How to Become the World Champion of Your Favorite Hobby | Chris Ullman (Part 1)

[00:00:06] Chris Ullman has had an amazing life. First, he was the world whistling champion. He won it four times. Second, he was basically the head of PR and communications for many successful huge politicians, presidential candidates, governors, and advisor to several billionaires. He's in most notably,

[00:00:32] he worked for 18 years for David Rubenstein who runs the Carlisle group. He's been on this podcast quite a few times and Chris just wrote a book four billionaires and a parking attendant. Lessons he's learned from

[00:00:46] all these different billionaires and politicians and lessons he also learned from a parking attendant. But prior to that, he also wrote a book called Find Your Whistle, and it's his adventures on the way to being the world

[00:00:57] whistling champion. So we talk about both topics. It's part one and part two. The first part is basically how do you be the best in the world at what you love doing? Whistling is not easy and being the world champion at any art form

[00:01:12] is not easy. We talk about that then part two, we talk about four billionaires and a parking attendant and the stories are incredible. At the end of part two Chris also whistles for us. So let's start off with becoming the world champion at the thing you love doing.

[00:01:33] That's part one coming up and then part two will be the next podcast and it'll be all about lessons he learned from the billionaires and a parking attendant. This isn't your average business podcast and he's not your average host. This is the James Altiger show.

[00:02:03] So, so Chris we can really almost do two podcasts with you. One is you were the world whistling champion several times many times, which is an amazing thing in and of itself. And I want to talk about that also you have a book that just came out

[00:02:19] four billionaires and a parking attendant and you've worked with all these billionaires and gotten great life advice or life learnings from them and also a parking attendant in the parking lot where you often parked. So both of these folks are amazing and you've had an amazing

[00:02:35] life still having it. I honestly don't know where to start so let's start with whistling. You started whistling at the age of five. How does someone even become world whistling champion?

[00:02:46] Well, James thanks for having me first of all. It's a real honor to be on your show and so my father was a good whistler and you know so much of it comes down to can you whistle

[00:02:58] and it's very binary. I've met a lot of people in my life who just cannot whistle. They go nothing comes out versus that coming out and so I'm able to whistle and then you know since

[00:03:10] I do public relations for a living I think in talking points. I'm able to whistle. I love to practice. I'm competitive. I'm good at arranging music for my instrument to whistle. I'm a bit of a showman and I found the international whistling competition

[00:03:29] back in oh my gosh 1993 competed nine times one at four times came in second a few times and it was a great run and I don't compete anymore. I just perform and I also whistle happy

[00:03:42] birthday 650 times a year for people which is what I call my birthday whistling ministry. Why do you whistle happy birthday to people? I want to honor their lives and you know it's so interesting about happy birthdays usually you sing it for your family or your colleagues if

[00:04:03] you're in an office but I actually get to insert myself into the lives of 650 people and bring them this like little packets of joy. I just did three literally like five minutes ago

[00:04:15] I whistled happy birthday three times and I recorded on my iPhone a little voice memo and I just texted to them and then people write back these amazing notes they say you made my day my day

[00:04:28] wouldn't be complete if I didn't have a whistlegram from you and so it warms my heart and you know I just convinced that we need to like stop thinking about ourselves and think about other

[00:04:41] people you know if every day I have to be nice to someone through whistling you know it's good it keeps me humble. And you know as you describe in the book that your kind of domination of the

[00:04:57] whistling world if you want to call it that and you know it takes a lot of practice you have a huge repertoire of songs you could whistle you obviously have the talent and the skill but

[00:05:07] you have to do work at the skill. I'm curious the process of becoming a whistling champion it's really a champion at anything but for you whistling the process of becoming a whistling champion

[00:05:21] world whistling champion do you think that helped you career wise and I'm asking in two different directions one is because everyone's impressed that you're the best in the world at something and

[00:05:33] number two because of the discipline it took to become and the way of thinking it takes to become the best in the world at something. Yeah you know that process of like coming up with

[00:05:44] this idea saying wow I'm pretty good whistler maybe I could be the best one day so like it actually sets you on a journey so I mean first it's a mindset you have an objective

[00:05:57] and then day in and day out you have to figure out how do I get there you know what are my strengths one of my weaknesses and this applies as you just said you could be a violinist a trombonist

[00:06:07] or a hedge fund manager like you and so you have to think what is it going to take to get there and so with whistling it is for me at least it was a combination of making sure I had

[00:06:24] a really wide range and by peak form I had over a three octave range which is a pretty wide range and then the capacity to arrange music for your instrument so I can listen to you know Beethoven

[00:06:41] symphony and have to figure out you know a lot of notes going on there have to figure out how to catch the tune or the main theme so I was very good at that and you know just being

[00:06:52] relentless and you know my new book four billionaires in a park intended there's all these people on there they are just relentless they set their sights on something and just go go go and

[00:07:05] like I did this crazy thing in 1996 I was training for the training and really really do for the international competition and so I got my it is why did you almost seem a little ashamed

[00:07:19] when you said the word training because people you know for years people have said to me do you practice and I used to be insulted and I would say what do you mean do I practice how can you

[00:07:29] be good at anything if you don't practice but I realize that people think whistling is just a silly little thing and why would you have to practice to be good at it so I've actually

[00:07:38] become a little insecure about it so I'm glad you picked up on that I want to I want to ask you about that like because because many many areas of life could seem frivolous right so

[00:07:52] let's say some people think whistling is that way that's the reaction you got from some people but also taking a you know inflated ball and throwing it through a net as many times as possible in a 60 minute period that could be considered frivolous too and yet you know

[00:08:09] some people make 80 million a year doing it so who's I always wonder about this like yes some recreational activities are considered frivolous and some are considered worthy of 80 million a year and you know the NBA has 10 billion in revenues a year so so money has sort of like

[00:08:31] set the bar on frivolity and and and yet there's nothing to whistling is musical it's creative it's very difficult there's nothing that makes whistling more frivolous than basketball other than the fact that it's a 10 basketball is a 10 billion industry so we take it a little

[00:08:50] more seriously somehow I'm just curious if there's anything yeah like oh you and those are very good points what's happened with the challenge with whistling which is why people kind of put it

[00:09:01] in the the frivolous category or the novelty category is that there is not a lot of music written for whistler now that may that may sound strange but it's it helps legitimize an instrument

[00:09:17] I mean if you want to uh if you go to the classical music catalog with tons of music for violin and trumpet and cello piano but you'll find almost nothing for whistler so for example I I

[00:09:32] reached out this years ago to 50 orchestras and said I can whistle Mozart's oboe concerto can I perform with you and two of them said yes but 48 of them completely ignored me and it's because it's they're used to hearing the Andy Griffith theme song or men catcalling women and

[00:09:56] so this has been a group of us who try to like legitimize whistling and take it from novelty to art and with some success I mean for I whistle with 12 symphony orchestras um and I other whistlers

[00:10:11] is this guy in the Netherlands uh named Hirt Shatru who's arguably the best whistler today I mean he's whistled with many orchestras so there's a small like little contingent of us who are taking it to

[00:10:25] the next level but we don't have all that infrastructure we don't have the music written for us there aren't whistling schools so we kind of train on our own and you'll actually find that most whistlers are good singers because they actually learned how to make music by singing

[00:10:44] and then that is very transferable to whistling that's interesting I wouldn't think it was because I feel like you could have a sense you could have a sense of what's it called when you

[00:10:56] have perfect a perfect pitch perfect pitch yeah it's easier to have correct pitch with whistling I would think than singing uh because the vocal chords connection to the brain it seems like it's

[00:11:07] not as fast no no if you if you have perfect pitch you you can hum a note you could sing a note you could whistle a note it really has or you could get a trombone and play it if you know how to

[00:11:21] play a trombone and hear you know get to the right note so um I don't have perfect pitch I have what I call a kind of perfect relative pitch like once I'm in the right key it can stay in the right key

[00:11:33] but there are people who you can say to them hum an a flat and boom they can just hum it in the absence of any reference point so again people ask if you train and going back to that like people

[00:12:00] ask if you train and of course of course you train quite a bit like what was a and by the way I definitely we're gonna get to the four billionaires and a parking attendant as a main

[00:12:08] but I am just fascinated by excellence because it's very very difficult to be the best in the world at anything and what was your training regimen like on a daily basis so uh I usually whistle around two

[00:12:20] hours a day and then I would do crazy things like get in my car and I drove to Graceland once for a week and whistled for six hours every day for seven straight days and the reason is that you

[00:12:32] know a you want to practice your music but b and perhaps more importantly you have to get your lips in shape you may be familiar with the french word called embouchure and it actually has to do with

[00:12:46] the the shape of and the conditioning of your lips to play a wind instrument could be a trumpet uh a clarinet or any wind instrument the same thing with whistling is that to a pucker

[00:12:59] is not a natural position for your lips so when you take this kind of complex musculature and stick your lips out into this very precise shape and then try to sustain that for minutes on end

[00:13:13] by whistle Mozart's oboe concerto it's 22 minutes long if your lips are not in tip top shape you will they will get tired quickly and then you will lose the the perfect positioning that embouchure to be able to sustain the note so that's why conditioning is so important

[00:13:33] and then in practicing your actual song like right now i'm working on Hummel's trumpet concerto i'm doing i'm performing with the alexandria symphony orchestra later this year so i know the

[00:13:48] piece well but i have to get my lips in good shape and so it's going to be real exciting to perform classical music with an orchestra and what when i perform with the national symphony

[00:14:00] i mean this is a 70 piece orchestra at the us capital in front of 65 000 people and you are immersed in sound it is is probably one of the most exquisite experience of my life to have an

[00:14:14] orchestra enveloping me with sound and then 65 000 people in front of me and then the us capital lit up behind them nothing will ever touch that in terms of this confluence of cool things

[00:14:28] do they have um a part written where you get to solo whistle for a few moments yeah yeah so in that particular song it's a song called on the mole which was written in the 1920s uh and it's

[00:14:41] a march and so i it is written for whistler it's one of the few pieces out there actually written for whistler and uh so i performed it and the really cool part was that at the end of the

[00:14:54] concert they brought me back and i talked to the audience the song and then we performed it again and and i conducted this mass whistling group of 65 000 people and uh that was cool and it's

[00:15:08] a really catchy tune and uh people loved it i mean that's amazing like on the one hand we talked a little while ago about you know how you felt insecure about you know is whistling worthy

[00:15:21] a worthy endeavor to spend thousands of hours on and compete in and yet look at this experience it created for you like let's say let's say one thing life you know everybody debates what is

[00:15:32] life about oh be a good person be a happy person do this be be a successful person whatever but maybe life is about creating these amazing experiences and how many people i can count on

[00:15:45] one hand maybe people who have had an experience at that level of amazing yeah well i i count my blessings every day i never could have predicted or anticipated what whistling has allowed me to do

[00:16:01] i mean i've whistled in the oval office for the president i whistle at major league baseball and basketball stadiums the national anthem i even whistle this is totally freaky at the top of the

[00:16:12] washington monument on the outside 555 feet in the air um and and then whistling happy birthday for people done ted talks it has brought me more joy than ever imaginable and which is why i count my blessings every day that this has happened i've worked yes i've worked hard

[00:16:34] and i've made a point of getting good but you know life is strange and you never know when crazy things are going to happen so you you've got to kind of revel in the moment you know my my life

[00:16:48] philosophy is that you know it's not the destination it's it's the trip you know that's not you know other people think that too but that is i've embraced this philosophy since it was like

[00:16:59] 13 years old and that's why you must must kind of revel in the moment i mean it's always an eye towards the future but the moment is critical well you know it's an interesting thing i i go back

[00:17:14] and forth on that on what you just said it's the it's all about the journey and not the destination because a lot of it is actually about the destination like you had a goal which was to

[00:17:23] win the grand competition for for whistling i feel that the destination a it sets the path of the journey so it defines the destination defines what you do on the journey like if you're going on a

[00:17:35] quest for the holy grail okay you've got to get out the knights of king arthur's court had to get on their horses and travel the world and seek out information about the holy grail i get set

[00:17:45] the it created the journey and when you won the competition that was probably you've probably felt better that moment than in any given day training for the competition well you're you're totally right

[00:18:00] and you know they are opposite sides of the same coin arguably is that having you know in the the big part of a big part of the new book is about purpose you know having a destination you're

[00:18:13] going to because i think having purpose gives us you know something to strive for so i agree with all of that you know and having worked for some of the most successful people you know in business

[00:18:27] and politics they all have purpose and an objective all right so i agree with that but the challenge is when today slips away because you're so focused on tomorrow and though in a perfect

[00:18:44] world you have purpose you know yes i want to graduate from college with a good gpa that's a great purpose to have but there are you know two there are a thousand school days between today and that day what are those thousand days going to be like

[00:19:04] book you know until they hand you that diploma and if you know if you're fixated on when i pay off my mortgage then i'll be happy or when i graduate i'll be happy or when i retire

[00:19:16] then i'll be happy which can dominate the way people think you know that's dangerous so they're not mutually exclusive like if you had never won the let's say you had always come in

[00:19:28] second and third and you never took first at the competition for whistling um would you have written the book on whistling that you wrote so so the book i have here is uh find your whistle yeah um

[00:19:40] you're probably not so even though you know i second best whistler on the planet number two sucks well there there is a fixation in our culture and maybe it's the human condition

[00:19:56] for the best and so i do appreciate that and you know i am the kind of person that even if it had not been you know the pinnacle of whistling that i would find purpose

[00:20:12] you know have that objective but then revel in every moment i mean yesterday i i met a security guard in an office building who helped me you know figure out the elevator i'd you know i had

[00:20:26] a little fob and all that couldn't figure it out now i know her name she has a beautiful smile and she said i look forward to seeing you tomorrow and it would have been so easy to

[00:20:38] view that as just this fleeting transaction of i need to get in the elevator versus a human with a name with a beautiful smile who actually is looking forward to seeing me tomorrow that matters and

[00:20:54] arguably the accumulation of those types of moments matter even more than you know these bogies that you're shooting for i mean just yesterday my 17 year old daughter said her dad is a little shy and she said i want to be more like you and just talk to strangers

[00:21:15] she said you can learn a lot i see you talk to strangers all the time you learn so much i say yeah i mean you know we're we're not going to be best buddies necessarily but you just never know and you know that those things matter they they

[00:21:32] i mean you can argue how much they matter but i think they matter a huge amount and i mean and arguably you're a i mean not arguably you are a trained communicator like you've

[00:21:44] this is what you've done for billionaires for for decades is you've been their right-hand man when it comes to communicating and and getting their word out there and their message out there and

[00:21:54] their goals out there and it's been your job to talk to strangers and billionaires and presidents and and so on and and again we'll get to that in a second you know one more question i have and

[00:22:05] again this is related to the frivolous aspect because i am fascinated by that pause that you had when you were training but before you won was there any point where you felt like you

[00:22:16] had to justify to your i don't know your wife or your family or your friends or colleagues or work colleagues that why you're spending hours a day doing this like you must have did you feel

[00:22:28] bad at any point during that process because hey i should be making a billion dollars and not whistling well thankfully i was single at the time because i could barely tolerate listening to that much

[00:22:40] whistling and when i did that gracefully pilgrimage the six hours a day i was single and alone in the car actually my wife doesn't even let me whistle around the house very much she thinks it's

[00:22:52] fairly annoying so if i were we're married with children and then i discovered this competition i don't know if it would have worked out so it was kind of providential that i was single when

[00:23:05] it happened well what about though like you're just your friends like like for instance in my 20s i left graduate school and computer science because i wanted to be a writer i was writing all

[00:23:16] the time and like any form of communication takes a lot of years actually to be a good writer and uh my friends and parents thought i was completely insane like they really thought i was mentally ill

[00:23:29] for for leaving one of the best graduate schools in computer science where my career was set if i got a phd there as opposed to doing something completely who knows most people don't succeed

[00:23:40] at writing and i was not a good writer at the time so i had a healthy dose of dunning kruger bias so i thought i was good but i certainly wasn't good so so i had to constantly question myself

[00:23:52] and answer their questions about why i was doing what i was doing so i'm glad you brought up writing as this and i'm going to juxtapose that with the whistling see there are there are

[00:24:04] tons of people who call themselves writers and most people are used to reading things it can be the newspaper or books uh or billboards all right so if someone like you says i'm going to be a writer

[00:24:19] a lot of people are going to say oh you're not hard it is to be a writer why would you bother with that now with whistling so i say to people hey there's a whistling competition

[00:24:30] i'm going to try that people like whistling that's really freaky that sounds cool let's hear it so there are just so few of them that people are kind of drawn to it and view it as novelty

[00:24:44] versus the writing which is you know kind of a dime a dozen that doesn't mean you're not a good writer but a lot of people say i'm going to go be a writer or i'm going to go go to hollywood

[00:24:53] and make my fortune but very few people say i'm going to be a champion whistler so people are more fascinated by it than poo pooing it yeah i agree and i think people don't realize

[00:25:09] how difficult a skill it is to write for instance so everybody with a word processor now becomes a writer oh you posted an article on medium that got 20 likes now you're a writer and uh people

[00:25:21] understand that most just like in anything most things are bad so most written material is not good writing like i always look for great great writers to inspire my own writing and it's very

[00:25:36] very hard for me like it's thousands of books i have to look at for every one that i find that oh this is going to inspire me to to write and um it you know and this is over 30 years of writing

[00:25:49] almost every day now but uh i would imagine you're right with whistling like when you told me oh you're a world champion whistler i was fascinated if someone said to me oh i'm a world champion writer

[00:26:00] eh all right but world you know then you guys probably that's exactly that's exactly it now interestingly whistling is it's very binary in terms of who likes it and who doesn't

[00:26:13] so so i i was in an elevator once with newt gingrich when he was the speaker of the house and my then boss was john casick who was governor of ohio and ran for president and casick says

[00:26:27] newt newt you got to hear chris whistle this is it's amazing newt wouldn't even look at me he completely ignored casick then casick tries again he's been on the tonight show

[00:26:37] he's been on the tonight show you got to hear him whistle nothing so there are some people who just think it's so so freaky they they want nothing to do with it and then other people

[00:26:46] you'll say to them ham a whistler and they're like their eyes light up and this is what happened with the national symphony i met one of the conductors and a friend of mine said hey chris

[00:26:56] is a champion whistler and she's like whistle for me but i whistle a song and then she's like hey you want to perform with the national symphony orchestra yeah let's do it so

[00:27:07] it's very binary there too the lesson really that i i take from this is that excellence opens doors and it opens unusual doors in in many ways like so i'm very much into chess i'm a competitive chess

[00:27:37] player i'm not like the best in the world but i'm doing something unusual which is that after a 25 year period where i did not play in tournaments so i'm a ranked chess master from the 90s

[00:27:50] then i stopped playing for 25 years in order to have a career and now i'm on a quest to be as strong as i was in the 90s and just going on this quest has opened so many doors and adventures for me like

[00:28:04] i was invited to go to amsterdam next week to just watch this tournament with the organizer and of among the very great players are playing and but and i can imagine for you being the best

[00:28:18] in the world at something excellence opens doors and it's worth it to achieve excellence in something regardless of whether other people consider you know its status uh in the hierarchy now of course if you were the best basketball player ever that also has a significant monetary game that's

[00:28:35] the door it opens but excellence in anything has has benefits i think it's very well put you know uh whistling doesn't pay well so i've always had a day job but that in itself

[00:28:48] has made my whistling career even more interesting you know so here i am i'm at the carl l group in his big global private equity firm my phone rings it's the founder of the firm david rubinstein he

[00:28:59] says come to my office but i walk down the hall and there is ted leoncis who is the owner of the wizards and the caps or whatever they're called these days the hockey team by the way

[00:29:10] he said he's been on the podcast oh good he's an interesting guy i've heard him speak so david says whistle for ted like okay and like a kind of a pet monkey it's like hey you come over here and whistle

[00:29:25] and uh sorry whistle and then ted says hey do you want to whistle national anthem at a wizards game so you were right and he he heard it he liked it and that opened the door and and that's why

[00:29:38] i just count my blessings like all these crazy things that have happened and yeah they continued to happen you know i get to perform go go on tv go on podcasts and um you know and so it's been it's been great

[00:29:52] last question about it like when you so at one point you had won the championship four times and you you stopped for a while then five years later you went back to try to win again

[00:30:04] was was it and i'm asking this almost selfishly but did you as you age and as you get a little rusty do the training techniques change through time so other whistlers have more sophisticated

[00:30:19] training techniques if who start now or does aging result in some decline in ability like what what have you experienced when you tried to come back to it so i understand why you're

[00:30:30] asking this question as you seek to regain your your your chest status and yes so what i what i realize then and and now too is that there is an accumulation of ability it could be chest ability it could

[00:30:49] be whistling ability that it there's a certain baseline you achieve because you're doing something all the time and then you may step it up if you have a competition or a performance but

[00:31:02] but your baseline is already high when you take a break your baseline falls so low that to get backed up just takes a lot more than you would think it's less about age i believe and more

[00:31:18] about time so the key is putting the time in so if you know if the national symphony called me tomorrow and said we want you to do some like really big concert in six months i could get back

[00:31:31] into the tip top form if i whistled two hours a day for six months it would be hard because i've got a busy consulting business i've got books and i've got children i like to ride my bicycle so

[00:31:45] and i gotta keep my wife happy so there's it would be a challenge to jam it in there but that's what it would take and i suspect it's similar to you you probably have to go go back and just

[00:31:56] play you have to it's like if i want to be a good whistle i have to whistle all the time to get the lips in shape and i assume you have to keep playing and playing and studying the books

[00:32:05] and the moves and for some things and maybe music is not one of these things or maybe composing music is but not playing music i don't know but but like you know as you age

[00:32:17] you're not as sharp like your thoughts aren't as fast and and your memory is not as good but your ability to do pattern recognition and intuition goes up so performing music maybe

[00:32:32] you're able to kind of like oh i'm going to add this bluesy sound to this classical piece and like you're able to kind of assimilate other other things and put them together in interesting

[00:32:42] ways which you wouldn't be able to do maybe when you're younger but some professions benefit from age so like peak age for a historian is actually 69 years old whereas peak age for a mathematician is

[00:32:54] 25 years old where you would require more sharpness and more memory and and and so on whereas a historian can say oh this event from afghanistan reminds me of this one battle in world war

[00:33:05] two so you have this huge wealth of knowledge and an ability to kind of like put them together in interesting ways that you didn't have when you were younger and and that's something that sort of

[00:33:14] happens in your 40s and 50s and keeps growing so it's interesting i love that point and i love the point about adding the little bluesy things because i am doing that with this trumpet piece

[00:33:25] i've i'm improvising in a few sections uh i haven't told the conductor yet i'm hoping he will be open to it uh to say listen i'm you know the key with great music and great writing you could

[00:33:37] argue is you have to make it your own you know there's no if it's cookie cutter people are going to say all right i've heard that before i want to make it distinctive um like for example i i listened to

[00:33:50] um uh so vladimir ashkenazi is one of the great pianists of our day and he's a conductor now and then his son is a clarinetist and i listened to his son play uh Mozart's clarinet

[00:34:04] concerto the other day and it was his this he embraced that piece like i've never seen before all these little curls and twists and things that he added to it that i'd never heard that i thought

[00:34:17] were appropriate but so unique and he made it his so in that that's the way to do it i think so i'm gonna try to do that with this trumpet piece to really make it mine uh that i if anyone in

[00:34:30] the audience knows the piece they're gonna say well i've never heard it done that way before but still think it's appropriate and enjoyable that's such an important point in a variety of ways

[00:34:40] to make something yours so like i think like it's this is very important by the way for employees at a job like if you work at uh a company there's usually a history a culture a culture of the

[00:34:55] product of you know whether is this a luxury product is this a uh us you know kids product is it they you know like like i used to work at hbo very briefly and hbo you could tell if a show is

[00:35:11] hbo or if a show is abc like there's a difference and i feel when employees really are able to say this is our product as opposed to this is my company's product like when they really kind of feel

[00:35:25] the philosophy and culture and make it their own that philosophy then they succeed as employees like carlyle group is a very different kind of private equity group than blackstone and i'm sure you feel the nuances what makes carlyle and david rubinstein different from for better or for us

[00:35:43] steve schwarzman and blackstone exactly when i tell people about when i either teach writing to young people or kind of developing your own brand in the marketplace and i'm all about saying

[00:35:58] you know understand you as a product understand your craft as a writer but make it your own and and be distinctive about it you're not not just to you know be a peacock that's all

[00:36:14] flash right but to do it with purpose so that the distinctions add value in some way you know one of the big distinctions with carlyle was that we said people like working with us more because we're not your typical sharp elbow new yorker how blackstone people might have

[00:36:34] bristled at that but we thought it was true and that was the feedback we got because in the end they have buckets of money so do we they have buckets of nbas from worton stanford and hbs

[00:36:45] so did we so like you had to have a differentiator and we thought it was our culture of actually being nice to each other now that has changed a lot since i left uh not for the not for the better

[00:36:58] but i think it's on the mend now that they have a new ceo but that's a whole other subject one thing i was going to ask you and maybe even suggest you so take it for what it's worth

[00:37:09] you should make tiktok videos doing pop culture covers of whistling up like every like like do hotel california uh whistling do a cover of some great raps on whistling i bet you that would you would get like millions of uh not that you are interested in this but

[00:37:26] i get you like millions of views and followers and so on like i would listen to i would subscribe to an instagram channel that was all whistling covers of like my favorite songs you know what

[00:37:38] what's fascinating about what you just said is you know it's all about time allocation and you know even i don't know how much money you made on your book but making money on a book

[00:37:50] is difficult you know unless you're walter isaacson writing about elon moth um so i'm always weighing you know i get paid well as a consultant so every every hour i spend consulting for corporate

[00:38:04] america i make tons of money every hour i spend working on my next book i don't make a lot of money but i get great satisfaction out of creating creating the whistling book creating this new

[00:38:20] book about the billionaires and the parking attendant um and money is less important to me now than 60 years old and financially secure uh so i you know i try to i try for a balance

[00:38:33] but to get to specifically your point about like tiktok and social media is that i tend to avoid social media because it is a rabbit hole because people say to me how do you have

[00:38:44] time to write a book and i say well i don't sleep that much i don't watch tv and i don't do social media which actually frees up a lot of time yeah and i don't mean to be judgmental if

[00:38:54] social media is your thing that's fine but the odds are i just spent a lot of time doing that probably not going to write a book but if that's not your thing then hey that's cool

[00:39:04] it that was more selfish request because i want to listen to some rap song being whistled so that would that would i would just love to hear stuff like that wow i really was fascinated

[00:39:23] i'm always fascinated in what it takes to become the best in the world at something you love or even just to excel at something you love which is very very difficult but obviously it's an incredible

[00:39:35] story if you want to hear chris whistle stay tuned because in part two which covers his latest book four billionaires and a parking attendant first off you should pre-order the book or order the

[00:39:47] book on amazon second part two is amazing stay tuned for it and at the end he whistles