The Tim Ferriss Show - #392: Ben Horowitz — What You Do Is Who You Are >> Lessons from Silicon Valley, Andy Grove, Genghis Khan, Slave Revolutions, and More

Episode Date: October 24, 2019

"One of the key insights from Bushido is that a culture is not a set of beliefs, it's a set of actions." — Ben HorowitzBen Horowitz (@bhorowitz) is a cofounder and general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He is the author of The New York Times bestseller, The Hard Thing About Hard Things, and the upcoming Harper Business book, What You Do Is Who You Are, available October 29th. He also created the a16z Cultural Leadership Fund to connect cultural leaders to the best new technology companies, and enable more young African Americans to enter the technology industry.Prior to a16z, Ben was cofounder and CEO of Opsware (formerly Loudcloud), which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion in 2007. Previously, Ben ran several product divisions at Netscape Communications, including the widely acclaimed Directory and Security product line.Ben has an MS and BA in Computer Science from UCLA and Columbia University, respectively.This podcast is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time, "If you could only use one supplement, what would it be?" My answer is, inevitably, Athletic Greens. It is my all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The 4-Hour Body and did not get paid to do so.As a listener of The Tim Ferriss Show, you'll get a free 20-count travel pack (valued at $79) with your first order at athleticgreens.com/tim.This episode is also brought to you by Hello Monday with Jessi Hempel, LinkedIn's podcast now in its second season, and it is full of advice you can start using today.Each week, Jessi sits down with featured guests to investigate the role work plays in our lives, and how to make it work for us. This season, one of the first episodes I recommend checking out is with Jerry Colonna. I've worked with Jerry in the past, and he is one of the start-up world's most in-demand executive coaches. In the episode, Jerry shares his approach to meetings, explains how to ask good open-ended questions, and he also goes through his approach to daily journaling.Whether you're starting your first job or gearing up for retirement, Hello Monday helps you tackle Monday — and the rest of the workweek — with tactics and strategies you can use. Find Hello Monday with Jessi Hempel on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.***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? Please fill out the form at tim.blog/sponsor.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.

At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question? Now would have seemed the perfect time. What if I did the opposite? I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over a metal endoskeleton. The Tim Ferriss Show. This episode of the Tim Ferriss Show is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time, if I could only take one supplement, what would it be? The answer is inevitably Athletic

Greens. I view it as, and a lot of you now view it as, all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it way back in 2010 in The 4-Hour Body, and I did not get paid to do so. I've been using it since before that, and I use it in a lot of different ways. I travel with it to avoid getting sick or to help mitigate the likelihood of getting sick. I take it in the morning to ensure optimal performance, and overall, it covers my bases if I can't get what I need from whole food meals throughout the rest of the day. And if you want to give Athletic Greens a try, they're offering a free 20-count travel pack for first-time users. I nearly always travel with at least three or four of these one-dose bags. In other words, if you buy Athletic Greens as a first-time buyer, you now get, for a limited time, an extra $79 in free product. So check out the

details at athleticgreens.com forward slash Tim. Again, that's athleticgreens.com forward slash Tim for your free travel pack with any purchase. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn's Hello Monday. Hello Monday is a podcast. Hello Monday with Jesse Hempel is back for season two and the show is full of advice, practical, tactile advice that you can start using today. Each week, Jesse sits down with featured guests to investigate the role work plays in their lives, how it can be integrated into your life, and how to make work work for you better. This season, one of the first episodes is with Jerry Colonna, who has been called the CEO whisperer. I've actually done quite a bit of work with Jerry, and he's one of the world's most in-demand executive coaches

amongst the startup ecosystem. In the episode, Jerry shares his approach to meetings, explains how to ask good open-ended questions, and he also goes through his approach to daily journaling, among other things. Journaling can really create an incredible competitive advantage and also act as an emotional rebalancing tool of sorts. So I recommend taking a look at it, giving a listen more accurately. So whether you're starting your first job or gearing up for retirement, Hello Monday helps you tackle Monday and the rest of the work week with tactics and strategies that you can use. So check it out. Find Hello Monday with Jesse Hempel. That's J-E-S-S-I-H-E-M-P-E-L. You can just look up Hello Monday on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Well, hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss. And welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss

Show, where it is my job every episode to attempt to deconstruct world-class performers of all different types to tease out the routines, favorite books, habits, and so on that you may apply to your own life. My guest this episode is Ben Horowitz. You can find him on Twitter at bhorowitz, H-O-R-O-W-I-T-Z. Ben is a co-founder and general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Hard Thing About Hard Things, and the brand new Harper Business Book, What You Do Is Who You Are. He also created the A16Z Cultural Leadership Fund. If you are wondering what A16Z stands for, just count the number of letters between the beginning and the end of Andreessen Horowitz.

So he created the A16Z Cultural Leadership Fund to connect cultural leaders to the best new technology companies and enable more young African-Americans to enter the technology industry. Prior to A16Z, that's Andrews and Horowitz, Ben was co-founder and CEO of Opsware, formerly known as LoudCloud, which was acquired by Hewlett Packard for $1.6 billion in 2007. Previously, Ben ran several product divisions at Netscape Communications, including the widely acclaimed Directory and Security product line. He has an MS and MBA in Computer Science from UCLA and Columbia University, respectively.

So without further ado, please enjoy this wide-ranging conversation with the one and only Ben Horowitz. Ben, welcome to the show. Thanks, Tim. Very excited to be here. And I have so many questions. I have pages and pages of questions. We'll try to get to as many as possible. I thought I would start with a name that I know you're familiar with, and that is Andy Grove. That may not be a name that all people know, but could you please describe who Andy is, why he's interesting to you? Yeah, so Andy was kind of one of the founders of Intel, which is kind of the foundational company of Silicon Valley, if there was any. And foundational not only technologically, but also culturally, I think importantly.

And just an amazing guy. Probably, you know, for my money, the best CEO we ever had out here. But, you know, he started his life, he was a refugee from Hungary from World War II. And, you know, he had to escape the Nazis and then the communists and kind of came over on a boat. And with, I forgot, they gave him him like 27 when he got to new york and uh he taught himself english and he kind of went to school at ccny and became a physicist and then you know eventually uh met up with um bob noise he actually told me a very funny story uh towards the end of his life where Gordon Moore, who is the famous Moore's Law and also a co-founder of Intel,

when they brought Andy in to Fairchild Semiconductor, the way they picked him out, and Andy told me this very lightly, he said he finished his PhD at Berkeley in two and a half years. And Gordon Moore had found that people who finish their PhD quickly correlate with high performers. So that's how he got the job. Well, that's a perfect jumping off point for about a half a dozen things that I was meaning to get to anyway, but let's, I'll try to ratchet back my, my, my caffeine enthusiasm and, and focus on Andy for a bit longer. High output management. You wrote the forward to a reprint of that book, which when I lived in Silicon Valley, I was able to observe the rebirth of sort of the resurgence

of this book and its popularity. And I know some incredible founders who have stacks of this book in their offices to give away. Why did you agree or offer to write the forward? And what are some of the takeaways that people might find in that book or that you found of particular value? Yeah, well, you know, it was my favorite management book by far. In fact, I think it might have been the only management book that I ever read that I liked. So it was, you know, quite a thing for me when Andy called me and he said, Ben, you know, I was watching you give this talk at Stanford. And, you know, in the talk, I was talking about my book, my first book, The Hard Thing About Hard Things.

And somebody asked me why I wrote it. And I said, well, you know, when I was a kid, I read this book, High Output Management. And like, it was amazing because it was the CEO of Intel, which is like the most important company in technology. And he wrote this book and it wasn't to like, you know, say how great he was or, you know, like all these books that these guys write who, you know, run big companies and how like they, here's when I learned the value of a dollar. And then this is when I built a great big company and all this kind of thing they say. But it was a book to teach like

young people like myself how to manage. So it was just a complete contribution back to the environment with really, you know, in a way, nothing in it for him. And, you know, I always when I'm reading that book, I said, Well, if I ever make it if I ever kind of become anybody that anybody wants to listen to, I'm going to write the sequel to high output management. And that was I tried to do with the hard thing about hard things. When he called me, you know, there was no question. I was like, 100%, I'll write the forward. But the reason it was such a great book is, it was kind of the original hard thing about hard things. And that most management books are like, here's all the obvious easy stuff. And here's like eight, like, random steps to do the most easiest thing in the world that anybody could figure out who wasn't like an idiot.

But Andy Grove, it was like he went all the way right to the worst, hardest, most messed up things that you'd have to do. So one of the things I remember from the book is he goes, well, hey, look, you're writing a performance review. And the rule of thumb is you never put anything in a performance review that you haven't already told the employee. Right. And you're reading like, yep, that's the rule. That's what we do. And he's like, OK, so now you're at the performance review and there's something that the employee needs to improve that you haven't told them. What do you do? And it's like, OK, that's a that's a real like thing. And he's like, do you put in the review or do you not and it's like okay that's it that's a real like thing and he's like do you put in the review or do you not put it in the review and uh you know his thing is you got to

put in the review and like it's bad that you didn't tell him but it's worse to not tell him now and you know and those kinds of difficult decisions like you know how you really do that or like you know it's like okay you, people are late to meetings. They're wasting everybody's time. They're stealing money from the company. But it's very awkward to deal with them. And so how do you deal with them on that and that kind of thing, which is really what you need to know to put any of these management techniques into effect.

How do you do it when there's real conflict? And that's why it's just an amazing book. So you mentioned the coming to meetings late. And in one of your blog posts, you have some fantastic blog posts and excellent writing, both, of course, on the web in this case and then in the books. But you share an anecdote that begins with, for example, we could talk about wartime versus peacetime CEOs, but a basic principle in most management books is that you should never embarrass an employee in a public setting. But Andy Grove, in the situation that you just mentioned, once said to an employee who entered a meeting late, quote, all I have in this world is time and you're wasting my time, end quote. That's one of my favorite things. late, quote, all I have in this world is time and you're wasting my time, end quote, right? Yeah, that's one of my favorite things.

And we'll almost... And you have to realize when he said that, he was like God. So it was like God, so he's God of Intel and you're walking into an Intel meeting, so it's like God telling you that you're wasting his time. So I suppose the first question that I'd like to ask, and we may end up getting into the wartime versus peacetime CEO differentiation, but what occurs to me is that he has a scientific background. He has an engineering and physics background. You also have a computer science background. How do you think about management? And I know this is a very broad question, but do you think about management differently than many people?

It would seem to be that the answer is yes. Also, just based on the observation you had about most management books, which I would agree with, how has your experience, your life experience, maybe including computer science, informed how you approach or think about

management? Well, I think it's, you know, it's an interesting combination, because there's a part of an engineering background that's extremely helpful, which is, you know, can you think about systems? And can you think about like, how like-scale systems interactions occur and what the implications are? And then there's a different part, which is a very kind of, I would say, high EQ component, which is in order to make that system work, you have to be able to see the company through the eyes of the people who are doing the work, which are usually the people who are not in the room when you're making the decision. And you have to understand how it's going to affect them, how it's going to change their behavior and so forth. You know, just as an example of that, like, you know, it's easy, like if somebody comes to you and they say, you know, Ben, I really deserve a raise. And you could go, okay, well, you know, like I like you and I want you to like me, so I'll give you that raise.

But you have to think about, you know, if you're bad at it at all, you go, okay, well, like how will it look to the people who are not here? Is that fair? Have they gotten a chance at it? Is this person just getting the raise because he came into my office? Or like, you know, does he really deserve it? So do I have a systematic process to evaluate talent and allocate the money that we have? Or do I run it like that because I'm not really thinking about it from everybody else's perspective? And so you kind of end up needing both to be good at it. And I think, you know, kind of going back to Andy

screaming at that employee, that's kind of a little bit in the balance, right? Because, you know, that employee is definitely going to be like ashamed and horrified and maybe demotivated by him publicly embarrassing him. But in that instance, what he was doing was something different, which was he was setting the culture and saying, look, culturally, fundamentally, like I'm going to teach everybody in this company a lesson by saying something that's so powerful and so colorful that it's going to spread like wildfire through my company. And everybody's going to know that it's not okay to waste people's time by being late for a meeting. And that's more important in this case than the individual. So it gets, you know, it's kind of a Confucian approach. The individual must be sacrificed for the good of the whole.

And you have to do that as CEO from time to time. Now, you don't want to do it gratuitously because that is definitely going to hurt somebody's feelings. And maybe that's a great employee or whatever, but you do, you know, and particularly if the culture is in place and they're kind of willfully ignoring the culture, which I, you know, I believe is the case in this case, then you have to kind of value the system and value that above that person's feelings. And these are kind of the trade-offs that you make in management. And that's why it is complicated to get it right. And why like it's not, you know, it's always like broken down and management books are often it's like you're talking to one person at a time. And that's never the case. You're always talking to everybody.

If this is a useful distinction, I'd love for you to define the two terms for us or the differences between two terms. That is management and leadership. How do you distinguish between those two? I know it seems like a stupid question maybe, but I'd love for you to, if you're able to just comment on that for a second, or if it's a bad question, we can move on. I mean, I think a lot of leadership is, or the way I think about it, and, you know, they're kind of, you know, my own dictionary of it is, you know, leadership, there's kind of a, is a lot of getting, is the art of kind of getting people to follow you. And as Colin Powell said, you know, if only out of curiosity. And I think so that that involves kind of, you know, having a vision, being able to articulate it, being inspiring, making, you know, creating a feeling among people that you that you care about them in a way and you care about their goals and objectives

and what they want out of life. And people want to follow people who have some number of those attributes. Management gets more into, okay, you have this great vision. You've articulated it. Everybody likes it. But how do you operationalize it? How do you kind of break it down into its steps? How do you make sure that people who need to communicate are communicating in these kinds of things?

A lot of leadership is knowing what to do, getting people to follow you, and then management uh getting people to do what you know um and that's a kind of a little bit of different part of your brain it's you know leadership's a little more on the creative side management's you know requires a little more discipline and systematization on the on the on the former in the of leadership, getting people to follow you, if only out of curiosity, and this may not be a fit, but in the course of doing research for this conversation, I came across mention of a paper called Good Product Manager, Bad Product Manager. I wrote that when I was a little kid. Yeah. And it seems like, at least the way it was phrased in this fortune piece, it, quote, became a Bible for the startups, in this case, referring to Netscape, for the startups, unpolished young executives. So could you describe that paper and what impact it had on you and or the people around you when it came out yeah so you know it's funny it was a it was a piece i wrote out of pure frustration so turns

out like product manager is a weird job in silicon valley in that in every single company, it means something different. And so what you do doesn't really translate well from one company to the next. And many companies have just bad product management functions. And so the people that I kind of inherited when I got the job to run the team all had these differing and weird views on got the job to run the team, all had these like, different and differing and weird views on what the job was. And I, you know, I always found myself like, yelling at them going like, does that make any sense to you? That kind of thing, you know, like, I was like, at that level of frustration. And then, you know, one day, I was just like, you know, I have to train,

like the team on what I want. And I was like like but i don't have time to put a training program together so i sat down i just wrote this document good product manager bad product manager and the thing i had my you know head was like and and it's a bad thought but it was like this is going to be like dog training you know like bad bad dog, bad dog. And so that's where the name came from. But it was really just, you know, like, like, this is what good product managers do. And this is what bad product managers do. And just like, let's just be clear on that. So like, you'll know, you can anticipate what I'm going to say if you do something bad. And we don't have to have that conversation all the time. and so that that's

all it started out to be and then what happened was kind of as you know as you said is like people valued just getting that information so much that not only did my team use it but then everybody at Netscape started using it and then like you huge number of people, product managers in Silicon Valley, still refer to that thing, which I wrote in 1995. And what it taught me was everybody, no matter how smart they are, no matter if they went to Stanford or Harvard or whatever, they can always use training in the job that you want them to do. Because the job that you need them to do is, one, these jobs are very complex, and they're different. And a lot of it is what do you expect as a manager.

And so if you're a manager who doesn't train your people, I can't imagine you're good at your job just because there's no way they're going to be able to read your mind on everything. So I'd like to talk about more lessons learned. And then I'm going to segue from that into how you might teach others, because in a lot of ways you do teach others. Let's chat about Bill Campbell. And Bill Campbell has come up once before on this podcast when I had a conversation with Eric Schmidt, legendary figure known throughout the Valley as coach, has advised

people like Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, and so on. Could you share what your relationship was like with Bill and what some of the things or any of the things that you that you really absorbed from Bill? Yeah, so, you know, I mean, he was just such a great help to me as CEO. And a lot of it was just, you know, being able to have a conversation with somebody who knew what I was talking about and who knew what they were talking about, you know, at the same time, which is when you're a CEO, it's just very difficult to have those in a way, you know, that's kind confidential and and like not with like somebody who could like remove you and that kind of thing and so he was just um invaluable to me in that sense and and a lot of what was so great about him is you know we could so on the one hand like we could argue about whatever and like he would have input and like

maybe i would you know listen to it maybe i went but it would never whatever i did never affected the relationship you know it was just that kind of thing with him um but the thing that he did better than anybody that i've worked with is he could really see the company through the employee like through the eyes of every single employee he he knew how people would react to every single decision and you know and he wasn't even running the company he would just come in once in a while and so forth he'd know enough people in it he would but he had just like this incredible sense about that um and and you know and that just proved to be very valuable so i'll give you an example so uh you know we had done this giant deal with eds to sell them kind of our old we had this

business that was gonna kind of basically make us bankrupt and by doing the transaction with eds we kind of escaped bankruptcy and then kind of launched into this other business the software business which eventually became like worth like 1.6 billion dollars or i think that was it um and you know so it was like the probably the most important deal we'd ever done as a company and you know we do the deal and i go bill like you know we got the deal done i can't believe it you know we're gonna announce it you know i gotta go to new york, you know, we got the deal done. I can't even believe it. You know, we're going to announce it. You know, I got to go to New York on Monday and we're going to announce it. And he's like, no, no, no, you can't go. And I was like, well, why can't I go?

And he's like, well, like when you do the deal, right, like this deal is going to involve selling some employees to them, laying some people off and so forth. As soon as that news hits, you got to be in person in the company talking to the employees and letting everybody know where they stand as quickly as possible. And I was like, oh, of course. I hadn't even thought that through. And had I not done that, so I did that. I sent Mark to New York to do the announcement.

But had I not done that, had I not kind of stayed back and had that conversation, I don't think we would have made it as a company because that day ended up being pivotal to reconstructing the trust that I needed to kind of run the company going forward. And that's the kind of value that Bill added. But if you want to know who he is, the only person I've ever met who could do the thing that Bill could do is Oprah Winfrey. And I know that sounds probably weird in a way, but Oprah Winfrey can meet you and talk to you for five minutes, and she can know you as well as somebody who's known you 10 years. And Bill could do that, too. That's so wild. Yeah.

And you may have run into somebody like that, but it is amazing. What do you think is behind that? Is it an ability to see behind the words and just deeply empathically sense more about your core personality and what's shaped it than other people? What allows an Oprah, for instance, to do that? Do you have any theories? Yeah, so it's definitely a combination of things that I don't possess. So it's a little hard to read it. But, you know, yeah, she kind of can read in every signal you're sending. So like the tone of your voice, the expression on your face,

like the way you're holding your hands, everything like is complete high fidelity information to her. And then she knows the exact right question to ask to get to the deeper level of what's going on. And, you know, like I've seen her do it. I've seen her do it. I've seen Bill do it. I learned from it. But like I like literally don't have the capacity to do it anywhere near their level. But yeah, it's some combination of like they're able to just process way, way more information

about a person much, much faster and and then great retention on the thousand people they've met before that might match to that. And it's super impressive, though. Yeah, I enjoy trying to deconstruct the secret sauce, but sometimes it is just impossible to do. I mean, there's certain people who are hardwired for a different spectrum of perception. On the other hand, there are a lot of coachable or teachable skills. And if we're looking at management, I'd like to shift from, in some respect,

student of Bill or advice receiver of Bill Campbell to advice giver. And Mark Zuckerberg has said that you are the management guru to all of the young entrepreneurs in the Valley. And I want to dig into that for a second, because, of course, you have much vaster experience than I do. But having spent almost 20 years in Silicon Valley before moving, spent a lot of time with first-time startup founders who, in some cases, have a real tiger by the tail. And many of these CEOs are really great product people with no real management experience to speak of who have never had this type of game to lose, if that makes sense. What would you teach or what do you teach or advise someone like that if you have, say,

a first afternoon meeting with them or a few hours, they're a new portfolio company. InWalk's this bewildered CEO who's entering deep waters. How do you begin to cultivate them or advise them as a manager in training, so to speak, or a CEO in training? They're all different, but there's things that are similar about them. Some of them are good at some things and others about others. So I don't know that there's a kind of thing that I would say to any of them. But, you know, one thing they all struggle with is how to build their team, you know, particularly their management team. And kind of what you're speaking about, okay, it's different if they're not succeeding or whatever, but if they're succeeding and the company's kind of degenerating because they

don't know how to run it, then that usually kind of gets into this whole executive hiring, integrating, managing problem. And this is, first of all, none of them are good at it. Like we've never had a first-time CEO who was good at this. And I know I wasn't good at it when I started. And the problem is, okay, you know, your board goes, hey, you need to hire like a CFO. Like, you know, somebody's got to keep track of this place. It's going crazy.

Like, what are you doing? You go, okay, I'm going to hire a C are you doing you go okay i'm gonna hire a cfo and you go okay hi you know and you go well i'm the ceo so i must know how to do that but you don't know how to do that and not only that like you've never worked in a finance organization you don't even know what the cfo job is like i always ask my it's like you know what's a good control structure how do you distinguish a good one from a bad one? And they have no idea. And so how are they going to interview a CFO? It's sort of like interviewing a Japanese interpreter

if you don't know Japanese. They all sound wonderful, right? Now, I'm going to plead ignorance before we get too deep into the weeds. What is a control structure in this context? Yeah, so just how does money get spent? Do you know every dollar that's getting spent? When money comes in, do you account for it properly?

These kinds of things. And how do you do that systematically as the company grows and people have budgets and all these kinds of things. So it's just something that they don't know how to do. And they don't know how to ask, say that they don't know how to do it. And they don't know how to kind of learn how to do it. And so I always like to just start with, okay, like, let's talk about a process for learning how to, you know, possibly at least get a criteria for your company for this position, not like a general, like the platonic form of a CFO because that doesn't exist.

But like a CFO for this company right now, like what do we need? And then how do we do that? Well, maybe we should talk to some CFOs, see what they would hire for us, see if that matches us, see how they would test for it in an interview and that, you know, kind of get deeper into it. But even as you go through all that, like, you know, then you, okay, once that CFO gets signed, how do you teach them about your company? You know, what does day one look like? How do you integrate them? These kinds of things. So it's, you know, it really is kind of has to be a hand over hand instruction. And then like, you know, once they're in there, if you hire somebody, you know, a lot of times, the CEOs will hire somebody who's so senior and

so aggressive, you know, because they went for the biggest resume they could find. And the person wants doesn't want to be CFO, they want to be CEO. And then that person will start trying to grab territory from the CEO and all these kinds of things, and you've got politics you've got to handle. And so it's just a long, I would say, it's not a quick manual, it's a kind of ongoing conversation to understand where they are, what they have to do, how to retain their mojo,'s a kind of ongoing conversation to understand where they are, what they have to do, how to retain their mojo, all that kind of thing.

And, well, I'll start with saying that the hard thing about hard things, your book, one of your books, I should say, is one of the most recommended books that has come up in the last handful of years on this podcast by what I would consider certainly high-performing founders and CEOs. You mentioned or we mentioned high output management earlier. a first-time founder who does have a tiger by the tail, who's doing well but clearly out of their depth in a new level of complexity with running what is turning into a company as opposed to just a good product. Yeah, so, you know, it's funny. People always ask me, like,

what are the management books you'd recommend? And I'd be like, I it's funny. People always ask me, like, what are the management books you'd recommend? And I'd be like, I don't know. So I think that, and it is a book written by C.L.R. James in 1937 called The Black Jacobins, which is the story of the Haitian Revolution. out that the, you know, that the Toussaint Louverture, who kind of led that revolution, was a basically a management and cultural genius, like better than anybody that I've ever kind of read about or learned from. And, you know, it just ends up being a great leadership book. I think Colin Powell's book, his autobiography is very, very interesting on leadership. And, you know, there's a bunch of, I think, you know, like if it's a little company,

Eric Ries' book is great, you know, The Lean Startup. The Lean Startup. Yeah, I mean, amazing. Teaching you things that, you know, particularly if you've not built a new company before, are just really fundamental lessons. And we see, I mean, you know, there have been some things in the news, you know, lately that, you know, about kind of with fat startups, which were kind of all the ones from my era. But, you know, the dangers of with fat startups, which were kind of all the ones from my era. But, you know, the dangers of a fat startup, I think he really articulates amazingly well in that book.

And that is one of the early traps you can fall into, particularly in an environment like this, where there's a lot of venture capital money running around. And the job of CEO, I've enjoyed a lot of your writing. And in one of your blog posts, I think the title is Making Yourself a CEO. You talk about how the job of CEO is a very unnatural job. And I'm cherry picking here a couple of lines, but to be a good CEO, in order to be liked in the long run, you must do many things that will upset people in the short run, unnatural things. How have you cultivated that ability in yourself or helped others to cultivate a willingness to be unpopular in the short run. I think this at least strikes me as a real critical differentiator. Could you speak to that?

Yeah. So, no, no, that is, you know, you've hit on probably one of the most important kind of leadership skills. And, you know, the easiest way to think about it is, like, if you make decisions that everybody likes all the time, then those are the decisions they would have made without you. So, you're not actually adding any value. So, almost by definition, you know, a lot of the most important decisions end up being ones that, you ones that people don't agree with and don't like and are difficult and cause people not to like you, at least for a while. And the way I generally work with CEOs on this is because it's very difficult because there's so much emotional, psychological force pushing them to make kind of the wrong decision, the easy decision, the one that is going to be the people pleasing decision. And a lot of it is just pointing out what's

going to happen, letting them make it. And then when the pain comes, go, you remember, we talked about this, and this is what happens. And, you know, a lot of it is just, you have to go through making those mistakes to train yourself to, you know, it's kind of like it's running towards the darkness. You know, like there's this pain and dark area where, you know, like people aren't going to like you. You know, it's going to suck. You know, like maybe you have to fire somebody. Maybe you have to lay them off. Maybe you have to make a very unpopular decision to cancel a project or whatever. But if you run away from that, because then you always know you have

to do it, like you can sense it when you run a company. If you run away from that, that's, you know, that's when you really get a huge raging fire and that, you know, will potentially burn down your company. And it seems to me, and I've never run a large company, but just in my interactions with various CEOs and founders, that coming back to the CEO position is a very unnatural job, that there are certain maybe technical abilities or procedural abilities maybe that are pretty easily trained or relatively straightforward. And then there are others that are perhaps less explicitly taught. And one that you've written about before is the ability to manage your own psychology. What tools or techniques have you personally found, or routines, anything at all really, to be useful for cultivating an ability to

manage your own psychology? And maybe you could just describe what that means. Yeah, so I mean, it is certainly the hardest part of the job because what happens is and you don't think about this when you're starting a company it's like one of these and i always talk to entrepreneurs about this i'm like you know if you knew what was involved when you started you would never would have started and they're like absolutely right there's no way i would have done this yeah so it's kind of a blessing that you don't know because if you did know, then nothing would ever happen. But the kind of thing that happens is, okay, you have this idea to start a company and then if you just think about that

socially, you know, like, okay, so you've got a lot of friends and relatives and some of them are excited for you. Some of them say that's never going to work and you want to prove them wrong and all that. then you got to go out and you've got to sell people on the idea so you've got to hire people into this kind of vision that you have and then you've got to raise money behind it and like often like some of that money might even come from like your relatives or that kind of thing so you've got this money that people have entrusted you with. You've got careers that people have entrusted you with. And you start going, and then something goes wrong.

It looks like the company may not work. And so what's the consequence of that? Well, like every relationship you have, you're going to violate if it all goes down. And that is super scary. like it couldn't be more scary. And, you know, to not let that thought or that set of thoughts paralyze you is, you know, can be really difficult at times. And a lot of it, you know, first, you know, one of the most important things, which I wrote about is first thing is you can't think and it, you know, first, you know, one of the most important things which I wrote about is first thing is you can't think in probability. You know, you've got to not think the way investors think in probabilities.

You have to just think in terms of how do I do this? Like if there was a way out, like which way is out? And train your mind in that direction as opposed to, well, there's a 90% chance that we're not going to get this deal. And if we don't get this deal, we're going to whiff the quarter. If we whiff the quarter, we won't be able to raise money. If we won't be able to raise money, then I'm going to have to lay everybody off. Once you start thinking like that, you literally can't function. And so kind of getting around to, okay, I've got one bullet in the gun. I have got to hit the target. So I'm going to get, do whatever I can to get as close as possible. And then like, we're going to shoot our best shot

and there's going to be no contingency plan and no way out and no, you know, like if somehow we don't make it, we don't make it, but like, we're going to die trying. And that, you know, getting to that mentality is really the key to being an effective entrepreneur, I think. stress of that type of uh sort of existential threat level uh one shot one kill uh psychology uh are there any particular habits or types of self-talk or anything that you use or encourage that allow people uh to perform better under those types of circumstances. Well, you know, like I don't want to exaggerate how good I was at it because, you know, like I was up at 2 o'clock in the morning like in a cold sweat with my guts boiling, like all that stuff.

Like it's not like I didn't have that. Right. You know, I wasn't that great at in in terms of kind of managing it in that way but i think i mean the things that helped me were one just always focusing on what i could do like there were so many things i couldn't do so many things out of my control so many things that um you know i mean like i was in the middle of the greatest technology equity meltdown in the history of the world. So like there was nothing I could do about that. Right.

Although it was hurting me. But it just didn't make any sense to think about those things. So just, you know, really thinking about the things that you can do. And then, you know, Bill Campbell was very, it was just very helpful to just be able to talk to him. And, you know, it wasn't like he had any answers either. But just to have somebody that, you know, I could at least get it off my chest. I was like, look, you know, we're in a spiral, like, and he get out, and here they are. Just at least talking it through and not feeling like I was missing anything. But I think a lot of people now, they meditate and do other kinds of things and so forth. I would rep to that, but that's not what I did at the time.

So I just sweated it out and cut years off of my life and all that kind of thing. It strikes me that one of your superpowers may be running towards the scary things and not away from the scary things, which might result in a lot of acute short-term duress, but it may ultimately result in less long-term duress. Could you explain the line, sharpen the contradictions? Ah, so yes, this is the line. I think this was from, actually, originally Karl Marx, and he was speaking of the, you know, sharpen the contradictions between capital and labor, you know, to basically accelerate the revolution. And, you know, I definitely think Lenin used it because, you know, Lenin was like amazing with rhetoric and that kind of thing. He was definitely a rhetorical genius. Also kind of wrong about everything and had a horrible impact on the world.

But like, that's a different story. But I like to use it in management because it's a great kind of cue for the CEO. What happens in an organization is you'll see little disagreements between people and a lot of your inclination is to smooth things over. But the right answer is usually to sharpen the contradictions. And the reason you want to sharpen the contradictions is because there's information in that contradiction. There's information about how you're not communicating, how the objectives are not aligned, how the strategy might be wrong. And you've got to get that because that's where the truth is. And so when you smooth that over, if you don't like bring it to a head and resolve it, then, you know, you miss an opportunity.

So it really is, you know, it's one of the most important techniques, I think. And anytime, like in a board meeting, anytime, like I hear like a little bit of disagreement or I see like, you know, an inconsistency in the strategy, that's always my cue to myself. I want to, you know, that's when you get the answer. Now, it's also a good way to start a revolution. So you got to be careful. So you are not a fan of the default revolution? No. Well, maybe that too. But I was going to say, you're not a fan of the default backpedaling. Oh, no, it's a miscommunication, that type of – Oh, no, no, no, no, no. That's – you know, like that is – it may be, but like it's probably a systemic miscommunication.

Right. You know what I mean? And as opposed to like, oh, yeah, like you meant this and you meant that, and like so now we're all happy. Eh, that's not what happened. That's almost never what happened. Very rarely. You have a new book. Why write a new book? I mean, you're a gifted writer, but why write a new book? And why this book? And

could you describe what it is? Sure, yeah. So, and that's a great question, because after I wrote the last one, I was like, I'm never writing another one. That was enough. So it surprised me. But it's interesting because when I was kind of first learning to be a CEO, and I asked Bill and I asked a lot of kind of others, mentors, like, you know, what should I focus on? And, you know, a lot of them said, you know, you should focus on culture. But then I said, well, how do I do that? And nobody really had any kind of, like, it was all these weird abstract ideas that didn't, they weren't compelling.

You know, they weren't compelling, you know, they weren't well articulated. And I never, you know, it was always like a grope in the dark for me to try and understand, like, how to set the culture, how to change it. And so I really kind of became obsessed with this question for myself. And, you know, I did a lot of, in my life, I've kind of been interesting about like culture in the broader sense. And so, you know, I just really, really, really spent a lot of time kind of going through, you know, history, going through kind of trying to understand how people did it, like what were the components. And it turns out to be, you know, I think one of the most central parts of management in that

if you think about like management tools, you know, there's the mission statement and there's the OKRs and KPIs and you've got, you know, whatever your objectives and you've got, you know, all these kinds of things, but none of them really dictate the things that really define who you are, right? Like, do you show up on time for meetings? Do you stay at the Four Seasons? Do you stay at the Red Roof Inn? Do people go home at five or they go home at eight? You know, like, what kind of company is this? What are all those those behaviors do you get back to people like right away or do you never get back to them or you get back to them in three days and like

all those behaviors like are your culture um but they're how people are behaving when you're not looking so like what do you do about that and you know how do you set that and how do you make that go because that ultimately is really going to speak not only to the quality of your company but like what impression it makes on the world right like is it a good company to do business with is it a bad company is it a place where people work and their life becomes better as a place they work and their life becomes worse you know like what are all these things and they're all a result of this like weird abstract thing called culture and so you know as i started working with ceos like of course none of them know really how to deal with it at all like they have ideas but you

know most of the ideas are like half-baked and like mostly wrong um so i thought you know i should really go back and restudy this problem and see if I can articulate it. And that's what the book's about. And it's called What You Do Is Who You Are, because it's not what you believe. It's not your values. It's not what you tweet. It's not like your social signal. It's like what you actually do. That's who you are. And once you get your head around that, you realize that's a big task. And the subtitle is How to Create Your Business Culture. And you, I think, alluded to at least one big component of this.

But is culture then, as you define it here, a shared set of behaviors and beliefs, or how would you suggest people who are listening to this perhaps change how they think about culture or ask themselves questions that will help to refine their thinking if they're CEOs or founders of a company, for instance. Yeah, so one of the greatest, most longest-lasting cultures in history is this way of the warrior, the culture of the samurai. You can like that culture or not, but you have to give the credit for the fact that it lasted over 1,000 years. And to hold a culture for that long is amazing. And one of the key insights from Bushido is a culture is not a set of beliefs. It's a set of actions. And that's really

what the culture is. And this is why I think people miss it so much because they think it's a shared set of beliefs, but it's not. It's a shared set of behaviors. And you don't even have to believe it. But if you behave that way, that's a culture. And this is and, you know, what you have to ask yourself is, OK, like what are the behaviors that show like for real that we're doing what we believe? I'll just give you an example in venture capital. Every venture capital firm says they have great respect for the entrepreneurs. Very few treat entrepreneurs with any kind of respect at all.

You go, well, how do you have that disconnect? And it's because they haven't defined what are the actions that translate into that being a real thing and a real part of the culture. And so this was one of the problems we had to solve when we started the firm. And one of the things I put in place very early on was, like, if you're late for a meeting with an entrepreneur,

I collected $50 today on this, you know, it's $10 a minute. And people are like, well, what if I had to go to the bathroom? I don't care. You know, what if I had to make a phone call? I don't care. And the reason I have it that way is because I want them to ask me, well, why? And when they say why, I say because, say because building a company is really, really hard. And if an entrepreneur takes time out of their day to come see us, we're going to respect

the fact that that's how hard it is. And we're always going to be on time. No excuses. Plan your day. Finish that phone call five minutes before you have to meet with the entrepreneur. Go to the bathroom earlier. Don't drink that eighth cup of coffee you know like but you need to do what you're supposed to do and you know you have to set these kinds of things in place if you're really

going to live up to your ideals and and that has to be across every dimension of the culture you have to kind of program it in um or you're just not going to have it. You're going to talk it. And then if you talk it and don't do it, then your culture becomes your hypocrisy. Right. Is culture something that you really have to get right at the get-go, or is it possible to do a rehaul and make it work without replacing all of the employees at a company yeah no you definitely can change culture you definitely can change culture you know my actually two two of my favorite examples in the book are one the the haitian revolution where you know uh lovature reprograms slave culture

into a military culture which is almost unfathomable in that like not only did he have a slave culture but it was uh one of the most difficult slave culture it was significantly more brutal kind of slave environment than um like the U.S. slave environment. So from the beginning of kind of the transatlantic slave trade to the Haitian Revolution, I think 900,000 slaves were brought to Haiti. At the end, there were 465,000 left at the start of the revolution. In the U.S., 500,000 slaves were brought in that same period, and there were 700,000 left. So it was that much quantitatively that much more brutal. So a very difficult environment of low trust to build a military force. And he built a culture that created an army that defeated probably at least two of the strongest European military powers in history, France under Napoleon and the British Empire. And so you got to say, absolutely, you can change a culture. And, you know, he used the same guys, the same guys who were kind of slaves, didn't even have clothes, that kind of thing, to, you know,

that kind of army. And then the other one that I found very interesting is Shaka Senghor, who is running, you know, a prison gang, a very violent prison gang, and just changed the culture to be like, remarkably, you know, empathetic for it, you know, it's still a prison gang and just changed the culture to be like remarkably you know empathetic for it you know it's still a prison gang so like it wasn't all friendly uh but it was a really significant change and those guys you know i i've met some of those guys you know that he had there as they've gotten out of prison and it's just remarkable the effect it had on them, not only in that organization, but coming out. So 100% it's possible. And in either case, in the former, that is, at least based on my very limited understanding, was, if not the only, one of the only successful slave revolutions. Yeah, it's actually the only slave revolt in human history

that ever resulted in an independent state. What were any of the things that he did that helped with that transformation from slave culture to sort of organized military culture yeah so it you know he's a quite a remarkable guy along these lines in that um he was born a slave so Toussaint was born a slave uh but he was so smart that the plantation owner um basically made uh toussaint not only he let him read so he learned to read and where he read things like caesar's commentaries where he learned a lot of his military strategy and some economics books and so forth but he also made him his driver and so

toussaint was able to go to all these meetings on the island. So he learned French colonial culture, kind of Roman military culture, and then he also knew slave culture. So he had this really comprehensive cultural understanding. So he knew the elements of kind of the various things that he wanted. And so one of the techniques he used, which I refer to as kind of create a shocking rule, was he had to solve this problem that trust was super low. I mean, the most difficult part of slave culture is it lacks trust. And the reason is trust is really like a long-term commodity in that I'm going to do something for you today because I trust that over time, like it's going to pay off for me. But if you're a slave, there's no tomorrow, right? You have no possessions. They could take your family at any point. They can kill you at any point. You don't own your

own life. So to build trust in that environment is almost impossible uh the way tucson did it is you know where one of the ways he did is he created this um rule which was basically officers can't cheat on their wives um and you think about that and you go okay well maybe that's not that big a deal but like you're talking about an environment where like basically soldiers were paid in like raping and pillaging like that that was like a fundamental kind of thing that everybody did outside of tucson's army um but he said no look i need to be able like your word like is everything and he had a great line about um you know he'd rather relinquish his command than break his word that's how much emphasis he put on it and like if i can't trust you to keep that one promise then you can't be an officer in the army and so everybody wanted to

know why that rule was in place and so that kind of starts to build up, okay, here's how much we value you keeping your word. And so that was, you know, kind of one like little aspect that he did to reset the culture. You know, another thing was he really elevated ethics. And you go, well, like, why is that important? Well, you know, you live with a higher code and you have a stronger bond because it gives you a feeling about yourself and a feeling about the people who you're working with that, like, we're doing something important. And, you know, one thing, and he outlined that end. He outlined raping and pillaging in the Army. And he said, look, we're after something more important, and that's liberty. And so we're not going to rape and pillage. And it became so powerful

that the white women in Haiti referred to Toussaint as father, like this is a slave who's running an army. They liked him better than the troops from spain or britain or france they they liked like the the slave army better because they treated them so much better and and there's a great story around this which and it's a legend so you know it's one of those ones we don't know is true but the name tucson louverture he wasn't born he was born tsaint because slaves only had a first name. It was part of the dehumanization process. And Louverture came later. And nobody knows for sure why, but the story is, you know, Napoleon hated him. Like he drove Napoleon crazy. Napoleon suffered more casualties in Haiti than in Waterloo. And he wanted to get them so badly. And he got his generals around, he said, like, how can you not defeat this slave? And the general said, well,

we get them backed up, we surround them, but every time we think we have them, there is an opening. And so his name is Toussaint Louverture, Toussaint, the opening. And at least my belief is that those people, those women in the town, they helped him in a way that Napoleon could never understand because he had elevated the culture to that degree. So those are a couple of the things. I may go on for, obviously, hours and hours and hours on the Haitian Revolution. Yeah, fascinating. I mean, this is something I knew nothing about before doing some homework for this conversation. And I'm excited for hopefully the clarity and with that precise

action that the book will bring to something that, like you said, culture, in quotation marks, is often thrown around as a collection of very high-altitude abstract concepts, or it seems that way, that you're both giving examples, historical and current day, of how to install these shared and, in some cases, rewarded behaviors. Yes, definitely. That's why I'm so excited about the book. I mean, I just feel particularly now, and, you know, you see all these criticisms of high-tech culture and, like, you know, this CEO, how could he run a company like this and so forth? And whenever I see that, I'm like, well, it's really hard. It's really hard to get, you know, 10,000 people to behave the way you want them to. And, you know, like, the default is everybody's culture is screwed up. And it takes a lot of effort to make it good. Yeah, it makes me think of the, there's a Ram Dass quote, which I'll paraphrase, but it's something along the lines of if you think

you're enlightened to go spend a week with your family, and it's like, okay, like, like, everybody should reflect on that when they're criticizing, especially, I would say, a relatively unseasoned or new-to-the-job CEO's ability to get 10,000 people to behave well. It's very difficult. It's very, very, very, very, very challenging. What would you consider success for this book? What type of outcomes would you like to see in the world? That's a great question. It's funny because when I wrote the first one,

my goal was that the CEOs in the portfolio would read it. And that turned out to be a good goal because it was so narrow that I think it forced me to write a specific book, which I think a lot more people liked. You know, in this one, I would, you know, I think that anybody who kind of cares about their imprint on the world, you know, this is kind of the book for that in that, and I always tell the people at the firm this, look, you know, when we're all retired, like, we're not going to remember, like, every deal that we people who interacted with us and and like we're going to know if we were proud of it or or like it's something we want to forget and you know that's what culture is really about it's like who are you like what do you do like you know what does it mean to know you um and that uh you know i i think it's such an important thing, but people don't have the mechanics for that.

Or, you know, I hadn't been able to find anything that I could read on that. So that's kind of the purpose read the book, but I'm very excited to, that it provides examples that allow people to see principles in action and sort of deduce how those might apply to their own decisions, whether that's, say, read Hastings right at Netflix or rewinding the clock and going all the way back to Genghis Khan, who's, of course, I shouldn't say of course, but someone that I've been really fascinated with for the last few years.

Oh, interesting. For many, many reasons. And has been really portrayed in a lot of the coverage in a one-sided, sort of one-sided sort of one dimensional way, very unfairly. Uh, but the sort of the scale and scope, it's very underrated.

Uh, and the vision of cultural inclusiveness that, that you talk about in the book as it relates to that, uh, I think it will be really eyeopening to people and I'm excited about it for that reason. I know we're coming up on time. It would be fun to grab a coffee and a round two some other time,

because I still have a long list of questions, which we can get to some other time. But let me ask just a couple of really quick closing questions, and then bring this to a wrap. But this question is sometimes one that is difficult to answer, but I'll lob it out there and see what we get. And that is, if you had a billboard, this is a metaphor, of course, but a billboard on which you could put anything you want, an image, a question, a word, a quote, but it allows you to convey something to billions of people, non-commercial. Can you think of anything that you might put on such a billboard? So this is just really off the top of my head because i was listening to this song this morning

but um my friend naz has this great line which is uh i know you think i'm rich because of my diamond piece but i've been rich since i started finding peace and i think that's uh that's my that's my vibe today. Well, that could be a podcast in and of itself, just digging into that. I think you said life is good. Maybe life is good. I think my life is good because of my diamond piece. All right. Well, finding peace. That will be part of our round, too. Is there anything else in terms of closing comments, suggestions, recommendations, asks of the audience that you know, to enable you to do what you need to do kind of as a leader and as an organization to be who you want to be.

And as a leader, I think that's the most important thing. Wonderful. And that is what you do is who you are. You can find that anywhere books are sold. People can wave hello on the internet on Twitter at bhorowitz, and we'll link to that and everything else in the show notes, including everything that we mentioned. So people listening can find that at tim.blog forward slash podcast. Ben, this has really been a lot of fun and very enlightening and enlivening. I have all sorts of notes to follow up on for my own research and reading. So thank you so much

for taking the time. I really, really appreciate it. Thank you. And I'm looking forward to round two and the cup of coffee. Deal. 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 for the weekend?

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today. Each week, Jesse sits down with featured guests to investigate the role work plays in their lives, how it can be integrated into your life, and how to make work work for you better. This season, one of the first episodes is with Jerry Colonna, who's been called the CEO whisperer. I've actually done quite a bit of work with Jerry, and he's one of the world's most in demand executive coaches amongst the startup ecosystem. In the episode, Jerry shares his approach to meetings, explains how to ask good open-ended questions. And he also goes through his approach to daily journaling, among other things. Journaling can really create an incredible competitive advantage and also act as an

emotional rebalancing tool of sorts. So I recommend taking a look at it, giving a listen more accurately. So whether you're starting your first job or gearing up for retirement, Hello Monday helps you tackle Monday and the rest of the work week with tactics and strategies that you can use. So check it out. Find Hello Monday with Jesse Hempel. That's J-E-S-S-I-H-E-M-P-E-L. You can just look up Hello Monday on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. This episode of the Tim Ferriss Show is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time, if I could only take one supplement, what would it be? The answer is inevitably Athletic Greens.

I view it as, and a lot of you now view it as, all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it way back in 2010 in the 4-Hour Body, and I did not get paid to do so. I've been using it since before that, and I use it in a lot of different ways. I travel with it to avoid getting sick or to help mitigate the likelihood of getting sick. I take it in the morning to ensure optimal performance, and overall, it covers my bases if I can't get what I need from whole food meals throughout the rest of the day. And if you want to give Athletic Greens a try, they're offering a free 20-count travel pack for first-time users. I nearly always travel with at least three or four of these one-dose bags. In other words, if you buy Athletic Greens as a first-time buyer, you now get

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