The School of Greatness - 43 Tim Ferriss: Self Talk, Visualization and the Rituals for Success

Episode Date: December 13, 2013

The is the forty third episode with the tree time New York Times best selling author and inventor of the term lifestyle design, Tim Ferriss.

This is episode number 43 with Tim Ferriss. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Hey, all you beautiful greats out there. Thanks so much for tuning in today to the School of Greatness. And I'm super pumped for this episode, just like I am every episode, because we've got

a very big, amazing guest on today. His name is Mr. Tim Ferriss, and yes, he's a three-time New York Times bestselling author, two of them which hit the number one seller on the New York Times bestselling list, and that's the 4-Hour Workweek, 4-Hour Body, and 4-Hour Chef. And he's now got a new project that I'm pretty excited about, and I know he is. It's called the Tim Ferriss Experiment. And it's a new TV show, which we're going to talk about today on this show with Tim. I want to dive into a lot of other things as well. And I am very excited because a couple episodes ago, I really got

to dive in deep with the one and only Gary Vaynerchuk. And a lot of you have been saying that you've never heard Gary become so vulnerable and open and raw and honest in any interview you've ever seen or heard him speak on. And I feel like we got to capture that in this episode as well with Tim. And I was very gracious of his time and his vulnerability and his willingness to open up and just talk about a lot of different things that's happened to him in his life. And we really talk about what some of Tim's biggest fears are, the biggest impact on Tim Ferris' upbringing with his parents and his family, Tim's own entrepreneurial failures.

We talk about the simple, effective way to develop any business idea. We also talk about how to create rituals that lead to success. And something that I was really interested in was learning about Tim's self-talk and how he visualizes what he's going to create in the future. Now, I think this is an important step to anyone's success is what they say to themselves internally and what they visualize before they actually create something. And I also talk about what people, I also talk about what Tim hopes people say at his funeral and what they say about his heart as a person.

So I'm very excited to share this interview with you because it really opens up the world of Tim Ferriss and really who he is. And I'm very excited for you to tap into that. With that, guys, let's go ahead and dive into this episode with the one and only Tim Ferriss. Welcome back, everyone. Thanks so much for coming on the School of Greatness. Got a great guest on who's actually one of the first guests on the School of Greatness. So this is the first repeat guest.

And his name is Mr. Tim Ferriss. What's up, Tim? Thanks for coming on. Oh, thanks for having me on again, man. It's always a pleasure. Yes. And being that you are the first person to come on twice, hopefully we'll have you on many more times. But I'm very excited to talk about what the reason you're coming on is because you have a new TV show called the Tim Ferriss Experiment. And it's coming out actually tonight of the recording, but this recording will probably come out in a week. So it'll be out by the time this recording is out.

And I'm very excited. I watched the first episode. It was amazing. I watched the trailer. It's a great production value. You add a lot of amazing components to it with your wisdom and your knowledge and how you're hacking everything. So I'm very excited about this series that you have coming out.

No, I appreciate it. The show has been – some folks may have seen a pilot that I did many years ago on History Channel. Yep. It was called Trial by Fire, and I did Japanese horseback archery. And the challenge that I've always had with TV really is multifold. Number one, finding a team I can work with who will respect the sort of integrity of whatever I'm trying to teach and not try to create a lot of fake TV nonsense around it. TV nonsense around it. Because I think the experiments that I do,

whether it's Japanese horseback archery, or we can talk about some of the examples in the new show, like rally car racing and professional poker and drumming and language learning, all sorts of things, they're kind of exciting enough that you don't need to manufacture a lot of nonsense, sort of kicking it with the Kardashian style. So I'd like to avoid that.

And it's very hard to do that because it's much easier in reality TV to just script the whole thing, which is the ironic part. And the second piece that's been really difficult is closely related to that, which is in TV, usually the host has next to no input on anything so you have the producers then you have the host and so normally what will happen is uh let's say someone like me will have a book comes out as well they get approached by many different production companies who want to sign them to hold agreements and those are basically usually very onerous agreements that restrict you from doing anything with any other production companies.

Then they pitch you to the broadcasters and they own that relationship. And it's a really under leveraged, bad position to be in. So that happened the first time around. And I ended up not renewing my option because there was a point where effectively they said, look, with creative stuff, like you're the host, we're the producer, like get used to it. And I was like, ah, no, I'm not interested in that. And it took a long time for me to take another look at TV with the proper leverage. This show, the Tim Ferriss experiment, is different in so much as I've had two more books under my belt, a lot more experimentation under my belt, better contacts everywhere so I can actually get the best teachers in the world to participate, which is really cool. Wietzkin, who's considered a chess prodigy. He was the basis for searching for Bobby Fisher, who also happens to be the first black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu under a legend named Marcelo Garcia. So we did an episode on both chess and jiu-jitsu simultaneously, which is really really cool. But the premise of the show is pretty much the same, right? I'm tackling

a difficult skill each week. Like in the case of language learning, is pretty much the same right i uh i'm tackling a difficult skill each week uh like in the case of language learning i have three and a half days to learn a language well enough to be interviewed on live tv for six minutes in that language which is tagalog and demonstrating to people that it's the way you're able to do that kind of thing is by deconstructing a complex skill and making it easy, making it simple, and then using a better toolkit. So you don't need better genetics. You don't need infinite budget or infinite time. You just need a better toolkit. And so the show delivers one or two of those tools from the world's fastest learners and best teachers each episode. And that's kind of the, the idea because for

instance, I mean, I couldn't swim until well after age 30. So we're doing an episode on swimming where we'll actually take one of my fans from kind of zero to hero and forward at four to five days and doing one on building a business, which is the same story, like straight out of the four hour work week also with a, uh, another mentor, and we're going to take someone from, you know, hopefully zero to hero in four or five days to get their business up and running. So it's... You're not doing all of them yourself,

then you're bringing another guest and being kind of more the host of it. I am... The entire show is a bit of an experiment, which is appropriate. So I would say I am the guinea pig for... There are 13 shows total every every sunday at 8 p.m eastern 5 p.m pacific is when it uh when it broadcasts on hln

which used to be cnn headline news now it's hln on the dial and uh the i am the guinea pig for probably 10 or 11 out of the 13 and then two or three of them are more, I would say, mentoring weeks for me where I help someone else overcome their specific fears related to business or swimming or something else. And what's the main vision behind the reason why you wanted to do this show specifically in the first place? What's the message you want to get across? Is it to reach a certain audience? Is it just to continue to spread what you're learning and let others be able to deconstruct things faster? What's, what's the main reason? Yeah, I'd say it's a teaching tool for me. And, uh, primarily there are a couple of motivations for the show. The first is, uh, I think that many of the lessons in the 4-Hour Body or the 4-Hour Chef have really impacted people who have, let's say, never been able to follow a diet before.

And now they've lost 200-plus pounds on the slow-carb diet. I mean there are probably every week I hear from someone who's lost 100-plus pounds on the slow-carb diet after never being able to lose weight before. someone who's lost 100 plus pounds on the slow carb diet after never being able to lose weight before. And it's not because they changed necessarily, they didn't get a new set of genetics, they just they had a shift in mindset and a better blueprint for doing it. That's it, you know, and it was made simple. So I want to show people how to do that in any area of their lives, whatever they want to learn, they want to learn a musical instrument for the first time, learn a language for the first time, learn a sport for the first time, get over their shyness. There's a dating episode where I really look like a nervous wreck, which is hilarious.

And I don't succeed at all these, by the way. I do face plant in some of these episodes pretty hard. And I don't succeed at all these, by the way. I do face plant in some of these episodes pretty hard. So that's motivation number one, is just to help people overcome some of their biggest fears and take big steps and try to reign more out of life. That's number one. Number two is I'm 36, not getting any younger, certainly. certainly and i wanted to chronicle some of these crazy physical experiments uh before i have a family and settle down a little bit because once i have kids i'm not going to want to do the really dangerous stuff uh certainly not as much anyway so i wanted to kind of chronicle a

bunch of that stuff visually so i can you know show my kids my grandkids how crazy dad used to be. And then last, the show was a way for me to tackle some of my big fears and also simultaneously check stuff off my bucket list. So it just seemed like all around the right timing to give something like this a shot. And the other piece of the puzzle I would say is that I was able to handpick the production company I wanted to work with. And they're called ZPZ. They do all of Anthony Bourdain's stuff. That's a great show.

Yeah, and I don't enjoy a ton of TV that's out there, especially in the non-scripted or reality TV space, which is not much that I like. But they do really gritty cinematic work where the, you know, the hosts can be themselves. They can curse if they need to. And that that's my style. So that that's been a fascinating experience as well. Now, what is your biggest fear, Tim? Biggest fear? Well, uh, geez, I mean, I'd say my biggest fear is probably just watching my parents get older, quite frankly, but that's not one that makes for very exciting television. So probably won't make an episode out of that. But why is that your biggest fear, though?

and, uh, because it is the most painful for me to watch. And, uh, also, I mean, I think I suspect it will be, my parents are fine now, but, uh, the most painful for me to watch and also one that is, is very much outside of my control. Uh, and there, there are things obviously that I'm looking into. I've spent time with a lot of scientists looking at life extension and ways of addressing different conditions and cardiovascular disease and blah, blah, blah. But I think it's just – it's something that everyone goes through, nothing new there, but one that I have less control over than many others. And so maybe it's a fear – it's more of a pain than a fear, maybe, is the best way to look at it. But it's certainly not something I look forward to. How influential have your parents been in your entire life? Because you went away for a number of years to study abroad.

Is that correct? I went. I did go abroad for a year to Japan and then went abroad later during college to China to study at two universities there. The impact my parents has had is enormous. And I think in large measure, because we didn't grow up with a lot of money and we weren't dirt poor, but we were lower middle class and didn't get the new bikes. But my parents did, I think, two things very well. Number one was they encouraged us to be really curious and try a lot of things and exposed us to many different things.

So whether that was, say, a free aquarium or doing things outside that were very much like science experiments. I mean, going to the beach and gathering black sand with magnets and kind of learning about magnetism that way. That was number one. Number two was they didn't have budget for a lot of the kind of kid fun stuff like new bikes or BB guns or video game consoles or whatever. like new bikes or BB guns or video game consoles or whatever. But they always told me and my brother that there was a budget for books.

It's like, look, if you really like a book, we'll find a way to make it happen. And whether that was the library or buying it for us, they taught us to associate a very high value with books. I really think that had a big impact. As a result, when I was in, say, third or fourth grade, I had this really, to my mind, expensive $40 hardcover book on marine biology. expensive, like $40 hardcover book on marine biology, which had just, it was basically a visual guide to fish and sharks and piranha and all that stuff. And, uh, I would just sit out during recess and read this book because I was a, I was a scrawny runt. Uh, I was a born premature.

I was really, really small until about sixth grade. So my, you know, my best friends were these books that, that, uh, I came to treasure because my parents taught me to do that. Did you have, so you didn't have a lot of friends when you were in elementary school, middle school? I mean, I had a few other, uh, friends, uh, but yeah, I wasn't, I wasn't completely by myself, but I was definitely not in the, uh, the cool kid, the popular kid group at all. Yeah. So what was your, what was kind of your dream growing up? Did you always have these big dreams that you wanted to inspire the world or create amazing works of art, uh, or just work in general that would influence a lot of people? What was it all about?

Yeah, I wouldn't say I had any huge ambitions. And, I mean, even looking at my ambitions now, I mean, of course, I always compare it to someone else. So I wouldn't even, I think that I'm just doing the best with what I have now. That's a positive impact. But compared to Elon Musk or people like that, I don't feel like my ambitions are big enough yet. Growing up, I wanted to be a marine biologist first. That took me for a pretty good period of time.

I'd say five years or so, five to ten years. Then pretty quickly, around the same time, I decided that I wanted to be a comic book penciler. So an actual comic book artist. And I took that very seriously and did that all throughout high school, even into college. Ended up as a paid illustrator. I did two things to pay some of my bills in college. I was a paid illustrator. I did two things to pay some of my bills in college. I was a paid illustrator, so I actually illustrated graphics for books that Princeton University Press put out, and I was also the graphics illustrator of the magazine there. put on a lot of meat between, say, sixth grade and freshman year of college. I got a lot bigger.

Once I figured out how to put on size, I was like, okay, I'm pretty sick of being a tiny kid, so let me get really stupidly large and got up to, you know, between 190 and 200, which is pretty large for my frame at you know 5 8 to 5 9 right and and bounce those are the two things i did and the the graphics i really didn't stop doing that until the end of college and sort of abandoned it to you know quote enter the real world which was stupid but uh i think a lot of people do that they drop a lot of these uh passions in there is to focus on whatever they perceive as being the real world, which to me was moving out West and joining a startup and buckling down and kind of putting my feet on the ground and learning how the real world works, which was not a bad thing. But, uh, you know, I do fantasize about getting back to the,

to the illustration. And when did you realize that the real world was a lie, or at least it was for you, and that you wanted to go back into living your passion? How long of the miserable jobs did you work until you started doing your own thing? Yeah, I would say there are a few different questions in one there, and I can answer them chronologically. I played around with, uh, I, or I just not really chronologically scattershot. So the,

the first is I played around with entrepreneurship in, uh, in college really. And, uh, even in high school, I, I w I read books, uh, like losing my virginity by Richard Branson and was very inspired by these mavericks and wanted to create some type of low-maintenance stream of income. Of course, that's the common dream, I think. And I was like, oh my god, it would be so amazing if I just had X. And of course, X is this magical number that almost everyone has. It started out, I was making $8 an hour working in this library at Princeton. And then I got the bouncing job, which was $20 an hour. And I was like, oh, my God, I'm rich.

And so that was a big step forward. And then eventually I was like, oh, my God, imagine if I could just make, what if I could make like $100 an hour or if I could make $300 a week or whatever the number was. And I taught an accelerated learning class actually at Princeton, which was really cobbled together. I mean, I used the daycare portion of a church because I couldn't afford to rent a location. It was on a Sunday daycare center at 3 p.m. or whatever. If I remember correctly, it was a $50 seminar. It was three hours long. It was $50 to attend, money-back guarantee, the whole nine yards. If you're not happy, you can take the whole thing i'll give you your money back and i i got 32 people if i remember correctly and i have never felt richer in my entire life because you know i

walked out of that i had been making 20 an hour with the risk of getting my head kicked in as a bouncer and the graphics editor position wasn't paid and uh the illustrator position was but i really wasn't making much money at all and i walked out of that seminar it was it was a good seminar but it was a little rough around the edges with you know 1500 or 1600 dollars and oh my god i mean you probably do have an idea yeah I do. The first time you have a moderately successful self-made venture like that, I had all these checks and $20 bills and $10 bills and $5 bills flowing out of my pockets and had them bunched up in my hands. I was on a bicycle.

A drug dealer. Oh, yeah. I had them bunched up in my hands against the handlebars because my pockets were so full. I remember I biked directly to the bank I was like I have to deposit this stuff right now because who knows what's gonna happen and uh that was that was I would say my first real successful attempt I had actually attempted to put together an audiobook before that in high school where I was like oh my god this, this stuff is easy. And I read

all these books that made it seem really, really, really easy. And it's not easy. It can be simple. But I created this audio book for basically, I mean, in I guess, current language, sort of hacking college admissions. And I produced this thing, I put every penny I had into doing a first manufacturing run and didn't sell any. I tried to do it through classified ads. I mean, this was like the real impoverished shit and did not sell anything. I was so depressed. And I didn't throw those audio tapes out until like 15 years later. I was like, one day, one day these things are going to sell.

And then I listened to them. They were horrible they were horrible oh my god i listened to them and there's like my 14 year old self like shitty like copyrighted not shitty actually it was like it was poor recording quality like classical music that i couldn't use anyway because it's copyrighted in the beginning and it was so cheesy oh my god like someday if i can find one of those audio cassettes i'll put up some of it to be like all right here was my like version one but uh the skipping forward you know i dropped the entrepreneurship stuff uh with me as the founder and moved out west to the bay area during you know 99, during the dot-com bubble and boom to make my billions that way. And it didn't last very long, of course. But I'd say after the first year or so of working with this startup, I became really jaded with how things were being done and decided that I

wanted to start my own company and give that another shot. And that was when I started looking at basically my credit card statements and where I spent money. And it's a really simplistic approach that I still think is really valuable. It's still where I think you can find the lowest hanging fruit for business creation. So in my case, I looked at my income, which at that point was $40,000 a year. And then I looked at pre-tax and then looked at where I spent the stupidest amount of money, just percentage-wise. You know what I mean? Where am I somehow justifying spending an irresponsible amount of money? It was with sports nutrition.

You're an athlete. You've seen this before. It's unbelievable how devout and consistent, especially guys are, with sports supplementation. I was spending hundreds of dollars a month on sports nutrition stuff. And when I looked at my buddies who were, say, training in jiu-jitsu or whatever at the same time, they all did the same thing, and some of them made less than I did. And so I decided to lean back on some of my early days where I'd spent time in neuroscience and design a non-stimulant product,

which was a pre-workout product. And that later became, you know, Body Quicken, which did exceptionally well, not out of the gate, of course, did exceptionally well. But I remember putting that together and it took a good, would say i'm guessing here a good like six months to throw enough against the wall to figure out what worked because keep in mind my only advertising experience really be before that point was the shitty classified ad that didn't do anything so i was starting from scratch to to try to figure out what worked and what didn't. And there was this new thing out called Google AdWords, which I was one of the first users of. And what was this? What year is this? Back in 2003?

It's back in 2001, 2002. And man, it was a different world. I mean, things are so much easier now. Of course, things are more competitive now in other respects. Like Google AdWords is a lot more expensive than it was then. But that's kind of how it came together. And since then, I've never gone back, I guess, in terms of... I'm a crappy employee, man. I get too impatient. I get too angry at inefficiencies. I'm not, I'm not a great employee. Uh, I'm a good like Lieutenant. If I have, for instance, I get it. That doesn't have

anything to do with, uh, bucking authority. Uh, I don't mind authority actually actually. For instance, in, say, a wrestling team, we had someone named John Buxton, Mr. Buxton, in high school, who was an incredibly good coach, incredibly strict, just took us to task and was very, very effective and efficient. I mean, he also raised the endowment for this high school. Keep in mind, it's a private school that I transferred to from like $50 million to $500 million. The guy was a

machine. In his extra time, he taught the wrestlers because he needed that to keep himself sane. I don't have an issue with someone like that because he was a tri-varsity athlete in college, was a national caliber wrestler, and he's an excellent coach. So if someone's qualified and doing an excellent job, I'm happy to follow.

I have no problem with that. But as it turns out, in the world of business, it's pretty hard to find those A players. You don't very often end up with a boss who's giving you more and more and more responsibility, pushing you and pushing you to be better and better and better, and they are magnitudes of order better than you are. You just don't, in my experience, run into that very often. But, I mean, if someone like Elon Musk was like, hey, whatever, I want you to be my executive assistant for six months,

I would probably take that job. You know what I mean? Right. I would probably take that job. You know what I mean? I probably take that job. Um, but it turns out that phone calls not come. So I am doing my own thing. Right. Right. That's too much. Yeah. I mean, discipline is really a key ingredient for success. In my opinion, I went to a private boarding school where it was very disciplined you know we had two hours of study hall every night and in bed by 9 30 and you had to make your room every day and you had to dress a certain way and the practice was intense school was intense and that discipline really i feel like something i thrived off of uh again like you said when you have a good coach someone you trust and you believe who's going to take you to the next level

so yeah and i would say also just this is maybe a side note, but since you brought it up. If you're an entrepreneur and particularly if you're a solopreneur or operating on your own, I think you need to create structure and rituals so that you're only applying, you're not burning out your, you're not wasting your thinking horsepower on things that don't matter. Right. Does that make sense? So for instance, when I, when I went to, from public school, which was a nightmare, uh, not, not in all places, but on long Island where I grew up, it was just, it was a terrible school to boarding school.

All of a sudden I had a lot more structure. And just like you said, it was, we had, we had chapel every morning. We had mandatory sports every afternoon. We had classes until I think six 30 at night because we had, we had, uh, we had one class block after sports. Then we had seated meal, coat and tie a few nights a week, had dress code during all classes. And that structure is really helpful. Some people think of it as confining. I think of it as very freeing. So helpful, yeah.

Because you don't have to make decisions about all of the minute bullshit. It's all figured out. And I think that for entrepreneurs, it's very valuable for a week, for instance, to just figure out what is your ritual going to be in the morning or when you wake up. What is the first 60 minutes going to look like? And script it out so that you do the same thing every day. And I think it's a very freeing experience where you end up feeling more energized. You have more energy and kind of thought power to allocate to the things that matter as opposed to trying to decide like what should I have for breakfast today? No, no, no.

Like eat the same thing for breakfast for a week straight. Just remove that so you don't have to think about it. Anyway, that's just a side note. I think ritual and routine is extremely important for people who want to be creative. Yeah. I mean, I hear a lot of my entrepreneur friends who are struggling. They really don't have, they haven't created great habits and they're not disciplined and they're never consistent. And they're always going from one thing to the next and they don't complete things.

Whereas, you know, playing, you know, playing sports or going to school or when I was playing pro football, even we had an itinerary every day so all i do is look at the itinerary and show up and i give my best effort to the task at hand and then you know complete rinse and repeat every single day and i continue to get better improve and we are striving to achieve our goals but if you don't have that routine or those habits, it's really challenging to get anything done that's quality that people are going to enjoy. Yeah, definitely. And I also think that having a schedule of sorts is very helpful when you take into account things like Parkinson's law, which of course was in the four-hour work week, might be familiar to some people, but meaning that a task will swell

to fill the amount of time that you allot it. So if you don't have any defined end time, you'll check email all day long, no problem. Right, right, right. You know what I mean? Or if you don't have a container, I find sports very helpful for this, just as a bookend to close out the day,

to do training at 6 p.m. where you are absolutely protecting that time as much as you would protect any other type of conference call or anything else, particularly if you're, let's say, you're somehow accountable to someone else that you're going to do it with, like rock climbing, doesn't matter, then that blog post will get done in an hour and a half and not in four hours. You know, right. And that type of bookend, I think is very helpful. Right.

Now transitioning to the next thing, what I want to know is what is it you think about before something big in your life is about to happen? So a big moment, a big opportunity, it could be a speech, it could be a board meeting or a presentation before one of your episodes that you're about to film. What is it that you mentally or visually go through your rituals that allow you to prepare for the big moments in life? Oh, that's a good question. Well, let me think. Or do you just show up and take it? No, I definitely don't. I don't just show up. Uh, I would say whenever, if it is something that I can rehearse, then I will rehearse. And I remember the first time I had a keynote opportunity at South by Southwest,

which was a huge opportunity for me. This was probably 2007, something like that, and I had between 45 minutes and an hour to give a presentation. The first thing I did was I broke the presentation down. I mean, this should sound familiar, right? This is just like geek and something. So I took the presentation, and I broke it into three parts. And that meant there were going to be kind of three acts to the keynote. And then I would have a very short introduction and a very short conclusion.

So it was like one to two minute intro, act one, act two, act three, one to two minute outro. And what that allowed me to do was rehearse each act by itself. So I never rehearse a keynote all the way through, start to finish, to begin with. I will rehearse each of those acts or each of those segments until that segment is smooth. Then I'll move on to segment two and rehearse that until it's smooth and segment three until that's smooth and then i'll do them all together uh and uh in the case of south by southwest what i did and i don't do this every time but it's it will maybe be uh funny for people to hear is i was staying with all the hotels were sold out so i was crashing at a friend's house in austin and kind of out in the boondocks and he had a garage he had a big garage and he had three chihuahuas of different sizes it was like a giant

chihuahua a tight chihuahua and a medium-sized chihuahua this isn't a fairy tale i'm going somewhere with this so yeah and i would my friend had to go to work uh and so i was kind of home alone until i had to head over to the conference center to do this keynote. And so I rehearsed by giving the keynote to these dogs. And if I, check it out, if I was really animated and like compelling as a speaker, of course, I don't understand what I'm saying. But if I was really animated and compelling as a speaker, they would sit there and watch the whole thing. It was hilarious. If I got monotone or looked down at my feet or didn't make eye contact, they'd just start wandering off. So I rehearsed it with these chihuahuas. But that's an example for a keynote. So I have a format that I follow. I have a way

that I rehearse. I have rituals. For instance, I don't usually drink diet soda for a lot of reasons. But in this case, before I do keynotes, I will drink two Diet Cokes. And I guess they're probably, I don't know, 12 to 16 ounces each. And the reason I do that is primarily ritual. It's not because I need that to be the only way I get the caffeine. It's because that's what I did for years

when I had really good keynotes. And I just decided that that was going to be my ritual. So you're like, you're like a baseball, you're like a baseball player who like wears his socks on backwards or something. Yeah. Oh yeah, definitely. And I, when you think we all have, we have rituals like that also slap the back of my neck before I go out on stage just to wake myself up. So that's one. If I'm looking at say, I kind of have to give you specific examples.

If we're talking about a big contract for instance, if we're talking about a big deal, whether that's a book deal or a TV deal or you name it, usually what I try to do is limit the downsides. So I'll ask myself, what are the worst things that could happen? And then I will try to either eliminate that from my mind if it's not something I can affect. If it's a very serious potential downside that isn't addressed in the contract,

I'll try to have clauses rewritten or clauses added. So for instance, in TV, what's the worst thing that could happen? The worst thing that could happen is I end up in a position where they're able to damage my reputation and integrity by putting content into the show that I don't believe is true or actionable or important, right? Or manufacturing a bunch of storylines that didn't exist. That kind of stuff is not okay with me. And therefore, I needed to find an attorney who had a track record of helping craft those types of deals for people who have a lot of leverage in one area, i.e. books, but very limited experience in the new area, TV.

leverage in one area i.e books but very limited grants in the new area tv and uh i will always look to kind of protect the downside and uh money is a piece of all these deals many many times but i don't i don't often belabor that part of things uh the reason being if if you have, say, a hit book or a hit TV show or whatever, you then have a lot of leverage to do things from that point forward, including, let's say, second book, royalties, etc., which is why Neil Strauss, a friend of mine who wrote The Game and seven other New York Times bestsellers, he doesn't care about his advance very much. He cares about the terms, but he doesn't care about the advance very much because if the book is a huge success,

he's going to get paid anyway, the same amount of money. I have a slightly different tack, but I usually try to limit the downside. I feel like if you can create enough safety nets and limit the downsides, the upside kind of takes care of itself. Then you can swing for the fences if you know that you've limited the downsides uh so those are a few of the things that i think about uh i'd say another that i think about and as i get older i think about this more and more which is who am i going to be working with um specifically like on a daily basis on a weekly

basis who are my points of contact? And do I like these people? Even if they're really good, if they're extremely abrasive and throw sharp elbows all the time, I'm just getting too old for that shit. I don't want to deal with it. I don't want to deal with it anymore. I'm very fortunate to be in a position where I don't spend a ton of money.

I spend a lot of money on certain things I like, but I don't spend, compared to a lot of people I know, I don't spend a lot of money on creature comforts. I don't have a really expensive car. I don't have a really expensive apartment. I don't have a lot of these things. I don't have a lot of these things. So I don't have to do deals with bad people to just keep my lifestyle afloat, if that makes sense.

And that's very much by design. That's not accidental. And I think it's worth remembering also that it doesn't matter what a contract says if it's done with a bad person like you cannot do a good deal with a bad person and anytime you think that's true you're gonna get bitten in the ass and yeah yeah it's like every single time almost without exception you're like oh my god this is a great deal and it's the honeymoon phase right so like everybody's back slapping and high-fiving like oh my god this is a great deal everybody's going to be happy this is going to be great but in the back of your head you're like you know that guy's kind of a dick or whatever but whatever it's a great

deal it's a great deal and then you do the deal lo and behold six months later a year later two years later whatever it might be that guy pops his head up and there's some big pain in the ass problem uh or they're like yeah you know like we really don't feel there's some big pain in the ass problem. Or they're like, yeah, you know, like we really don't feel like blah, blah, blah, was in the spirit of the agreement. So like we actually don't want to pay or, you know, something, something like that will pop up. Right. So yeah, you can't get a good deal with a bad person.

Now the final, the final part of this, you've given specifics, which I love and I thank you for that. But what I want to really want to know now is what do you tell yourself? What is the self talk? The positive visualization self talk? Do you see it happen before it happens when you're, again, shooting an episode, you know, because it might be a little nerve wracking about to be on camera, you want to do a good job, or if you're competing in jujitsu or some type of tournament what is the self-talk the visualization the things that you do in your minds to prepare i constantly visualize and i think that uh that you do this as well at least as an athlete you did uh

well there's the self-talk then there's the visualization and i tend to do those separately when i visualize i'm usually totally quiet it's usually some type of rehearsal in my own mind and i'll do that constantly for episodes because i'll have an itinerary and we'll have a schedule that i helped lay out uh on some level based on you know I've picked, the teachers I've chosen, etc. And I will definitely rehearse intros, outros, soundbites that we need for a specific portion of the show, which usually refer to introductions of some type, whether it's introducing the show and the challenge, introducing the experiments, the location, the teacher. You know, these are things where I have to be factually accurate and I also have to be concise. So I'll rehearse those. Fortunately,

because it is intended to be a Verite style unscripted show, for the most part, I get to just kind of be myself. But a lot of these shows are very very physical so i'm doing golf i'm doing brazilian jiu-jitsu i'm doing rally racing i'm doing you name it and for those i will constantly visualize and i will also review video this is closely related i will review video of top performers in those sports uh right before going to bed so i do video review right before going to bed and then I will end up visualizing or dreaming oftentimes about those skills. That's a very consistent practice of mine. In terms of the self-talk,

usually the self-talk, I'd say, when I hit a tough point is something along the lines of you've done harder things before. That's usually, I would say, the self-talk. And honestly, I still think back to those wrestling practices in high school where Mr. Buxton would just crush us and he would do it. And we thought we couldn't continue.

And he'd say, I'm only pushing you because I know you can continue. And if you need to puke, there's a bucket in the corner and then come right back in because you're up in like 30 seconds. couldn't continue and he'd say i'm only pushing you because i know you can continue and you know if you need to puke there's a bucket in the corner and then come right back in because you're up in like 30 seconds you know and uh there's so many examples like that where uh i will let's say i'll be getting frustrated or angry or uh antsy some in some way about something I'm doing now. And I'll just be like, you know what? This is adult programming, right? I'll just say, stop being pussy.

You've done harder things before. You're getting weak. If this is hard for you, you are getting weak. So suck it up. Put on your big girl pants and get it done. Done harder things before. And then I'm like,'m like ah you know all right if you're right so i kind of have that that hard-ass coach like on my shoulder is most of my self-talk and sometimes i'll hear uh you know whether it's girlfriends or family members or some friends will say you know I should be easier on yourself.

You should take it easy, be easier on yourself. And I don't think that's the answer. When I meet people who I really admire, who are really good at fill in the blank, whether it's athletics or cinematography or whatever, they're all hard on themselves. And it's not because they think they I mean they, and it's not because they, they think they can be perfect, but it's not going to stop them from trying. Uh, and I don't know. I don't think it's a bad thing as long as you know how to turn off some of the time. Uh, so I'd say most of my self-talk is, you know, you've done, you've done harder things before. So like suck it up, stop letting your mind run wild on you.

If there's any negative self-talk, it's like, all right, nip that in the bud because it's not helping. And focus on what you can control. Ignore what you can't control and get it done. It's usually some variation of that. Nice. I love it. Okay, two final questions. The first one is, what is it you want people to say at your funeral? Uh, what do I want people to say at my funeral about you? Obviously you never could get

a tan. No, not that. Uh, pretty pale though. Uh, let's see. I would want them to say probably something along the lines of he wanted his students to be better than he was. I always want to teach people to be better than I am in whatever I'm teaching. So I think that would be – that's the first thing that comes to mind. I like it. What would you want them to say about your heart? My heart? Uh, I'd say just that my heart was true.

My intent, my, my heart was in the right place. I mean, I genuinely, genuinely did all this stuff because I wanted to show people that things do not have to be as difficult as they seem. There are elegant solutions hiding out there, and if I can help unearth those, then that's a job I'm happy to have.

I'd say just that my heart was in the right place, that the motivations for this were on some level, I guess, altruistic. Right. Nice. Final question. What is your definition of greatness? Oh, my definition of greatness. And Tim didn't get any of these questions beforehand beforehand so he gets to think about it for a

second i would say my definition of greatness is a setting setting a goal that your former self would have thought impossible and trying to get just a little bit better every day. That's it. Uh, I really think that's it. And, uh, I think you can find that anywhere, you know, the, the world's best janitor, the world's best, you know, window washer, the world's best tennis player, the world's best belt manufacturer, artisanal belt maker. It doesn't matter. I think you can find it everywhere. But usually it's setting, and that goal could be, I want to be the best janitor in the world.

I mean, it sounds silly, but I don't think it is. I think that's a noble goal. Uh, so I'd say it's setting, setting a, setting an ambitious goal that perhaps your former self would have thought impossible. And then just trying to get a little bit better every day. I love it. Where's the best place we can hang out with you online and tell us again, the show times. Yeah, definitely. So the, the, the best place to find me is on the blog that's kind of the heartbeat of everything i do uh it's fourhourblog.com f-o-u-r-h-o-u-r-b-l-o-g.com about 1.4 million readers a month and then on twitter at t ferris t-f-e-r-r-i-s-s you can learn all about the show at upwave.com forward slash t-x and the show is the Tim Ferriss experiment every Sunday

at 8pm Eastern, 5pm Pacific, set your DVRs and on HLN the channel is HLN but people can learn all about it on Upwave, so at upwave.com slash tfx, there are also extras and bonuses and stuff

cut footage and scenes on that page. So I hope people check it out. I love it, man. Tim, thanks for coming on. And thanks for diving deeper than I think I've ever heard you talk about in any interview. So I appreciate you. It's a product of the questions. So thanks for asking good questions.

My pleasure, man. Thanks so much. And everyone, make sure to tune in and watch each and every week. And we'll see you soon. All right. Thanks so much, man. Thanks so much. And everyone, make sure to tune in and watch each and every week. And we'll see you soon. All right. Thanks so much, Lewis. interview. If you enjoyed this episode, I would love it if you head over to the site at lewishouse.com or schoolofgreatness.com to check out the show notes. Go ahead and share this episode with your friends over on Twitter and Facebook and Google Plus and everyone else. And wherever you are listening to this in the world, go ahead and upload a picture on Instagram and tag me at

lewishouse or hashtag schoolof of greatness. And just let me know where you're listening. And maybe we'll give you a shout out for our future fan of the week. I really appreciate you guys coming on here and the feedback that I'm receiving about the people that we're bringing on the guests, what they're opening up about in their lives and their success and their for failures. I appreciate the feedback that I'm receiving about that. And I'm going to continue to bring on guests and get them to open up in ways that you've probably never heard them open up before. It's all about reaching your biggest potential and unlocking your inner greatness here on

the School of Greatness. So with that, guys, you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and make sure to do something great.