American’s weatherman, Al Roker, talks about his latest book, You Look So Much Better in Person: True Stories of Absurdity and Success.

I just finished reading your new book. Well, I didn’t read it. You read it to me with the audiobook. It seems like you had a lot of fun recording it. I would imagine, recording an audiobook for something you’ve written for months and months and months, you’ve seen every page a thousand times, is gotta be a beating. But this one seemed like you had a good time doing it.

No, you know what? Because I’m getting older now, Michael. So reading it was like, I’d seen it for the first time.

Like, “Oh, Hey, I’m not dead. This is actually a pretty good book. Who wrote this? Oh, I did!” You know, I’ve written different books. I’ve written a few murder mysteries and had to do the audiobook. And in that, you’ve got to do different voices and you’ve got to keep track of it. This was pretty easy. It was mostly just me. It wasn’t like there were recurring characters in it.

I had so much fun writing the book. And, even to the title, you know, it’s so true to life. Because, literally every day when I would go out to the Today Show window, shake hands, you know, schmooze with people. Somebody would say, “Oh, my gosh! You look so much better in person!” Like, I know you don’t mean this as an insult, but you know, I do work on television. So, that’s not really high praise.

Is your persistence, the secret to your personal success?

Well look, I’m always nervous. I’m always worried. I have self-doubts and fear. But you’re very perceptive in the persistence part. It’s something I try to tell my kids. I try to tell young people. It’s like, be persistent and don’t be passive persistent.

Sometimes I ask one of our interns, “did you reach out to so-in-so?” “Oh, I sent them an email.” I’ll say, “Did they get back?” “Well, no, not yet.” I said, “pick up the phone and call.” My order of business is email and a text and then a phone call and then an email and then a text. You don’t just sit and wait for people to come to you. You come to people.

Al Roker’s You Look So Much Better in Person: True Stories of Absurdity and Success is now available at all major book retailers.

Listen to the full interview here: