Build, Don’t Talk: What I’m Learning with My Children

I read Build, Don’t Talk by Raj Shamani, and I’m excited to discuss how it applies to just about anyone. My eight-year-old son, my 12-year-old daughter, a young executive, or someone going to prison who has to start over. Let me give you a short summary of the book!

Raj Shamani is an entrepreneur and public speaker in India and around the world. He hosts the popular podcast Figuring Out. His book, Build, Don’t Talk: Things You Wish You Were Taught in School, covers subjects many of us had to figure out on our own after school. 

How do you sell something? How do you negotiate or manage money? How do you meet people and give them a reason to want to work with you? How do you grow your network, overcome failure, rejection? Why should you embrace you suck! How do you steal ideas from leaders without plagiarizing?

The book teaches you how to form good habits (rather than fixating on goals) and develop skills that include public speaking, building a business, and creating content instead of spending all your time consuming it. Raj shares his experience learning to sell and communicate, including where he didn’t have the skills and had to develop them. He also discusses the importance of believing in yourself and not needing external validation. The stories he shares bring these lessons to life. Rather than tell you, he shows you, which is key to learning, at least for me. 

I appreciate his humility and his recognition that he learned from other people. He asks you to do the same, to use what you learn and begin doing something with it, put that knowledge in your own voice, through your own lived experience. 

I’m reading the book every evening with Alyssa. I’ve discussed chapter two with Jason, who wrote his own book report. I’m proud to share it with friends, family, and clients. Let me explain why I read it, what I learned, and how it will help me moving forward.

Why I read the book

I wanted to read the book because I immediately liked the title, Build, Don’t Talk.

At White Collar Advice, that is our message. We ask people going through crisis to start creating something, even when they’re afraid of failure or rejection. Developing a new skill or growing your network requires trying, failing, and picking yourself back up. It takes humility, and you have to recognize that even if things don't go as planned, you still gain experience and knowledge from the effort. 

In my experience, some people who struggle through crises (I try to never talk in absolutes) remain in denial, and they find a way to never get going. Prison is full of dudes who talk about what they are going to do. Without action, that is called “happy talk” and the reality of their failure kicks in when they get released from prison. Many wish for a do-over that does not exist. 

The path forward, this book teaches, is incremental, daily: Tortoise and the Hare, aka, Slow and Steady Wins The Race!

I wish this book existed when I came home from federal prison in May of 2009. Coming home was strange. It’s one thing to go to prison. It’s another to come home, put yourself out there, and choose to talk about it.

I’m not a victim. I embraced and chose this career, but it doesn’t change that it was odd. As I describe in chapter two of my new book, After the Fall, I took copies of Lessons from Prison and began cold walking to see defense attorneys in downtown Los Angeles.

In Raj’s book, he talks about begging, reaching out on LinkedIn, and how others would ask friends for money or a loan. He describes having a skill for begging. I can relate. I practically begged lawyers to take Lessons from Prison. I was cold walking into ten offices and getting thrown out, with people looking at me like, “Who is this weirdo?”

I was wearing the suit I was sentenced to prison in. It was too big. I didn’t have the money to buy a new one. I tried to have it taken in, but it really should have been thrown in the trash.

I was proud of myself for doing it, but getting rejected hurt. For a long time I tried to rationalize: “You’re used to rejection, Justin. You’re a baseball player. You fail most of the time.” This felt different.

Had I read the book when I came home, I think it would have helped me recognize that it’s normal to fail when you start something new. You are supposed to suck at something you’ve never done before. I fixated on how I wanted the lawyer to respond. I should have appreciated that I was following through on my commitment to hustle/solicit rather than say, “Man, they did not seem to like me or the book. What am I doing wrong? This hurts.” 

Raj writes:

“Why are we giving someone else so much power over us? Screw what others have to say about you. Validate your own self because the fear of looking stupid is what holds you back.”

I was willing to look stupid, but I was too reactive to what other people said in determining whether I was successful. His advice about validating yourself would have helped me when I was beginning this career.

What I learned from the book

Chapter two is called “You Suck, Admit It.” Raj writes:

“Until we admit that we suck at things, we won’t be able to work on the part that sucks, and our ego won’t let us grow.”

It’s humbling to start over with a felony conviction, especially when you can no longer work in the career you built. You still have the knowledge and discipline that helped you become a doctor, lawyer, or businessman. You may have to redirect those skills and acknowledge that you suck at something new. That can be embarrassing and stressful.

Many people in our community are starting from less than zero, owing money and dealing with reputational fallout. Public speaking, writing, or developing another skill will require doing things that are uncomfortable and sucking for a while.

That lesson helped with Jason, who wakes very early to play the flute. One morning I said, “Bud, it’s 6 a.m. What are you doing playing the flute?”

“I suck. I really suck,” he said, and went on and on.

I would tell him, “No, you don’t suck, son. You’re doing the best you can. You’re practicing and getting better every time.”

Then we read chapter two together, and I realized: of course you suck, son. You just picked up the flute three days ago. He then realized Kobe Bryant and LeBron James probably sucked too when they started playing basketball.

Eventually he said, "I do suck, but I don’t want to suck forever,”

“That's right, son. That’s why you practice and, in time, you may want to move on to something new. Just keep trying and sucking," as he laughed.

I also appreciate Raj’s advice to focus on the habits that get you to your goals. It’s easy to fixate on the money you want to make again. But what did you do this morning to make it happen? Have you identified your values? Are you living faithfully to them and following through on what you said you would do?

It’s easier to talk about goals in the distant future than to focus on what you should do in the next 15 minutes.

This helped with Alyssa, who stresses over her math exams. She’s improving, though not as quickly as she would like. Math wasn’t my strong subject either.

“I want to do well. I want to do well. I want to make you proud. I want to test well,” she says. 

She worried about the test so much that it distracted her from sitting down to work on math, alone or with her tutor.

The book helped me get her to focus on her daily studying, working with the tutor, and completing the assignments with a good attitude. Her grades are improving. It’s like wanting to run a 26-mile marathon. Cool. Have you run the first mile? What is your diet like? 

Raj also describes developing a dishwashing gel business with his father. He didn’t have the knowledge or the money to hire a consultant to develop the formula, so they worked on it together. He writes that his dad became more committed to making it happen than he was. On the 87th attempt, they found the formula and made 500 milliliters of dishwashing gel.

I appreciate his willingness to admit he didn’t know how to make it, and then invest the time to learn. Some people would quit. Others might spend the money without doing the work themselves. He wanted to learn.

I had that willingness in prison, whether learning prison policy or trying to understand how and why I broke the law. Some days, I didn’t know whether the work would produce anything. Nobody was watching, nobody cared, and no money was coming in. But I could control what I did that day.

I shared the gel story with Alyssa. Recently, we went to Newport Beach, where there’s an obstacle course in the water. It’s pretty cool, and the water is freezing. You climb and slide off into the ocean, but you have to use hooks and rails to work your way up the course.

One was really difficult for her. It didn’t help that her eight-year-old brother did it in about seven seconds and made a point of letting her know he had no problem.

She tried three times, five times, 12 times, 15 times, 17 times. She was frustrated, but she wanted to get it. I saw her resolve.

“I’ll be here until they throw us out of the ocean or it gets dark,” I told her.

Fifteen minutes later…

“Alyssa, I know you can do this. Keep trying. It will be so rewarding when you make it. No matter what, I’m proud of you. Still, the sooner the better, as I’m burning here with no sunblock on.”

“Dad, don’t make me laugh.”

About 23 attempts later, she made it. I saw how satisfied she was. She would have done it 87 times, until her arms were numb, because she wanted to succeed.

The earlier attempts were lessons she could apply to the next one.

For our audience, I believe the most important part of the book is Raj’s account of cultivating one contact a day. That’s seven a week, 365 over a year. When you’re a defendant in crisis, it’s easy to focus on the loss of your business and reputation, or the financial fallout.

Imagine where you would be in 12 months if you cultivated a new contact every day. It may require looking stupid and getting rejected, as I did when lawyers threw me out of their offices.

That same cold-walking day, Mark Werksman, a lawyer, shook my hand. The next day he asked me for ten copies of Lessons from Prison. And I’ve earned more than a million dollars based on my relationship with Mark through cold walking and being willing to look stupid and fail and get laughed at.

So understand it’s easier said than done to cultivate one contact a day because you may have to reach out to 10 people.

Michael Santos wrote hundreds of letters to people from prison. Maybe only one out of every hundred would respond. He compared himself to a fisherman at sea casting lines. That’s what reaching out can require, but imagine having 365 new contacts/relationships a year from now.

I’m never going to ask you to do what I haven’t done and documented. I’ve built my plan. I have failed. I’ve written about everything through Lessons from Prison, Ethics in Motion, and After the Fall.

Think about who you can reach out to and how you can connect. Public speaking gets you in front of people. Raj’s account of how he addressed his speaking concerns was one of the most useful parts of the book for me.

He didn’t just obsess over an upcoming speaking event. He practiced an hour a day for 30 days. He was ready, he crushed it, and others began asking him how he did it and inviting him to speak.

On page 33, Raj writes about being ready to look stupid, and not letting that fear deprive you of the heights you could reach. Accept yourself, he writes, because if you don’t, who else will?

I proudly share these lines with my children. We underline them and destroy the book with marker and pencil and pen.

I’ve learned from masters: Michael Santos, Raj, Robert Greene, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Montaigne. I learned everything I teach from someone ahead of me. I interpret it through my own experience and share it with hopes that it helps you.

He acknowledges that in chapter 11 of the book, when he brings up Steve Jobs and stealing ideas. Jobs liked to repeat Picasso’s line, “Good artists copy, great artists steal,” and said Apple had been shameless about stealing great ideas.

Raj describes in the book that you shouldn’t plagiarize, but you have to interpret it for your own life. For example, I read Nietzsche in prison, his line about a thing's value being what it costs you rather than what you gain from it. I didn’t create that, but I interpreted it to my conduct. I had attained money through stealing, but at what cost? My freedom, health.

Parts of this book remind me of CZ, the founder of Binance, who strongly supports Prison Professors Charitable Corporation. In Freedom of Money, CZ wrote, “There are more opportunities in the future than the past.”

I think about that when I read Raj’s book, letting go of the past, using it as an experience, not ruminating.

How the book will help me

I continue calling lawyers to introduce our work. I call for two hours a day. Many don’t pick up the phone. Many know what we do and are interested. Many are not. I know I’d be stronger if a year from now 365 lawyers were in my Rolodex.

Raj writes about becoming 1% better than the 99% of people around you. 

As he discusses in the book, where are you stronger and better than other people? Where do you stand out? Where can you improve and monetize it? He writes that you have to decide the one thing you’re good at. No one else can do that for you. True, but it requires work, not talk to decide what that is.

In prison, I realized I could communicate and wanted to help people. I didn’t want others to hurt their families, get longer sentences, or sit at home with regret, eating Double-Doubles and chewing tobacco instead of getting engaged with their kids. That's where I could use my skills.

But I had to learn. I woke at four in the morning to read and write, despite people mocking me, calling me a tourist, and saying my sentence was too short for anyone to read my work. It would have been easy to quit and give them that power. That’s another lesson I share with my children.

In prison, I read a line attributed to Voltaire. In fact, it’s in my prison journal. It hangs in my office between my books. And it says:

“Observe how difficult it is to change yourself and you will understand how naive it is to try to change another person.”

That challenged me to understand why I went to prison and what I learned. I had to document it. I couldn’t be authentic with someone contemplating hiring my company unless I had done the work and had something to show them.

I had to first change me and share what I learned. Getting someone to buy in required being clear, transparent, and vulnerable about my own conduct.

And for me, that first asset was the blog that I wrote in prison. 

Let me close with Oscar Wilde. In prison, I read Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, and he wrote about “those mean triumphs that the memory of your past will make more bitter than defeats.”

In other words, starting over can be torture when you keep comparing yourself to your past career, income, and status. It’s difficult, I know. This book reminds me to pick up the phone and make the next call, even when the last lawyer wasn’t interested. 

I encourage all of you to read Build, Don’t Talk, and write your own book report using these questions. Why did you read the book? What did you learn from the book? How will the book help you moving forward? I’d love to read your report.

My best to you!

Justin Paperny

P.S. Buy Raj's book here!