The Tim Ferriss Show - #734: In Case You Missed It: March 2024 Recap of "The Tim Ferriss Show"

Starting point is 00:00:00 This episode is brought to you by Five Bullet Friday, my very own email newsletter. It's become one of the most popular email newsletters in the world with millions of subscribers, and it's super, super simple. It does not clog up your inbox. Every Friday, I send out five bullet points, super short, of the coolest things I've found that week, which sometimes includes apps, books, documentaries, supplements, gadgets, new self-experiments, hacks, tricks, and all sorts of weird stuff that I dig up from around the world. You guys, podcast listeners and book readers,

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Starting point is 00:01:35 So easy peasy. Again, that's tim.blog forward slash Friday. And thanks for checking it out. If the spirit moves you. Optimal minimum. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a question? and thanks for checking it out. If the spirit moves you. Tim Ferriss Show. which serves as a recap of the episodes from the last month. It features a short clip from each conversation in one place, so you can jump around, get a feel for both the episode and the guest, and then you can always dig deeper by going to one of those episodes. View this episode as a

Starting point is 00:02:35 buffet to whet your appetite. It's a lot of fun. We had fun putting it together. And for the full list of the guests featured today, see the episode's description probably right below wherever you press play in your podcast app. Or as usual, you can head to tim.blog.com and find all the details there. Please enjoy. First up, legendary actor Scott Glenn, whose acting career spans nearly 60 years and includes performances in Apocalypse Now, The Right Stuff, The Silence of the Lambs, and The Bourne Ultimatum, as well as a return to HBO this year for season three of The White Lotus. What advice, let's just say 10 years from now, your grandkids are listening to this and they're wondering what life advice. I would give them both the lessons I learned from Sir Lawrence and from my dad, which is if you love it, make it your life.

Starting point is 00:03:35 Right along with that, be tenacious. Learn that the most important thing about being knocked down is getting back up. And if you can put yourself in the spot where you say, I don't care how many times I get knocked down, I'm getting back up every single time and going after what I want, that's the answer. I mean, again, I'm in a bar with Laurence Olivier, who created the National Theater of England, who was the biggest movie star in the world, was the most creative stage actor in the world and director. He'd done everything. My question to him was, what is it that you need to make it in this business? Is it timing, right place at the right time? Is it contacts,

Starting point is 00:04:22 knowing the right people? Or is it just working on your skills and becoming better and better at what you do? He said, my dear boy, none of the above. Develop very strong jaw muscles. Learn how to bite on and not let go. I said, you're telling me it's just pure tenacity? His answer was, yes. If you're a monk outside the gates with a beggar's bowl and you stay out there long enough, they'll finally get sick of seeing you open the gates and let you in. Next up, Barbara Corcoran, an investor shark for the past 15 seasons on ABC's Emmy award-winning Shark Tank and host of the top business channel on Patreon, Barbara In Your Pocket.

Starting point is 00:05:09 I would add another superpower. In so much that I've seen of you and heard and watched, the one thing I have never seen, and maybe I've just missed it, but I have never heard you take a victim perspective. And I have heard you say, for instance, that the difference between successful people and others is how long they spend feeling sorry for themselves. So true. I've also heard you say, and I'm paraphrasing here, so if I get it wrong, please correct me. So far, you're right, Jim. You are at your best when you're being talked down to by a man or something like that.

Starting point is 00:05:42 Definitely. And I would love for you to perhaps tell the story of your 51% partner and the founding of the company. But also, I'm so curious where that resilience and ability to reframe what other people could take as victimization and turn it into something to your advantage. Because I've seen that over and over again in your story. It's such an important part. I mean, recovering from failure in my book is 95% of life. If you're going to have a good life, you better be really good at getting back up like a jack-in-the-box. Boom, boom, boom. Just get back up, get back up. I think I got that,

Starting point is 00:06:21 honestly, by being dyslexic. Because when you're the kid in class that's dumb, you're a failure by anybody's standard. And you're constantly put down or looked down on. And I was embarrassed. I learned shame in the classroom. Terrible thing for a child to feel like a nobody just because they don't have a certain skill set. But that definitely taught me about I had to go to school every day. I had to go back and sit there and hope they didn't call on me for reading, whatever. And I got used to being a loser like that and getting back up and just I just had to

Starting point is 00:06:54 go to school. So I got early training in that area. And I also learned from running sales for my whole life. That really was the only difference between the superstars that I had making two, $3 million a year and people made an average of 45,000, which was the norm. How does a superstar do it? I became a student of that. I used to think it was connections I would hire for that. Work ethic, I would hire for that. Who did they know in real estate, high-priced real estate, I would hire for that. And then I realized that's

Starting point is 00:07:25 just a starting gate. It gets you in easy. But when it comes down to it, it's how well you get back up and how long you take to feel sorry for yourself. They drove me crazy too. But I admired my superstars so much because of that ability. I could see them like, you could punch them around. They go, ah, the back of them. And so I learned from them like, you could punch them around. They go, ah, the back of the book. And so I learned from them too, you see. Next up, Seth Godin, author of 21 international bestsellers, including Purple Cow, Linchpin, The Dip. This is marketing and his new book, The Song of Significance,

Starting point is 00:08:07 a new manifesto for teams. How do you choose or think about kind of next chapters or what advice might you give me as I contemplate the what's next type of question? You know, I think it's very kind of you to say I'm very good at it. I don't think I'm good at it, but because I'm sort of in public and I do it in a certain way, it's noted. You know, I did five years of Akimbo. It was in the top 1% of all podcasts. And then I just stopped. And I stopped not because I didn't love it. I did love it. I stopped because if I kept doing it, there's something else I wouldn't do instead. And creating a vacuum is required so that I will do the hard work of filling the vacuum. But if I just keep doing the thing, then there is no vacuum. And sometimes the technology changes. That's why Spinnaker went away. That's why you

Starting point is 00:09:07 couldn't keep making VCR games. It's why my head start in the CD-ROM business was worthless because CD-ROMs went away. I'd liked in every time I did this being a pioneer in a new media space because that's for me the funnest spot. And then when the technology changes, I got to move on. But podcast technology is never going to change. I mean, you're noting there's a change in the production format, and that is a change. So in my case, what I'm trying to do is not maximize my income per hour spent, nor am I trying to maximize the size of my audience. What I'm trying to maximize is, are the people I'm serving glad that I did,

Starting point is 00:09:50 that I showed up to solve an interesting problem? And two, as I build the stack of things on the bookshelf behind me, can I point to them and say, that was interesting and generous and I'm glad I did it? And that's part of a limited attention span theater. So it's not for everybody. But my whole point of view is that life is projects. It is not a job. And when you stopped the podcast and created that vacuum, did you already have something

Starting point is 00:10:17 kind of warming up in the batting cage that was pending that you need to create that vacuum for? Or did you create the vacuum and then wait for something to get pulled into it? Not to strain the metaphor, but the idea. No, you're not straining it. If there is something pending, it's not a vacuum. There have been times when something so good came along, I did it and then had to remove things so I could do it.

Starting point is 00:10:39 You know, when a few of us started Squidoo, which was one of the first social networks, I had to completely reorganize my life because we built the 40th biggest website in the US with only eight employees. So we were busy. This is not what I'm talking about. I am talking about an actual uncomfortable vacuum where you feel like you're never going to work again, where nothing can possibly be worth what you gave up.

Starting point is 00:11:03 And that's hard to do. Yeah, it is hard to do. So just to put a microscope on that, I have, as a means of backstory, done this for periods of time and have found it deeply, deeply uncomfortable, sometimes fruitful, oftentimes not terribly fruitful. In part, I think, because when I create that vacuum, I don't know if the best way to embrace the vacuum is to basically just stare at the wall and watch paint dry or to do something else. And my mind just kind of folds in on itself. You create the vacuum. And then what are the next few weeks look like in terms of how you spend your time day to day or week to week? I think a fundamental difference between you and me, there are so many of them,

Starting point is 00:11:47 but one of them, as I am here talking to what, the world tango champion? Former world record holder, long time ago, yes. Is the only thing I have a world record in is being part of the largest co-author book signing in history in which me and 400 other people all signed our book at the same time. Because I am not a high performer. I am interesting. And being interesting is really important to me, but I am not holding myself to the standard you hold yourself in so many ways. And so I could imagine that the thing that gives me comfort might not make you happy. Right. For sure. I agree with all of that. And how does that

Starting point is 00:12:33 difference translate to what you would do in the weeks following creating the vacuum after, say, stopping the podcast? Because I guess you have activities that you're still carrying forward. It's not like you're completely idle. You're writing still, presumably. ship junk, but I am internally creating lots of mediocre work and basically creating straw people and saying, what would this be like? And then what would that be like? And here's this thing. And I sat with my 60 or 80 watt laser cutter and I cut this thing out. What do I think of that? that invention cycle is joyful, but I can't do it forever because I also need the satisfaction of shipping the work and not giving into resistance. So what I'm doing, when I was a book packager, we sold 120 books in 10 years, a book a month, but I had more than 800 books on my hard drive ready to go, not finished, but two-page, five-page proposals. Because the only way to have a finished proposal for me

Starting point is 00:13:50 is to have an unfinished one that you didn't ship. What is it, and this is probably a fundamental question I should have asked earlier, but what do you get from writing and having written as consistently as you have been due. What is the payoff? Like, why do that? Okay, so the biggest payoff is simple. Not in terms of equity, it's stock value, but in terms of the noise in my head. The biggest benefit is I will be writing tomorrow

Starting point is 00:14:17 because it's Friday, not because I've written the perfect blog post. That every single day, something gets published by me because i decided that 24 years ago not because i have reconsidered each day whether this one is good enough and even if no one read my blog i would still do it and i'm very fortunate that people give me the benefit of the doubt knowing that i am not guaranteeing this is the best thing I ever wrote and they're still willing to look at it. So that's lovely. In terms of my professional practice, again, back to genre, having a Synecure, a platform

Starting point is 00:14:59 where for a long time, if you type blog into Google, I was the first match because I just showed up more than just about anybody. There's a lot of value to saying, this is my lane and you can count on me in this lane. And for someone who is as peripatetic as I in their creative pursuits, having one of those turned out to be a really useful thing. Last but not least, Hugh Howey, the New York Times bestselling author of Wool, Beacon 23, Sand, Machine Learning, Halfway Home, and more than a dozen other novels. I read in the process of doing research, which is always fun for me to do with friends when I have them on the podcast, because otherwise it'd be really creepy to do like a bunch of like Google sleuthing on my friends. And I was wondering, I think you gave the advice,

Starting point is 00:15:58 and I'm wondering if it still applies, that writers not take days off. That's one. That could be one of those, don't believe everything you read on the internet. The second is related to writing for, I think it was a book review website, and becoming accustomed to working on deadline. And I'd just love you to speak to the importance of that, because I know for me, I think of myself occasionally as a writer,

Starting point is 00:16:22 if I don't have a deadline, man, I am not terribly productive. There's. If I don't have a deadline, man, I am not terribly productive. There's the deadline piece, if you could speak to that, and then just how you would suggest people train themselves to write. Is it daily? Is it a few days a week? Is it something else? I can only speak to what works for me, but I will say that I found that I have way more in common with other writers than we are dissimilar. I hear the same laments like you were just mentioning. I know you and I have a lot of the same hangups about writing. And the famous quote about writing is,

Starting point is 00:16:53 I hate writing, but I love having written. Everyone loves to have gotten some pages behind them. And I tried for 20 years to be a writer from age 12 to 32. My number one bucket list thing in life is to write a book. And no one was stopping me but myself. But for 20 years, I couldn't do it. And honestly, all I had to do was write a little bit every day, and I would write a book. That's all I ever wanted. And so how can you get in the way of yourself that consistently?

Starting point is 00:17:19 And we all do it as writers. And once I unlocked the ability to write, my fear was ever turning that switch back off. And that's where I think the daily habit is critical. Like I wrote today before I came here and it's Saturday and I'll write on the plane and I'll write in the back of an Uber. I'll do whatever it takes to get some words in that day. Is there a certain amount or is it just something? It used to be, I used to try to do like 2,000 words a day. Wow. I know.

Starting point is 00:17:47 That's a lot of words. Yeah. Now, if I do 1,000 words a day and what I find helpful in my Word document, whatever I'm working on, there's the word count written in the document at the end, wherever I'm writing. And when I start my daily session as I'm writing, I can see at the bottom of the Word document what the current word count is, and I can just see the comparison. And that gives me my, like, you need to do a little more. And then once I'm done for the day, I update that number to the day's number. And so I'm always just trying to march that forward.

Starting point is 00:18:17 It sounds calculated and cold, but if you just sit around waiting for inspiration and try to write a few sentences here and there, you'll never stay with the story enough to know what it's even about. When you said, effectively, when you turned on the spigot, you're afraid of turning it off. So you kept up this daily practice. But how did you, after so many years, turn it on in the first place? What was the catalyst? You mentioned the review website I was writing for. So I was trying to help a friend get this crime mystery thriller website up and running. And he was doing the film movie side of it, and I was doing the books. And I just put a call out to publishers. It was a beautiful website that he had made.

Starting point is 00:18:53 So I was sharing the URL of saying, this is what we're doing. And I started getting a flood of books in the mail. And for a reader like me, this was like Christmas every day. I was getting more books than I could review. So I was having to go through and see which ones appealed to me. And I was building bookshelves all over my house to house these things. For one genre? Yeah, for one genre. But it was the biggest genre. It was like the one that publishers make a lot of their money on.

Starting point is 00:19:17 And in order to keep up with it, I started reading and reviewing a book a day. And this is all I was doing. And I'd done this in college, too. I'd gone through a period of like two years where I was reading a book a day as a challenge. And some of these are 400 page books. So you're not doing much else, just that. I didn't know how good this was going to be for my writing, but absorbing that much prose just made it so easy for me to tap into not only the ability to string words together, but all the plot elements that I was absorbing from weeks and weeks and weeks of absorbing this

Starting point is 00:19:53 many books. And then I was also writing that review every day. And so I was getting a daily writing habit. And that wasn't even a job, wasn't getting paid to do this. I was doing it for a friend to try to get a website going because I love reading. But that experience is what made it possible for me to write. Is there any Mount Rushmore of fiction books that come to mind? This is not a fixed list, but whatever comes to mind. If you were to say, look, and I'll make this personal. So I've been experimenting with short

Starting point is 00:20:25 fiction for the last year or so i think i will do quite a bit more possibly in screenplay format which i definitely want to talk to you about at some point oh cool but what are some books people should consume or that i might want to consume to provide myself with really good nutrition for absorbing some of what you're describing. I think reading beautiful prose is almost like striking a tuning fork before your writing session. I think it's really awesome to pick up.

Starting point is 00:20:54 There's several things you can do. You can read stuff that's nonsense, but beautiful, like some Proust, and you can just turn to any part of Proust, it's all the same. The beginning of a story reads just like the middle of the stories. But the way a good translation of Proust flows, that iambic pentameter, the run-on

Starting point is 00:21:10 sentences, it's like you start to hear the tonal quality of good music in words, and then you can start to sing in that key yourself. Some of the books I've read recently that have, I think, upped my writing. One was, This is How You Lose the Time War, which is- So good. Yeah, it's so good. That is an incredible book. And it's short. And it's one of those that you could just pick up and read again to remind

Starting point is 00:21:34 yourself what writing can sound like. Also fascinating because it was written by two authors. Yeah. Who alternated back and forth. Alternated back and forth, which is structural to the story, which works. Circe, have you read that? I haven't yet read it. I have seen so many people reading it.

Starting point is 00:21:49 I've seen friends reading it. It took me forever to read that. The prose in that book is so special and will make you a better writer. Just recently, another one that someone recommended was Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. Oh, yeah. I haven't heard of it. I tried to read that like five times, and it was the hottest thing. And I never gave it enough of a chance.

Starting point is 00:22:10 But when I finally finished it, I was like, that's what I'm aiming for with my writing. No kidding. Why did it take you five times? I've heard this from a lot of people. So if you hear this recommendation and you want to read the book, get through the first like 70 or 80 pages. And I know it's like, I'd rather read something that's captured me from the first page. This book pays off.

Starting point is 00:22:28 So those are recent books that have, that have you recommended Lincoln highway to me, Lincoln highway, which I thought was spectacular. Anything by a more, a more tolls is one of the, it's just a book full of literary and narrative magic tricks. It's wild.

Starting point is 00:22:42 He upsets me because he, he wasn't even a writer as his primary career. I don't know. One of those. Yeah. Yeah. Super successful investment banker. You know,

Starting point is 00:22:52 it's like a Michael Lewis kind of story, like super successful in other ways. But it turns out the quality of reading that he does. And he's just one of the smartest human beings I've ever met. But his writing writing there's a short story collection coming out by him this year called a table for two get it on day one because there's one short story particular in there that is the cleverest thing i've ever read so he's another one that i'll read his works in order to remind myself like what we're aiming for

Starting point is 00:23:21 and his wordsmithing is beautiful yeah but it's not proust right it doesn't strive to be that it's clear but his it's so clear and the story arcs and character development and the weaving right and he's like sitting at a loom of prose and just like weaving these carpets and you don't see the finished pattern until after you say an hour and you're like oh my god yeah i didn't see that coming at all he's a genius and he works hard at it you know it spends the years and time it takes that's a level of writing that it's fun to aspire to but i know i'll never reach but you have to have like loftier goals than your expected outcome.

Starting point is 00:24:09 And now here are the bios for all the guests. My guest today is someone I've wanted to have on the podcast for years. We did the interview at his house in Idaho. He has no social media, no website. And his name is Scott Glenn. He is a legend. Scott Glenn's acting career spans nearly 60 years. His impressive film resume includes performances in Apocalypse Now, Urban Cowboy, The Right Stuff, Silverado, The Hunt for Red October, The Silence of the Lambs, Backdraft,

Starting point is 00:24:36 The Virgin Suicides, and The Bourne Ultimatum. I would venture that every single one of you would recognize his face. More recently, Scott has appeared on the small screen as Kevin Garvey Sr. in The Leftovers, the blind sensei Stick in Marvel's Daredevil and The Defenders, and as the retired sheriff Alan Pangborn in Castle Rock. This year, Scott will return to HBO to join season three of The White Lotus. And there is so much more to his story. He has, I would consider it, the gold medal trifecta in terms of mastery across life. My guest today is not only incredibly successful in her various endeavors, she is absolutely hilarious. And I burst out laughing a lot in this conversation. I had a blast. I think you will enjoy it as well. I had a blast. I think you

Starting point is 00:25:25 will enjoy it as well. Barbara Corcoran. Barbara Corcoran has been an investor slash shark for the past 15 season on ABC's four-time Emmy award-winning show Shark Tank, investing in more than 100 businesses to date. Even more impressive to me, she is also the founder of an eponymous real estate company, The Corcoran Group, which she started with a $1,000 loan after leaving her job as a waitress in New York City. You've seen this name everywhere. It's on signs, buildings, all over the place. Over the next 25 years, she would parlay that $1,000 into a $5 billion real estate business. And we get really deep into the weeds about early decisions, critical inflection points, and oh my God, some of her stories are just incredible. Barbara is the author of the national bestseller, Shark Tales,

Starting point is 00:26:11 How I Turned $1,000 Into a Billion Dollar Business, and host of the top business channel on Patreon, Barbara in Your Pocket, which provides exclusive content created for entrepreneurs at every level. On Patreon, Barbara will dive deep into the topics most important in business today, give an inside look at how she runs her business and works with her Shark Tank companies, and join members live to answer their toughest questions. You can find Barbara on TikTok, on Instagram, LinkedIn, all Barbara Corcoran, and you can find Barbara in your pocket at patreon.com slash Barbara Corcoran. One of my favorite people to ask for advice is Seth Godin. And this is a walk and talk, which means Seth and I were walking and talking while we recorded

Starting point is 00:27:02 this. And I had many burning questions I wanted to ask. He did not fail to deliver a lot of sage advice, tactical, practical wisdom. And what more can I say? The guy's a gem. He delivers every time. Who is Seth Godin? You might ask. Seth Godin is the author of 21 international bestsellers that have changed the way people think about work. His books have been translated into 38 languages, and Seth's books include Tribes, Purple Cow, Lynchpin, The Dip, and This Is Marketing. Seth writes one of the most popular marketing blogs in the world, 8,500, 8,500 plus daily blog posts, just to put that into perspective.

Starting point is 00:27:43 And two of his TED Talks are among the most popular of all time. He is the founder of the Alt-MBA, the social media pioneer Squidoo, and Yo-Yo Dine, one of the first internet companies. His latest book is The Song of Significance, a new manifesto for teams. You can find him at sethgodin.com, and you can find Seth's blog at seths.blog. So you can go to both of those for a lot of resources. And I'm going to just reiterate why we did this format the way we did it. Because there's too much sitting in the world. It's not good for you. We weren't evolved to do it. And I am trying to counteract the trend, the impulse, all of the incentives to do podcasts in a fixed location. This isn't good for my health, and it's certainly not good for your health to force you to consume it that way.

Starting point is 00:28:32 So I'm at least experimenting with being out and about doing something that we are designed to do, and that is walk. My guest today is my friend Hugh Howey. And man, oh man, do I love having conversations with Hugh. I always learn so much. I laugh so much. But who is Hugh? Hugh is the New York Times bestselling author of Wool, Beacon 23, Sand, Machine Learning, Halfway Home, and more than a dozen other novels. His Silo trilogy was recently adapted by Apple TV, becoming their number one drama of all time. A series based on his novel Beacon 23, starring Lena Headey, also released last year with season two due in March. Hugh's works have been translated into more than 40 languages and have sold millions of copies around the world.

Starting point is 00:29:21 He lives in New York City with his wife, Shay. You can find him at HughHowey.com. That's Hugh, H-O-W-E-Y.com. And on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram as Hugh Howey. We talk about all sorts of things, creative process. We talk about his publishing journey from a small press to self-publishing, to hitting the New York Times list with a self-published book, to a first-of-its-kind print-only deal with a big five publisher. He breaks all the rules, and he is a very original thinker and also a prolific, prolific producer of all things. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every friday that provides a little fun before the weekend between one and a half and two million people

Starting point is 00:30:10 subscribe to my free newsletter my super short newsletter called five bullet friday easy to sign up easy to cancel it is basically a half page that i send out every friday to share the coolest things i've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests. And these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness

Starting point is 00:30:51 before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to tim.blog slash Friday, type that into your browser, tim.blog slash Friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening.

The Tim Ferriss Show - #734: In Case You Missed It: March 2024 Recap of "The Tim Ferriss Show"

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