by the way this episode where's the camera this is this episode not for you this episode for me i've haven't listened this guy for a long time i read his books i i was used to gift your your book was one of the most gifted books i had for like a long time maybe first ten years my thank career and i would say you're about to i'm giving you the four hour fever like likes to call the four hour work with this you're gonna read this then for four hours you're gonna question everything in your life i called that the far fever it's normal don't worry call a doctor pig last beyond four hours yeah i feel like i could rude word i know i could be what i want to from at all in it like a days off on a road travel never looking back and so today i have like a bunch of things that i think maybe the audience will know honestly i don't give a shit i just wanted to ask you the questions that i wanna know i think that's the key to good podcast exactly so one of the things i wanted know is you talked about this space where you're like i'm thinking about what's next i've been there sold my company what's next i have a lot of friends that are there as yeah and what's the what's the approach because it can be paralyzing to have a thousand options yeah especially when you a track record do you have a track record of success now that almost adds some difficulty to the to the to the answer of what's next because it's gotta be good cap it can't be something tiny right how does ten ferris approach to what's next question yeah i think it can be tiny in a sense right i mean let's just i'll answer your question but let's just note that the podcast started as i'm gonna try to six episodes that's tiny so to this podcast as this is this is a timeline so i think that the quote seth gordon who is really wise beyond even what people would expect i mean and he walks the walk he's real operator who has authored a contra that's not contra it's an unorthodox life for himself and i have a lot of respect for seth and you know he said big things the big dreams changing the world those are easy to hide behind he's like but doing the smallest thing possible the next action you can't hide behind them right it's it's a it's a pass fail say that again so but big dreams aren't easy to hide behind yeah but it when you make something special next six episodes right if you don't do six episodes you fail to do six episodes but if it's like i'm gonna change the world and do this and blah blah blah great they're like know not to not to like quote everybody in the world but like kinda david allen selling like okay great what's the next physical action right okay now you have a report card right that i can give you because you've just made yourself accountable to me in a way to like do this thing that is very discreet and so this i i don't underestimate the small things i think the big visions can be helpful at times and i could give examples of that where it's been helpful for me but to answer your question in terms of choosing the next thing i'll say stay up upfront i don't who my next thing is right now but how do you approach that how do you approach me there yeah there are a few ways so the first is i make i suppose a menu of things i would like to try okay which is often a a a list of things i would like to learn i just returned from three days overseas with a game designer prototyping games nice and more games or yeah yeah sweet and that's something i'm trying right we'll see and the there's a lot that goes into even choosing the things on that list but and do you have a box on the menu like the part of the menu where it's like and we have like urchin that's you know you do you have the weird box where you're like let me think of some non obvious oh i try to do stuff right no no because there's tons of stuff that i could do that would be straightforward or predictable or reliably profitable that's the that's the most productive right and i'm not seeing they're bad options but like i can make a course yeah i could i'm i i know i could execute that and make it do really well right i i know that i know i could potentially create some type of membership platform or mastermind or something like that and i think i would enjoy some of these things right however let me come back to the criteria so whether i'm coming with my list i go for weird if there's something weird that is a huge plus kind of yeah that's like a turbo boost for inclusion right you not bending to the social expectations or norms right those are the weird things that's why they seem weird so and chances are if those end up on your list either they're easier for you than they are for other people or you're gonna have the enthusiasm and therefore endurance to do it longer right harder more intensely with greater purpose than other people those are all huge competitive advantages not that this not at all of life is a competition but to stand out in a crowd right you need to ones are like the immigrants it's like you got here yeah if you made it here you already have shown some amount of there must be some strength that got you onto this list oh totally because you had a negative filter associated with it yeah yeah or you just come from better like more resilient or risk taking genetic stock yeah if i could invest in like first or second generation immigrants yeah if i could just choose a i i could only choose certain filters so i would be very i've said that i've been like i love mormons i love if you're from the ukraine i'm list your name is dmitry well to tell me more what what's your idea come closer yeah so the the the shorts and synopsis of how i choose projects is i look for projects that can be successes even for me long term even if they fail short term what that means is projects where by any external measurement or perception they can be a failure however in the process of pursuing those things i develop or deepen relationships or develop or deepen skills that are durable right and those even if snowball something like that those snowball right right because if i do like five four projects they all fail but i am developing relationships with the type people i wanna to develop relationships with i'm developing new skills and then i start to bridge all those things and i'm paying attention i'm taking good notes my experience is eventually you win right whatever that happens to me it's kind of it honestly outside of that i would say these days some i'm getting getting all this fuck all that is energy and energy out like does this do i have more energy doing this or do i have substantially less right and that's a product also not just what you're doing where you are who you're interacting with i pay attention to that stuff because i could do something that people might see as frivolous archer or something and i i could pick on a whole ton of them that seem like waste of the time but that's like plugging my iphone into the wall it's like oh now i have a hundred percent charge instead of twenty percent charge there's a lot more that i can do with this phone right and just because i plugged it into the charger in the circus fun house doesn't mean i have to use it for the circus nut house right i you get to transfer to other things so that's that's also something as a fundamental currency that i pay a lot of attention to i'll tell you two related things on that last night i was got dinner with i think a mutual friend joe yeah yeah debbie founder airbnb b and he was saying he's like already do in town i was i'll a couple podcasts and we were talking about he's was like okay so what's like what's like a win you know like why why do you do you fly the town you leave your kids or you you make an effort what do are you looking for out of these i said well i just wanna leave with more energy than i came and really i want the guest to feel that way too like at the end of the day like what is the only way i can guarantee a success out of this is if you walk out of here feeling energized rather than drain from this conversation and if that's a i've i've been using that heuristic and it's so powerful to use the kind of like where is my energy after activity and how am i leaving the people around me yeah also is it you wanted to be mutually beneficial that way the second thing he said was that i thought you find interesting mh i was like we're going through this exercise i do called the perfect tuesday so i was like life is not really about these peak experiences i was like yes those like going and seeing like there's the total eclipse happening go and see this total eclipse apparently it's like a totally emotional experience if you're there i think it's happening in dallas this weekend or whatever there are those moments but the few and far between most of your life is just like tuesday there's normal tuesdays over and over again and to put a lot of effort into thinking like what's a dream average day for me and then try to live that dream and so we were talking about it and i asked them myself like how close are you to your perfect tuesday he's got all the resources in the world right all the airbnb yeah are they went public it's it's a super success and one of the things he said he goes that's a great question i go to the gym for my physical my to get my like to physically fulfill myself and then i work which is great and i feel productive and useful to the world and i have my family which is love he's like but i don't really make time for creativity anymore he's like he's a designer by that by training and he's like i need like a creative gym he's like i i feel like if i i sat down and i started sketching but almost feel like i'm wasting time like it's like yeah yeah what am i'm doing here i i found that really interesting and i feel like you do a good job of kind of making time for the things even if they're not societal norms for what people do i try yeah i tried to do it for sure do you have your version of a creative gym yeah i mean i was like playing the drums earlier today so from a like financial perspective that could be wasted i'm but the financial stuff and we can talk about it it's very useful for certain things i mean money only has a certain utility it's kinda like yeah you can eat until you're full and then you can eat until you're stuff and then you can eat until you're sick but like at what point do you stop eating like there is a point beyond which food cease to serve any positive function right and then like things in excess kinda become their opposite so you to be very careful with money and other things you know alcohol power fame they they can distort a lot of things how do you keep that in check so it's hard to keep some of those things in check i mean i know too many rich people now to to think that money fixes the inner game or the most problematic kinda psychological challenges the people have it doesn't at all it can fix a lot like money can fix money problems right but that's just one category right of issue and end it's incredibly useful as a vehicle for other things but i find a lot of folks very un creative about how they use money so i do i would say make time for the creative gym more so in the last handful of years but time with concept artists doing concept pushes building fictional worlds playing the drums earlier today had an art teacher stan pro pan who runs pro dot com amazing teacher came out and we worked on a whole bunch of different aspects of drawing and live charcoal sketching and shading and so on one could make the argument that isn't entirely off base that must be nice great you have all this time you kinda do what you wanna do but i will say also that when i have been at levels of peak performance professionally i usually have a creative outlet of some type it may not take the form of charcoal right drawing that's a bit on the nose as far as creativity goes but like j is creative right so like go to the j gym and learning how to operate in that free flowing environment that's very creative right so if if you're working on anything that requires a level of extreme present state awareness and improvisation and experimentation like you're in the creativity game right so wanted there a lot of ways to do that i got a book recommendation from you oh yeah i haven't seen that this book is all a few decades yeah i never heard of this book it's old book this book is called tough training for sports and it's by jim lo do you remember anything from this book i you you probably read this a long time ago i mean i read that one when i was probably fifteen or sixteen and i do remember that there is an inventory there's an assessment in there it's two or three pages long and you're intended to give that to your coaches peter around teachers people around you effectively for like a three what i would call now a three sixty review of different factors that affect mental tough yeah and i did that when i was fifteen or sixteen this one right oh there we go yeah there we go so the competitive profile yeah so there's there's i found this book incredibly helpful and later had jim lara on the podcast did some training with him and and a tennis pro with tennis and having that three sixty review from a mental tough perspective was incredibly helpful to me it it provided me with a level of awareness that i i i couldn't have developed on my own right and one of the things that talks about is basically if you haven't read the book it's like there's talent you're born with yeah there's skills which everybody else understands you practice and then there's performance yep and there's a gap between talent and scale that gap is called practice there's a gap between skills and performance and that's basically your tough training it's and he calls it i think the ideal performance state and it's like if favorite played sports you know this which is like some games are off oh i just wasn't fully locked in i was i just wasn't i didn't play up to my potential like what causes that versus those days when you're get in flow state or you're just totally dialed in and you you kick butt out there and it's like well that's because you were in your ideal performance state mh this is not just for sports obviously like this can be for you know how you show up as a dad at home it could be show if for work it could be for this podcast how do i show up in my ideal performance date do you do things to be in your kind of ideal performance state i do i do i would say that also just to highlight a few other things in here i haven't looked at this in a very long time twenty plus years but it discusses at length stress and recovery and d loading phases and period prioritization and awareness and they're all of these different checklists and assessments different assessments that you might use after a given training session and stress evaluations and so on all of which help me to become more aware of cause and effect in what i was doing so i had a i had a fantastic i mean my best season by far after reading this book and there are other factors that played into it in terms of ideal performance states i i've become less focused on optimization right overall i would say just because so much of it just does not fucking matter at all and the amount of breaking use to ferris optimization yeah i mean there's a place for who needs it there's a place for it there's a place for but it's like are you taking a taxi from those the the start to the finish line of a marathon because it's efficient i mean like yeah speed poetry is like there's there's a there's a it's suppose a cult of optimization that is peeling on a lot of levels but it ends up being a hammer looking for nails and it gets applied to everything and i think that that misses the forest for the trees sometimes and i've been guilty that for sure so it but in terms of optimization i would say that let's take today as an example so i had a great day today today was pretty un crowded i had a few team calls meaning employee calls are earlier today typically those are around tuesday but it i got shifted forward because was traveling yesterday beautiful day outside here in austin which helps of course went for a walk we've got a cold brew coffee had a phone call with friend came back did a bit of work knocked a few emails or a couple of pending angel investments and deals with that type and i had to get back to some lawyers and so on that took fifteen twenty minutes printed out some documents prepare for podcast that i recorded earlier today and then did a seven minute i guess this there's about a seven minute cold plunge at forty degrees which is pretty chilly that'll it's continuous yeah that's that'll lot that'll wake you up and i used that in part because i knew that we would be recording this late and i didn't wanna consume too much caffeine early in the day mh and then consume way too much caffeine throughout the day and end up not being able to sleep since we're recording this at night and also then had a little bit of titration with like a light green tea before recording my own podcast after walking a bit had some synthetic ketones so beta hydro which does help cognitive performance quite a bit so it it can act as a stand in for me for more caffeine it says a blended let's just say like tail end of the cold brew green tea about thirty minutes prior and then also synthetic ketones is about thirty minutes prior and light meals so very light meals i if i have a lot of mental lifting to do then i i generally eat pretty lightly mostly protein and a little bit of fat small amount of carbohydrate and here we are that's the day yeah right i got a great night sleep last night which isn't always the case but was the case last night and for me that is an optimized day there's not a lot crammed into it i'm not executing this sophisticated time management tetris to be as efficient as possible but i'm keeping the main thing the main thing like the main things were team one on one calls being physiological and just literally i guess prepared in terms of documentation research for podcast that i recorded and then being in a good state for having this conversation that's it k it's like you don't have to do a lot every day yeah i think that's effect for sufficiency right effectiveness over efficiency efficiency would be more like maximum output per unit of time regardless on what the output is directed towards is that right yeah yeah it's if you think of effectiveness as what you do affect efficiency is how you do any given thing but doing something really well doesn't make it important so yeah i'm a tony robbins guy he calls it majoring and minor things yeah measuring in minor things not a great way to go yeah and i also f away time and lose days to bullshit or i don't sleep well and then i'm grumpy and i have too much kathy and i a shooting and nights sleep like i i suffer from all that stuff yeah human i make mistakes but if you're thinking about projects as experiments using the criteria that i laid out before and you're doing your best you're gonna fa or you're gonna make mistakes but to keep the main thing the main thing and you have a good rationale for why that main thing is the main thing over time you tend to you tend to perform pretty well and just ship a lot more than most people even if you go a month without doing anything right and if you get fuck all done for a month sometimes it happens to me but i i try i would almost rather do that and i guess my version of doing fuck all might not look like fuck all but i would rather do that than rush into committing to something that doesn't meet my criteria because i'm uncomfortable not being busy right because that's how you end up over committing to things that longitudinal eat up years if you're comfortable not being busy yeah yeah that's a big one yeah just i mean the like the best way to get what the outcome of busy ness should be which is right like big effects of some time or or it could just be more joy whatever is is not by engaging in stop action alright it's by in a sense it's similar to my my my start of investing it's like having very tight per very tight parameters a lot of constraints and not breaking your rules alright it's like the equivalent of like blowing your bank role in poker blackjack or in start up investing would be you have no you've have no real thinking around portfolio constructions you you don't have enough positive constraints so you get over enthused about a ton of things you put out all these bets too quickly and then you lose all your money or you just can't play the game very long because you were never playing the long longevity to begin with and in life like that bank rolls your time and that's non renewable you can always make more money i heard you say something like people who are on twenty four seven or they're just like hustle hustle hustle grind grind grind you you you're like that's actually a dangerous form of laziness yeah just ind disagreement action ind disagreement action was a form of laziness yeah when people are like need to do x and then like first i'm gonna do research or make a long list it's like that's fancy procrastination like yeah shouldn't you just you don't need to list of a one hundred prospects just call one let's start with that yeah yeah and we all have our our our favorite pet forms are procrastination like reading is one of mine right i have to be very cautious about reading love reading and no one's gonna say you should stop reading yeah you're the big oh so diligent doing much homework but so sophisticated you know so sophisticated i wanna ask you about your blake in a second but before we do that teach you said teaching teach me about the art podcasting you would do this for ten years now yeah you've done many high stakes interview whether it's pick your favorite famous person or being a person you admire mh what can you teach me about the first five minutes of a podcast first five minutes it'll be five seconds i don't know yeah the beginning of a podcast yeah i mean the most important five minutes are the conversation that i have before i start recording with someone okay so that would be putting them at ease to the extent possible right my job is to make you look as good as possible every guest is final cut mh so let it all hang out and we can cut whatever you wanna cut you'll get a transcript nothing's gonna get published before you give it the okay put the walls down a little bit yep put the wall down general housekeeping so they don't get distracted like if you take water break bath and break pause stop you wanna start a story over again that's all totally fun i'll keep an eye out for things that i think we might wanna cut like if you accidentally mention your kid's names or something like that so like oh this guy's a done a lot b is actually looking out for me c has actually sat in my c interview e seat a lot and i always ask and like nobody almost nobody asked this it's it's such an easy layout in terms of differentiating yourself asking interview is what what a success be like what would you look at back at this i asked my inter interview this this morning about this i said six months from now you look back and you say i'm so glad i did that why like what does success look like and even if they don't have an answer they're so una custom being asked anything like that they're like and like being a good boyfriend it's like he cares it does not add if he probably the water i doesn't even i could've have got the water myself but the fact that he did he's thinking about me he cares yeah so there i would say that that pre record conversation is something i don't see very often really when i i didn't do it today but yeah i mean and and and sometimes that's fine right it's like i'm comfortable in this environment right and we've had contact before yeah but it's not always going to be the case it could also be the the case that somebody's very experienced but they're rushed right they got like an argument with their husband or wife the night before and their public assist is f and off their meds or whatever and they're just running from thing to thing to thing and then boom they get plop in front of a mic or they get plop in front of a computer and they're like okay go yeah you're talking this guy named tim okay you need to give them an on ramp if you can to decompress a little bit from that experience doesn't always work but it's it's worth the investment in my experience so that's even if i have to give up five ten minutes of the interview right let's just say they have a hard stop at ninety minutes or sixty minutes i will still give up that time so that's that's one in the first five minutes i would say it depends a lot on the the profile of the person and i don't mean fame i mean have they been interviewed a thousand times in a case where someone's been interviewed a thousand times i want to ask them a question that shows i've done an inordinate amount of research right so i'll ask them something that for instance i'll very frequently dig up like a deep cut i've noticed do this yes third grade teacher or a mentor that helped them when they were at one school when they were transitioning from one place to another that got mentioned and passing in a profile in the new yorker eight years ago i'm like who was so and so right tell me about so so and they're like okay and that can get them off of autopilot whether someone's been interviewed a lot or very little i will often ask them beforehand looks there's a lot of prep that goes into it if there are any greatest hits stories a bank what are stories people respond really well to that stick with them that people have brought up with you a year later two years later and they could be an academic ring academic talk to people right just not necessarily tony robbins or edward norton but they're in front of people so they'll they should have probably some examples or anecdotes or studies things that really stick with people okay great and i will then figure out a question or a queue or i might even ask them to suggest one to prompt talking about that and i will lead with that for two reasons first is that i'm starting with something that my audience is likely to resonate with yeah number two i'm giving them a win right it's fast i'm giving them a win upfront and that is helpful oftentimes when someone doesn't know where the conversation is gonna go to that point i always try to tell people where i am likely to start and that's part of the pre conversation i'll say i'm thinking about starting with this right i don't want to cause anyone to stumble out of the gate or for us to get caught on our heels this is probably where i'm gonna start do you think that's a decent place to start and if they're like well i don't know if it's like some random thing i read on the internet that isn't true i wanna know that before we start and if they're like oh yeah that'll work great now i've planted that seed their brains working on that while we're doing the housekeeping while we're talking about everything else and then we start and it's usually pretty smooth at least you know running out of the blocks those be a few things that come to mind for the first five minutes that's a great answer very helpful to me because we usually do the show it's me and sam yeah and it's that's the core of the show is me and sam hanging out mh and our dynamic is very simple it's dude to you seen this is it like a random show like you do the random show we do our it's that's very much like the core of our show and we usually if we have guests on it's because we want them to do that with us yeah but then occasionally there's guests where actually it's us scratching our own niche i want i really wanna meet this person i wanna get to you what they're really like and i wanna ask them the questions that i don't feel like i've heard from them in the same way that like some people say you should write the book you you wish you could just read you wish you could read if somebody else have written you wouldn't write the book that's the way i feel about when i do it interview like this it's like what is the question that i haven't heard in addition to the greatest hits because you'd wanna you know explore those a little bit together as well and it also depends on what you mean by good podcast right there's good for you or me personally and then there's is good for the audience whatever the audience right right depending on the show and i've gone back and forth on that right so sometimes i'll do a show for the audience every once in a while right i'll have a couple of scooby snacks for myself but i'll do something that is is really for the audience that is a risky approach alright it seems safer but it's actually probably risky you can get shaped by your audience and then become a bit of a like domesticated ox getting driven by what you perceive to be the preferences of your audience but i have the henry ford max in mind which is and i'm para here but effectively people don't really know what they want or need includes you and me mh by the way but for that reason rather than playing the speculation game follow your own interest and the the risk there is that you end up playing inside baseball and really doing something that is not necessarily transfer both your audience as far as i'm concerned and maybe i just have the luxury of being in a relatively early mover in podcasting but if your goal is to do this for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of episodes or that's not the goal at but if you're if your goal is to continue to continuing to have this amazing ridiculous job which just absurd like this is a job then you gotta play the long game and part of the long game is right it's like training and recovery so if you need to take a couple episodes as recovery there are purely self interested just for you that's what you do and i don't have any comp about that and the personal is the most universal also so if depends on your audience size of course but with with the size of my audience if something is bothering me if something is really peaking my curiosity if something's in my head at night and just won't go away chances are they're at least i don't know few thousand few tens of thousands of people who have the same thing going on right i heard this great quote for my buddy how much has the world benefited that tim ferris decided not to just keep selling supplements and to do it like to do other things like what would the world have been like had that not happen i think that's it that's great it's a great compliment very huge compliment very kind if you go from selling supplements which makes a lot of money it's like a very clear direct payoff and you could do good at it to being an author that's something not usually a good because it's not usually an upward career move let's say so why'd did you do well there there are a few things i would say so the first is that i didn't end up selling the supplement company until two thousand nine mh so whenever possible i have things running in parallel i do not view myself as a risk taker like if anything i would be producer risk reducer like risk for sure like i'm very good at cap downside risk and in this particular case i already knew that from a from a from an intellectual perspective that sounds to pom but i'm struggling to find a better modi let we me put it a different way my learning curve with the sports nutrition something in the world had flattened largely i i understood the basic mechanics i understood distribution it wasn't that interesting to me and it was also an industry that was and still is marred by a lot of bad behavior right and unbelievable tactics and in some cases just outright deception i mean when legal and illegal that i i really struggled being associated with and if we really flash back and look at what i thought i might end up doing as an adult i always wanted to be a teacher mh in part because i had these amazing teachers that had a huge impact of my life kinda save my life in a bunch of ways so i think i could have gone in a really bad set of directions and they helped prevent that so i thought when i get enough experience in life which is not now at that age twenty nine but eventually it'd be really nice to be a teacher and had that kind of impact so i thought ninth or tenth grade teacher still haven't done that i mean done some volunteer teaching but i had been going back i wanna say since two thousand three to princeton to teach this guest lecture right i was invited to come back and speak i've tried to find these many times by the way they're not on online i wish you an enough yeah they're not a lot i don't think i recorded them might recorded one or two i'm not sure but if i could find them i'd be curious to see them i'm sure i would what kinda out that right like you basically got send your lifestyle yeah the notes from that because every time i spoke goes twice a year ed chow the professor high tech entrepreneurship provide me back because i had the hair brand idea of doing everything bootstrap and all the other guest speakers had these venture backed companies and some of them were huge i was small fries by comparison but i was doing it my way i was taking a different approach so i came back and twice a year a lot happened in my life at that point i mean it was trench warfare of dog years right it's like if you ask anyone who's had the manic depressive experience of being involved with crypto it's like yeah what does last year felt like they're like seventeen years and it's similar i think when you're running a company in their early stages it's like the we two months ago it's like a lifetime it's like obama when he left off went from black gray hair yeah exactly four here i mean look at me right nowhere hair so i would say that that desire to teach and the the positive feedback really positive feedback i got from workshop the lessons and principles and so on in this class led me to conclude a few things number one i really enjoy teaching number two teaching in that format in front of twenty thirty forty students didn't scale now i think scale can be a dirty word and dangerous and overly selective for a lot of folks but it it wasn't going to enable me to reach a lot of people and then i was done from an identity perspective with the supplements so looking for something new and i had an author friend of mine this is a shortened story that could be really long but effectively say you should write a book and start introducing me to agents and nice editors even though i didn't want that right right i was just looking for feedback and suddenly add all these intros and so i was like okay well let me start having these conversations i'd also at that point returned from a year and a half or yeah about a year and a half of this global walk about which i chronic some of in the book right right argentina and this that the other thing i came back and i was like okay what next right i'm not motivated to really go into hyper growth mode with this company this isn't gonna be my thing for ten years twenty years so what next and that coincided with these intros you know the book was eventually accepted and there was an offer made but a lot went into it right twenty some odd twenty six twenty nine rejections from publishers and so on but i knew the material worked right i had the confidence because i'd workshop i with a live crowd which is over and over and over and over again i knew it worked right and i i frankly love experiments that's the way i i model my whole life so i viewed the book as an experiment i was like at the very least it's like an nba it's like alright it's like a a break from whatever i was doing that looks acceptable like resume slash like kinda like career trajectories it's like alright let me try it and it's great mask for unemployed now great i'm writing a book i'm get an nba yeah great mask for an unemployed and and then everything went bananas well you do the podcast that wait too experiment you're were like i'm gonna record i forgot six episodes and like you you you built yourself a golden bridge yeah if you wanted to retreat you're like hey i'm gonna try this i'll do six it's either gonna be a wonderful six episode series or it's gonna be the next thing but like i'm gonna just portion off this experiment versus yeah give yourself a huge commitment yeah give yourself a graceful accent i mean framing it for yourself but also to other people whatever you do as an experiment gives you a graceful it right it's so simple but it's such a psychological it's such a strong form of psychological leverage that i think very few people use right they're like my next thing is this i'm like oh totally mh i felt that before i felt pressure to have an answer yeah i wanna ask you about a different a couple of your like principal core principles that i have found very useful and i want you to unpack them one is the law of category mh can you explain what is the law of category and maybe how you used it sure the log category is is taken directly from a book called the twenty two immutable laws of marketing the law category in brief is a description of the power of creating new categories so rather than trying to be the best in a crowded category trying to be the only in a new category that's where ams light comes in like the the first light imported beer okay there you go or in the us let's just say low cost airlines southwest right and there are million examples that you could find the the law category is also i would say an encapsulation of something that might be called the blue ocean strategy versus the red ocean strategy so there's a book called the the blue ocean strategy i would also recommend that people read in combination with this chapter from the twenty two immutable laws of marketing the loft category i think i put it in either tools of titans or tribe mentors i liked it that much i went to i went through all the brain damage of getting permissions to include it and they those two pair well with an article you can find for free you could read it in fifteen minutes called one thousand t fans by kevin kelly on k k dot org you can find that and they're all driving at the same thing which is positioning and differentiation and trying to figure out how you can be the first something now some sometimes that turns into a bunch of hand wavy smoke and mirrors nonsense like we like we discussed earlier but at least as an exercise it's it's worth considering because for instance one of the questions i was gonna ask you which you can you can answer or and we can just use it as a sample question was when a die fan of your show is talking to someone who does not know the show how would you ideally like them to describe the show right and that is a question of positioning because branding it gets turned into this huge process with float charts and tons of agencies and companies and this and that sure i'm sure there are people are are very sophisticated with their approach but at the end of the day for me brand is what people consistently associate ex with x could x could be the show right how do they describe it right that's it that's your brand i mean just like a brand like where does the term brand come from like brand on cattle right so from that perspective i i i think it's very useful when you're considering doing a new project it's not how can i be the best competing in the same way against people doing the same thing yeah that that is not the frame and even if you end up em other people or borrowing best practices i think it makes sense to start with examining the law of category and thinking about blue ocean approaches which is why for instance with my podcast where now at the tenth anniversary and i don't i don't really see a viable path forward for me that is heavily video focused even though i think they're gonna be some significant taxes to pay for that podcast podcasts have a huge discover ability problem yes and a huge long term serviceability ability problem and youtube offers a solution in the form of what is it the second largest language search engine in the world right and i understand why it makes sense for a lot of people to harness that as one engine for growth makes a lot of sense but it's crowded it's really crowded by anyone's definition it would be a red ocean and it's definitely gonna get red and for that reason maybe i make the decision in six months you know what fuck it i'm gonna go whole hog let's see what happens right right but i don't have i don't have a really high degree of enthusiasm for that right now and enthusiasm is important right i'm which means i'm not gonna have the endurance compared to someone like chris right right williamson and people are like who is this chris and and furthermore i feel life the threads of life pulling me in other directions so doing it half fast would be the worst thing i could do like doing it six out of ten would consume resources and not be particularly effective right so i'm trying to decide if i wanna take a barbell approach with podcasting on some level which i've experimented with explain that what's the barbell approach all barbell approach could be applied i mean this is a a term i'm borrowing i don't know if he originated it from todd yeah nothing tall lab when he talks about investing brian like super risky stuff and then really boring let's just say fixed income s and p five hundred or something right like super boring stuff and really risky stuff where you have a cap downside but potentially huge upside in his set of games would probably some type of like black swan option right position and then nothing in between that's it right and you could apply that to exercise you could apply that to many different things as i'm applying it i would say within in the format of podcasting you would have no video whatsoever that would be on one end of the spectrum and i've done that i've experimented with walk talks where i a headset on and i recording with someone and we were talking and getting exercise and great i feel better so not sitting down for three or four hours or whatever the the amount of time might be and i love it i love doing it so i think that there's a possibility doing that with a lot of enthusiasm and joy and curiosity i might be able to make up for the lack of video with those elements and i would probably do higher frequency also right because of that and then on the opposite and the spectrum i might actually for instance tomorrow like we'll have a nice video set up tomorrow and i have effectively a studio it's no wrap around immersive av avatar led screen but it is it's a nice studio set it's what used to be considered really nice it's what you still yeah i saw very crazy yeah yeah it's i wouldn't call it cinematic but it's high quality video right and probably shy away from stuff in between and we'll see other if this barbell principle applies to so much right investing you're talking about it with project how i could approach a project mh we mean and ben have been talking a lot about how we do this with our network i was like man we're meaning so many people but like death by but death by a thousand zoom calls like i just i'm not gonna do it yeah so what am i gonna not talk to these people like no and so we decided this a barbell approach like a bunch of random texts well there's no obligation for either side to reply replies just like hey thinking about you or hey check this out that's it quick text spend a half day or full day together i'm i'll fly to you let's have a good time and we started doing this and oh my god it's like yeah i feel like i've cracked the cheat code of the relationship building that that that was otherwise felt very draining and overwhelming yeah the the barbell approach can be applied to a lot i apply it all over the place and another example would be say speaking engagements where i very rarely be speaking engagements but it's either free where i would maybe even pay to be in front of the audience right because the event in the audience is so interesting could also be a thing or ultra premium ultra premium high high watermark like what whatever company organization paid me the most have i've ever been paid right that's my new minimum right like whoever is gonna meet or exceed that right that's it and i will do probably two to six engagements a year that's it you you did this early on i remember you had like your blog or i think was is blog days and you did you were like everything's free i'm gonna give everything away for free i'm not gonna be kind of online course sling like the most people who once to get a little bit of volume it's like hey would you like half a million bucks would you like a million dollars you could just sell this course and then you you're like i'm either gonna be all free or i'm gonna be ultra payment i remember you did this like was called the opening the the yeah open the it's like a ten thousand dollar thing but like a lot of us were happy you'd be happy to pay that because it's like oh man i've gotten so much free value and i have the means and you're like cool i only need a small number of people which might make it a more enjoyable event for me was that the kind of calculus there yeah it's free it's free or ultra premium generally i mean that's how i try to approach things also because ultra premium gives you a lot more margin for error so you can afford to experiment right so it's it's a virtuous set of conditions that you can set in the beginning and it also poses a creative problem that i enjoy like setting the price i set the price before i figured out the content right the i was saying alright let me figure out the price and then i wanna figure out and it was it was it wasn't just ten thousand it was like ten thousand if you apply and or accepted in the first like six hours or something and then it got more expensive gotcha so then it went to like twelve fifty then it went to fifteen thousand and then my creative challenge was okay how do i make this event so two or three day event and i was done more than a decade ago it was a long time ago i've only done that one event as far as paid events goes right and was how do i make this event worth that amount of money like how do exceed the cost of this event in the first two hours of the event and then the rest is just gravy powerful question that's is a great question yeah and that was that was the challenge and part of the answer was i'm gonna give people my actual book proposals for the first two books that lay out everything like the marketing plans all the nitty gritty the sales pitch and all sorts of details because people were there for i guess what we would call now content marketing right right they wanted to know how to launch books they wanted to know how i had launched these books i like okay let me just skip the kip skip the conceptual overlay i'm just gonna show you exactly what i did open the out boom opening in the corona and and then i did i did an exercise this was also to answer that question it's very simple where we had something like a hundred and twenty people i mean we had tons of people apply and we were trying to vet for assholes to omit them right so we had questions that were bare traps for what well we wanted to make sure i have an audience i have a very enthusiastic audience and the last thing i would want is someone to take out a second mortgage or max out their credit cards to come to some event right so first off it was like wire transfers only we're not accepting credit cards right and i i had but it's gonna sound weird but like a warning slash lecture in text which just like i do not want you to go into debt for this right this has to represent a i camera remember what the percentage was but like no more than x percent of your current savings right excluding your retirement accounts and you give a stern talking to yeah and so i had i had a couple of questions about finances right because i really didn't want to have the guilt on my conscience of knowing that somebody after the fact you knowing after the fact that somebody went into the red or put themselves into really compromise position to come to this event and i do have fans who would do that i'm remember one guy in response to one of the finance questions he said well i appreciate you being my financial nanny but if you wanna and if you wanna come onto the tara act to look at my jet when i come you're welcome to and i was like and you're out yeah thanks for that you have done exact the financial qualifier yeah i was you failed the second test i was like you you fell into the exact bear trap that i was setting for you thank you for disqualify yourself we do not need you in a small then annie is good though i like that no a good service we can have help people so clever our financial annie dot com so we had it was something like hunt let's call it a hundred people we had a hundred people in the room and there was an attendee book with very short bios maybe not even bios and there were bios for everybody and we had every single person stand up in the room and i was this is gonna take a little time billing bear with me folks i think this could be interesting and i'd never done this before i didn't know how i was gonna turn out i said everybody's gonna stand up they're gonna say their name they're gonna have a brag which is give them permission yeah like don't give me some fluffy bullshit humble thing right right this is not the time of the place don't be like yeah red books sometimes and it's like a ten times times best like other like don't pull that stuff get up brag i'm giving you permission i'm actually giving a requirement then you have an ask make an ask of the audience and then you have a give so it's like something that you're really good at or could be anything so get and it's like a brag and ask a gift and i was like everyone else is active this whole time you are listening and you're writing this stuff down if somebody hasn't ask that you can help with write their name down and if there's is a gift that you want to discuss with someone write their name down and just doing those few things the proposals and then everybody standing up and like by the end of that day were like okay this is already ten right what i spent this is amazing and then it was just gravy from there yeah i think the easy thing to gloss over and that's it's like cool it's like cool story obviously but the takeaway for me and for anybody listening is that that question of or the technique first i'm just at the price then i will ask myself how i can over deliver on that value or deliver in the first two hours where that was a no brainer transaction for them to do mh that question led you to a such a different result than if you had just said what event should i do yeah average question mh common question and i feel like you have a lot of these powerful questions and you've said something that questions are like a pickaxe for the brain yep it's how you dig the gold out of the brain and and i love that metaphor i've i'm a collector of questions i got a swipe file of like a hundred questions mostly not people think the to interview questions no these are questions that i need to ask myself yeah to get my brain to i ask a better question get a better answer mh one of my other favorites of yours is what would this look like if it was easy mh used it today for this interview was like oh great i gotta do red interview today alright oh man this can be difficult there's so much content well this look like if it was easy and so what was your answer what would it look like this was easy is me being genuinely enthusiastic and excited to me too you feeling that for me and you walking out of here being like oh i actually i had an interesting conversation he didn't just ask me ten questions but maybe sean said two or three interesting things that got me got me like because i know like what does tim want out of a out of an experience if he learns something it's probably a good experience yeah or if he heard one or two provocative things that he might think about later mh that's like a a useful use of an hour for you and so i thought well i'm good at that so let me just like not withhold those mh which would be common in a podcast where i'm only gonna ask you questions mh be myself to make sure that you're at the the time but in this case given that you have a platform you been so vocal in the past i thought maybe i'll let myself do that because i think if i give tim one or two nuggets that are interesting mh he'll walk out here feeling like it's a great experience yeah totally so what other what what other questions do you have on that list that you use a lot that maybe i haven't heard oh okay i'd give you a couple of them am i leaning in to my absolute strengths and unfair advantage as much as i could be and what this really is is i call it the theoretical max i had a friend who had an app one time and his developer or his product managers were saying like oh the the response rate on our push notifications is like ten percent and he's like guys if we just got that to fifteen percent then like the rest of our funnel looks great and they're like we we tried a bunch of baby test didn't work he goes go in there right now and just right write your uber is arriving and this app was not uber and they sent it out and like fifty percent of people okay he goes that's now the theoretical max don't ever do that again but like don't give me the bs that like because before that they were like people don't have them on people just got people are too numb there's too many apps too many notifications had all kinds of stories yeah yeah and he's like actually let me just torch that bs real quick and so the theoretical max question is basically we am i leaning in to my superpower or my unfair advantage mh to its theoretical max and so like i'd ask you that like what is your unfair advantage i asked that question of myself a lot i try to edge into it a few different ways i'll ask friends of mine when have you see me at my best that's one or what do you see me do that is easier for me than for other people right i think my unfair advantage is at this point i have a lot just in terms of audience and platform and so on but if we're talking about just what i can take with me right what i can walk out of here with i would say it is an ability to ask unusual questions also ask the dumb questions when i'm trying to learn something from someone from a book from a video it doesn't matter i'm always asking these questions these various questions and then i can take whatever i learn and i suppose like i try to d this but i consider myself a fast learner at this point and if i can get to point x in six months which is gonna be usually pretty pretty good sometimes super impressive sometimes not depends on thing but overall on average i'm gonna learn things very quickly right because i a method at this point i can if it takes me six months to get to point x i can get almost anyone to that same point in three months or less mh because i realize i i i also had so many false starts and i tried so many things it didn't quite work i tried a lot of things that were common that turns out should be removed from lowering process entirely i'd say those those are what come to mind yeah my first reaction i myself if i was tim ferris what i say i think my first reaction would be i can get first it was i can get any guest on my podcast really that i want i mean every guest is within reach mh and said well that doesn't really need to be about the podcast necessarily yeah anybody i wanna talk to is within reach yeah that's interesting that's that's not true for most people and even if you are booking tons of gas or you're meeting cool people like you probably aren't at the theoretical max you're not at the your uber is arriving level of like leaning into that super your your reason your mom is dead to message theoretical max exactly so but then even further is not only can you get in touch with them okay that's easy but like you can go in and you can get people to open up the kona because your reputation is i'm tim ferris i learned things i've interview people i d the things that they're great at i ask them questions people will come to you in an interview ready to open up the command totally that's interesting another interesting thing is like you you said that you went to go visit the game designer in europe for three days that's cool that's kinda like throwing your rate around into your your unfair advantages like you could probably pick up the phone and if somebody is the best game designer in the world you they would be honored to say that tim ferris wants to come and learn my stuff for me fantastic please i'll i'll block i'll block out three days yeah that's cool and how many more times could do that so i would start to to have a little bit of a brainstorm around that there's another question i find really really valuable and that is what is what is the silly story i'm telling myself mh and it immediately puts you on the defensive because you're like why would i tell myself a silly story mh but we all are constantly telling yourself silly stories why we can't do this why that's gonna be hard why why that's not gonna work for me why that would take forever why this person is not responding to my thing it's because of abc the no actually it's probably not right mh and so identifying the silly stories it's like i'm a harry potter i don't know if you read harry potter but like there's the care the bog the the thing that will present itself as the thing you fear mh and the way to get rid of it is the the spell is ridiculous you make it you basically if you're your scared spiders you put the spider around skate and then they can't walk and then it's actually becomes funny instead of scary the same thing can be done with what are the silly stories in as soon as you start to point them out it's typically things that you've made real but when you when you sit down and you inter that that story turns out it was just as fictional as like a easily replaceable story that might be might be better for you and so yeah that's one that i ask quite often because it's the one that i hate it's the question that i hate that like you know that's a that's the one i need yeah yeah i suppose this so i could choose one question the only question i could ask it'd probably be some version of that yeah what do you have a in mind what it would be or no no i mean we're just we're constantly i mean the my favorite answer to the question that i ask most guests at some point what would you put on the billboard favorite aircraft i've ever had was from a hospice care physician named bj miller who's helped thousands of people to die and help them to die help them shouldn't yeah he didn't utilize them but he's mid wiping them through the transition to death if they have terminal cancer or something like that and his answer he actually confessed to me got from a bumper sticker or somewhere but the the his answer was don't believe everything you think that's it don't believe everything that you think and you know having some method for cross examining those beliefs right these thoughts we take to be true is is really really critical so that's a good one yeah i like that i wanna leave with one thing which is neville your friends with naval he's a fascinating guy to me never about a person only chatted it online and what whatnot really respect the guy i really admire a lot of things about him do you have any stories about naval anything that you noticed early on or moment what you observed kind of like the wisdom or the the the sort of the insightful that that he has l one of my fair people he's he's he's very very smart and hilarious and does not suffer fools gladly at all which i like you don't have to guess what n involves is thinking you which i i deeply appreciate and the first thing i came to mind is probably not the kind of example that you would expect but it's actually the first time i met naval all it's the first time i meant i went into a coffee shop in the mission in san francisco and i ordered her coffee and i'm waiting at the counter and there's this very attractive girl standing next to me and she's very friendly and smiles and i start talking to her and i'm kinda chatting her up you know hitting on her hoping her ask her for a number and take her out and boo who knows you know maybe dinner or maybe drink who who knows and then i seen a ball walk up with this huge girl on his face and he's like i see you met my girlfriend i was like oh yeah and he's like neville and he just had this huge g on his face was just sign wow what a good winner to address like totally calm and then we we then we started talking and like and we hit it off and that was probably god knows when that was i don't know two thousand and eight or something you're like man crush actually move out of the way yeah facebook this paul yeah and and and that was it i i i i just i admire and involve for his ability to speak truth and ask on uncomfortable questions and doesn't go out of his way to be rude but he's he's he's i think less inclined he is less inclined to the type of people pleasing that i'd say many people are predisposed to myself included like they're definitely times when them maybe too polite or tell white lies to make people feel good or what like normal human right social lu duplication right nothing major but it's like if you know if my girlfriend's put on a few pounds she's like do i look i'm like no right you know like i'm not gonna say yeah you look really fat not to say that naval nevada would say that but he's he's directing in a way that cuts through the noise and is very refreshing to me have you been able to pick up or learn anything from them in in terms of whether it's you know tactical stuff on the investing side or tons of stuff on the investing side i mean i think the site was way back in the day venture hex yeah that he and n c authored and i mean that was basically the kind of wikipedia bible of angel investing and advising for for end inside ga on venture capital i mean naval is jedi level when it comes to early station vest very technical he just ends up in every deal you would ever want to be and it's it's like you know the sort of you know pinky in the brain meets like forced gum meets you know sid hard he like how is he in every cap table right he's he's incredibly skilled as an angel investor yeah we don't even have enough time in be hours and hours and hours of of conversation to even begin to describe what i've learned from him there and he's very curious he's very interested and it's not at all limited to business so if it's you know david d or other thinkers he introduces me to a lot of a ec thinkers from different disciplines and his his exploration is certainly not limited as it is with a lot of people to say the sport of business or finance or investing a lot of people are one trick pony that way he is not a one trick pony so i i admire that as well i have a funny all story which is i have a buddy who was doing some like when facebook launched its platform my buddy made a app and i was like i of the silly app i on from her back then it was like people throw on sheep at each other and stuff that he's doing one of the like silly apps but it was clear that oh facebook platform that's like an opportunity and so smart silicon valley people were interested my friend sitting in georgia and naval falls is in san francisco and he gets a email for from naval basically he's gonna found the contact us page or whatever and was like hey i'd love to meet with you sometime time you know talk about your app venture capitalist here in in san francisco friend doesn't know who it all is doesn't know what venture capital is but it's like okay sounds interesting he's like oh you know like sure i mean i'm open to that next email is a plane ticket like here's a plane ticket goes out tomorrow so friends like okay girl and gets on a plane flies out here and meets the ball meets him in his office neville nevada asked him me he's like you ask me questions for like thirty minutes and he's like i had no idea what the pot what the right answer should have been but i'm saying whatever's is this my honest to answers i've always was like hold on goes into the other room comes back has printed out like a term sheet and says like here you know i'll give you whatever half million something or whatever it is like some amount of money for you know some percentage of your company and my friend who's like twenty three or something like that it's just like i don't know who this ending guy i don't know what deal i don't know any of the words on this page i my app is stupid i don't know why he wants to invest in it i don't really understand this so he's like i just don't feel comfortable right now and he's like and neville all at the time was like you know he's very he's like i think facebook is gonna be you know huge i think it's gonna be the platform where you do lots of things you're not just gonna talk to friends on there you're gonna be able to see that's my thesis that's why i wanna invest in this because my friend was like honestly this is kind of a stupid idea why you but this is not a business and so you gave them that that pitch my friend was like wow that sounds awesome i didn't realize all that i had stumbled into this gold mine potentially so he's like listen man i just i don't understand but this thing is i just need to think about and they're i'll no problem and so he's like i go and then by the way that same week he meets keith boy mac left and a bunch of other people who are also given him the same pitch but in different flavors like keith boy was like you should come work for us he's like i don't want a job he's like see all these people out there old programmers they're gonna put you out of business like you know tomorrow and he was like this is a stupid app it's not a business to do it waste your time gonna put me out a business that isn't i live on my mom's bedroom like what are you talking about and so then i he said he goes you know the great thing about naval nevada though is that he's like like fifteen years later now my friends very a very successful tech entrepreneur he's like i actually dug up that old term sheet he's like it was so fair he's like he could an advantage of me and i didn't know anything and he's like it was incredibly found a friendly fair and he's like that told me a lot about naval that at that time when a lot of people were in the he moment about this kinda gold rush in that facebook app days and i was clearly a novice he he he offered with very high integrity i thought that that said a lot about him yeah that matches in my experience i've always seen that yeah for sure right on well tim thanks for doing this man i really i really appreciate yeah my pleasure man thanks for taking the time here yeah i feel like i could rule where to i know i could be what i want to from at all in it like a days off on a road less travel never looking back