The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 647: Tim Ferriss - Chasing Your Curiosity, Internal vs External Scoreboards, Effectiveness over Efficiency, Winning Even if You Fail, Fame's Hidden Costs, & The Mount Rushmore of Podcasting

Starting point is 00:00:00 This episode is brought to you by Insight Global. I love the leadership team and the people at Insight Global. Insight Global is a staffing and professional services company dedicated to being the light to the world around them. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people or transform your business through talent or technical services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world have the hustle and grit to deliver. Hiring can be tough, but hiring the right person can be magic. Visit Insightglobal.com slash learning leader today to learn more. That's Insightglobal.com slash learning leader. Welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am your host, Ryan Hawk.

Starting point is 00:00:53 Thank you so much for being here. Go to LearningLeader.com for show notes of this and all podcast episodes. Let's go to learning leader.com. Now, on to tonight's featured leader. The legendary Tim Ferriss is the author of five number one New York Times bestsellers, including the four-hour workweek, tools of Titans and Tribe of Mentors. His podcast, The Tim Ferriss Show, has been listened to more than a billion times, and he was an early investor to Uber, Shopify, Twitter, Alibaba, and many others.

Starting point is 00:01:28 He's the creator of a new card game called Coyote. During our conversation, we discussed the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic rewards he's gotten from his output and the positive dent he's put in the world. And then his role as a founding father in the world of podcasts and what he likes and doesn't about the future of podcasts. Then we discuss why you should shoot for, quote, ultra premium. And then we talked about why you shouldn't pray for an easy life. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with Tim Ferriss. All right, Tim, man. Welcome to the Learning Leader Show.

Starting point is 00:02:11 Awesome to have you, dude. Thanks for having me. Good to see you. I'm curious. So I was rereading Tools of Titans and Tribe of Mentors. And the last line in the acknowledgement section of Tools of Titans, you dedicate the book to your parents for, quote, guiding and consoling you through it all.

Starting point is 00:02:27 And I think like when you look at people who have sustained excellence over time, you look at their upbringing. Sometimes they have these perfect childhoods or they overcame terrible ones. I'm curious to like go a little bit deeper. What are Tim Ferriss's parents like, the type of people that would raise someone like you who has gone on to leave such a positive dent in the world? And it is currently in the process of still doing it. Sure. Yeah, we can unpack that. So I'll say that my parents are last I checked.

Starting point is 00:02:57 human. So they have each a couple of superpowers, perhaps, and they definitely have super weaknesses, just like everybody else. So my childhood was, I wouldn't say it was a paragon of perfection, nor was it me getting put in a sleeping bag and swung against a tree. It wasn't either of those things. But I had some terrible things happen to me as a kid, but it wasn't at the hands my parents. So the question that you asked, I think, leads me by hooker crook in one direction, which is curiosity. So what my mom did in particular, we didn't have a lot of money. We weren't dirt poor, but we didn't have a lot of money. So if we had budget for anything, this is another thing my mom in particular did write. No new bike, no BB gun, no buy whatever the other kids had.

Starting point is 00:03:52 but she said if you want to read books we will always have a budget and so we would figure it out and one of the strategies was to take me to the bookstore to the remainder table so the remainder table are books that the bookstore can't sell basically or they want to get rid of it they want to get rid of these copies at a discount and so you go to the remainder table as an author that's where you don't want your books to end up but as a kid I was like wow this is just like a secret Santa from the universe in a sense because I couldn't choose what was on that table. But because the only place I could quote unquote spend money, it wasn't my money, but my parents' money was on books. I got really, and my brother also got really excited about

Starting point is 00:04:41 books. So there's a trick. And I still remember to this day some of the books that I bought as a little kid. Again, I'm using the bot in quotation marks because it wasn't my cash. And that fed a lifelong interest in things that are outside of the norm, maybe off menu. That's how I bought a book called The World of Fishes. I still remember this huge illustrated hardcover book of fish and sharks. and that fueled this desire to become a marine biologist, and that lasted for a super long time.

Starting point is 00:05:23 And on top of that, if I became interested, so let's take this example, in marine biology, as a little boy, of course, I'm into sharks and piranhas and anything that can kill a human for whatever reason. At least boys, I can't speak to girls because I'm not one, but they tend to go that direction. Hulk smash, destruction. And I remember seeing Jaws as a kid, which freaked me out as it did an entire nation, of course. But my mom found out somehow that the basis for the crazy shark hunter who takes them out on the boat in Jaws is actually at the time a real guy named Frank Mundus who lived out at the end of Long Island.

Starting point is 00:06:07 And my mom reached out to him, asked him if he'd be willing to meet a kid, and we drove. out there and met Frank Mundus and looked at all these scars. He had this huge scar up and down one arm. And I was like, Mr. Mundus, Mr. Mundus, is that from a shark? And he's like, no, it's from a roller skating accident when I was a kid. And even then as a kid, I was like, bro, just lie to me. I was like, that's such a lit out of the story. But my mom was good at finding low-cost or no-cost options for helping me and my brother explore whatever we happen to be interested in. So there's no memorizing one to ten in French to perform for dinner guests. There are other people in my extended family who've done that with their kids,

Starting point is 00:06:55 right? They'll be like, learn the piano because I want to show you off kind of thing. My parents never did that. They tried to expose me to a lot. A friend of the family was a piano player, and they gave me a few shots at it, and I was like, I don't think this is for me. I kind of regret that now, but at the time it just didn't light me up. So, for instance, in the world or the realm of marine biology, my mom would, after we had, we ate a lot of chicken legs and TV dinners,

Starting point is 00:07:22 and after we would have, say, chicken legs, we'd have all these bones, little bits and scraps and meat on them. And my mom, this wasn't all the time, but every once in a while, we'd go out to the bay onto a pier, and tie string to the chicken legs with a flashlight and just drop it off the side and pull up crabs and just look at them, just check them out, and then feed the chicken bones to all of the marine life underneath.

Starting point is 00:07:48 So I would say those are two things that come to mind that I think really shaped who I ended up becoming or maybe just fed what I already was. It's impossible to say. It made me think of actually the Wright brothers' dad, Bishop Wright. I read a McCullough's book. I reread it every year. It's one of my favorites. That is an excellent book, yeah. Yeah. And what those three, actually, the brothers and their sister, Catherine, that were surrounded by books and their dad really encouraged curiosity and reading. And it feels like as a parent, myself, my youngest daughter, Charlie, we wrote this little

Starting point is 00:08:25 mini book together. And I titled it Curious Charlie because of the power of curiosity, right? And it feels like, look, not that that's led to all of what you've accomplished, but it's part of the foundation. I would think of how do we foster curiosity, not only in kids, but to maintain that as you get older, feels like a super important thing to do. It certainly would be something I don't yet have kids that I know of at least. So when I do enter that chapter, it's just what I love to do. It's what I love to try to transmit. I always thought I was going to ultimately be a teacher, like a ninth grade teacher specifically. Around early high school, I had a number of influences that pushed me in a very, very good direction, but a lot of my friends didn't have that.

Starting point is 00:09:17 And my mentors, let's just call them, I think it might be an overstatement, but I'm martial arts teachers and things like that. One particular math teacher, I got lucky in a lot of respects. And my friends didn't, and they ended up Odeeing, going to teach. jail, dying and DUI accidents, things like that. So for a very long time, I always thought, you know what, at some point I'm going to go back and try to be the intervention. Right around like ninth grade, it's where kids are getting old enough that they can really do some damage if they start veering off. And they're about to make a lot of decisions that will start to set them on a particular trajectory. and it would be great to be basically the equivalent of those influences I had for kids around that age.

Starting point is 00:10:10 But I suspect I love teaching. I mean, anything that I learn, I can teach better typically than how I learned it. And I just love that challenge. So I think I'll really enjoy being a dad. TBD. You talk about that quite a lot. a bit more recently, where are you at? Like, I know there's some steps that have to happen before that becomes a reality.

Starting point is 00:10:35 It feels like it's on the forefront of your mind, at least from someone who's a listener of your show. Yeah, I mean, I'm, you know, practicing the baby making. I enjoy the practice. And I am looking to figure out a few other elements, obviously. And I've been in some fantastic long-term relationships before that just didn't work out for whatever reason or another, still close to those people. and have had two relationships that were five or six years each.

Starting point is 00:11:03 Dating someone right now is wonderful. I'm not going to get into the specifics because the Internet's a wild place, so I like to keep privacy private. But I'm on the path, you know, on the path. So here's the thing, right? As you or anyone listening will know, I mean, this is going to sound super duh, obvious. But it's like it's not hard to have kids, like the mechanics of doing it. if you're lucky enough to have intact biology and your partner does as well. That's not the challenge.

Starting point is 00:11:33 The challenge is figuring out who you can have a very long conversation with as a partner, who you can problem solve with, who can handle things if you're not there, God forbid something happens, and who you can fight cleanly with over time. Right. I mean, these are some of the outstanding questions, and that's just not everyone. We'll see, we'll see, but I'm optimistic. I'm not too worried about it in this sense that, I mean, there are moments when I'm just like, oh, my God, what am I doing with my life? But then there are also moments when I'm like, Robert De Niro got somebody pregnant when he was 78 or whatever. Like, I've got a little breathing room. I don't have to freak out. This is fine. I think it's going to be just another cool chapter. I mean, it's similar like when you got Molly

Starting point is 00:12:14 and like to hear you how into having a dog and training and the companionship, like a child, just a whole other level. And so I think as someone who, you know, obviously follows your work, I'm excited for that chapter. I think it's going to be fun to hear you. talk through how you're approaching all the different stages and that it would be super, super interesting for us. Yeah, thanks, man. I'll have to make sure that if I make some wise cracks, I don't get child protective services called on me because, you know, I'll occasionally have a bit goofy trickster of sorts, which kind of feeds into some of the current projects. But that is always very, very close beneath the surface. It doesn't always get showcased publicly, but my

Starting point is 00:12:53 friends see it a lot. And so I'll say things like, yeah, you really got to get the size of the cage right, you know, and, you know, the foot paddles for the water. You really need to make sure their little hands fit them properly. I mean, I say that stuff just joking around and people take it seriously. So I have to be very careful. The wise cracks that I make. No, we take ourselves too serious. I think it's important to take the work and the output, what we're trying to do to help other people. I think it's good to take that seriously. But the rest, especially ourselves, let's enjoy this thing, man. Let's laugh. Let's have fun. I feel like that's one of the biggest parts of you is you you actually hear a lot of laughter in your voice. It's already happening through the first

Starting point is 00:13:34 however many minutes and that's a common theme listening to your show is it feels like you genuinely are having a good time. You're laughing a lot. There's probably lots of smiling. And I think that's, I don't think we should just breeze past that. I think that's a real thing that we can learn from. That's also a, I don't want to say new pattern, but for a long time, I felt like, to be taken seriously, you need to present yourself as being serious. And the risk there is that the mask you wear often becomes the person you are. If you be very careful what you pretend to be, and Rumi's quote, I'll paraphrase, of be suspicious of what you want, that's one that also is a good compliment to what I'm talking about. But when you present yourself as serious,

Starting point is 00:14:25 you tend to be more serious. And it's this kind of recursive feedback loop. And it's very risky to take yourself too seriously. You can get a lot of incredible work done. But there are going to be many circumstances where the best solution is to laugh at yourself. Or even if it's, and this is not to make light of anything tragic, but there are situations where you can cry or you can laugh.

Starting point is 00:14:52 And maybe it's a bit of both. but the fundamental absurdity of this human condition is kind of hilarious. Sometimes it's tragically comic, but there's a lot that is paradoxical. There's a lot that is just straight up absurd. So furthermore, I would say if you're tempted to take your work too too seriously, you're going to burn out before you get most of it done. and for that reason, I'd say in the last 10 years, and there are many reasons for this,

Starting point is 00:15:28 but I read more fiction and more poetry, people are going to be like, what, that sheds light on some of the absurdities and also the Faustian bargain of being too serious. So for instance, I would say that Zorba the Greek, if you tend to be a little too serious, you want more play in your life, read Zorba the Greek. It is just an incredible, incredible, hilarious, and also deeply philosophical book. And if you want an even shorter read, you should

Starting point is 00:16:05 read a poem. I think it's simply called Ozymandius, but there may be a slightly longer version of the title, O-Z-Y-M-A-N-D-I-A-S. And actually, you know what? If you give me a second, Let me pull it up. Because for decades, I was a nonfiction purist. Maybe you feel similarly, but for a very long time, it was like, look, if I want to read stuff that's made up, I can make it up myself. I want stuff that's valuable, actionable, nonfiction, nonfiction, nonfiction, right? That was it. And there came a point when I realized a lot of what you're hoping to gain through nonfiction actually is conveyed and better remembered through fiction.

Starting point is 00:16:48 So if you want to learn about, say, leadership, like there's certain fictional books. They may be historical fiction. They may not be at all. Maybe it's something like Ender's game. Maybe it's something else that actually really convey some core principles that are incredibly valuable and better absorbed through fiction. Okay. Here we go.

Starting point is 00:17:13 This is Asimandias by Percy Shelley. I bet no one listening to this thought this was coming. Sorry, guys, but there's a point to it. Here's the poem, and Percy has a middle name that I can't pronounce, but Asimandias, I'm not someone who's ever recited poetry to bear with me. This is going to be pretty sterile, but here we go. I met a traveler from an antique land who said, quote, two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert, near them on the sand,

Starting point is 00:17:39 half sunk a shattered visage lies whose frown and wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read, which yet survive stamped on these lifeless things, the hand that mocked them and the heart that fed, and on the pedestal, these words appear. This is the key part. My name is Azimandias, king of kings. Look on my works ye mighty and despair.

Starting point is 00:18:03 Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sand stretch far away. What's the point of all this? All right, the point is, there was this figure at some point in history, based on this poem, of course. Osamandias, king of kings, look on my works, ye mighty in despair. I'm sure some of the pharaohs felt this way. I'm sure Alexander the Great felt this way.

Starting point is 00:18:29 One of the greatest conquerors the world has ever known. And yet, how many people can name Alexander the Great's full name? One in 10,000, one in 100,000? So if you feel like I need to do X, I must answer these email, which lead up to this project, which lead up to this year because all of the better known folks I've listened to and to the biographies I've read of these amazing icons, Steve Jobs or whoever, talk about legacy. So I must be very serious, serious, serious. Just read Osamandias once a month or so, which is not to say there isn't meaning.

Starting point is 00:19:06 It's not to say we can't find meaning. and we need meaning as meaning-making creatures. But if you start to take yourself too seriously, that is also the start of some type of inevitable burnout or hubris, in my opinion. You just have to be very conscious of it. And sometimes you might even allow it. You'll be like, oh, that's interesting. Okay, sure.

Starting point is 00:19:30 I'll let this go for a while, but be aware of what's happening. It leads me to think about the difference between Buffett and Charlie Munger have talked about this, but the internal and external scorecards of life. And you've, I guess, won the championship of certainly the external one, but you'd have to tell me about the internal one. I'm just curious about early Tim versus today, Tim, of how you viewed the two scoreboards of life, the intrinsic, the internal one, your purpose, your core values, your critical behaviors that make those true.

Starting point is 00:20:03 The external, which is bestseller lists, sold billions of books and podcasts, billions of listeners, all that stuff. How do you balance out the two now that you've experienced all of the fame and adulation from all of that great work? Yeah, I appreciate the kind words too. I will say that here's what's the most fundamental change is probably, and I don't have perfect self-awareness, so who the hell knows on some level, but I strongly suspect the biggest change is that let's just say from childhood, because money was tight in my house, and you would hear these things around the house constantly. Wouldn't it be nice? Oh, money doesn't grow on trees. You need money to make money. It's about who you know, not what you know. This unfair system, and if we only

Starting point is 00:20:55 had money, all of these problems would go away. And money can solve a lot of problems, but not all problems. And I struggled with, as many of my family, have depression for a very long time, still occasionally have to deal with the black dog and pet it on the head and manage that, but have figured out a number of tools that really, really help in that regard. And for decades, the feeling was when I cross X finish line, whatever that dollar amount is, or whatever the annual income is, then finally, right, I can unburden myself of all of these problems. And what you find is there are money problems that get solved by money. But when you run through that finish line, a lot of things don't automatically resolve themselves. And those could be

Starting point is 00:21:54 insecurities, those could be a fear of death. Fortunately, that's not one that I particularly grapple with, but it could take a million different forms. Everybody's got something. And then you realize, okay, if I choose to look at these things closely and work on them, I'm going to need a different set of tools besides the almighty dollar or fame, even less useful, very, very damaging in a lot of respects. Fame and money are like alcohol or power. They just amplify whatever is underneath the surface. They're non-selective, like psychedelics, let's just say. So if you have certain insecurities or paranoia or you're distrusting, all of those are going to be amplified. If you're generous, good news, that's also going to be the case. If you're a micro-ass, you're going to

Starting point is 00:22:45 become a mega-ass when these things get added to the mix. So that is all to say, let's just look at the last 10 or 15 years. It's still important to me. me to have some external scoreboards. I'm very competitive. I mean, I grew up as a competitive athlete, although I was very, very small until about sixth grade. So around sixth grade is when I could finally function as an athlete in more sports. But sports were really a backbone for me, loved competing. I happened to be good at competing. Like the differential between what I could do in practice and what I could do in competition either didn't really exist. for me or I was better in competition, which meant I wasn't necessarily, if you looked at the tail

Starting point is 00:23:35 of the tape better than a lot of the people I competed against, but a lot of them deteriorated. They lost a couple of points in competition, whereas I just kind of stayed the same. And then with the dollar outcomes and like startup investing and this and that, it's like, yeah, it's nice to have some goals, right? if I launch anything, I have very, very, very ambitious goals because they're energizing, right? They're very energizing to have. And I enjoy pursuing really, really ambitious goals, but I now have the understanding that you're playing the game because the game is fun. And I shouldn't expect much to change. Maybe I have some interesting.

Starting point is 00:24:25 opportunities pop up or some new doors open. But really, it's about thinking about your daily experience and what is energy and versus energy out, because life is a succession of days. And that doesn't mean squeezing the most out of every minute. I think I had probably excessive focus on that type of effectiveness and efficiency. And I've allowed deliberately more slack in the system now in a million different ways because you've competed at a high level in sports. It's like you need recovery phases or deloading phases. And I think about that in every possible arena of life now. Sometimes you need a deloading phase from your primary relationship.

Starting point is 00:25:18 Like take a week to go with the boys on a hiking trip or something. It's like, you know, like humans were weird and messy and it's 100% true. What are some other ways you create more slack? Do you think of Tim Ferriss and you're the productivity guy, the, you know, he's going to help me with some potentially hacks. I don't even know if you want to use that anymore. But, but, you know, that's kind of four-hour workweek-ish type stuff. What are ways that you create slack in your days now?

Starting point is 00:25:43 Because you've often said, if you looked at my typical day, everyone would be surprised, like, because, you know, I'm not perfectly efficient all the time. And I'm like, no, I still know. Tim is a human. He's messy and probably has flaws like all of us. And so sometimes he wants to watch Netflix, you know? Like that's what we do, right? Yeah, yeah, totally. So I would say maybe as a setting of the table, I'll just go back way back to the four-hour work week, which came out in 2007 initially, back when I had reasonably full head of hair still. Anyway, I would draw attention to two parts of that book that don't.

Starting point is 00:26:23 always get enough attention, one would be effectiveness versus efficiency. That'd be number one. So 80-20 analysis, but there's a lot more to it because you could do an 80-20 analysis, Pareto principle applied to the wrong things. So the definition step in the exercises in the book is arguably the most important, where effectiveness is doing the right things, efficiency, is doing things well. But doing something well does not make it important. And like, my God, we could spend hours just talking about that. So the reason that's relevant is that you and I both have the same amount of time every day as Bezos or the presidents and prime ministers.

Starting point is 00:27:18 and these people who seem to have lived a lifetime in each week, same amount of time. And some of them are not harried running around, and there's some great biographies of various leaders who, during, say, World War II, like they had to sleep a lot of the time or rest because they were sick, and yet, with a few hours a day, they command forces and determine strategies that were high leverage and winning strategies. And the older I get, and the more energy is at a premium, right? The more surgical I try to be with really thinking hard up front. And now upfront could be at the beginning of each day. It could be at the beginning of a week.

Starting point is 00:28:09 It could be at the beginning of a year. I do my hardest thinking at the beginning of the year, which, by the way, for you, could start today. It doesn't need to be Jan 1. You don't have to be like, ah, too bad. I'll wait. I need to wait another five or six months before I do this. You can do it right now. Just have your new year start now. So past year reviews, these types of things, which people can all find for free. And to give credit where credit is due, you know, Gary Keller, the one thing. What is the one thing that if done would make everything else easier or irrelevant? Right. That question is a focusing question. And not letting yourself off the hook, right? I'll just choose two or three. No, one.

Starting point is 00:28:48 asking that like a dog with a bone a broken record choose your metaphor until you get a really good answer and then look i'll borrow liberally of course everybody borrows liberally but david allen getting things done like what is the next physical action so if you have something really big and amorphous it's like okay the next big thing that could change everything like for me i'm thinking about possibly making an animated feature film right well that's That's super ambitious. I don't know the first thing about producing such a thing. And that has been on my list for a while, but that is too big. It's like, all right, well, what's the next physical action? Probably calling someone to learn more about it. Maybe it's getting on chat GPT and walking around

Starting point is 00:29:37 for two hours talking to it. Next action today or this week. Get it in the calendar. There you go. So that's, I'd say, necessary to cover because this effectiveness versus efficiency, I'm relentlessly focused on effectiveness. I'm not these days, I used to be, relentlessly focused on efficiency. I still try to be efficient, but filling every 10 minutes, I mean, there are some people that are very, very, very, very successful and they'll apply heuristics to their time that will make them crazy and anxious and easily pissed off. And I did that for a long time where it's like, okay, this is my value per hour. And there's math in the four hour work week for this. So the idea,

Starting point is 00:30:25 if I ended up having to go to the post office or to mail something or go to the grocery store to buy something, there's a really long line, that could really throw you off balance and make you irritated. I don't think that's a great way to live. If you're choosing your targets well, having to spend an extra 20 minutes at the grocery store should not throw off hours of your day. The system's too fragile. So you know what? That's a huge mouthful. So let me pause for a second, but I will say what that means is if my targets are good. Number one, I can prioritize self-care. PT, training, Zone 2, which I find as boring as death, but nonetheless, super important. for a lot of reasons.

Starting point is 00:31:13 So that is a direct byproduct of embracing effectiveness over efficiency. The effective executive by Peter Drucker recommend to everybody. That is an amazing read. I haven't mentioned it in a really long time. And meditating, not just, say, using an app like The Way, which I'm involved with, but that's because I used it for a bunch and just fell in love with how Henry Shookman approaches. training people in these cumulative skills that transfer outside of meditation.

Starting point is 00:31:48 Let me give a piece of advice for folks who might just feel rushed, right? Like there's never enough time. For me, one of the easiest things to do to train your nervous system to calm down. In the morning, take 10 minutes with your cup of coffee to read some fiction or read some poetry or to meditate for 10 minutes so that you prove to yourself that you do not have to do a front flip out of bed

Starting point is 00:32:18 and land in a full sprint. That is unnecessary. There are so many historic examples of people who have done a thousand times more than you or I and they have spent the first few hours. I mean, study Winston Churchill. It's one of many, many examples.

Starting point is 00:32:38 You don't need to do that, but you need to prove to yourself that you don't need to do that. So taking 10 minutes in the morning to do something like read or meditate has such an incredible payoff on your psycho-emotional health and quality of life. So I can give you many, many other examples on a macro level, let's say planning that year and blocking out week-long trips, long weekends with close friends. And I booked those all in advance. So I have the sunk cost working in my favor. But like next week, I'm going to be gone for a week off of computers and phones. And that has been planned six months in advance. Yep.

Starting point is 00:33:17 Get on the counter and block it. One of the other projects, you have a million things to choose from. So when I talked with your team about your latest project, I was, you see these guys. When you see this, I'm holding up for audio Tim's new card game, this new game you created called Coyote. Tell me more about this. Of all the million different projects that are pitched you or that you could do, you decided to do this. What made you choose this?

Starting point is 00:33:44 Yeah, I decided to make a game. Yeah. And it is definitely not financially driven. You can do well in games if you have a mega, mega gigantic hit and it goes for years, much like in book publishing or say music, right? If you end up in the top 1% of 1%, sure, you can have a decent annuity. but it's hard. It's hard to do that. So why would I create a game? There are a few reasons, because I'm sure this is WTF for a lot of folks. Every few years, I like to do something completely

Starting point is 00:34:17 off-menu. And keep in mind, you can do a lot when you're moonlighting at night on the weekends, maybe you block out half a day once a week. You can get a lot done if you are being surgical with how you approach things. And what I have realized, and this is deeply personal, but it's also borne out in data and polling, people don't have a shortage of productivity advice. And as my friend Derek Sivers has said before,

Starting point is 00:34:54 if more information were the answer, then we'd all be billionaires with six-pack abs, right? This is not more information is not the issue. So if I look at my audience, if I look at my own life, what's the issue? We've kind of already talked about it. It's taking some of the steam out of the system, a little pressure out of the tires, and actually recovering and enjoying what you have worked and what you are working so hard for with what? For me, it's play and social bonds, right? Just like people say it's the economy stupid. I think you can go one level higher and say it's the relationship stupid. You look at the countries that are rated as the happiest in the world. Fundamentally, it almost always boils down to social ties. And what I've noticed in my audience and what the Atlantic has written about is effectively social in-person interactions for certain age groups are down something like 70% in the last 10 years.

Starting point is 00:35:58 This is very dangerous. If you look at also the increases in anxiety and diagnosed cases of depression, etc., the anxious generation, the book by Jonathan Haidt, we're not evolved to stare at a screen 18 inches away all day, all the time. This is not what we're evolved for. For instance, I had this birthday gathering not too long ago. It's been going for 30 plus years. My oldest friends flew in. They don't really care, and I don't really care about my birthday. per se. It's just a reunion every year. And so many of the guys said, this is my favorite weekend of the year.

Starting point is 00:36:36 They love their families. They love their kids. And I'm sure if I press them, they'd be like, yeah, of course, I care about Christmas more with my family more than your birthday. But how much joy it brought them and how nurturing it is for me and how long that lasts. But putting something like that together sounds like a heavy lift. So I wanted to create, I also have tons of games in my house. I have my original Dungeons and Dragons stuff that I had when I was a kid, which kind of like saved me in a lot of ways. But I wanted to create a super fast, easy-to-learn game that is a light lift. Because when I started thinking about maybe making a game, because I saw how certain games were so fun for me and my friends to play, it was never something that took an hour to learn. and hours to play.

Starting point is 00:37:25 It was always something like, for instance, poetry for Neanderthals by Exploding Kittens. That was one of many games that my friends wanted to play again and again. After a few lessons of wine at dinner, we only have 45 minutes, let's just say. I thought to myself, okay, well, of all the games that we've been testing,

Starting point is 00:37:45 this one really hit. Who made this? Exploding Kittance. Who are these people? Oh, okay. It's Matthew who started the Oatbill, and this guy called Alon Lee. Well, maybe I should start listening to some podcasts. There's one called How to Think Like a Game Designer.

Starting point is 00:38:00 So I was listening to that podcast by Justin Gary. And then I interviewed Alon Lee. And lo and behold, right, here we go. Right, this thing, Coyote now has 300 million-plus game play views on social, which is bananas. It's kind of blown past all of their other games. And Explan Kittins is one of the most successful game makers, in the world as indie also.

Starting point is 00:38:25 What they do is pretty amazing. It's not a huge company, but they're really agile. And that's about it. Now, I will say making a game like Coyote also for me, in terms of choosing projects, like you said, I could choose a thousand different things. What I'm always looking for is a good answer to the question for any project I consider.

Starting point is 00:38:49 How can I win even if I fail? and what that means is how I started angel investing way back in the day, which again was like off hours. You don't have to burn the ships. You don't have to quit your job. You can do so much during lunch break and after hours around the weekends to prove that something can work. And that's fundamental to how I choose things. And how I choose projects is based on the relationships I'll build and the skills and knowledge that I will acquire that can transfer beyond that project if that project fails by the external metrics that we talked about

Starting point is 00:39:27 earlier so in the case of say four-hour chef my one book that really underperformed to my expectation anyway it was boycotted by a bunch of retailers because it was coming out through amazon publishing and there are many other contributing factors but one of the experiments for that book was using these relatively new things in 2012 but focusing on on podcasts for the launch. And doing that allowed me to figure out that I wanted to start a podcast. And then what did I do? I gave myself a graceful accent. I told my audience, I'm going to try this thing for like six to ten episodes. And at the very least, I'm hoping that it will get me closer to my friends. I'll made a few new people. And I will get better at interviewing,

Starting point is 00:40:12 asking questions and conversation, which is the backbone of all of my writing anyway. When I do research from my books, that's core. So even if nobody listens after 10 episodes, it is quote unquote failed, but I have won. And similarly with Coyote, I'm like, all right, Alon Lee, he worked on the Xbox, on Halo. He's worked on every type of game you can imagine. His track record is bananas. He's created entirely new genres of games. And we hit it off. I was like, all right, kind of borrowing from Naval Ravicon, who I think he says something like, if you wouldn't work with someone for a lifetime, don't work with them for five minutes. Now, that's obviously quite extreme. But I do think about this. I'm like, if you're going to really pursue a business

Starting point is 00:41:03 relationship, I mean, that could last longer than most marriages, at least in the U.S., so pay attention. And we had similar, quirky, ridiculous senses of humor. And I was like, okay, cool. This seems like a great investment. And even if this game never gets published, just the process of learning about every aspect of this and getting closer with Alon and its team, absolutely worth it. And it just happened to work. So after two years, we finally, well, I guess it was about a year ago, finally hit on an idea that I felt I could run with. And here we are. So that's the long in the short of it, but people do not have a shortage of screens, digital, and isolation, and the illusion of these parasycial relationships. Everyone's on the verge or already

Starting point is 00:42:01 overdosing on those things, and there are heavy prices to be paid for that. I think in-person, social, analog, you just need at least some dose of that to offset the rest. I'm not saying digital is automatically poison, but too much of it sure is, in my opinion. And I'm saying that as someone who lived in Silicon Valley for 20 years and invests in tech. I love the fact that you brought up that you met him on your podcast. Outside of my immediate family, I think some of the coolest moments and greatest opportunities and best relationships started here. We had a semi-long conversation and got deep and continued on. It feels like you've done a lot of that. And I'd love to go into the idea of podcasting and interviewing since to some group of people,

Starting point is 00:42:50 that's what you're most known for and others. It's writing and soon to be games and who knows what else investing too. Yeah, we'll see. We'll see. Yeah. So I would put you like on the Mount Rushmore or one of the founding fathers, maybe not quite as early as Mark Marin or Joe Rogan or Terry Gross or Dan Carlin, but pretty early.

Starting point is 00:43:10 Pretty early. I'm curious, though, when you just think of podcasting in general and you've talked a little bit about this on your show recently. What are some of the things that you still currently love about it? And then what are some of the things that you're like, I don't like that it's headed in this direction. I've used podcasting for workshopping. I use my blog this way beforehand, sort of testing the waters with different areas and expertise and so on to see if I like it. Is it energy in? And to also see how my audience response. So back in the day, I used the blog for this. And I'd put up posts and I'd be like, hmm, let's see what happens here.

Starting point is 00:43:44 And if people want some really fun sort of archival stories, go check out the first blog post that Ryan Holiday wrote on Stoicism on Tim.Blog. That helped kind of launch the whole thing, right? And then Ryan is just done such an amazing job. Now that's the podcast. So I use the podcast. The podcast is a great excuse for me to talk to people I want to talk to anyway. to ask the questions that I would ask them over dinner anyway. And every once in a while we get talking about the things that I'm not a huge fan of in the ecosystem,

Starting point is 00:44:24 which doesn't make them bad. It's like if you're allergic to peanuts, it doesn't mean that peanuts are evil, which means that you're allergic to peanuts. I do not want to, for instance, create a fixed location television studio. Part of the appeal, we can easily forget the reasons that drove us to make an important decision in the first place. And one of the drivers for creating a podcast was the freedom that it provided in terms of being anywhere with a mic, I could record a podcast, as long as I got a decent mic to whoever was on the other end. And for that reason, also because of some of the privacy

Starting point is 00:45:03 concerns, and I suspect a lot of folks who are going for video natively, are notherly, are either better at it. I mean, there are many different possibilities. They're better at it than I am. I don't think I am intrinsically a video person. Second, they haven't seen some of the taxes that you pay for facial recognition that is really wide. There are a lot of taxes. People can check out, I think it's titled 11 reasons not to become famous, which will be an eye-opener for a lot of people. That's a blog post. and for that reason I'm continuing to do what I do. I have some insurance because of when I started in the sense that I have a certain critical mass of loyal listeners.

Starting point is 00:45:55 And that is enough certainly to sustain the podcast as an independent business that does not burn money. And the audience is still very big. but Rogan, to his credit, he's figured out a lot. I think it's very fair to say. He was the first who really figured out that YouTube could be used as a growth driver for podcasts.

Starting point is 00:46:22 He's a virtuoso of entertainment and performing on camera. He is absolutely top notch at doing everything related to the production that he's created. And that can take a lot of forms, right? He created his separate clips channel and has done so many things really, really well.

Starting point is 00:46:40 And he had first mover advantage, right? There was a long time to flash back where you had, let's just say, when I launched the Four Hour Chef, this is two years before I launched my podcast. You had Rogan, you had Merrin, you had Nerdist, you had Adam Carolla, a handful of others. And they were kind of all in a peloton. They were all seemingly roughly in the same orbit with respect to audience size. And then I would say a handful of years later, and this directly correlates to the rise of video and YouTube, and a lot of converging trends, Joe is good at this. Joe is also very good at kind of peeking around corners to see where things are going. He's very good at it.

Starting point is 00:47:23 And he had first mover advantage. And then he just executed on it. So that is all to say, that is not a game, I think, particularly at this point in time that would be easy for me to execute on. It is not what I see as the sort of surgical high leverage focus going back to our sort of definition in 80-20 analysis. What do you want? Be suspicious of what you want, Rumi, right? Why, why, why? Okay, if you come up with an answer as to what you want, ask why a few times. Why does that matter? So what?

Starting point is 00:48:00 Then what? And figure it out because there are always tradeoffs. and you may be signing up for a ride that you're going to want to get off of halfway. And if you're strapped to that roller coaster, nope, you are not getting off the ride. So to that extent, I think since I've seen some of the side effects of a lot of public exposure, which, you know, death threats, stalking, having to escalate stuff to FBI, and people saying they're going to show up at a live event, shoot me. Just go down the list.

Starting point is 00:48:33 like audience members, readers saying, if you don't help me in 48 hours, I'm going to kill myself. These types of things are actually all common for anyone who has a big enough audience. You don't need to say anything controversial. You don't need to do anything controversial. It is purely a function of size. And I'll just give people the basic picture that I paint in the 11 reasons not to become famous. If you have a small village, you're going to have one village idiot. right like one crazy person let's just say that's a village of 200 people all right then you bump that out

Starting point is 00:49:09 to a thousand you're going to have at least a handful now as it gets larger let's just say my audience is twice the size of new york city every month something like that including all the boroughs then how many crazy people are there in new york city a whole hell of a lot you could fill a lot of buses with those crazy people i mean many many many buses they're all online they all online they all have a voice and some of them are actually very, very clever, right? They have buggy software, but they're very clever. So you can't dodge this by just behaving well. It's a function of audience size and it's a function of recognizability and how easy you are to find or recognize on the street. So this is not to say, don't pursue any of these things, but it is to say if you

Starting point is 00:49:59 are successful at this game that you've chosen, you will need to deal with. with these things. And I'm in a private WhatsApp group with a few dozen, very big creators, some of which are much, much bigger than I am. But everybody's got, I would say, at least a few million folks following them on a monthly basis. Literally everybody deals with this stuff. Some of them need full-time private security. And yada, yada, yada, yada, yada. Every single person is dealing with something like this. Do you have security with you a lot? No. I just have concealed carry in Texas. But when you go out, whether you're in Texas or California or New York, are you recognized constantly?

Starting point is 00:50:39 Depends on where I am, certainly. But you mentioned California, New York. Yeah, if I'm trying to go to a coffee shop in Manhattan or Brooklyn or San Francisco or Austin, generally speaking, I'm not going to be able to work there. I won't be able to just relax and read the book for an hour or two, which is not to say that I don't enjoy these interactions. I do. because my listeners, and this is another reason why I've chosen to continue what I'm doing on some level, long form, often very, in some cases, very complicated subjects. I have an interview in the next week or two where I'm going to go incredibly deep, probably two or three hours with a scientist. It's going to be very useful, but it's going to get technical, and I'm not going to dumb it down. I'll try to simplify to explain things or get him to do that. but the nature of the interviews, let's just take an interview like that,

Starting point is 00:51:36 means that the people who are going to get through it are generally going to be, on some level, patient, they're going to be very curious, they are going to be well educated, whether that's through school or self-education, right? And those people are typically awesome to interact with. Like, they're great. I love meeting my listeners. I love meeting my readers.

Starting point is 00:51:59 but if you just want to chill out and read a book and you have four or five those interactions while you're trying to read the book, it just makes it hard to read the book, right? So that's a thing. But as I have deprioritized playing the game of video, that has decreased a bit.

Starting point is 00:52:20 So some folks have been like, wow, Tim's been really quiet for the last X number of years. And it's like, yeah, that's not accidental. Yeah, yeah. If you mean by quiet, you're seeing my face less. on your algorithmically driven feed,

Starting point is 00:52:34 then yes, that's a very deliberate lifestyle design decision. One of the things that it feels like you've worked really hard at to become world class is interviewing. Something I'm fascinated to study. I feel like when I listen to your show, I'm thinking as much about, I wonder why he followed up instead of moving on. I need to deconstruct that process of how it all works. I am curious to learn to start high level your overall philosophy on how you approach interviews, how you prepare for them, how you let serendipity happen and whether to say, let me stick to

Starting point is 00:53:11 kind of my pre-meeting notes versus actually we're going way over here. What is your overall philosophy when it comes to interviewing world-class performers? Rule number one is scratch your own edge. For me, for me, right? Scratch your own edge. Interview the people you want to talk to genuinely. whenever I have been tempted to stray from that because it's an A-list celebrity or whoever it might be, it may get a lot of downloads because of name recognition and the YouTube Algo has anointed this person as

Starting point is 00:53:42 helpful to them to serve up. Let's just be very clear on the value capture by platforms. I say that as someone who invested early in Facebook and Twitter and a lot of these companies. is if you're using it for free, you are the product. So I've been tempted at points to stray from that. And who knows? Maybe every once in a while you can break your rules, as long as you know what your rules are in the first place.

Starting point is 00:54:12 But I would say that, and you've done this for a long time as well, so I have to imagine this is true for you, at least a lot in the time. A game like this, if you want to play the long game, requires endurance. At least for me, to have endurance, you need energy. To have energy, you can't be dragging your feet

Starting point is 00:54:35 to the recording for very long. You will run out of batteries. When you run out of batteries, you're going to run out of enthusiasm, then you're going to take a break, then you're going to decrease frequency, and then before you know it, you've quit your podcast.

Starting point is 00:54:47 So for me, which is also why, I look at video and I'm like, well, I know what a lot of these people are doing. and my team has analyzed it and I have the WhatsApp group where they're talking about the various tools and strategies they're using. These are people who are as good as it gets,

Starting point is 00:55:05 but I don't have love of the game, that particular game. And for that reason, I'm not going to have the endurance, even if I hire people and ain't nothing in this life for free. They're going to be tradeoffs. So, for instance,

Starting point is 00:55:19 if I don't want to have really sensation clickbaitie headlines on videos with crazy images, because those will perform best. Beware ye who enter here, right? You're kind of sailing off into the dragons in the ocean on the old maps. So for me, that scratch your own itch, even if you're just recording some episodes for yourself, even if they quote unquote underperform for a bit, right? I've had interviews on some weird esoteric subjects.

Starting point is 00:55:55 And my goal with that is the same goal. This also applies to kind of rules that I had with my blog. It was very helpful once I was able to put this into a short phrase as a guiding compass point, which was my goal is not to have 100% of my audience like any episode. In fact, I don't want that. but I do want 10% of my audience to love each episode or each blog post. Love where they're like, oh my God, this is written for me. How did Tim know I needed this right now?

Starting point is 00:56:32 Oh my God. My friends Toby and Lauren need to read this or listen to this. Boom. 10%. And that gives you a lot of creative latitude and it gives you permission to scratch your own because the personal is the most universal. So I would say that's the first that comes to mind, and almost everything is downstream of that.

Starting point is 00:56:54 All of the questions in your prep process. You've said before that you have tons of notes, that you like to have notes leading up to it. Is that just born strictly out of that curiosity of, wow, I get to talk to Jamie Fox or Arnold Schwarzenegger or whoever else. These are the questions for me. It's an audience of one to start. And yes, it would be nice if it helps other people,

Starting point is 00:57:13 but it's really about my curiosity and obsessions and chasing that down. I would say a lot of it is going to be personal curiosity. When you're contending with, let's just take those two examples. So Jamie Fox and Arnold Schwarzenegger, their first appearances on the podcast, because I think they've both been on two or three times. And when they were first on my podcast, this was still at a point where and when A-list celebrities didn't really do podcasts. Maybe there were a few exceptions every once in a while.

Starting point is 00:57:43 But very, very rarely did A-Lister's go on podcasts. They were still using a more traditional, the publicists were using a more traditional playbook. So to get Arnold and Jamie on the show, even though I knew basically their right-hand man or someone who's a real true friend and close in their orbit, probably took a year and a half to get them both ultimately scheduled and on the show. in a case like that because I could feel that those were possible inflection moments and I could probably recruit, say, Apple to help promote it and the turnstile and so on, which back in the day was a big deal, I wanted to add a few different layers of preparation.

Starting point is 00:58:34 And that entailed letting each of them know very early. in the interview, I have done more homework than 99.999% of people who have ever interviewed you, even though you've been interviewed hundreds or thousands of times. Maybe I'm the most prepared. So I would almost always come in with a question that related to their third grade teacher or something like that, or one line in the Arnold Schwarzenegger auto bio that other people I knew hadn't paid attention to because it kind of tied into German. and I wanted to hear him speak in German because I've never heard him speak in German and I grew up on Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. I wanted to start somewhere that no one else had started. I will always let interviewees know where I'm going to start also.

Starting point is 00:59:24 Almost always. We'll let people know because I don't want them to stumble out of the gate. I want them to feel confident and at ease when we get started. So very frequently, I will let them know where we're starting, or depending on the guest, I will ask them up front, often well in advance. What are two or three of your greatest hits stories? And what I mean by that is any story that seems to stick with people or that you've heard a lot of positive feedback regarding. Just like any stories, maybe it's one thing from your book three books ago that people constantly refer to.

Starting point is 01:00:03 What is that thing? because we want to have the biggest funnel at the beginning of the show to pull people in, because this is going to be a wide-ranging, detailed, sometimes in the weeds conversation. Let's start with something that you know works. They're like, great. Here are two or three cues. Often I'll say, don't tell me the story. Just give me a cue that I can use to prompt you because I don't want to hear it in advance.

Starting point is 01:00:26 I want it to be fresh. And but a bang, but a boom. You know, they get like nothing but net three point. right out of the gate. The audience gets something awesome right out of the gate. And then we're both already warmed up by the time that gets wrapped. And then we can get into whatever we want to get into. And one of the things I'm asked regularly is of 600, however many people, what is the one thing? And obviously there isn't one thing, you know, that they all have in common are the high performers. But if they really push me and I'm like, all right, okay, one thing.

Starting point is 01:01:02 You know what it really is? And I'm like, I'm about to let you down. Okay, just to let you know. They're like, okay, what is it? I go, nobody knows. Toilet paper. Nobody knows what they're doing. We are all figuring it out as we go. And you have a line from Tribe of Mentors.

Starting point is 01:01:18 The superheroes you have in your mind are nearly all walking flaws who've maximized one or two strengths. And I actually think that is a very inspiring quote. I think it's inspiring to know that nobody has this thing figured out. We're all figuring it out as we go. You kind of do that out in public, regularly figure out a bunch of stuff through asking questions and chasing down your curiosity. But I feel like that is something, again, reading from your work that I found as well is like we're all pretty messy humans that maybe have maximized or worked on one or two strengths that have helped us get to where we are. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:01:57 Yeah, for sure. So I would say to build on what you said, looking across all the interviews I've done. a lot of these, let's say, world-class performers are willing to experiment. They don't typically view risk or failure in the same way that a lot of ulcerans do, or even like very high-level B players. And that doesn't mean they're delusional. It just means that these words are subject to individual definition. you can see that in areas where you might not expect,

Starting point is 01:02:36 like General Stanley McChrystal. That was also a big get way back in the day. The first conversation I had with him, people push at the edges, right? They'll question assumptions, which is incredibly hard to do within, or at least there are consequences to doing that within the realm of, say, at the military,

Starting point is 01:02:54 although his started very early on when there were not lives at stake and so on. But you see it with writers, you see it with filmmakers, you see it with athletes, you see it with anybody you can pull out of the hat of the guests that I've had on. I'd say very, very typically, they view risk and failure very differently. Some of them view, say, risk similarly to how I would tend to look at it, which is the probability of an irreversible negative outcome. Otherwise, like, just try to view it, if you can the way that I view it, which is like, all right, life's a series of six to 12 month

Starting point is 01:03:35 projects, sometimes they're shorter, sometimes they're longer. And then within that, I'm constantly running two-week experiments, four-week experiments. That's it. So if you're a scientist, as long as you design the study, i.e., the project and experiments, well, you're just getting feedback. You thought X is going to drive Y, and maybe you have a goal on top of it, right? 10% per week or whatever. Okay, great. Try it out. If it doesn't work,

Starting point is 01:04:05 try something else. And then the risk side, you can really, I do not view myself as a risk taker at all. Like, I think about risk mitigation all the time, a lot like Richard Branson,

Starting point is 01:04:19 that was a big moment for me when he was on the show because I read Losing Your Virginity way back in the day, right out of college. I was like, who is this madman? This is amazing.

Starting point is 01:04:29 I would go to Virgin Records back when that existed on Market Street in San Francisco. It's just like the whole thing was so surreal. And in any case, when he launched Virgin Atlantic with these airlines, it's like he negotiated so many ways to cap the downside. I think it was Boeing at the time, but he had the craziest terms that he negotiated. And people are like, oh, this Maverick, he's crazy. He risks everything at every turn. It's like, no, no, no, no. When you actually ignore. the headlines and look at what he did as a negotiator, his downside was really well capped. And there's a lot of upside potential and not a lot of downside potential. And it's like, okay,

Starting point is 01:05:13 like that's almost always how I'm approaching things. I mean, I'm very hyper-vigilant by nature, which is why that picking things based on what you'll learn and the relationships you'll develop is so key. Right? It's like when I invested in Twitter and Facebook, which was like well before they IPOed, but not super, super early, I thought they were overpriced. I was like, I'm not going to make money on these. But by getting into these deals, I bought equity from employees. These are hot companies. So this is my marketing budget, right?

Starting point is 01:05:45 Like, I'm going to put money into this. I'm not going to make any money back. I'm going to lose this money. But by being in these deals, it will help me get other deals. And I'm also get to learn A, B, and C and how secondary markets work and blah, blah, blah, blah. So for me, the assumption was I'm going to lose all this. But there are different angles on this, different upsides. And I would say a lot of the people I've interviewed have a similar way of approaching things.

Starting point is 01:06:09 Like Arnold Schwarzenegger, a lot of people don't realize he was a millionaire through real estate before he ever had his big break in acting. So he was able to say no to stuff that if people had looked at his English and his acting at that point, they were like, you have no right to say no to these bit parts. but he was like, no, I'm going to wait. I'm going to wait. I want the big parts. And I'm going to wait. I'm going to wait. I'm going to say no.

Starting point is 01:06:33 The only reason he could do that is because he built a safety net through the real estate investing. I mean, the guy is, he's very, very, very sharp. And when you pull back the curtain and look at a lot of these successes, you realize just how well they've created different safety nets. Oftentimes, which takes the form of not to beat a dead. horse but like doing stuff at night or on the weekends until you've proven to yourself sufficiently like okay i have enough here to believe that it's got legs then they're like okay maybe i'll try

Starting point is 01:07:09 full-time writing for six months and be really serious about it and here's the idea and then if not you know i could always go bartend or do whatever to get back on my feet you know rent out my futon on air bambi or whatever and then like life goes on you know it's not terminal like i'm I mean, I guess life is always terminal, but you get the idea. Like, this is not going to be a fatal move where I lose the game of chess of life and then close curtain. It's like, no, no, you'll be fine. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:07:38 Tim, to close, I think from a leadership perspective, you have proven to be a talent scout, whether it's investing early and tons of companies, look them up, they're all over. You mentioned a few of them. Or, and you mentioned a few of these as well, the people you've had on your show, before they're known, or at least known as they are now. And a lot of it started with your show. Like even Naval, like I had not heard of them until you, or Derek Sivers, same. Josh Waitskin, Ryan Holiday, General McChrystal, Jock, all these people I've been fortunate

Starting point is 01:08:13 to have on my show as well after I learned about them from you, quite frankly. And I'm sure tons of podcasters who are lucky enough to have some of those people started from you. I think from a leadership perspective, we all need to work on this. skill of being a talent scout, of seeing talent early. Tough question maybe, but how do you do that? How have you gotten so good at seeing this potential, this really high ceiling for people before others have seen it? Oh, yeah, that's a good question. I would say a few things come to mind. One is coming back to this sort of surgical focus. This is another reason why you don't have to rush around all the time.

Starting point is 01:08:57 You do not need to have a huge network. This might sound controversial, but you don't need a huge network. Turns out that anyone who is incredibly, incredibly good at what they do, top 1%, they know people who are similar in other fields. So it's like the super A plus players tend to know other A plus players.

Starting point is 01:09:20 You'd be surprised, right? So it's like if I spend time with, I'm making this up. Please people don't reach out to Eric. But let's just say Eric Cressy, who is like one of the top shoulder arm, upper extremity. He's a full stack kind of performance coach. But if you're a major league baseball team and you have a pitcher who needs to fix their elbow or wrist or something with prehab and rehab, he's your guy, right?

Starting point is 01:09:50 Period. Full stop. I guarantee you he's going to know a bunch of people who are A plus in other fields, right? Even though that is very, very niche. And same thing for, you might not think someone who's at the top of their game as a fiction writer who writes novels would know someone like a Rick Rubin. But turns out they do. So the first is if you want to get to know a lot of world class performers, if you're like, I'm I need to start with Tom Cruise, you're going to lose.

Starting point is 01:10:24 Like, you're never going to get to them. Right? So, seek out the people who are really good at anything. Japanese knife making, woodworking. It doesn't matter. Because guess what? Also, if your goal is to learn, not just acquire business cards for some very unclear goal that you have in the future, which is why, like, be suspicious of what you want.

Starting point is 01:10:44 Why, why? And then what, why does that matter? So what? Jero from Gero Dreams of Sushi is going to have. a lot in common with the LeBron James of the world, with the Hugh Jackmans of the world, with the General McChrystals of the world,

Starting point is 01:11:02 a lot. And guess what? Like Giro's brother, who's also amazing, his younger brother, actually went and I used to live in Japan as an exchange student. That was my first time out of the U.S. when I was 15,

Starting point is 01:11:14 which is crazy. But I was like, all right, Jiro's going to be impossible. This doc just came out, never going to get a seat in this like eight-seater or whatever it is. But guess who's neglected and probably knows a whole hell of a lot of the secret sauce is his younger brothers.

Starting point is 01:11:30 Let's just go eat it as younger brother's restaurant. Went to his younger brother's restaurant, did it super early, right, before people got out of work. And there was just a handful of people in the restaurant sat at the bar so I could talk to him and I still speak Japanese and just was able to have the most amazing conversation with this guy for an hour. And it's like you could have done the same thing. Bring somebody who speaks Japanese and figure it out. So I would say that's part of it.

Starting point is 01:11:58 It is looking for niche talent instead of what you perceive to be really, really broad talent. And then I would say intimately related to that. And I'm glad this is coming up again. But it's like follow, just follow your own interest. And don't feel like you need to impress somebody with a field that is quote, quote, respectable or in the mainstream or anything like that. Because how are you going to be able to decipher the B minus from B plus, from A minus from A plus players in that field? Are you going to have the ability to do that? So just like with investing, it's like you look at all the biggest

Starting point is 01:12:40 hits that I've had, right? First, I think I was the first advisor to Shopify, but when they had like 10 employees, right? Why did I figure that out? Well, it's because I was revising the four-hour work week in 2009, looking for an e-commerce solution that was better than all the stuff I had tried. I knew the problem points. I knew the pain. I asked my readers, and they were like, you should check out this little thing called Shopify. And then I checked out Shopify. I was like, oh, this is different. And then at a conference met Toby, the CEO, still the CEO. And off we go, right? I knew the product space. I knew the pain points. And Uber being one of the first three advisors, to Uber. It's like, why did I know that? Well, it actually came out of an earlier failure of a startup

Starting point is 01:13:24 that didn't make me anything. But I got to know Garrett Camp, who then was the co-founder of Uber, and taxis in San Francisco were terrible. I had been stood up by taxis and missed flights before. I was like, yeah, I understand the pain point. Sure, what's the downside? I get to hang out with somebody I already really like who I think is a genius. And I'm going to learn a bunch about an entirely new field. Great, let's try it. Uber was turned down by every possible investor you can think of. It went out. So I was also, I think, I think the first advisor to Angel List, which Naval Ravacon started. And at one point, Uber went out on Angel List to like hundreds of investors and everybody except for maybe one or two said no. They were like, this is for the 1%.

Starting point is 01:14:11 Tech bro, this, that, or the other thing, completely missing the fact that we're not looking at the current total addressable market for black cars. Like this is going to fundamentally expand the pie. In any case, I didn't have some crystal ball. I was just trying to solve some pain in my personal ass.

Starting point is 01:14:32 Literally. Duolingo, same thing. Right? Duolingo. And so I would say like stick with what you know and it's very hard to go wrong and use exploring what you know

Starting point is 01:14:46 as a way to just step out one lane to something that's adjacent. Okay, cool. Build your confidence, figure it out, and then do one adjacent. And if you just keep doing that, you will get better at spotting talent. I was lucky Tim to go hang out with our mutual friend, Brian Coppelman, and New York City. We recorded actually in the office where he wrote Billions. This is wild billions are still going on.

Starting point is 01:15:12 And he said to me, the reason I bring this up is he said to me, follow your curiosity and obsessions with great rigor. Do that and I like, I like your chances. And it seems like Tim, that's like been the through line of this entire conversations of following your curiosity and obsessions with great rigor. If you do that, it's just weird the way the world works out. The weird how good things seem to keep happening. Good opportunities seem to keep coming your way if you're chasing down your curiosity and obsessions with great rigor. It's really cool how that works. Yeah, totally. I mean, the obsession part is important. Again, coming back to the energy piece as the base of the pyramid. Brian's amazing. He's a close friend. He was the first person,

Starting point is 01:15:52 I don't know if we've talked about this publicly, he was the first person within the world of entertainment to approach me after a bunch of just smoke up the ass conversations with Hollywood people. He was the first person to approach me, met with him in New York City with David, his writing partner, who basically said, yeah, we would love to do something with you with the four-hour work week. I assume you'd want to write it or be a co-writer. It's the first person to actually ask me, what would you do with it if you wanted to do something on film? And I was like, oh, okay, this is different. And these guys are actually operators who did Rounders and all these other movies and television shows. So Brian, I just want to point out also. So Brian's right. He's

Starting point is 01:16:31 absolutely right. And Brian is also not just curious, but he's voracious about knowledge and skills and the right relationships, right? So our approaches are very, very similar. I think he has crazy batteries. I don't know what that guy, I don't know what's in his genetic code. I don't know what he eats for breakfast, but that dude's energy levels are nuts.

Starting point is 01:16:54 I don't really understand how that works. It's another way that I choose startup founders to invest in, by the way, when you're just like, what is going on here? This person doesn't ever seem to get tired. I'm like, yeah, they're going to need that for the road ahead. Probably doing the right thing. and pass football around this office.

Starting point is 01:17:10 Kind of a low ceiling, like throwing sidearm football for like 10 minutes just talking afterwards. It was the best. It was like one of the coolest days ever. Tim, this is a good place to end at least round one. I really, really appreciate this, man. Thank you on behalf of all podcasters for what you've kind of laid the groundwork for all of us, man.

Starting point is 01:17:27 It's been so much fun. And thank you for sending me this and having your team, Semi-Kyote. This is really cool. I love that you're expanding into this game market. I know it's hard, but I'm not surprised that it's already crushing it. So I'd encourage people to get it. Thanks, Ben. I'll say just a few more things.

Starting point is 01:17:42 So I forgot to put the button in Brian Coppulman, which is for 20 or 30 years, he has done Transcendental Meditation, 20 minutes, twice a day, without fail. And also something called Morning Pages. So people can check that out. But coming back to injecting slack in the system, and check out Coyote, guys.

Starting point is 01:18:01 This is like microdosing joy with family and friends. Young kids can play it. They'll actually probably beat a lot of the adults. and there's no shortage of serious stuff out there. You need something else to offset that so you can get the truly serious work done. And also just enjoy this. As far as we know, one-way ticket. Don't let it pass you by.

Starting point is 01:18:25 So check out coyote guys. You can find it everywhere. And thanks so much for having me. You're very good at what you do. I appreciate that. It means a lot coming from you. And I would love to continue this dialogue as we both are us, man. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:18:35 Thanks, man. Love it. really nice to connect and to everybody listening. Thanks for listening. Thanks, man. It is the end of the podcast club. Thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club. If you are, send me a note, Ryan at learningleader.com.

Starting point is 01:18:55 That would be know what you learn from this great conversation with Tim Ferriss? A few takeaways from my notes. Notice how often Tim laughs, both on my show with him. And then if you listen to his, he laughs constantly. I think he's made a conscious effort to try to have fun, to enjoy the ride. And Tim also said, you need to be careful of who you pretend to be and also be suspicious of what you want. Ask, why do I want this thing? Why am I doing this?

Starting point is 01:19:24 What can I learn from this? I think the combination of being suspicious of what you want as well as having fun along the way, it's really important. And also always ask why. It reminds me of Ryan Peterson. asking why five times. And then decision making, Tim says, how can I win even if I lose? For example, he viewed angel investing like his personal MBA. And so instead of paying to go to graduate school to study business, he invested in companies and learned about business by working with actual businesses. He didn't really expect to make money on those investments. That was just a bonus.

Starting point is 01:20:05 So I think for all of us, it's how can I win even if I lose? Now, Tim happened to win a lot on some of those investments, but that wasn't what it was about. It was about learning and winning even while losing. And then be a talent scout. I liked the look on his face as he was thinking about this response. And then he said, you don't need a huge network. A plus players in one area, no, A plus players and others. seek out people who are great at what they do, regardless of what they do.

Starting point is 01:20:37 Study what makes them great at that specific thing. Then you'll probably meet other A-plus players in other areas. Also, it's on us to strive to be an A-plus player at whatever it is we choose to do. Be so good at whatever your thing is that other A-plus players want to meet you. That's something that Tim is really good. good at and something we all can work towards. Once again, I would say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of the Learning Leader Show with Tim Ferriss. I think he'll help you become a more effective leader

Starting point is 01:21:18 because you continue to do that. And you also go to Spotify, an Apple podcast and your rate to show five stars, hopefully, and you subscribe to it and write a thoughtful review by doing all of that. you give me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis, and for that I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk you soon. Can't wait.

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 647: Tim Ferriss - Chasing Your Curiosity, Internal vs External Scoreboards, Effectiveness over Efficiency, Winning Even if You Fail, Fame's Hidden Costs, & The Mount Rushmore of Podcasting

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