The Tim Ferriss Show - #75: Tools and Tricks from the #30 Employee at Facebook

Starting point is 00:00:00 Soundcheck, could you mouth the blue ball for a second and tell me what you had for breakfast? Today for breakfast I had egg whites, onions, chicken, and one slice of bacon. How much weight have you gained in the last 12 months? 40 pounds. Optimal minimum. 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 seem the perfect time.

Starting point is 00:00:25 I'm a cybernetic organism living tissue over metal endoskeleton. The Tim Ferriss Show. This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I do get asked a lot what I would take if I could only take one supplement. And the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road.

Starting point is 00:00:58 So what is AG1? AG1 is a science-driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole food sourced nutrients. In a single scoop, AG1 gives you support for the brain,ics, and whole food sourced nutrients. In a single scoop, AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut, and immune system. So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out. Go to drinkag1.com slash Tim. That's drinkag1, the number one, drinkag1.com slash Tim. Last time, drinkag1.com slash Tim. Check it out. 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.

Starting point is 00:01:44 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, have asked me for something short and action-packed for a very long time, because after all, the podcast, the books, they can be quite long. And that's why I created Five Bullet Friday. It's become one of my favorite things I do every week. It's free, it's always going to be free,

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Starting point is 00:03:00 tim.blog forward slash Friday. If you listen to this podcast, it's very likely that you'd dig it a lot. And you can, of course, easily subscribe any time. So easy peasy. Again, that's tim.blog forward slash Friday. And thanks for checking it out. If the spirit moves you. Why hello squirrels, chipmunks, and muskrats. Why muskrats? Don't be racist. We welcome everybody here because this is the Tim Ferriss Show, where my job is to attempt to deconstruct world-class performers and teachers, whether they are investors, chess prodigies, actors, musicians, or entrepreneurs in this particular case. This episode features Noah Kagan. Noah Kagan is a friend of mine I've known for many years. He was number 30 at Facebook, number four at Mint.com, which was sold for God knows how much money, I think 100 plus billion dollars, and is the chief sumo, i.e. co-founder of SumoMe.com, which offers free

Starting point is 00:03:54 tools to help grow web traffic, among other things. Also a top-rated taco connoisseur, I'm not sure we're going to get into that, but he has, most important, created four products that have made more than seven figures. And that is what we're going to delve into in this particular episode. Lots of tactics, tools, routines, and so on that Noah has used himself and has helped other people to use. And Noah was also my co-teacher in the Tim Ferriss Experiment episode, Build a Business, where we led Cindy, a a novice entrepreneur into scaling and launching her business in one week and there are a lot of the behind the scenes goodies where if you go to itunes.com forward slash tim ferris that is two r's and two s's itunes.com forward

Starting point is 00:04:39 slash tim ferris i think there's an hour of bonus footage with some really nitty-gritty call script sales and marketing stuff that I think you will enjoy. But this episode by itself, super strong, standalone, lots of takeaways, lots of resources. And if you don't want to write it all down, you can get the show notes at 4hourworkweek.com forward slash podcast. That's 4hour, F-O-U-R-H-O-U-R, 4hourworkweek.com forward slash podcast. That's four hour F-O-U-R-H-O-U-R, fourhourworkweek.com forward slash podcast. Without further ado, here is Monsieur Noah Kagan. Enjoy. Noah, my man, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me, Tim. I have been looking forward to this for quite a while because every time we talk and we've known each other for years, I come away with

Starting point is 00:05:25 notes upon notes of things that I want to test or try. So I'm hoping and expecting sternly like an angry father. Yeah, that's a lot of pressure. This episode will have the same. But for people who don't have too much context, you were number 30 at Facebook. You were number four employee at Mint, which sold into it for a hundred plus million dollars. And you've created multiple products now that have earned seven figures. What else should people know perhaps as background or what would you like to tell them about as context? I thought that was pretty good, man. I was like, wow, whoever that guy is, he sounds pretty good.

Starting point is 00:06:01 Hire that man's speech writer. I mean, you know, the only other thing is like is I came out like a lot of people were listening. I came out of Berkeley or whatever college you came out to, and I worked at a corporate job at Intel sitting in a cubicle. And then I didn't really use networking or any of that kind of stuff to kind of eventually go to these kind of cool companies and be able to create my own businesses that give me the freedom to do a lot of things I want to do.

Starting point is 00:06:24 And you are in Austin, Texas. Is that right? Yes, sir. Where did you grow up? I grew up in the Bay Area, about a mile and a half from the Apple headquarters. So near Cupertino somewhere. Yeah, I grew up in Cupertino. The question of why there has been a mass exodus, it would seem, from cities like New York City and San Francisco to Austin is one I've never really

Starting point is 00:06:45 heard you answer. So maybe I can just ask you, why is Austin becoming such a hotbed and why did you choose to move to Austin? Yeah. I mean, I actually interned like in 2000, about 10 years ago and I came out here and I never heard of the place. I didn't even know. I mean, in Texas now it's, you know, because the internet people know that there's a, there's places inside of Texas. They have like photos. Uh, but I never knew what Austin was about. And I came here and I had like sex with this person and then I got drunk and it was like, like, what's that book? Lord of the flies where it's like the young kids take over an Island. Yes. It's basically like that, but we have a city. So I came here and I was like, how come no one else is here you know you're paying half as much

Starting point is 00:07:27 as the bay area for housing uh we actually see grass a lot of grass around us um you got a lot of tacos which is what i'm known for and it's like one of the capitals of tacos in the nation and it's kind of like um you know it's like what the bay area was probably like 10 years before now it's just like you're packed and you're paying insane prices uh and I think also fundamentally, there's a few key things for me, but fundamentally, I just, I didn't want to also just be around startups talking about their funding all day long. And so Austin provided a lifestyle for me where it was more affordable, really attractive women, really good outside life. Like if I, when I leave the office, I have a good lifestyle. It just really fit that balance. And that's why I think it's, you know, it's one of the fastest growing cities in the nation right now. Yeah, it's one of my favorite

Starting point is 00:08:08 cities. I almost moved there after college, actually. It was between Austin and SF. And I didn't make it to the final round of interviews for Trilogy Software. So that made the decision for me. So I came very close. I could have forked another way and ended up in Austin. Did you get flown out in first class in the limo experience with trilogy? I don't think I made it that far. I think, I think they recognized a terrible potential employee very quickly and decided that, uh, I would be more trouble than I was worth, which is probably accurate. Uh, you know, I hear, you know, what's funny about that. Like I got a job offer. Well, I've applied for Google twice and I've been rejected twice.

Starting point is 00:08:46 And I'm like, is Google really good or am I that bad? Or is it just like I meant to kind of run my own thing? I remember when I did my interview at Google, I couldn't remember how to do division. That makes it hard to get a job at Google, I'd imagine. I was like, dude, I got to use my phone. Do you mind? He's like, yeah. You're not imagine. I was like, dude, I got to use my phone. Do you mind? He's like, yeah. Okay, you're not going to get the job, dude. He's like, if you can't do 12 times 12,

Starting point is 00:09:10 Noah, I'm sorry. I have some bad news. Unless you want to interview for our cafeteria jobs. No, I know. Multiplication, I'm good. It was the division, man. Anyway, so Austin, I mean, coming back to it, it was just more of after being in the Bay Area around engineers and all that stuff in my life, I wanted something a little more affordable, women and outside and just kind of like a slower lifestyle. I would say for younger people, I would actually recommend going to these busier cities because you're surrounding yourself with like hungry, hungry people. By younger, what age would you say that is? I'm saying up until 30, I would say in like a really populated city personally. And that's

Starting point is 00:09:38 what I did because you're around people that are hustling and it's really inspiring and it's motivating and there's a meetup every day. And we, you know, we have that in Austin, but it's nowhere near the level of the Bay area or New York. And so I'd say if you're younger, I would want to be around that and get connections to that and experience that. Cause you're, I mean, if you look at Austin, like how many big companies have come out of Austin, Tim, like name two. Dell and blank. I'm sure there are others. Okay. So Willie Nelson Biofuels. What'd you say? I said Willie Nelson Biofuels. Willie Nelson, dude. I mean, I was going to say like a weed joke, but like name two that came

Starting point is 00:10:12 out of the Bay Area. I mean, you could go on for days. Right. Yeah. And that's a different question. Yeah. And you have a density in SF that you don't have in Austin. Namely, I guess what I mean by that is you have the peninsula in the Bay Area, but just within San Francisco, you have, let's just call it 700,000 people very densely packed in. So getting to events, meeting new people, bumping into the icons or billionaires you want to meet is as easy as going to a handful of different coffee shops. Whereas in Austin, in my experience, having gone to South by Southwest so many times, it's more spread out much like Los Angeles. So those types of serendipitous moments are a little harder to engineer. I mean, the funniest one for me, I was walking in San Francisco a few years ago and I'm talking about PayPal with my friend Boris. And then I'm like, oh my God, literally the guy walking in front of us was Peter Thiel. And I was like, Peter, we had a question about

Starting point is 00:11:02 PayPal. Do you mind if I ask you? That's the co-founder of PayPal for people wondering who's also the first money into Facebook. And actually another guest on the podcast as well. The place I'd like to go next, and I think maybe working backwards makes sense here. I'd love to experiment with just front-loading this episode with a lot of tools and tactics that people can play with as soon as they listen to this episode. What are some of the tools, whether they're apps or otherwise, that you are really into at the moment or that you find extremely useful? Yeah. So I'll give you my top things that I use and I think everyone should literally use right now and go do these things. Number one, and this is – it's not even an app or anything.

Starting point is 00:11:49 It's speeding up your mouse pad. It's the number one productivity hack because you're on your computer almost all the day. Go to your settings, speed up your mouse pad, double what you're at. It takes a few minutes to get used to, but you realize like, holy crap, everything starts at the top. So speed up your mouse pad and everything will get faster. I really love that one. Cause anytime I'm on someone slower, I'm like, wow, you're so slow. What's wrong? Is your computer broken? So you just go to system preferences and then keyboard and then on mouse trackpad. Actually it's one of those three, I'm sure. Yeah. Trackpad. Yeah. You click on trackpad and then you go to your tracking speed

Starting point is 00:12:22 and move it to the basically almost the fastest. And then your keyboard, or the way that you get around the computer is significantly faster. Got it. Let me just go through a list of things that I love. Sure. Other things on the computer, Alfred app. If you're not using Alfred app, it's free. And basically, instead of having to even move your mouse, you can just hit a launch bar and then type in whatever app you want, and it'll automatically load it.

Starting point is 00:12:43 So if I wanted to open Firefox, I can just hit Command Spacebar, type Fi, hit Enter, and it's loaded instead of me having to move my mouse anywhere on the screen. Now, is that – I've heard of Alfred before. I use – I guess it's Spotlight just built into the OS. Oh, Spotlight's way slower, man. It's just a lot slower. It's way slower. And with Alfred app, you can do contacts.

Starting point is 00:13:04 I can do math with it sometimes when I need help. A lot of the times. Okay. Got it. When I have to do those divisions. So Alfred app is an awesome one, especially for getting around your Mac. I don't know if they have a PC version yet, but who uses PC? Um, I don't know. Do you ever feel bad when they have like, when people are using hotmail or PC, I'm like, bro, is everything okay? Okay. Let me go. I'm going to go more. Cause I know I want to get meaty stuff yeah we um i use so let's get into apps like web and other things for this is one is a killer one it's a chrome extension called facebook newsfeed eradicator and this one is amazing and i used to work at facebook and i know all of us you you have this like weird thing where you're so used to going to facebook you just type in fa and your your hand you can even control it. And so we install the Facebook newsfeed eradicator.

Starting point is 00:13:46 You go to Facebook and it blocks your newsfeed and then you get there and I do it. I probably do 10 times a day. I go to Facebook and I get there and there's nothing there. And I'm like, well, I guess there's nothing for me to do today. Everyone's asleep.

Starting point is 00:13:56 And I go back to my work. Um, because I think people are looking for so many different productivity hacks. I just try to focus on the big ones that are really helpful. And that one is huge. Cause I go Facebook, nothing's happening. Go back to my day and get the things done. I just try to focus on the big ones that are really helpful. And that one is huge. Cause I go to Facebook, nothing's happening. Go back to my day and get the things done.

Starting point is 00:14:07 I want to get done. Um, I use schedule once. Yeah. Great program. Me too. Love. You use that too?

Starting point is 00:14:14 I do. Yeah. It was introduced to me by Andrew, uh, Warner of Mixergy who's done thousands of interviews. And I, I, as soon as he booked me using that.

Starting point is 00:14:23 So I was the one who was picking a time. He made you do that? He made Tim Ferriss on that? I don't blame him though. If he was, I, as soon as he booked me using that. So I was the one who was picking a time. He made you do that. He made Tim Ferriss on that. I don't blame him though. If he was, no, it's so nice. And it's,

Starting point is 00:14:31 it prevents so much confusion. You want to just explain with it? Sure. So good. The reason I like it, uh, they have a $99 a year plan. Make sure you find that one.

Starting point is 00:14:40 Cause they have all these different options, but you can get in there and get the $99 a year one, I believe. And the nicest thing about it is it's such an annoying thing. So like if me and Tim wanted to meet, I'd be like, Tim, are you free next Tuesday at four? You'd have to come back and say, no, how about Wednesday? And then blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. With schedule once it connects automatically to your calendar. When you send it to someone, you could set your preferences. So like I am very specific preferences. Like I don't do meetings on Thursday.

Starting point is 00:15:01 I don't do meetings before 10 AM. I don't do meetings during lunchtime. I don't do meetings on Thursday. I don't do meetings before 10 a.m. I don't do meetings during lunchtime. I don't do meetings after five. And I only do meetings for 15 minutes because I really, if it's longer than that, like we need to figure out why it's going so long. And then basically I send that to you and I'd say, Hey Tim, let's talk for that time of period. And then it makes it really easy for you to just compare that to your schedule, choose the time that auto goes into my calendar and we're done. Yeah. And, and one of the other benefits that I noticed, number one, the first thing someone will see when they click the link to grab a time is it'll say, set your time zone. And that avoids all of the confusion like, Oh, sorry, I thought it was 4 PM CST and not PST. And then you have to book it again. It avoids all of that. It sends reminders

Starting point is 00:15:40 to people. I've been using it, for instance, if I'm doing, let's just say recording, and I don't typically do this, but if I were recording five podcasts in a day, or I had some type of batching like that, I would block out an entire day in say one hour increments or two hour increments, and then have everybody just pick the time that is remaining and available. Because it also happens if you're emailing separate people competing for a certain day, let's just say. You'll book one person and then the other person will want the same time and it's just a huge headache. So this thing saves just dozens of hours of headache. Totally, totally worth it.

Starting point is 00:16:19 Other ones? Oh, excuse me. Yeah, no, go for it. Other ones, followup.cc. This is one of my secret weapons. I basically can never forget anything. It's like, I call it my Jewish mother in my inbox because my mom never forgets anything. She writes everything down. And so what followupcc does is like, if I'm emailing Tim, which, you know, we do from time to time, I'll email Tim and in my BCC,

Starting point is 00:16:40 I'll put when I want to remember it. So what it does is that I'll put like one day at followupcc.cc. And in a day, it'll email me back and say, hey, here's the email that you sent and the reminder about it. So you can do this for people be like, hey, I'll check in with you in two months, or I'll follow up with, you know, even for things you want to do as a to do, like, let me do this in two months, or let me check this email in a week, you can either forward it or BCC it, and it'll automatically remind you. And I've just found that it basically helps me never forget anything because sometimes you just keep it in your inbox and i personally don't want anything in my inbox if i can and this helps me move out anything or remember anything that i want so i highly recommend that yeah automating follow-ups super yeah it's just so nice i mean and there's email tracking tools for opens and stuff like

Starting point is 00:17:19 that i just want to follow up kind of the lightest way easiest for me to use um other tools that i've been using a lot i'm've been using perch.co. It's totally free for everyone who's doing it. I know a lot of people are either starting or running their own businesses. Perch provides free people-to-people like webcams. So we have four people that work remote. And it's kind of weird because they're like, what the hell are these guys doing in the office? And we're wondering what they're doing sometimes.

Starting point is 00:17:42 And so Perch gives you the chance if you have two ipads or two phones uh to see each other and so it helps for communication and also just like being a part of a team versus like a random remote person very cool yeah i hadn't heard of that one i really like that one um i like my fitness so i'll go to a few on the phone and web they're kind of mixed i use my fitness pal.com almost i use it every day um and i use it because if you really want to lose weight or gain weight which we're you know we can talk about a bit i've gained 40 pounds in the past four months and now i'm losing 40 pounds in the next five months or six months um just just so people understand what's going on here oh how much how much of the

Starting point is 00:18:19 40 would you say is muscle versus fat well i don't know the exact i didn't i probably should have been more if you had to estimate how much of that is muscle, probably like half and half, maybe. I don't know the exact number. I think it's a bit more honestly. So just, we'll come back to this guys, but Noah sent me a picture of himself. I hadn't seen him in about six months and could not recognize the guy. Um, now granted you're hitting a bicep pose in the gym. No, you weren't. I'm kidding. But it was a shot from the gym and I was just like, what the hell? It was a naked selfie, dude. Come on. It's Tuesday. Naked selfie Tuesdays. That's kind of our routine. So we'll come back to that. But what

Starting point is 00:18:55 do you use my fitness pal for? So I use my fitness pal and I track every single thing I eat. And it's not so much that I want to be OCD and obsessive about like, oh, I have to track everything and I want to count everything. But it gives me, if that I want to be OCD and obsessive about like, oh, I have to track everything and I want to count everything. But it gives me, if you really want to accomplish something, and this is a tool that if you want to lose five pounds, it'll say like, eat this amount of calories and this much macros and in four weeks you'll hit five pounds. And so it's like, well, why wouldn't I do that? And it just makes me more accountable to help me hit the objectives of what I want to hit.

Starting point is 00:19:20 And so it's like, am I under my macros and the amounts I want to be hitting today or not? And it just makes my life so much simpler to, to be able to figure that out. And over time you kind of even know, you start knowing what you're, you know, much more about the food that you're actually putting in your mouth about like how much protein a chicken has versus steak versus like, um, you know, like a quest bar, which is one of my favorite protein bars. No, definitely. And, uh, for those people wondering what macros are, uh, that's just referring to macro nutrients. So the, the, what percentage of the food you're eating, calories you're eating are coming from fat,

Starting point is 00:19:49 protein, or carbohydrates generally. And then when people refer to micronutrients, those would be say the trace minerals and so on and so forth, vitamins. There we go. And I'm actually experimenting with some, some, somewhat unusual macros right now, which are about 80% fat calories, 15% protein, and 5% or less carbohydrates, typically less than 30 grams a day, just to optimize for brain function as opposed to body function, which is working pretty well. What have you noticed about that? I've noticed that when I hit, and I'm using a device called the Precision Extra with XTRA for tracking ketones at a very precise level, you would hope since it's called the Precision Extra, it gives you

Starting point is 00:20:33 a readout in millimolar. So instead of peeing on a keto sticks, these things you can buy at Walgreens or wherever to indicate if you're in ketosis or not, you can get a concentration. So I'll prick my finger and check it and it'll say, oh, you're at 0.7 millimolars or 1.5 millimolars. And for my optimal mental performance, I've just noticed that I perform best at between say 1.1 and let's just call it 1.7 millimolars. And my belief up to this point, because I hadn't had a good tool, that was a nice quest bar burp, up to this point has been the deeper the ketosis, the better my brain will perform because the brain likes ketones. But for me, that doesn't appear to be the case. So I've been able to get super specific and sort of use the

Starting point is 00:21:21 food I put in my mouth like a sniper shot for mental performance, which is awesome. Um, so that's been the, the primary benefit. And along with that, I've noticed, for instance, all of my morning fatigue for say the first half hour of the day is completely gone. I mean, a hundred percent gone. I wake up and I'm ready to go, which is, has never been the case when I'm carb dependent. So that's interesting. I mean, it's funny. I was thinking, I think a lot about, I mean, I think we don't think about how much we, how much sleep affects us and we all know sleep more and it's better. Um, I actually used to work in bedsheets at Macy's. Um, so wait, now you work in bedsheets, like you were selling bedsheets or you'd wrap yourself up like Casper, Casper, the ghost and go to work. No, I sold bedsheets to old women, uh, on commission.

Starting point is 00:22:04 Huh? How old were you when he did that? That was in high school. All right. And, I sold bed sheets to old women, uh, on commission. Huh? How old were you? How old were you when he did that? That was in high school. All right. And, uh, so I learned a lot about like bedding and I also worked in, uh, towels, but one of the things I was going to suggest is like, we're talking about apps and tools. I think a lot of people don't think about their physical tools. So, uh, I've tried to optimize my bed. Uh, I think I've done a pretty good job. So the So the company that I use is coming down to Amazon. The one that I just tried actually a week ago that I'm going to be upgrading to is called Tuft & Needle. It's a little like these like kind of hipster guys

Starting point is 00:22:32 out in Arizona, really nice. And they have like the super comfortable mattress. And then I found there's a guy literally he's like in the middle of Midwest. He looks like your uncle. And he created a thing called MyPillow. Have you heard of this? No, I haven't. I've heard of Tuft & Needle though. That one, that name has come up a couple of times among friends. So I have to take a look at those guys. Yeah, I can put you in touch with them. I went and slept on it and laid on it like a few days ago. It was great. And then, and I'm going to upgrade to that. They have a, and then I use a pillow called my pillow, which is like tri-foamed. I don't even know what he does, but it's really good. Because what I realized is like the more that I'm comfortable in bed, I just feel better.

Starting point is 00:23:07 Absolutely. And I wake up, you know, feeling, you know, pretty damn good every morning. And I use a company called Parachute for the bedding. And so those are the kind of the combination that I've been using. And I'm like, damn, I'm feeling really good when I wake up in the morning from all that stuff. And what does the, just to come back to two things, uh, or a few things, the nightly rituals, what is, what, what are the last say two hours of your days typically look like? And when do you go to bed? When do you wake up, et cetera? My night varies a bit more. Um, but what I do

Starting point is 00:23:37 at night is I try to put myself to sleep by reading. Uh, I noticed I would, I'd try to watch shows or anything like that. And then I just get stimulated. So I'll go to bed and I, you know, I won't always have to read a business book, which my brother always kind of gave me crap about. Like there's other things besides nonfiction. So I've been reading like Jack Reacher books. Like, I don't know if anyone has, you know, suggestions for books that are fiction that are good. Like the Martian was probably one of the best books of the year. Jack Reacher. Is that, that's a, there's graphic novels or what are the? It's, it's the movie Tom Cruise is in, which was surprisingly good last year. Got it.

Starting point is 00:24:06 But I'll basically just try to read, and that helps me go to sleep versus simulating me. I would watch shows like Big Love, which wasn't that good. Or now I'm watching Daredevil. But basically, I realize if I watch that stuff in bed, I don't go to sleep. So now I just do books instead, and I've been doing that for a little while. So The Martian was an amazing fiction book. It's probably one of the best in the past year or two. The whole story of The Martian, I think, what's his name? Andrew Weir or Weir,

Starting point is 00:24:36 something like that. The whole story of how that was, I guess, self-published or very, very small to start with and just developed a massive cult following. Then the audio book was a huge, huge blockbuster hit and it's taken off and i think it's now being developed into a movie or maybe the movies are out and i love that type of story it's just like 50 shades of gray everyone turned it down um and it just became a viral sensation on its own which then led to it becoming a blockbuster like the book um go the fuck to sleep the children's book that was leaked as as a PDF among people in the publishing world became this huge buzz item and then became a bestseller. Uh, that's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. What time do you typically go to bed and when have you found you perform best or how do you perform best in terms

Starting point is 00:25:23 of going to bed and waking up? What are the, so one thing I do is I don't keep a phone in my room. I think that's a common thing. We wake up and we have the phone right in our room and we just get all stimulated by that. So I keep my phone in a separate room always. Um, I'm going to see various, I think when I'm excited, like remember the guy, Steve Pavlina from like five to 10 years ago, he had really good content. He was very like strict about wake up at this time and don't wake up at this time. So I've changed my routines in the past year and it's helped me where one, I sleep in darkness now. So I don't sleep with natural light and I don't really use an alarm. And I noticed I wake up a little later now, but when I wake up, I don't need coffee and I feel

Starting point is 00:25:57 more refreshed. And that's just what's worked for me. So I wake, I think now I used to wake up at seven 30 and I'd have to go to like do my old man pee. I don't know if you know, do you do that at home? Oh, I, well, I'm a bit of a water hog. So I usually wake up also in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, which I, yeah, I've had my prostate checked. Love the experience. Just kidding. But no, I, I, you know, I've checked out all that stuff. I just drink too much water. So yeah, I get up and I do the old man pee once or twice probably. Yeah. So I just found I slept better. So I moved my bed to dark. I know Tucker Max, our mutual friend does that as well. And then when I wake up, I try not to just go get overly

Starting point is 00:26:37 stimulated with like my phone and everything already happening. And so my morning routine, and then I actually find that the days I'm not having coffee in the morning, I'm like, oh, I slept better. And when I've been sleeping in darkness, that's been happening. And then I try to stay away from my phone for the first hour of my morning. So I spend the first hour making ideally the same breakfast every morning. And I generally will rotate that every three months. And so like now my breakfast is one cup egg whites, two eggs with 2% cheese. And so I'll have that in the morning for breakfast, and then I'll read for the next 30 minutes.

Starting point is 00:27:05 And you just scramble all that up together? Yeah, I actually did what you recommended in one of your early YouTube videos, where I microwave it. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The three-minute slow-carb breakfast. Yeah, yeah. I was like, damn, you can microwave eggs?

Starting point is 00:27:17 Now I microwave everything. No, but I've actually found it's relaxing, and I like that I'm eating the same thing, so I don't have to think about it. Because sometimes, actually, when you have to think about dinner or lunch or breakfast, it's kind of tiring. It's like, oh, what the hell am I going to do? And then you have to process all this extra energy that I don't really want to. And so then I try to create a routine where it's like breakfast first thing and then it's reading a book, whatever I'm interested in at that time.

Starting point is 00:27:40 So I'd love to dig a bit on the books because I know you've read a lot and you've mentioned books to me before. Like, well, there are many, but I think one of them I found very helpful and have recommended to my startups, which is Who. And maybe you could explain or introduce that book and some of the others that you found very helpful for business and just for designing your own style of business. Sure. The one thing, before I forget, Tim, one thing I've noticed, there's two kind of, there's many attributes, but I always think it's interesting to try to understand like what are the fundamentals of successful people like you and other people that it's like, oh, what are they doing that regular people aren't? And the two things I've noticed is one, I haven't really met any super successful people that don't read. I don't know if you've noticed that.

Starting point is 00:28:28 Yeah. It's very, it's very unusual. Yeah. I've never met like, Oh yeah, I don't really read anything. I don't really do anything. And the second thing is this is one that everyone can do today. And I do it every day. I even do it in hotels, which it's not something perverted. It's, I know that's what you guys think. It's not exclusively something perverted. Yeah. Let's be clear. They, uh, I make my bed every you guys all think. It's not exclusively something perverted. Yeah. Let's be clear. They, uh, I make my bed every day. I don't know if everyone else does that, but I've always noticed it's just like a great

Starting point is 00:28:50 way to get my win in the morning. Um, and some other people I think have mentioned that, but that's like, I do those things like, you know, I make sure I'm reading every day and I make sure I make my bed. And those are kind of like two wins in the morning that always, I'm like, nah, it's a pretty good day. Yeah. Um, so to the book, who not, not, not to interrupt,, but I want to actually reinforce that for people because I never made my bed. And then two things happened. I saw a commencement speech by a war hero, who, you know, just a highly, highly decorated veteran who had

Starting point is 00:29:19 also come back to civilian life and just done incredibly well in the private sector. And he said, you can't always change everything in the world you want to change, but start with making your bed in the morning. And I was like, what? Huh? But it stuck with me. And then I met a monk, I think his name is Dandipani. I might be messing up the pronunciation. In any case, he said, if you want to have a feeling of sort of calm control over things, and I'm paraphrasing here, start with making your bed in the morning so that when you come back to it, it's not complete chaos and you feel like things are in disarray. And I was like, well, that sounds kind of silly, but whatever.

Starting point is 00:29:58 I'll try it for a week. And it's been just a huge psychic impact. That's an incredible psychological ROI. So I do that every morning as well. Yeah. I mean, it's funny. I was talking with my team about similar kind of like, what are the things that you could do today and you don't need anybody else and you could, you know, make yourself feel better and get better, you know, I would say success. Um, and, and two things that I've noticed is one, this is kind of a tangential one, but it's organized your dollar bills. I don't know if you do that.

Starting point is 00:30:23 Uh, I, I'm not. You mean like by denomination? I do it by denomination. I do it in the same order. So they're all front facing in my wallet. Okay. And so I think it's a Susie Orman thing she said 10 years ago or so, but I've done it. And I just think it's like a respectful thing for your money. And it kind of makes you like, okay, money is good. And the other thing is that with the bed thing and things in my life in general, I don't know who told me this, but it's hard for me to let it go which is like just do it now and so if you see something that's broken or if it's on the floor if you have a dish just like just get it over with

Starting point is 00:30:52 and i try to like for some reason i can't let that go when there's things like that it just helps me get that kind of stuff done and it's relieving yeah so i do that that's done do you have mantras like that or anything mentally that you do. Or reminders that are just sound bites that I've picked up over time. One of them that I thought was really profound in a lot of ways was advice I got from this mother. I mean, I stayed with an older couple and their family in Panama at one point. And they were a real power couple. I mean, the, the, the wife had done a ton when she was focused on career, husband was a huge player and had like bought and sold some of the biggest companies in central and South America. And they

Starting point is 00:31:37 were both really, really, uh, content and accomplished. And those two don't always go together. They're actually pretty rare. And, uh, what she said to me was, you should make sure you always have, uh, an incredible bed and, and, and at least one incredible pair of shoes, because if you're not in one, you're going to be in the other. And I was like, huh? And so I started, I had always bought kind of the cheapest shoes to get around. And I was like, ah, it doesn't matter. I viewed my shoes like a car almost, which is how I view cars. I'm like, I don't need a Ferrari or some fancy car. It's just getting me from point A to point B.

Starting point is 00:32:12 Like, give me the crappiest thing, the cheapest thing that'll do the job. And I viewed my shoes in the same way. And I didn't realize how many physical problems I'd created until I actually started investing in better shoes. And you don't need a lot. I mean, you could have one pair of, it's like one pair of very good walking shoes. And, and, you know, I, I tend to prefer these days, not necessarily the five fingers or anything like that, because I don't think those are great walking shoes because the human foot is not designed to walk on concrete or asphalt. But rather what you would call zero drop shoes. So shoes that don't have an elevated heel,

Starting point is 00:32:49 but do have some protection for the bottom of the foot. And you can spend, say, 20 to 40 bucks on a good pair of Chuck Taylors or Vans. And I have a black pair of Vans, for instance, that can double as dress shoes. Nobody notices. I've had people compliment me on the shoes when I'm at like a business dinner, like, oh, those are great shoes. What are they? And I say vans and they just, they're astonished.

Starting point is 00:33:14 So that tip, you know, having a high quality bed and high quality bedding, and then at least one pair of high quality shoes is uh is something that's that stuck with me i think that's so one you know one thing you were saying i thought was cool it's like when you tell stories it's so much easier to remember so in like two weeks i can be like yeah tim was like in the jungle in panama with like some guru and they told him about choosing a bed and it's so much easier for me to remember that versus you just like yeah have a bed in better shoes oh yeah it won't it won't stick right and the only reason the only reason i've remembered that is because the context was unique right uh it's interesting about what we remember it's it's funny there's

Starting point is 00:33:52 this music artist and i'll talk about the book who but there's this music artist named stitches i don't know if you've ever heard of him he's kind of like off the grid uh he's florida based but the guy is insane like he talks about doing He does, it doesn't talk about it. He does drugs on stage. Like he's got stitches tattooed all over his face. And, uh, it's very extreme. And, you know, maybe it's a fad, maybe it's for now, but it makes me think about marketing and business and being remembered. And it kind of made me realize like you don't get remembered in the middle. No, you don't, you don't get remembered in the middle and, uh, you need to, that's why I recommend, uh, and look, it's not a perfect book, but it is a out that if you want positioning, whether that's for a product, for a, a, a point you're trying to persuade people to

Starting point is 00:34:52 accept or negotiation, you have to, uh, it's not enough just to be better. You have to be different because no one will have a chance to realize you're better if you don't have their attention first. And so just thinking of positioning in that way is basically better as necessary, but not sufficient, I think is super critical. It's funny though, because we're like trained as like, I think humans to follow orders and raise our hands and stay in line. And I always try to encourage people and myself included to break a rule. And so I'm like, not every day, but I'm like, okay, can I run this light? Which not obviously I'm trying to run lights and kill people, but it's like, all right, well, it says do not enter this way, but maybe I should just enter it or tell, you know, one thing I've recommended to people is like the coffee

Starting point is 00:35:39 challenge. Yeah. I was going to say, have you heard the coffee challenge? Well, I have, because when we, uh, when we were filming the tim ferris experiment together you actually forced our student to go do this which i thought was fantastic uh and so maybe you can explain that to people because certainly um the the jason bourne style going the wrong way down a one way is probably not what i would suggest people to do but uh the coffee challenge is something I would suggest everyone do. So maybe you can explain that. Yeah. Um, well, it's funny. So I'll tell the story of my brother. Uh, so I told my brother to do the coffee challenge and he's like, I'm a doctor. I'm the man I can do anything. And, uh, so we went to like some random place in Arizona where he lives. And so the coffee challenges, you have to go up to the counter and you order coffee.

Starting point is 00:36:23 And if you don't drink coffee, order tea. If you don't drink tea, order water. I don't care. And then you just ask for 10% off. And everyone listening, I know you're listening right now in your ears. You're like, oh, that's stupid. Noah's stupid. Tim, I'm going to pause this podcast, whatever. Because it's so easy. I've been doing sales 20 years. And I told my brother to do it. And he's like, are you kidding me? I could do it. I'll do it in a minute. So it was on his birthday last year, and he goes up to the guy, and he pauses because he's scared. And I filmed the whole thing. And I was like, he's like, could I have 10% off?

Starting point is 00:36:56 And they're like, why? He's like, because. And I do believe they ended up giving it to him. And the coffee challenge sounds kind of silly, but the whole point is, you know, to business and in life and to even, you know, being on not necessarily the extremes, but you have to ask for things and you have to put yourself out there. And that's the hard part. And for anyone who hasn't done the coffee challenge, once you go do it, you learn just a ton about yourself. Nothing that you could read in a book or that you can even do just hearing.

Starting point is 00:37:21 So next time today you're at a place where you're buying something, ask for 10% off. Tell them Tim sent you. Don't do that. Do even do just hearing. So next time today, you're at a place where you're buying something, ask for 10% off. Tell them Tim sent you. Don't do that. Do not do that. Okay, tell them Noah sent you. I'll take it. It's fine. Tell them to come to me.

Starting point is 00:37:33 And see what you learn about yourself because you realize it's harder than it is. But once you get over it, and we did this for our monthly 1K product, where it's like, hey, go figure out that asking for money and asking for things isn't as hard as it seems. And now you can start asking for things that you're like, well, now I want you to buy something of mine or a service or a product that, you know, I really believe in versus just, you know, asking for a discount, which is more of a practice. Yeah. And there are a couple of things that are important to underscore there. The first is a lot of the limitations we feel we have are completely

Starting point is 00:38:03 self-imposed. And, uh uh and if you look at say the coffee challenge or a comfort exercise like one from the four-hour work week which was going into a coffee shop and i would suggest probably doing these two in two different coffee shops uh just go in and lay down on the floor for like five seconds and don't say anything and then just get back up like nothing happened. And the worst case scenario is so trivial. You know what I mean? It's so trivial. It's just a little bit of discomfort. But it goes to show you how many rules we follow that may not be serving our best interest, right? And those, the coffee shop rules are just easy to break, so it's a safe experimental lab. But people are like, well, I can do this or I can do that.

Starting point is 00:38:49 And I remember asking Matt Mullenweg, the lead developer of WordPress, who's now the CEO of Automatic, which is a billion-dollar-plus company. I asked him a question at one point, and I was like, well, is it this or is it this? And his answer was, that's a false dichotomy, meaning you're asking me to choose between two things that are not mutually exclusive or there are other options. Like what is the C option? What is the D option? And there's an expression, and I'm paraphrasing here, it's a quote actually from Thomas Edison, who said, when you've examined all the options, just remember colon, you haven't. And it's like, huh, interesting. And I mean, for example, I mean, with the Tim Ferriss experiment with the TV show, when the division at Turner went out of business and everything got shut down,

Starting point is 00:39:36 everything got shelved. Almost everybody basically said like, that's game over. All right, let's all move on with our lives. We had a good time. That's it. You can't get the TV show out. You can't get the TV show back or anything like that. And it took a year of looking at, you know, what if I did this absurd thing? What if I took this absurd approach? Like how do I craft a deal when it's, even if I were to get the show back for Turner, it's a, it's a rounding error on pocket change for them. There's not really incentives. How do you figure out the deal structuring and so on? And eventually found a way to do it. But it took a lot of poking and prodding and kind of rolling out hypotheticals, like taking a piece of paper and being like, okay, so I'm just going to freehand write and

Starting point is 00:40:19 flow for 10 minutes and just like, what are the most absurd things I could do to possibly get these things back? And not judge, right? You're going to throw out really stupid things, probably some illegal things, probably some dangerous things, uh, probably some completely self-destructive things. And then you look through it and you're like, okay, now this is interesting. And I heard a quote from, or a story from a comedian, one standup guy. And said uh how did he put it he said writing well or generating good ideas is like orchestrating a room full of people in a fire emergency he's like when if there's a fire you can't have everyone rush for the exit at once um and because they'll get blocked in the doorway you have to let each one out at a time and then you can organize it

Starting point is 00:41:03 afterwards you can like group them into whatever you need a stupid mediocre and good ideas after the fact and so just doing that type of freehand idea generation um for solutions i find to be to be super helpful but i know i i know we've uh passed around a little bit but we're supposed to talk about the who book but you know what's funny tim because like uh i mean obviously me and you are a little more known on the internet. And, you know, we've done some things that people will be like, well, you're Tim Ferriss. Right. And that's actually what I hear a lot. And so it's like, well, you're Tim. So it's easier for you. And I don't think they have for instance, I had something I was doing online recently. And this guy responded on Twitter and he said, well, it's easy for you. You're Tim Ferriss and you have a blog with a million plus people. And this other guy, well-known blogger, Darren Rose, I might be roused, R-O-W-S-E, pro blogger, who's a very um, savvy content guy with a huge audience. He said, we all start at the same place, zero readers, you know? And it's just like, rather than,

Starting point is 00:42:12 rather than dismissing, uh, dismissing other people as having achieved things that are unattainable, recognize like we, they, they started kind of like naked and alone in the world without any skills. Those are, they had to develop that. And, uh, you know, you and I have a lot of the same challenges even still today. I assume, I know we've had some pretty deep conversations about challenges we've had that everybody else has. And it's like, you don't get rid of those problems. You just kind of trade up. Uh, that's, that's dude preach. I'm like, Ooh, I was, the sermon was good right there. I'm like nodding. I'm like, yeah, Tim. I mean, one thing, you know, especially cause I've started a few businesses and, uh, what I, what I think most people don't realize is that every major company, Facebook, Dell,

Starting point is 00:42:57 Microsoft, Google, all of it started with like one dude or two dudes or two women with no customers. Yeah. They all started the same size as everyone else. So you know, it start there, get that one customer and build up. And that's how you get to become the size of those companies or, you know, have a large site or whatever it is that, you know, each person wants to accomplish. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Amazon in the early days, I mean, their, their desks were, I think they were just doors from like cheap wooden doors from Home Depot across two file cabinets. Like those were their desks.

Starting point is 00:43:26 You know what I think about, Tim, especially like with you. So I met you before your even first book came out. I always think it's the funniest thing. I email you. I got email intro to you and I got an auto responder that's like, hey, I'm surfing in Costa Rica. And I'm like, who the fuck is Tim Ferriss? You know, an auto responder surfing in Costa Rica.

Starting point is 00:43:42 Hey, I'll be back in two weeks. I'm like, all right, I don't really want to meet this guy. But I think what separates out a lot of the winners versus losers is that it's not only that you got the book out there, but you've been doing it consistently for 10 years. Same with Zuckerberg at Facebook is that it's easy to get a hit for a week or a month or two months. But do it for, you know, Zucker's made decisions for 10 years. You've done your stuff for 10 years. Like, I've been doing it for 10 years. You've done your stuff for 10 years. Like I've seen what I've been doing for five years. Like, you know, those things like, I mean, you know, I've seen what is now a seven figure business, but I made $12,000 myself the first year. Yeah. And that, you know, it's like, well, no, you're making good money now, but it's like, yeah, it starts small

Starting point is 00:44:16 and then you've got to keep going. You got to persist with it. No, definitely. And you have to choose good teachers. And for me, because I was on my own so much and probably for you, books were a lot of those teachers for me. I love how you brought it back. Did everyone hear that right there? Look, that's an interviewer. All right. So we're going to do the Who book. So let me just, look, do you mind if I just rattle them off and then people just go buy them? Rattle them off and then I might ask you to dig into some. All right. So here are the books. So I went through, I have a, I can give you the list for everyone, but every book I've read, I catalog every book and movie I've read. Um, and I'm just going to give you like the seven ish one, the business related and personal

Starting point is 00:44:53 that I think are just super, super helpful. Um, my favorite one in the past year has been essentialism. Um, and it's basically just the whole book literally is just like, say no to everything. That's not important. So I learned that at Facebook. That book was a great reminder of it. And even like with our main product, SumoMe.com, like we have one goal, which is to hit a certain revenue target. And every decision we do is either does it help towards that or not? And we say no to everything else.

Starting point is 00:45:18 The Who book that and feel free to interrupt me. I'm sure you will. I don't know. Do I? No, we've we've known each other long enough. I'll sure you will. I don't have to say that, do I? No, no. We've known each other long enough. I'll jump in if need be. Perfect.

Starting point is 00:45:33 The Who book is, there's a longer book called Top Grading, which I wouldn't read because it's like, it's thick. It's really thick. The Who book is like a condensed version of it. And I learned it at Mint where the founder was using it. And so Who basically helps you create a framework for thinking about who you want to hire, the questions you want to ask, and then how do you filter, find them and then get down to make sure you have the right person. Uh, Matt's interview was great cause he makes people audition, um, for the jobs. And I like that, but I also use who, which, you know, helps you have some

Starting point is 00:45:56 really basic questions that you could standardize so that you can compare people. Yeah. Who has, who has some really solid chapters that lay out exactly the series of questions that you can ask at different points in the process? It's really solid. What I'll do, Tim, is I'll email you after this. I'll email you my – I'm so weird. I write book reports on every book I read. Awesome. And so I'll email you the book report on who.

Starting point is 00:46:19 So for the people that – you know, it's funny because I think if you read it, you'll get more out of it because you have to keep reading the same message. Most books are one page, but you repeat it enough times you remember it. Um, and so yeah, I'll send you the book report afterwards so that people can, uh, cool and get the condensed version. I'll add, I'll add all sorts of goodies in the, in the show notes. My two other, my favorite sales business book of all time, which is one of the underground ones. And I think you might know Amanda Holmes, but it's from her father and it's called the ultimate sales machine. And this book is just like, it's like an underground. I had it on my shelf for six months. It was one that you kind

Starting point is 00:46:51 of skip over. Like I have a books on my shelf now and I skip over them. I'm like, nah, I'll get to that one later. And I finally got it for an airplane and I get on the airplane and I opened the first page and I'm on the introduction and I'm like, all right, rabbit ear that page, next page, rabbit ear, next page, rabbit ear. Like the whole book was folded over. Uh, and I finished it on that airplane ride. And it's one of these books that not enough people talk about, but everyone who reads it is always like, Oh, I'm really glad I read that one. You must fold your pages like origami masterpieces. Cause I usually hear dog, I usually hear dog ear, but rabbit ear, I kind of like, yeah, I've actually been trying to carry a pen when I read certain business books, uh,

Starting point is 00:47:24 because I just find it easier to come back pen when I read certain business books because I just find it easier to come back to the specific sections I want to write in my book reports. Other things, an old school book that if you're looking to do service type business, Million Dollar Consulting is great for how to raise your prices and how to actually start your own service or consulting based business. I really like that. Right now, I'm really thinking a lot more about sales, especially with Suomi as we're growing that product.

Starting point is 00:47:46 So I read two books recently that were really strong on sales. One is the sales acceleration formula. And that is more around SaaS-based selling, but it could still be good for how to find the right... Software as a surface, like the Sumo Me's or the Dropboxes of the world. Wow, you lumped me with Dropbox. Thanks, bro. No problem. Amen. The Sumo Me, the Googles. the Google's, um, so it's basically like how to find, like filter through people on LinkedIn, how to ask like the specific

Starting point is 00:48:10 text to how to ask for a referral. Um, you don't ask for, you don't email someone asking to hire them. You ask, email them, ask to refer someone else. And that's generally a good way to get to know them and possibly get a referral. Well, it's like a raising money. People say, if you want, if you want money, ask for advice. If you want advice, ask for money. Oh man. Actually, you know, one thing that I think Shane, do you know Shane snow? I do. Yeah. Oh yeah. He's been on your side. Yeah. He wrote, he did a bunch of experimentation with Soylent when it first came out and then wrote the first kind of review of two weeks of being on it on my blog, which caused all sorts of firestorms. But yeah, yeah, I do know Shane. I love Shane. And everyone should check out his book, Smart Cuts. It's actually,

Starting point is 00:48:47 it's a really good book too, but that wasn't even the point. Shane told me one of the great ways you can get a mentor or meet anyone you want to meet is just interview them. So that's something actually for me, there's companies I really respect like Taco Deli. It's a local, it's my favorite taco in the world. And they're in Austin. And so I basically, you know, you reach out to people like, Hey, I just want to promote you to my audience. And even if you have a small audience, Tim, me and you can actually, I think we're going to possibly later show people how to get their own audience live in the show. Oh, yeah. But it won't be live.

Starting point is 00:49:15 It'll be recorded. And you can do it instantly when you listen to it on your phone. And so Shane was basically like, yeah, interview people. And then it's a chance for you to meet and connect. And it's the best way to get a hold of someone versus normally you ask an email and be like, hey, can I just have something? A few other books that I really enjoyed, Spin Selling, really shifted my mindset about how you're going to be approaching customers and really thinking about the formula, which is situation, problem, implication, and then natural solution or need solution. And it basically helps you really transition people to be like, hey, what problem do you have? And think about if you're really helping them and say, well, if you're going to need this help, you should probably use our solution. It's a great way to

Starting point is 00:49:51 think of yourself as an advocate, which is like, hey, what's your situation? All right, what problem do you have? All right, well, if we can solve it, how would that make your life better? Oh, well, guess what? We actually have that solution for that problem that we just solved for you that sounds like was what really important for you. Yeah, no, absolutely. And this applies in more places than people might realize. So for instance, I had someone ask me recently, you know, why do you think people take action when they read your stuff? Like, it seems like there's a high conversion rate compared to most books, like people actually take action. And I was like, well, I'm not sure if that's true, but I hope it's true. And if it is true, I think it's because in each of my chapters, let's just say in

Starting point is 00:50:29 the four hour body, I basically take that spin selling approach of establishing the problem first and combine it with the sort of story arc of like the writer's journey or Joseph Campbell stuff and tie it into a narrative that people can remember. So it's, uh, the, these types of mental frameworks apply to more contexts and areas than I think people might realize. I mean, it applies to everything. I mean, I don't think people realize that like the two most important things I've, I mean, I don't know if the most important, but two very important things are copywriting and selling.

Starting point is 00:50:59 And I think those are that in personal finance are three of the probably most undervalued or under recognized things that people should spend more time learning. What have you read that has helped you most with copywriting? Number one thing, and it's completely free, is the Gary Halbert letters. Yeah. So my good, you know, Neville, I don't know if you know my good buddy Neville. Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah, Neville at Copywriting Course.

Starting point is 00:51:18 And Neville got me into him and his writing is just so fluid. And obviously it's practice, which I always hate because when you hear cliche things like that, you're like, I know it's practice, but I want tips. And so the Gary Halbert letters, he wrote these things called the Boron letters to his son while he was in jail. And they're just phenomenal copywriting pieces about how to sell and how to think about things. And we can link to that. Those are totally free and great. There's the other stuff like Ogilvy on Advertising is a really good book. It's so often recommended, but so few people actually read it.

Starting point is 00:51:52 It's a really good book. You know what? I did it. And I literally said, this is not a joke for you or your audience. I, in college, obviously that's a great sentence. In college, I was in english as a second language what dude i'm american i was born in san jose california sweet like my parents speak english so i'm just trying to give you an idea of how bad of a writer i was and maybe still am

Starting point is 00:52:17 wait are you serious yeah dude i was in english as a second language with me and a bunch of people who couldn't speak english you took esl courses yeah well i didn had to. Wait, did you like crash the course or was it recommended to you? No, it was a requirement at Cal because I wasn't, my English was so low. I wish it was like a joke. I'd be like, oh, well, yeah, I can speak English. It's like, dude, I'm from America. You know, that's, it's funny you mentioned that because I remember looking at TOEFL, the test of English as a foreign language. Yeah. And people generally don't actually understand the mechanics of their native language very well, but you forget that and you think you're like, oh, I'm a native speaker.

Starting point is 00:52:54 Of course I know English. And then you look at the test and they're like, what is the difference between anything and something? And you're like, uh, I would totally fail TOEFL. If I had to take TOEFL to get into anything, absolutely would probably flunk out. Yeah, no, so that's serious. So I'd say Gary Halbert helped. And actually, you know one thing that's not a book,

Starting point is 00:53:15 but really probably changed the game for me, writing-wise, besides writing a lot, was getting an editor. And that's, because I would write something, and I'd be like, this sounds great. I can't believe how good it is. And then I would show it to Neville or Anton at the App Simulator team, and they'd be like, this is garbage. And I'd be like, no, it. I can't believe how good it is. And then I would show it to Neville or Anton at the App Simulator team and they'd be like, this is garbage. And I'd be like, no, it's good. And then once they would start reading it and give me the feedback,

Starting point is 00:53:31 it changed. Then I'm like, okay, now I'm getting why it's not as entertaining or how I can improve things like photos and bold and how I shift around my sentence grammar and structure. How would you suggest people implement that for themselves? If they're asking someone to proofread something, what are the instructions that you give someone or what type of person are you looking for? Well, working backwards, I'm looking for someone who I like their writing. And also, I'll tell you what I did last year, which was really helpful. I created an inner circle. And it basically was people that I really enjoyed their writing. And I said, hey, I'm going to create a small group of people. I think there was about five of us.

Starting point is 00:54:06 And anytime we're putting out an article, let's send it to the group. And you could leave comments in the Google Doc. Everyone can just leave a comment. So it doesn't change the writing, but it can give you feedback about that type of writing. And it also, when you finally finish the article, those people would help promote it, which is a whole nother marketing tactic. So do those people that you would upload a new doc to, say, a shared folder, and then just invite those people via email? Or how do you guys? Exactly. upload a new doc to say a shared folder and then just

Starting point is 00:54:25 invite those people via email or how do you guys? Exactly. Well, so if you created a Google doc, so I'd go to Google docs, create a file, just any file. I would share it with them. So I'd share it with you. And then on that file, you can have it be just comment only. And so they would go in and leave a bunch of comments. I would go fix it and I'd be like, wow, that was actually a lot better. And then subsequently my writing even gets stronger and I would do it for them when they had their articles. Got it. Got it. That's like, I don't know for you, And then subsequently, my writing even gets stronger. And I would do it for them when they had their articles. Got it. Got it.

Starting point is 00:54:47 Because I don't know for you, like I'm still, you know, okdork.com, my personal blog, you know, it's 100,000 subscribers. It gets a decent amount of traffic. I'm still scared of my writing because it's just like, because, you know, and that's why I like having an editor because I'm like, there's probably tons of grammar that's going to get ripped on.

Starting point is 00:55:01 And, you know, it represents me and I want to look good. So having the editor and like peers be able to edit my things especially like with google docs i know a lot of people use like a hemingway or uh what is it draft yeah draft i've used it's pretty sweet uh draft i like i haven't used hemingway like the name despite the guy's uh somewhat unfortunate end uh but those are two ones for like group editing i mean so for writing yeah those are the stuff and then the two ones I would say coming back to like selling stuff, spin selling I just mentioned, sales acceleration formula we talked about. And then I'd say lastly, there's a book called Small Giants, which I really like.

Starting point is 00:55:35 Small Giants is a great book. I'll let you describe it. It had a huge impact on me though when I read it. No, no. What was the impact on you? Five, seven, eight years ago. Well, I assume we're talking about the same book. It's Bo Burlingham. Yeah, exactly. huge impact on me though when i read it what was the impact five seven eight years ago well i i assume we're talking about the same book it's uh bo burling burlingham exactly uh it was just i

Starting point is 00:55:51 think the subtitle what is the subtitle something like companies that choose to be the best not the biggest or something like that but the uh the idea that size or growth does not have to be the measure of success if you're an entrepreneur is just a very conceptually uncommon thing to hear. That's one of the books that kind of put the finishing touches on convincing me that trying trying to find price insensitive people to sell to, uh, is just a complete game changer or making something that is so good. And so over delivers that you can charge a premium price. Um, those, those are a few of the things that I took away from that. What about you? Uh, that's very long. I mean, I think if you, people that are listening that are not in Silicon Valley, I don't think they understand like how, I don't know. I don't know exactly how to share, but it it's just like everything is about if

Starting point is 00:56:47 you're a billion dollar company and if you're going viral and if you have a lot of funding and if you're not, you're a nobody and you're nothing and everything is pointless. Uh, and it was refreshing to hear these, you know, pretty subs, you know, substantial companies like, uh, uh, cliff bar, or I think there's a beer company in San Francisco, uh, that were doing great things in big companies, but just doing it in their own way. And it's very empowering to realize, yeah, you can do your own thing, and it can be big,

Starting point is 00:57:10 and you don't have to compromise on those things. My favorite taco shop here, they've been around since 1999, and they have five shops. But our common notion is that you have to go viral, not viral, but you have to scale. So 10 shops and 20 shops. And they're going at a pace that's comfortable for them. They don't have to be Starbucks, you know, and they're just doing their taco deli thing. And that's why I respect them. And,

Starting point is 00:57:31 you know, I talk about them so much. Yeah. Uh, it's, it's, it can be a really profound, I think, awakening for people when they start to, when they sit down and really try to assess what, what would add value to their lives and more joy and, um, excitement. And that's, that's very rarely money for the sake of money, because the money you, you exchange for an experience or, uh, interacting with certain types of people or any number of things. And there are other ways to get those things besides scaling a company, making a bunch of money that you can trade for those things. I mean, for instance, you mentioned the taco shop. You could look at other examples like Jiro from Jiro Dreams of Sushi and his like 12-seater, three-star sushi restaurant in Tokyo. he has no desire to scale that. You know what I mean?

Starting point is 00:58:25 In fact, it's kind of antithetical to his entire personality and, uh, mission for sort of perfecting his craft. Right. And, you know, one of the examples of from small giants, uh, there was an Andy DeFranco example, but then there was another example, which I thought was so awesomely niche and so just fantastic, which was, uh, I'm pretty sure I'm getting the book, right. It was a leather pants and specifically the person who made leather pants for like Sheryl Crow. And they became hugely famous because she has nice legs and ass, but also the pants were really cool. And, you know, for, I think Aerosmith and so on, but it, one of these examples where they're, uh, they're like this, like, this guy I bought a hunting rifle from, he makes 20 rifles a year and they're customized. They're just incredible. And he'd done me a bunch of favors and ability to ability to optimize other facets

Starting point is 00:59:28 of their life when you remove that as the sole objective. Anyway, I just, uh, I'm really glad you brought that book up because I actually have it on my bookshelf, literally, uh, in my living room positioned in a way that anytime I sit down on my couch, I can see it face out right next to a handful of other books like Zorba the Greek and The Magic of Thinking Big and a few others. Have you read Richard Feynman's book? Oh, surely you must be joking, Mr. Feynman. Dude, have you talked about it on the show? I don't think I have, but that is actually another one of the half dozen books that's

Starting point is 01:00:02 up on my shelf. Why don't you talk about that book for a second? Because it's one of the like half dozen books that's up on my shelf. I mean, why don't you talk about that book for a second? Because it's one of my favorite books of all time. It's one of these books and I have it. So if you ever meet me in person, I'll give you my, I have an extra copy because it's just that amazing. This is a guy who won the Nobel Prize, I believe. He helped create the atomic bomb. Yep.

Starting point is 01:00:20 Yeah. He worked at Los Alamos. Also helped identify the O-ring that caused the Challenger disaster. And just like the amount of stuff that he's done, you're like, okay, this guy's got to be weird. And he's just so greatly weird. And he talks like a human. And just like all of his experience, I think the biggest thing that I took away from the book is just his curiosity to life and experiences. Where he would just start like, oh, well, you know, one day I just thought drinking wasn't fun, so I stopped drinking. And he walked out of a bar and never drinking again. Or he wanted to pick up, I think, was it bongo drums? Yeah, bongo drums. He also wanted to learn how to pick up women, so he would go into bars.

Starting point is 01:00:54 Just didn't give a shit what other people thought, too, which was amazingly refreshing. He decided he wanted to learn how to safe crack, to open safes. And so he would prank people in Los Alamos where they were building the atomic bomb. So he would take out confidential papers and put them on the desk of somebody he wanted to freak out. Yeah. So the finding book and what I love most about it just makes you curious about the world. I was mentioning briefly, like my brother's kid is touching grass for the first time. And I just look a grass, grass, whatever. And this kid is like touching grass and feeling it and experiencing it. And it makes you kind of just appreciate all

Starting point is 01:01:31 the things that are going around in life in the world. I'm like, Oh, that's really great. And I think that book just inspired me with that. And that's why I highly recommend it. It's, it's a must read. And also the fact that when he was on his last, you know, on his sort of last legs towards the end of his life, he was still doing things that he, that challenged his belief systems or his skill sets. So he learned how to paint very late in his life. Oh, yeah. diehard engineer who really felt like the romanticizing of, say, people who would argue that the scientist takes the magic out of something like a flower because they deconstruct it in scientific terms. And his argument was that's entirely the opposite.

Starting point is 01:02:17 We can appreciate so much more that you can't see, but felt compelled to sort of trade best practices with a friend of his, who is a well known painter and, uh, become a white belt again and suck at painting. And I don't know if this was in his book. I think there's a, there's actually a, an interview with Richard Feynman. Uh, I'll, I'll link to this in the show notes at four hour workweek.com forward slash podcast. But, um, there's a YouTube video that I'll link to called the pleasure of finding things out. And I think in that might be somewhere else. They talk about, he would go to strip clubs to paint as like an old dude and, uh, just really was, was not affected by public pressure. And that's something I admire so much, especially as in times when I feel defensive, like I have to protect something that I've created or

Starting point is 01:03:11 anything like that. The fact that he was willing to seemingly throw it all away by doing things that would negatively impact his reputation when in the end, they never did. Nobody cared because they're too busy thinking about themselves. Exactly. And to add to that, Tim, I think you're, you're right on the money. One thing that I started doing is you ever, I'm like, well, I noticed, I try to notice like when I'm feeling really good or like what happened that made me feel really good. And I was noticing that reading and like studying and learning, like reading Feynman's book made me feel really good. But I noticed as we get older, you just like you schedule a day around all the work stuff you're doing. And so on Tuesdays from 10 to 12, I schedule nothing but learning.

Starting point is 01:03:49 So every Tuesday, it's on repeat. And that's one of my tactics. I put things on repeat on my calendar. So 10 to 12 every Tuesday. And my friend Neville, again, got me into learning from YouTube videos. I'm like, YouTube videos? And so I go on YouTube videos, and I bookmark specific people. So Feynman videos are amazing.

Starting point is 01:04:04 And then Elon Musk's videos are just as phenomenal. And I was like, wow, you can learn from YouTube. I never really thought of intentionally going to find things to listen to and watch. What, how did you choose that time on Tuesday? Uh, Monday I do team meetings. And so I would, you know, I kind of almost be tempted to do it all day, but Monday is kind of like my organization day. Um, I can give you, if I can talk about afterwards, know, I kind of almost be tempted to do it all day, but Monday is kind of like my organization day. I can give you, I can talk about it afterwards. I do a specific thing that really helps me on my Mondays. So Tuesday is like the next day that I'm available to start thinking about things. Because most of your good stuff doesn't come when you're doing, it comes when you're thinking.

Starting point is 01:04:36 And then I'm starting to incorporate on my Thursdays trying to do like a fun activity like disc golf. So on Thursday afternoons, Thursday mornings 10 to 12, I'll try to go out and just like play disc golf or go for a bike ride or something where I just have time that's, my mind is like a little more free. What, uh, do you have your activities clustered by day? Like what do you do? For instance, you said team meetings on Mondays. Is there a certain focus on Tuesdays aside from the studying Wednesday, Thursday, Friday? Like, do you, do you break things out and categorize them that way? I don't batch. The way I look at my week, um, is on Monday mornings, I basically have three categories that matter to me, which is like work, workout and personal. And then I label three things for each one and workout. I put four cause I work out four days a week. So I have three

Starting point is 01:05:22 things for work, four things on workout and three things for personal. And then I put those in my calendar during the week about when I want to batch those tasks. Like I want to do my work things this time during these days. And then I leave the rest of the calendar open. And I think Mark, I learned that from Mark Andreessen where he's like, certain things are going to be more important certain days. I'm not going to try to block it out for something else. And so then I just focus on the three I commit to doing at the week. And then every Monday I review my calendar with my friend Adam from mybodytutor.com. And so then I just focus on the three I commit to doing at the week. And then every Monday I review my counter with my friend Adam from MyBodyTutor.com. And so we share what we said we're going to do, see how we did. What was it called? MyBodyTutor?

Starting point is 01:05:52 Yeah. Have you heard of MyBodyTutor.com? No. B-O-D-Y-T-U-T-O-R. Yeah. I mean, we can talk about, I'm having to stay long and talk health and fitness, but he basically has helped me get ripped abs. And now he's helped me bulk up to 200 and he's helping me get back down to bulky, ripped, bulky and ripped at like 175. And I've been working with him for about a little over four years and he's one of my best friends. What are some of, I'm sorry, go ahead. Well, I was gonna say, so that's what I, how I organized my week where on Mondays I email him a review of the previous week using followup.cc because it reminds me. And I think if you don't review what you've done, it's hard to know how you're progressing.

Starting point is 01:06:28 And then I commit to what I want to do this upcoming week. And so everyone should get an accountability buddy. So Adam emails me. I'm like, yo, why didn't you do this last week? Or how come every week you're doing the same crappy thing that's not doing anything? You should think differently about it. So I think for side products or full-time businesses, I still do it with him. And I've been doing this with him for a few years now. Very cool. I want to pick a little bit at

Starting point is 01:06:50 some of the tips you have for people who might want to gain muscular size. Before I get to that, I want to add a few other resources. So you mentioned my body tutor, which is great. I hadn't heard of it. So that's definitely going to go in the back of my mind on the list. A couple of others that people might like for finding accountability partners would be, uh, coach.me coach.me, uh, used to be lift, uh, the, yeah. And I, I advise those guys. So I've, I've had fun running experiments with them. The other is there are two others actually, uh, stick.com S T I C K K.com where you can put money on the line that you can lose if you don't hit certain milestones, which is very incentivizing for people as a consequence. And then one that is very strictly money-related, which is DietBet.com. So if you want to lose weight, you can put together a betting pool basically. And, uh, and make, and make that work,

Starting point is 01:07:46 uh, for gaining muscular size. This is, I, I, as you would imagine, get a lot of questions about this, but what were the biggest, uh, if you had to give someone advice, say a guy who is your size before you started bulking up for gaining 40 pounds in 40 pounds, uh, in six to 12 months. And let's just say most of that should be muscle. What would be the advice? If they're like, I've never been able to gain weight, man. I think I'm doing everything that I could possibly do. What are your tips? Well, I would start with the foundation. So I wouldn't actually even recommend this to most people because it is challenging once you hit that goal to come back down because you get comfortable eating nachos and you get comfortable eating drinking beer.

Starting point is 01:08:29 Obviously, some people do clean bulks, but I did a mix of it. So what I would actually recommend is get a foundation of being able to eat healthy consistently and maintaining or losing your weight, probably maintaining for at least, I would say, six months to a year. I've been doing a consistent diet for two years before I even tried to bulk. So I don't think unless you have the mental capacity to be able to control it, I wouldn't recommend it because it's very easy to kind of get lost with it. And that's why my fitness pal and Adam were so helpful

Starting point is 01:08:55 because for two years I was eating very consistently and losing weight and getting the body I wanted. The one thing that was actually fascinating, Tim, is until I started doing my fitness pal, I was going to the gym like three, four days a week, but I was staying tiny and I'm like, what the,

Starting point is 01:09:08 what the F is going on? Uh, and it's because I wasn't, you can, you can say fuck, uh, Frick. Uh,

Starting point is 01:09:15 dude, I don't know. Like I was on Pat Flynn's podcast and he's just like, he's like, I had to edit half your interview. Uh, and so, you know,

Starting point is 01:09:21 the, and I've been watching big love, the Mormon TV show. So I'm just like, I don't know about it you know, the, and I've been watching big love, the Mormon TV show. So I'm just like, all about it. Um, anyways, so basically for a long time, I wasn't eating enough protein and that's why I wasn't getting bigger. And so that's what made me a little more curious about it. So number one, I would say try doing just maintaining or losing for a year so that you're comfortable with it. Uh, the big things with gaining weight. So I went from one 60 to 200

Starting point is 01:09:44 in a few months. So number one, I would say plan your calorie intake, how much you actually need to be having each day. Because otherwise, besides that, you're blind. You're just like, well, I should have this many. And you really don't know. So if you want to hit a certain weight, just work backwards from how many calories you need to be eating every day to get that amount. I'd say the big things for me were, one, I had a buddy who was doing it at the same time and that was a game changer because he's doing it and he's gaining weight and I'm like well fuck I have to do it too and it was just much more helpful to have someone supporting me and my one of my best friends

Starting point is 01:10:14 John Ross was locally and we're both gaining secondly I did use weight gainer which I don't know if there's debate I haven't looked at the tons of science but it does help you gain weight and get the mass that you want it does go away a little bit because of creatine and blah, blah, which I'm not going to get into because I don't know it super well. But that really significantly helped me gain weight. And ultimately, you kind of have to look at like, all right, you get tired of eating. You get to a point of like, I am sick of eating. So what is the cheapest way to get as many calories and as much protein in my body to help me gain this weight? So in the morning, it was like, how can I do protein shakes, Quest Bar, egg whites, eggs, whatever I could take, and basically doubling everything I was already currently doing. So whatever you think you're eating, eat double. But basically,

Starting point is 01:10:55 at some point, what you have to figure out, and what I started doing is like, what is the protein ratios of food and just eating the highest protein, the highest like calorie food to really put on as much weight as possible. Yeah. It's the, the, the working out isn't the hard part. It's the eating by far. And you, and you plateau, man. I hit like one 70 plateaued, one 80 plateaued, one 90 plateaued. And you know, it's funny as a, the last night I wanted to hit it by March 1st to 200 pounds. And this is, you know, I hit, I was at like one 97 and, uh, and my hit i was at like 197 and uh and my girlfriend i was like and i was it was like 12 it was not 12 it was like 10 30 and i'm like i'm not gonna hit it and she's like you need to stop being a bitch and start putting some food in your mouth and uh you know i've ate and drank

Starting point is 01:11:39 and ate and then at you know before midnight i was uh you know like cinderella i hit my 200 there's a one other thing that was really helpful tim Tim, that I think you, I don't know what tool you use. I use WeThings scale. Yeah, WeThings. Yeah, yeah. The automatic sort of, I guess it's Wi-Fi or Bluetooth enabled scale that automatically creates graphs for you. So I use, what I do is I have a WeThings scale and I take my scale and you can embed your weight chart online. So I embedded it online and I shared it with Adam. And he would check in with me every day to be like, you're skinny, you're fat, you're fat, you're doing well. Why aren't you getting more weight and so forth?

Starting point is 01:12:17 And it's very counter because most people want to lose weight. And so when you're trying to gain weight, and especially me, I'm like the guy you never wanted. Before, I would say I'm the guy you never wanted to eat with because i'd be like uh egg whites can you separate the cheese particles uh can you put no but it's like i'm like god do you want any of the food that they're serving you um and so it was a shift in me but having adam and then i have a facebook like workout group where i was posting my weight and you know i think the more people that you have that care about you and that are checking in on you, uh, on a regular basis, the more it was easier for me to help accomplish that. Yeah. The more you get people invested in your progress, and that could be a Facebook group that

Starting point is 01:12:52 you create, or just promising to put Facebook status updates, uh, once a week, for instance, and making that commitment publicly is extremely helpful. A couple of points I'd like to underscore. The first is the fact that leaning out first will help you bulk faster. There are a bunch of biochemical reasons for this and sort of biochemical, but also neuroscience related reasons, just in terms of regulation of leptin and ghrelin and all of these things, where if you lean out even for two to four weeks, doesn't have to be that long. But certainly getting to the point where let's just say hypothetically, you choose this low carb diet from for our body, you're already at say, 14% body fat, you drop two to 4% in four to eight weeks, then you will have developed, uh,

Starting point is 01:13:49 probably a very good degree of insulin sensitivity. And insulin is an anabolic hormone. That's why bodybuilders sometimes inject insulin, uh, competitive bodybuilders, which I would never recommend because you can kill yourself. What does that do for them? It allows them to store more calories ingested in muscle tissue and elsewhere. But it's a very, very, very dangerous thing to do. And you can mimic that a little bit with, say, low doses of alpha lipoic acid. And there are other things that act as insulinomimetics as they would call them um but if you lean out like i really really want to get big for whatever reason i haven't done it in ages because it's just such a slog i mean you feel like a kobe beef cow just being fattened

Starting point is 01:14:35 for slaughter i mean it's really it's so it's so laborious oh my god like i didn't want to eat you didn't get to like at first you eat. At first it's hard to do. You're like, I shouldn't have egg yolk even though I know fat is good and all that stuff. But then you have egg yolks and then it's like six egg yolks and then you're like, fuck eggs. Yeah, exactly. But you do have your kind of supersize me moment where you're like, this is amazing. Yeah, baby. And then a week later you're just like, can I stop?

Starting point is 01:15:02 Please, I want to tap out. Please. On the eating, on the training, I'd be curious to know what your biggest mistakes were that you'd been making from a training perspective. Totally. I mean, the number one thing, the number one, number one thing was I wasn't eating enough in the beginning. So even like last year, when I wanted to start getting like bigger muscles, I just was eating so little food. I'm like, well, I'm supposed to eat light, like egg whites and these things. And Adam's like, don't you want to get bigger? You need to eat more food, and you're stopping a bitch.

Starting point is 01:15:33 And so I started eating the egg yolks, and Tucker Max always gave me shit for it, too. He's like, dude, you've got to stop being a bitch. And I guess that's maybe a common theme. And so you do that, and you realize bigger dogs need more food. So if you want to be bigger you need to put more in yeah um so that was number one and then i started just doing heavier sets and less reps what would uh so what were you doing and what did you change it to so i i there's actually a few different programs there's a guy named the online coach

Starting point is 01:16:00 and he does a thing called the shoal program it's like something hypertrophy i don't know what he's all like s-c-h-o-l-l-s-h-u-l-l-s-h-u-l program um that i was following and i can i can send that to you afterwards so i followed his program and a lot of what his program is like super heavy weights five sets and then i would focus on core movements so i break my thing out into four days a week and so the biggest mistake was I was doing super high reps with lighter weights for a long time. And now I just wanted to get bigger and bulkier. And it's funny because when you saw me, you're like, holy shit, you're huge.

Starting point is 01:16:35 And it's like, one, I ate a ton more, and I monitored it, and then I lifted a ton heavier versus the lighter weights, which in my opinion just kind of give me more of the definition. Yeah, or just make you more injury prone, depending on how you do it. Certainly. I mean, there are a lot of folks who do sort of high rep, high velocity, which is just asking for all sorts of issues. Now, is the Shul program, the online fitness coach,

Starting point is 01:17:00 was it sort of five sets of five reps type of situation? Exactly. Okay, so it sort of five sets of five reps type of situation with three movements? Okay, so it's very similar then. There's a book that's become very popular among engineers, oddly enough, in Silicon Valley called Starting Strength by Mark Ripito. And Ripito knows his stuff. He has some very pragmatic approaches to this stuff. And he actually has a second book, and probably more, but one that I really enjoyed,

Starting point is 01:17:25 which is, is a lot denser and probably not the right one to read first, but called, uh, pragmatic programming, I think it is. And it's all about sort of medium term and long-term planning of training and how to cycle it and so on. But I think that's biting off more. Which one should we start with? A starting strength? Starting strength. Yeah. Starting strength, starting strength, or for, for simplicity sake, Which one should we start with? Starting Strength? one called, uh, if you search easy strength and Pavel's name, uh, a lot will pop up, uh, very simple. And, um, my, my podcast interview with him went really deep into a bunch of his approaches for strength and endurance and flexibility. Pavel knows his stuff. Um, also a great example of making, finding the minimum effective dose that produces the largest disproportionate output right or

Starting point is 01:18:27 outcome uh yeah five six five is hard to go wrong with it yeah i mean two other things that you know two other things i would say would really help me during that whole process especially for anyone trying to be in fitness um you know it's fun as much as we want like less input and more output which you know i think you've done very well because you figure out like what's how do i get maximum thing for less. Part of it is consistency, which I'm not going to spend a ton of time on because you have to go. That's the point. In my calendar, if you look at my calendar today, Tim, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, there's gym in there automatically.

Starting point is 01:18:55 I don't even get to choose. It's just there at a certain time, and I do it every week. So consistency has been big. And then secondly, this is kind of more of a hack one. It's not really a hack, but just something that really motivates me. I follow fitness people on Instagram. A lot of people use Instagram for all their friends that they post stupid photos. And I don't really follow any friends.

Starting point is 01:19:14 All I follow is rappers and fitness people. What is your Instagram? Noah Kagan. Got it. But I follow this online coach guy. He posts great workout videos. Uh, they post things like there's, um, I'll pull up some of the different people that I recommend, but no, his is great. Um, and what's awesome about it is that they just post all their different

Starting point is 01:19:35 workouts, what they eat motivation. And so during the day when I'm on the toilet or I'm kind of feeling lazy, I go on my Instagram and I see that their bodies are ripped. And what was your recommendation? We're going to come back to looking at ripped bodies while sitting on the toilet. Well, the two things I was going to recommend is, number one, if your internet's dropping out, and I'm not sure what's going on today, but I basically went and upgraded our router to like an Asus RT86 DynNet Dasher. But basically, like, focus on the things that are the highest levels of the funnel. And I noticed my router is the first thing that my internet comes in that affects all of my work. And so we went in, I don't know, this is like a 200, $300 router.

Starting point is 01:20:11 So if you're at home and you're working and your internet matters, like go and invest in that because that's at the top of the funnel and optimize the things where you get the biggest results downwards. Definitely. So you said two things. What would, what's the other one? Oh no, the router. The router and then Instagram? Okay. Well, let's come back to Instagram. So looking at people, I wanted to have – I thought I was maybe a weirdo on my own. So I actually do the exact same thing. I'm trying to get better at gymnastics and more bodyweight calisthenic type movements. Ooh, cool. So almost all of the people I follow on Instagram, and I'm just Tim Ferriss with two R's and two S's on Instagram, are like gymnastic bodies or maybe gymnastics bodies is incredible. There are a couple of very impressive parkour athletes and acrobats, including a friend of mine named Travis Brewer, who competes on American Ninja Warrior and was actually one of my parkour teachers for the Tim Ferris experiment when I like destroyed my entire body. But a really fantastic coach and just

Starting point is 01:21:11 incredible, crazy athlete. And I'll do the same thing when I am feeling rushed or inclined to skip training for whatever reason. I will go on Instagram and check those folks out. Very cool. Yeah, man. There's like, do you follow calisthenic Kings or, uh, there are a number of them. There's like Calis Thanos, I think is a Greek Greek guy. There are a bunch of them. I mean, there's so many, of course they're, they're only maybe six to 10. Um, there's a guy, I want to say his name is Trevor Blackwell. Um, I'm also following some Olympic weightlifters or guys who do, uh, Olympic lifts, uh, who are beasts just because that's another thing that I'm kind of focused on at the moment. Uh, but, uh, that's a, that's a much longer story. Uh, let's, let's, let's flip gears a

Starting point is 01:21:55 little bit and talk about some of your business rules or guidelines. Uh, and I knew you've, you've mentioned before, I think the 411. And I was hoping you could elaborate on that and maybe talk about some of your other guidelines or rules that you have. Yeah, man. So come back to some of the business things that have worked really well. I mean, what I've learned, I'm noticing my brother's starting his own business. And Neville, as I mentioned earlier, is trying to get certain things organized. And I realized that simple rules are actually the easiest way for you to be successful. And so the 411 is specifically for AppSumo, and you could apply it to yourself. But we basically

Starting point is 01:22:33 were like, how many deals do we need to do a month to be successful? And then we can just follow that rule. So for AppSumo, it's 411, which is just like four deals a month, one free deal, one promotion of an internal product every month. And as long as we do that, we're successful. And that's for us. But for yourselves listening, how can you create simple rules? Like once a week, I have to do a blog post. Once a week, I have to make a sales call and do the 111 thing, which every week you do with that one activity. And I've just noticed the more that we have simple rules, it just makes it a lot easier for us to be accomplishing those things and we check in on them. And so it just makes a life a

Starting point is 01:23:08 lot easier and a lot more effective and likely that they'll be accomplished. Do you use a Google spreadsheet or project management stuff like a Basecamp or an Asana or Trello or whatever? How do you actually keep on top of that stuff with your team so that it doesn't just get written down on a piece of paper and lost along the way. Exactly. So I'll call it, I call it the Susan Sue formula, uh, or the angry Asian mother formula, depending on who you're talking to. So Susan Sue is this five foot, nothing Asian chick who's like one of the most bad-ass chicks you'll ever meet. And so she came and ran sales for us for about a year or two years ago. And what she did and and you know, they do it, we do it on the sales team is that they check in every morning and every evening. And so Susan Sue would be like, what are three things you're going to get done today? And at the end of the day, what three things did you get done? And that was, it's

Starting point is 01:23:55 definitely a lot of work, but I've been doing that with like Neville is trying to grow his email list. And every morning, um, he's, you know, he's going to be like, I hear things I'm going to do. And at the end of the night, he checks in with me. He's like, here's what I got done today, and here's my progress. And so what I recommend for most people, though, is I do a once-a-week check-in with everybody personally. And I find that to be the most helpful. If you want to be Susan Su level, do it daily in the morning and evening. And that's insanely effective because it's like,

Starting point is 01:24:19 here's what I'm going to do, here's what I got done. And you get that stuff moving forward for sure. For me on AppSumo at a higher level, I check in every week. Generally, I just check in in person. And we have a dashboard that we check in every day. Is the dashboard in Google Apps? Or what is the tech that you're using for that? The dashboard, you're going to be pretty surprised. It's literally something we made. It's just one number. So I'll tell you, for SumoMe, our goal is to make a million dollar revenue business this year. So that's our goal for the business. And so we have a target of how much

Starting point is 01:24:52 money you need to make a month, which is $83,000. And then we know how, so the website is literally just what is our revenue against that? It's literally one number. And if you ask anybody in our company, like actually I'm kind of curious to ask him, uh, I don't want to walk out of the interview, but if I ask, I'll ask him my team chat right now. Uh, what is our team goal for the year? And this is something I learned from Zuckerberg in terms of how to get things organized. I don't try to organize everything. I try to focus on what's my number one goal. And that's what Zuck did, which is the number one goal for him was growth. And I think, I don't know if I mentioned the story to you before, but I went to Zuck trying to get him to make money. Ever tell you the story? No,

Starting point is 01:25:32 no. I'd love to hear it. I went to him and I was like, dude, Facebook needs to be real business one day. Let's make some money. Don't you want to like stay in business and make a lot of money for so that we can, you know, be a company one day and really profit. And he's like, Noah, does that help us grow? I'm like, no, no, it won't help us grow, but it'll help us make money and make a business. He's like, does it help us grow? No. And so what he did that I've applied at my businesses,

Starting point is 01:25:54 and that's all I ever do now, is that I pick one very specific goal and I check on it on a regular basis. So as an example, let me just break down the SumoMe one. Our goal is a million dollars a year. I have a spreadsheet that breaks out how much money that is each month. And then we have our dashboard that shows it every day about how we're progressing towards it. And on every month, on the first of the month, I just check how we did against what I projected that we need to be doing to hit our goal.

Starting point is 01:26:18 And so everyone is focused around that one goal and nothing else. So I love this. And, uh, this is, this is something that when I'm say interviewing people and trying to obviously pick up lots of things that I can use myself. I mean, this is not just for publication. I like talking to people like you so I can pick up new book recommendations, tools, approaches. And this is very consistent. Uh, when you look at the very top, top, top performers where for instance, tools, approaches. And this is very consistent when you look at the very top, top, top performers where, for instance, we mentioned Peter Thiel earlier, who is not only a billionaire, but he's done it several times over in different ways. I mean, that's very,

Starting point is 01:26:55 very hard to do. And he was famous, it turns out, and this could be apocryphal, I don't know if it's totally true, but I think it is, that at PayPal, he gave every person one top objective, and it was a measurable objective. And if they came to him for an office hours type of meeting or pulled him aside to ask him a question about why don't we do this or hey, I need some help with such and such, he would ask them, how does this contribute to your number one priority, X? And how is it driving the numbers forward? And if it was not related, he wouldn't talk to them about it. I mean, that's exactly right. I mean, that's what we do at AppSumo. For the SumoMe.com product, I asked our team, I just posted on our team chat,

Starting point is 01:27:41 what's our goal for the year? Well, the guy was joking, but he put 100,000 monthly recurring potatoes. His nickname is Potato, so that's what he calls money. But everyone on the team knows everyone is aligned. And for AppSumo in the past, last year was a billion people seeing SumoMe.com. And we hit a billion. The year before, it was a million dollars with monthly1k.com, which we did.

Starting point is 01:28:02 The year before that was half a million email subscribers. And the point is not that, wow, Noah gets everything done. It's just I don't do anything else. And that comes back to the essentialism book that you were mentioning earlier, which really kind of drives that point home. Yeah, I mean, and obviously you have your high-level thing and you break it down. So like I was telling you, we're struggling right now. We have two customers.

Starting point is 01:28:22 We have small, medium business, self-serve, and then we have enterprise. And so I have to come back and look at, all right, which helps us accomplish our goal better? And you know, that's what I have to go and spend time solving to then say, all right, well, what will help us go faster and easier, hit that number one goal, and then focus just on that. And then kind of keep going through that process. Like right now, I get interview requests probably like every two days, every three days, hey, come talk to my interview. And I'm like, will this help me get to my goal faster than doing another activity. And it won't, so I don't do it. And that's specifically like this. And I'm like, yeah, okay, Tim, you know, Tim, a few people have heard of Tim Ferriss and a lot of people will check this

Starting point is 01:28:54 out. So it will be significant enough worth my time to help me really accomplish my goal. And everyone on the team is aligned with that. So speaking of goals, I think a lot of people have goals. They're like, you know, yeah, that Noah guy has been talking about building an email list. Yeah, I know he's helping Neville. I should really do that. And they have the should do that. And that's as far as it goes, right? Maybe they take a note, maybe they put it into their notes and their iPhone, whatever. And that's where it lives forever and it never gets implemented. So you mentioned earlier that, uh, you would do a demo or basically give people something they can do now to, to pump the ball down a few, then down

Starting point is 01:29:33 the field a little bit and make some, some progress. And I think you mentioned email subscribers. Uh, if I'm right, correct me if I'm wrong, but what is that exercise? Yeah, man. So sumo.me.com is free tools to get, to grow your website. So how to get a bigger email list, how to get more shares. And, and just for people who are listening, um, I'm, I use that on my blog and it's not because I do love you, but it's not because I love you. Oh, Timothy. Um, so here's what we're going to do. Like, I think one of the things that people love about you and what I respect about you is that you're about getting shit done. Like, you know, for our work, because how do I get things done? How do I do less work to get more, even more things done?

Starting point is 01:30:10 And, you know, you want to understand the elements of those things, and you're very curious and very specific about that. So, you know, I'd love for you to listen to notes, but anybody who does what I'm going to teach them to do, the highest result person, we're going to do a giveaway. I'm going to pay for it, where I will fly you to hang out with me and our office and put you up in a room. I'm not in a room in a hotel. That sounded a little creepy. And you can work with us on any project you have for a day. We'll get you taco deli for the person who actually takes action because I know for you that's really important, Tim. And I don't want you to just listen to this interview and not do shit.

Starting point is 01:30:42 I want you to listen to this interview, take action, and make your life better. That's what would make this worth it for me. And just so people have a context here, what is the deadline for doing this? Well, I'm going to give you things that you can do in real time. So I will say a week from when this goes public, because you should be able to do those things within that day and right now as you're listening. So I would say if you're weak, that's already long enough. Okay, got it. So I'll just say for guys, obviously avoid where prohibited, blah, blah, blah. You can't be a minotaur. You need to be over 18 years of age. You can't be whatever.

Starting point is 01:31:19 You could take over the prices, right, man? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And no, no purchase necessary, all that shit. None at all. There's actually, it's totally free. And what I want to teach people is how to start a business or how to share your message with the world instantly. If you, even if you don't have anything cool right now. And the, and so the person who does the most, you're going to fly them to Austin and show them a good time. And, uh, perhaps free cuddles when I'll always cuddles, dude, bro hugs, bro hugs. Well, so here's, let me just start with it. Like, you know, we did this monthly one K product, uh, monthly1k.com that showed people how to start a business and 5,000 plus people. And I've been able to help a lot.

Starting point is 01:31:50 And a lot of people just are like, well, how do I start? And I think the two things I want to say is either if you want to start a business or if you just want to get your message out there, start it now so that whenever you want to do in the future, I know Tim, I actually read when I was studying all your popular interviews to figure out what stuff your audience would want to hear. And you actually said, hey, I wish I had an email list sooner. So as you have books or things you want to promote or get out there, you can have direct communication with your audience. So I want to specifically show how anyone listening right now can get 100 people on an email list for free so that when they have a message, they can get it

Starting point is 01:32:20 out instantly. Yeah, let's rock and roll. All right. So whoever gets the most in their email list within the week from when this goes live, I will fly you out, pay for food, pay for hotel and help you with whatever business stuff you want to be helped with. So, all right, so here's what we're going to do. You have a phone, you're listening to this podcast. Is that how most people listen to the podcast, Tim? I think a lot of people are listening on their phones, maybe not exclusively, but on whatever device, but let's, let's just say you have a phone handy. Sure. All right. So if you're on your phone, I'm speaking right into the microphone, come back to your phone, or if you're on your computer, come back to the computer and hang out

Starting point is 01:32:51 the, all right. So I want you to grab your phone and here's what we're going to do. The, I want you to get a hundred subscribers and I'll just say it again, because I think it's important. If you want a hundred subscribers, it's so that if you ever want to start a business or if you ever want to promote something or share your message even, start it now so you can do it whenever you're ready instead of waiting until later and not doing anything, which will piss me off. So if you want to get 100 subscribers, here's what I want you to do. Choose any topic you're interested in. Like, Tim, let's actually – I'll do it live right now as well. What's a topic that you're interested in, Tim?

Starting point is 01:33:21 Like something recently that you've been thinking about or reading or curious about? Interested in the ketogenic diet, which is like the Atkinson. Oh, the keto thing? Yeah, I'm interested in that. I'm really digging deep in that right now. Okay, so do you want to start a new newsletter? I probably have my hands full. I think you're a little busy.

Starting point is 01:33:40 All right, I will do the keto topic newsletter. I will get 100 people right now on it so that I can share that message with other people. And then maybe I can say that Tim likes the keto diet. So choose a topic that you're curious about, interested in, you want to talk about to certain people. Here's what I want you to do. Tim, do you have your phone on you? I have my phone off because I didn't want it to interfere with what we are doing here. Pay attention to me.

Starting point is 01:34:03 So that's good. All right. Well, for whoever's listening, here's what we're going to do. I'm going to interfere with what we are doing here. Pay attention to me. So that's good. All right. Well, for whoever's listening, here's what we're going to do. I'm going to take a photo of myself. Hi. So take a photo of yourself. Now I want you to go to your social networks. And I'll post all this stuff in the blog post also,

Starting point is 01:34:16 which I'll give people info on, but continue now. And here's what people are going to say. Well, Noah and Tim have followers or fuck, who cares about followers? Even if you have 100 people, don't worry about that. It doesn't matter if you have 10, or 5 take a photo of yourself now i want you to post it on your social sites facebook and google facebook and twitter so right and don't even you don't have to sign up for a service no i don't have an email list guess what's an email list provider gmail that's a great way to start your newsletter so that you know i just to give you context like

Starting point is 01:34:44 appsumo is a high seven figure business and 90% plus just comes from an email list. So just to give you context about, oh, you actually can just, the email list can create large businesses. So posting your social, I'm starting a newsletter and then attach your photo. You're going to see my photo on Noah Kagan and then say, email me and then put your email. So I'm going to do mine about keto. Cause I'm curious about keto. Email me Noah, or I'll put keto at okaydork.com. And this will go to my inbox. And now I will get a list of people who will be curious about keto. So it didn't cost me any money. It took me about two seconds. So if you're on your phone, take a photo of yourself. Go to your Twitter. Then I'm going to go to my Facebook and just post it socially.

Starting point is 01:35:28 I'm starting a newsletter about keto. Email keto at okdork.com. And so I just tweeted that. And now people are going to start emailing me about keto. And so that's one tactic. So we're going to do two more. And then you will actually probably have 100, if not more, people interested in what you want to talk about about so if you want to sell them something or if you just want to put out information one thing i've noticed tim is that one tactic that i do is in my okdork.com newsletter i have an auto reply when people join that say what's one thing i can help you with and then they tell me their

Starting point is 01:35:57 questions and that's actually businesses yeah people say hey no i want help with this and basically you just look for the pattern of what the constant questions people keep asking you. And you say, hey, email list, I'm going to create a book about this. It's $10. You pay me via PayPal and I go make it. And this is what I've taught 5,000 people. And they do it and they get businesses. The problem, Tim, is people are like, it can't be that easy.

Starting point is 01:36:19 Because they're looking for some magic bullet or some golden trick or something more complicated. But it's not. It starts with one customer and helping one person. And this is the way you can actually start it while you're listening to the podcast instead of waiting to eventually start your business. Definitely. No, and I've seen, you know, there are people out there like Neil Patel has done some very similar stuff, right? I mean, he's been like, pay me this and then I will add you to this email list. It's so simple and makes a ton of money. I mean, it doesn't have to be complicated.

Starting point is 01:36:49 In fact, if it is really complicated, it's probably not the right answer. So you said there were a couple of other things that people should do. Yes. So I posted mine on Twitter and then posted it on your Facebook and have people email you to subscribe. That's number one. And they just email you. You don't need any software. You don't need to sign up for MailChimp, which is free, but that's complicated. Just keep it really

Starting point is 01:37:07 simple. Secondly, go to your email signature. So Tim, for you, on your settings, on your phone, so if you have an iPhone, I don't even know what Android, who uses Android, but on iPhone, go to settings, mail, and scroll to the bottom to your signature. On your signature, say, reply to me if you want the latest tips on keto. And so if you already have a mailing list, make sure you update your signature on all your accounts on a regular basis. So unlike my personal one, it says, come eat tacos with me. And people click it all the time. And then it's like, oh, you should join my newsletter. Basically, what I try to recommend people as you're starting businesses is keep it as simple as possible.

Starting point is 01:37:46 Don't spend as much money as possible. And importantly, leverage the assets you already have available. What most people, Tim, don't realize is that they have at least 50 to 200 people minimum on LinkedIn that could be potential customers. But they think, oh, I got to do like a Facebook ad, which is going to cost you money. And I want to discourage that. And so I'm trying to say, how do you already have assets? Do you already have a church group? Do you already have a Facebook group? Do you already have your colleagues that you can use as your customers to join your newsletter and eventually make a business out of? Because you could say, hey,

Starting point is 01:38:15 I'm creating something. You should buy it. And guess what? Now you have access to these people via your newsletter. Is this connecting? Yeah. I can't tell because I'm talking to myself a little bit. No, no, no. This all makes sense. And I want to give just a quick tech suggestion for people who might be like, oh, my God, but I don't have – let's just say your name is whatever, Bob Jones. So I don't have a BobJones.com domain. I don't know how to create a Keto at BobJones.com email address. Got you. A workaround for that, which a lot of people don't. It's so simple and I couldn't believe how useful this is when you figure it out. If your email address is,

Starting point is 01:38:52 let's just say bobjones at gmail.com. If you create bobjones plus anything you write at gmail.com, your email will still get delivered. So you could, you could put, Hey, I'm on Twitter. You can say, Hey, I'm starting a keto newsletter. Uh, email me at, uh, Bob Jones plus symbol keto at gmail.com. If you want to join people, email that and it allows, it then allows you to search by that email and sort, uh, and you don't have to set up anything new. You're just using a plus sign and some kind of identifier before the ad symbol. Um, super, super useful and expedient expedient. What you can also do for this is if you're signing up for a new service or anything, a newsletter, you can put plus and then some identifier. So it's like if I sign up for, you know, whatever, super, super, you know, underroosheroes.com and I'm

Starting point is 01:39:49 like, you know, I wonder if these guys are going to spam me and I want to know if they do or if they sell my information or anything like that. I want to be able to automatically send it to trash without giving them my real email address, right? So bobjonesatgmail.com, that's valuable information. I don't want to be getting shit from all sorts of people potentially if they leak my information. So I'll put bobjonesplusunderoosatgmail.com. And that way, I know if my information has been

Starting point is 01:40:19 leaked and I can just junk that email address and have it all go to spam, for instance. So that plus approach is super helpful. I don't think enough people know that one. The other thing I would add to that is do the plus filter, do that, and then in your settings, create filters. So what I would do for all these people in Gmail is, I don't know these other services, and most people use Gmail, but in labs of Gmail, in your settings lab, turn on canned responses, enable it.

Starting point is 01:40:48 Then what you do is create a filter. So whenever, and you can do this in the search box really easily. So I said keto at okdork.com, or I could do my email address, which is noahkagan plus keto at gmail.com, which is what Tim was suggesting to you. And so what you do is you search keto at okdork.com. And I've already got, Tim, I've already got two people emailing me for the newsletter. That's fantastic. And so what you do here is you click the little down arrow, and you click filter messages like these, and you create a filter like this.

Starting point is 01:41:19 Now it says create a filter with this search. And what I would do here is I have a canned response. Look, I'm not even having to create any software. So send a canned response and a canned response would be when I create that's like, hey, what are you interested in learning about keto? And they would just tell me what I should be creating for them and possibly even selling them in the future. Definitely. And I want to point out just a couple of things. Well, actually, before I do that, are there any other steps or recommendations? And then I have just a couple of observations that I think might be helpful for people who might still find this intimidating. Yeah. What I want you to do is if you have a phone, you can do this right now. If you're listening to this podcast, you don't have to go anywhere else.

Starting point is 01:41:58 You don't have to pay for anything and you could start your business instantly, which I've never seen anyone do before, but you can do it with the technology we have available for free. So number one, post it on your social, post it on Facebook and Twitter. I put a photo because it's a little more apparent. Maybe you want to put a little more text and just give them the email address

Starting point is 01:42:13 to email you to join. On your signature, I wrote this, Tim, which I think you'll appreciate. It says, for on my signature on my phone, it says, reply to me with a hell yes if you want the latest keto news. I like it. I like it.

Starting point is 01:42:24 And I've actually used that in some of our sales collateral and it works really well because people are like, oh, hell yes if you want the latest keto news. I like it. I like it. And I've actually used that in some of our sales collateral and it works really well because people are like, oh, hell yeah, sure. And so now I'm going to, I do it for sales, but you can put in your signature and now that's done. So in every 50 emails I send every day on average, I now have probably about two to five of them being like, oh yeah, cool. Hell yes. I'm like, what are you hell yesing about? But set up your filter and they get the reply. And then now you have the questions to be answering. The last thing I would say that is really cool is go to your, Tim, do you have favorites on your phone? Yeah. Yeah. I have favorites.

Starting point is 01:42:53 I'm actually really curious. That's fascinating. Who's on your favorites, man? My phone is off, so I'm not sure. No, you know who's on your, don't act like that. Who's on your favorites? No, no, I'm not sure. Honestly, I'd have to look at it. I know I'm not. I don't talk to you that often, but like all my favorites is just like my brother and my girlfriend, a few other people. I like my coworkers. Um, go to your favorites cause it's the easiest one not to have to think about and just click on their names and then text them. Hey man, can I send you information about keto? It's cool diet information.

Starting point is 01:43:21 What I want to go back to that point that was critical and I thought most people would probably ignore is that just go to the people that already like you. If they won't even buy from your industry for you, it's only going to get harder. It will not be easier. And what I want to do is you, you know, you took your assets, you used it, you had set up some passive things like your signature and text the people that are your favorites. And if they don't know someone, then you ask for a referral. Hey man, do you know any person that's like a fatty or anyone who's like crazy into health that might be interested in keto news? And this is just basic. Obviously, we can get more fancy and complicated.

Starting point is 01:43:51 But this is the way that it starts. This is how you get that first customer. This is how you start the Facebook or Google or Amazon or Microsoft. No, I started to interject. I just wanted to say to people a few things. Number one is keep in mind you can always abandon the project. I think a lot of people are like, well, but I don't know how to run a few things. Number one is keep in mind, you can always abandon the project. I think a lot of people were like, well, but I don't know how to run a newsletter. I don't really want to commit to another part-time job. Oh my God. Like what happens if blah, what happens if this, what

Starting point is 01:44:13 happens if that? It's like, look, you can always just send an email to these people and be like, Hey, had a huge fire pop up. The keto newsletter is going to have to wait. Sorry guys might have more news later. And then you're done. It's not a major life commitment. Yeah, man. You're not getting married to the newsletter in like an Irish Catholic family. I mean, it's like you have options here. It happened to me, Tim.

Starting point is 01:44:39 It happened to me six months ago. I started an events business to show people how to start an events business where I sold tickets and then I made events. And then I was like, I kind of don't want to keep doing events because I'm trying to run AppSumo and SumoMe. And so I just refunded the difference to people. And, you know, it's very straightforward. It's always with integrity and just letting people know the expectations. And just to actually add another example. So I've done this many, many times.

Starting point is 01:45:07 And sometimes things don't work out or you don't like it and you quit. So I tried to make a membership site, a very inexpensive membership site as an experiment ages ago for $10 a month or something like that. And it turned out that I just, at least at the time, didn't like managing it. And the technology wasn't great. So the experience wasn't perfect. And I was like, you know, I just don't want to do this anymore. It's too much psychic drain. It's not worth the trouble. So I refunded everybody.

Starting point is 01:45:26 And there were several hundred people probably. Refunded everybody, everything that they had spent and just shut the thing down. And you almost always have that option. But there are other things like the podcast. I was like, you know what? I'm not sure if I'm going to like this internally. I'm going to commit to doing six episodes as an experiment. And then I'll reassess it and I might ditch it.

Starting point is 01:45:44 And that'll just be like my mini series of podcasts. And it worked out. So I kept on doing it. Um, the, um, so, so bringing it back to the competition then for those people who are listening, they're like, yes, hell yes. I want to compete. Uh, guys, you can find the blog post for this episode at four hour workweek.com forward slash podcast, all spelled out. And in the comments, you have to leave your results and you have to leave your results, uh, just to make it easier for everyone on my side to manage. You're going to have to put hashtag Noah at the top of your comment. And if you can't follow that set of instructions, we're not going to look at your comments. So do that. Hashtag Noah at the top of your comment. And if you can't follow that set of instructions,

Starting point is 01:46:26 we're not going to look at your comment. So do that. Hashtag Noah at the top of the comment. And what should they include in their comment, Noah? Yes. So two things. There's definitely people on your audience. Your audience is awesome.

Starting point is 01:46:39 I've met a lot of people, and they're all over the world. And they're like, yeah, I love Tim, and now my life has changed for me. So I know that there's already people who are kicking ass and running successful businesses. You're like, well, Noah, I already have a successful business. I'm in Australia. That was a great Australian.

Starting point is 01:46:50 Was that pretty good? That was like an Australian, like kangaroo British accent. So I'm looking more for the people who are taking action. So if you already have a mailing list, take action on really significantly growing that on the seven days. I'm looking for people who have the biggest results either from zero to 100 or from 1,000 to 100,000. And so what I really want to see is what have you done to really grow your mailing list in the next seven days from when you listen to this?

Starting point is 01:47:14 And for the people, just to remind you, if you don't have a mailing list or if you don't have a business or if you have a business, this is the best way to communicate with your customers whenever you want to sell them something or even if you just want to share your message with the world. You have direct access to something that, how often do you check your email? I know how often I check mine. It's a lot, especially because I'm on the toilet. You know, like, oh, email, it's toilet time. That and Instagram. The second thing that I wanted to mention, Tim, so number one, hashtag know it, your comment, and show me what you've done in this week. And we'll full expenses flight anywhere in the world, hotel, and you get to work with us for a day.

Starting point is 01:47:47 The second thing is if you already have an email list, I was talking with Tim about it. We've put together on our side like a free no upsell, cross sell, down sell free course for you guys. So go check it out if you have an email list already that it's email1k.com slash Tim. And that's fully free. There's nothing to sell there. I'm sorry. If you want to give me money, you're welcome to, but not with this. And that will be, it's 10 experts that'll show you how to grow your mailing list on more advanced tactics if you already have one. Very cool. And I will put this in the blog post as well, guys, but which will

Starting point is 01:48:18 have show notes and links and all sorts of other things that we talked about in this episode. But, uh, just to recap. So at, in the comment, if you're going to do this hashtag Noah, your results and what you did, quantify it whenever possible. And then I want you to end with the most important lesson that you learned in doing this exercise.

Starting point is 01:48:40 Um, so that the comments themselves because become a very useful resource for everybody. Um, good stuff, man. I, become a very useful resource for everybody. Um, good stuff, man. I'm just want to see people take action and they do it and they get results because you can do it from your phone. There's no excuse. Yeah, no, there's no excuse.

Starting point is 01:48:53 Uh, so let's, let's do this. Noah, I am, uh, I actually, you're, you're making me think of all the things I want to do now. Uh, and I know you're running a company, but we have to, we're going to go do a flotation. I'm taking my girlfriend for a surprise flotation. You ever done a flotation tank? I have done flotation tank. Actually I was introduced or finally pushed to try it by Joe Rogan. Uh, and you're talking about like a deprivation tank basically. Exactly. Yep. Have you done it before? I have done it before. Um, I actually did on a first date,

Starting point is 01:49:23 which I don't recommend, but I've done it many times. First date is a very, that's an intensive kind of creepy silence of the lamps for a student getting in a box naked in someone's house. It's not the idea. Oh, it's that you have flotation tank at your house. No, no. I went in Austin a few years ago. There was not a, there wasn't, there wasn't public one. So that a private one in some lady's house. So I was like, I swear this is legit. I'm not just trying to get you naked. I just need you to get in this box legit. I'm not just trying to get you naked. I just need you to get in this box naked and I'm going to close the door on you. And I'll tell you on that experience, I was actually really scared because that was my

Starting point is 01:49:52 first time. So I had a panic attack. Wow. That's no good. But subsequently I've gone to like larger ones that are like super clean and legit. And, um, I do it like once a month. I generally bounce between that and Chinese massages, like the reflexology because they're only $35. And it's like that secret. It's a secret white people don't know. So I don't want all you guys going to do this now. But reflexology massages are $35 or Chinese massage. There's no happy endings.

Starting point is 01:50:14 And it's the most affordable, effective massage I've ever found. Yeah, I need to get on my reflexology action. I use something called a rad roller, R-A-D. It's like two lacrosse balls melted together to roll out my feet each day. So these kind of like just nugget sized recommendations, I think are really fun. So let me, if you wouldn't mind just in a sort of wrap up, I'll ask you a couple of rapid fire questions. You don't have to answer super, super concisely, but just to the extent possible, we'll try to do short questions and short answers and we'll do a couple of them. No, it's like, Hey, could you speak shortly? Not long. Just do it. I'm like, yes, I'll get less words. I use my ESL skills. Uh, when you think of the

Starting point is 01:50:55 word successful, who is the first person who comes to mind and why Evan Williams. So for those people that he is the, I guess, co-founder of Twitter, blogger, medium, all around baller. Why, why is that? So, you know, I think it's easy to do a business once and be successful. I think when you can do it multiple times, you're a badass. And success is very relative to how you define it, but if it's money or if it's whatever it is you want it to be. I think from like a business creation and making society better, Evan is very interested in communication. And he didn't, you know, it's pretty big that you did blogger. I think most people do blogger and tap out.

Starting point is 01:51:35 You're like, you know, I'm pretty, it's like Elon Musk. He did one thing, you know, he sold a company and then he did PayPal and then he did another one. And it's like him and Evan Williams is just like, holy moly, you don't just do it once. You do it many times. Um, cause easy to hit a home run once, but to do it consistently, just, I think the consistency of it and dedication is, was really impressive to me about that. No, I agree. And what's also impressive and really inspiring about that is generally speaking, the guys who have that type of consistency or gals and do it repeatedly are doing it for reasons other than the money, uh, because they already have more money than God. And in some of these cases, and it's, it's really about the mission. And I think that's

Starting point is 01:52:13 partially why some of them like Ev, you know, I've spent time with Ev and he's, uh, he comes across as a happy guy. You know what I mean? It's, uh, and that's not, but it's a surprise here. It's incredibly surprising because the, the, the type a personalities that I usually run into who have made hundreds of millions or billions of dollars are so driven that they, they have trouble appreciating anything that they have. And I don't feel like that's the case with Ev. Um, so all the more impressive to me that he's able to maintain that, uh, type of perspective. Uh, okay. Do you have any favorite

Starting point is 01:52:46 movies or documentaries? Yes. So my favorite movie immediately is Commando. It's a horrible Arnold Schwarzenegger movie from the 80s. So amazing. Oh my God. It's great. I just, I don't know, as a kid, I watched it over and over on beta tapes, which you youngins probably don't know about. I love two other ones I think are just really well done. It's Count of Monte Cristo. I haven't seen that. It's just such good revenge. If you just want to get revenge, like you have an ex-girlfriend or something, you watch this guy and you're like,

Starting point is 01:53:13 I need to be like him. And then there's a recent documentary called The Jinx. Oh, I haven't seen that. Oh, dude, you're going to blow your mind. I don't think everyone wants you to do or no one wants you to do, but this guy blows people's minds with his gun. And he gets away with it. Huh.

Starting point is 01:53:30 It's a documentary. It's a documentary about Robert Frost, which you probably have heard his name or seen his name somewhere. But they just like, they get you. And the ending is just insane. Don't. All right. If you haven't watched The Jinx, go watch The Jinx and thank me later. Awesome.

Starting point is 01:53:43 I'll throw out another one for people who like documentaries. King of Kong. Or Man on Wire. You can look at those two and then choose one to suit your tastes. What advice would you give to – how old are you now, Noah? 33, dude. I'm like dead in the internet zone. I'm like – internet years, I'm old.

Starting point is 01:54:03 I'm a dinosaur. Yeah, you are a dinosaur. I know. What advice would you give to your 25 year old self and i say 25 i've been asking i've been telling people 20 but we're fucking everybody's a fucking idiot at 20 yeah in my yeah i was gonna say condoms yeah i say morning after pill condoms no um you know i'd say that the number one thing that and here's the. I think a lot of these things people can hear and then they just discard. So let me just tell you how to do it. So get a mentor. But you're like, I don't know how to get a mentor.

Starting point is 01:54:31 Here's what you should do. Email the person that you respect the most that's done the thing you want to do that you know right now. Like have your phone and text them or email them and be like, hey, I think you're the really best person I know in this space. Like can I meet with you on a regular basis? And if they're like a person who's too busy for you, ask them who they'd recommend. Who do you learn from locally or internetly or wherever that I could just talk to on a regular basis?

Starting point is 01:54:53 And I really wish I would have been more active in securing that. And you don't have to go try to get Peter Thiel or Tim Ferriss or Noah King because we don't want to help you. We don't. We're busy doing things. Well, we want to help at scale. It's hard. Exactly. Okay, thank you. See see that's why we have tim that's where the i'll use the ugly word the ugly s word in that capacity but and so it's not that i don't want to help people it's just

Starting point is 01:55:15 like i don't have the capacity to help as many people as i'd like and so when i was 25 i think i would have spent more time finding someone that's done the things i want and helping them and having active meetings with them to be like, hey, you've already done where I want to go. Why don't I just learn it from you instead of wasting all the time that I had to do? Number two at 25, I'd work for free. So I would go help that person. So email your friend like, yo, can I meet with you? I'll help you with whatever you want. And if they don't, if they're not busy, ask who they'd recommend. And then third, I'd really just kind of look at your phone or your internet browsing

Starting point is 01:55:45 or in your home and look at the products or services that I was using at today right now and go work for those companies. So when I was 25 and I did do this and I'm really happy to do this, but I was like, I just like Facebook. I'm going to go try to work there. I just love personal finance. I did a personal finance workshop this morning with my team because I just love talking about money.

Starting point is 01:56:04 Um, and so I went and worked at Mint. So go and try to surround yourself or put yourself in places doing the work that you really want to be doing. Yeah. And the easiest way to do that is just look at what you're already enjoying and then go, like, think about if you could do that all day. Absolutely. And some other related bits. I just actually heard this yesterday from someone, older gent actually, who's, he's not above asking for mentorship. And I usually discourage people from using the word

Starting point is 01:56:33 mentor or mentorship because it's just, it screams unpaid full-time job. So if you're going to pitch people, don't use that wording. But I think the work for free piece is huge. He said he got one of the biggest names in Silicon Valley to mentor him effectively, although he didn't call it that, because he said pretty much the same thing. He emailed this guy out of the blue and said, I really respect what you've done with A, B, and C. I've read everything about it. Here are things I've done. If you have something that might be sort of credible, if not, that's fine. And then he said, I know you're working on a book. I would love to ask

Starting point is 01:57:10 you some very specific questions for every hour that you spend with me. I will spend four hours proofreading your book or helping you with the book pro bono. And that's how he got the first meeting. And then the guy agreed to meet with him on an ongoing basis for more than a year and never took him up on the proofreading offer, even though that was sort of the sugar that made the pill go down. So that's a really important point. And Charlie Hohn has some good writing on this, H-O-E-H-N, on working for free. It's really- 100%. Oh, no, working for free. It's really. A hundred percent. Also. A book.

Starting point is 01:57:45 Oh, no, go for it. No, no, no. His book, Recessing Proof Graduate is just epic for younger people starting out. Yeah. Or anyone. Or anyone who's starting over or trying to reinvent themselves. Really. The other thing, Tim, I think you said, which is super true.

Starting point is 01:57:57 I just want to highlight it for everyone listening is don't email people and be like, hey, I'll help you with anything. Because I'm like, well, now I have to think about what to do. And you're going to be a shitty free labor person. Yeah. Like, that's the worst. Because you're like, Tim, I'll help you with anything. Because I'm like, well, now I have to think about what to do. And you're going to be a shitty free labor person. Yeah. Like, that's the worst. Because you're like, Tim, how many emails do you like? Roughly how many emails you get a day?

Starting point is 01:58:10 Like, hey, I want to work with you. Can I hang out with you? Can I have coffee with you from people you don't know? At least 100 a day. Holy shit. To my team or me if they manage to somehow, you know, spam 100 emails and get one right. Exactly. And so, you know, it's interesting to think about, like, how you, how does the person stand out to actually get ahold of Tim?

Starting point is 01:58:28 And so here's how you do it. You won. Someone told me this yesterday. I loved it. It was called the swipe, the one thumb rule, which is your email should be able to be one thumbed on the phone. Yeah. Yeah. Which I thought was a pretty good way. I thought that was a good way of looking at the one thumb rule. The second thing is don't tell Tim. You can study Tim all day. All of your stuff is public. Most of it that you're working on or thinking about. Go study Tim and do the work.

Starting point is 01:58:51 Then send it to Tim. There's a guy, Brian, at VideoFruit.com. And Brian does this for a lot of people. He emails you and he's like, hey, I made this video for you. Hey, I did this marketing role for you. Hey, I did this document for you. Here, I just sent it to you. I'm not expecting shit.

Starting point is 01:59:03 And then you're like, well, damn, this is really good. What else can you do? Yeah. Instead of emailing Tim likeing tim like hey tim we should just like can i help you i'll be a free intern just so i can learn pick your brain yeah and i don't uh i don't reply to any of those and number one because i don't have the capacity and i think for a lot of tasks like that that are and don't make no mistake, that's a task that I have to, I have to do that instead of something else. Um, piece of advice that I got from someone, um, I'm blanking on who said this to me, but they said, and it was so, I was like, wow, okay, that is great. And it's, it, it's, it sort of, uh, comes back to your point about doing your homework. And they said, if someone hasn't done their homework to determine if something is a fit, I don't have the time to explain to them why it isn't a fit.

Starting point is 01:59:50 And I was like, isn't that good? Damn. Yeah, I like that. And I was like, oh, for instance, ending up working with Charlie or whatever, is number one, they did something of value that was highly specific and indicated they'd done a lot of homework that was very helpful and they didn't expect anything in return. But they did such good work that I was like, like you said, I was like, huh, wow wow what else can this guy do uh or you know maybe maybe someone's like hey here's a you know a this is not an example please i don't need a thousand of these sent to me guys but like here's a summary of podcast x and i thought this would be useful for you to use as a pdf uh that's my logo all over it yeah well or but if they're like hey if

Starting point is 02:00:41 you want me to do a few more of these like i have some dead time between now and blah um let me know. But if I don't hear back from you, no problem. And I think another mistake a lot of people make is they – and I've been guilty of this in the past. And I look back at some of my behavior when I was just getting started and I cringe because it was in retrospect. I'm like, no fucking wonder I didn't get any responses. If you send emails like any of what we've described today and you don't get a response, don't take it personally. And that's

Starting point is 02:01:10 easy advice to say, but I would take it one step further. And the way you don't take it personally is assume that the people who don't respond have excellent reasons for not responding, right? And like maybe someone in their family is sick. Maybe they're trying to take care of their kid. I'm in trouble at school. Maybe fill in the blank, just assume they have a good reason for not responding. And, um, there's another expression, God, I wish I could remember who told me this, but you know, don't attribute to malice that when that's that, which can be explained by incompetence, but I would modify that. And I would say, don't, don't attribute to malice. What can be explained by incompetent incompetence or just busyness, right? So just because someone doesn't get back to you right away, or just because someone sends you a short email and

Starting point is 02:01:55 misses something, uh, don't immediately assume that it's because they're trying to fuck with you or because they don't respect you. I see so many people get wound up and they're like, oh my God, so disrespectful. Oh my God. So blah. And they shoot themselves in the foot. And I've been guilty of that myself. I think that I'm pretty quick to anger and very impatient. So it's taken a lot of effort to try to sand down the rough edges. But, um, another last, just one last tip, uh, is, uh, for finding mentors, a great way to do that is to volunteer for local business organizations that host events. That's what I did when I moved to Silicon Valley.

Starting point is 02:02:27 So you can volunteer at events where they have local icons or business leaders coming to speak, and you get to interact with those people. And if you're volunteering somewhere, by the way, it does not give you license to do a shitty job. And most people think that's true. So you can stand out just by doing twice what you're asked to do as a volunteer. And that's how you get to know people like I did. I got to know Jack Canfield who co-created chicken soup for the soul. And then many years later introduced me to the guy who became my agent and sold the four hour work week. Um, that's pretty cool. Yeah. All right. So to know a next question, uh, what is the purchase that you've made in the last, say, six months for $100 or less that has had the greatest impact on your life?

Starting point is 02:03:10 Purchase in the last six months. I would say I purchased it around that time, but it's my Nutribullet. I don't know what that is. It's the Magic Bullet's bigger brother. The Magic Bullet, which is not a sexual device. It's a blender. I guess it could be in some weird ways um but the neutral bullet is basically like i like smoothies i like my protein shakes i like blending up things um but it's always a pain in

Starting point is 02:03:35 the ass to clean right and this you could just blend drink out and wash out and there's no cleaning and every time i get this is like the gift i give to most people i'm like dude if you don't have a neutral bullet in your kitchen like you're missing out and it's just really effective for like blending anything and getting it like i have a vitamix which is like a 500 blender and i just don't even use it anymore it's a lot of cleanup for that thing yeah well yeah it's like i have to get a cleaning lady to assist me to clean that thing uh and the nutribullet you can do you know in 20 seconds or less and it's just been really effective and it's one of these things like if you don't have it i just buy buy it for people. Cause that's what I know they need.

Starting point is 02:04:06 Very cool. Well, action packed. I love how many things we were able to cover and, um, yeah, I would love to hear, uh, what people think and also the competition people can check out. So go to fourhourworkweek.com forward slash podcast to check that out. Uh, one more thing I'm going to mention for folks is that, uh, you and I both were on an episode of the Tim Ferriss experiment and coached someone through launching their business and went through a lot of information that we weren't able to cover in this episode, like creating call scripts and tons of challenges like the coffee challenge and so on. So that I think people would enjoy checking out. But where can people learn more about you, Noah, find you online, et cetera. Yep. Uh, number one thing for my personal stuff is going to be at okay. Dork.com. Okay. D O R K.com and business related if, you know, for the tools and a lot of the main things I was talking about, it's going to be at sumo me.com.

Starting point is 02:04:59 That's a lot of the business that we've been building and recommending for most people. Awesome. Uh, anything, any parting advice or thoughts that you'd like to give to folks? I would. I would. Two other things, because I looked at, and this is kind of a thing, like, I think there's a ratio of how much you invest in something to how much you get out. So if you're sending cheap emails to people like Tim or a customer or anybody you want, and you're sending a quick email, you're probably not going to get a response because you're

Starting point is 02:05:24 not investing that much. So I invested in researching shows and comments to see what is going to make this the most popular episode ever. And that's what I want it to be with the number of comments. So make sure you go comment, even if you don't do the challenge. Two other things that a lot of people were asking about. We did Morning Ritual, but you guys asked, what do I listen to while working out?

Starting point is 02:05:43 And I want to share some of my favorite rap artists yeah yeah let's do it your audience so if they want to get they want to get pumped up um i listen to a lot of like hardcore rap and i get mixtapes from datpiff.com how do you spell that d-a-t-p-i-f-f.com uh so i can't i'll send it i'll send you my spotify playlist too for my workouts um but the guys i listen to a lot lately are like Travis Scott and Wale's new album. Those two have been going really strong. So if you're going to look at a workout, go check out Travis Scott and Wale. How do you spell Wale? W-A-L-E.

Starting point is 02:06:17 Uh-huh. Wale. Do you have any music you listen to that you're embarrassed to admit you listen to? Mostly emo, which is just going to be like Promise Ring. It's like kind of crying stuff. It's like, oh, I'm a little bitch. I'm a little bitch. So that's number one.

Starting point is 02:06:38 I listen to Promise Ring. A lot of their stuff is good. The other thing, Tim, you guys talked about alcohol, and people seem to like alcohol recommendations. So if you're a tequila fan, Casa Amigos is affordable and delicious. And it's George Clooney's tequila and it's phenomenal. I drink the Reposado. If you're a little more expensive, which is the best for the price, it's called Classe Azul. And that's $100 a bottle or $89. And it's a porcelain white bottle bottle and it's insane if you like tequila is that what

Starting point is 02:07:05 you order when you walk into a bar do you just uh it's normally 20 a shot so it depends on my mood i'm like 20 a shot i have the bottle at home i could wait i'll just get a soda water uh and or if you're a whiskey fan balconiescones, single malt, anything by Balcones. It's a number one whiskey in the world. It's a Texas whiskey. Balcones, B-A-L-C-O-N-E-S. Yes, sir. Awesome. All right, Noah, well, we will have some tequila and tacos in Austin soon. Oh, my God, that sounds awesome.

Starting point is 02:07:36 Thank you so much for the time, man. And everybody, be sure to check out all the notes and goodies and links and recommendations, Spotify playlists, et cetera, at 4hourworkweek.com forward slash podcast.

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #75: Tools and Tricks from the #30 Employee at Facebook

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #75: Tools and Tricks from the #30 Employee at Facebook

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