more to offer someone than I do, I’m just some schmoe.”

Yeah, you’re right. But so what? So because I have more to offer someone like Steven Pressfield, that means you have nothing to offer? Bullshit. Leverage what you have. Or better yet, create something to offer. Figure out what the person needs and do it for them. Understand who they are and what they want in life, and you’ll see where you can fit in (if at all–there is no guarantee of a place for you). Like I said in the original post, if this is a route you want to take, it’s not going to just come to you. You have to go get it. Pick out the people you like the most and you think have the most to offer you, then learn about them and figure out what you can offer them. It’s not going to be much, but oftentimes it doesn’t need to be a whole lot. And show them that not only do you have something to offer them, but that you aren’t going to waste their time and that helping you is a productive thing for them to do.

Anyway, the meeting went great. I’m not going to write about it now, because Steven gave me an advance copy of Turning Pro, and I will write about meeting him when I write my review of that book (which will go up in when the book releases, maybe two weeks or so from now).

Spoiler: Turning Pro is fucking awesome, just as good if not better than The War of Art.

But I will show you this picture. I’ll admit, I got a little fanboyish and brought some books for Steven to sign. He was more than gracious about it though, and put possibly the greatest inscription I could ever imagine getting:

Nils Parker and I just launched a new advice blog, and the first post addresses a question I get constantly:

Why You Shouldn’t Go To Law School

It may be a little confusing that I’m doing two different sites. There’s a reason I am breaking these two sites up, and the explanation is probably boring to everyone but me. But don’t sweat it, I’ll cross link here everything I post there.

The whole Planned Parenthood donation debacle described below wasn’t all that funny, it was mostly just sad on their part. But PETA’s response IS funny. I got the letter and picture below from PETA yesterday:

And accompanied with the picture was this Letter to Tucker Max from PETA President Ingrid Newkirk:

I’ve been dealing with media for about a decade now, and I’ve seen some crazy, ridiculous things. But this recent controversy might legitimately be the most insane thing I’ve ever been witness to.

In short: I tried to donate $500,000 to Planned Parenthood, and they turned me down because they were worried more about other people’s perceptions of the donation than helping women.

[The most factually accurate article about this is in Forbes, you can catch up on it there. There has been a ton of analysis on this as well, most of it profoundly stupid, but the best is probably here.]

I am writing this on my blog because, even though I’m used to being misquoted and misrepresented in media, I’ve never seen anything like what’s going on now. It’s like people have absolutely no regard for any sort of facts or analysis based in reality; all anyone in media wants to do it use this to rant about whatever ideological position they hold. Let me clear some things up:

[Read more...]

As you may know by now, I retired from writing anymore fratire books (explained here), and have now moved on to other projects and parts of my life. Yes, I have some assorted writing/entertainment projects coming, and yes, they’re cool, yes a lot of people will like them, whatever. That’s not what THIS blog is about. This blog is going to be about a lot of things, but I think it can all be summed up pretty simply: I’m going to write about things I enjoy talking and thinking about that I think others will find interesting or helpful.

For example, Some Things I Plan To Post Here:

[Read more...]

The hiring process is now over, and I will go over all of it I haven’t yet gone over in this post. Here was the task for the third round of applicants:

[Read more...]

A lot of people have asked me why I’m using this process to hire an assistant. Not only why am I doing it publicly and letting anyone apply, but why I am posting my thoughts about each round of applications, and why I talk explicitly about what I’m looking for and what various applications do wrong.

Obviously, I don’t have to do it this way. And yes, it does create more work for me in the short term. But I don’t care about the short term; I’m doing this to achieve longer range goals. Instead of me rambling on and on about what I hope to accomplish, I think you can see what I’m accomplishing by reading this fantastic email I just got:

Hello,

I didn’t think I would ever be writing a thank you e-mail to Tucker Max, but there is a first time for everything! Even though I did not make it to the third round (dropped the ball on including both questions AND answers), I just wanted to say I appreciate the feedback that you leave on your blog. I have been a fan of your old  blog and books for a long time now, and this new one is refreshing.  Your advice and analysis to the applicants is truthful, constructive and in my opinion, really helpful.

It is nice to know that even a self-proclaimed “asshole” will take the time to read 800 submissions and respond.  I can tell you that I know my well thought out cover letters were not read by 75% of the jobs I have applied to in the past.  My generation lives in a world where we think everything is going to be handed to us.  Hard work and perseverance is replaced by blaming the economy and giving up.  Thank you for reminding me to stop complaining and DO something—best fucking advice I have gotten in a while.

There are many, many other reasons I’m running the application process the way I am, and I will explain all of them in time. But this person, and many others who sent emails like this, get it.

And yes: Once I get through all the Round 3 applications, I will do a comprehensive run down of what people did right, what they did wrong, and I’ll explain why I selected the person or people I did. But it may take awhile since I have two new books coming out this week.

First off, I want to thank everyone who has participated so far. Aside from a very small number of annoying people, most of you were great. Of the 1,500 people who had the opportunity to participate in Round 2, about 800 finished and returned the application on time. This was the Round 2 application: [Read more...]

Well, I got over 4,000 emails responding to my research assistant gig posting. It genuinely flabbergasted me, especially after I took pains to explain to people that this was not a job that involved any sort of goofy partying with me or whatever, and though it pays, it isn’t much at all. I was hoping to get 500 responses.

Of over 4,000 emails sent to me, only about 1,500 got replies back inviting them to the second round. Yes, you read that correctly: Only 37.5% of the people who responded could follow the extremely basic instructions I gave.

Since I have closed the first round and the second round has started, I’m going to go through each instruction and explain how people got them wrong, because I think it might be beneficial to people who are in the second round to understand my thinking. It also might help some of those people who fucked up to understand what they look like to an objective employment source, and learn something from their mistakes.

Here are the full instructions I put up: [Read more...]