The Tim Ferriss Show - #255: How to Turn Failure into Success

Episode Date: July 26, 2017

In this episode, we discuss another common request from listeners. I've gathered some of the best advice about coping with frustrations and roadblocks, and -- ultimately -- learning how to turn failure into success. These conversations are extremely valuable because they show you there is more than one way to achieve your goals. After more than 200 conversations with the world's top performers, you start to spot certain patterns. These are the shared habits, hacks, philosophies, and tools that are the common threads of success, happiness, health, and wealth. Behind each success story is usually a lesson on how to overcome failure. Aside from my own take on the topic, this episode includes conversations with: Arnold Schwarzenegger Malcolm Gladwell Bryan Johnson A.J. Jacobs Shep Gordon Enjoy! Show notes and links for this episode can be found at tim.blog/podcast. This podcast is brought to you by Soothe.com, the world's largest on-demand massage service. Because I've been broken so many times, I have body work done at least twice a week -- so I have a high bar for this stuff. I do not accept mediocrity, and I wouldn't expect you to, either. After much personal testing, I can affirm that Soothe delivers a hand-selected, licensed, and experienced massage therapist to you in the comfort of your own home, hotel, or office in as little as an hour. I was amazed at the quality of service and convenience. Think of it as Uber for massages, available in fifty cities worldwide. Download the app at Soothe.com and use code TIM to get $20 off each of your first two massages. This podcast is also brought to you by MeUndies. I've spent the last year wearing underwear from these guys 24/7, and they are the most comfortable and colorful underwear I've ever owned. MeUndies are designed in L.A. and made from sustainably sourced MicroModal -- a fabric three times softer than cotton. Even better, it includes free shipping. If you don't love your first pair of MeUndies, they'll hook you up with a new pair or a refund. If you love the product, they have three different subscription plans -- so you'll never be bored with the ever-changing selection. Check out MeUndies.com/Tim to see my current faves (some are awesomely ridiculous, like the camo) and get 20 percent off your first pair. That's MeUndies.com/Tim.***If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Visit tim.blog/sponsor and fill out the form.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Friday subscribers. So check it out. Tim.blog forward slash Friday. If you listen to this podcast, it's very likely that you'd dig it a lot and you can, of course, easily subscribe any time. So easy peasy. Again, that's tim.blog forward slash Friday. And thanks for checking it out. If the spirit moves you. Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show. I am Tim Ferriss, And thanks for checking it out, if the spirit moves you. across more than 200 guests on the podcast. So we call them in as it relates to a specific topic or a specific question and then give you the highlights. I've made it my job each and every time I do an interview to deconstruct world-class performers of different types, tease out the habits, routines, tactics, and so on that set the average apart from the extraordinary.

And these radio hour episodes focus, as I mentioned, on one specific theme and bring in tactical advice from several guests. This episode is about failure. One of the most common attributes in all of the successful people, however you define success, I have met and interviewed is that they have an ability, a cultivated ability oftentimes to move through failure or view it differently. This is exactly when many other people simply quit. So coming up, I talk to, for instance, the Terminator Arnold Schwarzenegger about how failure propelled him forward. I remember Michael Jordan one time said in an interview that he missed 9,000 shots.

Then mega bestselling author and one of Time Magazine's 100 most influential people, Malcolm Gladwell shares his failures and what he learned from them. One of the most important things about me is how obsessed I am with those two flaws of mine. Next, we learn from entrepreneur and investor Brian Johnson, the founder of Braintree, which was bought by eBay for a cool $800 million. So at this point, I have no income. I have a child at home, and so I need to make ends meet. Self-experimenter extraordinaire A.J. Jacobs then steps in to share a story about his favorite failure. You're going to get rejected 98% of the time. You just got to keep going. And Shep Gordon, who is named one of the 100 most influential people by Rolling Stone magazine,

adds a story you won't forget. Shep is the man behind some of the biggest names in entertainment, and he understands and explains what separates those who get consumed by fame from those who are able to thrive in the moment. I would say 99% of the people I met in show business who were the kingpins were miserable. Of course, I am often asked about my own failures. After all, I'm no stranger to struggles. I am not immune. I don't conquer insecurities and all obstacles

with a mental karate chop every morning when I hop out of bed. So I thought that we could give a specific example of one of my failures. And if you want to hear about some really, really dark times that I won't get into, you could listen to my new TED talk from the main stage about fear setting. And you can find that has at least a million views right now. I just went up tim.blog forward slash TED. But in a business context, I thought I would focus on something that happened in the last few years. And this can be very cathartic, discussing failure, and pragmatic, because it helps you to

uncover when you do a post-game analysis, what is holding you back, ideologies perhaps, or mental models that need to evolve, or just simple blind spots. And this one is related to a TV show. I have tried TV several different times and I could give you some of the early failures, but I wanted to give you a more recent one. And it is a failure in quotation marks because I was able to transmogrify it into something else. And I will explain how. So the Tim Ferriss experiment was a TV show that was produced. I was one of the executive producers and the host several years back with Turner Broadcasting and had a very good team on the Turner side, very good team on the production side, 0.0, who has done all of, as far as I know, Anthony Bourdain shows,

very gritty, very cinematic, incredible team. All of the pieces were in place. And I did, before I got started, a number of analyses before signing on the dotted line for the deal, including descriptions of the worst case scenario and the worst case scenarios. This relates back to the fear setting, which you guys should check out. So I did that. But of course it's limited based on a number of assumptions that you make about what could go wrong, what you think up at the time. I also did what's called a SWOT analysis, which is fancy sounding, but it stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats. All right. so I'm identifying strengths I can leverage for the show, weaknesses I might want to compensate for by hiring other people

or simply avoiding those particular areas, opportunities, what could come of the show that I might want to be prepared for, have infrastructure for, and then threats, which relates to the fear setting and the premeditatio malorum, the premeditation of evils or bad things that could happen to pull on Seneca a little bit. What ended up happening with the show, there are a few things. Number one, for those of you who haven't seen it, you can just

search Tim Ferriss experiment. It's available on iTunes at this point is if you, if you go to itunes.com forward slash Tim Ferriss, two R's, two S's, and scroll to the bottom, you'll find the TV show. The schedule was near suicidal. There were 13 episodes, I want to say, filmed in something like between 13 and 15 weeks. And I suffered some tremendous injuries because the premise of the show was that each episode I would tackle a new skill. I would start from zero. I would try to learn as much as possible with experts in the span of, say, a week, which realistically ended up being three or four days, and then test it in some type of high stakes final exam. And so we tried to parkour. We did rally racing, suffered some

tremendous injuries, which were caught on camera for your enjoyment. Poker, betting in Vegas, all sorts of craziness. And we filmed the show and then we ran into a couple of issues and they were all related to distribution and regime change. So the issue number one was that people had trouble meeting those in my audience, actually locating where the show was being broadcast. It was on, I guess it was HLN and then True. And it bounced around from here to there in between programming that didn't lend itself to any carryover audience. So it was really dependent not on an endemic audience, but on me driving traffic

or the division within Turner, Upwave at the time, driving traffic somehow. What then ended up happening is there was a regime change. So what does that mean? That means that the entire division was shut down and people were replaced. So the contacts that I had, the relationships I'd developed,

no longer worked at Turner. And the show, along with other shows, many other shows, were effectively put into the vault so no one could see it. It was really traumatic for me. Here I am. I'm sitting there. I have all of these injuries, some of which I'm still dealing with today in my knees specifically, some in my elbows and forearms, tore a lot of connective tissue and muscles during those 13 weeks. And we have this end product, which we're really, really proud of. And then boom, the lights go out and no one can see it. So I had not thought about distribution challenges or staffing slash

regime problems that could crop up. And those were two major, major blind spots. It doesn't matter how good your product or service is if people cannot get it or if you cannot get it to people. So I ended up being able to negotiate to license the program back and then do a launch with iTunes, which was fantastic. Thank you, Kevin, if you're listening. And it was a huge blockbuster, did really, really well. It was the most successful nonfiction TV show to launch on iTunes at the time. It was just tremendously successful and financially a win all around, which was spectacular, but it took a long time to get that done. And it was brutalizing. And I took my notes from that and then turned around. And most recently, right now, in fact, it's being broadcast

a new television show called Fearless with Tim Ferriss and the less is in parentheses. And I used many of the learnings from that show, from the Tim Ferriss experiment to make this show a lot easier to film, to produce, and to promote. There are always challenges in television or publishing of any type. And the simple lesson you should take away or moral of any story involving, say, a musician, an author, or otherwise, is that if you want to control distribution, you have to pay for the production of the product and have your hand in every possible choke point for distribution. So there is one. It was very, very, very painful for me at the time and caused a lot of psychological and emotional downtime for me.

And that hopefully doesn't bore you. Hopefully it is, I'm not gonna say inspiring in some way, but defangs fearness in a sense, not fearness. I don't even think that's a word failure in a sense, because I'll do like this, a fearness, fearness with Tim Ferriss, because you see people in the magazine covers and you assume that they have got it all figured out and they, they wake up every morning and they just do a front flip out of bed because they're so stoked to work on everything they have to do that day. It's just not the case. And we are going to, without further ado, dig into some of the stories of our esteemed guests. Malcolm Gladwell is the author of five, maybe more, New York Times

mega bestsellers. You see them everywhere. They usually get an entire wall in the airport stores. These books include The Tipping Point, Blank, Outliers, What the Dog Saw, and David and Goliath. He's been named one of the 100 most influential people by Time Magazine, has explored how ideas spread, investigated the root of success, and much more. He is a very, very tactical guy, and I started off in our conversation by asking him if he could think of any failure that set him up for later success. I mean, it's all kinds. I, when I was a kid, I was in just one of many, but I was a runner, very serious runner.

And I. What distance? 1500 meters and 800 meters. And I... What distance? 1,500 meters and 800 meters. And I... The puking distances. Yes. And I, in my third year of running seriously, lost races I thought I was going to win.

I mean, it kind of, what for me at that age was quite a traumatic fashion. And I quit running. And it was the first, I would regard that as the, of that, the first real failure of my life. Something I really wanted to do well at. I didn't. And I feel like it was hugely important,

both because it made me think hard about what my priorities were, what I had placed running too high in that list. But more than that, I then later in life went back and thought a lot about why I quit and was dissatisfied with my reasons. So anything you can, this whole notion of circling back, I think is so important.

I mean, this shows God revisionist history. So it's explicitly about that, but you know, I, I would almost obsessively revisit my reasons for quitting running and scrutinize them and say, is it right? What did I learn in the intervening five, 10, 15, 20 years about who I am, what I want, what it takes to be good at something. So that was a very valuable, a really valuable experience at exactly the right time, because that's the age where, you know, where decisions, not decisions matter,

but where I think you reflect on things in your adolescence in a way that you don't reflect on things later in your life. What, uh, what age was this or what grade? I was 15. 15. I always thought I was going to go back at some point and be a ninth grade teacher. So right around that like 14 to 16 range. It seems like there are a lot of very important forks in the road. Yeah, I think there is. I think you are because so much is, everything is plastic at that age, right? So you can mold it whatever way you want. And so it's just a kind of like, I think about what, how confusing and complicated those years are in retrospect. What is, do you have any morning routines? What does the first 60 minutes of your day look like? Could be any day of the week.

Let's just say it's a work day. Well, I was just saying earlier, I think one should eat very little in the morning. What time do you wake up? You know, eight. I have a big thing of tea. What type of tea? Sorry, I'm going to keep... Lapsang Souchong.

Oh, that's great stuff. Great stuff. If you like... I remember a friend who's getting off of he loved whiskey and he felt like the smell reminded him of some type of peaty alcoholic beverage so yeah it has an amazing smell um it's a very controversial tea and then i might i might pull a malcolm wait, wait. Why is it a controversial tea? Some people smell it and they just run in the opposite direction. They think it,

they don't even think it's tea. I mean, I've never seen people have such a kind of, there's a little coffee shop where I go often in the morning to have my tea and they have it. I think I'm one of the only people who order it. I think they get it because of me. And it's like I walk in, they're like, you know, make a beeline for it. But it's clear that, you know, I'm in a distinct minority. It smells. I mean, you can smell it from quite a ways off. I might eat a little bit of oatmeal. That's pretty much all I'll eat in the morning. That's one of your go-tos?

Yeah. But not a lot. And then I look at three websites. Okay, so we're going to come back to three of those. So not a lot means like a cupful, a couple of spoons? Like a cupful, half a cup, something like that. Just enough that I have a reasonable,

something in my stomach. And then I will look at three websites. The first one is lets's run.com. The nerdy runners, all serious runners read let's run. Then I read marginal revolution, Tyler Cohen's column. And then I read ESPN.com just to make sure that nothing major happened in the world of sports. And then I start my work. How do you, and what time is that then when you're starting your work? So we're talking, we're now, we're still before nine. And then if I have writing to do, it's best to do it in the next, in the two hours that follow.

So before lunch. Yeah. And what does your routine look like in those few hours when you start your work? What does that look like? Is there a particular music you listen to? Sitting in a coffee shop. Sitting in a coffee shop. I'm, uh, uh, or, you know, some restaurant, I'm not at home. Uh, and I'm not in an office and I'm, um, uh, working pretty steadily. I'm not really easily

distractible been around 1130 or so. I kind of have to do other things. I mean, I, I don't stop working, but I stop writing. Do you listen to music when you write? Do you just take in the ambient? There's music on in the... I write almost entirely in public places. So whatever, I don't listen to music myself. No headphone.

But I like the noise. Because I came of age in a newsroom, so I need that. I mean, I learned how to write in the middle of... When newsrooms are not noisy now, they used to be incredibly loud. So that's what I need to kind of get going. And then do you, is that when the bulk of your writing is done? Is that pre-lunch period or do you write in the afternoons? No, I rarely write in the afternoon.

I find, yeah, journalists seem to be very adaptable or former journalists. People have worked in newspapers or had those types of daily deadlines. Yeah, we seem to be very adaptable, or former journalists. People who've worked in newspapers or had those types of daily deadlines. Yeah, we're faster. And also, remember, writing is not the time-consuming part. It's knowing what to write. It's the thinking and the arranging and the interviewing and the researching and the organizing. That's what takes time. Writing is blissful.

I wish I could do it more. I mean, it's a break from all of the hassle of so let's just say end of work day to bed what do your wind down routines look like well i'll go running then probably um after the end of the afternoon uh and although i'm injured now but um uh that's really highlight of the day, of the kind of work day. Some days I'll go to train with my track club. Sometimes I'll go for a long run, or I'll go biking, or I'll go do a CrossFit workout or something physical.

What is your favorite movement in CrossFit or exercise, at least? Well, I kind of, runners secretly disdain any activity that's not running. So I, or even not to disdain. I know enough runners to do that. So I don't, I don't, I don't even want to think about favorite in that context. It's something I suffer through because it's necessary to ward off injury. And when it's over, I'm very happy. But, you know, I'm much happier if I can go and, you know, run eight miles with some friends.

Got it. Pre-bed, anything in particular? No, I'll eat dinner, might read in the evening or watch sports or tea. Do you have trouble getting to sleep or do you generally sleep easily? I come from a family of, we are champion sleepers. Gladwells are some of our... Some of the champion sleepers. Gladwell's are some of our, some of the best sleepers out there. We are some of the best. It is our, it is our defining characteristic that we're at our definition of a bad night of sleep is so hilarious because

it's like, you know, my father will say he had trouble sleeping. And what that means is he was up for 20 minutes between, you know, four and four 20. I mean, that's a bad night of sleep. What flaws or weaknesses do you have that have turned out to be strengths in some capacity? This is like a job interview question, isn't it? I was going to offer you a position to Paris enterprises, but I think you're too busy. Um, well probably, uh, God, uh god uh my uh it's only a job interview if you say sometimes i just work too hard exactly well in in in in dealing with my own impatience and my sloppiness into attending to those flaws, I think I have done. That's been a really crucial thing in helping me achieve what I've achieved. So it's just...

Could you elaborate on that? Yeah. I mean, I'm sloppy. How are you? In what sense? You know, I don't... Sloppy like clothes all over the floor? No, no, no. Sloppy like clothes all over the floor? No, no, no.

Sloppy about, I'm in a hurry. I, you know, I don't always double check something I know. Or I'll interview someone for 45 minutes when I should interview them for two hours. Or, you know, I'm just kind of like, I'm a good enough person. I'm not a perfectionist. It's fine. And so I've become so aware of that now that I've compensated and I have taught myself to be a lot more of a perfectionist or I've forced myself to keep asking questions much longer than I would have. And I said earlier that it was these investments of time that had been so, that's what I'm talking about,

that I forced myself to invest more time in a lot of activities, knowing that if I did it my normal way, I'd be out the door, right? I'd be thinking about what I wanted for dinner as opposed to, so that's sort of a very, it's why, by the way, I so object to, so when you observe or measure someone's natural inclinations, you haven't got a picture of them. Because you don't know what they do with those natural inclinations, right?

So it turns out that one of the most important things about me is how obsessed I am with those two flaws of mine, right? So identifying those as my natural inclinations tells you exactly the opposite about me. Because you're compensating by developing the opposite. I am massively compensating for them all day long, right? And I'm obsessed with compensating for them. Have you received a lot of bad advice along the way as to what you might do professionally, or has that not

been the case no i mean i don't i'm not an advice seeker about those kinds of things nor much of an advice giver so i haven't really gotten a lot of and also my position is you can't know i've kind of stumbled into most of the things i've been doing um I much prefer simply to be open to opportunity than to plan my path. I think that's a better for me anyway. I don't know. I mean, people are different, so some people need to plan, but I'm not up. I don't think I had really at all. Next up is a very impressive entrepreneur and investor, Brian Johnson. That's Brian with a Y. He sold one of his companies, Braintree, to eBay for $800 million, then took $100 million from that sale and launched the OS Fund, which stands for operating system. And it is intended to support

inventors and scientists who aim to benefit humanity by rewriting the operating systems of life. And you can look up OS Fund to see what he is up to. It is quite fascinating and will blow your mind in terms of scale and scope that he uses in thinking of his investments. Brian's story is not only a scrappy rags to riches story, but he is someone who succeeded in a technical field without any formal technical training. I find it extremely inspiring and potential expanding. It shows you that the options you think you have in front of you, A or B, for instance, often neglect the C, D, and E that are standing right to the side. I asked him to describe what happened between his first business in cell phones, believe it or not, and his massive success with Braintree. Well, the short version is the cell phone company went remarkably well, but it was not going to make me enough money to retire by 30.

So I had to find something bigger. So I started a voice over IP company with three founders and it was just before Skype and Vonage. And the short of that is we had the wrong team, wrong product, wrong timing. We did, we did everything wrong. Now we did have a prop. We actually built something. We got customers. And this was also in Utah. Yes. And we had revenue. So like we actually built something, but in reality, like we, we were not set up to succeed. So that failed. And then on the hills of that, I joined another guy to do real estate development. And the short of that is that failed because of some bad decisions we made.

And so without income for two years, I was dead broke. And so I applied for 60 jobs. I found a monster in the other job sites at the time. Nobody would hire me. I think it was so clear that I had no intention of staying a long time. I tried to make the resume look like it, but just never was the case. So nobody would even give me an interview. Additional skills, loyalty, fierce loyalty to employer. Exactly. And then I saw the newspaper one day, I had a list of the 50 richest people in Utah. And I thought, bingo, that's what it is. I will write an email to these 50 people.

I'll say, I'm young, I'm smart. I'm trying to become an entrepreneur, but I just need some money on the side. So I'll become your right-hand man. I'll do whatever you want me to do. And no one responded. It's at this point, I'm like totally desperate. I'm sure you get a fair amount of those emails these days.

I do, and I'm empathetic to it. I totally am. So at this point, I have no income. I have a child at home, and so I need to make ends meet. And so I find this job posting in, again, I think it's Monster. It was selling credit card processing door-to-door. And basically, it was like if you could— So business-to-business.

Yes. Like marching up and down the street, walking into a retailer or a restaurant. Let me help you set up a merchant account. Yes, or— Get a point-of-sale business. Yes. Like marching up and down the street, walking into a retailer or a restaurant. Let me help you set up a merchant account. Yes. Or get a point of sale system. Yes. Or mostly change. Everyone already had existing service.

Got it. Got it. And so the requirement was like, if you could fog a mirror, you could work for these guys. It's 100% commission. They don't care if you don't succeed. Right, right. But to your point on the sales side um i would go to inside a business i figured out pretty quickly the industry was really messed

up like the technology was terrible and um people were just generally plagued by the industry because it's just unscrupulous all this dishonesty and complexity and so i figured out that was the hook because my product had zero differentiation. It was exactly the same as 500 other providers that walked in the door every day. And so I'd walk in, I'd say, all right, Tim, right when you saw me walking in, you'd be like, all right, sales guy, all right, not interested. I've got stuff to do. Then when you heard me say credit card processing, it's like, please leave. Strike two. Yeah, like leave. So I would say, Tim, if you give me three minutes of your time, I will give you $100 if you don't say yes to using my service. And usually they'd say like, okay, that's interesting. Like, what does this guy have to offer? And I would open my pitch book and I'd walk them through the industry. Here are the providers. Here's what they do. Here's how they do it. Here's what I do. I'm the same as everyone else. Except for with me, you get, you know, honesty and transparency and great customer support. And so I became this company's number one salesperson. I broke all their sales records

following this really simple formula of just selling honesty and transparency in a broken industry. That's super interesting. And so a couple of questions, I just want to rewind for a second. With the real estate company, what were, if you're comfortable talking about them,

what were the worst decisions? What were the worst decisions? What were the fatal mistakes? So I'm really proud of actually what we did. We launched a $50 million mixed-use project in one of the best places in Utah. Mixed-use means residential plus commercial. Exactly, yeah, bottom floor, small shops. And Fannie Mae came in.

They were our equity investor. We really put together a great project. The single biggest flaw was storage space. So empty nesters showed up to buy, and there wasn't sufficient storage. Storage for just all of their extra stuff that they wanted to take out of the big house and move into this community living space. So then cells stalled in phase one. The bank got anxious. Got it.

So just didn't account for that yeah that need that was the big blunder being human is remarkably tough right we just so like you and i before this discussion we were talking about all the funny irrational things you and i both do that's inconsistent with our thought patterns right and uh i guess i a couple years back like maybe a decade ago i got into irrational behavior reading dan or really's book particularly irrational yeah and thinking fast and Slow. Yeah, Thinking Fast and Slow, Danny Kahneman. Yes, exactly.

So I started reading all these books, and I became increasingly convinced of my own fickleness and inability to actually act rationally in life. And once I became aware of that, I think I became much softer in my opinions and confidence levels in life where I want to question thoroughly everything I do all the time. And of course, I miss all layers a lot of time, but I try to be present in knowing that when I make a decision, there's all kinds of layers behind it, many of which are probably flawed. And if I went back

and evaluated it. So I suppose it's just being present and knowing it exists and how flawed we are in our abilities when really we think we're perfectly logical and consistent all the time. We're just not. There's Dan Ariely's book is great. Predictably rational. Also, a lot of really solid business takeaways in terms of how people I remember the example he gave in a presentation. I'm not sure if it's in the book. I'm blanking, of the checkout process

that the Economist magazine tested. Oh, that's right. And it was like, get the print edition for this amount by itself, get the digital edition for this amount by itself, or get both for this amount. And how changing the pricing and removing or adding options

affected the average order size. Yes. So fascinating. Yes. Or adding in basically, not a red herring, it's not, I don't think the right term, but a straw man of an option that they don't even really want you to choose,

but they'll add the cheaper option just so they know you'll, because they know that 50% of the people will take the middle option. Totally. Which would have been the cheapest before, but you would have then not chosen it. Just like restaurants, I think,

put the most expensive pricey item in the top right corner to say like, here's a $75 option. Everything else is cheap at $32. Same thing with wine. Yeah. Very common. When you are feeling, and maybe the answer is you don't feel this way, but when you're feeling say overwhelmed, how do you unpack that and try to reduce the sources of that

overwhelm? I've gotten so much better over the years. Now I just call a friend and just say, you know what? I'm feeling overwhelmed and I feel terrible and I don't think I can do this. And right. Just saying it out loud. Like, yeah, I actually, I can, I got this, but I just needed to get that off my chest and I'm all right.

And so when I deal with, when I work with entrepreneurs, now people I'm investing in or otherwise, I say like, if you want to chat at any time of the day and say anything, right, no judgment on my side, just say it out loud, do it.

And I think there's just, it's, it's hard to do hard things, I guess, as Ben Horowitz would say. Horowitz would say, yeah. And having the ability to be vulnerable

and honest and transparent and raw with other people is immensely helpful for me. Yeah. But you weren't always. No. You didn't always do that. No, I was extremely private and guarded and I owned everything. I didn't dare come out and let go.

I think men are particularly bad at that. I agree. Yeah, I've struggled with this myself., uh, you're so on point. It's such a simple answer, seemingly self-evident and obvious. Right. But, uh, I think it points to something I've noticed about myself and I tend to be stuck in my kind of prefrontal cortex. Yeah. Yeah. But if, if you haven't kind of thought your way, if you haven't rationalized your way, or that's not the right, reasoned your way into a problem, it's hard to reason your way out of it. I agree. Just by relying on the sort of internal pro and con list and like schematic of something that is purely emotional or maybe based on some operating system flaw that you're experiencing.

So yeah, just calling a friend. Yeah. But that's like what I love about the friendships I have is I can go into a conversation and I know when I leave two things will happen. One is they will have challenged my mental models that I can't challenge. I can't see my mental models and I can't challenge myself very well, but someone else can see it so clearly and they can just call it out. Right. And number two is when I leave the conversation saying like, I want to become a better person, right? And I want to do more in life and I want to work harder. Like, those are the two things I think I value the most

in the interaction. So I want to be that for other people, right? That when they bring something to me, I can flip it and say, yeah, here's a different model for you to contemplate. And two, hopefully when they leave, they say, you know what, yes, like I can do this and I've got that much more energy to go about it.

AJ Jacobs is one of my favorite people. He is a comrade in arms in the wacky world of self-experimentation. He does all sorts of odd things, as I do. He is the author of four, maybe five, New York Times bestsellers, and he chronicles all sorts of shenanigans, including, for instance, in his book, The Know-It-All, he covered his quest to read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica and learn everything in the world. The Year of Living Biblically was his attempt to follow all the rules of the Bible as literally as possible. It's a fantastic book, by the way, guys. I learned more about religion in general from that book than any quote unquote serious book. It's really, really well done. And of course, Drop Dead Healthy, which documented his mission to become the healthiest person alive. And there's more out

there, I am sure. I asked AJ about one of his favorite failures. One of your favorite personal failures and what i mean by that is specifically a failure that led in some way to a later success right or set the stage for a later success well i have had many many failures have we as we've discussed and I am a big fan of them. And rejection, that's one of the things I try to teach my kids all the time. You're going to get rejected 98% of the time. You just got to keep going. One, I don't know if this falls into the right category, but NBC a couple of years ago optioned my life, one of my books, and it was going to be a comedy where every week it was this writer did another wacky experiment and chaos ensued. And it was a total failure. It didn't get picked up. But the lesson I learned was I actually

made a conscious effort. I was like, you know what, this may or may not get picked up, but I am going to consciously enjoy this experience and get everything I can out of it. You know, I got to meet Donald Sutherland, played my father-in-law. My wife was played by this woman who had much bigger boobs than she did. So she loved it. And it was just a blast. And I would go into meetings and I would see be like, you know, what if, what if the main character who was named AJ, what if he did this? And they're like, oh, AJ would never do that. I'd be like, huh, well, I don't know, maybe he would. But it was just so much fun. And there's one producer who I read a book of hers.

And she's like, yeah, if you cannot enjoy the process, then you're screwed. Because the chances of getting a movie actually made are so infinitesimal. So enjoy the process. Enjoy the walk up the mountain, not just the summit. That was a big lesson. Most embarrassing failure at an experiment. So aside from the micro expressions, right. Uh, most embarrassing failure at an experiment. Did he give up or refine

his approach? Interesting. Yeah. Well, I, I mean, I think my life has been a series of embarrassments and humiliations. So, you know, in a way you engineer your, that's true. Experiments to be embarrassing. Yes, exactly. Because I'd also think that makes me a better, uh, better copy is, you know, and that is actually one thing I was thinking about that I learned doing this podcast is that, um, being humiliated on radio is actually sometimes makes for better radio. So, uh, when I'm doing interviews and I ask a question and the person is like, God, that's a dumb question.

That is beautiful. That always makes the cut. That's gold. Yeah. So I, I may not look that sound that good on the podcast, but I think it's entertaining. So,

but yeah, I would say many humiliations. I, I don't know if this counts, but this is the first one that comes to mind is, uh, I was working at Esquire magazine and we asked the actress Mary Louise Parker to pose nude. And I was, uh, uh, tasked with asking her and she said, well, I will pose nude, but only if the editor of the piece also poses nude. And I was the editor. So I went to my editor in chief and he was like, all right, well, do it. Take off your pants. That's your job. So I had to pose nude for a very well-known celebrity photographer. And it was,

it was quite humiliating and vulnerable and, and also highly insulting because I was, you know, he's a big photographer, so he had like 10 assistants, like gorgeous 20-something female assistants. And I was like, oh my God, this is so embarrassing. But they could not care less. They were like, no interest in my nude form. So that was tough for my ego. And then that came out and they actually published the picture and we got some subscription cancellations, I believe. So it was, uh,

overall, I was, uh, it was a dark time. Shep Gordon has worked with some of the biggest names in the entertainment universe, from Alice Cooper to Bette Davis, Raquel Welch to Groucho Marx, Blondie to Jimi Hendrix, Sylvester Stallone to Luther Vandross. I mean, the list is just crazy. And his job, among others, was to make them as famous as humanly possible. With that mandate, there were many massive successes and highlights

and also equally massive PR and management failures. I asked Shep to explain any of the rookie mistakes that he sees a lot of people making in his world. Are there any other rookie mistakes that you see a lot of people making in the position of something like a manager or that you made that come to mind? Any particular sort of archetypal or critical mistakes? Yeah, I think it's less a list of mistakes than it's a mistake of intentions. What I see, at least, from the people I see and talk to, is they're not in the business really for service. They're in the business for greed. And out of greed, you just do stupid things and your vision's blurred. If you're in it for service to your artists, which is really a manager. I mean,

again, there are different types of managers. There are managers who are power guys who I get it. They build empires off it and they're great for their artists. But I think, you know, I have an assistant who has a daughter who's being sought after by everybody in the music business, record companies, managers, publishers. She's a beautiful 21 year old girl, Lily Miola. And I see the difference between the phone calls that come in for her and the things that I do for Alice like I wake up for Alice and I think about how am I going to enhance his career how am I going to you know right now we're running Alice for president we wrote into the show a piece where Hillary beats up Donald Trump in the show. And we have an Alice Cooper president.

We're selling T-shirts. We're going viral. And it's fun. It's funny for us. But it's me waking up and thinking, what can I do to add to Alice's career? And most of these young people I see coming around, when I sit and talk to them and they ask for advice, they're not asking advice for their artists. They're asking advice for them.

How do I get more clients? How can I get a piece of publishing how can I I think it's a general rule maybe for humanity it's as our civilization moves along but I think it's motivation more than actual things wrong because I think again there's no school for management so every manager is going to make lots of mistakes it reminds me of a story I've heard you tell. I think it was in a commencement speech, actually. I might be misplacing that. But you were talking about a guide to cooking rice from, I want to say, some type of... From His Holiness, the Dalai Lama.

Exactly. And 90% of it or more was about the intention of when you select the rice, when you boil the rice, and only perhaps 10% of it was technical. Let me ask you, how do you maintain that orientation or how did you come to have that service orientation? Because, of course, I would imagine all things equal. You want to be financially successful as a manager so that you can do the things you want to do and so on. And I guess it's a byproduct of making your clients financially successful. But how did you maintain

that lens of service over greed? Did it ever get the best of you and then you correct course or has that not been the case? You know, it's a very timely, great question because I really thought my life was completely random and I couldn't understand any of the decisions I made. I never questioned my decisions. You look in the mirror and you say, why would you possibly do this? It doesn't make any sense. And things like, as a manager, you have a right to commission the life of the projects you work on.

So I worked on The Beatles anthology record, for example. I have a right to collect commissions on that. I always chose not, if I'm not working with the artist, I didn't want to take their money. So I chose never to do it. Which, when you look in the mirror, you say, what are you, a schmuck? To yourself. But if you have a strong foundation and you can feel that foundation, which is, you know, I shouldn't really be making money off this. They're going out and living their lives, their life. It's not my life. You go back to it. And I always thought all those choices were just random like maybe i was it was ego thinking i was a good guy or i don't know what the motivation and when i wrote the

book i realized that i'm actually living my father's life and he was a man of pure service pure service to me and my brother and he really gave up almost everything else in his life, but was joyful because he was serving us. And as I met mentors along the way, Roger Verger in particular, I saw how he was the first person I really met who was very successful and very happy. Most of the people I was meeting, I would say 99% of the people I met in show business who were the kingpins were miserable. They were cheating on their wives. They were alcoholics. They were just miserable. They were just drowning the pain. And I think that those kinds of, my dad first, and then seeing the mentors made me think, you know, you're going to die with the money.

Enjoy the moments you hear on the planet. And if service is a way to enjoy it and comes naturally to me, I don't want to fight it by falling into the traps of all those normal traps of greed and stuff. I'm good enough at what I do that I can make a living. I've heard, and I want you to correct me here, but that it took something like 10 to 12 years for Mike Myers to get you to agree to do the documentary. Maybe you can give me some color there, but the follow-up to that is going to be why a book? Why do a book? Yeah. I've always cautioned my clients when I started working with them that if I do my job perfectly, I have a good chance of killing them because I will make them so famous that they can't survive.

So I've always had a very corrupted view of fame. I realize that's what I do for a living. And I'm good at it. And it can provide great stuff for people, but they have to be prepared that they're going to take a fall and hopefully get up from that fall. So the last thing I really wanted to do was test myself. Why would I really want to, you know, didn't make any, documentaries aren't financial. I didn't view it as being of service to anybody or anything except my ego. And I didn't want to have to deal with fame.

I just didn't want to have to flirt with it. I saw too many people I love fall victim to it. So I said no and laughed. And then I had some near-death experience and didn't know it, luckily. I mean, it was beautiful. And I woke up in a hospital room, very drugged out. And by the second day, realizing I was very alone, that my life was fairly isolated. I was in a hotel room.

I had just, I mean, a hospital room. I just almost died, feeling very high. And I think very, starting to feel really sorry for myself, which is unusual, makes unusually feeling how lucky I am. And right in the middle of that, Mike called. Hey, chef, how you doing? I said, you know, I'm really doing miserable. It's one of the few times in my life I can't find the footing. I'm like sort of kind of lost a little bit. And he said, well, how about doing the movie now now we have now we have like a really dramatic moment to go to and i think my ego probably said because i was feeling sorry

for myself i said yeah yeah maybe that's a good way to come out of this thing if i live let's do the movie so i got well uh got some good help from my friends. And maybe a month later, I remembered that I had told him we would do the movie. So I called him up. Hey, Mike, how you doing? Great. I said, you know, did we have a conversation when I was in the hospital? I said, do the movie. And he said, yeah.

He said, go ahead and do it. I staffed up. I got six people. Okay. staffed up i got six people working okay and i really assumed that like my cousin in san diego would see it uh but he would abandon the project or i i didn't it was hard for me to think of it as real and i i knew mike socially i didn't know him professionally except enjoying his talent. And I didn't realize how driven he was. And he spent the next year of his life, seven days a week, 24 hours a day on this thing. I did nothing. But I remember about 11 months into it, I got to New York and he invited me up for a cup of coffee and say hello. And I went up and I walked into his apartment. It was like walking into CSI.

It was pictures of me, my life, all over every wall. You know, at CSI, they had the criminals. Yeah, right, right, right. So, and the movie came out. And at first, I was really embarrassed, especially with the name. I couldn't look anybody in the eye. When they'd say, oh, I hear you've got a movie. What's it called? And I would feel my eyes go down to the floor, and I would say, Supermitch.

I could not look anyone in the eye. And the film company asked me to come out for a screening somewhere in the Midwest. It was the first time I had seen it with the audience. It was at some film festival. And I was really embarrassed. I mean, like, truly embarrassed. Super mentioned, like, oh, my God, this is so egotistical. It's so not what my vision of myself is.

So I started questioning my vision of myself is, but I started questioning my vision of myself. But anyway, as the movie's over, I walk out into the lobby and it's very Aryan couple. They almost looked at the top of a wedding cake. Right. They're standing there and the woman had tears in her eyes and they just stood in the corner. They waited for everybody to take pictures you know the things that happen after a screening and uh i walked over to him at the end said oh so heck glad we wanted

to talk to you we just moved here from saint thomas and our children had grown up and there we were empty nesters and we came back and we realized we have so much to be blessed for and we just don't do enough good stuff. And watching the movie made us realize we have to change that in our lives. And we'd love to start with you. And we don't have much, but we're hunters. And you said you like to cook and eat. We have a lot of venison in our freezer. Can we give you some venison? And I went back to the house, got the venison. It turned out my roommate in college was there next door neighbor in St. Thomas. They had a picture of him.

When I saw the effect it had on those people, and then I came back and I started getting emails and calls. We spoke about Rick Rubin before. That's how we reconnected. Out of nowhere, I hadn't seen him in 30 years. He got a hold of me and said, can I fly over to Maui and spend some time with you? I saw the movie and I really could use some time with you. And he came over. I hadn't seen him in 30 years.

So it affected all. The first thing I package I got when I got home was a this beautiful birdcage came from Africa. And it had like 50 white silk flowers in it and one pink one and this four-page letter from a girl 19 year old girl who said listen i'm not different than the other flowers but i know if you would let me out of the cage i could really help my people but you know just these things coming from every corner so that was sort of a side note and i had, Roy Choi, a chef who had a book signing in New York when I was there. He's on Anthony Bourdain's imprint. And I never met Anthony and I was a huge fan of him. At the book signing, he walked over to me and maybe if there's anything in what motivated me that other people can use, maybe some techniques that I never was aware of

but that I can find by looking backwards. And that's really the exercise. And they agreed that if I didn't want to put out the book, I could give them back the money and we just ended. So that was the journey for me was to try and see, Michael always said there are these interconnections and I always thought of my life as random to see, are there,

are there connectors that could help other people along the way? And hence the book. And what impact would you like the book to have? I would like people to realize how lucky they are. I end the book with maybe the, one of the things that maybe I can add to some people's lives, particularly here in America, which is just the way you drop out of the womb, you won the game. You won it already. You're in America. You have a chance. You can get clean

water. You get food. Hopefully, you get some love. There's not a bomb dropping on your head every second. That alone is something to meditate on every day, how special you are and how rarefied it is to be born into something like this. And then maybe the second thing is to try and see the miracle in everything so that when you see somebody who your initial reaction is hatred or you see a snail walking on the ground and your initial reaction is kick it out of the way, to try and see the miracle in it. If you see the miracle in it, because everything is a miracle, you're not going to be able to hurt it. You're going to have a different attitude towards it. To the person you hate, you're going to feel sorry for them, that they don't see the miracle in themselves. And sorrow is a much better emotion than hatred, selfishly, for yourself.

And in there, there's also practical, you know, how you try and make business into compassionate business, how you try to make it a win-win, not winners and losers. And I talk a lot about how you create history, things like guilt by association, taking a non-famous person and putting them next to famous people, the fame starts to bleed off. And we live in a fame-driven world. So for commerce, fame is important. So I want to ask you about regular practices in your life related to Buddhism and appreciation in just a minute. But since you brought it up, could you describe what you did for Anne Murray that pertains to your last example of that fame

by association? Yeah, Anne was a great example of guilt by association. She's a wonderful singer, one of the purest voices I've ever heard. She was a school teacher in Toronto, went on a TV show for the summer and sang a song called Snowbird, which became a number one record around the world, huge impact. But she was very, very, very Canadian white bread. But she wanted to make it. She wanted to be on Midnight Special, which was a big show there. She wanted to play in Vegas. She wanted to do all the things that stars do.

But she wasn't a star. She was a girl who had a hit record that nobody really knew who sang it. So she came to me for management. And one of the first things I did with her was try and because the song was so big and so strong, I knew that I could include her and stuff if I had her. At that time, Alice Cooper had a group called the Hollywood Vampires, a drinking group. And it was John Lennon, Harry Nielsen and Mickey Dolenz and the Monkees. Big faces at the time, particularly John Lennon, who was in his dark era and was not being seen at all when he left Yoko for a while. He was in California. Everyone knew he was there, but nobody was seeing him. And the press were anxious to see him. So I booked her in California on Thanksgiving, which I thought was very funny because she was Canadian. I tried to make it all as absurd as I possibly could. And I got the guys, I went to see the guys and I said, I got that on my hands and knees. And they all, I used to drive them all home at night because they all got too drunk to drive and nobody could afford cars. So I was the designated driver. So I got that on my hands and knees and I said, guys, I'll drive you all, all the time.

But you got to come help me with this girl from Canada. Finally, the next man needs no detailed introduction. You might know him as the Terminator, the Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger. I asked Arnold about the biggest sacrifice he has made while climbing the ladder of success. I think that there's no two ways about it that the toughest choice was to get my bikini wax before Conan the Barbarian. No, I think, you know, definitely the toughest choice was to run for governor because I really felt very passionate about becoming a public servant. And I felt really strongly that I could do a better job than the politicians in Sacramento. I felt that the politicians screwed up the state. That's why we had blackouts, that's why huge debt and deficits, and no one could get along.

Democrats and Republicans couldn't work together. And it was just a huge mess here. And I felt that I could do a better job. But at the same time, I recognized the fact that I just finished Terminator, and Terminator 3 came out. And I became the highest paid actor at that time in the world. And so that meant that I was not going to be able to make two movies a year and make this kind of millions and millions of dollars. So am I willing to go and walk away from all that money?

Potentially over $100 million over the next, you know, seven years. And so then there was the family question. My wife was not very enthusiastic about it. She comes from a family that had politics had a tremendous impact on the family and side effects. And so she felt like the same would happen to our family. And so there were all of those debates, but eventually after long deliberation and thinking about the whole thing, I did make up my mind and I decided to do it. But it was a very, very tough decision to make because I had to think about all of those different aspects. But I went for it and I

felt very passionate. And then after I made the decision, I was 100% behind it. And I felt like I had the need to serve the people and to give back to this great, great country that gave me everything. What do you consider your greatest failure and how to set up or shape your future successes? Well, I think that you have to recognize that it doesn't matter who it is. The most successful person in the world can tell you honestly that they also had a tremendous amount of failures. It's not always just success. The key thing is, is that we learn from the failures actually more than from our successes. And it doesn't matter if you talk

about the best basketball player. I remember Michael Jordan one time said in an interview that he missed 9,000 shots. And here he was one of the greatest, if not the greatest basketball player in the world. So yes, you miss. And I remember that Ted Williams, one of the greatest baseball players, I think it was 1941 or so when he had the best baseball season

and he averaged 406, 406. And that meant that 40% plus, 40.6% to be exact, he was successful with his hits, with his batting. And 60%, therefore, were failures. So think about it. This is the greatest baseball player that this record still stands today. So it just shows you that everyone has failures. And so the key thing is that you learn from those failures and you move on.

I had my failures in bodybuilding. I lost bodybuilding competitions. Most people only know my victories, which were bodybuilding. I lost bodybuilding competitions. Most people only know my victories, which were a lot, but I've also lost. I lost in weightlifting. I lost in powerlifting. I embarrassed myself many times trying to lift the 500 pounds on a bench press in front of 2000 people in a beer hall in Germany. And I failed and it crashed on my chest. They couldn't make it, but eventually I did make it. And I lost, you know, I had failures in the movie business. I remember I had a lot of movies that went through the roof, but then there were movies that went right in the toilet that were not as successful.

Books that I came out with that won a New York Times bestseller list and then others that didn't, you know, live up to the expectations and failed. So, yes, we have those kind of things and to me the key thing is always uh and you know that we learn from it i have failures also i remember in my personal life and i learned from that you know and then you move on again what is important is that you get up when you fall the winner always gets up and the loser stays down that's what's what's the difference. So to me, the important thing is always that when you fail on something,

you get up, you dust yourself off, and you move on and have, again, a great vision of which direction you want to go, pick another goal, and keep moving forward. What tip did you receive at an older age that you could have used in your 20s? Well, there's a lot of things that we learn throughout the years, obviously. But I think the main thing that comes to my mind is charity.

You know that when you're young, you don't think about that you should reach out and you should help others. So, you know, like I was only thinking about my goal to be on that stage at, in London at the Mr. Universe competition. And just like Reg Park, my idol that won three Mr. Universe competitions and then became Hercules in the movies and all that.

I wanted to have that trophy on that same stage as he wanted. And that was the only thing that in my mind. And then after I won that, it was winning Mr. Olympian, Mr. World, and all the competition become the greatest bodybuilder. That's all I had in my mind. It was total tunnel vision. And, but then later on, I learned luckily

that how important it is to also not only think about me, but to think about we. And to go and to help others that there are a lot of people that need help. If it is people that need help in their training, and to go around and help people and hold seminars and teach them about training and about the importance of exercising the right way. If it is to make sure that everyone can do sports,

like I got involved in special olympics and started helping special olympians to do sports and specifically to do weight training and power lifting and they introduced uh into the special olympics movement power lifting competitions which are now worldwide and they're very very successful we started special olympics specifically in austria also and got all the ski races together to start and to help me and support me and just that special olympics didn't work together with the private sector and the government norris and then eventually you know starting after school programs and then becoming the chairman of the president's council on physical fitness and travel around the country

through all 50 states and promote health and fitness, and bring everyone together. And then eventually it led to running for governor. So I think giving back and recognizing that every one of us needs help. I got plenty of help to be where I am today. There's no such thing as a self-made man, as I always say. You know, there's people that helped me to be where I am today. So it is up to me now to inspire other people, to help them and to go and reach out and to help them. This is what made me get involved in the environmental movement and in this environmental crusade.

And I just love giving back where you don't think about what is in it for me, but you know, how can I help this great nation of America that gave me all the chances in the world and it opened up so many doors of opportunities. I would not have accomplished any of the things if I wouldn't have come to America. And, you know,

so to give something back to me is extremely important. And I want to have kids learn this as early as possible, that part of being successful is to give also something back. Well, there you have folks, possible that part of being successful is to give also something back. started with getting drunk with Kevin Rose at my kitchen table. The Tim Ferriss Radiar continues to be an experiment. So please, please, please, I would love your feedback. Tell me what you'd like to tell me what you don't like. How would you improve the format? Let me know on Twitter at T Ferriss, T-F-E-R-R-I-S-S, or in the comments on the blog post that accompanies this episode. So every episode has show notes with links to anything that we talk about and so on. And you can find that and show notes for every

other episode at tim.blog forward slash podcast. And until next time, as always, 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 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 world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance.

And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to 4hourworkweek.com. That's 4hourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This podcast is brought to you by MeUndies, which I'm wearing right now. Have you ever wanted to be as powerful as a mullet wearing ninja from the 80s or as sleek as a Black Panther in the Amazon? Of course you have. And that is where MeUndies comes in. I have spent the last year wearing underwear from these guys 24-7. And they are the softest, most comfortable, most colorful underwear I've ever owned. And it says here in the copy, they want a seasonality hook. And this is, quote, the summer and fall are the perfect time to update your underwear drawer, end quote.

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