The Tim Ferriss Show - #170: Shay Carl — From Manual Laborer to 2.3 Billion YouTube Views

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Starting point is 00:03:21 In this episode, we have Shay Carl. At Shay Carl on the Twitter. That's S-H-A-Y-C-A-R-L, who got his first computer at age 27. He was a manual laborer for ages and uploaded his first YouTube video while on break from a granite countertop job. Now let's flash forward to today. His Shay Tard's YouTube channel now has roughly 2.3 billion views with a B. Celebs like Steven Spielberg have appeared alongside Shay and his family. He has five kids and has been married for, I believe, 13 years. He co-founded Maker Studios, which sold to Disney for nearly $1 billion. And he's also lost more than a hundred pounds

Starting point is 00:04:01 since his peak of being overweight. And we dig into all of this. She came to San Francisco to spend two days with me. We did a bunch of weird stuff together. A lot of firsts for She, a Russian bath house, acroyoga, et cetera. And we covered a ton. We actually broke this up into a couple of segments. We covered not limited to the following, but including the following, the most important decisions and inflection points in his life,

Starting point is 00:04:29 tools of the trade and tips for creating on YouTube gear as well. Favorite books, quotes, et cetera, that he lives by stories. He's never shared anywhere else before and much more. So I hope you enjoy this conversation with yours truly and Shay Carl. And just one last caveat. We do get into some religion in this one, and I'm not a particular religious person, but I've had staunch atheists on this podcast. I find their reasons and reasoning very interesting. And we have had a number of religious people on the podcast, including Shay, and I find the discussion equally interesting. So develop your empathy if you're allergic to that type of thing and try to listen to this tutorial and take as much as you can possible from it. And with that said, please enjoy.

Starting point is 00:05:14 Shay, welcome to the show. Wow, I'm here. Thank you, Tim. It's so great to have you here. And I don't know the best way to introduce you. So I'm just going to read off a couple of bullets because I think your story is so fascinating. All right. So here we go. Bought your first computer in 2007. Dell laptop when you were 27 years old. Found YouTube while on Blake.

Starting point is 00:05:35 That's going back to my Japanese roots. It actually does happen when I'm tired. I used to live there. So chill out, people. While on break at my manual labor, that's your manual labor, granite countertop job. And you've noticed a lot of things about my kitchen and house since you've gotten here. So your attention to detail is something we'll touch on. I bet I'm the only one who got underneath your kitchen countertops and was looking at how they mounted the sink.

Starting point is 00:05:57 You are the only, the one and only. You also noticed the handrails. Then you posted your very first video on YouTube, August 16th, 2007. That was a big year for me too. Got your first check from YouTube four months later for 300 bucks. Now I'm just going to flash forward here. As of this moment, the Shaytards YouTube channel has 4.2 million subscribers that have been watched a combined 2.3 billion times.

Starting point is 00:06:20 And you're also one of the dozen co-founders of Maker Studios, which sold to Walt Disney Corp for $1 billion? Yeah, I think they settled on $650 million towards the end, but we can call it $1 billion. Lots of commas. Lots of commas. Yeah. Regardless. And what a story, man. I am thrilled to have you here. We met, I guess, first connected on the internets, on on Twitter and then met in person unexpectedly for the first time at the White House. That was weird. That was weird. We met at a Starbucks is the first place we met. That's right. On route. Well, the first way I found out about your podcast is through Joe Rogan. I've been a fan of his. I watched Fear Factor, love Joe Rogan.

Starting point is 00:07:02 But because my brother is, he has a hunting channel on YouTube called Hush, hunting fish. So Joe Rogan is big into hunting. And because of that, I started listening to the Joe Rogan podcast, or I think I followed him. And then he tweeted the Jocko podcast. He's like, you got to check out this Jocko Willick podcast on the Tim Ferriss thing, or whatever. I'm like, who's Tim Ferriss? I had heard about the four-hour work week because I had a guy that was in church growing up or just like right when I came home from my mission that talked about your book. But I'm like, let me check out this podcast. So I listened to the Jocko podcast and was like amazed not only by him, but by you and the people that you've had on your podcast. And so we were talking,

Starting point is 00:07:48 DMing through Twitter about, you know, being on the podcast. And I was like, no way, because you asked me to be on your podcast. And then you had Jamie Foxx, Kevin Costner, like, I'm like, how am I going to be on this podcast? And so finally we linked up and you're like, okay, let's set a date. And then like the next day I got invited to go to the white house to meet with Joe Biden. And then we were meeting with everybody who was going to meet. And I walk in. And it was like such a weird thing because I had just been thinking about you. I'm like, I think that's Tim Ferriss right there. He's walking over here.

Starting point is 00:08:15 Hey, Tim Ferriss, does he know me? And it was weird. It was weird to see you after having just communicated about being on the podcast. So I think all things happen for a reason. But that's a cool first place to meet is the White House. No, it is. It is. Yeah, our first date was at the White House.

Starting point is 00:08:31 Now, in fact, one of my coolest Instagram videos ever is you in it when we were about to walk out on the stage with Joe Biden. And I had just luckily pulled out my camera right as the guy's like, and the vice president of the United States of America. And Joe Biden had asked us to walk out on stage with him against the wishes of the secret service. Do you remember that moment? I do remember. When Joe Biden's like, I want these

Starting point is 00:08:54 people to come with me. Is that cool? And they're like, well, actually, sir, you have to meet. He's like, that's not what I asked. And they're like, yes, sir, you can do whatever you want. You're the vice president. So he invited us to walk out on stage with him. And I lucked out and hit record on the Instagram video right as they're announcing the vice president of the United States of America. And then we go walking out with him. And you're in that Instagram video. It has like 200,000 views on it.

Starting point is 00:09:17 So that's a very monumental Instagram video for me to have been announced by the president. And then we walked out together. So you seem to have lived many lives in one, and I'd like to start at the very, very beginning. If you can talk about it, Shea Carl, what's the story behind your name? So my name is my name. I am Shea Carl Butler. That's my full name. My dad's name is Carl Scott Butler. And when I very first found the internet, the very first interaction I had on the internet was to get a Hotmail email account.

Starting point is 00:09:52 And for some reason, I think it's because of college, when I went to ISU, Idaho State University in southeastern Idaho, go Bengals, you had to have a student log in, right? And it was your first letter of your first name and then like the last four letters of your last name. So I always kind of figured that's how you had to name yourself on the internet is just like your name. So I'm like, I'll just call myself Shay Carl.

Starting point is 00:10:15 That's my first and middle name. And I just kind of push them together. Shay Carl at Hotmail. Do not email me. I do not check that email anymore. And that was my very first account, SheaCarl at Hotmail.com. So when I started my YouTube channel, I thought, well, I don't know what a good username is. Maybe I'll just use my email name. Shea Carl, that's my name. Why not?

Starting point is 00:10:37 So that was my very first moniker on the internet was youtube.com slash Shay Carl. And that's my very first YouTube channel that I started in 2007 on a little $500 Dell laptop that I bought at 27 because I figured I'm an adult now I should get a computer and do adult things. And so yeah, it was you know, not and I say this too about Shay tards, the main channel that we have, it wasn't my best marketing decision. It was all kind of like discovery as it happened, right? I didn't think like, oh, I'm going to have 4.3 million subscribers one day. What's a good name to have? I just thought, I want to make a video.

Starting point is 00:11:14 I have some things to say. So yeah, Shay Carl is my first and middle name. It's funny with these first forays into digital worlds or really any type of business world even though you might not recognize it as such at the time is the implications of those first handles so i remember hearing and i don't know if this is the handle any longer but travis kalanick co-founder of uber when he got on twitter like a lot of people were like oh this twitter thing whatever like i'll just make up a username so it was t Tebowincona, I think, was his username. And for years and years and years, he had to stick with it or he chose to stick with it.

Starting point is 00:11:50 I think it's changed since. But if we go back to your childhood, you were raised Mormon. Is that correct? Correct. Yeah. So my grandfather, Colonel Eugene Haynes Butler, he was in the United States Air Force, told us many stories about Vietnam and napalm and the power of that gas. He was born just Christian and was kind of searching for something and was in Germany, stationed in Germany. I can't remember

Starting point is 00:12:25 what year, but ended up finding some Mormon missionaries there. The name of the church is officially the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But the nickname Mormons comes from the Book of Mormon, which, thanks to Trey and Matt, have popularized that book quite a bit. If you've heard about the play on Broadway, The Book of Mormon. So that's kind of like a nickname, The Mormons. But yeah, I was raised because my grandpa was baptized in Germany and started practicing. And then he raised his family, my dad, specifically in the church. And then I was as well. I was born in Logan, Utah, 1980, March 5th, 1980, Piscesces as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of

Starting point is 00:13:07 Latter-day Saints. In fact, I was born in the hospital that was 50 feet across the street from the Mormon temple, the Logan, Utah temple. And yeah, kind of was raised in that, going to scouts, going to church. We weren't super... mom and dad, if there was like a playoff game, if the jazz were playing, we might miss, you know, but, um, we definitely went and I don't, you know, it's so hard in hindsight to think about your childhood because you have such a skewed perspective of it. And it's weird to look back on it later, but I felt like my parents weren't super passionate about it. They knew it was right, and I feel like they felt an obligation as parents to do what was right for your kids,

Starting point is 00:13:51 and that was to go to church. And in many ways, I'm very grateful because there was so much that I learned. Ron Campbell, for instance, was my young men's president from the age of 12 to 16 in the Mormon church. you're, you know, you're in this thing called young men's. And he was like a pillar of like who I wanted to become in life. Like there are men like that, that I have met through the Mormon church that I have been like, I want to be like that guy. 12 to 16 is a really important period. Very much so. So what, could you explain the organization, first of all? Well, it's all, okay, so like, in the church, you know, we believe that you can receive the

Starting point is 00:14:30 power of God, which is called the priesthood. And, you know, it might be from any, you know, church that you go, you kind of, you know, you reach certain levels. So at 12 years old, you receive the Aaronic Priesthood. And when you receive that, then you can do things like service. The priesthood of God, we believe, is only for the service of men. So... The Aaronic priesthood. And when you receive that, then you can do things like service. The priesthood of God, we believe, is only for the service of men. The Aaronic priesthood? Yeah, it's like the priesthood of Aaron from the Old Testament. Oh, got it. I think I was misspelling it incorrectly in my head. It's not ironic.

Starting point is 00:14:56 No, no, no. Yeah, the priesthood of Aaron, the Aaronic priesthood. But at that early age, you start to serve the sacrament, like the bread and water, to remember Christ and his body and his sacrifice. And then there's specific things that it says that you can do, which is to bless the sick. And basically, it's an organization. I can't go through all the setup of it. But every Sunday, we have church. And there's three hours. Mormon church is three hours.

Starting point is 00:15:27 The first hour is what is called the sacrament meeting, where all the congregation meets together. And the main purpose of that meeting is to remember Christ, to have the bread, have the water. And there's no paid ministry in the church. Everybody's volunteer. So the bishop of the ward, or what you might know as like the priest or the whatever, the guy who's up at the pulpit in charge, he's a volunteer. He might be a dentist or an accountant or whatever. And he has a calling to serve in the bishopric for anywhere from three to five years. And then he's released and then he becomes a regular member of the church. So there's different teachers. And for the 12 to 16-year-olds,

Starting point is 00:16:10 there's what's called, we call it young men's president. And we had a guy named Ron Campbell, who was an older man who had a business. And for one hour, the young men would meet with him and we'd have lessons. One hour per week. Yeah, every Sunday. And then there was also a thing called mutual, which is like on Tuesday nights, we would meet at seven o'clock and do different activities. A lot of times we just play basketball at the church, which was our favorite activity. But it was all very interrelated to scouts, the scouting program, Boy Scouts of America specifically. And that's not affiliated with the Mormon Church, but the Mormon Church sees a lot of value, I think, in the Boy Scouts program. And so it's very ingrained in the culture to get your Eagle Scout. I remember hearing like,

Starting point is 00:16:49 when you go for a job interview one day, and it's between you and another guy, and you have your Eagle Scout, you're the one that's going to get the job. And so that became a big priority growing up, like you got to get your Eagle. And that was, you know, advancing through tenderfoot, first class, second class, all the way up until you received your Eagle Scout, which you had to do this big project at the end of it. That was kind of like the final test to becoming an Eagle Scout is you know, some very real motivating people in my life that were saying, hey, pay attention. Like these decisions that you make matter. You know, you need to, you know, begin with the end in mind in a sense where you need to think about what your decisions do right now. In fact, early on, I remember talking about in these weekly meetings about making good choices in life and about not making the choice when it happens, but making the choice right now.

Starting point is 00:17:51 Right. I remember being in those lessons. It's like, make the decision right now so that when you're faced with it, you've already made that decision. And I think that's just general good advice as far as thinking about an eternal perspective, right? Like, try to suck out of your life where you're in your mind so much. What I mean by suck out is like, pull out. Like, elevate where you're looking down. Become a third party or observer of your own thoughts, of your own actions. You know, and that sometimes I think helps me live in the now where you're concerned about yesterday and you're worried about tomorrow.

Starting point is 00:18:31 If I'm able to kind of like step out of my body in a sense and look at myself as my own devil's advocate and be honest, you know, because a lot of us I think are not honest with ourselves. We lie to ourselves. We like, maybe sometimes we're honest like there we know that there's something that we're struggling with and we don't want to stop that thing or we don't want to admit that we have that weakness and so even within our own psyche even with our own minds we're unable to be like hey

Starting point is 00:19:02 shea i'm talking to you bro shea you should maybe consider this, you know? And so I think, to me, that's we lived before we were born and that we were conscious spirits that knew that we were going to come to this earth, that knew that this was going to be a testing ground, that knew that we were going to be paired up with a physical body. I believe our spirits are a real thing. I believe that our spirits are just a finer matter that can mesh with denser matter, like our bodies, our bones, our tissue. And that when we die, those spirits separate from our bodies. And then the gospel of Jesus Christ is that we will be resurrected and that that spirit will then again mesh with an eternal, uncorruptible, physical being of bone and flesh. And so thinking about that, it's helped me make life decisions where I'm like, well, I'm not just thinking about what does that girl think about me or do I look cool in these shoes?

Starting point is 00:20:12 I'm thinking, you know, I'm going somewhere. I came from someplace and I'm going to go somewhere someday. So I need to think about every single decision I make, every thought that I have with that kind of plan in mind. Well, I think it has a sort of built-in long-term perspective, right? And one of the things that I'd like to underscore that you just mentioned is deciding how you're going to react before you have to react. In other words, this is very much along the lines of something I remember hearing from Tony Robbins, who was talking about marriage and fidelity and so on. And he said, you can't just have faith in your relationship

Starting point is 00:20:58 and assume you're always going to respond in the best interest of your relationship. You have to decide what types of temptations are going to respond in the best interest of your relationship. You have to decide what types of temptations are going to exist, what the exact situations are that might present themselves, and decide in advance how you're going to respond in those exact circumstances, as opposed to just crossing your fingers and hoping that it's all smooth sailing. Right. And so I want to talk about a transitionary period. Maybe it's a transitionary period. So 19 to 21.

Starting point is 00:21:28 Actually, before I get there, I forgot to follow up on Mr. Campbell. So were there any specific things that he taught you or specific characteristics that he had that made you want to model him? Yes. The best way to describe it is like, imagine Santa Claus. Imagine sitting down and hanging out with Santa Claus, right? Santa Claus is a wise soul who's seen a thing or two, and he's generous, right? He's super, like nothing gets under Santa Claus's skin. To me, that's what Ron Campbell was. The guy could tell a story, first of all, like he was raised on a farm, and he would tell us story after story of moving pipe.

Starting point is 00:22:08 If you've ever been on a farm, you know that you got to move the pipe to water the crops. And so there's, you know, these 20 foot long steel pipes with the water runs through that you have to pick up and move, you know, 10 to 20 feet over to the next furrow where the water didn't reach.

Starting point is 00:22:30 And so he would just tell us these random stories of moving pipe and guys that he worked with on the farm racing across who could move pipe the fastest. And he just had this ability to captivate us boys. And there's always lessons in the Mormon church. If you go to any Mormon church in the world, tomorrow or on Sunday, you'll have the exact same lesson if you're in Ethiopia or if you're in Salt Lake or if you're in Atlanta or Guatemala. All the curriculum for the 16 million members of the church is exactly the same.

Starting point is 00:22:58 Yeah. So it's like when I first moved to LA, all of my Los Angeles friends were like, did you find a church you like? And it's like, oh, we just went to the one that's in our geographical boundary because the church is all broken up into geographical areas. So it's like, if you live from in between main street and center street, then you're in this ward. And so anywhere in the world you can go, the curriculum is exactly the same anywhere. Main street and center street. This is another thing that made me think

Starting point is 00:23:25 of some of my trips to Idaho and Utah. Just the way that the city is laid out itself. Salt Lake specifically, Brigham Young set it up so it's like easy. It's like first, second, third.

Starting point is 00:23:35 So I can just tell you an address and you can immediately find it just if you can know how to count, basically. Yeah, yeah. So where were we going? We were talking about campbell and his ability to captivate all right tell stories and um and he was just such a generous

Starting point is 00:23:51 guy like he would do things like we would go on these high adventures and he would do he was a successful businessman so he would be like let's buy a parasail because he had a water ski boat right so for one of our audience he bought this parasail that you hook up to a back of a boat and then you get a harness in and then you hit and you go above the boat but he had no idea how to work it so he had us and all of the scouts trying to figure out how to work this parasail and for the first four times we had it upside down we're like dragging people into the ground because the parasail was flipped around. And finally we're like, what if we flipped it over? And sure enough, we popped up just like that. But he was the kind of guy that's like,

Starting point is 00:24:29 here's the jet skis, here's the parasail, go have fun. And don't break anything, which we always did. And when we lost his water ski rope, he was cool with it. He was just a guy that was, like I said, like Santa Claus, that had wisdom, that was forgiving, that was kind, but also knew that you had to work hard, that you had to apply yourself, that you had to make good decisions, that you had to have a purposeful definition of what you want your life to be. Just like you were talking about Tony Robbins. I know what I want my marriage to be like. I also know that I'm a dude who thinks chicks are hot, right? So it's like, how am I going to be married to this one girl forever if I like to look at other girls' boobs?

Starting point is 00:25:08 And not like I'm that kind of guy, but I'm just saying, dudes, if you're honest and you see a nice pair of boobs out there, you're going to glance at them. So how do I consciously think about that right now and make a decision to turn away? Or maybe to appreciate that nice set of cleavage that you got, but I don't have to stare at it. I don't have to og at it. I don't have to like ogle over it or something, you know? So I'm a huge believer in you can literally do anything you want if you create it in your mind first. I love James Allen.

Starting point is 00:25:39 As a Man Thinketh is one of my favorite books where I think we so undervalue the power of thought. Every single thing in human existence was a thought first. These microphones, this couch, anything we enjoy in the natural, things that are amazing, the Hyperloop. Elon Musk is landing rockets in the ocean. He had an idea to do that first. So if you're going to be naive to the fact that you can think about bad things and not do bad things, you're in for a lot of pain in your life. You have to control your mind. You have to control... Meaning if you're running on the fuel of negative thinking, that will manifest itself externally. And people think that's mumbo jumbo, the power of thought,

Starting point is 00:26:26 what the secret, all that kind of stuff where it's like, oh, come on, give me some real, like what are some real tips and tricks? To me, it's the cliches. I'll side note real quick.

Starting point is 00:26:40 When I was exercising and losing weight, I was 280 pounds. I decided to run the Los Angeles Marathon, I was 280 pounds. I decided to run the Los Angeles marathon. I lost a hundred pounds and I ran the Los Angeles marathon and I've since run four other marathons. So when I was doing that, because I'm a YouTuber, because I have a big audience that watches my videos, as I was losing this weight, as a YouTuber, you're constantly thinking of like, how can I tell my audience about this? I had, I think at the point I had lost like 40 pounds. I was riding my bike up and down the Santa Monica pier every day or the boardwalk there from

Starting point is 00:27:09 Venice to Santa Monica. And I had lost like 40 or 50 pounds just riding my bike every day, drinking a lot of water, eating fruits and vegetables, all that stuff. That's like, if you're going to lose weight, what do you do? You exercise, you eat right, you get good sleep, you drink water. And I was doing all that and I had lost 50 pounds. And so one bike ride one day, I'm like, what am I going to tell my audience? Like, I'm excited to make a video to tell people like, guys, I just hit 50 pounds. And I'm like, what can I say? I'm like, well, what have I been doing? I've been exercising. I've been reading like health books. I've been eating fruits and vegetables. And I'm like, I can't say that. If I make a video and tell people to do that, they'll be like, oh, those are just cliches. But I was like, well, that's what's working. That's what I'm doing.

Starting point is 00:27:50 And so I, on this bike ride, I remember exactly where I was. I thought to myself, the secrets to life are hidden behind the word cliche. So anytime that you hear a thing that you think is a cliche, my tip to you is to perk your ears up and listen more carefully Because the second that a cliche is being spoken a truth is being spoken now There can be cliches and other things too, but It's so simple that we make it too difficult. Yeah, like think happy thoughts Then you'll be happy and most people like are like, bullshit, that can't happen. I'm like, yeah, it's not going to work for you because you've got a shitty attitude.

Starting point is 00:28:31 But if you can just mentally strengthen yourself, if you can mentally say, this is the life I want, this is the kind of person I want to be, really be this kind of person. There's a doctrine in my church that teaches that when we die, we're not going to communicate with these words anymore. I'm going to be able to know exactly what's in your mind. You're not going to be able to hide anything from me, for instance. You got to clean it up before you make this switch. Yeah, you got to get ready now because you're going to meet some people for the very first time that you've known your entire life. Think about meeting somebody in a realm where you know all of their intentions you know exactly how

Starting point is 00:29:06 they feel that's going to be a different person to you right so the goal in this earth life is to become that person who you say you are right now um because i believe whether you believe in god or not like that's going to happen like isn't a text message just me sending you a thought i'm just like adding some letters and shooting it through the air. Eventually, I believe, you know, and we can get into this too with technology that we'll be able to just, you know, telepathy will be a real thing where we, okay, for instance, NDEs, near-death experiences. You get on the internet, you just type in NDE or you look up near-death experiences. A majority of those people say that when they died or they were on the other side,

Starting point is 00:29:48 they felt that this Christ-like person or this God person or whoever it was knew them. They could not hide a single solitary thing. Like they just knew every single thing about them. So hearing that and reading about that, I'm like, well, I better get my stuff together now and really be that person because eventually you're going to have to be and you're not gonna be able to hide anything. And I think that's what the internet's doing. I think especially with the election, you know, like the presidential election, it's like, we see who these people are, right? Like you can't hide. Remember back when Clinton was running and he's like i didn't inhale yeah you know we talked about marijuana it's like so that's okay you just put pot smoke in your mouth you know but it's like think about where we're at today like if somebody's like like obama at his recent uh white house correspondence dinner made a joke about being high in in college i haven't been this high since college yeah that's right deciding my major so it's like how have we gone from you know like bill clinton

Starting point is 00:30:46 smoked marijuana to we're just more transparent now i feel like and i feel like that's a good thing um the internet i've said this before is making the world a glass ball where we can see each other um you know these leaders and countries in the corner of the earth have been able to do horrible things to their people for decades but now now that we have the internet, we're like, hey, wait a minute, you can't do that. And because of that, we have to be more honest as a society, as individuals. And that comes into question too with what I do with my daily vlogging. Is it safe? Is it sociologically responsible to put so much of your life on the internet but i just i guess on that tangent is really becoming the person who you say you are and think about what if everybody knew all of your thoughts yeah i saw this billboard

Starting point is 00:31:40 uh so this billboard new york city that, be the person your dog thinks you are. There's a saying that I've heard about, you can tell the character of a man by how his dog and his kids react to him. Because dogs and kids are honest, right? So if you know somebody whose their dog is afraid of them and their kids are afraid of them, you know their character. Yeah. So that's a little aspect of becoming really who you say

Starting point is 00:32:07 you are because dogs and kids know who you really are so i want to ask a question about behavioral modification and thought control in a sense let's say that you wake up on a given morning and you're not feeling like your your optimistic self. For whatever reason, you're just in a pissy mood. And things are looking a little darker around the edges. What do you do to correct that? What's the internal dialogue? What are the rituals? Right.

Starting point is 00:32:35 Because that happens. And I'm known on the internet for saying, happiness is a choice. You can choose to be happy. And that's actually something that I've learned through vlogging, where because I've said, I'm going to make a video every single day for a year. When I turned 29 years old, this is kind of how I really got my internet following, is I came out and I said, I'm going to do a daily vlog, 365 videos. How far after your first video was that? That was, I guess, two years?

Starting point is 00:33:04 It was about a year and a half. A year and a half in. You know, and like when I very first started YouTube in 2007, it was just like, well, I have a video. Let me upload that and see how it does. What was the first video? The very first video I uploaded, you can go on my Shay Carl channel.

Starting point is 00:33:16 It's actually, now that I think about it, it's me and my brother and my brother-in-law singing happy birthday to my mom after sucking helium balloons. We all like doused like down three helium balloons and then saying happy 50th birthday to my mom. I think that was the very first one. But the real first video I think is me dancing around in a unitard. My wife had this old unitard that I had found. And I come out into the living room like, look what I found. And we had this little digital camera.

Starting point is 00:33:45 And she just thought it'd be funny to pick it up and turn it onto the video mode and record me doing this as almost like blackmail material. And then when I found out about YouTube, I was like, what videos do I have? I'm like, oh, yeah, Colette has that blackmail video of me in a unitard. I'm going to put that on the internet. Now, what was your job at the time? At the time, I was a granite counter fabricator. I know we're bouncing around, but what possessed you to record and put that video up?

Starting point is 00:34:13 In other words, have you always been a performer since a young age? Yeah, I was definitely a class clown type. It's so funny, your story comes back to you as you live more of your life but there's my grandpa had this old vhs camcorder and i used to always love to film people with that thing i'd throw in a vhs tape into the side just like a vcr yeah put that thing on my shoulder like i was working at the news channel and I would just film around the house. And I still haven't done this, but I know there are hours of like times where I have the camera in my mom's face and she's like putting her hand in the lens saying, turn the camera off, Shay, like so annoyed that I'm just filming her when she's pissed off. So I want to go make a montage

Starting point is 00:34:59 where I take all of that and it's just like, turn the camera off, turn the camera off. So yeah, my dad always used to say that I should be a lawyer because i was good at arguing i just i've always liked to talk i guess and i've always uh you know i guess i have been that class clown type so when youtube came along i was like i can do that i can talk like that the first guy i found was philip defranco yeah who maybe you know phil he's been on joe rogan's podcast um he kind of really got me into the world of youtube and i i watched phil's like when i first found him how old was he at the time maybe he was young he's just he's like the baby-faced assassin no he's so young and i'm like this kid that's what i remember thinking i'm like he's a kid who has a tv show type thing i'm doing

Starting point is 00:35:39 air quotes here um that has 60 000 people that subscribe to it. And for all that I can tell, he's doing this all by himself. And he had that iMovie intro music, like he had made this little intro where he acted like he was picking up a phone. How did you meet him? So I found Philip DeFranco the first night I ever got on YouTube. I got this computer. I got it set up. It was bedtime. My wife's going to bed. I'm like, I'm just going to get on the internet here. I found Philip DeFranco that night. And I was like, oh, there's people that are hanging out here talking. And so I just subscribed to him that first night. And I'm like, I can talk like him. Right after that, maybe two

Starting point is 00:36:23 or three days later, he came out with a video called How to Get a Popular Online Show or Series. Then he had a contest where he wanted his audience to submit videos, and then he was going to pick his favorite three, and then those three were going to get voted on in the website. And then he would promote that person to help them get more subscribers. So at the time, I was doing Granite Countertops, but I was also a radio DJ in the sense that I was calling into the radio studio every morning when they did trivia and just trying to get on the radio. I would call in and just annoy the DJs. And I would just hit redial, redial, redial. And I would get through at least once every morning.

Starting point is 00:37:00 So I have to stop you for a second. So my sport my sport when i've never i don't think i've told anybody this my sport when i had my pretty shitty i mean just in terms of like draining first job out of college when i was commuting in my my mom's hand-me-down minivan you know with the seat that the seats got stolen from it was so depressing. I would listen to, I think it was Sirius Radio, and I would call in the entire commute when I was stuck in traffic on 101 trying to do the exact same thing. Just trying to get on the radio. And it was cool to me, just like the conversation, right? Like you're in your car, you're listening to these guys talk. And I think everybody in their car does that where they're like, well, I have something to say about this, but nobody thinks to call in and try to like become part of the conversation.

Starting point is 00:37:48 And the reason I did that is because we were on the job. Like we were the granite guys in the shop, you know, polishing granite. We had the radio on. So every morning at 10 AM, when they did the trivia, we'd all be like, call into the radio station. And I got through so many times that they gave me a nickname and the program director of the radio he said listen if you stop calling in in the mornings i'll give you your own segment on saturdays and so i got to my what was your nickname so well okay so the trivia um it was called the answer is never dirty so the the trivia question would be like, 20% of women like this in bed. And you'd be like, oh, what is it? But the answer would be like silk sheets or something that wasn't dirty. But the question always sounded dirty. So you never knew

Starting point is 00:38:34 what the right answer was on the first, you know, when they ask the question, it's like you guess and they give you hints and then slowly people get the right answer. So the first guess was always a total guess. So one day we called in and we just said croquet. We thought, and I thought like croquet would be funny as the answer, like the sport of croquet. Cause who knows what the answer is. And so then every morning we just thought it'd be funny if we altered it about croquet something. So like the question might be like 30% of dudes said they like this before going on dates. And I would call and be like, um, is it read croquet weeklyquet weekly you know just like some stupid thing about the game of wickets yeah you know and so they started calling me croquet shay it's like oh croquet shay's on the line again and it was just

Starting point is 00:39:15 this random enough thing that i did enough where i got this name called croquet shay and then two of the djs were annoyed by me so the the program director's like, listen, we'll give you your own gig as a judge. We have to keep the animals separate. Yeah. There's like, you got to quit calling in. But they had another segment called Doghouse Wednesday, where couples would call in and say why they were in trouble with their significant others. And he said, I'll give you a job as one of the judges who gets to talk for like 90 seconds on the radio and explain why they thought which person was in the deepest doghouse. Right. So that was like my very first gig in the entertainment world. And at the time, I still had a job at the granite counter business. So like every Fridays or whenever they did the doghouse thing, I would have to like go out and hide. I had to hide from my boss while I was on

Starting point is 00:40:00 the radio. I'd be like, I'm going to go on the radio. And all of my co-workers knew. And it became this weird thing. Anyway, so then that's how I got into radio. I was a judge on Doghouse Wednesday, did well on that. And then when a weekend spot from the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday weekend position for the DJ was opened, the program director, Brad, is like, do you want this job? It only pays $8.50 an hour, but you can be on the radio four hours a night. And I was like, yes. And I would have to drive like an hour round trip, 30 minutes to the studio, 30 minutes back to get paid $32. And gas was like $20 or whatever, just to be on the radio. And so that was my first session into entertainment. And this goes back to the question. So you were like 28? I was, yep, about 28, 28 and a half.

Starting point is 00:40:47 Got it. When I was a DJ at Z 103, Idaho's number one hit music channel. Coming up next, we got Purpose by Justin Bieber. So I did that for a while. And I loved doing that. I loved, my favorite thing was being the guy on Friday nights at 5 PM when it's like, guess what, bitches? It's the weekend. Come on, what are you going to do this weekend? And I was like the party guy. I was the rally behind, it's the weekend and it's time to have a good time. Because I had just come from that, I was working from 6 a.m. to 6 at night at the granite shop. I was working 12 hours a day,

Starting point is 00:41:22 Monday through Friday, knowing what it felt like to celebrate Friday afternoons and then to detest Monday mornings. So, all right. So on the detesting point, I took us off the reservation, which was great because that was a fantastic story on thought control or improving happiness by way of choice. And you said you learned that through daily vlogging. Yes. So like being a radio DJ, when you get on the mic, you got to have some level of enthusiasm, right? You can't be like,

Starting point is 00:41:55 hey, Idaho's number one hit music channel. Check out this new song. You know, like that's going to be boring. Nobody's going to listen to that. So right, waking up as a human being, sometimes I'm in a bad mood. Sometimes I'm frustrated. Sometimes I feel like crap. And for whatever reason, we all go through it. We all wake up feeling like total crap. And like, you hate everybody, like, screw it. I don't care. You want to burn everything down.

Starting point is 00:42:18 Like, I feel that too. Like, I want to tear everything up and punch people. Like, I have that anger inside of me as well. I think some people like, Oh, well it's easy for you. It's not. I think people don't realize that everybody suffers whether, you know, some people put on a better show than others. It depends. But what I found is knowing that I had to do a daily vlog, knowing that I had to like vlog myself, even in those bad moods, I found myself turning the camera on. Sounds a lot like flog. I don't know. I was flogging myself. It's very painful.

Starting point is 00:42:51 No, I would sit up straight. I would take a deep breath. I would smile. And I would turn the camera on and be like, hey, guys, what's going on? Shay, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And whatever I did, I would turn the camera off. And then all of a sudden, I would feel better. That's a really cool point. And not just like I feel better, but physiologically I could feel my body was different. And there's studies that if you sit up straight, if you, if you breathe deep, if you smile, if you just,

Starting point is 00:43:16 I have a thing where like, I'll just look in the mirror and this might sound really crazy. I'll just look in the mirror and just laugh at myself. And almost break down this wall of being so pretentious about not being able to be silly. I think there's a great power in being silly. I think there's a great power in not taking things so seriously. And so by just sitting up straight, putting a smile on my face, and kind of faking it till you make it, you actually do feel better. There's real power in this. And there's research to support that too. There are studies to support it. There's a great TED talk on blanking on the woman's name, blonde hair,

Starting point is 00:43:53 short kind of bob haircut, who talks about posture and looking at self-reported sort of averages of say, well-being and so on, which would correlate to this. Quick side note on being silly, because I think you're very good not only at improving your own mood, but improving other people's moods around you. So everybody should go to twitter.com forward slash Shay Carl and look at the profile pic. And now with that in mind, I'm going to segue to what happens at the TSA when you show them your ID? Because I've seen it. You showed me. So funny story. Me and my buddy, Kasim G, who's a comedian on the internet and not a chipper guy. He's like one of my friends who just hates going in public with me because I

Starting point is 00:44:46 like to talk to everybody and try to make people laugh. And he's, I found that comedians are darker people, you know? Yeah. It's very, very typical. I think,

Starting point is 00:44:55 uh, comedians, cartoonists, uh, writers less so, but still a fair percentage. It's like they use their comedy to kind of, it's like a therapy for some,

Starting point is 00:45:06 you know, other deep things that they're dealing with. I don't know. I'm not trying to psychoanalyze comedians, but that's his type, right? Like he doesn't like people. It doesn't like anything,

Starting point is 00:45:14 but he likes motorcycles and like cars and stuff. So we got some deal with Harley Davidson, who's like, Hey, we want to pay for you guys to go through motorcycle school. We're going to give you motorcycles. We're going to give you motorcycles we're going to give you motorcycle jackets and because we're social influencers there was no money exchange it was just like you're cool we're cool you ride our bikes and you know tweet a picture every once in a while me and casper

Starting point is 00:45:37 like sweet so we went through this two-week motorcycle training course we got our motorcycle licenses we went to the the californ California DMV, which is never a pleasant experience. And finally... Because you were living in LA? Yeah, I was living in Venice Beach at the time. And so finally, we take the test, all that stuff. It's me and Kasim. This is our final thing till we get our motorcycle licenses and we can actually go out and ride. And it's time for the picture, right? So Kasim's standing there. And right as I go up to take the picture, he goes, don't do anything stupid.

Starting point is 00:46:07 Like, knowing that I'm going to, right? And I can actually, maybe we can scan my license. Because my license is a fair representation. Yeah, we'll put it. We'll blur out anything that needs blurring. And then we'll put it in the show notes. So I did this crazy face. Just like, he's like, smile.

Starting point is 00:46:22 And I'm just like, deer in the headlights, smile, giant eyeballs, knowing that they're going to make me retake it. It's the DMV, right? You can't smile. You can't do anything in the DMV. You have to have this, I'm a serial killer look on your face for them to identify you, apparently. What, people don't smile in real life? So I do this and the guy laughs. The guy thought it was funny. And he prints out my id and he hands it to me and i'm like wait you're gonna let me keep this and he's like yeah it's funny and i'm like are you serious and he's like yeah i'm like oh my heck so my license is me like

Starting point is 00:46:55 and so i was telling tim the story when we were at the white house without fail you could give me the grumpiest meanest tsa agent in the world at five in the morning who's taken IDs, that's doing it all day long. And I, 99% of the time can get them to laugh because they'll look at that picture and they're like, holy shit. Like you can see them in their mind too. Like they look at it and it's so different from all of the other pictures that they are just staring at all day long. They'll either one smile right away when they look at it and it's so different from all of the other pictures that they are just staring at all day long. They'll either one smile right away when they look at the picture or two, if they don't smile when they look at the picture, when they look up, you know, like to match it,

Starting point is 00:47:35 to like identify you. If I'm doing the exact same face as I am in the picture, 99 out of a hundred times, I can get every single grumpy Tsa agent in the world to laugh or at least crack a smile because especially at five in the morning and there's there's days where i don't feel like you know being that guy and they're like is this you and i'll have to be like and do the face and they're like it's you so the the photo looks like if people are not going to make it to the show notes or the Twitter profile. It looks kind of like a ventriloquist's puppet, I would say. It is a pretty close approximation.

Starting point is 00:48:11 But so the daily vlogging, in addition to serving as therapy or just a proof of concept showing you that you can change how you feel, it seems like, I mean, you alluded to it earlier that was was that the breakthrough I mean was there when did you realize that this could be more than a hobby so I guess you know early on when I was you know trying to make ends meet my sole purpose was to make money you know to me that's what college was to me it was like know, to me, that's what college was. To me, it was like, you went to college so that you could take enough classes. So you could get a piece of paper that said that you were responsible enough to get some stuff done. Uh, and then that you could work, you know what I'm saying? So to me, it was all about like,

Starting point is 00:49:01 how do I make money? How do I provide for my wife and kids? How do I, you know, make this a thing? So yeah, like the first time I figured that like YouTube was going to be an actual career is like the first paycheck I got. Um, and when I started YouTube, I didn't know you can make money at first. It was just about the conversation, just about connecting with people. So, you know, after like two or three months of making videos, I got my first check for 300 bucks and I was shocked. I could not believe that I actually got paid for just being silly, for just, you know, thinking of ideas or, you know, weird skits that I was doing. And I remember the first time I got that money, I went down to the bank because I thought it was a scam.

Starting point is 00:49:41 Honestly, I thought like, I don't know YouTube. I don't know who Google is. And they did that whole thing where they deposit 11 cents in your account. And then you go to the website and you verify, yes, you put 11 cents in my account. And then your bank accounts linked. So I was so scared to even link my bank account with my Google AdSense, which is how you get paid because Google owns YouTube. So I was like, they're going to steal all the money out of our account. But then I was like, well, we only have $150 in there anyway. So it won't matter if they steal it. So the very first time I got paid from YouTube,

Starting point is 00:50:08 I remember seeing the money in the Wells Fargo. Maybe I shouldn't say which bank I have. I remember seeing the money in my bank account. And I remember going down that day to the bank to withdraw the cash because I was like, if they give me the money, then it's real. So I remember the transaction going to the bank saying, I would like, if they give me the money, then it's real. So I remember the transaction going to the bank saying, I would like to withdraw that $300, almost sheepishly, like there's going to be snipers on the roof. They gave me the $300 cash. I walked out of the bank and I'm like, what? This is real money. I could buy groceries with this. So from that moment on, it became, how can I turn this into grocery money into mortgage money? And that was

Starting point is 00:50:46 my next goal. I want to make a thousand bucks. Grocery money to mortgage money. Yeah. I want to be able to pay my house payment with this money from YouTube. And if I could pay my mortgage, which at the time was like 980 bucks a month, if I can make a thousand dollars a month on YouTube, that would free up so much time where I could be with my family or do other things. And so that's where it started. It was the pursuit of making this hobby, just like anybody who starts something from their garage, into a full-time thing. And how did you... What were the decisions you made or the changes you made that helped you go from grocery money to mortgage money? So it was more videos, to be frank. The simple answer was more videos means more views,

Starting point is 00:51:30 means more money. And so just education on YouTube, you don't get paid on your subscribers. So it doesn't matter. You could have 10 billion subscribers. If nobody watches your videos, you don't make a dime. It's all based on how many views you get. So they call it CPM, cost per per mil and i think that is latin

Starting point is 00:51:47 for thousand um so every thousand views you average anywhere from two to five bucks so imagine that like if i said here take this cup and go show it to a thousand people and i'll give you three dollars you'd be like screw you i'm not doing that that's not worth my opportunity cost but if you have eight billion potential customers, everybody on the earth, which everybody doesn't have the internet yet, but you can easily rack up some money if you get a lot of people to start watching these videos.

Starting point is 00:52:13 So when I turned 29 years old, March 5th, 2009, it was the last year of my 20s. And I went through this like pre-midlife, midlife crisis where I'm like- Quarter life crisis. Yeah, quarter life crisis where I'm like, I'm not gonna to be 20 anymore. I'm going to be 30. Like, what have I done with my life? I'm going to be a 30 year old man. Holy crap. What could I do for the last year of my twenties? And at the time I was married with three kids,

Starting point is 00:52:35 so I can't like, you know, sell everything and get on a motorcycle and drive to Peru or something like most people do or would or think. So I was like, what if I made a video documenting the last year of my twenties, 365 videos. So the way that YouTube worked at the time is you got paid, um, two months later, it was like a 60 day pay cycle. So all of the videos, when I started March 5th, those 25, 26 videos for that month, I got paid in those at in May. Right. So we started the daily vlogs, March, April, May, three months went along. And then I saw our paycheck for the March 25 videos that we did. And that check was for $6,000. And I remember seeing that on the computer screen and just yelling at my wife, like, Colette, come in here.

Starting point is 00:53:26 Come here. Look at that. Look. She's like, what's that? I'm like, that's how much we're going to get paid next month on YouTube. She's like, what? Are you serious? And real quick, I'm like, six grand. If I can make six grand a month, that's 72,000 bucks a year. I'm living in Southeastern Idaho making 28,000 a year. And I I'm considered middle class. If I'm making $70,000 a year, I'm going to be rich. And so that first month of daily vlogs where I saw we're going to get paid $6,000 this month to make these videos, it was like everything else went away. The granite counter. I remember the day my wife came in and said, you need to go finish that granite job. We're going to get paid $10,000 on this giant granite job. I remodeled the entire house, kitchens, bathrooms,

Starting point is 00:54:09 wet bar, shower, everything. And we're gonna get this big payday on this granite job. But I didn't want to finish it because I wanted to make YouTube videos. So the second that happened, it all became like, this is our full-time job now. This is what we're doing. And now a funny statistic is as a 36-year-old man today, being a full-time YouTuber is the longest job I've ever had. So people are like, oh, you can make money on YouTube? I'm like, yeah, I've been doing it for a decade, baby. And yeah, and it was, I guess the precursor to that is my biggest passion in life was to not hate my job because I went to

Starting point is 00:54:47 college and I was, you know, just looking at people in the world and it seemed like everybody hated their job, right? It was a huge complaining point for everybody that, you know, you love your life on Fridays and you hate your life Monday mornings. I'm like, that's 80% of your life. If you hate your job, you hate 80% of your life. I do not want to hate a majority of my life. How do I get out of this rat race of, you got to go to college so you can get this piece of paper so that you can go to this organization and show them your piece of paper. And by the way, I'm an Eagle Scout. Please give me a job. I didn't want that. I didn't want to be stuck. That was the rat race to me. That was the controlling environment of corporations where

Starting point is 00:55:32 you feel like you're a cog in a wheel, that you have to do something, that you have to watch your P's and Q's or you're going to get in trouble. You can't think outside of the box. You have to fit in with your coworkers. You can't think of anything unique because it'll be ridiculed. All that kind of stuff that comes from being at a job, a J-O-B, I didn't want, and I fought tooth and nail against that. So let's, before, well, I was going to say before graduation, but that sort of gets to the next question, which is, can you tell me a story about or describe the day you decided to drop out? Yeah. So I was in college simply because I didn't know what else I was going to do. Right. I did serve a two-year mission from when I graduated high school.

Starting point is 00:56:19 From when I was 19 to 21, I went to the West Indies. And so I did have like a two-year space in between graduating high school and going to college where it was strictly service. I was only there in the West Indies to teach the gospel. Barbados, Trinidad, Guyana? Yep. I was in those three countries. The West Indies mission, which was my mission, is made up of 16 different countries. It's the entire Caribbean. So like St. Kitts, Grenada, Antigua, Barbados, all of that. And so the way our mission worked is we'd move around every six to nine months. And so I lived in Barbados for seven months, which is a claustrophobic feeling when you can see the ocean from anywhere on the island.

Starting point is 00:57:00 Barbados is seven miles wide. So if you're at the top, like you can look and almost see the ocean anywhere you're at on the island. And it's kind of a claustrophobic feeling. If you're coming from a mountainous... Yeah, Idaho. A landlocked area also. This giant ocean is surrounding me. And then I moved to Trinidad and Guyana for those two years. So that was a good time to kind of like get out of the world and to not think about me so much. That was a total service,

Starting point is 00:57:26 you know, thing those two years. And so when I came back from my mission, my main priority, which is part of the culture of our church, is to get married. I remember like the last two weeks of my mission thinking, okay, I'm headed home. Who am I going to marry? Hmm. I liked Amber in high school. I'm going to marry Amber. Okay. I'm marrying Amber, but I didn't marry Amber. But like, that was like the, the thought process as a missionary. It's very like, okay, what's the next step in my life? Get married. And it was like one night in the West Indies, I decided I was going to marry this girl who seemed like the most logical reason. And then I came back and went to a play with my friend and found a girl on stage that

Starting point is 00:58:03 was singing that I fell in love with that night. And I told my friend, Derek, I'm going to marry that girl, which is my wife. So, um, came home, um, went to college, signed up for college cause everybody else was all my return missionary friends were all getting into college. So it's like, okay, now it's time to get my degree and figure out what I'm going to do. And because I was good with people, I always thought I'll be in sales or marketing. You know. You take those bubble sheets in school. They're like, fill out these 90 questions and we're going to tell you what best job suits you, which I was like, how do they know? Because every question is like, do you like this? I'm like, well, I kind of like that. And so I'm like, how do I answer this? And so a lot of those bubble sheets I would answer in the

Starting point is 00:58:39 way that I knew I wanted to be perceived. It's like, I'm going to answer this because if I answer this, that means that I'm like this and I want to be like that, which in a sense is like, maybe that is your real answer. So I hated those things too. So I went to college, started taking all my generals, had a business, like I'm going to be in business. I don't know yet. And basically got to the point where I had taken all of my generals. I was about to-

Starting point is 00:59:03 Like your prereqs. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You got to take philosophy and psychology and English 101 and all these general prerequisite classes. And I had met and married... That's a huge long story. But I had met and married my wife. And we were pregnant with our second child, Avia, our daughter. And I'll just tell you, and this might be true for universities around the nation, but there is no parking, little to zero parking. And it's just ridiculous because they said that they were going to build a parking garage with my $2,800 tuition and they didn't.

Starting point is 00:59:36 And I was just pissed. Every morning, me and my buddy Luke, we'd come into psychology class and we'd be like, you played the game this morning and the game was trying to find an effing parking spot because we couldn't. And there'd be days where I just missed class because like, I can't find a parking spot. And I'd racked up like $100 in like parking tickets because I'm like, I can't find a spot. I'm parking here. I don't care. And every time they'd give you a ticket. So one day I was at that spot where I was looking for a parking spot. We're about to have our second kid. I felt guilty for leaving my wife at home with our, you know, our two year old son and she's eight and a half months pregnant and I'm going off to school every day to, you know, I hated the fact that like my psychology teacher, for instance, you could just tell that she was an unhappy person,

Starting point is 01:00:21 right? Like she, she knew all the psychological things from the book, but I could just tell she was a bitch. Like she just was angry. Like you couldn't, if you made a peep in her class, she would freak out. And I'm like, this is a psychology person who's supposed to understand the human workings of emotions and stuff. and she can't get her own stuff together like why am i spending 350 on her book that she wrote and she doesn't even seem happy like this is worthless to me like sure i'm learning about freud and all this but i guess i learn more from people you know than like you know stories and so i was just sick of it i was sick of what I saw as a rat race, as this convoluted thing to almost make... It's a business. It's a business to make money. And so I was like,

Starting point is 01:01:12 I can't find a parking spot. I'm done. And literally that day, I dropped out of college. And I was like, screw this. I'm not coming back. And I went home. And my wife's like, I thought you had class. I'm like, nope, I'm done. I'm not going back. She's like, what are you going to do? Like, I'm going to get a job. I think I'm gonna start my own business. I want to start my own business. And I guess the one thing that I did learn from college is I had a business one-on-one class from a teacher who really changed everything for me. And she defined the secret to success as loving what you do. And I, you know, would say that I define it in different ways now. But back then that was like a prophecy to me. I was like, yes,

Starting point is 01:01:51 why do you have to hate your job? Why do you have like, just so you can get money to buy groceries and get a house, you have to hate most of your life. Like there's gotta be a better way. So when she said that, that was like an epiphany to me. Like, that's the secret to life is to not hate your job, is to find something that you love to do. And so that became from the day I dropped out of college was my pursuit. And I did a lot of things. I sold pest control door to door. I was a real estate agent. I was a car salesman. I owned my own granite countertop business. I was a school bus driver. I used to drive school buses and I would let the kids throw snowballs at the school bus and they almost broke

Starting point is 01:02:30 a window one day. So I had to tell them they can't do it anymore. But that was my ultimate goal is to not hate what I did for a living. And when that first $300 check from YouTube showed up, it was like, this is it. This is what I'm going to do. So you said you might define it differently now. How would you define success? Or how do you think about that now? Well, now that I have money, I define it differently. Because back in the day, to me, success was money. It was... And not just to be rich and not to have cool things, but to be able to provide, to be able to,

Starting point is 01:03:06 you know, give things to my wife and kids. That's why I loved Ron Campbell so much early in the day because he had water ski boats and parasails. And I remember a family growing up that was, their dad was a dentist. And I just remember like they always had money to go to Hawaii and ski boats and stuff like that. And I remember kids being like, oh, the so-and-sos, they're so rich, blah, blah, blah. And I'd be like, but isn't that like, why are you guys dissing on them? Like they get to go to Hawaii. They get to do cool things. So early on to me, that's what success was to be able to provide, to be able to give to my kids and my wife. And now you find out that once you get money, that it is not the answer. It is not what gives you happiness.

Starting point is 01:03:47 And so I define success in many different ways. Maybe we'll get this towards the end, but you usually ask on your podcast, who's a successful person? Yeah. Or when you hear the word successful, who do you think of? Let's just hit, let's hit it now. Yeah. Okay.

Starting point is 01:04:01 Um, what I was thinking about that question before i was coming and like without like naming specific people i think to truly define somebody successful to me relationships with people are important so if you have a person that and to me it's older people somebody who has kids to me the definition of success is being cool with your parents, your grandparents, and your kids. Like being able to navigate the difficult task of dealing with each other, human beings. If you're in good relationship with your mom and your dad and your kids, like to me, that's the definition of success. And sometimes you have to let those people go. Sometimes there's very, you know, like it's weird being an adult now and dealing with

Starting point is 01:05:00 your parents in a sense where it's like my mom and dad say things now that I don't agree with at all, but I don't necessarily need to fight with them about that. It's being able to be open enough to accept other ideas and accepting people for different spots in the road. We're all at different parts in our life. And because of the internet, because of YouTube, because of the litany of comments that I've received, uh, just ripping my life apart, for instance, by, um, reading thousands. I mean, the comment section of YouTube could be considered the cesspool of the human species. Sometimes like the worst things in the world are said in the comment section of YouTube. So I've been ridiculed for everything under the sun,

Starting point is 01:05:49 whether it's how I installed my kid's car seat or me believing that there's an afterlife. You know, like people will just shred any idea that I have apart. And so to me, success is not judging somebody or not trying to say a person is a certain type of person without knowing their whole story. I guess to define that, whenever I see celebrities in the news like, so-and-so did this, it's like, well, I don't really know the suffering that they're

Starting point is 01:06:25 you know going through like you think about somebody like prince who we all look up to or thought was amazing and then you just think man he must have been in a lot of pain he must have been really suffering but somebody like prince can't come out and say that right he can't come out and be like i'm really struggling or they feel like they can't yeah exactly that's the point or like a psychiatrist might have that same effect where they're the person that everybody comes to to talk to and they feel like they have to be the strong one and they can't talk about their own weaknesses. So then they end up committing suicide or if you've ever known a friend,

Starting point is 01:06:57 you know, it's like, why didn't you talk to somebody? And it's this fear of being vulnerable, I guess. Yeah. Or I mean, there's so many different pressures.

Starting point is 01:07:06 The makes me think of something I was, I was told probably within the last two or three years, but that being everyone is fighting a battle, you know, nothing about. Right. Right. And just assuming that to be the case. And, uh,

Starting point is 01:07:22 and another sort of corollary to that that I was told at one point was, don't assume malice when incompetence could explain it. Or, and I would just say also like busyness, right? Like don't assume malice. That's a very good point. And to me, realizing that what that means is people aren't really trying to hurt you. You know, I think a lot of times you think, well, that person is a vindictive, evil, mean person, when really they're just not paying attention, really. Like they're not purposely trying to hurt you or say mean things. You know, nobody ever, it seems like everybody only does things for personal reasons, right?

Starting point is 01:08:01 Like they're not trying to hurt you. They're just trying to better their lives in a sense. So knowing that helps when you feel like you're being attacked by somebody, um, which is not necessarily the case. It's just them, you know, not communicating well or one of those things, but. Yeah. Or just having a shitty day and not humanizing something on the internet. Or just being in a bad state, like people get in bad moods. And that goes back to using your body to change your mood. I recently went to a Tony Robbins event

Starting point is 01:08:31 and he talks about that a lot where you have to change your physiology. Like your body, these bones. For instance, when I ran my first marathon and I lost 100 pounds, it was weird to see my stomach so thin, like so close to my rib cage, if you will. And I remember sitting in the shower after I ran the marathon and like, it's just such a weird thing to say, but like my bones are right there. Like looking at my knee and thinking about what

Starting point is 01:09:00 it looked like inside of my body. And if we realize that these bodies are tools that will help our mental state, we can use our bodies to help us feel better. So your question earlier is like, what tips and tricks and things do you use? Tony Robbins teaches this thing called priming in the morning where it's similar to meditation where you're thinking about things, but it's a very purposeful, like you sit up straight, you're breathing in a specific way, you're thinking specific things,

Starting point is 01:09:32 and you can do things with your body that will change your entire mental perspective on things. And just to sort of underpin the broader strategy behind that also, and if people want the details on some of his morning priming, he goes through it in the two-part interview that I did with him at his house.

Starting point is 01:09:50 So you can look that up. But the sort of framework that he lays out that I think is very helpful is, let me get this right. I think it's state story strategy, I believe. And like most people want to sit down to determine a strategy to address their issue, but they're in a negative state, which leads them to have an internal narrative that is self-defeating. And they only see problems as opposed to solutions or alternatives.

Starting point is 01:10:21 And the point that he makes is that you have to address it in the opposite direction. You have to create the optimal state so that you can craft an enabling story, i.e. narrative, and that allows you to produce or plan the best strategy. You can't make good decisions if you're in a bad mood. The decisions you make

Starting point is 01:10:43 when you're in a shitty mood are going to be shitty decisions. you can make yourself become happy through these these things or just a better state you're going to make better decisions yeah uh i use cold exposure for that quite a bit we might get a taste of that later when we go to the the russian baths excited with the cold plunge there's shrinkageage, Tim. It's shrinkage. I know. I know. We could pull a George Costanza. It's cold water! It's cold water!

Starting point is 01:11:12 The next question I wanted to ask is I guess related to some of this, but what are some of the darkest periods that you've faced or some of the biggest challenges that you've had to overcome personally? Oh, well, we can talk about that one. Um, I think this would be shocking to my audience

Starting point is 01:11:37 for those that are listening that have come over here from my section of the internet, but I battled with alcohol for, you know, four or five years. Um, and that was tough. That was something that kind of, and it's something that I haven't talked about, honestly. Um, and maybe I'll want to cut this out of the podcast later. But it's very common. I mean, it's not an uncommon challenge to face or addiction for that matter. Yeah. So I guess I should talk about it. My audience is probably freaking out right now. My mom's probably freaking out right now. But I think listening to Morgan Spurlock's podcast that you recently had on where he

Starting point is 01:12:22 talks about being able to own your scars or talk about your scars or the hard times. And I think in general, that is a societal thing that we all need to work on because there's a lot of people suffering and people don't want to tell you they're suffering. And so they'll suffer in silence and maybe even commit suicide if it gets to the horrible end of the spectrum. But more than that, it's just the daily suffering that people are going through because they're afraid to tell their close friends and family their problems and what they're suffering through. So with me, it was when I started drinking, I drank in high school a little bit. Boys will be be boys, kind of like we're seniors, senior night. Like I didn't drink a ton because of the culture I came from where,

Starting point is 01:13:10 you know, the Mormon church has a code of health called the word of wisdom that says no alcohol, no tobacco, no coffee, tea. And it also says that you should eat fruits and vegetables. And it also goes as far as saying that you should eat meat sparingly. And in fact, only in times of winter or famine. This is a code of health that Joseph Smith revealed in the early 1800s. That is what the Mormon culture lives on. And it's a big part of the Mormon church. And it's not talked about. And it's this weird... I mean, we could go into hours of this. But basically, after I got married, we were living in Utah. I was working at a granite job, getting paid $9.50 an hour. My wife, bless her heart, was doing a call center job every day. And we had

Starting point is 01:13:58 one kid at the time. We, in fact, just had our first son. And just kind of trying to make ends meet. And the guys that I worked with at the granite shop afterwards, I'd get a few beers and I'd be like, that seems fun. I want to, I want to, what the heck? Like, let me try a few beers. And I didn't tell my wife, right? So at first I was like, and that's the part of the Mormon culture where it's like, I couldn't even go tell my wife, like, Hey, I had a few beers today after work because I was afraid that she would almost even to the extent that she would leave me. Like, what? You did what?

Starting point is 01:14:33 I'm out of here. And of course, that's just like my overactive brain, like thinking the worst, which we all do. But it became a thing where I started drinking every once in a while. And this was way before YouTube even started. And I was lying to her for like eight months almost, where I wasn't telling her that I was drinking, where I would, you know, have sunflower seeds or something like that to cover my breath. Because it was something I was like, if she knew about this, or I don't know, whatever, you know, this was years and years ago. So then I found YouTube,

Starting point is 01:15:05 right? Then I got onto YouTube. We started making videos. And through the process, I met a bunch of people on YouTube, made friends and moved to Los Angeles, California to start this company called Maker Studios that we talked about at the beginning that sold to Disney with a bunch of people that I met, you know, there's like seven or eight of us. And living in Venice Beach was the biggest culture shock I'd ever received. And I had lived... Coming from San Francisco, even, you have culture shock when you go to Venice. I can only imagine. It was so weird because I felt like I had lived in Dallas, Texas. I had moved around

Starting point is 01:15:40 selling pest control. I was in the West Indies for two years as a missionary. But moving to Venice was weird because it wasn't like the friends that I talked to, it wasn't like if they believed in, it wasn't like what religion. That was all my life before. It was like, well, are you Hindu, Catholic, Muslim? What are you? But then in Venice, it was like, oh, you believe in God? That's cute, Shay. Pat on the head. Do you believe in Santa too? And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, you guys head do you believe in Santa too and I was like whoa whoa whoa wait you guys don't even believe in God like at all and my Venice Beach friends are like no like how can you prove there's a God I'm like well I guess I can't but that was just a weird

Starting point is 01:16:16 concept for me so having a few beers wasn't a big deal to them you know and so that became easy for me not only are these my friends and people i looked up to creatively but these were my business partners and it became hard to connect if you didn't drink and i hated the fact that people wouldn't open up until they've had a few drinks like as a sober person now i haven't had a single solitary hand to the square drink in four years, it annoys me to the point of infuriation when I go to after parties or something where nobody will get on the dance floor until they've been drinking for like 30 minutes. I'm like, why do you need this substance to loosen up a little bit? And that's what I liked about alcohol, as I liked being able to finally talk to people

Starting point is 01:17:03 in an open manner where it wasn't like, well, we have to worry about all the proper PC things. It's like, let's just really talk here, right? Like quit being so presumptuous or like saying these big words, like let's just talk as dudes, you know? So I like that about alcohol. It gave people that ability. But I have this saying that is just specific to my personality that is this if one is good then all is the best meaning i cannot just have a couple beers right like i am an extremist like i can't i don't think either of us are very good at moderation right i am bad at moderation so i have to make decisions you you know, because some people will,

Starting point is 01:17:45 why can't you just have a few beers and be fine with it? I'm like, well, one beer, I mean, it's an acquired taste. It tastes like, like the first time you drink beer. I remember the very first time I drank beer as a 19 year old. I'm like, this is disgusting. Why do people drink this? And if they say they like it, they're lying. It's disgusting. Um, I mean, we could talk all about that. But towards the end, when I let the natural progression of addiction happen, which it will, if you're not very conscious, I was drinking every day. Yeah. And I was drinking, if not every day, six days a week. And if I went 48 hours without drinking, I was like,

Starting point is 01:18:26 man, when's the last time I had a drink? Wednesday? That's forever ago. It got to the point where it was definitely... It wasn't taking over my life because I was able to... I guess I was a functioning alcoholic, you could call it. And I think a lot of people do that. And I think a lot of people do that more than they're willing to admit. I think half of Silicon Valley is comprised of functioning alcoholics. How do you define alcoholism? I don't like calling myself an alcoholic, but if you drink more than three days a week, maybe you drink four days a week, and you have more than one or two glasses

Starting point is 01:19:05 of wine, to me, you're an alcoholic. And there's obviously different levels, but it's like, why do you drink? Do you drink to get drunk? Do you drink so that you can open up to people? You have to be, like I said earlier, your own devil's advocate. You have to ask yourself those hard questions. I think, I think also the litmus test for addict could be your ability to stop or inability to stop. Right. I remember for instance, I've only scared myself once with alcohol in this capacity, but just first of all,

Starting point is 01:19:38 I want to applaud you for talking about this because I think the biggest, one of the biggest risks when people are facing problems that make them fear for their sanity or their grip on the family, whatever it might be, is the feeling of being alone. This is a unique problem, which is why it took me almost nine months, and I'm kind of ashamed it took me that long, after deciding to write this post on suicide because I was off myself in college and I was ashamed of it. And I didn't want to scare my parents and fill in the blank, right? There are all of these concerns. And ultimately I realized that I was doing a disservice with someone with a platform, which is a great, uh, it's a great blessing and so on, but it's also a great responsibility

Starting point is 01:20:25 that I felt compelled to share. So I have alcoholism runs in my family. And I remember at one point, this is a long time ago, I was living in San Jose and I was cooking breakfast one morning and I guess I'd had like a glass of wine or two with a friend the night before.

Starting point is 01:20:43 So there was a bottle of wine that was like half full. And I guess I'd had like a glass of wine or two with a friend the night before. So there was a bottle of wine that was like half full. And I was cooking something and it called for some type of vinegar or whatever. And I was like, oh, I could just use some wine. And so like splash some wine and I'm cooking. And then I took like one little swig of wine and put it down. I was like, oh, that was kind of like a fun thing to do in the morning. Just like get started off. And over the course of a few weeks, it was like, okay, now I'm taking like two swigs in the morning and then three swigs in the morning.

Starting point is 01:21:08 And it wasn't a lot, but I remember one morning it was like 9.30 and I had a slight buzz on and I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is not good. This is not good at all. And, um, but similarly it's like i i do drink alcohol but whenever i feel like i might be the i feel like alcohol is using me and not the other way around then i just cut it out and i'll and i'll go four weeks without because i remember here in silicon valley it's so easy to uh or in in any city la really and i'm sure in many non-cities, you look back at the week and you're like, okay, I had three glasses of wine at various dinners and social outings, five or six nights this week. That is a lot of alcohol. So how did you finally break that habit? So, I mean, the reason I'm willing to talk about this now,

Starting point is 01:22:08 and I've been wanting to talk about it for a long time, is because I know that there are so many people suffering through this still right now. Because I remember being in that spot. I remember thinking about quitting. And I remember thinking, but how will I have a good time? How will I have fun? Like, what will I do? The very first day that I quit right around 4pm rolled around and I was like freaking out. Like, what do I do? Like, I was like anxious. I had to, I remember I had to leave the house and go rock climbing. I'm like, I have to do something. I have to do something. I'm going to drink again. And that's just advice. If you are taking something out of your life, like alcohol, you have to replace it. Anything you take out, there's a void, there's a hole. And if you don't

Starting point is 01:22:55 put something back in that hole that's healthy, that same negative thing will go back. Just like you were saying with the wine in the morning, we as humans are prone to the path of least resistance, right? It's not easy to get better. It's tough. And our natural, you know, inclination is towards addiction and towards the things that are easy, right? Like it's easy to drink alcohol and take away the pain. It's easy to not wake up in the morning and exercise. It's easy to go through the drive through and buy a Big Mac, right? Like, what are you willing to do that is hard? And I think understanding that and being able to embrace that work specifically. Like, I remember my grandpa was like, work will work when nothing else will work. Coming from the military, he just taught us,

Starting point is 01:23:43 you work your ass off. Work will work when nothing else will work. And I grew up with that where it's like, if it's not working, then just work harder. So I definitely see the value in hard work. Kasim G, my buddy I was talking about earlier, he has a house in Venice Beach with a swimming pool. And it was an early morning scenario, like you were talking, it was like 11am. And I remember me and my brother going over to Kasim's house and he had a bottle of whiskey there and we're going to sit in the pool and stuff. And it's like, hey, let's have a few shots of this whiskey. So I remember my California friend, my atheist friend, Kasim, being like, dude, it's not

Starting point is 01:24:19 even noon. And I'm like, wow. Like all of a sudden, I'm like, how far have I come? Where when I first moved out here, I couldn't believe that these people didn't believe in God. And now all of a sudden they're lecturing me on drinking too early and in the day. And so I was like, shut up, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, like alcoholics do. It's not a problem. A lot of you right now are probably like, this guy doesn't know what he's talking about. Cause you feel self-conscious about you're drinking too much. Like you need to be able to say, yes,

Starting point is 01:24:47 I probably do drink too much. Anyways, I got in his swimming pool. I was swimming, kind of drunk. Um, and I was kind of having a conversation with God, honestly, like I was swimming and I was like, I need to quit. I need to quit. Like one, my buddy's telling me I'm drinking too early. Two, I'm a fatso. I was drinking my calories. I have a very large capacity. I could drink a 24-pack and still have this conversation with you. It's just the way that my body is. Like, anyway, so I was having this conversation. As somebody who believes in an eternal creator, I was kind of talking to God in a sense in my mind.

Starting point is 01:25:33 And a lot of times my conversations with God are, I think, really honest conversations that I'm having with myself. I see God as this eternal creator that loves me. And I was having this conversation in the swimming pool, like, I'm going to quit in two weeks because I have this, you know how you always have like, uh, life moments. Like I have to do this and then I'll quit after this. And it's always the next morning, right? Like the diet starts tomorrow. And I just was swimming and I had this, this revelation or something. It's like,

Starting point is 01:26:09 if you really are serious about quitting and you really want to quit the only way that you're going to quit, because I was terrified of not being able to quit. Like I was really in that moment where it was taking control of me, where when 4 PM rolled around, if I didn't start drinking, I was really, you know, physiologically feeling it. Like I had that addiction. And so I'm like, how am I gonna quit? How am I gonna quit? And the realization came to me in that swimming pool that if you don't quit right now, right this second, like when you get out of this pool, you're a non-drinker, then you'll never quit.

Starting point is 01:26:39 And that terrified me. Like I had that realization like somebody spoke it to me. Like if you don't stop right now, like right this second, like if you don't say I'm done, I'm quitting, you'll never quit. And I knew that that was true. Like the second that I thought that I was like, I won't because I'll always think of another reason. I'll always say tomorrow. I'll always say next week and it'll never end. And the progression, like how many of you listening right now have ever done or said something that you totally regret while you were drunk?

Starting point is 01:27:10 Everybody. Right. And, and just to also to, to, to just highlight that I think a lot of people drink, they don't need the drinking to open up, but they want the plausible deniability.

Starting point is 01:27:24 They want to be able to say, I had, I to be able to say, I had too much to drink. But not to interrupt. Yeah, everybody's had that experience, of course. And so I had that realization in the swimming pool and it terrified me. I just thought, where does this lead? Where does this alcoholism go? What is the natural progression? I was able to see where it had taken me to that

Starting point is 01:27:45 point, which was feeling like crap in the mornings, being overweight, saying things every once in a while that were a little like, whoa, I can't believe he said that. I didn't like that feeling. I don't want to be that person. And I guess the ultimate goal is deciding the person you want to be on purpose. And that is not who I wanted to be. So I quit. That stroke, that breaststroke, I was like, it scared me so much to the point that I'm like, okay, that's the answer. I have got to quit right now. And I got out of the pool and I told everybody that was there, there was a couple of people, I said, I quit drinking. And they all laughed at me because I drank a lot. And that's in my personal community, like my friends that were, you know, my wife, my wife knew, like I told, I talked earlier about how I didn't tell my wife, but my

Starting point is 01:28:35 wife definitely knew after the eight months I told her, you know, so everybody knew that was in my close and they knew what a big part of my life it was because I was the one at parties who's like, didn't want any ever, I never want anybody to leave. It was like, wait, you're leaving? No, come on. Like I never wanted the party to end in a sense. And so I quit.

Starting point is 01:28:54 And the thing that really saved me is right at that time, like I think it was the next day, I went on this hunting trip with my dad and my brother and my son. And we were up in the middle of the mountains where there wasn't a convenience store or a liquor store closed. This was the day after the swimming pool.

Starting point is 01:29:11 Yeah. This was like, I can't remember if it was the day after or two days after. But shortly thereafter. But in the pool, that was my justification. I was like, well, I'll quit on the hunting trip because I'm going to be with my dad and my brother and my son and I'm not going to drink. I'm not going to want to... Normally, I would have. I would have found a way to hit it, you know, but I was

Starting point is 01:29:27 like, I don't want to drink on the hunting trip. It's like a father, son, not only my dad, but my brother and my son, it's like three generations. Like this is a meaningful man's trip. And so in the pool, I was like, well, I'll quit when I go on that hunting trip. But I knew I had to quit before because of what I said. So it was like three days before. But anyways, we went to the mountains and hunted elk for two weeks. And that was a very, you know, waking up at five in the morning

Starting point is 01:29:56 and not being able to say a thing because my brother would yell at me if I'm too loud out on the mountain. My brother's a professional hunter. Like that's what he does for a living. Like he has a YouTube channel. So you can't snicker or make little jokes like I like to do when you're trying to hunt big game with a bow and arrow. And so I had to be quiet at the same time of being in the most grandiose mountains I've ever seen. And so I had a lot of time to think right after I had made that swimming pool decision.

Starting point is 01:30:26 So that two weeks, or I think it was like more like eight days hunting for elk in the mountains of Idaho was a real good therapy for me. And I recommend, I mean, I was at the point of alcoholism where me and my wife were calling rehab centers. Like I was like, I'm just gonna disappear for two weeks,

Starting point is 01:30:41 whatever it takes. I'm gonna go to Malibu, you know, like how stereotypical. We moved to LA, I became an alcoholic and I'm gonna go to malibu you know like how stereotypical we moved to la i became an alcoholic and i had to go to rehab you know and i was like i don't want to do that i don't want to be that person well instead you did uh the oldest the oldest rehab known to man going on go hunting extended hunting trip and i ended up killing my first elk on that trip too that was a crazy story and And then my brother cooked us up steaks that night and I hated it. Cause I,

Starting point is 01:31:08 I have like, I like animals a lot. So when I was eating that steak, I could just see that elk's eyes looking at me as I shot him from 40 yards away in the neck. So I, I didn't do great on that, but,

Starting point is 01:31:22 um, and that's why I have been vegan in the past, but not as much now. So what would you say to any other words for someone out there who might be facing addiction? Oh, Timothy Ferris, I can't believe I just said that I drank alcohol for so long. Please forgive me, Mom, I love you.

Starting point is 01:31:40 I would say this. You're not alone, though. I mean, you're not alone, right? Andrew Zimmer's talked about his, he was shooting shooting up i think it was heroin at the time margaret chose talked about her battles like this is a common battle right and that's why i've been motivated to talk about it because i feel like my story can help a lot of people and i think that in general that idea of listen society let's not be so hard on each other. Let's forgive each other and let's be okay with each other's weaknesses so that we can talk about them so that

Starting point is 01:32:15 then we can start to heal, that we can become stronger. Yeah. Well, with this suicide post that that I mentioned, you know, I'd been carrying that baggage for so long and even many of my closest friends had no idea. And I was, and I kept it mostly to myself out of shame, but also out of fear of my parents' reaction, if they would blame themselves, et cetera. And then I put it out there, the burden was gone. Like the weight was lifted and the, my parents responded, uh, you parents responded in many different ways, but all positive and effectively said, you're doing really important work. And I was like, holy shit, if I had known this was going to be the response. You wouldn't have to suffer so long.

Starting point is 01:32:55 I would have put this out so much sooner, and maybe it would have helped people that I didn't have a chance to help. And that's important to realize about humans for people who are wanting to do something like this people who are wanting to do something like this, who are wanting to get something painful off their chest or admit to an addiction or just anything. You know what it is right now as you're listening, you're like, oh, it's this thing for me because we all have our different things. To have to realize that people are more forgiving than you think they're going to be. Because like what we talked about earlier, people are all suffering in their own way. There's some sort of like, it helps to know that you're suffering too. Not like misery loves

Starting point is 01:33:33 company, but like, oh, he's suffering. Like you'll find that people are way more forgiving than you thought if you're vulnerable. If you get caught and then you have to make an apology video, then every reason to be like, screw this guy. But if you're willing to be like, listen, here's a major problem I have. Here's a real weakness that I'm suffering with. Like I wake up and suffer. I have pain, physical pain from mental thoughts, that kind of stuff. If you're able to just open up and be vulnerable, you'll find, I think, almost every time people will bend over backwards to try to understand you and say it's okay and try to help you.

Starting point is 01:34:14 Yeah, absolutely. So let's switch gears just a little bit, or a lot of a bit, I suppose. But we haven't spoken much about Maker Studios. What were the most important decisions or happenings that allowed it to be as successful as it was? It's about doing something new. It's about having the courage to say, we're going to try this thing that's never been done before and just see where it goes. Like, just the concept of moving to Los Angeles,

Starting point is 01:34:54 like picking up and moving my wife and three kids to Venice Beach to start an internet company with some people that I had only met like six months to a year previous, was like, everybody that I knew was telling me not to do it. My mom, my audience, like I had viewers at the time. And this is part of the documentary I talk about that I made called Vlogumentary with Morgan Spurlock and my buddy Corey Vidal. But I talk about when we moved to Los Angeles, I had to convince our viewers that it was going to be cool because they're all worried like, oh, you're going to become LA. They really liked that we were this regular family from Idaho. So just moving out to

Starting point is 01:35:40 Los Angeles to start a business was this first step that was so unconventional, so risky, that it's like, you don't know these people. What if they're going to scam you? We all do this, to protect ourselves. We all question these what-ifs. We all make reasons why we can't do something that we dream about because it's dangerous, it's risky, it's not smart, it's not prudent, whatever. So that was the first step is just saying like, wow, there's people watching these YouTube videos and some people are starting to get paid doing it. What if we started a business that helped each other create these videos? So having said that, the audience... Just a quick pause. when did you have the conversation that decided it like what what was was there a night when it's like you had a conversation it's

Starting point is 01:36:33 like all right fuck it i'm in and then you had to sit your wife down be like yeah honey i have great news that was a two-week process the convincing of my wife to move to California. The first of those conversations was on the telephone at the radio studio at Z103, a guy named Danny Zappin, better known on the internet as Danny Diamond. girlfriend whose name was Lisa Nova, still is, Lisa Donovan produced the Lisa Nova channel, which was a big channel early on. She was not only the biggest female YouTuber, but she was just like the biggest YouTuber at the time when I came onto the site in 2006, 2007. It was the Lisa Nova channel. It was huge. Everybody knew who Lisa Nova was. So because I was just getting into the community, I of course knew who Lisa Nova was and was like, you know, wanting to get to know more YouTubers so that I could kind of be in this YouTube community and had come to found out that she had a boyfriend named Danny and her brother, Ben, who kind of helped produce her content. Cause at the time she had more

Starting point is 01:37:41 produced content than anybody. They were doing skits. She was dressing up as Captain Jack from Pirates of the Caribbean. They had friends that did really great Hillary impressions. Anyway, so I had met these people and started talking to them about making YouTube videos and so forth. And had a phone conversation with Danny one night where he had set up a deal with a movie studio to promote this new Jason Statham movie called Crank, I think it was. Oh, yeah, Crank. To keep his heart rate above a certain RPM or you would die. Yeah. Or beats per minute. And so it was just a deal to promote that second movie. So

Starting point is 01:38:20 the studio said, we want other YouTubers as well. We want Lisa Nova to produce a video promoting the movie. And do you guys know any other of these YouTubers? And Dave Days was one. I was one. So he called me in Idaho at the radio station at Z103 and said, hey, we got this deal through so-and-so productions that I can fly you out to LA and I can give you 2000 bucks to come out here and make a video. We'll help you make it. We'll help you shoot it and edit it. And then you have to upload your channel to promote this movie coming out. So people will go see it. And I was like, dude, a free trip to LA. And you're going to give me two grand. I remember calling my wife that night and be like, babe, I got to book tickets to LA because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And she's like, wait, what? Who? Why? How much? What? So that was the first night that it was like, whoa, this is like 2000 bucks. We're really cranking here. So I went out and this is so great because I have this all in vlog footage. You can go to my old

Starting point is 01:39:16 vlogs and see when I made this very first trip to Los Angeles to make this movie or to make these videos that would promote this jason statham movie so the first night that i was there we're all sitting we had shot that day you know they had this nice camcorder they had a boom pole they had a microphone on a stick and i remember thinking like wow these guys are they're high production these guys are real professionals baby i'm in hollywood they got a boom pole and they had final cut pro and they knew how to edit and i had knew none of that really i just knew how to talk like i know how to do so that first night in venice beach with danny and lisa and ben all kind of sitting there danny's

Starting point is 01:39:58 like what if we started a business doing this like what if we helped each other think of ideas, write scripts, edit, shoot? You could, you know, we have some props. We have a wardrobe department. She can do makeup. Like, what if we made a studio where we helped each other create content? And I was like, sign me up. This is funner than anything I've ever done. This really lends to all the things I like to do, which is act silly and just be in front of people and that kind of thing. And so I remember moving back, telling my wife, hey, I want to move our family to Venice Beach to start this business. And my selling point to her was this, babe, all we need to do is keep $200 cash on hand because that $200 is gas money. If for some reason, everything hits the fan, we go totally broke for whatever reason,

Starting point is 01:40:51 if we just have 200 bucks cash, we can drive back to Idaho and live with my parents. So that was my like, babe, it's cool because we could drive home and live with my parents if everything goes to hell, which is not a great sales technique. But... It's not the worst I've heard. No, right? That was like my fail safe is we just had to have this $200 cash. So bless my wife's heart. She has supported me through my crazy ideas that I've had. She has put the kibosh on a few, like when I wanted to move to Alaska for a year and live

Starting point is 01:41:23 off the land. She said no to that, which pissed me off, but whatever. So we did. She finally agreed to it, and we kind of told our parents, and I had to leave the radio job, which was kind of sad, but they were like, oh, you're moving to LA, you finally made it.

Starting point is 01:41:39 I'm like, no, I haven't. We're going to be broke. And so we moved out to Los Angeles, and the very first deal that we got to, other than this movie, when I first went out was A1 Steak Sauce. When I moved out there in June, we had this deal where we had to promote A1 Steak Sauce.

Starting point is 01:41:58 And they had this whole campaign that was called Sing for Your Beef. And we had to get people to make up songs. How ridiculous, right? Of them singing about their meat. I would have loved to have just been like a fly on the wall for the creative meeting. It's like, how are we going to get these people to make up songs? Yeah, it was difficult. But that first brand deal through A1 Steak Sauce started, not only helped us pay for our rent for the first three months, but it kind of started

Starting point is 01:42:26 Maker Studios. And then we got some other deals. How did the A1 deal happen? It was all through, I can't even remember. Danny, at the time, had some contacts because he was in that world. And they're just barely, and bless A1's heart for being so forward thinking. This is eight years ago. You know, this is, you know, to have marketers have an advertising budget that was on the internet was unheard of, right? And now that's almost all companies are switching to. So it was very early on. I can't remember how we got the A1 contact, but... And then what followed after that? I interrupted. Then, yeah. Then we had this Sanyo Zakti campaign. Those early brand deals were really the money that helped us get the business off the ground. There was this camera called the Sanyo Zakti.

Starting point is 01:43:17 And we all made a bunch of content on these cameras. They were waterproof. And we did all these silly things with them. And it was all about sharing a product to our audience that trusted us as influencers. And then that product would pay us. And that's one of the revenue streams for YouTubers. But the main one is just getting views. So those early deals kind of helped get the business off the ground. But as we started the business, we decided to start a channel together. And so we took like the five or six biggest YouTubers at the time and we created a

Starting point is 01:43:51 collaboration channel called The Station. And the idea of that was a rising tide lifts all ships. So it's like if we all pour into this, then the sum will be greater than our parts, right? Where two plus two doesn't equal four, but it equals five. Where for some reason, there's this magic of networking and working together where you actually create or receive more than you think you would, where I'm one person that can do this much output in 12 hours. And you would think naturally that adding one more person would just double that output, right? But a lot of times you see that it does more than double it

Starting point is 01:44:30 because of whatever. Like we're, I think we're meant to be with each other as humans. Like we're not meant to be individuals. So it's just the same concept. Like if you're listening to music while you're working, your output's going to be higher. So whenever you network something, and we see this in computers now, there's a greater output, whether it's exponential growth. Einstein said that compounding interest is the eighth wonder of the world. There's just magic there, right? When you connect people in teams. And so that's what happened is the station, this channel, it grew bigger than almost all of our audiences. It all of a sudden had a million subscribers within the first month. And it was insane.

Starting point is 01:45:12 And it just grew like wildfire. It was the first time that you had social influencers coming together. It was like a Care Bear stare, if you will. You know how all the Care Bears get together and once they link and they Care Bear stare, it's like way stronger than just the individual Care Bear power. Yes. You get what I'm saying here. I do. You're from the 80s. And that effect happened. And we all of a sudden started to have to hire people.

Starting point is 01:45:35 And we had to make up job titles because the job titles that a social media optimizer is like, we just need somebody to help us with Twitter and Facebook. Things like that didn't exist in the marketplace. So we had to invent jobs, basically. How did you find your employees? People off the internet. The very best employees from Maker were people who were YouTubers themselves. People who struggled through trying to gain an audience, trying to create something that was unique that people would watch, and then trying to make a living at that. A YouTuber is a multifaceted person. They produce, edit, write, shoot, all of the things that need to happen to create content. YouTubers do all of those things. And that's why old media,

Starting point is 01:46:27 Hollywood, they're having such a hard time keeping up is because we can create content so much faster and so much cheaper than they can. I remember hearing on a panel once that content is a commodity. Just like wood or gold or oil, my YouTube videos are a commodity that I can trade. And that's usually through advertising. You place advertising on that content, but people now in 2016 are buying that content. And marketing people are realizing that the influence that I have as a social influencer is way more powerful than an ad on a TV screen or a movie screen. It's like in the past, marketers and advertisers have put a priority on the size of the screen where it's like, I talked about CPMs

Starting point is 01:47:12 earlier. I get two to three bucks per thousand views. TV gets 25 to 30 bucks. So it's like, if I could get my CPMs up to what TV CPMs are, I would be making bank, right? But because of this perception that advertisers have that, well, it's way more valuable to spend our money on a TV commercial than to pay some YouTube guy to talk about our product. That paradigm is shifting where they're realizing now that my audience of 4.2 million subscribers are people that have been with me for eight years. These are people that have been with me for eight years. These are people that have watched my kids before. Yeah, it's your extended family.

Starting point is 01:47:48 These are my best friends, right? And what's the best form of marketing? Word of mouth, right? So instead of paying $100,000 per second to be on a Super Bowl ad, I think advertisers and marketers are realizing that they have much more value with somebody like me, that I can be like, look at this link right here, click on it. On the TV, you can't click on a link. I can give advertisers analytics that are so specific, it would blow their minds. Like look, 13 to 17 year old age females watch this for 2.3 minutes. And when I said this, they stopped watching. Like the analytics in Google are that specific where there's hotspots where they can tell you

Starting point is 01:48:27 when people click off of the video. So you can then go into the video and say, well, what did I say that made people leave right there? So with advertisers, now that we can show them that, the ad dollars are switching, where it's like they don't put a premium on the size of the screen anymore because they're realizing that the size of the eyeball is exactly the same, right? All of our eyeballs are the same.

Starting point is 01:48:48 So that's, I think, ultimately what caused Disney to write this big billion dollar check to buy Maker Studios, is this influence. And it was the networking. And it was, more than anything, I think Disney's like, whoa, what's going on here? There's some real traction. And we just want to get into that. And somebody like Disney can just write a big check to get into it. And guys like us who just started a company four years ago can take that big check and say, thank you.

Starting point is 01:49:18 So you've started more companies since, like Tricks and Cleaning, with, I guess, help me out here, your sister. Yeah, it's a family business. And I guess, I want you to describe it, but the question I have for you is, why start another business? And there's no right answer. But like, I mean, we were talking a little bit about prices in, say, San Francisco versus prices where you live. Like you have, I would imagine, more than enough to do whatever you need to do

Starting point is 01:49:54 or want to do. And that's the other misconception, I think, too, is I think people see that the company sold for that much and they think, well, surely he's... You know, I wonder how much money people think that I have. But there was a lot of founders and plus Time Warner invested like 20 million. So they got a big chunk of it. Anyways, it's about growth. It's about if you're not growing, you're dying. Tony Robbins said this. It's not... You don't live to achieve. It's like, while you're achieving, you're a living, you know, like I just,

Starting point is 01:50:28 my accountant calls me a serial entrepreneur where I just, I want to grow things. Like I want to try things that I've never tried growing up. I skied, um, a ton. I, I rollerbladed, I was in all the extreme sports. So like Volcom, North Face, Hurley, all these companies were huge influences when I was young. And growing up, me and my brother always wanted to start a clothing company. So now where it's like, well, I have the money and the time, let's try this thing that we had always talked about as kids. So we started Tricks and Clothing. And it's very family-oriented. Dave Ramsey, who's a financial guy I listen to, says the only ship that sinks is a partnership. So I've kind of gone against that advice. But yeah, we co-founded the company with my two brothers, my sister, my best friend from high

Starting point is 01:51:21 school, my brother-in-law and like a camera guy that i have and they all have equity in the company like i believe that people should be invested to the point where if they work harder they get paid more i don't like the hourly situation where it's like you trade your time for money so it's like it doesn't matter how hard you work you get paid the same amount so anybody that like i go into business with, I almost always want to offer some sort of equity, whether it's small or large, depending on what they can help because I want them to have an invested interest in it. So tricks and clothing is more of a content company than a clothing company. You know, we have, we just make clothes that we like to wear and then we go do fun stuff and we shoot all of that. And really what we're selling is this

Starting point is 01:52:05 lifestyle of creating great moments with your friends and family. And we just wear these shirts and hats while we're doing it. So it's really an excuse to do fun things with my siblings and my friends. Because it's like the last video we shot, we went to this iFly skydiving tunnel in Ogden, Utah. And that's work for us. We're going because we have to make um i fly skydiving tunnel in ogden utah and that's work for us like we're going because we have to make this video about this new hat that we're launching but in order to launch it we're going to make this cool skydiving video right indoor skydiving yeah indoor skydiving so mostly the reason i started tricks and clothing was to have an excuse to hang out with my friends and family and then people won't say that I'm lazy because I'm obviously working on my business.

Starting point is 01:52:51 Okay, so we're back from the Russian bath break. Rejuvenated, refreshed. Seeing each other naked. Seeing each other naked. That was exhilarating. It was the cold plunges. I'll tell you what people if your listeners don't know this tim ferris can sit in a cold plunge longer than anybody i've ever seen

Starting point is 01:53:11 we're talking sub zero that's 40 degree 40 degrees or so it's cold it's cold it's cold definitely shrinkage factor to the point where tim was under the water holding his breath, I watched a guy come get in the bath in the cold plunge, get out, shiver, and jump out of the thing saying, how is he doing that while you were under the water the entire time? So very refreshed, very awake now. Very awake. Very awake. And we talked about some cool stuff. And I was like, we need to record this. We need to record this. So we didn't get too far into it. But one of the conversations we were having related to one of the aspects of what you do that I find impressive, which is you are atypical in some respects with the way you've brought your audience along with you for eight years on YouTube. And I was lamenting and

Starting point is 01:54:07 also focusing on a lot of family-related content. And I was lamenting that when I was initially given suggestions for being more active on YouTube, I tended to be pushed towards doing like super fast cut. You must appeal to like 12 to 15 year olds. And that didn't jibe with me, but I am interested potentially based on what you've told me and what Casey Neistat has told me, experimenting with daily vlogging, even if just as like a form of therapy experimentation for myself. And we were discussing the potential of possibly doing, say like a, like 30 day experiments where people can do this along with me,

Starting point is 01:54:54 which I've done before on the blog with like knob nom, which was no booze, no masturbation for 30 days. That might be a weird video. So maybe not the no masturbation transition part, but what would, what would your suggestions be for doing that the right way or the smarter way instead of the dumber way? Because quite frankly, I'm so used to doing long form content and these long books, long blog posts that I struggle to think of how to do short form vlogs.

Starting point is 01:55:22 You don't need to necessarily. I know traditionally early on the internet has been, it's a low attention span place, right? Where it's like, I remember early on when I started uploading vlogs, it's like, if you had something over five minutes, good luck getting somebody to watch it, right? Like we're talking internet videos here. They need to be 30 to 90 seconds. You need to, you know, that's how the internet kids are. They're bouncing around the timelines, the Snapchats, the Facebooks all over. But that's not true anymore with YouTube. Like our vlogs average 12 to 20 minutes. Um, and any more YouTube rewards, the algorithm rewards longer videos because they want people on the site. So I've

Starting point is 01:56:05 found that our, you know, 12 to 15 minute videos have actually done better because people are on the site longer and the algorithm rewards watch time. So the longer somebody is on your video, the longer or the more likely that they'll see more of your videos or that your other related videos will pop up in the suggested videos box. So I guess my first tip, my, well, first everybody listening should tweet Tim relentlessly until he starts a YouTube channel, uh, because I know you guys want to see more of him, but it's just a better way to communicate with your audience. Like if, if you're a human Guinea pig, you know, like you kind of say sometimes like you're trying these things, you're trying to deconstruct, you know, world-class people, what a better way than to do what they do. You know, the best way to, um, kind of achieve

Starting point is 01:56:57 anything is find somebody who you want to be like, and just do what they do, you know, kind of follow their pattern. And so with what a 30 day vlog or what a daily vlog will do for you and what it's done for me is it really helps you look at yourself in a sense where I live every day twice, where I live my day. And then that night, as I import the footage from that day, I watch all that stuff. And it's not like, you know, if I have a 20 minute vlog or a 15 minute vlog, I only had 40 minutes of footage that day. Right. So it's like, there's not cameras out 24 seven. I shoot to edit. Right. So I'll pull out the camera and I should do it while I'm here. My camera's in my, in my backpack, but I will edit as I'm

Starting point is 01:57:39 shooting. Right. So like, as I'm talking, I will make cuts in my mind that I know I'm going to make later where I like take a breath, talk here, apple tea cut, and then start talking again. So because I've edited myself so much when I'm shooting myself, I know how long I want the clip to be. So I'll never shoot for longer than two minutes. A single take. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm good at that. And I've gotten better where I can just flip the camera on and talk. Some people find it really hard because you become self-conscious. You're like, I don't like the way I said that. And we talked about this at the Russian baths. To me, one of the biggest keys to success is not caring what other people think.

Starting point is 01:58:20 Just being able to speak freely and not worry about how it's going to be perceived. I was telling Tim this, I haven't been nervous for a long time to do something, but I was super nervous to come on this podcast because I know the caliber of people that listen to it. And so a lot of times I liked the fact that it's like, yeah,

Starting point is 01:58:39 I sold my company for a billion dollars. Cause then that gets respect. Right. But sometimes when I'm like just jabberbering like I do in my daily vlogs, I think people could stumble upon this and be like, what's this? This is a waste of time. But there's not a right or wrong way to do it. The way to do it is to just start doing it. Just to get a channel, make a video, and upload it. And then you start to learn what you like, what you don't like. Like I've always said, you shouldn't start a channel to try to be like Philip DeFranco. When I first found Phil, it was like, do I have to do that? Do I have to do these quick cuts and do popular culture? Do I

Starting point is 01:59:15 have to talk about Britney Spears going to jail? Like, what can my thing be? And my thing was, I just want to turn the camera on and talk. Or one of my very first vlogs when we were trying to get a Christmas tree from the basement upstairs and we got the Christmas tree stuck like in the stairway. And my son was stuck underneath this artificial Christmas tree. And my wife was like trying to pull the tree down the stairs. And my son was stuck inside the tree. And it was so funny. I'm like, instead of helping, I'm going to go get the camera and just record this. And so I also say vlogging is about knowing when to take out the camera. It's very hard to be like, okay, I'm going to turn the camera on and be funny and entertaining. Ready,

Starting point is 01:59:54 go. But it's more about like, oh, everybody's laughing right now. This is a great time to pull out the camera. You know, those moments that are just happening naturally. But with you and what we're talking about at the bathhouse is that, yeah, you can do a 30 day vlog where it's like, I'm going to do this for 30 days and you at home can follow along with me. And then it's, then it becomes like your YouTube channel is like a science lab where you're, you can see the results and people can follow along with you. You can have a day one. Here's my protocol.

Starting point is 02:00:25 Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to eat only fruit for a month and let's try this and let's see how it goes. And what a better way to communicate than through video by saying, Hey guys, it's day one. Here we go. I'm super nervous to try this. Let's do it. Okay. Here's my first banana. And then all of a sudden you're on day 10. This is my 176th banana. I'm pretty fucking sick of bananas. And then people will write in. All of a sudden you'll start getting banana recipes from all of your viewers. Like, hey, Tim, I'm doing the same thing, but here's how I eat my bananas. And then all of a sudden you're having the benefit of hundreds and thousands of minds kind of networking all on the same project that you're doing.

Starting point is 02:01:01 All being excited about the same thing you're excited about. So this is a fun idea for me, and I do want to come back to sort of a tactical, practical question for you. But so unbeknownst to pretty much everyone in the universe, I do have a YouTube page, but no one knows about it because it's been so neglected. Actually, neglected is too loaded. I haven't been consistent because I haven't figured out a way to do it that is congruent with my wants and values and desires.

Starting point is 02:01:31 But this would be congruent because it's like a log of an experiment, which is what I do all the time. Anyway, I just haven't used video. And you guys are not here with us in my living room. But I literally have bookshelf after bookshelf after bookshelf of notebooks. And it would just be a flip in recording mechanism, right? And I'll give a shout out. And I had no idea before we met that you have invested in DietBet among other companies. So DietBet, I have done a couple of campaigns with diet bet, even though I have no equity in the company or anything like that. I said, okay, this is a very

Starting point is 02:02:09 simple way for people to do what I have suggested for a long time, which is create incentives for yourself. It's not enough to say, I want to lose weight, bad goal, like make it specific. How many pounds make it measurable, measurable, make it rewardable or punishable and that's where something that is as simple as a as a betting pool comes into play so people can check out dietbet.com but i could see for instance combining the video uh log with a particular experiment that people could follow along, join me on, right? And I could see that, hello, that's okay. You're all right. We have company coming in and simultaneously having say diet bet. And on top of that, having something like coach.me, which is a company I'm involved with used to be lift for, uh, sort of, uh, not only accountability, but coaching for people who want it for whatever

Starting point is 02:03:07 might be going on. And if I did that, so let's just say, all right, day one, day 10, day whatever it might be, would you suggest filming to edit in the sense that I'm taking multiple snapshots of each day? Or is it just one portion? Because in my mind, I'm like, well, I could do, let's say, a flexibility experiment. But if it's like the same five-minute routine over 70 days, aren't people going to want to punch themselves in the face? It has to be, I think, the best vlog, just like any story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. So to me, the best way to do a daily vlog

Starting point is 02:03:46 is to start in the morning and be like, good morning. It's another great day. It's March, blah, blah, blah. And I'm going to do this. And I'm looking forward to this today. And then it's like, they're living this sped up day through your life because you're going to have different things that, you know, come to you throughout the day in the process. Like whatever it is that you're, you're doing, whether it's journaling, say you're trying to have different things that come to you throughout the day in the process. Whatever it is that you're doing, whether it's journaling. Say you're trying to write in your journal every day for 30 days and you're talking about that. And also there's this weird concept. For instance, listening to your podcast, being a fan of your podcast, I've wondered for the longest time what it looks like in here.

Starting point is 02:04:23 Just having Mike Rowe on and he's talking about all the books that you have and you have Jocko's book over here. As a viewer, I wish I could watch some of this podcast. Right? Yeah. And if you were doing a daily vlog, then people get a little bit more into the aesthetic of your life. So it's like, oh, he likes Japanese art and you like plants a lot. There's plants all over in this place.

Starting point is 02:04:48 And photographs and artwork of naked ladies. There are some naked ladies. This one over here keeps staring at me. What's your deal, lady? I'm a married man. But it's just more of you, right? People look up to Tim Ferriss. They want to know more about Tim Ferriss. That's what you do, right? You deconstruct world-class whatevers. And so you want to know, what did you have for breakfast? What should I have for breakfast? And that goes back to the point where I said, find somebody who you want to be like and do what they do. That's what vlogging is in the sense that you are really able to tell the story of your life in a much fuller way. And there's so many times during the day where you'll think like, Oh, I want to say this or, and that's a great time to pull out the camera. And it doesn't, that's why I'm like, I said, it's, it's important to know when to pull out the camera because it's this very hard proposition to be like, okay, I'm gonna turn

Starting point is 02:05:38 the camera on and talk about perform. Yeah, exactly. It's like be funny and entertaining, go. And then you see a red light, like action. That's tough to do. But in those moments where you're introspective or you're meditating or early in the mornings when you first wake up and you have an idea, what a better time to pop up. Or later in the mornings when I wake up. No, no shame in that. No judgment. And in fact, listening to your podcast, I know a lot of successful people get up early. That's a problem I have had as well. And until I had kids, 10 a.m. was early for me to wake up at 10 a.m. Now you're waking up and having soccer matches at 6 a.m. Yeah, I'm up at 6 a.m. every morning because there's kids jumping on my head. But it's a great way to tell a story, honestly.

Starting point is 02:06:25 And that's what I see what I do is, is it's just storytelling. And what we were talking about earlier is you're able to analyze yourself. Like I have been able to take out speech crutches like, um, and just saying words that are useless because I edit myself and I hate myself when I'm saying these ums or whatever that you use as a speech crutch. And I think you really are able to see yourself in a way that you're not used to seeing yourself. Completely. Yeah. And so it's been very, I mean, vlogging, people ask, is it healthy? Is it good? It's put a mirror in front of me that's made me ask myself some hard questions that I might not have done before if I wasn't editing my life every day after I lived it.

Starting point is 02:07:12 So it's almost like every day you live your life and then you sit down and you're like, I'm going to look at all of my day again. Well, it's in a way completely analogous to what I already do in text. And quite frankly, maybe better in the respect that I use, say, the five-minute journal, which forces you, encourages you to focus for a few minutes in the beginning of the day and then review it and do a retrospective and takes another three to four minutes. And there's a gratitude component. There is a focus component. People can listen to my other podcast on like, it's like the five habits that helped me win the morning if you want to hear more on that. But the point being, I don't have any social accountability. I don't have any external

Starting point is 02:08:01 pressure, which is a good thing in my mind to keep it up. So there are days when I miss it. But if I'm doing a daily vlog and I announce to the world that I'm going to do that, for fuck's sake, now I have to do this goddamn video, I am forced to do the retrospective and look back at the day in a way, which I think can be very helpful., the stick in that respect, I think is very underrated. The, I want to just comment on a few things, because I think they're important. So the first is not caring about what people think. And I was thinking, I was thinking to myself yesterday and sort of meditating, meditating is too lofty a word. I was just trying to digest two things that I hear a lot that I've always had trouble practicing and I've begun to suspect are almost impossible. So one is live every day like it's your last. And the fact of the matter is you can't do that. It would be

Starting point is 02:08:55 like whiskey and whores and Coke. You can't just start doing that. Maybe that's just me, but I apologize, everybody listening. So the point being, you have to temper that as someone with, say, kids or responsibilities or big, long-term goals with a degree of planning, which by definition takes you out of the present state. It's like, how do you balance those two things? It's maybe not as simple as it would appear at face value. And as we were talking about this today, not caring about what people think, I was like, is it that? But then you said something just a few minutes ago, which is not worrying. And I was like, well, I think that's the key right there. You can care about what people think, but not let it stop you from experimenting.

Starting point is 02:09:42 You can care on some level and have it be a consideration because as like social uh animals who have sort of evolved in tribal groups or small uh very small contingents i think we're hardwired in a sense to care about hierarchy and so on because they they used to kill you if they didn't like you yeah right or you get out of the clan yeah exactly and then you're done they would sacrifice you yeah that's then you're done so the uh all right so i'm gonna i'm gonna make a uh public commitment here here we go yeah so i i'm not gonna set at once i start and it'll be clear i will do a daily vlog for 30 days the the YouTube channel, which actually has some pretty wacky,

Starting point is 02:10:27 cool shit out there, including like video of some of my surgeries and crazy stuff like that, is just youtube.com forward slash Tim Ferriss with two R's and two S's. So check that out, guys. And subscribe. Subscribe.

Starting point is 02:10:40 Hold me accountable. So let's just say... Well, I'm going to hold you accountable right now. When are you going to start? When does your 30 days start? When do you want to know? I want to think of a good experiment. Yeah, what can you...

Starting point is 02:10:51 So I'm mid-experiment right now with gymnastics. So I could record some of that and put it up, certainly because I still suck balls at some that are really funny to watch because they're terrible. I mean, really bad. But I'm making progress, and it's very clearly visible if you see the timeline. And you would love to have that video.

Starting point is 02:11:10 That's another thing about vlogging. Now, the good news is I have all the video. Oh, you do? I've been filming, but I haven't posted it. And I could also potentially put up the commentary from Coach Sommer, who's been helping me, former national team coach who was just on the podcast. Uh, so let's see in terms of date,

Starting point is 02:11:31 uh, no later. I'm going to make it this way. Cause I want to make sure it's, I want to make sure it's something I enjoy putting out no later than August 1st, 2016. I will start 30 days of vlogging?

Starting point is 02:11:45 Yeah. What I was going to suggest is it would be cool to be like, what's a gymnastic move that you would love to be able to do? Like something that coach has told you that like an iron cross, for instance, right? Like up on the rings where you like do that. What I think would be cool is if you set a goal to be able to do something like that and say, I'm going to start August 1st and my goal is in 30 days, I'm going to be able to do this move. So I actually have three specific moves that I'm targeting right now, but people are just catching me midstream.

Starting point is 02:12:17 The good news is I have all the videos. So we will be able to do a retrospective. And the moves are, for people who haven't heard the Coach Summer interview, which is worth listening to, and people can just Google this. I won't go into it right now, but it's a strict press handstand, probably straddle. People can just look that up. And then front lever and then planche, P-L-A-N-C-H. Also probably a straddle planche because that's easier than a pike planche, or a straight-legged planche in any case. But yeah, I think I could have some fun with this. And the appeal to me of the vlogging, honestly, out of all the things we've talked about, is using it as a additional tool in the toolkit

Starting point is 02:13:05 for becoming more conscious and self-aware and present state aware. I've done that somewhat in audio, being able to deal with these audio tics, some of the verbal tics that I have. But it would be a fun way to, like you said, have a forcing function so that you look back at your day and have some sense of evaluation. Not judgment necessarily, but evaluation where you're actually forcing yourself to hopefully

Starting point is 02:13:37 incrementally improve bit by bit and trend in the right direction, which is what I've noticed with the gymnastics. If I weren't recording it and sending these videos to coach summer, it would just be, it would be infinitely harder for me to track and tweak the process and the progress. The accountability issue is huge because we always make excuses to not do something. But if you have a couple hundred thousand people who are like, you said you would do this on the days that you don't feel like doing it. And it's not to say that you don't feel like doing this, but there's, as we all know, days where you just don't feel like doing it, that will push you to do it anyways. And then you will grow exponentially faster because you're forcing yourself to do these things. What type of camera do you use?

Starting point is 02:14:29 And what software or other tools do you use to make this manageable? So my technical knowledge is fairly slim. I've always relied on my personality. But you can get a Canon G7X, which is what most YouTubers are using now. It shoots in 1080, high quality, high definition, has audio. And camera companies are really coming a long ways. They're really seeing the vlogging, I'm going to call it a culture, take off. It's so weird for me to be driving down the street and see somebody talking to a camera,

Starting point is 02:15:01 which I do often now, where I'll see people in stores talking to a camera, whether they're FaceTiming or FaceChatting or Snapchatting, FaceChatting. When I started doing it eight years ago, nobody was doing it. I would feel crazy walking around a grocery store talking to a camera. Now it doesn't bother me at all. Now I could be walking through the middle of Los Angeles International Airport and vlog as I'm walking through and not even care. But if I go to my hometown Walmart, I'll feel embarrassed because I'm afraid to see somebody I know that sees me doing the vlogging thing. But yeah, I use Final Cut Pro X, which is an easy editing software where you can import your footage. And it's, you know, Apple B

Starting point is 02:15:45 use the blade tool and you just cut. So I don't have a bunch of effects. Like I have a little intro and an outro, um, you know, and those are just best tips and practices. You should always link your content. So if you're doing 30 days of videos at the end of day one video, or at the end of day two video, it's great to say, Hey, go check out yesterday's vlog. You can click right here to watch it. So those are the little things that I can teach you. But yeah, you can use, I mean, the tools of the trade of creating content are so much better and easier to get now. And that's why, you know, people are able to compete with Hollywood out of their bedrooms because these cameras are small, they're cheap, and they're shooting as good of stuff as you see in movies sometimes or used to

Starting point is 02:16:30 see. It's like us, I mean, sitting here right now, the gear that I have that we're using right now consists of, in its entirety, a Zoom H6, two XLR cables, which have existed forever. And then two SM, I think these are SM 58 Shure mics, which have been around forever. You could throw these against the wall and they'd be totally fine. And this produces audio that is certainly for podcasting purposes, more than sufficient, as long as I don't screw it up too badly on the levels. And you think how many people are listening to this based off of this tiny little piece of technology? Like if you're in the room with us, it's a very small recording device. And as technology speeds up through this exponential growth that we're experiencing

Starting point is 02:17:15 right now, the ease of capturing that content is so much easier. Where to the extent that I've seen apps now, Casey Neistat, for instance, films a lot of his vlogs on his iPhone. The quality on this front-facing camera is so good now that you can do a lot of it on your phone and edit within your phone. And there are mics, and I have one somewhere nearby. I think it's called the Rodecaster. Yeah, you just plug in there. It plugs right into the lightning on the iPhone. Do you, on your canon g7x

Starting point is 02:17:46 attach any type of mic no i should you can and then there's i hate where the microphone is the microphone's on the top of the camera and it kind of sucks for wind so a lot of youtubers will get like a little you know like a fuzzy thing that you'd see like on the end of a boom pole or something to break up the wind and they put that but see canon is even now switching the mic to the front of the camera um to compensate for that to get the audio because they're realizing that people are speaking to the camera and so they're putting the microphones in different positions now so little things like that like i used to have a deal with flip you remember flip cameras back in the day sure it would pop out it was owned by the cisco corporation i was so mad because when youtube first started flip was genius

Starting point is 02:18:30 in the sense that they there was an event called youtube live that was here in san francisco in 2007 katie perry saying will or acon was there it was like the very first big youtube event where they invited all these YouTubers and there was like 50 seats that they had for like, you know, the big YouTubers that they invited to this event. And on every one of those chairs was a flip camera, a brand new flip camera in a box. And all of us were like, no way they gave us a free camera. And I use that camera so much and promoted it so often through my vlogs that the flip

Starting point is 02:19:05 company, um, court contacted me. They sent me like 10 of these cameras to give out. And they said, we want to do a Shay Carl flip camera. We want you to help us design what would be the best for this camera. And I was like, okay, we need to have a, uh, a macro button. And like, I had all these ideas and they ended up going, or Cisco for some reason, just shut down flip.

Starting point is 02:19:28 Yeah. I think it was a tax reason or something. Could have been a tax reason. It could have been an iPhone reason. Maybe, maybe. Right after they were acquired. It was like six months later, the iPhone. Yeah, that's the reason.

Starting point is 02:19:38 But I was so disappointed because I was going to have like my own flip camera. But the evolution of these personal point and shoot cameras has really come a long way where for 800 bucks, this Canon G7X can do a ton of stuff. Canon, that's on me. First one's on me. Send me 10 cameras. Help me design a new camera. Canon, come on.

Starting point is 02:19:58 I want some cameras too. Call me. This is the epic multi-parter. Continued. We just finished acro yoga. Got Shay to do flying poshy. Being flown, no less. I've had a lot of firsts on this trip.

Starting point is 02:20:16 I had a MRI body scan. We went to the Russian baths. I just got done doing acro yoga. And it's all in between the sessions of recording the podcast. There's a lot happening behind the scenes here. But we were talking about at the Russian baths, among other things, quotes that have motivated you and or quotes that you find very useful. And I remember one you said was, and correct me if I'm wrong here, something along the lines of smart people learn from their mistakes. Wise people learn from other people's mistakes.

Starting point is 02:20:46 Right. Are there any other quotes that you keep handy for yourself or others? Um, I mean, I love quotes. Like I love motivational quotes and I know that I have like a bunch that I'm like always like, I love Henry Ford's,

Starting point is 02:21:02 um, uh, what is it whether you think you can or whether you think you can't you're right I love that quote I love

Starting point is 02:21:14 you know one of mine that I've thought of is the secrets to life are hidden behind the word cliche you know I really always every time I think I'm hearing a cliche I count that as a truth. I perk my ears up. I try to listen to what's being spoken. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of different tips and tricks that you can try to keep yourself motivated, but I don't know. I

Starting point is 02:21:38 haven't thought about that right off the top of my head. Well, let's maybe come at it from a different angle and just thinking of tips. Quite a few people asked if you had any fatherhood tips for first-time dads. I was telling this to Tim yesterday. You have to know when to walk away from a crying baby sometimes because early on it can get stressful when the babies are crying and you've fed them and you've changed them. And it's like, what do you want kid? Um, I think a lot of parents stress themselves out majorly by trying to ease their kid.

Starting point is 02:22:12 And sometimes you just need to let a baby cry in their crib. Uh, cause it can get stressful. Uh, tips. Don't let them die. Yeah. Keep them alive.

Starting point is 02:22:23 I always, I always joke like I've kept all five of my kids alive. That's a good percentage. It's just, it's hard to give, like, here's what I would do as a father, because every situation is different, right? But I've learned that, and this kind of came to me, here's another quote that I think is true to life, that I kind of realized

Starting point is 02:22:46 when I had my fifth kid, when Daxton came along, which is to me, the happiest state of human existence is found in loving something more than you love yourself. And no other way can you do that than through parenthood, through, you know, flesh of your flesh. And I remember being an early parent and, you know, hearing parents like, oh, I remember being an early parent and, you know, hearing parents like, oh, I love my kids so much. And I almost felt this guilt early on. Cause I'm like, yeah, I love my kids, but like, I don't get how people are like so connected with their kids. I'm like, I guess I don't like my kids until they're like two years old. I can start talking and then their personality starts coming out. My wife is like, loves the little baby and like babies are cute and stuff,

Starting point is 02:23:28 but I'm like, they're worthless. Look at, he's just laying there. It doesn't do anything. But why, right? Like one and a half years old, when they start to talk and like walk and you see them understanding the things that you're saying, little Daxon, we have like full conversations and he can only speak like six words but i can just tell from his body language and from things that you know he points at and stuff we have like full conversations so um and they'll say the funniest things we'll be driving and my daughter emmy just has this dry quiet sense of humor and she'll drop these one-liners i'll be like turn the radio down what did you say brock ran in the kitchen the other day and he's like oh it smells so good in

Starting point is 02:24:09 here it smells better than jesus or the video you showed me with the bow and arrow yeah can you explain that that's a viral video we were driving home from los angeles to idaho and we stopped at this gas station and there's this little toy store in the gas station. And all the kids are like, I want a toy. I'm like, hey, you guys can have one toy. So my little, at the time he was three and a half, Brock got a bow and arrow. And we're getting in the van and I'm vlogging. We're like, okay, we're headed home. And all of a sudden he's like, look at my boner. And we're like, what did you say?

Starting point is 02:24:39 He's like, look, I got a boner. I'm like, no, Brock, it's a bow and arrow. And yeah, that got 7 million views on YouTube. But yeah, kids do say the darndest things. It is true. And from the outside looking in, I mean, you seem to be a very good dad. But just to revisit that question, what do you think makes you different? Because there are a lot of shitty parents out there and a lot of shitty dads. What makes you different because there are a lot of shitty parents out there and a lot of shitty dads what makes you different first of all you just got to be there for your kids right like i have seen the level of bad parenting that exists in the world just simply

Starting point is 02:25:15 because of how many kids watch our channel solely as like we're their parents because their mom and dad and some parents have to work a lot right so like i'm not if you have to send your kids to daycare or if you have to leave your kids i understand that like i remember coming home and my mom had to work till 4 30 so we were by ourselves when we came home but that's why i love my job because i can be with my kids and that really is because you can't like here's all the steps to being a good dad. Mostly, you just have to be there for them. And there's a fine line, too, about being their friend and being like their parent.

Starting point is 02:25:52 Because I'm my kid's friend in a sense that, like, we love to hang out. But when it's time to clean your room, I can be a dad and be like, no, get in there and clean your room. Like, I grew up in this traditional household where you need to learn how to work. You need to get your homework done. You need to keep your room clean. You need to help out around the house. You live here too. Go pick up that trash. Go do the dishes. Help out. Like we're a team. I tell my kids like this family is a team and we all need to pitch in together and everybody needs to help. So, you know, when the house is a mess, I can turn it into dad mode and be like, come on, every turn the TV off, turn the computer off, put that iPad away. Everybody

Starting point is 02:26:28 get in here. We're gonna do 10 minutes of cleaning and I can get in that dad type tone where it's like, it's time to do what you need to do because we need to be responsible. But then I'll wrestle with them on the couch and we'll play soccer in the basement. And it's just what I think the, here's the best tip about being a parent. Remember when you were a kid, right? Think about the things that you liked when your parents did. Think about the things that you didn't like what your parents did and change those things. And I think that's a generational thing. Each generation does better or tries to do better than before. I hear stories from my grandma about how poor they were

Starting point is 02:27:06 and how they had to really make sacrifices to make ends meet. And it's just like each generation tries to do better. And I would say those are some good tips. Just try to remember what it was like when you were a kid and try to implement those things. So when you are gathering tips, ingesting information, audiobooks, do you listen to audiobooks? I love audiobooks. Are you listening to anything right now or most recently? I mean, I have loved listening to anything Dale Carnegie,

Starting point is 02:27:42 How to Win Friends and Influence People is a staple that I've listened to three or four times. Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill are amazing. How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie. Also a huge winner. I just downloaded that. I haven't listened to that yet. I need to listen to that. I haven't listened to it, but I've read it several times. It is on my bookshelf

Starting point is 02:27:58 about 12 feet to my right. It sits there as a constant reminder that it's kind of like the break in case of emergency break glass in case of emergency book book yeah well because a lot of times you need to be reminded of that stuff like you'll go and you'll listen to those books you'll be like oh yeah why am i not doing that i know that when i do those things i feel happier there's just little things that we like we talked about earlier where humans are prone to follow the path of least resistance. And if we're not conscious about our decisions, and we're not every day making specific choices

Starting point is 02:28:32 to become better, we'll slowly start to slide down. We will get worse. So you have to be conscious every day of what am I going to do with my life? How do I want my life to be? What kind of person do I want to be? And just having those conversations with you. But I love audio books. Anytime I can multitask, mow on the lawn. I listen to your podcast all the time. I have an Audible subscription. I listen to Audible, any audio books I can find. Any other podcasts that you really enjoy listening

Starting point is 02:29:00 to? I like the Joe Rogan podcast. I listened to Hank and John Green. They have a podcast. They give dubious advice. They're YouTubers. I really look up to those guys. I mean, writers also. Yes, smart dudes. And creators of VidCon, right?

Starting point is 02:29:14 Yep. They created VidCon. They have a science channel, like all kinds of intellectual content, smart stuff. They're brothers that I i call john green an intellectual dreamboat he's no john he's the author he's the author of the fault the fault no stars which was turned into a movie for alaska um he's done a couple others and hank is in a band he kind of runs vidcon and uh they both have a collaborative channel called the Vlog Brothers.

Starting point is 02:29:53 Smart dudes who you can trust. They do a project for Awesome every year where they, like the last couple of years, raised over a million dollars for charities around the world. Very earnest guys. Yeah. And very forthcoming with the lessons they've learned also from what I've seen. And that's why I love their podcast because they really... I was going to actually open my podcast thing here. I love This American Life. I listen to Marc Maron.

Starting point is 02:30:13 I like When the Kids Go to Sleep. That's my podcast. WTKGTS, check it out. But yeah, yours mostly. I've been listening to yours a lot. I found you through Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan tweeted the Jocko podcast, and that's when I really started to listen to you. But yeah, I think aggregating your timeline too is a great thing. What I mean by that is,

Starting point is 02:30:36 I try to follow people on purpose so I will be forced to see things on Twitter that will motivate me. Or things that I'm like, what's, what can I learn new? So like I'll, I'll follow NASA and all these, you know, there's a Facebook. Oh, I really wanted to tell this to your audience. There's a Facebook page that has some of the coolest technological videos you'll see on the internet. And it's called, um, oh my heck, I got it. Hashim Al-Ghalil. Well, maybe we can put it in the show notes. We can put it in the show notes. How do you spell it?

Starting point is 02:31:08 It's H-A-S-H-E-M, capital A-L dash G-H-A-I-L-I. And some of the, if you want to be on the cutting edge of what's happening. You were telling me about one with the water coming out of a spigot that then has sound waves of a particular frequency pushed through it. I haven't seen this video yet. And then the water basically mimics... It takes on the property of the sound wave. Yeah. That sounds incredible. There's just things that seem science fiction, but you go to this guy's Facebook page and we're talking like printing skin, printing body parts. There's some really

Starting point is 02:31:46 cool stuff that's happening. And if you want to be on the cusp of knowing what's happening technologically, I'd get on that Facebook page and check it out. I'll put that in the show notes also. What is the book you've given most as a gift? You know, I've listened to your podcast so many times and I wanted... What my answer previously was and what I recommend all the time is Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University, which is... It's a practical book. Financial Peace University. P-E-A-C-E. Yeah. Peace. And it's just about getting out of debt, cutting up your credit cards.

Starting point is 02:32:17 That concept freed me up early on in my marriage and in my career to do things like move to Los Angeles and start this crazy company called Maker Studios. Because I didn't have debt, because I didn't have all these bills, I didn't have a car payment, I didn't have a... Well, I did. I did have car payments and student loans and all of that stuff. Because I read one of the very first books I ever read was Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad, Poor Dad. And that was all about OPM, use other people's money, leverage other people's time. And you talk a lot about that in the 4-Hour Workweek. But to me, it was so stressful to have debt. And it was like, not if you could afford that, but could we fit that monthly payment into our budget? We bought furniture, 90 days same as cash, all that rat race stuff.

Starting point is 02:33:08 By getting out of all of that, it freed me up to have the courage to try something new. So I always recommend Dave Ramsey and his books. But if I think about it, the book that I've given out the most is the Book of Mormon, because I was a missionary for two years, and that's all I did is pass that book out. And I think it has value, whether you believe it's scripture, like the Latter-day Saints believe, or if it's just a made-up book that was written by Joseph Smith. There are stories in there that really will help you learn how to have faith in yourself, have faith in something greater than you. Have hope in the future of an eternal life. So here's a question for you. So I was thinking, when you mentioned sort of the truth behind the cliche,

Starting point is 02:33:53 I was thinking about parables also. Right. And books like The Alchemist. Yep. Books like Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. And the impact they can have, lasting impact they can have on people. If someone who is a non-believer would like to read a part of the Book of Mormon that you think could have an impact on them despite their lack of theology, is there anything in particular that

Starting point is 02:34:20 you would point them to? There is a chapter, I believe it's Alma, I'm a bad Mormon, I should know this, Alma 2, I'm looking up on my phone right now. There's a prophet by the name of Alma, which I think is, the reason I'm going to suggest this is because it's actually a science experiment that you can do on spirituality. Where in this, it's like a parable, well, it's a story in Alma 2, where he talks about, at least if you don't believe in God, the first place to start is have a hope that there's a God. I just think like, well, what if you could make up whatever you wanted and it was true? Which obviously is, you obviously is not what I'm suggesting. But

Starting point is 02:35:06 to me, when I have a crisis of faith where I'm like, what if God doesn't exist? What if this is all made up? What if we die and we're just worm food? That stresses me out to think about that because I feel I've worked so hard on my relationships with my wife, with my kids, building this family, for it to end in dust isn't okay with me, right? Even to the point where, this is where I've said to people, if you don't believe in God, you should believe in the technology that's going to make us immortal. Because that Facebook page that I was just explaining, it lends to immortality for humans in the next 10 to 20 years where we can print off organs, we can 3D print livers, we can embed chips into our body now. We're getting into all that kind of stuff.

Starting point is 02:36:01 So to me, that doesn't contradict God. To me, all knowledge is God's knowledge. We need to learn everything there is. And if he created our bodies, then we're going to slowly learn how to create artificial intelligence. Well, there's all... And I mean, living in Silicon Valley too, I know people who are doing some pretty out there stuff. I mean, in the name of like Ponce de Leon's Fountain of Youth or Immortality, they're all- Transcendent Man. Yeah, Transcendent Man.

Starting point is 02:36:33 Ray Kurzweil. Ray Kurzweil. It's a favorite documentary of mine. And I was an advising faculty member for a period of time for Singularity University based at NASA Ames. And so you have the pills, you got the potions, you have stuff like metformin for extending life. You also have people who are looking at blood transfusions with younger people, which is

Starting point is 02:36:53 very interesting. So replacing their own blood vampire style. Yeah. And it just goes on and on. Stem cell stuff, regeneration of destroyed connective tissue, which is something I'm experimenting with right now with some very off-label medical compounds, we'll call them. Is that what you call them? That's what I'll call them for now. That's a separate conversation. So you mentioned

Starting point is 02:37:17 Transcendental Man as one of your favorite documentaries. So let's go there. What are some of your favorite documentaries or movies? Yeah. Transcendent Man was very interesting to me. I'm a huge Morgan Spurlock fan. He just helped me make a documentary that we're working on. Well, it just premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. It's called Vlogumentary. It's a documentary of this YouTube world and how creators like me have made a living making videos on the internet. Um, so I'm a big Morgan Spurlock fan. Um,

Starting point is 02:37:50 forks over knives is if you want to get into health, um, is a great documentary. I'm sure everybody's been on Netflix. What's the other one that's like that forks over knives? Um, well, there are a bunch,

Starting point is 02:38:01 there are a bunch. Yeah. This gets into some heated territory pretty quickly, But are you talking about the sort of vegetarian-oriented documentaries? Yeah. There's another one that I haven't seen because I think… The Garrison Therapy? What is it? Well, there's one called Cowspiracy. Oh, yes. I've heard of that one. conspiracy but my like my point my ask of creators would be if you want to if you want to persuade

Starting point is 02:38:27 people with an argument who are not a part of the choir in other words you're not preaching to the converted do not name your documentary cowspiracy like i'm just not going to be able to take that seriously uh unfortunately there might be good stuff in it but it's just it's that's that's not how you use a honeypot to convert the hard to convert right uh but uh any other any other docs or movies that come to mind um dude i'll tell you a movie that's coming out that i saw at the sundance film festival i don't know when it's coming out but it's called captain fantastic with vigo mortensen okay and it's a story about a father who is kind of sick of society and he takes his well the mom and the wife of the family has passed away and i won't tell you how and she and so he takes his kids into the forest and they

Starting point is 02:39:20 like live off the land and he teaches his kids everything he knows. He has all these books. And part of the movie is like, he doesn't want to go back into society. Anyways, I saw it at Sundance. I bawled my eyes out. Look for it in theaters. I don't know when it's even coming out. But it's called Captain Fantastic.

Starting point is 02:39:36 Viggo Mortensen is the father in it. Sounds like kind of my ultimate fantasy, aside from the family members passing away part. It's like Swiss Family Robinson in today. It's really cool. Like the opening scene is them chasing a deer down from the family members, uh, passing away family Robinson in today. Uh, it's really cool. Like the opening scene is them chasing a deer down and killing it to, for food.

Starting point is 02:39:51 Amazing. Yeah. I need to see that. Uh, what a hundred dollar or less purchase doesn't, we can fudge that a little bit, uh, has most positively impacted your life in recent memory that's a good question i didn't think about an answer to that one hundred dollar or less

Starting point is 02:40:13 it probably you know it could be more and it's it's it's flexible like what purchase that is not outside of everyone else's reach uh this is a little more pricey than that but the boosted board the electric skateboard yep which is more like 900 but um they have a few different models yeah you can get so you can get cheaper ones so i also have a boosted board in my garage and uh what i decided was the most fun for me on the boosted board i'd like to hear your opinion but the boosted board i also put in this crazy quarterly box you can check out quarterly this company that sends out quarterly boxes that people can subscribe to but

Starting point is 02:40:50 i created the boxes usually cost like a hundred dollars to subscribe and i was like you know what i want to do a holiday mega box that's like five grand i don't remember it was like 1500 or five grand and just filled it it was a it's two huge like Raiders of the Lost Ark crates. And they included a boosted board. No way. But what I realized for myself is that I like the sensation, because it's so odd, of carving uphill. Yeah. Because the board can go, what, 22 miles an hour? Yeah.

Starting point is 02:41:17 And you can... They're a longboard, effectively. And you have a hand controller that allows you to accelerate or decelerate. That's the other cool thing. Like going downhill, you can brake can break yeah and charge it like battery like a prius yep and uh yeah the boosted board's awesome you have to be careful and when you start do not start on the highest speed setting because it will shoot out from underneath you and when you do start you need to get into like a power stance.

Starting point is 02:41:46 They scare me. Yeah. That's a fair warning. If you get a boosted board, do not kill yourself because, and I think they make it hard to turn it on the fastest. It comes auto default to the slow setting. And cause I was trying to turn it up to the fast setting. I'm like, how do I, I had to get into the instructions and like figure it out, which is good, which is powerful. Yeah. Get a helmet. helmet and you're if you're someone like me you know 38 and i got on it and suddenly i like reverted to my 12 year old self and i'm like oh yeah i totally used to do this don't get too carried away with that emotion uh here's what i would say unless you can run 23 miles an hour be very careful because if you're

Starting point is 02:42:22 gonna hit a rock or something and if you're going 22 miles an hour, you're going to eat your face. The reason I bring up the boosted board is because I'm just so excited about the power of batteries. Batteries are getting so much stronger. You see with all those hoverboards that all the YouTubers are riding. Now these electric skateboards that can take you up a hill. That's magic to me. Me and my brother growing up,

Starting point is 02:42:45 it's like if we could have had something like that, we would have gotten in so much trouble. You probably wouldn't even be sitting here. I would not. I would definitely have injured myself. Since you're the guy who does backflips on skis. On skis, yeah. And we were talking yesterday

Starting point is 02:42:55 where I think the evolution of that with how many quadcopters we're seeing, I really think we're on the cusp of a personal battery-powered quadcopter where you can kind of get in this little self-encapsulated helicopter dome and fly around. Just have a harness. Yeah. I don't see... I don't... In fact, if you go on YouTube right now, you can see a guy who has built a platform out of these quadcopters and he can stand on it with a hand control and fly standing on top of like six quadcopters that he built out of this platform so

Starting point is 02:43:29 it's gonna get real jetson like here pretty soon it's coming in the next five years now i usually ask about morning rituals but it might involve well it sounds like zeke you're john you're great dane staring straight down your face until like anxiety and sixth sense wakes you up or kids jumping on you I don't know but do you have any particular rituals that are important to you and your family in the first say 60 to 90 minutes of

Starting point is 02:43:56 waking up definitely and it it's only evolved you know since like my three oldest are all in school now but I used to sleep in till 10 or 11. But it's rare if I'm in bed after 8am now, because either Zeke is with his giant Great Dane snout right in my face with a stinky breath, or the kids are running in. And two out of seven days of the week, we have a kid that ends up sleeping with us because

Starting point is 02:44:25 they had a nightmare or something. And I'll just wake up and there's a kid in our bed because they came in during the middle of the night. But we pray. Every morning before the kids go off to school, we kneel down as a family and we say a prayer. And whether you think that's crazy or not, I mean, think about just the aspect of having kids. Because in the prayer, we say that what we're grateful for, we're thankful for our health. We're grateful for our house. We're grateful for each other. Help us to be kind,

Starting point is 02:44:51 help us to be loving. And we say these words and we take turns. And I, you know, I'll say, Gavin, we say the prayer this morning, Avia,

Starting point is 02:44:58 we say the prayer this morning. And that's one thing that my wife and I have tried to focus on before we send our kids out the door every morning is we want to have a family prayer. We'll kneel down. And sometimes it's seven in the morning and I'm still asleep and they'll come in to say the morning prayer. And I'm still laying in bed and they'll all just kneel at the foot of the bed. And I'll get up and roll over like, okay, I'm ready to pray. I'm ready. And we'll say our little morning prayer. And I think it just gives us a good tone. It helps my kids have an eternal perspective, which I think all people

Starting point is 02:45:31 should have. We should always be conscious of, we came from somewhere. Now we're here on this earth, and then we're going to go somewhere. Which is, I guess, your next rapid fire question. If I could put anything on a billboard, what would it be? Oh, look at you. You're going to die someday. Or maybe I just have it say, you're going to die. And that seems gruesome, but having a healthy understanding... And my grandpa taught me this. My grandpa would always talk about when he died. In fact, he bought his coffin five years before he actually died.

Starting point is 02:46:03 And so when people would come over, he would take them down into the garage and show them his coffin. And I remember like getting in it, you know, so like I've been in my grandpa's coffin and teaching them that like death isn't something to be feared, but you know, life should be lived to the fullest because you're going to die. And I just love conversations like that because to me, that's what has real meaning. Because to me, the things that matter the most last the longest. And to me, families are forever. I believe that my wife and I will be joined in holy matrimony for all time and eternity. In traditional wedding ceremonies, you hear, until death do you part.

Starting point is 02:46:46 And I'm like, bullshit. No. Why would you part at death? So that's kind of where I come at it. And that's what I teach my kids. I teach them that I married this beautiful daughter of God who I cherish and who is their mother. And I even, so far, my relationship to my wife is so important to me that, and I don't want my kids to know that she's a priority over them, but my wife and I's relationship isn't more important than my kids and I relationship, but they need to know how strong that is. They need to see that mom and dad are solid. And so a lot of times me and Colette consciously make decisions to not let our kids come between us. So we never do the like, go ask your mom, go ask your dad. It's like me and her need to come up with a decision. And we are a united front that then goes and informs the kids

Starting point is 02:47:42 on if they can do such and so some of the the the strongest families that i've encountered in the last five to ten years are really explicit about what you just said but they would they would they would perhaps in some cases saying like my relationship with my wife or my husband comes first and then my relationship with my kids because it prevents that uh mutiny from breaking out or that like dissension in the ranks where all of that which then turns

Starting point is 02:48:11 it creates a really I think sort of a caustic isn't the right word insidious it plants an insidious seed that can cause all sorts of problems later but that's something that I've seen over and over again with the marriages or families that seem to work, which at least where I live

Starting point is 02:48:32 is in the minority, sadly. I mean, family is on the decline. I think the foundation to our society is the family. Like we all, whether you like it or not, all come from a family. We are all from a mother and a father, whether you know who that person is or not. Um, but I do, I mean, I'm softening saying this now cause I don't want to like offend my kids or like make people think I don't love my kids. But yeah, like my relationship with my wife is way more important because guess what? The kids are going to leave. They're going to turn 18 and leave the house. And then it's just going to be me and my wife. So if, if we've let them come between us and all of a sudden the kids are out of the house and it's like, Oh, we don't have a very good relationship because you know, the kids have

Starting point is 02:49:13 like drove this wedge between us all these years. Uh, it's going to be a crappy situation. So me and my wife's relationship is most important. And I think our kids know that you get married at age, remind me? 22. 22. What advice would you give your 25-year-old self? I was listening to the last podcast with Mike Rowe. And hindsight, I say, is not 20-20.

Starting point is 02:49:40 It's 4K. Hindsight is 4K for the internet kids out there. But at 25, where was I when I was 25? We had just had our first kid. I think Colette was pregnant. That's right. When I dropped out of college, uh, maybe I would have said drop out of college sooner. Um, but I don't think I would change anything. I think I agree with Mike Rowe in the sense that I would tell myself, don't worry, it's going to be okay. Um. Things are going to work out. And I love that question because it's easy to think, well, what would I tell my 25-year-old self? So then I think, well, if I'm 45 and I'm asked that question, what would I tell my 36-year-old self?

Starting point is 02:50:21 This is something I think about a lot, actually. And I actually journal. Sorry, I'm hijacking this for a second just because I've had a lot of puberty. So one of the only pieces of writing that I've lost that made me really, really sad for an extended period of time was I sat down and I wrote a short

Starting point is 02:50:41 story and realized only afterwards it was very similar to this piece written by Borges, but where I sat down and I wrote a short story and realized only afterwards, it was very similar to this piece written by Borges, but where I sat down and ended up seated across the table from a stranger and it turned out to be my future self. And so I asked them for advice and they gave me advice. And it was a fun story, but I also, I mean, this sounds so kind of weird but got a lot of good advice just by going through the exercise right and i was like that's odd i don't know what i

Starting point is 02:51:13 just did there it seems like a like a kind of a a really funky magic trick but what so what would your that's what i mean what you just explained is exactly what I was going to suggest, is think about how old you are right now, and think about being a 10-year-older version of yourself, and then think, what would I probably tell myself as an older version of myself? And that is the wisdom that I think you found in that exercise. Stephen Covey says, begin with the end in mind. And so I think having this eternal perspective where you're thinking about the timeline of your life, where you came from, where you're going, who you want to become, you can kind of delve into certain moments in that timeline, and specifically the past

Starting point is 02:52:07 because you can see where you've come from. But just thinking futuristically in a sense where, okay, what am I going to, you know, what are probably my suggestions to myself in five years from now? And then start living those things. I think you're going to exponentially, you know, grow faster than you would have. It's all about measuring, right? It's all about a measured life, about being conscious of your decisions, about looking at your attitudes, about what you think. Talking about books, I mentioned earlier, As a Man Thinketh is to me one of the most powerful books that you can read.

Starting point is 02:52:40 And it's short. It's like 100 pages. And there's so much truth in the fact that everything that you do physically starts as a thought in your mind. So if you don't want to become whatever, don't think about those things. And if you find that you're thinking about a certain thing, that's going to manifest itself physically eventually. So your thoughts are a very... And sometimes people get crazy thoughts, right? Sometimes you might think you're crazy because of all the stuff that comes in your mind, but you have to be conscious and it takes self-discipline. Well, I think part of the development of that discipline, I mean, for me, it's been morning meditation practice, but also been the developing, or I should say rather practicing the role of observer as opposed to being trapped in yourself and run by your emotions and not being aware of them or observing them. like taking 10 minutes to write down what your 45 year old self, like in my case, right. Or 50

Starting point is 02:53:46 year old self would say to me now gives me a degree of separation where I can look somewhat objectively, like step off the rollercoaster ride that is my life and be like, that's a fucking weirdly designed rollercoaster. Like, hold on here. Why did the architect do it that way? We should really like change this turn. People are going are definitely going to get sick on turn four. Let's fix that. And another way that I do that, I mean, I'm not particularly religious, so I don't have a what would Jesus do bracelet, I think. But I have a handful of friends who are very highly developed in ways that I am not. So I have friends who are very zenned out and effective in high stress circumstances. I'm very good at doing that in crises. I'm not so good with the small things. I get really riled up

Starting point is 02:54:33 by the little things. And so I might say, ask myself, you know, what would Matt Mullenweg, this is a friend of mine who's really impressive on a lot of levels, like, what would Matt Mullenweg do in this situation? Like, how would fill in the blank, right? How would Eric Weinstein think about this? And if I'm overreacting and feeling myself slip into a negative state, I'm like, let me hit pause here. How would these other people I know really well

Starting point is 02:54:59 respond to this right now? Like, what would their advice be to me? And I find that is an extremely helpful exercise, which takes practice. So you get into the habit of doing it. So speaking of that, vlogging is great practice. Because when you're editing yourself, you are watching yourself. And that is exactly what you need to do when you talk about becoming an observer of yourself. Because when you're in your mind, you make excuses for yourself, right? Or maybe you're not even conscious of some

Starting point is 02:55:32 of the things that you're doing or saying, or if you're rude to somebody, maybe you don't even realize that you're doing that. But if you're able to step out of your body in a sense and look at yourself from a third person point of view, which is I've been able to do much more because I've edited myself for so long. I'm able to see the things that I'm saying and then tell myself, you shouldn't say that because of this and this and this. It's hard to explain, but like almost try to picture, you know, as you sit there, close your eyes and imagine that you are standing behind yourself and that you're looking at the back of your head. And that is a practice that you can do to kind of

Starting point is 02:56:12 help pull yourself out and become an observer of your life. And that's when I think there's power to be like, well, I shouldn't have done that. This is good. I should do that. And then, you know, you can be the architect of your roller coaster and you can change turn three. Well, that's also the detachment that Jocko talks about. Very similar approach. Well, this has been really fun, Shay. I'm glad you came here to acro yoga and Russian bath and do it all. Is there any ask or request for my audience? Anything you'd like them to consider, think on before we get to where they can find you

Starting point is 02:56:51 and all that good stuff? I mean, I just, it's the same conversation that we've been having is take a look at your life, you know, and know and have hope that you can make it whatever you want it to be. And then just go about the task of doing it. And it's through hard work, through reading, through experience. The real success is in the doing of the thing.

Starting point is 02:57:19 So you can say and listen to a bunch of stuff, but to make action, to do stuff, to get up early, to make your bed, doing the hard things is what will bring you success. So get used to work and fall in love with it. Find those things that you hate and find those things that you dread and embrace them. And once you do that, there's no fear left because you've kind of allowed yourself to go into the dark. And it reminds me of one quick

Starting point is 02:57:52 story. I remember when I was working at the granite shop, dude, 4.30 was the worst time of day because those last 30 minutes would just drag on. And I would stare at the clock like 30 more minutes, 29 more minutes, 28 more minutes. You've done it in school or you've watched the little hand move slowly. And one day I was like, why am I just dreading this last 30 minutes every day? It sucks to hate. Like we talked about hate this 30 minutes of my life. And so I remember one day where I was like, I'm just going to clean this shop. I'm going to turn on some music in this last 30 minutes. I'm just going to clean this shop. And I hated clean the shop because it was a mess. And all the other guys would just throw silicone tubes on the ground. It would piss me off. So I just started going to work. I just started working. And all of a sudden, I looked up at the clock and it's 545.

Starting point is 02:58:31 I'm like, I just stayed 45 minutes past. So quit procrastinating, dive into the hard stuff, and allow yourself to make a mistake. You're going to mess up. And just never quit. Keep going. Get started. That's it. All right, my friend. So where can people find you? What are you up to?

Starting point is 02:58:52 What would you like them to check out? I'm Shea Carl on all the social medias. You can follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Shea Carl. I just wanted to talk about a website called Social Blue Book that I'm really excited about right now. That's the thing I'm really excited about blowing up right now. It's a place that influencers can go to find their value. If you find yourself with 5,000 Twitter followers, and there's a brand that wants to pay you to promote their product, and you have no idea what to charge them,

Starting point is 02:59:21 you can go to socialbluebook.com and you can log in through your Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and they'll give you real values of what your tweets are worth. If you made a video for somebody promoting a product, it'll give you your value based on statistics like watch time, thumbs up, comments, interaction. And it also has a great tool where you can submit... Or brands, if you're a creator, can submit brand deals to you. And there's a whole form where you can just type in the ask. Check it out. If you're an influencer, it's a great tool to negotiate with brands. Socialbluebook.com is really cool. Everybody listening, as always, links to books mentioned, channels mentioned,

Starting point is 03:00:09 pages, et cetera, will be found and can be found in the show notes. So visit that for all of the delightful things that we discussed at 4hourworkweek.com forward slash podcast, all spelled out. And as always, and until next time, thank you for listening. 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

Starting point is 03:00:43 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, the world of the esoteric as I

Starting point is 03:01:06 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 fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.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.

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #170: Shay Carl — From Manual Laborer to 2.3 Billion YouTube Views

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #170: Shay Carl — From Manual Laborer to 2.3 Billion YouTube Views

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.