The Tim Ferriss Show - #130: Daymond John and How to Turn Weaknesses into Strengths

Episode Date: January 7, 2016

Usually, it's my job to deconstruct world-class performers. This time around, the tables are turned. Many of you have wanted to hear me interviewed, so this week Daymond John (@thesharkdaymond), star of ABC's Shark Tank and the CEO and founder of FUBU, is in charge and asking the questions. Daymond has a new book called The Power of Broke, and he is an expert interviewer and interrogator. In this episode, you'll learn untold stories about my beginnings and the advantages that exist when you think you're at a disadvantage. If you've ever felt like a beginner in business or find your back against a wall, you will learn how to take your situation or a lack of resources and turn it into a strength. Show notes and links for this episode can be found at www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. This podcast is brought to you by Audible. I have used Audible for years and I love audio books. I have 2 to recommend: The Graveyard Book by Niel Gaiman Vagabonding by Rolf Potts All you need to do to get your free audiobook and a free 30-day trial is go to Audible.com/tim. Choose one of the above books, or choose between more than 180,000 audio programs. That could be a book, a newspaper, a magazine or even a class. It's that easy. Go to Audible.com/Tim and get started today. Enjoy! This podcast is brought to you by TrunkClub. I hate shopping with a passion. And honestly I'm not good at it, which means I end up looking like I'm colorblind or homeless. Enter TrunkClub, which provides you with your own personal stylist and makes it easier than ever to shop for clothes that look great on your body. Just go to trunkclub.com/tim and answer a few questions, and then you'll be sent a trunk full of awesome clothes. They base this on your sizes, preferences, etc. The trunk is then delivered free of charge both ways, so you only pay for clothes that you keep. If you keep none, it costs you nothing. To get started, check it out at trunkclub.com/tim.***If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Visit tim.blog/sponsor and fill out the form.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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show is usually my job to deconstruct world class performers, whether they are, say, military strategists, hedge fund managers, chess prodigies, athletes, entertainers, screenwriters, etc. But this time around, the tables are turned. Many of you have wanted to hear me being interviewed, and I may bore you to tears, but this is an attempt. And in fact, we have Damon John, who's CEO and founder of FUBU, which he turned into a business with more than $6 billion in sales, but it all began with a $40 budget and no outside funding. And Damon has a new book out called The Power of Broke. You can check out all sorts of cool aspects and offers of this at powerofbroke.com. And he is an expert interviewer and interrogator. You may also know him, of course, as one of the stars of Shark Tank. But we've known each other for quite a few years. And what you're going to hear

is an interview that was then sliced and diced and put in a synopsized form into the book about some of my beginnings that you may not have heard of. So it's like the four-hour workweek, this luxury lifestyle design, blah, blah, blah. But you oftentimes don't know about driving around, this is me, that is, a used minivan that was a hand-me-down from my mom, or giving keynote presentations to chihuahuas to try to develop my presentation skills because I was so nervous to go on stage, et cetera, et cetera. So we dig into a lot of the advantages you can have if you think you are at a disadvantage. So desperation, lack of funding, no background training network, how can you take the power of broke in this case, the power of being a rope beginner starting from

scratch and turn it into a strength. That's what this conversation is about. You should definitely check out the power of broke. It has interviews with people, not only yours truly, but with the founder of Under Armour, EDM superstars, people from every possible field you can imagine about their rocky beginnings and how they turned a lack of resources into a strength. So without further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Daymond John. So what's up? You got me here, the Shark, Damon John, and I have the pleasure of bringing my buddy on to talk about the power of broke. And my buddy's name is Tim Ferriss. I don't think he needs any introduction, but I'm going to actually read a couple of points because I do know many of the things that Tim has done and is still doing,

but I want to make sure that I really put it in perspective because there's so many things. So Tim, of course, is an author, an entrepreneur, an angel investor, and also really a human guinea pig. And I think that Tim exercises the power of whether when he is looking and betting deals or whether he is actually physically becoming a human guinea pig for something or he's putting out his book and information or he's just out there learning. So I learn from Tim a lot. And I just want to basically introduce Tim Ferriss. How you doing, Tim? I'm great. All right. Nice to be here. Thank you. Thanks for being here with me. So now, you know, the first thing I want to talk about is basically, you know, when you came out and you decided to come out with the four-hour work week, right? You know, we all, the theory of the power of broke is the fact that we don't utilize money to accomplish a job.

And I don't care if you're working at, you know, at Ford. It's about ingenuity and it's about thinking, but it not about the actual dollars the dollars will come but being creative um why would somebody give you a book deal because i'm told that you got turned down by 26 27 authors i got turned down by 27 banks i guess that's a lucky number yeah what what was the challenge of you know getting a book deal and getting it out there? Well, the first problem, if you want to look at it as a problem, was that I never wanted to write a book. So it was an accidental career, and I had a few students, I was guest lecturing at the time, recommend that I write a book. And I was like, that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. I can't write.

Don't want to write anything longer than an email. I'm not going to do it. And when the notes started coming together from this class, and a few friends of mine were like, you should just make this a book. You have all of this material that you could turn into something. I tried to put it together and eventually got introduced to a couple of the right people, which by the way, actually, I'm going to take a back step. So the person who introduced me to my agent was Jack Canfield, who was co-creator of Chicken Soup for the Soul. I think this is probably most relevant to the power of Brooke. The way I met him, people are always asking me, how do you meet your mentor? Would you send him an email and ask him to be your

mentor? I'm like, no, that's not what you do because they have enough of a job. They don't need another full-time job, especially an unpaid one. I had just moved to Silicon Valley years prior, didn't know anyone, didn't have any money. I was driving my mom's hand-me-down minivan, which was horrible, not good for dating. And I decided to volunteer for a startup nonprofit that held events. And so I busted my ass as a volunteer, kept on taking on more responsibility, and kept on asking for more, for more, for more. And eventually they were like, all right, well, this guy's a go-getter. We don't have many of those among the volunteers because they think it's volunteer work. They don't have to work hard. And I was invited to one of their board meetings and they chose me to lead the next major event. What did that mean? The important

thing here was that I got to invite, I got to choose and invite the panelists and the speakers. So I invited Jack Canfield, co-creator of Chicken Soup for the Soul, 100 million plus books sold. The guy who created the Pet Rock, co-founder of Electronic Arts, the founder of Cliff Bar, all these people that I wanted to meet. So I had no money, no connections. The only thing I had was time. That was it. So flash forward a few years. I want to stop right there for one second because you bring up a very valuable point that you went and you wanted to be mentored or you wanted to be in an environment.

And I know that you and I and many of us mentor people, but a lot of people don't realize what's in it for the mentor. Everybody comes and their pitches, I need, I need, I need, I need, and then my pitch as well. So I need to sleep less to help you, I need to do that. So your theory was, let me go and contribute. Let me also go and I'm going to get up before everybody, I'm going to go to bed after everybody, and I'm going to become a rock star there, and I'm going to add value, and that value will then return to me. Right, and at the time, I had to borrow that credibility. Yes.

So in the beginning, I had no background. I hadn't been on the cover of any magazines or anything like that, so I worked with this nonprofit that did bring in media. So they, as an organization, had people from Forbes and whether it was the Tech Crunch of the day, whatever, would show up. And that's why the panelists wanted to come. And so flash forward many years later, and I never bugged Jack. I never asked him to mentor me. Just every once in a while, if I had a real life decision question and it was not frequent, I would send it to him. And eventually many years later, and we're still friends, but he's like, you should make this a book. And before I knew it, he's like, I'm introducing you to this person, this person, this person, this person. All right. So that's how I met the agent, who was at the time a brand new agent.

He was a superstar editor, but a brand new agent. So he also was in a situation where he had no resources, no reputation as an agent. And then we went out to sell the book together and got turned down violently by almost everybody. It wasn't just a polite, no, thank you. It was just violent. This is garbage. Who is this idiot to tell me? How old is he again?

To tell me A, B, and C. People were very, very offended in some cases, which is still kind of mystifying to me. But let me ask you something. With all those turndowns by what you would say would be individuals who know the world, they know the pulse, and they're telling you it's crap. Yeah. Now, there's the fine line of we are in love with our product. Yeah. And we're too in love. We're not taking reality in hand.

Yeah. Was there a way that you were measuring it going, no, I'm taking the pulse here or there. Yeah. And I know I'm on to something because yeah we have to be realistic not all entrepreneurs or people are going to get an a you know oh for sure 90 percent going to get an f right yeah right what point did you say this is not an f it's an a or even a b yeah the what gave me confidence i think there are two things so uh the first was i'd been testing this material on live classes for years. And I always did feedback forums, and I knew what people responded best to.

I knew how to hit a pulse. The people who were in a position to buy my book were not my target audience. And so it didn't register for them. They didn't have the same pain points, maybe. Got it. But it was demoralizing. I mean, 20-plus rejections and not mild rejections was really kind of demoralizing. And I started to doubt myself a little bit here and there.

But I believed in the value of the content because it was the true story of my experience and what had worked for me. And I'd written the book, uh, or what I'd written at that point, at least basically as an email to two friends and two very specific friends with very specific problems. And, uh, and we had one meeting left. I remember because I went to New York, flew to New York to go to these in-person meetings with my agent. It was just like, no, no, no, no, goodbye, no. And this sounds like straight out of a movie, but it's true. The last meeting was with Crown.

And Crown is an imprint, basically a subdivision, a random house. And I was just thinking to myself, all right, this is the last meeting, so hopefully I'm going to be the most polished, right? Number one. And we had the meeting, we had the meeting, and you can kind of feel a meeting if it's working or not and it wasn't

working. And so I'm sitting there and people are getting it, like intellectually they're like, okay I get it. But they weren't having the visceral response and at the time there was a guy named Steve Ross who was in charge of saying yes or no. He was the guy and he was way down at the end.

It was one of those kind of like death Star meetings. They do it at CAA and all these places where they bring in like 30 people. And I'm like, I don't even know who, I can't remember the people's names. And I remember that towards the very end, Steve was like, is there anything else you'd like to say before we kind of cut and then we can follow up with you? It was one of those like, don't call us, we'll call you kind of like

lead-ups. And I was like, oh God, here comes number 30 or whatever. And I just, I told him, I was like, absolutely. I said, I don't or whatever. And I just, I told him, I was like, absolutely. I said, I don't half-ass anything. And this is paraphrased, but it was just like, if you look at my records, whether it's in sports, whether it's in tango, whether it's in anything, I will do anything required. I will kill myself, if necessary, to make this book a bestseller.

And it will be a bestseller. You guys should buy it. And he was just like, that's ballsy and that's it and that's that later i had no idea like how the decision making process went but then about a year or two later uh word came back to me there like yeah it was that last thing you said it was that that was the end of the meeting how fast how fast did they go to you know contract or or or let's start, let's start putting it together after that? You know, once, they also got a very good price, right? It's a balance of factors, right?

But they're like, all right, this guy seems crazy enough. We're managing our expectations. We're not paying a lot for it. And this guy is a workhorse probably. Right, right. And they're like, we place bets all the time. Like, all right, sure. Like, this guy seems crazy enough.

And it took just a couple weeks. Within a couple weeks, it was time to write. Well, that's great. You know what? And honestly, I never heard the details of that story, but it has all the personality to a traditional Power Broke theme, which is, number one, you didn't overburden the potential mentor, whoever it was. Number two is, you know, that person, and it happened with that potential mentor, as well as at the end of this part of your life, the decision-making person said,

he's going to do it with or without me, and I want to be part of the ride. I think also that as being turned down by 27 um you know uh publishers um i think that there's a couple things here you had proof of concept and that's what made you believe that you can go because you had already tested it yeah um i also think that a couple other things there's one there's one thing i believe if everybody loves it you get the lowest common denominator, I believe. So I think that it's that. Or they're lying to you. Or they're lying to you. And a hard no is at least better than maybe I'm saying maybe I'll call you back.

Yeah, right. Right. So I think that all exercises exactly what I try to tell people and we share with people is the power of broke. And then now we have the book. Yeah. It's Somebody somebody believed in you now and oh oh the other one i like the point is you know that agent that nobody was working with yeah that you found and you became partners with when i found my partners they were you know in

you know my my partners who uh ended up uh helped me distribute clothes yeah they were number 20 30 40 in the business i noticed that everybody likes to go to number one and two. I want to go to number 20. Who wants to be number one or two? Yeah, exactly. Right? Because they have the connections. They have the pipeline.

They just don't have the product and or the grit of the newer position. And that's what you found. So, okay, now all of a sudden you have this book deal that you really told them that you were going to change the world and become a bestseller, which is one of the hardest things to do, especially at the time when books were starting to plummet. They give you a deal. The deal, they don't give you a lot of money. And even when they give you a lot of money, they barely do any marketing. Right. Now you have to go out and market this book, and you have to deliver on your word.

What happens? How does that happen? So the, uh, I remember very, very clearly it was, uh, let me get this right. It was December 26th, 2006. So the book was slated to come out April. And I've been thinking about this for a while, but what I realized, like you said, uh, publishers tend to put money behind books they've already put money into. And they hadn't put any money into mine, really. And so it was my job to try to figure out how to market, but I didn't have free reign. I didn't have a full hand of options because the publisher didn't want me meddling with a lot of stuff. They're like, no, no, no, we might do stuff with print. We might do stuff with this. We might do stuff with that. And what that left me was online. And online is obviously a big category. Keep in mind, this was end of 2006, beginning of 2007.

Yeah, so there wasn't a Twitter, right? Twitter was just coming out. It was baby. What was out at that time? So it would have been Google. Obviously, you have AdWords and things like that. Facebook. You had Twitter, which was very nascent. MySpace was... MySpace was sort of, yeah. Okay, got it.

But there was kind of word on the street that bloggers were interesting. Who are these blogger people? So I realized, if online is the only sandbox I can play in, I should probably figure out what the hell blogs and bloggers are. And it's embarrassing to say it at this point. So I went online. I remember the day after Christmas, I'm like, I really need to figure this out. Everything I thought I was going to do, I'm not allowed to do, apparently.

So I searched most influential bloggers. And Technorati came up at the time. A number of different things came up. And I saw a summit. There was this, some type of, oh no, it was CES, that's right. Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas. And to my mind, because I used to do, I used to have to sell mass data storage systems. When I graduated from school, the first job I had was like boiler room selling storage

area networks. So I made a lot of cold calls and a lot of cold emails. And I realized, okay, well, what is the hardest way to get a hold of a blogger? The most crowded way is probably email. They're getting tons of email. The second most crowded would be phone, right? But they don't just put their phone on the internet for the most part, unless it's Robert Scoville, who ended up being very instrumental.

And then the least crowded is in person. And so I decided that I was going to try to track down, how do I find groups, like herds of bloggers in one place? And I looked at CES, and I bought a ticket to Vegas, and I never went to CES. I ended up going to, I started asking around, effectively, like, where can I meet bloggers? Where could I ask bloggers questions and they said oh

you should go to the you should go to the lounge Seagate's sponsoring a lounge called the blog house h-a-u-s and it's free booze and free wi-fi for bloggers I was like perfect and so I go to this blog house and uh tip for people always be nice be nice and this is this this is where it's going to get really that that becomes really crucial. So I walk in. There's a woman who's helping people get situated and sign in and checking their wristbands. And I was very nice to her. I didn't know anybody.

And I sat down and just, I would sit in on conversations. And I'd basically just say, hey, guys, first time to CES. I don't know anything. Do you mind if I just eavesdrop? I would buy you a round of drinks, but it's free. I'll get you some drinks. And they're like, yeah, okay, whatever. And I just did that over and over and over again. And it turned out later, because I was kind of lost like babe in the woods, and I was speaking with this woman, Miriam, who was helping people check in. And everybody wanted at that time to talk to this guy named Robert Scoble, who was just,

he was a big deal. He was the guy. Like if you wanted somebody to talk about you or anything you were doing, he was the guy, but everyone was on top of him. I mean, everyone was just, you know, clamoring to get ahold of this guy. And I felt like that was not the right way to talk to him. I didn't want to be one of 20 people trying to get his attention. And it turned out, lo and behold, I brought this up to this woman who was helping me check in, and she was his wife. And so she's like, oh, you know, no problem. You can meet Robert. He's really easy to talk to. No problem.

And so just, like, wait until they're done doing their thing. So, like, hang out. I have nothing else to do. Hang out for another hour and a half, two hours, three hours, whatever it was. And she made the introduction. And that, a very small mention from Robert, is one of the critical things that started the entire snowball. And I took my experience at CES because I felt like it was positive. There weren't any big results yet because the book hadn't come out.

But I was like, this seems to be working somehow. I'm getting that sixth sense that things are starting to gel. And because I was very honest, I didn't try to impress anybody. This is another thing. I didn't try to impress anybody with what I knew about tech or anything. I would be the first person if they're like, da, da, da, Ruby on Rails. And I'd be like, I'm sorry. I'm deep in the ignorance pool here. Like I'm drowning. What is Ruby on Rails? I'm sorry, guys. And it was so uncommon that people would do that and admit when they didn was so uncommon that people would do that and admit when they didn't know something that people would then start asking me questions. Like, what are you doing here? Well, I'm working on my first book. Okay, what's your book about?

And I would just let them kind of draw it out of me. I wouldn't pitch. I wouldn't go into full pitch mode because that's just like, it's just like trying to go on dates. You can't just suddenly give a woman a five minute pitch. Like, it doesn't work. Like, desperation doesn't work. Go over the jugular. It doesn't work. And so I went to South by Southwest and managed to finagle, beg and plead and negotiate and go through many, many different people

to try to get a speaking spot. And they're like, no, no, no. And Hugh Forrest, who runs South by Southwest Interactive, is now a good friend. But at the time, he must have been so irritated. He kept on trying, kept on trying. He's like, no, no, no, no, no. And then they had a cancellation, I think, a very last-minute cancellation. They're like, okay, you can go into this sponsored room where people are going to be eating and drinking. Not an ideal, right? But you'll be in the Adobe, I think it was the Adobe

such-and-such room, and you'll have a half hour or an hour. And when I gave that presentation, and I didn't have a place to stay. All the hotels were sold out. God, all those memories are coming back now. I stayed. Don't cry. No, I know, I know, I know. I'm going to get a tear up here. So I stayed at a friend's house.

You'll love this. And I was so nervous about giving my presentation. He had three chihuahuas, all of different personalities, different sizes. And I went into the garage, and the dogs came in because I thought I was going to go get food. And I gave my presentation of these chihuahuas over and over and over again. And, of course, well, I assume they couldn't understand a word I was saying. But if I was boring, like if I didn't move around, if I wasn't engaging, they would take off. And if I was, like, doing this kind of stuff, and you're really

Tony Robbins-ing at them and keeping them engaged, then they sat there kind of mesmerized. That could be the stupidest story ever. Oh, no. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, exactly. But they were like, I don't know, whatever he's doing, he looks like he's... I love it. It's exciting, so I'll watch. And I went, I gave this presentation. The tech failed. I remember that. I had a whole presentation, and the internet connection was dead. I was like, okay, I guess I'm just going to have to wing it.

But I'd rehearsed so much, gave this presentation, and that was just, that's where it took off. Well, first of all, I think the most important thing that, I don't know if everybody else is going to learn, but I have two hot dogs and two chihuahuas, so I'm going to start doing my pitches, because no matter what level we're at in life, we're still doing my pitches, right? But I think the valuable thing that you mentioned in the story are a couple of things. First of all, what you said about the bloggers is going at them the normal, traditional route. Individuals who are in the space, they are approached a million times. And I have the same problem with music artists and producers.

I can go down and try to find them at a conference when they're getting 9,000 cards or something like that. You know what I did? I started trying to find a way to meet them in clubs and hang out at the studio because, you know, a music artist is not waking up until 2 o'clock in the afternoon because they're performing in a studio all night. So I tried to do that, of course. I think also one of the most important things you said is be nice to everybody. Mary Kay made a statement years ago, of course. Everybody's walking around with an invisible sign on them saying, make me feel important. And many people think that this whole thing of walking around with, yeah, I need to speak to the man, that's not probably going to get you as far as speaking to, I need to speak to the man.

That's not probably going to get you as far as speaking to the wife or the daughter or the kids. And many times, even with Shark Tank, something will, a product I'll have, it'll air. I'll call all my big to-do guys, hey, I want to do a deal with you. And they'll go, yeah, whatever. Let them be home in the bed with their wife watching TV and some chips, and that product then airs and she goes, oh my God, I would use that. My phone lights up the next day. So the most trusted advisors of individuals are the people they love. And make sure you're nice.

And especially even if they don't love them and they trust them like their secretaries or their doctors, these are the people that can that can say hey this is a good guy or this is a great girl so I love those stories and that that's absolutely the most amazing thing and I think that one of the last things are your transparency don't walk in the room like you know everything because when you're talking to very seasoned people there's a certain code and or language that we speak not that it's hidden but there's certain things you would say that can pick up that we know that you're talking to very seasoned people, there's a certain code and or language that we speak. Not that it's hidden, but there's certain things you would say that can pick up that we know that you're lying or we know that you don't know what you're talking about. Right.

Absolutely. So now all of a sudden you got the book deal. You meet the bloggers. The book, you know, where does the book end up in life at that point? You know, and just give us the, basically the, what grade did you get on that book? Well, you know, the book was hard to write. I still find writing really difficult. And book launches, and I constrained what I spent also.

I could have spent more, and I chose not to. I kept my expenses really tight. I mean, it was like $5,000 to $10,000, and that's mostly just flying around trying to find people. But part of the reason I kept it tight is that it required that my thinking was more precise, and it required that my thinking was unorthodox, right? So even if you can afford more, whether it's time, money, whatever, it doesn't mean you should use it, because you don't want all of that margin for error necessarily.

You want to force the hard thinking. So when the book came out, I remember I was killing myself for this book launch. And so I should also point out that the point of the four-hour workbook and all the case studies in it is that you control this currency called time and you can allocate it to things that either give you the most pleasure or the highest leverage, right? And in this case, I knew the book was going to give me the most leverage if executed well. So I was just killing myself, you know, kind of after doing an 80-20 analysis. I'm like, this is where my time is best spent. And I did, I don't know if you've, I'm sure you've probably done satellite radio tours before where you just walk in and you do like 40 radio shows in a row.

It's exhausting. And I was towards the end of the day. This was a Wednesday. I'm pretty sure it was a Wednesday. And I was just demolished. And I got a call from my editor. And I was like, hey, Heather, how's it going? I'm dead.

I'm really beat. I don't know if my brain is going to be very helpful right now. And she's like, well, hi there, Mr. New York best-selling author and i was like okay curse i was just like uh i was like heather please don't fuck with me right now i'm so tired please and she's like no you hit the list like you are you're on the extended list but you hit the list and i was just like and you know i just kind of leaned back against the wall and fell down and i was like kind of sitting there with my head in my hands, and I was like, wow.

I'd wanted it, but on some level didn't think it was going to happen. And so the first book just explodes and goes ballistic. I mean, goes completely nuts and hits the New York Times list, stays on the New York Times list for about four and a half years unbroken every week. Hits number one, gets translated into now 40-something odd languages, and still sits around

like 200 on Amazon now. The book's amazing, and obviously that's why I value your contribution for this time. You go on after that, you go and do the four-hour body, and again, bang. Yeah, of course. You go on after that. You go and do the four-hour body. Yep.

Correct. And again, bang, right? Out of there. Now, all of a sudden, you know, you decide to do exactly what you do best. You start to look at the next best opportunities where the trend and or the people are going. Right. Because, you know, as they say, you want to be where it's going to be, not where it's at now. You go do a deal, right?

And what happens with this book deal you go to do? Yeah, exactly. So like Wayne Gretzky, right? You want to go to where the puck is going to be, not where it is. And I noticed a trend where with the four-hour work week, the percentage of digital sales, e-books, was about, I'd say, 6% in the first month or two. Because the Kindle was also just becoming a thing. And then for the 4-Hour Body, it was about 25%, 30%. And I could see where the trend was going and where consumption was going of printed material.

So I had an opportunity to be the first major book acquired by Amazon Publishing, which is not self-publishing. So Amazon was and did launch Amazon Publishing, which would pay advances, recruit authors, and compete head-to-head against the big six, the Simon & Schuster's, the Random Houses, and everything. And I had a chance to be the first. And I like being first. There are a lot of risks with that.

You take a lot of arrows. If anything's going to go wrong, you're going to feel it. But I just, I love doing it. It's one of those things. That's what gets me excited. And I was like, you know, like, if that's a wave no one's surfed before, like, I want to try that. And so I decided to partner with Amazon, and it was huge news,

went out in the New York Times, everything. And I expected there to be some blowback, right? I expected there to be some issues, but man, were there a lot of issues. Barnes & Noble, somewhat expected, it boycotted the book. So no- Barnes & Noble, the biggest guys. Yeah, the big guy, like the big guy. And then a ton of other folks in the UK, Canada followed suit. Then the Indies followed suit. And then what I didn't expect was the big box guys who were also afraid of Amazon for related but different reasons, Costco, Target, Walmart, all boycotted the book. So now you're in a situation, or I was in a situation where it's like, okay, my entire

reputation the last three years of my life, and I put about three years into each book, hinges on getting this to as many people as possible. And I have effectively zero retail distribution. Now what? And I had to do a bunch of very unorthodox things to try to get it out into people's hands. So one, and there's an expression you hear sometimes in publishing, which is the hardest place to sell a book is in a bookstore. Why? Because there are a million other books. And I started reaching out to other people with large retail footprints, and Panera Bread was one of them.

And it turned out I had a lot of fans at Panera as a benefit of the first book. And so we did sort of a shock and awe campaign in New York City, specifically around all the other publishers, to fire a warning shot. And so the book distribution through Panera was done primarily in New York, but it was for the PR benefit.

Right. Because it wasn't planned to do the whole thing nationwide. And we're talking about the four-hour chef at this point. Four-hour chef, right. So we're doing four-hour chef, and we launched it with a secret menu also at Panera, where people could get slow-carb items, which means no bread. At Panera, it means bread. So we did all this simultaneously.

So I had to think about basically going back to square one because it's as if I have, almost as if I have no money because I have no retail distribution at all. No, you didn't have, it's not that you didn't have any money. You were actually negative. You had enemies. Yeah, I had enemies. Right, right. So you couldn't even, if you had money, you couldn't go into it.

Even if I had money, I couldn't buy my way into placement at the end cap. Right. In Barnes & Noble. It wouldn't happen. Right, exactly. So I was actually at a deficit. So we did a bunch of really interesting things. Basically, at the same time I took over Panera, negotiated really well and took over a portion of the taxi cabs in New York City to run a trailer for the book. And simultaneous with that, did something which cost really no money at the time,

got in touch with BitTorrent. And BitTorrent, for those people who don't know, I mean, it's a peer-to-peer file sharing network, basically. They wouldn't like that description very much, but where you can find almost anything. And they wanted to establish themselves. And this is where you have to figure out what other people want. I know you know this.

It can't just be the I need, I need, like you said. What do other people want? And I sought out people like BitTor because they want to establish themselves as a way for legitimate artists or producers to spread content to new fans. And I was like, I can be your poster boy. And I will, basically in the same pitch I gave to Crown,

when I sold my first book, I was like, I will do everything. I'm going hard. I'll go hard because I need this. So I will do everything I can to put you guys on the map with mainstream media as a legitimate source of distribution. So did a big partnership with them, a ton of content given away for free, email gates, which means we got email addresses for people who signed up to get these things for free. Long story short, it was the entire Torrent bundle, so if you see 4-Hour Chef bundle, you can still find it, was downloaded I think more than two and a half million times. Wow. And it became, at the end of the day, when we looked at it in retrospect, the number

five, I think, most downloaded Torrent of the entire year, ahead of some of the biggest musicians you've heard of. And all of these things helped drive it to number one, Wall Street Journal, hit the list, stay there, sat there for a while. And would I have sold more books if I had full retail rollout? Probably. Would it have forced me to be as innovative? Probably not. Do I regret having made the decision?

No. Exactly. And that's it. And I think you are the epitome and you sum it all up. I mean, the lessons, the takeaways from there are two things. Number one is people believe that after they get to a certain stage in life, or if they get to that certain stage in life, they're not going to have roadblocks and obstacles.

So whether you're Steve Jobs who was fired over at Apple to a certain stage in life, or if they get to that certain stage in life, they're not going to have roadblocks and obstacles. Right. So whether you're Steve Jobs who was fired over at Apple or you're Bill Gates and the government is coming after you for this to try to choke you or you're Donald Trump and you leverage too much of your properties or you're Daymond John and after FUBU goes they go, oh, that was just a fad. People don't like baggy jeans. Oh, it's never going to happen again. Don't think that it's ever going

to stop. Actually, the more successful you become, the more haters you get. Yeah, you just trade up. You just trade up the haters, right? But also, what you also have really showed me and everybody who's watching is at whatever level you get,

you have to roll up your sleeves and you have to dig in deep and you yourself have to do it whatever level you get you have to roll up your sleeves and you have to dig in deep and you yourself have to do it if you think you're going to allocate it to everybody else and the whole idea about being a boss and the owners to sit home and do this and that i don't believe that success is going to follow that so you go ahead and break all the records and of course the book goes off to doing uh really really impressive numbers and it's still out there and you know i just want to sum this all up because, first of all, here's where I find you amazing. I find the fact that you find new and viable veins to go out there and push your agenda as well as enrich people's lives because if you really look at not only how you've gotten there what you've put out is probably the most valuable thing uh that we have in our lives there's only

three things that really can um help us in life or hurt us it's and it's time it's your health and it's your nutrition and they're all married. And if any one of those three fall, you can't be successful. And I'm not talking about success is necessarily going to be money. You can't have a productive life as a father, a mother, a child, a loved one, and or you can't have success. So first of all, that's valuable, and I really urge everybody who's watching this too, please, please read the books, and I am a huge fan of it. I'm just going to sum it up with some of the other things that Tim has done, and this is going to be very, very short.

But Tim is an investor and advisor in things such as, you may have heard of him, Facebook, Shopify, Uber, Evernote, AngelList, Twitter, and the list goes on. I will list everything and every way that you can really check out Tim's materials. And I'm a big fan of his. Thank you, Tim, for hanging out with me. And I really did learn things. I'm a student of life, man. Thank you. Thank you. This is great. I appreciate it, man. Thank you, man. Hey, guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is five bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And

five bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the, uh, the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to 4hourworkweek.com. That's 4hourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one.

And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it.