#170: Shay Carl — From Manual Laborer to 2.3 Billion YouTube Views

Shay Carl (@shaycarl https://twitter.com/shaycarl) got his first computer at age 27. He was a manual laborer for ages and uploaded his first YouTube video while on break from a granite counter top job. Flash forward to today: His SHAYTARDS channel now has roughly 2.3 BILLION views. Celebs like Steven Spielberg have appeared alongside Shay and his family. He co-founded Maker Studios, which sold to Disney for nearly $1 billion. He has been married 13 years and has 5 kids. He has lost more than 100 pounds since his overweight peak. Shay came to San Francisco to spend 2 days with me, we did a bunch of weird shit together (a lot of firsts for Shay), and we covered a ton, including: The most important decisions and inflection points in his life Tools of the trade and tips for creating on YouTube Favorite books, quotes, etc. that he lives by Stories he's never shared anywhere before And much, much more Enjoy! Show notes and links for this episode can be found at www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. This podcast is brought to you by Wealthfront https://wealthfront.com/tim. Wealthfront is a massively disruptive (in a good way) set-it-and-forget-it investing service led by technologists from places like Apple. It has exploded in popularity in the last two years and now has more than $2.5B under management. Why? Because you can get services previously limited to the ultra-wealthy and only pay pennies on the dollar for them, and it's all through smarter software instead of retail locations and bloated sales teams. Check out wealthfront.com/tim http://wealthfront.com/tim, take their risk assessment quiz, which only takes 2-5 minutes, and they'll show you -- for free -- exactly the portfolio they'd put you in. If you want to just take their advice and do it yourself, you can. Well worth a few minutes to explore: wealthfront.com/tim http://wealthfront.com/tim This podcast is also brought to you by Born Fitness Coaching http://bornfitness.com/tim. Born Fitness Coaching offers concierge coaching, a 3:1 coach-to-client model that is customized to your needs, goals, and preferences. That means you receive unlimited interaction and coaching with one certified coach for diet, one for fitness and one to keep track of all the rest (lifestyle, accountability and consistency.) Born Fitness Coaching http://bornfitness.com/tim is offering a special coaching experience based on the principles of The 4-Hour Body. You guys have asked me for this, and this is why I partnered with them for this offer. There are only 100 spots available because I insisted that quality never drops. Each Tim Ferriss Show listener receives $100 off per month. For full details, please visit BornFitness.com/tim http://bornfitness.com/tim.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Speaker 02

  No, we're just seeing appropriate timing.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 0:23Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront, and this is a very unique sponsor. Wealthfront is a massively disruptive, in a good way, set it and forget it investing service, led by technologists from places like Apple and world famous investors. It has exploded in popularity in the last two years, and they now have more than $2.5 billion under management. In fact, some of my very good friends, investors in Silicon Valley, have millions of their own money in Wealthfront. So the question is, why? Why is it so popular? Why is it unique? Because you can get services previously reserved for the ultra wealthy, but only pay pennies on the dollar for them. And this is because they use smarter software instead of retail locations, bloated sales teams, etc. And I'll come back to that in a second. I suggest you check out wealthfront.com/tim.

• 1:08Tim Ferriss?

  Take the risk assessment quiz, which only takes two to five minutes, and they'll show you for free exactly the portfolio they'd put you in. And if you just want to take their advice, run with it, do it yourself, you can do that. Or, as I would, you can set it and forget it. And here's why. The value of Wealthfront is in the automation of habits and strategies that investors should be using on a regular basis but normally aren't. Great investing is a marathon, not a sprint, and little things that you may or may not be familiar with, like automatic tax loss harvesting, rebalancing your portfolio across more than 10 asset classes, and dividend reinvestment add up to very large amounts of money over longer periods of time. Wealthfront, as I mentioned, since it's using software instead of retail locations, etc.,

• 1:50Tim Ferriss?

  can offer all of this at low costs that were previously completely impossible. Right off the bat, you never pay commissions or account fees. For everything, they charge 0.25% per year on assets above the first 15,000, which is managed for free if you use my link, wealthfront.com/tim. That is less than $5 a month to invest a $30,000. Account, for instance. Now, normally, when I have a sponsor on the show, it's because I use them and recommend them. In this case, it's a little different. I don't use Wealthfront yet because I'm not allowed to. Here's the deal. They wanted to sponsor this podcast, but because of SEC regulations, companies that invest your money are not allowed to use client testimonials. So I couldn't be a user and have them on the podcast.

• 2:32Tim Ferriss?

  But I've been so impressed by Wealthfront that I've invested a significant amount of my own money, at least for me, in the team and the company itself. So I am an investor and hope to soon use it as a client. Now, back to the recommendation. As a Tim Ferriss Show listener, you'll get $15,000 managed for free if you decide to open an account. But just start with seeing the portfolio that they would suggest for you. Take two minutes, fill out their questionnaire at wealthfront.com/tim. It's fast, it's free. There's no downside that I can think of. Just take a look, see what portfolio they would create for you, and you can use that information however you want. wealthfront.com/tim.

• 3:11Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Born Fitness Coaching. Born Fitness Coaching offers concierge coaching, a three-to-one coached client model. In other words, each client receives unlimited messaging and interaction on a private app with three coaches to ensure they don't fail on three things. One certified coach for diet, one certified coach for fitness, and one coach to keep track of all of the rest: lifestyle, accountability, and consistency. Each plan is customized to you, adjusting to your preferences and needs based on, for instance, food, budget, equipment available, experience, and time that you have. Clients that follow Born Fitness programs for six months have a 95% success rate.

• 3:52Tim Ferriss?

  And for Tim Ferriss Show listeners, Born Fitness Coaching has created a custom coaching experience based on the principles of the four hour body. You guys have asked me for this, and that is part of the reason that I collaborated with them. This includes personalized diet plans using slow carb diet principles, if that is what you want, and training plans that emphasize, and you pick strength, absolute strength, relative strength, muscle gain, or fat loss. So pick your goal, and then you have a team of three to guide you. There are only 100 spots available because I insisted that quality not drop at all. So it is restricted to 100 spots and each Tim Ferriss Show listener receives $100 off per month.

• 4:31Tim Ferriss?

  For full details, please visit Born Fitness, that's B-O-R-N fitness.com/tim. Again, that's BornFitness.com/tim. Hello, boys and girls, ladies and land of the bars. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers, to tease out their routines, habits, favorite books, quotes they live by, etc., from these folks so that you can test them, implement them in your own life. In this episode, we have Shay Carl, @shaycarl on the Twitter, that's S-H-A-Y-C-A-R-L, who got his first computer at age 27.

• 5:12Tim Ferriss?

  He was a manual laborer for ages and uploaded his first YouTube video while on break from a granite countertop job. Now, let's flash forward to today. His Shaytards YouTube channel now has roughly 2.3 billion views with a B. Celebs like Steven Spielberg have appeared alongside Shay and his family. He has five kids and has been married for, I believe, 13 years. He co-founded Maker Studios, which sold to Disney for nearly $1 billion. And he's also lost more than 100 pounds since his peak of being overweight. And we dig into all of this. Shay came to San Francisco to spend two days with me. We did a bunch of weird stuff together, a lot of firsts for Shay, Russian bathhouse, acro yoga, etc., and we covered a ton.

• 5:55Tim Ferriss?

  We actually broke this up into a couple of segments. We covered, not limited to the following, but including the following: the most important decisions and inflection points in his life, tools of the trade and tips for creating on YouTube, gear as well, favorite books, quotes, etc. that he lives by, stories he's never shared anywhere else before, and much more. So I hope you enjoy this conversation with yours truly and Shay Carl. And just one last caveat, we do get into some religion in this one, and I'm not a particularly religious person, but I've had staunch atheist-

• 6:30Tim Ferriss?

  atheists on this podcast. I find their reasons and reasoning very interesting. And we have had a number of religious people on the podcast, including Shay, and I find the discussion equally interesting. So develop your empathy if you're allergic to that type of thing. And try to listen to this tutorial and take as much as you can possible from it. And with that said, please enjoy.

• 6:55Tim Ferriss?

  Shay, welcome to the show.

• 6:56Speaker 00

  Wow, I'm here. Thank you, Tim.

• 6:58Tim Ferriss?

  It's so great to have you here. And I don't know the best way to introduce you. So I'm just going to read off a couple of bullets because I think your story is so fascinating. All right. So here we go. Bought your first computer in 2007, Dell laptop, when you were 27 years old. Found YouTube while on Blake, on Blake. That's going back to my Japanese roots. It actually does happen when I'm tired. I used to live there. So chill out, people. While on break at my manual labor, that's your manual labor granite countertop job. And you, you've noticed a lot of things about my, my kitchen and house since you've gotten here. So your, your attention to detail, something we'll touch on.

• 7:32Speaker 00

  I bet I'm the only one who got underneath your kitchen countertops and was looking at how they mounted the sink.

• 7:37Tim Ferriss?

  You are the only, the one and only. You also noticed the, the handrails. Then you posted your very first video on YouTube, August 16th, 2007. That was a big year for me too. Got your first check from YouTube four months later for 300 bucks. Now I'm going to just going to flash forward here. As of this moment, the Shaytards YouTube channel has 4.2 million subscribers that have been watched a combined 2.3 billion times. And you're also one of the dozen co-founders of Maker Studios, which sold to Walt Disney Corp for 1 billion?

• 8:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think they settled on 650 million towards the end, but we can call it 1 billion.

• 8:12Tim Ferriss?

  Lots of commas, lots of commas.

• 8:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:14Tim Ferriss?

  Regardless, and what a story, man. I am thrilled to have you here. We met, I guess, first connected on the internets on Twitter.

• 8:24Tim Ferriss?

  And met in person unexpectedly for the first time at the White House.

• 8:29Speaker 00

  That was weird.

• 8:30Tim Ferriss?

  That was weird.

• 8:30Speaker 00

  Well, we met at a Starbucks is the first place we met.

• 8:33Tim Ferriss?

  That's right, on route.

• 8:34Speaker 00

  Well, the first way I found out about your podcast is through Joe Rogan. He, I've been a fan of his. I watched Fear Factor, love Joe Rogan. But because my brother is, he has a hunting channel on YouTube called Hush, uh, Huntin' Fish. Um, so Joe Rogan is big into hunting and because of that, I started listening to the Joe Rogan podcast, or I think I followed him. And then he tweeted the Jaco podcast. He's like, you gotta check out this Jaco Willak podcast on the Tim Ferriss thing or whatever. I'm like, who's Tim Ferriss? I had heard about the four hour work week because I had a guy that was in church growing up, growing or just like right when I came home from my mission that talked about your book. But I'm like, let me check out this podcast. So I wa, or I listened to the Jaco podcast and was like amazed, not only by him,

• 9:19Speaker 00

  but by you and the, you know, the people that you've had on your podcast. And so we were talking, DMing through Twitter about, you know, being on the podcast. And I was like, no way, because you asked me to be on your podcast. And then you had Jamie Foxx, Kevin Costner, like, I'm like, how am I gonna be on this podcast? And so finally we linked up and you're like, okay, let's set a date. And then like the next day I got invited to go to the White House to meet with Joe Biden. And then we were meeting with everybody who was going to meet and I walk in and it was like such a weird thing because I had just been thinking about you. I'm like, I think that's Tim Ferriss right there. That's, that's Tim, he's walking over here. Hey, Tim Ferriss, does he know me? And it was weird. It was weird to see you after having just communicated about being on the podcast.

• 10:03Speaker 00

  So I think all things happen for a reason, but that's a cool first place to meet is the White House.

• 10:07Tim Ferriss?

  No, it is. It is, uh, yeah, our first date was at the White House.

• 10:11Speaker 00

  Now, in fact, one of my coolest Instagram videos ever is you in it when we were about to walk out on the stage with Joe Biden. And I had just luckily pulled out my camera right as the guys like, "And the Vice President of the United States of America." And Joe Biden had asked us to walk out on stage with him against the wishes of the Secret Service. Do you remember that moment?

• 10:32Tim Ferriss?

  I do remember.

• 10:33Speaker 00

  When Joe Biden's like, "I want the..." People to come, come with me, is that cool? And they're like, well, actually, sir, you have to meet. He's like, that's not what I asked. And they're like, yes, sir, you can do whatever you want. You're the vice president. So he invited us to walk out on stage with him. And I lucked out and hit record on the Instagram video right as they're announcing the vice president of the United States of America. And then we go walking out with him. And you're in that Instagram video. Has like 200,000 views on it. So that's a very monumental Instagram video for me to have been announced by the president. And then we walked out together.

• 11:04Tim Ferriss?

  So you've seemed to have lived many lives in one. And I'd like to start at the very, very beginning. If you can talk about it. Shay Carl, what's the story behind your name?

• 11:17Speaker 00

  So my name is my name. I am Shay Carl Butler. That's my full name. My dad's name is Carl Scott Butler. And when I very first found the internet, the very first interaction I had on the internet was to get a Hotmail email account. And for some reason, I think it's because of college. When you, when I went to ISU, Idaho State University in southeastern Idaho, go Bengals. You had to like have a student login, right? And it was like your first letter of your first name. And then like the last four letters of your last name. So I always kind of figured that's how you had to name yourself on the internet is just like your name. So I'm like, I'll just call myself Shay Carl. That's my first and middle name. And I just kind of push them together. Shay Carl at Hotmail. Do not email me.

• 12:01Speaker 00

  I do not check that email anymore. And that was my very first account. Shay Carl at Hotmail.com. So when I started my YouTube channel, I thought, well, I don't know what a good username is. Maybe I'll just use my email name. You know, Shay Carl, that's my name. Why not? So that was my very first, you know, moniker on the internet was youtube.com/shaycarl. And that's my very first YouTube channel that I started in 2007 on a little $500 Dell laptop that I bought at 27 because I figured I'm an adult now. I should get a computer and do adult things. And so, yeah, it was, you know, not, and I say this too about Shaytards, the main channel that we have. It wasn't my best marketing decision.

• 12:45Speaker 00

  It was all kind of like discovery as it happened, right? I didn't think like, oh, I'm going to have 4.3 million subscribers one day. What's a good name to have? I just thought, I want to make a video. I have some things to say. So, yeah, Shay Carl is, that's my first and middle name.

• 12:59Tim Ferriss?

  It's funny with these first forays into digital worlds, or really any type of business world, even though you might not recognize it as such at the time, is the implications of those first handles. So I remember hearing, and I don't know if this is the handle any longer, but Travis Kalanick, co-founder of Uber, when he got on Twitter, like, a lot of people were like, "Ah, this Twitter thing, whatever, like, I'll just make up a username." So it was T-Bone Kona, I think it was his username. And for years and years and years, he had to stick with it, or he chose to stick with it. I think it's changed since. But if we go back to your childhood, you were raised Mormon, is that correct?

• 13:39Speaker 00

  Correct. Yeah. So my grandfather, Colonel Eugene Haynes Butler, he was in the United States Air Force, told us many stories about Vietnam and napalm and the power of that gas. He was born just Christian and was kind of searching for something and was in Germany, stationed in Germany, I can't remember what year, but ended up finding some Mormon missionaries there. The name of the church is officially the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But the nickname Mormons comes from the Book of Mormon, which, thanks to Trey and Matt,

• 14:19Speaker 00

  have popularized that book quite a bit. If you've heard about the play on Broadway, The Book of Mormon. So, you know, that's kind of like a nickname, the Mormons. But yeah, I was raised because my grandpa was baptized in Germany and started practicing, and then he raised his family, my dad, specifically in the church. And then I was as well. I was born in Logan, Utah, 1980, March 5, 1980, Pisces, as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In fact, I was born in the hospital that was 50 feet across the street from the Mormon temple, the Logan, Utah temple. And yeah, kind of was raised in that, going to scouts, going to church. You know, we weren't super, you know, like,

• 15:03Speaker 00

  mom and dad, if there was like a playoff game, if the Jazz were playing, we might miss, you know? But we definitely went. And I don't...

• 15:13Speaker 00

  You know, it's so hard in hindsight to think about your childhood because you have such a skewed perspective of it and it's weird to look back on it later. But I felt like my parents weren't super passionate about it. They were, they knew it was right and I feel like they felt an obligation as parents to do what was right for your kids and that was to go to church. And in many ways, I'm very grateful because there was so much that I learned. You know, Ron Campbell, for instance, was my young men's president, like from the age of like 12 to 16 in the Mormon church, you're, you know, you're in this thing called young men's. And he was like a pillar of like who I wanted to become in life. Like there are men like that that I have met through the Mormon church that I have been like, I want to be like that guy.

• 15:58Tim Ferriss?

  12 to 16 is a really important period.

• 16:00Speaker 00

  Very much so.

• 16:01Tim Ferriss?

  So what, could you explain the, the organization first of all?

• 16:05Speaker 00

  Well, it's all, okay, so like in the church, um, you know, we believe that you can receive the power of God, which is called the priesthood. And, you know, it might be from any, you know, church that you, you go, you kind of, you know, you reach certain levels. So at 12 years old, you receive the ironic priesthood. And when you receive that, then you can do things like service. The priesthood of God, we believe is only for the service of men, so.

• 16:28Tim Ferriss?

  The ironic priesthood?

• 16:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's like the priesthood of Aaron from the Old Testament.

• 16:32Tim Ferriss?

  I think, yeah, I was misspelling it incorrectly in my head.

• 16:35Speaker 00

  It's not ironic.

• 16:36Tim Ferriss?

  No, no, no.

• 16:37Speaker 00

  Um, yeah, the priesthood of Aaron, the ironic priesthood. But, um, at that early age, you start, you do serve the sacrament, like the bread and water to remember Christ and his body and his sacrifice. And then, you know, there's specific things that it says that you can do, which is like to bless the sick. And basically it's an organization, you know, I can't go through all like the, you know, the setup of it. But, you know, every Sunday we have church and, and there's three hours. Mormon church is three hours. The first hour is what's, what is called the sacrament meeting where all the congregation meets together. And the main purpose of that meeting is to remember Christ, to have the bread, have the water. And there's no paid ministry in the church. Everybody's volunteer. So the bishop of the

• 17:22Speaker 00

  Or what you might know as like the priest or the whatever, the guy who's up at the pulpit in charge, he's a volunteer. He might be a dentist or an accountant or whatever. And he has a calling to serve in the bishopric for anywhere from three to five years. And then he's released and then he becomes a regular member of the church. So there's different teachers and for the 12 to 16 year olds, you know, there's what's called, you know, we call it young men's president. And we had a guy named Ron Campbell, who was our, like, he was an older man who had a business. And for one hour, the, the young men would meet with him and we'd have lessons.

• 17:59Tim Ferriss?

  One hour per week?

• 18:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, every Sunday. And then there was also a thing called mutual, which is like on Tuesday nights, we would meet at seven o'clock and do different activities. A lot of times we'd just play basketball at the church, which was our favorite activity. But it was all very interrelated to scouts, the scouting program, Boy Scouts of America specifically. And that's not affiliated with the Mormon church, but the Mormon church sees a lot of value, I think, in the Boy Scouts program. And so it's very ingrained in the culture to get your Eagle Scout. I remember hearing like, when you go for a job interview one day, and it's between you and another guy, and you have your Eagle Scout, you're the one that's going to get the job. And so that became a big priority growing up, like you got to get your Eagle. And that was, you know, advancing through Tenderfoot, first class, second class, all the way up until you receive

• 18:45Speaker 00

  your Eagle Scout, which, you know, you had to do this big project at the end of it. That was kind of like the final test to becoming an Eagle Scout, is you had to organize this giant service project. And so just through those years, those, you know, like you said, those influential years from 12 to 16, I had, you know, some very real motivating people in my life that were saying, hey, pay attention, like, these decisions that you make matter. You know, you need to, you know, begin with the end in mind, in a sense where you need to think about what your decisions do right now. In fact, early on, I remember talking about, in these weekly meetings, about making good choices in life and about not making

• 19:28Speaker 00

  the choice when it happens, but making the choice right now.

• 19:31Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 19:32Speaker 00

  I remember being in those lessons, it's like, make the decision right now so that when you're faced with it, you've already made that decision. And I think that's just general good advice as far as thinking about an eternal perspective, right? Like, try to suck out of your life where you're in your mind so much. What I mean by suck out is like, pull out. Like, elevate where you're looking down. Become a third party or observer of your own thoughts, of your own actions. You know, and that sometimes, I think, helps me live in the now, where you're concerned about yesterday and you're worried about tomorrow. If I'm able to kind of like, step out of my body, in a sense, and look at myself as my

• 20:17Speaker 00

  own devil's advocate, and be honest, you know, because a lot of us, I think, are not honest with ourselves. We lie to ourselves. We, like, maybe sometimes we're honest, like, we know that there's something that we're struggling with, and we don't want to stop that thing, or we don't want to admit that we have that weakness. And so even within our own psyche, even with our own minds, we're unable to be like, "Hey, Shay, I'm talking to you, bro, Shay. You should maybe consider this," you know? And so I think, to me, that's what religion does. And people might be like, "How is that, Shay?" Is, I, I guess, to really explain it,

• 20:58Speaker 00

  I have to tell the entire belief system that I have. But it's basically that we lived before we were born, and that we were conscious spirits that knew that we were going to come to this earth, that knew that this was going to be a testing ground, that knew that we were going to be paired up with a physical body. I believe our spirits are a real thing. I believe that our spirits are just a finer matter that can mesh with denser matter, like our bodies, our bones, our tissue, and that when we die, those spirits separate from our bodies. And then the gospel of Jesus Christ is that we will be resurrected, and that that spirit will then again mesh with an eternal, uncorruptible, physical being of bone and flesh. And so...

• 21:43Speaker 00

  Thinking about that, it's helped me make life decisions where I'm like, well, I'm not just thinking about, what does that girl think about me, or do I look cool in these shoes? I'm thinking,

• 21:55Speaker 00

  you know, I'm going somewhere. I came from someplace and I'm gonna go somewhere someday. So I need to think about every single decision I make, every thought that I have, with that kind of plan in mind.

• 22:08Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I think it has, I think it has a sort of built-in long-term perspective, right? And the, one of the things that I'd like to underscore that you just mentioned is deciding how you're going to react before you have to react. In other words, this is very much along the lines of something I remember hearing from Tony Robbins, who was talking about marriage and fidelity and so on, and he said, "You can't just have faith in your relationship and assume you're always going to respond in the best interest of your relationship. You have to decide what types of temptations are going to exist, what the exact situations are that might present themselves,

• 22:50Tim Ferriss?

  and decide in advance how you're going to respond in those exact circumstances." As opposed to just crossing your fingers and hoping that it's all smooth sailing.

• 22:59Speaker 00

  Right.

• 22:59Tim Ferriss?

  And so I want to talk about a transitionary period. Maybe it's a transitionary period, but so 19 to 21. Actually, before I get there, I forgot to follow up on Mr. Campbell. So were there any specific things that he taught you, or specific characteristics that he had, that made you want to model him?

• 23:19Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 23:22Speaker 00

  The best way to describe it is like, imagine Santa Claus. Imagine sitting down and hanging out with Santa Claus, right? Santa Claus is a wise soul who's seen a thing or two. And he's generous, right? He's super, like, nothing gets under Santa Claus's skin. To me, that's what Ron Campbell was. The guy could tell a story, first of all. Like, he was raised on a farm, and he would tell us story after story of moving pipe. If you've ever been on a farm, you know that you gotta move the pipe to water the crops. And so there's, you know, these 20-foot-long steel pipes with the water runs through that you have to pick up and move, you know, 10 to 20 feet over to the next furrow where the water didn't reach, right?

• 24:05Speaker 00

  And so he would just tell us these random stories of moving pipe and like... Guys that he worked with on the farm, like racing across, like who could move pipe the fastest? And he just had this ability to captivate us boys, right? And, and you know, there's always lessons in the Mormon church. If you go to any Mormon church in the world tomorrow or on Sunday, you'll have the exact same lesson if you're in Ethiopia, or if you're in Salt Lake, or if you're in Atlanta or Guatemala. All the curriculum for the 16 million members of the church is exactly the same.

• 24:37Tim Ferriss?

  Really?

• 24:38Speaker 00

  Yeah. So it's like when I first moved to LA, all of my Los Angeles friends were like, "Did you find a church you like?" And it's like, "Oh, we just went to the one that's in our geographical boundary." Because the church is all broken up into geographical areas. So it's like if you live from in between Main Street and Center Street, then you're in this ward. And so anywhere in the world you can go, the curriculum is exactly the same anywhere.

• 25:02Tim Ferriss?

  Main Street and Center Street. This is another thing that made me think of some of my trips to Idaho and Utah. Just the way that the city is laid out itself.

• 25:10Speaker 00

  Salt Lake specifically, Brigham Young set it up, so it's like easy. It's like first, second, third. So I can just tell you an address and you can immediately find it, just if you can know how to count, basically.

• 25:21Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 25:22Speaker 00

  Um, so where were we going on that?

• 25:24Tim Ferriss?

  We were talking about Campbell and his ability to captivate.

• 25:27Speaker 00

  All right, tell stories. And, um, and he was just such a generous guy. Like he would do things, like we would go on these high adventures and he would do, he was a successful businessman. So he would be like, "Let's buy a parasail." Cause he had a waterski boat, right? So for one of our audience, he bought this parasail that you hook up to a back of a boat and then you get a harness in and then you hit and you go above the boat. But he had no idea how to work it. So he had us and all of the scouts trying to figure out how to work this parasail. And for the first four times, we had it upside down. We were like dragging people into the ground because the parasail was flipped around. And finally we're like, "What if we flipped it over?" And sure enough, we popped up just like that. But he was the kind of guy that's like, "Here's the jet skis, here's the parasail, go have fun."

• 26:12Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 26:13Speaker 00

  And don't break anything, which we always did. And when we lost his waterski rope, he was cool with it. He was just a guy that was, like I said- Like Santa Claus that was had wisdom that was forgiving, that was kind, but you know, also knew that you had to work hard, that you had to apply yourself, that you had to make good decisions, that you had to have a purposeful definition of what you want your life to be, just like you were talking about Tony Robbins. I know what I want my marriage to be like. I also know that I'm a dude who thinks chicks are hot, right? So it's like, how am I going to be married to this one girl forever if I like to look at other girls boobs? And not like, I'm not that kind of guy, but I'm just saying dudes, if you're honest and you see a nice pair of boobs out there, you're gonna glance at them. So how do I consciously think about that right now

• 26:58Speaker 00

  and make a decision to turn away, or maybe to like appreciate that nice set of cleavage that you got, but I don't have to stare at it. I don't have to like ogle, ogle over it or something, you know, so I'm a huge believer in you can literally do anything you want if you create it in your mind first. I love James Allen, um, the uh, As a Man Thinketh is one of my favorite books where I think we so undervalue the power of thought. Every single thing in human existence was a thought first. These microphones, this couch, anything we enjoy in the natural, you know, things that are amazing, the hyperloop, Elon Musk is landing rockets in the ocean. He

• 27:41Speaker 00

  had an idea to do that first. So if you're gonna be naive to the fact that you can think about bad things and not do bad things, you're gonna, you're in for a lot of pain in your life. You have to control your mind. You have to control.

• 27:56Tim Ferriss?

  Meaning if you're, if you're running on the fuel of negative thinking, that will manifest itself externally.

• 28:03Speaker 00

  And people think that's mumbo jumbo, the power of thought, um, what the secret, all that kind of stuff, where it's like, oh, come on, give me some real, like, what can, what are some real tips and tricks? To me, it's the cliches. All side note, real quick, when I was exercising and losing weight, I was 280 pounds. I decided to run the Los Angeles Marathon. I lost 100 pounds and I ran the Los Angeles Marathon and I've since run four other marathons. So when I was doing that, because I'm a YouTuber, because I have a big audience that watches my videos, as I was losing this weight, as a YouTuber, you're constantly thinking of like, how can I tell my audience about this? I had, I think at the point, I had lost like 40 pounds. I was riding my bike up and down the Santa Monica Pier every day,

• 28:48Speaker 00

  or the boardwalk there from Venice to Santa Monica. And I had lost like 40 or 50 pounds, just riding my bike every day, drinking a lot of water, eating fruits and vegetables, all that stuff that's like, if you're gonna lose weight, what do you do? You exercise, you eat right, you get good sleep, you drink water. And I was doing all that, and I had lost 50 pounds. And so one bike ride one day, I'm like, what am I gonna tell my audience? Like, I'm excited to make a video to tell people, like, guys, I just hit 50 pounds. And I'm like, what can I say? I'm like, well, what have I been doing? I've been exercising, I've been reading like health books, I've been eating fruits and vegetables. And I'm like, I can't say that. If I make a video and tell people to do that, they'll be like, oh, those are just cliches. But I was like, well, that's what's working, that's what I'm doing.

• 29:30Speaker 00

  And so I, on this bike ride, I remember exactly where I was. I thought to myself, the secrets to life are hidden behind the word cliché. So anytime that you hear a thing that you think is a cliché, my tip to you is to perk your ears up and listen more carefully. Because the second that a cliché is being spoken, a truth is being spoken. Now, there can be clichés and other things too, but it's so simple that we make it too difficult. Like, think happy thoughts, then you'll be happy. And most people are like, bullshit, that's not, that can't happen. I'm like, yeah, it's not gonna work for you because you got a shitty attitude.

• 30:11Speaker 00

  But you know, if you can just mentally strengthen yourself, if you can mentally say, "This is the life I want. This is the kind of person I want to be, really be this kind of person." There's a doctrine in my church that teaches that when we die, we're not going to communicate with these words anymore. I'm going to be able to know exactly what's in your mind. You're not going to be able to hide anything from me, for instance. So you gotta clean it up before you make this switch. Because you're going to meet some people for the very first time that you've known your entire life. Like, think about meeting somebody in a realm where you know all of their intentions. You know exactly how they feel. That's going to be a different person to you, right? So the goal in this earth life is to become that person who you say

• 30:53Speaker 00

  you are right now. Because I believe, whether you believe in God or not, like, that's going to happen. Like, isn't a text message just me sending you a thought? I'm just like adding some letters and shooting it through the air. Eventually, I believe, you know, and we can get into this too with technology, that we'll be able to just, you know, telepathy will be a real thing, where we, for instance, NDEs, near-death experiences. You get on the internet, you just type in NDE, or you look up near-death experiences. A majority of those people say that when they died, or they were on the other side, they felt that this Christ-like person, or this God person, or whoever it was, knew them. They

• 31:34Speaker 00

  could not hide a single solitary thing. Like, they just knew every single thing about them. So hearing that and reading about that, I'm like, well, I better get my stuff together now and really be that person. Because eventually, you're going to have to be, and you're not going to be able to hide anything. And I think that's what the internet's doing. I think, especially with the election, you know, like, the presidential election, it's like, we see who these people are, right? Like, you can't hide, remember back when Clinton was running, and he's like, "I didn't inhale." You know, he talked about marijuana, it's like, "So that's okay, you just put pot smoke in your mouth?" You know, but it's like, think about where we're at today. Like, if somebody's like, like Obama at his recent White House Correspondents' Dinner made a joke about being high in college. I haven't been this high since college, right?

• 32:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was since I was deciding my major. That's right, deciding my major. So it's like, how have we gone from, you know, like, Bill Clinton smoked marijuana to we're just more transparent now, I feel like, and I feel like that's a good thing. Um, the internet, I've said this before, is making the world a glass ball where we can see each other. Um, you know, these leaders in countries in the corner of the earth have been able to do horrible things to their people for decades. But now that we have the internet, we're like, hey, wait a minute, you can't do that. And because of that, we have to be more honest as a society, as individuals. And, and that comes into question too, with what I do with my daily vlogging, like, is it safe?

• 33:00Speaker 00

  Um, is it, you know, sociologically responsible to put so much of your life on the internet? Um, but I just, I guess, um, on that tangent is really becoming the person who you say you are. And think about what if everybody knew all of your thoughts?

• 33:19Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I saw this billboard, uh, so this billboard in New York City that said, be the person your dog thinks you are.

• 33:26Speaker 00

  There's a saying that I've heard about, you can tell the character of a man by how his dog and his kids react to him. Because dogs and kids are honest, right? So if you know somebody who's their dog is afraid of them and their kids are afraid of them, you know their character.

• 33:42Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 33:42Speaker 00

  You know, so that's a little aspect of becoming really who you say you are, because dogs and kids know who you really are.

• 33:50Tim Ferriss?

  So I want to ask a question about sort of behavioral modification and thought control in a sense. Let's say that you wake up in a given morning and you're not feeling like you're, your usual optimistic self. For whatever reason, you're just in a pissy mood. And, uh, things are looking a little darker around the edges. What do you do to correct that? What do you, what's the internal dialogue? What are the rituals?

• 34:15Speaker 00

  Right, because that happens, you know, and I'm known on the internet, uh, for saying happiness is a choice. Like you can choose to be happy. And that's actually something that I've learned through vlogging. Where because I've said, I'm going to make a video every single day for a year. When I turned 29 years old, this is kind of like how I really got my internet following is I came out and I I said, I'm gonna do a daily vlog, 365 videos.

• 34:39Tim Ferriss?

  How far after your first video was that? That was, I guess, two years?

• 34:44Speaker 00

  It was about a year and a half.

• 34:45Tim Ferriss?

  Year and a half in.

• 34:46Speaker 00

  You know, and like when I very first started YouTube in 2007, it was just like, well, I have a video. Let me upload that and see how it does.

• 34:52Tim Ferriss?

  What was the first video?

• 34:53Speaker 00

  The very first video I uploaded, you can go on my Shay Carl channel. It's actually, um, now that I think about it, it's me and my brother and my brother-in-law singing happy birthday to my mom after sucking helium balloons. We all like doused like down three helium balloons and then saying happy 50th birthday to my mom. I think that was the very first one, but the real first video I think is me dancing around in a unitard. My wife had this old unitard that I had found and I come out into the living room like, look what I found. And we had this little digital camera and she just thought it would be funny to pick it up and turn it onto the video mode and, and record me doing this. It's almost like blackmail material. And then when I found out about YouTube, I was like, what videos do I have? I'm like, oh yeah, Colette has that blackmail video of me in a unitard.

• 35:38Speaker 00

  I'm gonna put that on the internet.

• 35:39Tim Ferriss?

  Now, what was your, your job at the time?

• 35:41Speaker 00

  At the time I was a granite counter fabricator.

• 35:46Tim Ferriss?

  So, all right, I know we're bouncing around, but what possessed you to put, to record and put that video up? In other words, have you always been a performer since a young age?

• 35:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was definitely a class clown type. And you know, I, it's so funny, your, your story comes back to you as you live more of your life, but there's, my grandpa had this old VHS camcorder and I used to always love to film people with that thing. I'd throw in a VHS tape into the side, just like a VCR. Put that thing on my shoulder like I was working at the news channel and I would just film around the house. And I still haven't done this, but I know there are hours of like times where I have the camera in my mom's face. And she's like putting her hand in the lens saying, turn the camera off Shay, like so annoyed that I'm just filming her when she's pissed off. So I want to go make a montage where I take all of that and it's just like, turn the camera off, turn the camera off.

• 36:43Speaker 00

  So yeah, my dad always used to say that I should be a lawyer. Because I was good at arguing. I just, I've always liked to talk, I guess, and I've always, uh, you know, I guess I have been that class clown type. So when YouTube came along, I was like, I can do that. I can talk like that. The first guy I found was Philip DeFranco.

• 37:00Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, sure.

• 37:01Speaker 00

  Who, maybe you know Phil. He's been on Joe Rogan's podcast. Um, he kinda really got me into the world of YouTube. And I, I watched Phil's, like, when I first found him.

• 37:09Tim Ferriss?

  How old was he at the time?

• 37:10Speaker 00

  He was young.

• 37:11Tim Ferriss?

  He's like, he's like the baby-faced assassin.

• 37:13Speaker 00

  No, he's so young. And I'm like, this kid, that's what I remember thinking. I'm like, he's a kid who has a TV show type thing, I'm doing air quotes here, um, that has 60,000 people that subscribe to it. And for all that I can tell, he's doing this all by himself. And he had like, that iMovie intro music, dunna, da dunna, you know, like he had made this little intro where he acted like he was picking up a phone and...

• 37:34Tim Ferriss?

  How did you meet? How did you meet him?

• 37:37Speaker 00

  So, I found Philip DeFranco the first night I ever got on YouTube. I got this computer, I got it set up. It was bedtime, my wife's going to bed, and I'm like, I'm just gonna get on the internet here. I found Philip DeFranco that night, and I was like, oh, there's like people that are hanging out here talking. And so I just subscribed to him that first night after, and I'm like, I can talk like him. Right after that, maybe two or three days later, he came out with a video called, "How to Get a Popular Online Show or Series." Then he had a contest where he wanted his audience to submit videos, and then he was gonna pick his favorite three, and then those three were gonna get voted on in the website, and then he would promote that person to help them get more subscribers.

• 38:21Speaker 00

  So at the time, I was doing granite countertops, but I was also a radio DJ in the sense that I was calling into the radio studio every morning when they did trivia and just trying to get on the radio. I would call in and just annoy the DJs, and I would just hit redial, redial, redial, and I would get through at least once every morning.

• 38:41Tim Ferriss?

  So I have to stop for a second. So my sport, when I've never, I don't think I've told anybody this. My sport, when I had my, uh, pretty shitty, I mean, just in terms of like draining, first job out of college, when I was commuting in my, my mom's hand-me-down minivan, you know, with the seat, the seats got stolen from, it was so depressing. Uh, I would listen to, I think it was Sirius Radio, and I would call in the entire commute when I was stuck in traffic on 101, trying to do the exact same thing.

• 39:14Speaker 00

  Yep, just trying to get on the radio. And it was cool to me, just like the conversation, right? Like, you're in your car, you're listening to these guys talk. And I think everybody in their car does that, where they're like, well, I have something to say about this. But nobody thinks to call in and try to like, become part of the conversation. And the reason I did that is because we were on the job. Like, we were the granite guys in the shop, you know, polishing granite. We had the radio on. So every morning at 10 a.m., when they did the trivia, we'd all be like, call into the radio station. And I got through so many times that they gave me a nickname. And the program director of the radio, he said, listen, if you stop calling in in the mornings, I'll give you your own segment on Saturdays. And so I got to my very first- What was your nickname?

• 39:57Speaker 00

  So, well, okay, so the trivia, um, it was called The Answer's Never Dirty. So the trivia question would be like, 20% of women like this in bed. And you'd be like, oh, what is it? But the answer would be like silk sheets, or something that wasn't dirty. But the question always sounded dirty. So you never knew what the right answer was on the first, you know, when they asked the question. It's like you guess, and they give you hints, and then slowly, like, people will get the right answer. So the first guess was always a total guess. So one day, we called in and we just said croquet. We thought, and I thought like, croquet would be funny as the answer, like the sport of croquet. Because who knows what the answer is? And so then every morning, we just thought it'd be funny if we altered it about croquet something. So like, the question might be like, 30% of dudes said they like this before going on dates.

• 40:42Speaker 00

  And I would call in and be like, um, is it read croquet weekly? You know, just like some stupid thing about the game of croquet. Yeah, you know? And so they started calling me Croquet Shay. It's like, oh, Croquet Shay's on the line again. And it was just this random enough thing that I did enough where I got this name called Croquet Shay. And then two of the DJs were annoyed by me. So the program director's like, listen, we'll give you your own gig as a judge. We have to keep the animals separate. Yeah, they're like, you gotta quit calling in. But they had another segment called Doghouse Wednesday, where couples would call in and say why they were in trouble with their significant others. And he said, I'll give you a job as one of the judges who gets to talk for like 90 seconds on the radio and explain why they thought which person was in the deepest doghouse, right?

• 41:26Speaker 00

  So that was like my very first gig in the entertainment world. And at the time, I still had a job at the granite counter business. So like every Fridays or whenever they did the doghouse thing, I would have to like go out and hide. And like I had to hide from my boss while I was on the radio. I'd be like, I'm gonna go on the radio and like all of my coworkers knew. And it became this weird thing. Anyway, so then that's how I got into radio. I was a judge on Doghouse Wednesday, did well on that. And then when a weekend spot from the Friday, Saturday and Sunday weekend position for the DJ was opened. The program director Brad is like, hey, do you want this job? It only pays eight fifty an hour, but you can be on the radio four hours a night. And I was like, yes.

• 42:06Speaker 00

  And I would have to drive like an hour round trip, thirty minutes to the studio, thirty minutes back to get paid thirty two dollars and gas was like twenty or whatever, just to be on the radio. And so that was my first, you know, session into entertainment. And this goes back to the question.

• 42:23Tim Ferriss?

  So you were like twenty eight?

• 42:25Speaker 00

  I was, yep, about twenty eight, twenty eight and a half.

• 42:28Tim Ferriss?

  Got it.

• 42:28Speaker 00

  When I was a DJ at Z103, Idaho's number one hit music channel. Coming up next, we got Purpose by Justin Bieber. Uh, so I did that for a while and I loved doing that. I loved, my favorite thing was being the guy on Friday nights at five PM. When it's like, guess what, bitches, it's the weekend. Come on, what are you gonna do this weekend? And I was like the, the party guy. I was the rally behind, it's the weekend and it's time to have a good time. Because I had just come from that, not, you know, I was working from six AM to six at night at the granite shop. I was working twelve hours a day, Monday through Friday, knowing what it felt like to celebrate Friday afternoons and then to detest Monday mornings.

• 43:09Tim Ferriss?

  So, all right, so on the detesting point, we were, I, I took us off the reservation, which was great. Cause that was a fantastic story on. Thought control or improving happiness by way of choice. And you said you learned that through daily vlogging?

• 43:27Speaker 00

  Yes. So like being a radio DJ, when you get on the mic, you gotta have some level of, you know, enthusiasm, right? You can't be like, hey, Idaho's number one hit music channel. Check out this new song, you know, like that's gonna be boring. Nobody's gonna listen to that. So, right, waking up as a human being, sometimes I'm in a bad mood. Sometimes I'm frustrated. Sometimes I feel like crap and for whatever reason, we all go through it. We all wake up feeling like total crap and like you hate everybody, like screw it. I don't care. You wanna burn everything down. Like I feel that too. Like I wanna tear everything up and punch people. Like I have that anger inside of me as well. I think some people like, oh, well, it's easy for you. It's not. I think people don't realize that everybody suffers.

• 44:10Speaker 00

  Whether, you know, some people put on a better show than others. It depends. But what I found is knowing that I had to do a daily vlog, knowing that I had to like vlog myself, even in those bad moods, I found myself turning the camera on.

• 44:23Tim Ferriss?

  Sounds a lot like flog. You'd have vlogged yourself.

• 44:28Speaker 00

  It's very painful. No, I would, I would, you know, sit up straight. I would take a deep breath. I would smile and I would turn the camera on and be like, hey, guys, what's going on? Shay ba ba ba ba da da. And whatever I did, I would turn the camera off and then all of a sudden, I would feel better.

• 44:42Tim Ferriss?

  That's a really, that's a really cool point.

• 44:44Speaker 00

  And not just like I feel better, but physiologically I could feel my body was different. And there are studies that if you sit up straight, if you, if you breathe deep, if you smile, if you just, I have a thing where like, I'll just look in the mirror and this might sound really crazy. I'll just look in the mirror and just like laugh at myself. And, and almost break down this wall of um, being so pretentious about not being able to be silly. You know, I think there's a great power in being silly. I think there's a great power in not taking things so seriously. And so by just sitting up straight, putting a smile on my face and kind of faking it till you make it, you actually do feel better. There's real power in this.

• 45:27Tim Ferriss?

  And there's, and there's research to support that. Too. There are studies to support it. There's a, there's a great Ted Talk on blanking on the woman's name, blonde hair, short, kind of bob haircut. Who talks about posture and looking at self-reported sort of averages of say, well-being and so on, which would correlate to this. Quick side note on being silly, because I think you're very good, not only at improving your own mood, but improving other people's moods around you. So everybody should go to twitter.com forward slash Shay Carl and look at the profile pic. And now with that in mind, I'm going to segue to what happens at the TSA when you show them your ID?

• 46:10Tim Ferriss?

  Because I've seen, I've seen it, you showed me.

• 46:15Speaker 00

  So funny story, uh, me and my buddy Kasim G, who's a comedian on the internet and not a chipper guy. He's like one of my friends who just hates going in public with me because I like to talk to everybody and try to make people laugh. And he's, I found that comedians are darker people, you know?

• 46:33Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's very, very typical. I think comedians, cartoonists, writers, less so, but still a fair percentage.

• 46:42Speaker 00

  It's like they use their comedy to kind of, it's like a therapy for some, you know, other deep things that they're dealing with. I don't know. I'm not trying to cycle analyze comedians, but that's his type, right? Like he doesn't like people. He doesn't like anything, but um, he likes motorcycles and like cars and stuff. So we got some deal with Harley Davidson who's like, hey, we want to pay for you guys to go through motorcycle school. We're going to give you motorcycles. We're going to give you motorcycle jackets. And because we're social influencers, there was no money exchange. It was just like, you're cool, we're cool, you ride our bikes and you know, tweet a picture every once in a while. Me and Kasim were like, sweet. So we went through this two-week motorcycle training course. We got our motorcycle licenses. We went to the, the California DMV, which is never a pleasant experience.

• 47:28Speaker 00

  And finally-

• 47:29Tim Ferriss?

  Because you were living in LA?

• 47:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was living in Venice Beach at the time. And so finally, we take the test, all that stuff. It's me and Casim. This is our final thing till we get our motorcycle licenses and we can actually go out and ride. And it's time for the picture, right? So Casim's standing there and right as I go up to take the picture, he goes, "Don't do anything stupid." Like, knowing that I'm gonna, right? And I can actually, maybe we can scan my license, because my license is-

• 47:53Tim Ferriss?

  Sure, yeah, we'll put, we'll, we'll put- We'll blur out anything that needs blurring and then we'll put it in the show notes.

• 47:59Speaker 00

  So I did this crazy face, just like, he's like, "Smile." And I'm just like, like deer in the headlights, smiled, giant eyeballs, knowing that they're gonna make me retake it. Like, it's the DMV, right? Like, you can't smile, you can't do anything in the DMV. You have to have this like, "I am a serial killer" look on your face for them to identify you, apparently. Like, what, people don't smile in real life? So I do this and the guy laughs. The guy thought it was funny and he prints out my ID and he hands it to me. And I'm like, "Wait, you're gonna let me keep this?" And he's like, "Yeah, it's funny." And I'm like, "Are you serious?" And he's like, "Yeah." I'm like, "Oh, my heck." So my license picture is me like, "Huh." And so I was telling Tim the story when we were at the White House.

• 48:40Speaker 00

  Without fail, you could give me the grumpiest, meanest TSA agent in the world at 5:00 in the morning, who's taking IDs, that's doing it all day long, and I 99% of the time can get them to laugh. Because they'll look at that picture and they're like, "Holy shit." Like, you can see them in their mind, too. Like, they look at it and it's so different from all of the other pictures that they are just staring at all day long. They'll either, one, smile right away when they look at the picture, or, two, if they don't smile when they look at the picture, when they look up, you know, like they do-

• 49:15Tim Ferriss?

  To match it.

• 49:15Speaker 00

  To like, identify you. If I'm doing the exact same face as I am in the picture, 99 out of 100 times, I can get every single grumpy TSA agent in the world to laugh, or at least crack a smile. Because especially at 5:00 in the morning. And there's, there's days where I don't feel like, you know, being that guy. And they're like, "Is this you?" And I'll have to be like, "Heh," and do the face and they're like, "It's you," so.

• 49:37Tim Ferriss?

  The, the photo looks like, if, if people are not gonna make it to the show notes or the Twitter profile, it looks kind of like- A ventriloquist's puppet, I would say. It is a pretty close approximation. But, uh, so the daily vlogging, in addition to serving as therapy, or just a proof of concept, showing you that you can change how you feel.

• 50:03Tim Ferriss?

  It seems like, I mean, you alluded to it earlier, that was, was that the breakthrough? I mean, was there, when did you realize that this could be more than a hobby?

• 50:13Speaker 00

  So, I guess, you know, early on, when I was, you know, trying to make ends meet, my sole purpose was to make money. You know, to me, that's what college was. To me, it was like, you went to college so that you could take enough classes, so you could get a piece of paper that said that you were responsible enough to get some stuff done, uh, and then that you could work. You know what I'm saying? So, to me, it was all about, like, how do I make money? How do I provide for my wife and kids? How do I, you know, make this a thing? So, yeah, like, the first time I figured that, like, YouTube was gonna be an actual career is like, the first paycheck I got.

• 50:54Speaker 00

  And when I started YouTube, I didn't know you could make money. At first, it was just about the conversation, just about connecting with people. So, you know, after like, two or three months of making videos, I got my first check for 300 bucks, and I was shocked. I could not believe that I actually got paid for just being silly, for just, you know, thinking of ideas, or, you know, weird skits that I was doing. And I remember the first time I got that money, I went down to the bank, because I thought it was a scam, honestly. I thought, I'm like, I don't know YouTube, I don't know who Google is. And they did that whole thing where they deposit 11 cents in your account, and then you go to the website, and you verify, yes, you put 11 cents in my account, and then your bank account's linked. So I was so scared to even link my bank account with my Google AdSense, which is how you get paid, because Google owns YouTube.

• 51:39Speaker 00

  So I was like, they're gonna steal all the money out of our account. But then I was like, well, we only have $150 in there anyway, so it won't matter if they steal it. So the very first time I got paid from YouTube, I remember seeing the money in the Wells Fargo, like, maybe I shouldn't say which bank I have. I remember seeing the money in my bank account and I remember going down that day to the bank to withdraw the cash because I was like, if they give me the money, then it's real. So I remember the transaction going to the bank saying, I would like to withdraw that $300, almost like sheepishly, like, there's gonna be snipers on the roof. They gave me the $300 cash. I walked out of the bank and I'm like, what? This is real money. I could buy groceries with this.

• 52:19Speaker 00

  So from that moment on, it became, how can I turn this into grocery money into mortgage money? And that was my next goal. I want to make a thousand bucks.

• 52:28Tim Ferriss?

  Grocery money to mortgage money.

• 52:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, I want to be able to pay my house payment with this money from YouTube. And if I could pay my mortgage, which at the time was like 980 bucks a month, if I can make a thousand dollars a month on YouTube, that would free up so much time where I could be with my family or do other things. And so that, what, that's where it started. It was the pursuit of making this hobby, just like anybody who starts something from their garage into a full-time thing.

• 52:55Tim Ferriss?

  And how did you, what were the decisions you made or the changes you made that helped you go from grocery money to mortgage money?

• 53:02Speaker 00

  So it was more videos, to be frank, like to, the, the simple answer was more videos means more views means more money. And so just education on YouTube, you don't get paid on your subscribers. So it doesn't matter, you could have 10 billion subscribers. If nobody watches your videos, you don't make a dime. It's all based on how many views you get. So they call it CPM, cost per mil. And I think that is Latin for thousand. So every thousand views, you average anywhere from two to five bucks. So imagine that, like if I said, here, take this cup and go show it to a thousand people and I'll give you $3. You'd be like, screw you. I'm not doing that. That's not worth my opportunity cost. But if you have eight billion potential customers, everybody on the earth, which everybody

• 53:47Speaker 00

  doesn't have the internet yet, but. You can easily rack up some money if you get a lot of people to start watching these videos. So when I turned 29 years old, March 5th, 2009, it was the last year of my twenties. And I went through this like pre midlife, midlife crisis where I'm like-

• 54:03Tim Ferriss?

  Quarter life crisis?

• 54:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, quarter life crisis where I'm like, I'm not gonna be 20 anymore. I'm gonna be 30. Like, what have I done with my life? I'm gonna be a 30-year-old man. Holy crap. What could I do for the last year of my twenties? And at the time, I was married with three kids, so I can't like, you know, sell everything and get on a motorcycle and drive to Peru or something like most people do, or would or think. So I was like, what if I made a video documenting the last year of my twenties? 365 videos. So the way that YouTube worked at the time is you got paid, um, two months later. It was like a 60-day pay cycle. So all of the videos, when I started March 5th, those 25, 26 videos for that month, I got paid in those in May.

• 54:45Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 54:45Speaker 00

  So we started the daily vlogs, March, April, May, three months went along. And then I saw our paycheck for the March 25 videos that we did. And that check was for $6,000. And I remember seeing that on the computer screen and just yelling at my wife like, "Colette, come in here. Come here. Look at that. Look." She's like, "What's that?" I'm like, "That's how much we're gonna get paid next month on YouTube." She's like, "What? Are you serious?" And real quick, I'm like, "Six grand. If I can make six grand a month, that's 72,000 bucks a year." I'm living in southeastern Idaho, making 28,000 a year, and I'm considered middle-class. If I'm making 70 grand a year, I'm gonna be rich.

• 55:28Speaker 00

  And so that first month of daily vlogs where I saw, "We're gonna get paid six grand this month to make these videos", it was like, everything else went, went away. The granite counter, like, I remember the day my wife came in and said, "You need to go finish that granite job. We're gonna get paid 10 grand on this giant granite job." I remodeled the entire house, kitchens, bathrooms, wet bar, shower, everything. And we're gonna get this big payday on this granite job. But I didn't wanna finish it because I wanted to make YouTube videos. So the second that that happened, it all became like, this is our full-time job now. Like, this is what we're doing. And now, a funny statistic is, as a 36-year-old man today, being a full-time YouTuber is the longest job I've ever had. So people are like, "Oh, you can make money on YouTube?"

• 56:13Speaker 00

  I'm like, "Yeah, I've been doing it for a decade, baby." Um, and yeah, and it was, I guess the precursor to that is my biggest passion in life was to not hate my job because I went to college and I was, you know, just looking at people in the world and it seemed like everybody hated their job, right? It was a huge complaining point for everybody that, you know, you love your life on Fridays and you hate your life Monday mornings. I'm like, that's 80% of your life. If you hate your job, you hate 80% of your life. I do not want to hate a majority of my life. How do I get out of this rat race of you gotta go to college so you can get this piece of

• 56:56Speaker 00

  paper so that you can go to this organization and show them your piece of paper? And by the way, I'm an Eagle Scout. Please give me a job. Um, I didn't want that. I didn't want to be stuck. That was the rat race to me. That was the controlling environment of corporations where you feel like you're a cog in a wheel, that you have to do something, that you have to watch your Ps and Qs or you're gonna get in trouble. You can't think out outside of the box. You have to fit in with your coworkers. You can't think of anything unique because it'll be ridiculed. All that kind of stuff that comes from being at a job, a J O B. I didn't want, and I fought tooth and nail against that.

• 57:33Tim Ferriss?

  So let's, let's before, well, I was gonna say before graduation, but that, that sort of gets to the next question, which is, yeah. Can you tell me a story about or describe the day you decided to drop out?

• 57:48Speaker 00

  Yeah. So I was in college, uh, simply because I didn't know what else I was gonna do, right? Um, I did serve a two-year mission from when I graduated high school, from when I was, uh, 19 to 21, I went to the West Indies. And so I did have like a two-year space in between graduating high school and going to college where it was strictly service. I was only there in the West Indies to teach the gospel.

• 58:14Tim Ferriss?

  Barbados, Trinidad, Guyana?

• 58:16Speaker 00

  Yep. I was in, um, those three countries. The West Indies mission, which was my mission, is made up of 16 different countries. It's the entire Caribbean. So like Saint Kitts, Antigua, Barbados, all of that. And so the way our mission worked is we had moved around every six to nine months. And so I lived in Barbados for seven months, which is a claustrophobic feeling when you can see the ocean from anywhere on the island. Like Barbados is seven miles wide. So if you're at the top, like you can look and almost see the ocean anywhere you're at on the island. And it's kind of a claustrophobic feeling.

• 58:49Tim Ferriss?

  If you're coming from a mountainous.

• 58:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, Idaho.

• 58:52Tim Ferriss?

  Landlocked area also.

• 58:54Speaker 00

  This giant ocean is surrounding me. Um, and then I moved to Trinidad and Guyana for those two years. So that was a good time to kind of like get out of the world and to not think about me so much. That was a total service, you know, thing those two years. And so when I came back from my mission, my main priority, which is part of the culture of our church is to get married. I remember like the last two weeks of my mission, thinking, okay, I'm headed home. Who am I going to marry? Hmm, I liked Amber in high school. I'm going to marry Amber. Okay, I'm marrying Amber, but I didn't marry Amber. But like, that was like the, the thought process as a missionary. It's very like, okay, what's the next step in my life? Get married. And it was like, one night in the West Indies, I decided I was going to marry this girl, who seemed like the most logical reason.

• 59:39Speaker 00

  And then I came back and went to a play with my friend and found a girl on stage that was singing that I fell in love with that night. And I told my friend Derek, I'm going to marry that girl, which is my wife. So, um, came home, um, went to college, signed up for college because everybody else was. All my returned missionary friends were all getting into college. So it's like, okay, now it's time to get my degree and figure out what I'm going to do. And because I was good with people, I always thought I'll be in sales or marketing. You know, you take those bubble sheets in school. They're like, fill out these 90 questions and we're going to tell you what best job suits you. Which I was like, how do they know? Cause like every question is like, do you like this? I'm like, well, I kind of like that. And so I'm like, how do I answer this? And so a lot of those bubble sheets, I would answer in the way that I knew I wanted to be perceived.

• 1:00:21Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:00:21Speaker 00

  You know, it's like, I'm going to answer this because if I answer this, that means that I'm like this and I want to be like that. Which in a sense is like, maybe that is your real answer. So I hated those things too. So went to college, started taking all my generals, um, had a business, you know, like I'm gonna be in business. I don't know yet. And basically got to the point where I had taken all of my generals. I was about to Like your prereqs. Yeah, yeah. Like, you know, you gotta take philosophy and psychology and English 101 and, you know, all of these general prerequisite classes. And I had met and married, that's a huge, long story, but I had met and married my wife. And we were pregnant with our second, uh, child, Avia, our daughter.

• 1:01:02Speaker 00

  And I'll just tell you, and this might be true for universities around the nation, but there is no parking, little to zero parking. And it's just ridiculous because they said that they were gonna build a parking garage with my $2,800 tuition, and they didn't. And I was just pissed. Every morning, me and my buddy Luke, we'd come into psychology class and we'd be like, "You played the game this morning?" And the game was trying to find an F-ing parking spot. Cause we couldn't. And there'd be days where I'd just miss class, cause like, I can't find a parking spot. And I'd racked up like a hundred dollar in like parking tickets, cause I'm like, "I can't find a spot. I'm parking here. I don't care." And every time, they'd give you a ticket. So one day, I was at that spot where I was looking for a parking spot.

• 1:01:43Speaker 00

  We were about to have our second kid. I felt guilty for leaving my wife at home with our, you know, our two-year-old son. And she's eight and a half months pregnant, and I'm going off to school every day to, you know, I hated the fact that, like my psychology teacher, for instance, you could just tell that she was an unhappy person, right? Like she, she knew all the psychological things from the book, but I could just tell she was a bitch. Like she just was angry. Like you couldn't, if you made a peep in her class, she would freak out. And I'm like, "This is a psychology person who's supposed to understand the human workings of emotions and stuff,

• 1:02:22Speaker 00

  and she can't get her own stuff together. Like, why am I spending $350 on her book that she wrote? And she doesn't even seem happy. Like, this is worthless to me. Like, sure, I'm learning about Freud and all this, but I guess I learned more from People, you know, than like, you know, stories. And so I was just sick of it. I was sick of what I saw as a rat race, as like this convoluted thing to almost like make, it's a, it's a business, you know, it's a business to make money. And so I was like, I can't find a parking spot, I'm done. And literally that day, I dropped out of college and I was like, screw this, I'm not coming back. And I went home and my wife's like, I thought you had class. I'm like, nope, I'm done. I'm not going back. She's like, what are you gonna do?

• 1:03:07Speaker 00

  Like, I'm gonna get a job. I think I'm gonna start my own business. I wanna start my own business. And I guess the one thing that I did learn from college is I had a business 101 class from a teacher who really changed everything for me. And she defined the secret to success as loving what you do. And I, you know, would say that I define it in different ways now, but back then that was like a prophecy to me. I was like, yes, why do you have to hate your job? Why do you have, like, just so you can get money to buy groceries and, and get a house? You have to hate most of your life? Like, there's gotta be a better way. So when she said that, I, that was like an epiphany to me, like, that's the secret to life, is to not hate your job,

• 1:03:48Speaker 00

  is to find something that you love to do. And so that became, from the day I dropped out of college, was my pursuit. And I did a lot of things. I sold pest control door to door. I was a real estate agent. I was a car salesman. Uh, I owned my own granite countertop business. I was a school bus driver. I used to drive school buses. And I would let the kids throw snowballs at the school bus. And they almost broke a window one day, so I had to tell them they can't do it anymore. But that was my ultimate goal, is to not hate what I did for a living. And when that first $300 check from YouTube showed up, it was like, this is it. This is what I'm gonna do.

• 1:04:23Tim Ferriss?

  So you said you might define it differently now. How would you define success? Or how do you think about that now?

• 1:04:30Speaker 00

  Well, You know, now that I have money, I define it differently because back in the day, to me, success was money. It was, and not just to be rich and not to have cool things, but to be able to provide, to be able to, you know, give things to my wife and kids. That's why I loved Ron Campbell so much early in the day because he had water ski boats and parasails. And I remember a family growing up that was, their dad was a dentist. And I just remember like, they always had money to go to Hawaii and ski boats and stuff like that. And I remember kids being like, oh, the so and so's, they're so rich, blah, blah, blah. And I'd be like, but isn't that a, like, why are you guys dissing on them? Like, they get to go to Hawaii, they

• 1:05:11Speaker 00

  get to do cool things. So, early on, to me, that's what success was, to be able to provide, to be able to give to my kids and my wife. And now, you find out that once you get money, that it is not the answer. It is not what gives you happiness. And so, I define success in many different ways. Maybe we'll get this towards the end, but you usually ask on your podcast, who's a successful person?

• 1:05:37Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, or when you hear the word successful, who do you think of? Let's just hit, let's hit it now.

• 1:05:40Speaker 00

  Okay. Um, I was thinking about that question before I was coming and like, without like naming specific people, I think to truly define somebody successful, to me, relationships with people are important. So, if you have a person that, and to me, it's older people, somebody who has kids, to me, the definition of success is being cool with your parents, your grandparents, and your kids. Like, being able to navigate the, the difficult task of dealing with each other, human beings. You know, if you're able to have a good, you

• 1:06:22Speaker 00

  know, if you're in good relationship with your mom and your dad and your kids, like, to me, that's the definition of success. And, and sometimes you have to let those people go. Sometimes there's very, you know, like, it's weird being an adult now and dealing with your parents, in a sense, where it's like, my mom and dad say things now that I don't agree with at all, but I don't necessarily need to fight with them about that. Right? It's, it's being able to...

• 1:06:54Speaker 00

  You know, be open enough to accept other ideas and, and accepting people for different spots in the road. Like, we're all at different parts in our life. And because of the internet, because of YouTube, because of the litany of comments that I've received, uh, just ripping my life apart, for instance, by, um, reading thousands, I mean, the, the comment section of YouTube could be considered the cesspool of the human species sometimes. Like, the worst things in the world are said in the comment section of YouTube. So I've been ridiculed for everything under the sun, um, whether it's how I installed my kid's car seat, or me believing that there's an afterlife. You know, like, people will just shred any, any

• 1:07:39Speaker 00

  idea that I have apart. And so, to me, success is not, um, judging somebody, or not trying to, um, you know, say a person is, is, is a certain type of person without knowing their whole story, right? Like, um, I guess, to define that, like, whenever I see celebrities in the news, like, so-and-so did this, it's like, well, I don't really know the suffering that they're, you know, going through. Like, you think about somebody like Prince, who we all look up to, or thought was amazing, and then you just think, man, he must have been in a lot of pain. He must have been really suffering. But somebody like Prince can't come out and say that, right? He can't come out and be like, I'm really struggling.

• 1:08:21Tim Ferriss?

  Or they feel like they can't.

• 1:08:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. That's the point. Or like, a psychiatrist might have that same effect, where they're the person that everybody comes to, to talk to, and they feel like they have to be the strong one, and they can't talk about their own weaknesses. So then they end up committing suicide. Or, if you've ever known a friend, you know, it's like, why didn't you talk to somebody? And it's this fear of being vulnerable, I guess.

• 1:08:43Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, or, I mean, there's so many different pressures. The, makes me think of something I was, I was told, probably within the last two or three years, but that being, everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about.

• 1:08:57Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:08:58Tim Ferriss?

  Right? And just assuming that to be the case. And, uh, another sort of corollary to that, that I was told at one point was, uh...

• 1:09:08Tim Ferriss?

  Don't assume malice when incompetence could explain it. Or, and I would just say also like busyness, right? Like, don't assume malice.

• 1:09:16Speaker 00

  That's a very good point. And to me, realizing that, what that means is people aren't really trying to hurt you. You know, I think a lot of times you think, well, that person is a vindictive, evil, mean person. When really, they're just not paying attention. Really, like, they're not purposely trying to hurt you or saying mean things. You know, nobody ever, it seems like everybody only does things for personal reasons, right? Like, they're not trying to hurt you, they're just trying to better their lives, in a sense. So, knowing that helps when you feel like you're being attacked by somebody, um, which is not necessarily the case. It's just them, you know, not communicating well, or one of those things, but...

• 1:09:58Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, or just having a shitty day.

• 1:10:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:10:00Tim Ferriss?

  And not humanizing something on the internet.

• 1:10:03Speaker 00

  Or just being in a bad state, like, people get in bad moods. And that goes back to, um, using your body to change your mood. I recently went to a Tony Robbins event, and he talks about that a lot, where you have to change your physiology, like, your body, these bones. When I, for instance, when I ran my first marathon and I lost a hundred pounds, it was weird to see my stomach so thin, like, so close to my rib cage, if you will. And I remember sitting in the shower, um, after I ran the marathon, and like, this is such a weird thing to say, but like, my bones are right there. Like, looking at my knee and thinking about what it looked like inside of my body. And if we realize that these bodies are tools that will help our mental state,

• 1:10:48Speaker 00

  we can use our bodies to help us feel better. So, your question earlier was like, what tips and tricks and things do you use? Tony Robbins teaches this thing called priming in the morning, where it's similar to meditation, where, you know, you're thinking about things, but... It's a very purposeful, like you sit up straight, you're breathing in a specific way, you're thinking specific things, and you can do things with your body that will change your entire mental perspective on things.

• 1:11:18Tim Ferriss?

  And just to sort of underpin the broader strategy behind that also, and if people want the details on some of his morning priming, he goes through it in the two-part interview that I did with him at his house, so you can look that up. But the sort of framework that he lays out that I think is very helpful is, let me get this right, I think it's state, story, strategy, I believe. And like, most people want to sit down to determine a strategy to address their issue, but they're in a negative state, which leads them to have an internal narrative that is self-defeating. And they only see problems as opposed to solutions or alternatives.

• 1:12:01Tim Ferriss?

  And the point that he makes is that you have to address it in the opposite direction. You have to create the optimal state so that you can craft an enabling story, i.e. narrative, and that allows you to produce or plan the best strategy.

• 1:12:17Speaker 00

  You can't make good decisions if you're in a bad mood, right? Like, the decisions you make when you're in a shitty mood are going to be shitty decisions. If you can make yourself become happy through these things, or just a better state, you're going to make better decisions.

• 1:12:36Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. I use cold exposure for that quite a bit. We might get a taste of that later when we go to the Russian baths with the cold plunge.

• 1:12:44Speaker 00

  There's shrinkage, Tim, it's shrinkage!

• 1:12:46Tim Ferriss?

  I know, I know. We can pull a George Costanza.

• 1:12:49Speaker 00

  It's cold water, it's cold water!

• 1:12:53Tim Ferriss?

  The next question I wanted to ask is, I guess related to some of this, but like, what are some of the darkest periods that you've faced? Or some of the biggest challenges that you've had to overcome personally?

• 1:13:07Speaker 00

  Oh, well, we're gonna talk about that one. Um, I think this would be shocking to my audience, for those that are listening, that have come over here from my section of the internet, but I battled with alcohol for, you know, four or five years.

• 1:13:32Speaker 00

  And that was tough. That was something that kind of, and it's something that I haven't talked about, honestly.

• 1:13:40Speaker 00

  And maybe I'll want to cut this out of the podcast later, but um.

• 1:13:43Tim Ferriss?

  But it's very common. I mean, it's, it's not an uncommon challenge to face, or addiction for that matter.

• 1:13:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I guess I should talk about it. My audience is probably freaking out right now. My mom's probably freaking out right now. But I think, listening to Morgan Spurlock's podcast that you recently had on where he talks about being able to own your scars, or talk about your scars, or the hard times. And I think in general, that is a societal thing that we all need to work on because there's a lot of people suffering, and people don't want to tell you they're suffering. And so they'll suffer in silence, and maybe even commit suicide if it gets to the horrible end of the spectrum. But, you know, more than that is just the daily suffering that people are going through because they're afraid to tell their close friends and family their

• 1:14:36Speaker 00

  problems and what they're suffering through. So with me, it was when I started drinking, I drank in high school a little bit, like, boys will be boys, kind of like, we're seniors, senior night. Like, I didn't drink a ton because of the culture I came from, where, you know, the Mormon church has a code of health called the Word of Wisdom, that says no alcohol, no tobacco, no coffee, tea, and it also says that you should eat fruits and vegetables. And it also goes as far as saying that you should eat meat sparingly. And in fact, only in times of winter or famine. This is a code of health that Joseph Smith revealed in the early 1800s, that is what the Mormon culture lives on. And it's, it's

• 1:15:18Speaker 00

  a big part of the Mormon church, and it's not talked about. And it's this weird. I mean, we could go into hours of this, but basically after I got married, I, we were living in Utah. I was working at a granite job, getting paid nine fifty an hour. My wife, bless her heart, was doing a call center job every day. And we had one kid at the time. We, in fact, just had our first son. And we're just kind of trying to make ends meet. And the guys that I worked with at the granite shop afterwards, I'd get a few beers. And I'd be like, that seems fun. I want to, I want to, what the heck? Like, let me try a few beers. And I didn't tell my wife. Right? So at first, I was like, and that's the part

• 1:16:01Speaker 00

  of the Mormon culture where it's like, I couldn't even go tell my wife, like, hey, I had a few beers today after work, because I was afraid that she would, almost even to the, to the extent that she would leave me. Like, what? You did what? I'm out of here. And of course, that's just like my overactive brain, like, thinking the worst, which we all do. But it became a thing where I started drinking every once in a while. And this was way before YouTube even started. And I was lying to her for like, eight months almost, where I wasn't telling her that I was drinking, where I would, you know, have sunflower seeds or something like that to cover my breath. Because it was some, something I was like, if she knew about this, or I don't know, whatever, you know, this was

• 1:16:42Speaker 00

  years and years ago. So then I found YouTube, right? Then I got onto YouTube. We started making videos. And through the process, I met a bunch of people on YouTube, made friends, and moved to Los Angeles, California to start this company called Maker Studios that we talked about at the beginning that sold to Disney, with a bunch of people that I met. You know, there's like, seven or eight of us. And living in Venice Beach was the biggest culture shock I'd ever received. And I had-

• 1:17:10Tim Ferriss?

  Coming from San Francisco, even, you have culture shock when you go to Venice. I can only imagine.

• 1:17:15Speaker 00

  It was, it was so weird, because I felt like I had lived, you know, I had lived in Dallas, Texas. I had moved around selling pest control. I was in the West Indies for two years as a missionary. But moving to Venice was weird, because it wasn't, like, the friends that I talked to, it wasn't like, if they believed in, it wasn't like, what religion? That was all my life before- Or is like, well, are you Hindu, Catholic, Muslim? What are you? You know? But them in Venice, it was like, oh, you believe in God? That's cute, Shay. Pat on the head. Do you believe in Santa too? And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, you guys don't even believe in God like at all? And my Venice beach friends are like, no, like, how can you prove there's a God? I'm like, well, I guess I can't, but that was just a weird concept for me.

• 1:17:57Speaker 00

  So having a few beers wasn't a big deal to them, you know? And so that became easy for me. Not only are these my friends and people I looked up to creatively, but these were my business partners. And it became hard to connect if you didn't drink. And I hated the fact that people wouldn't open up until they've had a few drinks. Like as a sober person now, I haven't had a single solitary hand to the square drink in four years. It annoys me to the point of infuriation when I go to like after parties or something, where nobody will get on the dance floor until they've been drinking for like 30 minutes. I'm like, why do you need this substance to loosen up a little bit, you know?

• 1:18:38Speaker 00

  And that's what I liked about alcohol, as I liked being able to like finally talk to people in an open manner where it wasn't like, well, we have to worry about all the proper PC things. It's like, let's just really talk here, right? Like quit being so presumptuous or like saying these big words, like let's just talk as dudes, you know? So I like that about alcohol. It gave people that ability. But I have this saying that is just specific to my personality that is this. If one is good, then all is the best. Meaning I cannot just have a couple beers, right? Like I am an extremist. Like I can't.

• 1:19:18Tim Ferriss?

  I don't think either of us are very good at moderation.

• 1:19:20Speaker 00

  Right. I am bad at moderation. So I have to make decisions. You know, because some people will, why can't you just have a few beers and be fine with it? I'm like. Well, one beer, I mean, it's an acquired taste. It tastes like, like the first time you drink beer. I remember the very first time I drank beer as a 19 year old. I'm like, this is disgusting. Why do people drink this? And if they say they like it, they're lying. It's disgusting. Um, anyways, I mean, we could talk all about that. But towards the end, when I, you know, let the natural progression of addiction happen, which it will, if you're not very conscious, um, I was drinking every day.

• 1:19:58Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:58Speaker 00

  And I was drinking, if not every day, six days a week. And if I went 48 hours without drinking, I was like, man, when's the last time I had a drink? Wednesday? That's forever ago. Like, it got to the point where it was, it was definitely, you know, it wasn't taking over my life because I was able to, I guess I was a functioning alcoholic, you could call it. And I think a lot of people do that. And I think a lot of people do that more than they're willing to admit.

• 1:20:29Tim Ferriss?

  I think half of Silicon Valley, uh, is comprised of functioning alcoholics.

• 1:20:33Speaker 00

  How do you define alcoholism? Right? Like, I don't like calling myself an alcoholic, but if you drink more than three days a week, maybe you drink four days a week and you have more than one or two glasses of wine, to me, you're an alcoholic. And there's obviously different levels, but it's like, why do you drink? Do you drink to get drunk? Do you drink so that you can open up to people?

• 1:20:57Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:57Speaker 00

  Uh, you know, you have to be, like I said earlier, your own devil's advocate. You have to ask yourself those hard questions.

• 1:21:03Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I think, I think also the litmus test for addict could be your ability to stop or inability to stop, right? I remember, for instance, I've only scared myself once with alcohol in this capacity. But just first of all, I want to applaud you for talking about this because I think the biggest, one of the biggest risks when people are facing

• 1:21:26Tim Ferriss?

  Problems that make them fear for their sanity or their grip on the family, whatever it might be, is the feeling of being alone. Like, this is a unique problem, which is why it took me almost nine months, and I'm kind of ashamed it took me that long, after deciding to write this post on suicide, because I was off myself in college and I was ashamed of it and I didn't want to scare my parents and fill in the blank, right? There are all of these concerns and ultimately I realized that I was doing a disservice with someone with a platform, which is a great, uh, it's a great blessing and so on, but it's also a great responsibility that I felt compelled to share.

• 1:22:08Tim Ferriss?

  But it's, uh, so I have alcoholism runs in my family. And I remember at one point, this is a long time ago, I was living in San Jose and I was cooking breakfast one morning and I guess I'd had like a glass of wine or two with a friend the night before. So there was a bottle of wine that was, uh, like half full. And I was cooking something and it called for some type of vinegar or whatever. And I was like, oh, I could just use some wine. And so like splash some wine and I'm cooking and then I took like one little swig of wine and put it down. And I was like, oh, that was kind of like a fun thing to do in the morning, just like get started off. And over the course of a few weeks, it was like, okay, now I'm taking like two swigs in the morning and then three swigs in the morning.

• 1:22:49Tim Ferriss?

  And it wasn't a lot, but I remember one morning it was like 9:30 and I had a slight buzz on and I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. This is not good. This is not good at all. And, uh, but similarly, it's like I do drink alcohol, but whenever I feel like I might be the, I feel like alcohol is using me and not the other way around, then I just cut it out and I'll, and I'll go four weeks without, because I remember here in Silicon Valley, it's so easy to, or in, in any city, LA really, and I'm sure in many non-cities, you look back at the week and you're like, okay, I had three glasses of wine at various dinners and social outings, five or six nights this week.

• 1:23:34Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:23:34Tim Ferriss?

  That is a lot of alcohol.

• 1:23:36Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:23:36Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, but so how did you finally?

• 1:23:42Tim Ferriss?

  Break that habit.

• 1:23:43Speaker 00

  So, I mean, the reason I'm willing to talk about this now, and I've been wanting to talk about it for a long time, is because I know that there are so many people suffering through this still, right now. Because I remember being in that spot. I remember thinking about quitting, and I remember thinking, but how will I have a good time? How will I have fun? Like, what will I do? The very first day that I quit, right around 4:00 PM rolled around, and I was like freaking out, like, what do I do? Like, I was like anxious. I had to, I remember, I had to leave the house and go rock climbing. I'm like, I have to do something. I have to do something. I'm gonna drink again.

• 1:24:25Speaker 00

  And that's just advice, if you are taking something out of your life, like alcohol, you have to replace it. Replace it. Anything you take out, there's a void, there's a hole. And if you don't put something back in that hole, that's healthy, that same negative thing will go back. Just like you were saying with the wine in the morning, we as humans are prone to the path of least resistance, right? It's not easy to get better. It's tough. And our natural, you know, inclination is towards addiction and towards the things that are easy, right? Like, it's easy to drink alcohol and take away the pain. It's easy to not wake up in the morning and exercise. It's easy to go through the drive-through and buy a Big Mac, right?

• 1:25:08Speaker 00

  Like, what are you willing to do that is hard? And I think, understanding that and being able to embrace that work specifically. Like, I remember my grandpa was like, work will work when nothing else will work. Coming from the military, he just taught us, you work your ass off.

• 1:25:24Tim Ferriss?

  Work will work when nothing else will work.

• 1:25:26Speaker 00

  And I grew up with that, where it's like, if it's not working, then just work harder, you know? So, like, I definitely see the value in hard work. Kasim G., my buddy I was talking about earlier, he has a house in Venice Beach with a swimming pool, and it was an early morning scenario, like you were talking, it was like 11:00 AM. And I remember me and my brother going over to Kasim's house, and he had a bottle of whiskey there, and we're gonna sit in the pool and stuff, and it's like, hey, let's have a few shots of this whiskey. So I remember my California friend, my atheist friend, Casim, being like, dude, it's not even noon. And I'm like, wow, like, all of a sudden, I'm like, how far have I come where when I first moved out here, I couldn't believe that these people didn't believe in God.

• 1:26:10Speaker 00

  And now, all of a sudden, they're lecturing me on drinking too early in the day. And so I was like, shut up, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, like alcoholics do. It's not a problem. A lot of you right now are probably like, this guy doesn't know what he's talking about. Cause you feel self-conscious about you're drinking too much. Like, you need to be able to say, yes, I probably do drink too much. Anyways, I got in his swimming pool. I was swimming, kinda drunk. And I was kinda having a conversation with God, honestly. Like, I was swimming and I was like, I need to quit, I need to quit. Like, one, my buddy is telling me I'm drinking too early. Two, I'm a fatso, like, that's, I was drinking my calories. Like, I, I have a very large capacity.

• 1:26:54Speaker 00

  I could drink a 24-pack and still, like, have this conversation with you. Like, I, it's just the way that my body is, like.

• 1:27:04Speaker 00

  Anyway, so, I was having this conversation. As somebody who believes in an eternal Creator, I was kind of talking to God, in a sense, in my mind. And a lot of times, my conversations with God are, I think, really honest conversations that I'm having with myself. Like, I see God as this, you know, this eternal Creator that loves me. And I was having this conversation in the swimming pool, like, I'm gonna quit in two weeks because I have this. Like, you know how you always have, like, life moments? Like, I have to do this, and then I'll quit after this. And it's always the next morning, right? Like, the diet starts tomorrow. And I just was swimming and I had this, this revelation or something. It's like, if you really are serious about quitting and you really wanna quit,

• 1:27:48Speaker 00

  the only way that you're gonna quit, because I was terrified of not being able to quit. Like, I was really in that moment where it was taking control of me. Where, when 4:00 PM rolled around, if I didn't start drinking, I was really... You know physiologically feeling it like I had that addiction. And so I'm like, how am I gonna quit? How am I gonna quit? And the realization came to me in that swimming pool that if you don't quit right now, right this second, like when you get out of this pool, you're a non-drinker, then you'll never quit. And that terrified me. Like I had that realization like somebody spoke it to me. Like if you don't stop right now, like right this second, like if you don't say, I'm done, I'm quitting, you'll never quit. And I knew that that was true.

• 1:28:32Speaker 00

  Like the second that I thought that I was like, I won't. Because I'll always think of another reason. I'll always say tomorrow. I'll always say next week and it'll never end. And the progression like, how many of you listening right now have ever done or said something that you totally regret while you were drunk?

• 1:28:51Speaker 00

  Everybody, almost, right?

• 1:28:54Tim Ferriss?

  And just to also to just highlight that, I think a lot of people drink. They don't need the drinking to open up, but they want the plausible deniability. They want to be able to say, I had too much to drink.

• 1:29:10Tim Ferriss?

  But not to interrupt. Yeah, everybody's had that experience, of course.

• 1:29:13Speaker 00

  And so I had that realization in the swimming pool and it terrified me. I just thought, where does this lead, right? Where does this alcoholism go? What is the natural progression? I was able to see where it had taken me to that point, which was feeling like crap in the mornings, being overweight, you know, saying things every once in a while that were a little like, whoa, I can't believe he said that. You know, like, I didn't like that feeling. I don't want to be that person. And I guess the ultimate goal is deciding the person you want to be on purpose. And that is not who I wanted to be. So I quit. That stroke, that breast stroke, I was like, It scared me so much to the point that I'm like, okay, that's the answer. I have got to quit right now.

• 1:29:57Speaker 00

  And I got out of the pool and I told everybody that was there, there was a couple of people. I said, I quit drinking. And they all laughed at me because I drank a lot and that's in my personal community, like my friends that were, you know, my wife, my wife knew, like I told, I talked earlier about how I didn't tell my wife, but my wife definitely knew after the eight months I told her. You know, so everybody knew that was in my close and they knew what a big part of my life it was because I was the one at parties who's like, didn't want any ever, any, I never want anybody to leave. It was like, what? You're leaving? No, come on. Like I never wanted the party to end in a sense. And so I quit and the thing that really saved me is right at that time, like I, like, I think it was the next day.

• 1:30:41Speaker 00

  I went on this hunting trip with my dad and my brother and my son. And we were up in the middle of the mountains. Where there wasn't a convenience store or liquor store closed.

• 1:30:50Tim Ferriss?

  This is the day after the swimming pool.

• 1:30:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, this was like, I can't remember if it was the day after or two days after.

• 1:30:54Tim Ferriss?

  Shortly thereafter.

• 1:30:55Speaker 00

  But that, in the pool, that was my justification. I was like, well, I'll quit on the hunting trip. Because I'm going to be with my dad and my brother and my son, and I'm not going to drink. I'm not going to want to, you know, normally I would have, I would have found a way to hit it, you know, but I was like, I don't want to drink on that hunting trip. It's like a father, son, not only my dad, but my brother and my son. It's like three generations. Like this is a meaningful man's trip. And so in the pool, I was like, well, I'll quit when I go on that hunting trip. But I knew I had to quit before because of what I said. So it was like three days before, but anyways, we went um to the mountains. And hunted elk for two weeks and that was a very, you know,

• 1:31:34Speaker 00

  waking up at five in the morning and not being able to say a thing because my brother would yell at me if I'm too loud out on the mountain. My brother's a professional hunter, like that's what he does for a living, like he has a YouTube channel, so you can't snicker or like make little jokes like I like to do when you're trying to hunt big game with a bow and arrow. And so I had to be quiet at the same time of being in like the the most grandiose mountains I've ever seen. And so I had a lot of time to think, like right after I had made that swimming pool decision. So that two weeks, or I think it was like more like eight days hunting for elk in the mountains of Idaho was a real good therapy for me. And I recommend, I mean, I was at the point of alcoholism where me and my wife were

• 1:32:17Speaker 00

  calling rehab centers. Like I was like, I'm just gonna disappear for two weeks, whatever it takes, I'm gonna go to Malibu, you know, like how stereotypical, we moved to LA, I became an alcoholic, and I had to go to rehab, you know, and I was like, I don't want to do that, I don't want to be that person.

• 1:32:31Tim Ferriss?

  Well, instead you did the oldest rehab known to man, going on extended hunting trip.

• 1:32:40Speaker 00

  And I ended up killing my first elk on that trip, too. That was a crazy story. And then my brother cooked us up steaks that night, and I hated it. Cause I, I have like, I like animals a lot. So when I was eating that steak, I could just see that elk's eyes looking at me as I shot him from 40 yards away in the neck. So I, I didn't do great on that. But um, and that's why I have been vegan in the past, but not as much now.

• 1:33:07Tim Ferriss?

  So what would you say to any, any other words for someone out there who might be facing addiction?

• 1:33:13Speaker 00

  Oh, Timothy Ferris, I can't believe I just said that I drank alcohol for so long. Please forgive me, mom, I love you. I would say this.

• 1:33:22Tim Ferriss?

  You're not alone, though. I mean, you're not alone, right? Like Andrew Zimmer's talked about his, he was shooting up, I think it was heroin at the time, Margaret Cho's talked about her battles, like this is a common battle.

• 1:33:32Speaker 00

  Right. And that's why I've been motivated to talk about it, because I feel like My story can help a lot of people and I think that in general, that idea of, listen, society, let's not be so hard on each other. Like, let's, let's forgive each other and let's be okay with each other's weaknesses so that we can talk about them so that then we can become, we can start to heal, that we can become stronger.

• 1:33:59Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, well, with this like suicide post that I mentioned, you know, I've been carrying that baggage for so long and even many of my closest friends had no idea. And I was, and I kept it mostly to myself out of shame, but also out of fear of my parents' reaction, if they would blame themselves, etc. And then I put it out there, the burden was gone, like the weight was lifted and the, my parents responded, you know, in many different ways, but all positive and effectively said, like, you're doing really important work. And I was like, holy shit, if I had known this was going to be the response.

• 1:34:34Speaker 00

  You wouldn't have to suffer so long.

• 1:34:35Tim Ferriss?

  I would, I would have put this out so much sooner and maybe it would have helped people that I didn't have a chance to help.

• 1:34:40Speaker 00

  And that's important to realize about humans, for people who are wanting to do something like this, who are wanting to get something painful off their chest, or admit to an addiction, or just anything, you know what it is, right now, as you're listening, you're like, oh, it's this thing for me. Cause we all have our different things. To have, to realize that people are more forgiving than you think they're gonna be. Because, like what we talked about earlier, people are all suffering in their own way. There's some sort of like, it helps to know that you're suffering too. Not like misery loves company, but like, oh, he's suffering. Like, you'll find that people are way more forgiving than you thought, if you're vulnerable. If you get caught and then you have to make

• 1:35:25Speaker 00

  an apology video, then everyone's gonna be like, screw this guy. But if you're willing to be like, listen, here's a major problem I have. Here's a real weakness that I'm suffering with. Like, I wake up and suffer. I have pain, physical pain, from mental thoughts. That kinda stuff. If you're able to just open up and be vulnerable, you'll find, I think, almost every time, people will bend over backwards to try to understand you and say, it's okay, and like, try to help you.

• 1:35:54Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, absolutely. So let's switch gears just a little bit, or a lot of a bit, I suppose. But we haven't spoken much about Maker Studios. What were the most important decisions or

• 1:36:12Tim Ferriss?

  happenings that allowed it to be as successful as it was?

• 1:36:17Speaker 00

  It's about doing something new. It's about having the courage to say, we're gonna try this thing that's never been done before and just see where it goes. Like,

• 1:36:32Speaker 00

  just the concept of moving to Los Angeles, like picking up and moving my wife and three kids to Venice Beach to start an internet company with some people that I had only met like six months to a year previous, was like, everybody that I knew was telling me not to do it. My mom, my audience, like I had viewers at the time. And this is part of the documentary I talk about that I made called Vlogumentary with Morgan Spurlock and my buddy Corey Videl. But I talk about when we moved to Los Angeles, I had to convince our viewers that it was gonna be cool because they're all worried like, oh, you're gonna become LA.

• 1:37:14Speaker 00

  They really liked that we were this regular family from Idaho. So just moving out to Los Angeles to start a business was this first step that was so unconventional, so risky, that it's like, you don't know these people? What if they're gonna scam you? Like, we all do this, right? To protect ourselves. We all, you know, question these what ifs. Like, we all make reasons why we can't do something that we dream about. Because it's dangerous, it's risky, it's not smart, it's not prudent, whatever. So that was the first step, is just saying like, wow, there's people watching these YouTube videos and some people are starting to get paid doing it. What if we started a business that helped each other create these videos?

• 1:37:59Speaker 00

  So having said that, the audience-

• 1:38:02Tim Ferriss?

  Just a quick pause. When- When did you have the conversation that decided it? Like, was there a night when it's like you had a conversation, it's like, alright, fuck it, I'm in, and then you had to sit your wife down and be like,

• 1:38:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:38:18Tim Ferriss?

  honey, I have great news?

• 1:38:21Speaker 00

  That was a two-week process, the convincing of my wife to move to California. The first of those conversations was on the telephone at the radio studio at Z103. A guy named Danny Zappan, better known on the internet as Danny Diamond. He helped his girlfriend, whose name was Lisa Nova, still is, Lisa Donovan, produce the Lisa Nova Channel, which was a big channel early on. She was not only the biggest female YouTuber, but she was just like the biggest YouTuber at the time when I came onto the site in 2006, 2007. It was the Lisa Nova Channel, it was huge, like, everybody knew who Lisa Nova was.

• 1:39:02Speaker 00

  So, because I was just getting into the community, I, of course, knew who Lisa Nova was, and was like, you know, wanting to get to know more YouTubers so that I could kind of be in this YouTube community. And had come to found out that she had a boyfriend named Danny and her brother Ben, who kind of helped produce her content, because at the time, she had more produced content than anybody. They were doing skits, like, she was dressing up as Captain Jack from Pirates of the Caribbean. They had friends that did really great Hillary impressions. Anyway, so, I had met these people, right? And started talking to them about making YouTube videos and so forth. And had a phone conversation with Danny one night where he had set up a deal with

• 1:39:44Speaker 00

  a movie studio to promote this new Jason Statham movie called Crank, I think it was.

• 1:39:50Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:39:51Speaker 00

  To keep his heart rate above a certain RPM or you would die.

• 1:39:54Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:54Speaker 00

  Or beats per minute. And so, it was... Just a deal to promote that second movie. So the studio said, we want other YouTubers as well. Like, we want Lisa Nova to produce a video promoting the movie. And do you guys know any other of these YouTubers? And Dave Daze was one, I was one. So he called me in Idaho at the radio station at Z103 and said, hey, we got this deal through so and so productions that I can fly you out to LA and I can give you 2,000 bucks to come out here and make a video. We'll help you make it, we'll help you shoot it and edit it. And then you have to upload your channel to promote this movie coming out. So people will go see it. And I was like, dude, a free trip to LA? And you're gonna give me two grand? I remember calling my wife that night and be like, babe,

• 1:40:37Speaker 00

  I gotta book tickets to LA because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And she's like, wait, what? Who? Why? How much? What? You know? So that was the first night that it was like, whoa, this is like 2,000 bucks. Like, we're really cranking here. So I went out and this is so great because I have this all in vlog footage. Like, you can go to my old vlogs and see when I made this very first trip to Los Angeles to make this movie or to make these videos that would promote this Jason Statham movie. So the first night that I was there, we're all sitting, we had shot that day. You know, they had this nice camcorder. They had a boom pole. They had a microphone on a stick. And I remember thinking like, wow, these guys are, they're high production. These guys are real professionals.

• 1:41:21Speaker 00

  Baby, I'm in Hollywood, they got a boom pole. And they had Final Cut Pro and they knew how to edit. And I knew none of that, really. I just knew how to talk like I know how to do. So that first night in Venice Beach with Danny and Lisa and Ben all kind of sitting there. Danny's like, what if we started a business doing this? Like, what if we helped each other? Think of ideas, write scripts, edit, shoot. You could, you know, we have some props. We have a wardrobe department. She can do makeup. Like, what if we made a studio where we helped each other create content? And I was like, sign me up. This is funner than anything I've ever done.

• 1:42:02Speaker 00

  This really lends to all the things I like to do, which is act silly and, you know, just be in front of people and that kind of thing. And so I remember moving back, telling my wife, hey, I want to move our family to Venice Beach to start this business. And my selling point to her was this, babe, all we need to do is keep $200 cash on hand because that $200 is gas money. If for some reason, everything hits the fan, we go totally broke, for whatever reason, if we just have 200 bucks cash, we can drive back to Idaho and live with my parents. So that was my like, babe, it's cool because we could drive home and live with my parents if everything goes to hell.

• 1:42:44Speaker 00

  Which is not a great sales technique, but. It's not the worst I've heard. No, right? That was like my safe, my failsafe is we just had to have this $200 cash. So bless my wife's heart, she has supported me through my crazy ideas that I've had. She has put the kibosh on a few, like when I wanted to move to Alaska for a year and live off the land, she said no to that, which pissed me off, but whatever. So we did, she finally agreed to it and we kind of told our parents and I had to leave the radio job, which was kind of sad, but they were like, oh, you're moving to LA. You finally made it. I'm like, no, I haven't, we're going to be broke. And so we moved out to Los Angeles and the very first deal that we got to, other than

• 1:43:29Speaker 00

  this, this movie, when I first went out was A1 Steak Sauce. When I moved out there in June, we had this deal where we had to promote A1 Steak Sauce and they had this whole campaign that was called Sing For Your Beef and we had to get people to make up songs. How ridiculous, right? Of them singing about their meat and about like. I would have loved to have just been like a fly on the wall for the creative meeting. Oh, it's like, how are we going to get these people to make up songs? Yeah, it was, it was difficult, but that first brand deal through A1 Steak Sauce started, not only helped us pay for our rent for the first three months, but it kind of started Maker Studios and then we got some other. How did the A1 deal happen?

• 1:44:11Speaker 00

  It was all through, I can't even remember, like Danny at the time had some contacts, you know, because he was in that world and, you know, they're just barely, and bless A1's heart for being so forward thinking, this is eight years ago, you know, this is, you know, to have marketers have an advertising budget that was on the internet was unheard of, right? And now that's almost all companies are switching to. So it was very early on. I can't remember how we got the A1 contact, but um. And then what followed after that? I interrupted. Then, yeah, then we had this Sanyo Zacti campaign, like those early brand deals were like really the money that helped us get the business off, off the ground. There was

• 1:44:54Speaker 00

  this camera called the Sanyo Zacti and we all made a bunch of content on these cameras. They were waterproof and we did all these silly things with them. And it was all about, you know, sharing a product to our audience that trusted us as influencers and then that product would pay us. And, you know, that's one of the revenue streams for YouTubers, but the main one is, you know, just getting views. So those early deals kind of helped get the business off the ground. But as we started the business, we decided to start a channel together. And so we took like the five or six biggest YouTubers at the time and we created a collaboration channel called The Station. And the idea of that was a rising

• 1:45:36Speaker 00

  tide lifts all ships. So it's like if we all pour into this, then the sum will be greater than our parts, right? Where two plus two doesn't equal four, but it equals five. Where for some reason, there's this magic of networking and working together where you actually create or receive, you know, more than you think you would, where I'm one person that can do this much output in 12 hours. And you would think naturally that adding one more person would just double that output, right? But a lot of times you see that it does more than double it because of whatever, like we're. I think we're meant to be with each other as humans, like we're not meant to be individuals. So it's just the same concept, like if you're listening to music while you're working,

• 1:46:20Speaker 00

  your output's gonna be higher. So whenever you network something, and we see this in computers now, there's a greater output, you know, whether it's exponential growth, Einstein said that compounding interest is the eighth wonder of the world. There's just magic there, right? Like when you connect people in teams. And so that's what happened is the station, this channel, it grew bigger than almost all of our audiences. It all of a sudden had a million subscribers within the first month. And it was insane and it just grew like wildfire. It was the first time that you had social influencers coming together. It was like a Care Bear stare, if you will. You know how all the Care Bears get together and once they link and they Care Bear stare,

• 1:47:04Speaker 00

  it's like way stronger than just the individual Care Bear power? Yes. You get what I'm saying here? I do. You're from the 80s. And that effect happened and we all of a sudden started to have to hire people. And we had to make up job titles because the job titles that, you know, a social media optimizer is like, we just need somebody to help us with Twitter and Facebook. Things like that didn't exist in the marketplace. So we had to invent jobs, basically. How did you find your employees? People off the internet. The very best employees from Maker were people who were YouTubers themselves. People who struggled through trying to gain an audience, trying to create something that was unique, that people would watch,

• 1:47:49Speaker 00

  and then trying to make a living at that. Like a YouTuber is a multifaceted person. They produce, edit, write, shoot. All of the things that need to happen to create content, YouTubers do all of those things. And that's why old media, you know, Hollywood,

• 1:48:10Speaker 00

  They're having such a hard time keeping up is because we can create content so much faster and so much cheaper than they can. I remember hearing on a panel once that content is a commodity, just like wood or gold or oil. My YouTube videos are a commodity that I can trade. And that's usually through advertising, like you know, you place advertising on that content. But people now in 2016 are buying that content, you know, and marketing people are realizing that the influence that I have as a social influencer is way more powerful than an ad on a TV screen or a movie screen. It was, it's like in the past marketers and advertisers have put a priority on the size of the screen where it's like, I talked about CPMs earlier. I get two to three bucks per thousand views.

• 1:48:55Speaker 00

  TV gets 25 to 30 bucks. So it's like, if I could get my CPMs up to what TV CPMs are, I would be making bank, right? But because of this perception that advertisers have that, well, it's way more valuable to spend our money on a TV commercial than to pay some YouTube guy to talk about our product. That paradigm is shifting where they're realizing now that my audience of 4.2 million subscribers are people that have been with me for eight years. These are people that have watched my kids be born.

• 1:49:27Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's your extended family.

• 1:49:28Speaker 00

  These are my best friends, right? And what's the best form of marketing? Word of mouth, right? So instead of paying a hundred thousand dollars to be, you know, per second to be on a Super Bowl ad, I think advertisers and marketers are realizing that they have much more value with somebody like me that I can be like, look at this link right here, click on it. On the TV, you can't click on a link. I can give advertisers analytics that are so specific, it would blow their minds. Like, look, 13 to 17 year old age females watch this for 2.3 minutes. And when I said this, they stopped watching. Like the analytics in Google are that specific where there's hotspots where they can tell you when people click off of the video.

• 1:50:10Speaker 00

  So you can then go into the video and say, well, what did I say that made people leave right there? So with advertisers, now that we can show them that, the ad dollars are switching where it's like. They don't put a premium on the size of the screen anymore because they're realizing that the size of the eyeball is exactly the same, right? All of our eyeballs are the same. So that's, I think, ultimately what caused Disney to write this big billion-dollar check to buy Maker Studios is this influence. And it was the networking and it was, more than anything, I think Disney's like, whoa, what's going on here? There's some real traction and we just want to get into that. And somebody like Disney can just write a big check to get into it.

• 1:50:52Speaker 00

  And guys like us who just started a company four years ago can take that big check and say, "Thank you."

• 1:50:57Tim Ferriss?

  See, you've started more companies since, like Tricks and Clothing with, I guess, help me out here, your sister?

• 1:51:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a family business, you know?

• 1:51:13Tim Ferriss?

  And I guess, just, I want you to describe it, but the question I have for you is, why start another business? And there's no right answer. But like, I mean, we were talking a little bit about prices in, say, San Francisco versus prices where you live. Like, you have, I would imagine, more than enough to do whatever you need to do or want to do.

• 1:51:36Speaker 00

  That's the other misconception, I think, too, is I think people see that the company sold for that much and they think, well, surely he's... You know, I wonder how much money people think that I have, but there was a lot of founders and plus Time Order invested like 20 million, so they got a big chunk of it. Anyways, it's about growth. It's about, if you're not growing, you're dying. Tony Robbins said this, if, it's not, you don't live to achieve, it's like, while you're achieving, you're a living. You know, like, I just, my accountant calls me a serial entrepreneur, where I just, I want to grow things. Like, I want to try things that I've never tried. Growing up, I skied a ton.

• 1:52:20Speaker 00

  I rollerbladed, I was in all the extreme sports, so like Volcom, North Face, Hurley, all these companies were huge influences when I was young.

• 1:52:31Speaker 00

  And growing up, me and my brother always wanted to start a clothing company. So now where it's like, well, I have the money and the time. Let's try this thing that we had always talked about as kids. So we started Tricks and Clothing and it's very family oriented. Dave Ramsey, who's a financial guy I listen to, says the only ship that sinks is a partnership. So I've kind of gone against that advice. But yeah, we co-founded the company with my two brothers, my sister, my best friend from high school, my brother-in-law and like a camera guy that I have, and they all have equity in the company. Like I believe that people should be invested to the point where if they work harder, they get paid more.

• 1:53:14Speaker 00

  I don't like the hourly situation where it's like you trade your time for money. So it's like, it doesn't matter how hard you work, you get paid the same amount. So anybody that like I go into business with, I almost always want to offer some sort of equity, whether it's small or large, depending on what they can help, because I want them to have an invested interest in it. So Tricks and Clothing is more of a content company than a clothing company. You know, we have, we just make clothes that we like to wear and then we go do fun stuff and we shoot all of that. And really what we're selling is this lifestyle of creating great moments with your friends and family. And we just wear these shirts and hats while we're doing it. So it's really an excuse to do fun things with my siblings and my friends.

• 1:53:58Speaker 00

  Cause it's like, the last video we shot, we went to this iFly skydiving tunnel in Ogden, Utah. And that's work for us. Like we're going because we have to make this video about this new hat that we're launching. But in order to launch it, we're going to make this cool skydiving video.

• 1:54:13Tim Ferriss?

  Right, indoor skydiving.

• 1:54:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, indoor skydiving. So mostly the reason I started Tricks and Clothing was to have an excuse to hang out with my friends and family. And then people won't say that I'm lazy because I'm obviously working on my business.

• 1:54:31Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, so we're back from the Russian bath break. Rejuvenated, refreshed.

• 1:54:38Speaker 00

  Seeing each other naked.

• 1:54:39Tim Ferriss?

  Seeing each other naked.

• 1:54:41Speaker 00

  That was exhilarating.

• 1:54:42Tim Ferriss?

  It was, the cold plunges.

• 1:54:44Speaker 00

  I'll tell you what, if people, if your listeners don't know this, Tim Ferriss can sit in a cold plunge longer than anybody I've ever seen. We're talking sub-zero, that's 40 degrees?

• 1:54:54Tim Ferriss?

  Forty degrees or so.

• 1:54:55Speaker 00

  It's cold water.

• 1:54:56Tim Ferriss?

  It's cold, it's cold.

• 1:54:57Speaker 00

  It's definitely shrinkage factor, to the point where Tim was under the water, holding his breath. I watched a guy come, get in the bath, in the cold plunge, get out, shiver, and jump out of the thing, saying, "How is he doing that?" while you were under the water the entire time. So, very refreshed, very, uh, awake now, yeah.

• 1:55:19Tim Ferriss?

  Very awake, very awake. And we talked about some cool stuff, and I was like, "We need to, we need to record this, we need to record this." So we didn't get too far into it, but one of the conversations we were having, related to one of the aspects of what you do that I find impressive, which is, you are atypical in some respects with the way you've brought your audience along with you for eight years on YouTube. And I was lamenting, and also focusing on a lot of family-related content, and I was lamenting that when I was initially given suggestions for, for being more active on YouTube,

• 1:55:59Tim Ferriss?

  I, I was, I was 10, I tended to be pushed towards doing like, super fast cut, you must appeal to like, 12 to 15-year-olds. And that didn't jive with me, but I am interested, potentially, based on what you've told me, and what Casey Neistat has told me, experimenting with daily vlogging, even if just as like, a form of therapy experimentation for myself. And we were discussing the potential of possibly doing, say, like, 30-day experiments, where people can do this along with me, which I've done before on the blog, with like, Nob Nom, which was no booze, no masturbation for 30 days. That might be a weird video, so maybe not the no masturbation

• 1:56:41Tim Ferriss?

  transition part, but, uh, what would, what would your suggestions be for doing that?

• 1:56:47Tim Ferriss?

  The right way, or the smarter way instead of the dumber way. Because quite frankly, I'm so used to doing long form content. And these long books, long blog posts, that I struggle to think of how to do short form vlogs.

• 1:57:03Speaker 00

  You don't need to necessarily. I know traditionally, early on, the internet has been, it's a low attention span place, right? Where it's like, I remember early on, when I started uploading vlogs, it's like, if you had something over five minutes, good luck getting somebody to watch it, right? Like, we're talking internet videos here, they need to be 30 to 90 seconds. You need to, you know, that's how the internet kids are. They're bouncing around, the timelines, the Snapchats, the Facebooks, all over. But that's not true anymore with YouTube. Like, our vlogs average 12 to 20 minutes.

• 1:57:38Speaker 00

  And anymore YouTube rewards, the algorithm rewards longer videos, because they want people on the site. So I've found that our, you know, 12 to 15 minute videos have actually done better because people are on the site longer, and the algorithm rewards watch time. So the longer somebody's on your video, the longer, or the more likely that they'll see more of your videos, or that your other related videos will pop up in the suggested videos box. So I guess my first tip, my, well first, everybody listening should tweet Tim relentlessly until he starts a YouTube channel, because I know you guys want to see more of him. But it's just a better way to communicate with your audience.

• 1:58:21Speaker 00

  Like, if you're a human guinea pig, you know, like you kind of say sometimes, like, you're trying these things, you're trying to deconstruct, you know, world-class people, what a better way than to do what they do. You know, the best way to kind of achieve anything is find somebody who you want to be like, and just do what they do, you know? Kind of follow their pattern. And so with what a 30 day vlog or what a daily vlog will do for you and what it's done for me is it really helps you look at yourself in a sense where I live every day twice, where I live my day and then that night as I import the footage from that day, I watch all that stuff. And it's not like, you know, if I have a 20 minute vlog or a

• 1:59:05Speaker 00

  15 minute vlog, I only had 40 minutes of footage that day. Right? So it's like, there's not cameras out 24/7. I shoot to edit, right? So I'll pull out the camera and I should do it while I'm here. My camera is in my backpack, but I will edit as I'm shooting, right? So like, as I'm talking, I will make cuts in my mind that I know I'm gonna make later, where I like, take a breath, talk here, apple tea, cut, and then start talking again. So because I've edited myself so much, when I'm shooting myself, I know how long I want the clip to be. So I'll never shoot for longer than two minutes.

• 1:59:40Tim Ferriss?

  A single take.

• 1:59:41Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. And I'm good at that. And I've gotten better where I can just flip the camera on and talk. Some people find it really hard because you become self-conscious. You're like, I don't like the way I said that. And we talked about this at the Russian baths. To me, one of, one of the biggest keys to success is not caring what other people think. Just being able to speak freely and not worry about how it's going to be perceived. I was telling Tim this, I haven't been nervous for a long time to do something, but I was super nervous to come on this podcast because I know the caliber of people that listen to it. And so a lot of times, I like the fact that it's like, yeah, I sold my company for a billion dollars because then that gets respect, right?

• 2:00:22Speaker 00

  But sometimes when I'm like, just jabbering, like I do in my daily vlogs, I think people could stumble upon this and be like, what's this? This is a waste of time. But there's not a right or a wrong way to do it. The way to do it is to just start doing it, just to get a channel, make a video and upload it. And then you start to learn what you like, what you don't like. Like I've always said, you shouldn't start a channel to try to be like Philip DeFranco. When I first found Phil, it was like, do I have to do that? Do I have to do these quick cuts and do popular culture? Do I have to talk about Britney Spears going to jail? Like, What can my thing be? And my thing was, I just want to turn the camera on and talk. Or one of my very first vlogs, when we were trying to get a Christmas tree from the basement upstairs,

• 2:01:07Speaker 00

  and we got the Christmas tree stuck, like, in the stairway. And my son was stuck underneath this artificial Christmas tree. And my wife was like, trying to pull the tree down the stairs. And my son was stuck, like, inside the tree. And it was so funny. I'm like, instead of helping, I'm gonna go get the camera and just record this. And so it's, I also say vlogging is about knowing when to take out the camera. It's, it's very hard to be like, okay, I'm gonna turn the camera on and be funny and entertaining. Ready, go. But it's more about like, oh, everybody's laughing right now. This is a great time to pull out the camera. You know, those moments that are just happening naturally. But with you, and what we were talking about at the bathhouse, is that, yeah, you can do a 30-day vlog where it's like, I'm gonna do this for 30 days,

• 2:01:51Speaker 00

  and you at home can follow along with me. And then it's, then it becomes like, your YouTube channel is like a science lab, where you're, you can see the results, and people can follow along with you. You can have a day one, here's my protocol. Here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna eat only fruit for a month. And let's try this, and let's see how it goes. And what a better way to communicate than through video, by saying, hey, guys, it's day one. Here we go. I'm super nervous to try this. Let's do it. Okay, here's my first banana. And then all of a sudden, you're on day 10.

• 2:02:22Tim Ferriss?

  This is my 176 banana. I'm pretty fucking sick of bananas.

• 2:02:26Speaker 00

  And then people will write in. All of a sudden, you'll start getting banana recipes from all of your viewers. Like, hey, Tim, I'm doing the same thing, but here's how I eat my bananas. And then all of a sudden, you're having the benefit of hundreds and thousands of minds, kind of networking, all on the same project that you're doing, all being excited about the same thing you're excited about.

• 2:02:44Tim Ferriss?

  So this is, I mean, this is a fun idea for me. And I do, I do want to come back to sort of a tactical, practical question for you. But so, unbeknownst to pretty much everyone in the universe, I do have a YouTube page, but no one knows about it because it's been so neglected. I shouldn't, neglected is too loaded. I haven't been consistent because I haven't figured out a way to do it that is congruent with my wants and values and desires. But this would be congruent, because it's like a, a log of an experiment, which is what I do all the time, anyway. I just haven't used video. And you guys are not here with us in my living room, but... I literally have bookshelf after bookshelf after bookshelf of notebooks.

• 2:03:27Tim Ferriss?

  And it would just be a flip in recording mechanism, right? The end, I'll give a shout out, and I had no idea before we met that you have invested in Diet Bet, among other companies. So Diet Bet, I have done a couple of campaigns with Diet Bet, even though I have no equity in the company or anything like that. I said, okay, this is a very simple way for people to do what I have suggested for a long time, which is create incentives for yourself. It's not enough to say, I want to lose weight. Bad goal. Like, make it specific. How many pounds? Make it

• 2:04:02Speaker 00

  Measurable.

• 2:04:03Tim Ferriss?

  Measurable. Make it rewardable or punishable. And that's where something that is as simple as a betting pool comes into play. So people can check out dietbet.com. But I could see, for instance, combining the video log with a particular experiment that people could follow along, join me on, right? And I could see that, hello, that's okay, you're all right. We have company coming in. And simultaneously having, say, Diet Bet, and on top of that, having something like coach.me, which is a company I'm involved with, used to be Lyft for sort of not only accountability, but sort of coaching for people who want it, for whatever might be going on.

• 2:04:48Tim Ferriss?

  And if I did that, so let's just say, all right, day one, day 10, day, whatever it might be, would you suggest filming to edit in the sense that I'm taking multiple snapshots of each day? Or is it just one portion? Because in my mind, I'm like, well, I could do, let's say, a flexibility experiment, but if it's like the same five-minute routine over 70 days, aren't people going to want to punch themselves in the face?

• 2:05:17Speaker 00

  It has to be, I think the best vlog, just like any story, has a beginning, a middle, and an end. So to me, the best way to do a daily vlog is to start in the morning and be like, good morning, it's another great day, it's March blabbity blah, and I'm going to do this, and I'm looking forward to this today. And then it's like they're living this sped up day through your life, because

• 2:05:41Speaker 00

  You're gonna have different things that, you know, come to you throughout the day in the process, like whatever it is that you're, you're doing, whether it's journaling, say, you're trying to write in your journal every day for 30 days and you're talking about that. People, and there's this, also there's weird concept, for instance, like listening to your podcast, being a fan of your podcast, I've wondered for the longest time what it looks like in here.

• 2:06:02Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:03Speaker 00

  Right, like just having Mike Rowe on and he's talking about all the books that you have, and you have Jaco's book over here. As a viewer, I wish I could watch some of this podcast.

• 2:06:13Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:13Speaker 00

  Right? And if you were doing a daily vlog, then people get a little bit more into the aesthetic of your life. So it's like, oh, he likes, you know, Japanese art and, you know, you like plants a lot. There's plants all over in this place.

• 2:06:28Tim Ferriss?

  And photographs and artwork of naked ladies.

• 2:06:32Speaker 00

  There are some naked ladies, one or two. This, this one over here keeps staring at me. What's your deal, lady? I'm a married man. But it's just more of you, right? Like people look up to Tim Ferriss, they wanna know more about Tim Ferriss. That's what you do, right? You deconstruct world-class whatevers. And so you wanna know, what did you have for breakfast?

• 2:06:50Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:50Speaker 00

  What should I have for breakfast? And that goes back to the point where I said, find somebody who you wanna be like and do what they do. That's what vlogging is in the sense that you are really able to tell the story of your life in a much fuller way. And there's so many times during the day where you'll think like, oh, I wanna say this or, and that's a great time to pull out the camera. And it doesn't, that's why I'm like, I said, it's, it's important to know when to pull out the camera, because it's a very hard proposition to be like, okay, I'm gonna turn the camera on and talk about-

• 2:07:19Tim Ferriss?

  Perform.

• 2:07:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. It's like, be funny and entertaining, go. And then you see a red light, like, action. That's tough to do, but in those moments where you're, you know, you're introspective or you're meditating, or like, early in the mornings when you first wake up and you have an idea, what a better time to pop up-

• 2:07:37Tim Ferriss?

  Or later in the mornings when I wake up.

• 2:07:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, whenever you wake up. No, no shame in that.

• 2:07:41Tim Ferriss?

  No judgment.

• 2:07:42Speaker 00

  And in fact, listening to your podcast, I know a lot of successful people get up early, and that's a problem I have had as well. And until I had kids, I, like, 10 a.m. was early for me.

• 2:07:53Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:53Speaker 00

  To wake up at 10 a.m.

• 2:07:55Tim Ferriss?

  Now you're waking up and having soccer matches at 6 in the morning.

• 2:07:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm up at 6 a.m. every morning, because there's kids jumping on my head. But, um, you know, it-

• 2:08:03Speaker 00

  It's a great way to tell a story, honestly. And I more, I mean, that's what I see, what I do is, is it's just storytelling. And what we were talking about earlier is you're able to analyze yourself. Like I have been able to take out speech crutches, like um, and just saying words that are useless. Because I edit myself and I hate myself when I'm saying these ums or whatever that you use as a speech crutch. And I think you really are able to see yourself in a way that you're not used to seeing yourself.

• 2:08:35Tim Ferriss?

  Completely.

• 2:08:35Speaker 00

  Yeah. And so it's been very, I mean, vlogging, you know, people ask, is it healthy? Is it good?

• 2:08:43Speaker 00

  It's put a mirror in front of me that's, that's made me ask myself some hard questions that I might not have done before. If I wasn't editing my life every day after I lived it, you know? So it's almost like a, every day you live your life and then you sit down and you're like, I'm gonna look at all of my day again.

• 2:08:58Tim Ferriss?

  Well, it's in a way, completely analogous to what I already do in text. And quite frankly, maybe better in the respect that I use, say, the five minute journal, right? Which forces you, encourages you to focus for a few minutes in the beginning of the day and then review it and do a retrospective. And takes another three to four minutes. And there's a gratitude component. There is a focus component. People can listen to my other podcast on like, it's like the five habits that helped me win the morning, if you want to hear more on that. But the point being, I don't have any social accountability. I don't have any external

• 2:09:42Tim Ferriss?

  pressure, which is a good thing in my mind, to keep it up. So there are days when I miss it. But if I'm doing a daily vlog and I announce to the world that I'm gonna do that, for fuck's sake, now I have to do this goddamn video. I am forced to do the retrospective and look back at the day in a way. Which I think can be very helpful. And you know, the stick in that respect, I think is, is very underrated. The, uh, so I want to just comment on a few things because I think they're important. So the first is not caring about what people think. And I was thinking, I was thinking to myself yesterday and sort of meditating, meditating is too lofty a word.

• 2:10:22Tim Ferriss?

  I was just trying to digest two things that I hear a lot that I've always had trouble practicing, and I've begun to suspect are almost impossible. So one is live every day like it's your last. And the fact of the matter is you can't do that. It would be like, you know, whiskey and whores and like coke and like you just like, you can't just start doing that. Maybe that's just me, but I apologize, everybody listening. So the, the, the point being like, you have to, you have to temper that as, as someone with, say, kids or responsibilities or big, long-term goals with a degree of planning, right? Which by definition takes you out of the present state. It's like, how do you balance those two things? It's maybe not as simple as it would appear at face value. And as we were talking about this today, not caring about what people think,

• 2:11:07Tim Ferriss?

  I was like, is it that? Uh, but then you said something just a few minutes ago, which is not worrying. And I was like, well, I think that's the key right there. Like you can care about what people think, but not let it stop you from experimenting, right? You can care on some level and have it be a consideration because as like social, uh, animals who have sort of evolved in tribal groups or small, uh, very small contingents, I think we're hardwired in a sense to care about hierarchy and so on.

• 2:11:41Speaker 00

  Because they, they used to kill you if they didn't like you.

• 2:11:44Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, right.

• 2:11:44Speaker 00

  You'd get kicked out of the clan.

• 2:11:45Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, exactly. And then you're done.

• 2:11:46Speaker 00

  They would sacrifice you.

• 2:11:47Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, that's, then you're done. So the, uh, all right. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna make a, uh, public commitment here.

• 2:11:55Speaker 00

  Here we go.

• 2:11:56Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, so I, I'm not gonna set, uh, once I start and it'll be clear, I will do a daily vlog for 30 days. The, the YouTube channel, which actually has some pretty wacky, cool shit out there, including like video of some of my surgeries and crazy stuff like that, uh, is just youtube.com forward slash Tim Ferriss. Two R's and two S's. So check that out, guys and

• 2:12:18Speaker 00

  Subscribe.

• 2:12:20Tim Ferriss?

  Subscribe. Hold me accountable. Uh, so let's just say-

• 2:12:23Speaker 00

  Well, I'm gonna hold you accountable right now. When are you gonna start? When does your 30 days start?

• 2:12:27Tim Ferriss?

  When's my- I wanna know. I wanna think of a good experiment.

• 2:12:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, what can you-

• 2:12:31Tim Ferriss?

  So I'm mid-experiment right now with gymnastics. So I could record some of that and put it up certainly cuz I still suck balls at some that are really funny to watch cuz they're terrible. I mean, really bad. Um, but I'm making progress and it's very clearly visible if you see the timeline.

• 2:12:48Speaker 00

  You would love to have that video. Like, that's another thing about vlogging.

• 2:12:51Tim Ferriss?

  Now, the good news is I have all the video.

• 2:12:53Speaker 00

  Oh, you do?

• 2:12:54Tim Ferriss?

  I've been filming, but I haven't posted it. Uh, and I could also, you know, potentially put up the commentary from Coach Summer, who's been helping me, former national team coach, who's, who's just on the podcast. Uh, so let's see. In terms of date, uh, no later, I'm gonna make it this way cuz I wanna make sure it's,

• 2:13:18Tim Ferriss?

  I wanna make sure it's something I enjoy putting out. No later than August 1st, 2016, I will start.

• 2:13:24Speaker 00

  30 days of vlogging?

• 2:13:25Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:26Speaker 00

  What I was gonna suggest is it would be cool to be like, what's a gymnastic move that you would love to be able to do? Like, something that the coach has told you that, like, an iron cross, for instance, right? Like, up on the rings where you, like, do that. What I think would be cool is if you set a goal to be able to do something like that-

• 2:13:45Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 2:13:45Speaker 00

  And say, "I'm gonna start August 1st, and my goal is in 30 days, I'm gonna be able to do this move."

• 2:13:51Tim Ferriss?

  So I actually have three specific moves that I'm targeting right now, but people are just catching me midstream. The good news is I have all the videos, so we will be able to do a retrospective.

• 2:14:03Speaker 00

  Status.

• 2:14:04Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, and the, the moves are, for people who haven't heard the, the Coach Summer interview, which is, is, is worth listening to, uh, and people can just Google this, I won't go into it right now, but is a strict press handstand, probably straddle, people can just look that up, uh, and then front lever, and then planch, P-L-A-N-C-H. Also probably a straddle planch, uh, because that's easier than a pike planch, but- Or a straight-legged planch in any case. But yeah, I think I could have some fun with this. And the appeal to me of the vlogging, honestly, out of all the things we've talked about,

• 2:14:40Tim Ferriss?

  is using it as a additional tool in the toolkit for becoming more conscious and self-aware and present state-aware.

• 2:14:52Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 2:14:53Tim Ferriss?

  It just, it's, I've done that somewhat in audio, being able to deal with these audio tics, some of the verbal tics that I have. But it would be a fun way to, like you said, have a forcing function so that you look back at your day and have some sense of evaluation. Not judgment necessarily, but evaluation, where you're actually forcing yourself to hopefully incrementally improve bit by bit and trend in the right direction. Which is what I've noticed with the gymnastics. Like, if I weren't recording it and sending these videos to Coach Summer, it would just be, it would be infinitely harder for me to track and tweak

• 2:15:32Speaker 00

  Right.

• 2:15:33Tim Ferriss?

  the process and the progress.

• 2:15:35Speaker 00

  The accountability issue is huge. Because we always make excuses to not do something. But if you have a couple hundred thousand people who are like, "You said you would do this, Tim." On the days that you don't feel like doing it, and it's not to say that you don't feel like doing this, but there's, as we all know, days where you just don't feel like doing it. That will push you to do it anyways. And then you will grow exponentially faster because you're forcing yourself to do these things.

• 2:16:03Tim Ferriss?

  What type of camera do you use? And what software or other tools do you use to make this manageable?

• 2:16:10Speaker 00

  So my technical knowledge is fairly slim. I've always relied on my personality. But you can get a Canon G7X, which is what most YouTubers are using now. It shoots in 1080, high-quality, high-definition, has audio. And camera companies are really coming a long ways. They're really seeing the vlogging, I'm gonna call it a culture, take off. Like, it's so weird for me to like be driving down the street and see somebody talking to a camera, which I do often now. Or I'll see people in stores. Talking to a camera, whether they're FaceTiming or FaceChatting or Snapchatting, FaceChatting. So when I started doing it eight years ago, nobody was doing it.

• 2:16:55Speaker 00

  Like, I would feel crazy walking around a grocery store, talking to a camera. Now it doesn't bother me at all. Now I could be walking through the middle of Los Angeles International Airport and vlog, you know, as I'm walking through and not even care. But if I go to my hometown Walmart, I'll feel embarrassed because I'm afraid to see somebody I know that sees me doing the vlogging thing. But yeah, I use Final Cut Pro X, which is like, you know, an easy editing software where you can import your footage. And it's, you know, Apple B, you use the Blade tool and you just cut. So I don't have a bunch of effects. Like, I have a little intro and an outro.

• 2:17:33Speaker 00

  You know, and those are just best tips and practices. You should always link your content. So if you're doing 30 days of videos, at the end of day one video, or at the end of day two video, it's great to say, "Hey, go check out yesterday's vlog." You can click right here to watch it. So those are little things that I can, you know, teach you. But yeah, you can use, I mean, the tools of the trade of creating content are so much better and easier to get now. And that's why, you know, people are able to compete with Hollywood out of their bedrooms. Because these cameras are small, they're cheap, and they're shooting as good of stuff as, you know, you see in movies sometimes, or used to see, but...

• 2:18:11Tim Ferriss?

  It's like us, I mean, sitting here right now, the gear that I have, that we're using right now consists of, in its entirety, a Zoom H6, two XLR cables, which have existed forever, and then two SM, I think these are SM58, Shure mics, which have been around forever. You could throw these against a wall and they'd be totally fine. And this produces audio that is certainly, for podcasting purposes, more than sufficient, as long as I don't screw it up too badly on the levels.

• 2:18:41Speaker 00

  And you think, how many people are listening to this based off of this tiny little piece of technology? Like, if you're in the room with us, it's a very small recording device, and as technology speeds up through this exponential Growth that we're experiencing right now, the ease of capturing that content is so much easier. Where to the extent that I've seen apps now, you know, Casey Neistat, for instance, films a lot of his vlogs on his iPhone. Like the quality on the front, on this front-facing camera is so good now that you can do a lot of it on your phone and edit within your phone.

• 2:19:15Tim Ferriss?

  And there are mics and I have one somewhere nearby. I think it's called the Rodecaster.

• 2:19:20Speaker 00

  Plug in there.

• 2:19:20Tim Ferriss?

  That plugs right into the Lightning on the iPhone. Do you, on your Canon G7X, attach any type of mic?

• 2:19:28Speaker 00

  No, I should. You can. And then there's, I hate where the microphone is. The microphone's on the top of the camera and it kind of sucks for wind. So a lot of YouTubers will get like a little, you know, like a fuzzy thing that you would see like on the end of a boom pole or something to break up the wind. And they put that, but see Canon is even now switching the mic to the front of the camera.

• 2:19:50Speaker 00

  To compensate for that, to get the audio, because they're realizing that people are speaking to the camera. And so they're putting the microphones in different positions now. So little things like that, like I used to have a deal with Flip. You remember Flip cameras?

• 2:20:02Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, back in the day, sure.

• 2:20:03Speaker 00

  Pop out. It was owned by the Cisco Corporation. I was so mad because when YouTube first started, Flip was genius in the sense that they, there was an event called YouTube Live that was here in San Francisco in 2007. Katy Perry sang, or Akon was there. It was like the very first big YouTube event where they invited all these YouTubers. And there was like 50 seats that they had for like, you know, the big YouTubers that they invited to this event. And on every one of those chairs was a Flip camera, a brand new Flip camera in a box. And all of us were like, no way. They gave us a free camera.

• 2:20:40Speaker 00

  And I used that camera so much and promoted it so often through my vlogs that the Flip company contacted me. They sent me like 10 of these cameras to give out and they said, we want to do a Shay Carl Flip camera. We want you to help us design what would be the best for this camera. And I was like, okay, we need to have a, a macro button. And like I had all these ideas and they ended up going, or Cisco for some reason just shut down Flip. Yeah, I think it was a tax reason or something.

• 2:21:11Tim Ferriss?

  Could have been a tax reason, could have been an iPhone reason.

• 2:21:13Speaker 00

  Maybe, maybe.

• 2:21:14Tim Ferriss?

  Right after when they were acquired, it was like six months later, the iPhone.

• 2:21:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's the reason. But I was so disappointed because I was gonna have like my own flip camera. But the evolution of these personal point and shoot cameras has really come a long way. Where for 800 bucks, this Canon G7X can do a ton of stuff.

• 2:21:32Tim Ferriss?

  Canon, that's on me. First one's on me. Send me 10 cameras. Help me design.

• 2:21:37Speaker 00

  Canon, come on. I want some cameras too.

• 2:21:40Tim Ferriss?

  Call me.

• 2:21:44Tim Ferriss?

  This is the epic multi-parter continued. We just finished acro yoga.

• 2:21:50Tim Ferriss?

  Got shade to do flying poshi, being flown no, no less.

• 2:21:55Speaker 00

  I've had a lot of firsts on this trip. I had a MRI body scan. We went to the Russian baths. I just got done doing acro yoga and it's all in between the sessions of recording the podcast.

• 2:22:07Tim Ferriss?

  There's a lot happening behind the scenes here, but we were talking about at the Russian baths, among other things, quotes that have motivated you and are quotes that you find very useful. And I remember one you said was, and correct me if I'm wrong here, something along the lines of, "Smart people learn from their mistakes. Wise people learn from other people's mistakes."

• 2:22:26Speaker 00

  Right.

• 2:22:27Tim Ferriss?

  Are there any other quotes that you keep handy for yourself or others?

• 2:22:33Speaker 00

  I mean, I love quotes. Like, I love motivational quotes. And I know that I have like a bunch that I'm like always, like I love Henry Ford's,

• 2:22:45Speaker 00

  what is it?

• 2:22:47Speaker 00

  "Whether you think you can or whether you think you can't, you're right."

• 2:22:50Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 2:22:51Speaker 00

  I love that quote. I love, you know, one of mine that I've thought of is, "The secrets to life are hidden behind the word cliche." You know, I really always, every time I think I'm hearing a cliche, I count that as a truth. I perk my ears up. I try to listen to what's being spoken.

• 2:23:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of different trip, I mean, tips and tricks that you can try to keep yourself motivated. But I don't know, I haven't thought about that right off the top of my head.

• 2:23:20Tim Ferriss?

  Well, let's, let's maybe come at it from a different angle and just looking, thinking of tips. Quite a few people asked if you had any fatherhood tips for first time dads.

• 2:23:31Speaker 00

  I was telling this to Tim yesterday, you have to know when to walk away from a crying baby sometimes because early on it can get stressful when the babies are crying and you've fed them and you've changed them and it's like, what do you want kid? Um, I think a lot of parents stress themselves out majorly by trying to ease their kid and sometimes you just need to let a baby cry in their crib, uh, cause it can get stressful. Uh, tips, don't let them die. Yeah, keep them alive. I always, I always joke like I've kept all five of my kids alive. That's, that's, that's good percentage. Um, it's just, it's hard to give like, here's what I would do

• 2:24:12Speaker 00

  as a father because every situation is different, right? But I have, I've learned that, and this, this kind of came to me, here's another quote that I think is true to life that I kind of realized when I had my fifth kid, when Daxton came along, which is to me, the happiest state of human existence is found in loving something more than you love yourself. And no other way can you do that than through parenthood, through, you know, flesh of your flesh. And I remember being an early parent and, you know, hearing parents like, oh, I love my kids so much. And I almost felt this guilt early on because I'm like, yeah, I

• 2:24:52Speaker 00

  love my kids, but like, I don't get how people are like so connected with their kids. I'm like, I guess I don't like my kids until they're like two years old, until they can start talking and then their personality starts coming out. My wife is like loves the little baby and like babies are cute and stuff, but I'm like, they're worthless. Look at, he's just laying there, doesn't do anything. But why, right? Like one and a half years old, when they start to talk and like walk and you see them understanding the things that you're saying, little Daxton, we have like full conversations and he can only speak like six words, but I can just tell from his body language and from things that, you know, he points at and stuff, we have like full conversations. So, um, and

• 2:25:33Speaker 00

  they'll say the funniest things. We'll be driving and my daughter Emmy just has this dry, quiet sense of humor and she'll drop these one-liners. I'll be like, turn the radio down. What did you say? Brock ran in the kitchen the other day and he's like, Oh, it smells so good in here. It smells better than Jesus.

• 2:25:52Tim Ferriss?

  Or the video you showed me with the bow and arrow. Can you explain that one?

• 2:25:55Speaker 00

  That's a viral video. We were driving home from Los Angeles to Idaho. And we stopped at this gas station and there's this little toy store in the gas station and all the kids like, I want a toy. My kids can have one toy. So my little, at the time he was three and a half, Brock got a bow and arrow. And we're getting in the van and I'm vlogging, like, you know, we're like, okay, we're headed home. And all of a sudden he's like, look at my boner. We're like, what did you say? He's like, look, I got a boner. Like, no, Brock, it's a bow and arrow. And, uh, yeah, that got seven million views on YouTube. Uh, but yeah, kids do say the darndest things. It is true.

• 2:26:32Tim Ferriss?

  And from the outside looking in, I mean, you seem to be a very good dad, but just to revisit that question. What, what do you think makes you different? Because there are a lot of shitty parents out there and a lot of shitty dads. What makes you different?

• 2:26:46Speaker 00

  First of all, you've just got to be there for your kids, right? Like, I have seen the level of bad parenting that exists in the world, just simply because of how many kids watch our channel solely as like, we're their parents because their mom and dad, and some parents have to work a lot, right? So like, I'm not, if you have to send your kids to daycare or if you have to leave your kids, I understand that. Like, I remember coming home and my mom had to work till 4:30. So we were by ourselves when we came home, but that's why I love my job, because I can be with my kids. And that really is, because you can't, like, here's all the steps to being a good dad. Mostly, you just have to be there for them.

• 2:27:27Speaker 00

  And there's a fine line too about being their friend and being like their parent, because I'm my kid's friend in a sense that like, we love to hang out, but when it's time to clean your room, I can be a dad and be like, no, get in there and clean your room. Like, I grew up in this traditional household where you need to learn how to work. You need to get your homework done. You need to keep your room clean. You need to help out around the house. You live here too. Go pick up that trash. Go do the dishes. Help out. Like, we're a team. I tell my kids, like, this family is a team. And we all need to pitch in together and everybody needs to help. So you know, when the house is a mess, I can turn it into dad mode, be like, come on, every turn the TV off, turn the computer off, put that iPad away. Everybody get in here, we're gonna do 10 minutes

• 2:28:10Speaker 00

  of cleaning. And I can get in that dad type tone where it's like, it's time to do what you need to do because we need to be responsible. But then I'll wrestle with them on the couch and we'll play soccer in the basement. And it's just what I think the here's the best tip about being a parent. Remember when you were a kid, right? Think about the things that you liked when your parents did. Think about the things that you didn't like what your parents did and change those things. And I think that's a generational thing. Each generation does better or tries to do better than before. You know, I hear stories from my grandma about how poor they were, you know, and how they had to really make sacrifices to make ends meet. And it's just like each generation tries to do better.

• 2:28:54Speaker 00

  And I would say those are some good tips. Just try to remember what it was like when you were a kid and try to implement those things.

• 2:29:02Tim Ferriss?

  So when you are gathering tips, ingesting information, audiobooks, do you listen to audiobooks?

• 2:29:10Speaker 00

  I love audiobooks.

• 2:29:12Tim Ferriss?

  Are you listening to anything right now or most recently?

• 2:29:16Speaker 00

  Um, I mean, I have loved listening to anything Dale Carnegie. Um, How to Win Friends and Influence People is a staple that I've listened to three or four times. Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill are amazing.

• 2:29:29Tim Ferriss?

  How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie, also a huge winner.

• 2:29:33Speaker 00

  I just downloaded that. I haven't listened to that yet. I need to listen to that.

• 2:29:35Tim Ferriss?

  I haven't listened to it, but I've read it several times. It is on my bookshelf about 12 feet to my right. And sits there is a constant reminder that it's kind of like the break in case of emergency, break glass in case of emergency book?

• 2:29:48Speaker 00

  Book, yeah. Well, because a lot of times you need to be reminded of that stuff. Like you'll go and you'll listen to those books, you'll be like, oh yeah, why am I not doing that? I know that. When I do those things, I feel happier. There's just little things that we like, we talked about earlier, where humans are prone to follow the path of least resistance. And if we're not conscious about our decisions, And we're not every day making, you know, specific choices to become better. We'll slowly start to slide down. We will get worse. So you have to be conscious every day of what am I going to do with my life? How do I want my life to be? What kind of person do I want to be? And just having those conversations with you, but I love audiobooks. Anytime I can multitask, mowing the lawn, I listen to your podcast all the time.

• 2:30:34Speaker 00

  Um, I have an audible subscription. I listen to audible, any audiobooks I can find.

• 2:30:38Tim Ferriss?

  Any other podcasts that you really enjoy listening to?

• 2:30:40Speaker 00

  Um, I like the Joe Rogan podcast. I listen to, uh, Hank and John Green. They have a podcast. They give dubious advice. They're YouTubers. I really look up to them.

• 2:30:51Tim Ferriss?

  Impressive guys. I mean, writers also and creators of VidCon, right?

• 2:30:54Speaker 00

  Yep. They created VidCon. They've created the sci- there's, they have a science channel, like all kinds of, you know, intellectual content, smart stuff, like they're brothers that, uh, I call John Green an intellectual dreamboat.

• 2:31:09Tim Ferriss?

  Is John, no, John, I always, he's the author of The Fault No Stars, which has turned into a movie.

• 2:31:15Speaker 00

  Looking for Alaska. Um, he's done a couple others and Hank is in a band. He kind of runs VidCon and, uh, they both have a collaborative channel called The Vlog Brothers. Smart dudes who like, you can trust, you know, like, you, like, they do a project for Awesome every year where they, like, the last couple of years raised over a million dollars for charities around the world.

• 2:31:37Tim Ferriss?

  Very earnest guys.

• 2:31:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:31:39Tim Ferriss?

  And, uh, very forthcoming with the lessons they've learned also, from what I've seen.

• 2:31:46Speaker 00

  And that's why I love their podcast, because they really, I was going to actually open my podcast thing here. I love This American Life. I listen to Marc Maron. Uh, I like, uh, When the Kids Go to Sleep, that's my podcast, WTKGTS, check it out.

• 2:32:00Speaker 00

  But yeah, yours mostly. I've been listening to yours a lot. I found you, uh, through Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan tweeted the Jaco podcast and that's when I really started, uh, to listen to you. But yeah, I think aggregating your timeline too is a great thing. What I mean by that is I try to follow people on purpose. So I will be forced to see things on Twitter that will motivate me so or things that I'm like, what's what can I learn new? So like I'll follow NASA and all these, you know, there's a Facebook. Oh, I really wanted to tell this to your audience. There's a Facebook page that has some of the coolest technological videos you'll see on the internet and it's called, um, oh my heck, I got it.

• 2:32:42Speaker 00

  Hashem Al Galil. Well, maybe we can put it in the show notes, but

• 2:32:46Tim Ferriss?

  We can put it in the show notes. How do you spell it?

• 2:32:48Speaker 00

  It's H A S H E M capital A L dash G H A I L I. And um, some of the, if you want to be on the cutting edge of

• 2:32:58Tim Ferriss?

  You were telling me about one with the water coming out of a spigot that then has sound waves of a particular frequency pushed through it. I haven't seen this video yet. And then the water basically mimics

• 2:33:12Speaker 00

  It takes on the property of the sound wave.

• 2:33:14Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's so, that sounds incredible.

• 2:33:15Speaker 00

  There's just things that you're like, that seem science fiction, but you go to this guy's Facebook page and like, we're talking like printing skin, printing body parts. There's some really cool stuff that's happening. And if you want to be on the cusp of knowing what's happening technologically, I'd get on that Facebook page and check it out.

• 2:33:32Tim Ferriss?

  Put that in the show notes also. What is the book you've given most as a gift?

• 2:33:37Speaker 00

  You know, I've listened to your podcast so many times and I wanted, what my answer previously was, and what I recommend all the time is Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University, which is, it's a practical book.

• 2:33:50Tim Ferriss?

  Financial Peace University.

• 2:33:52Speaker 00

  P E A C. Yeah, peace. And it's just about getting out of debt, cutting up your credit cards. Like that concept freed me up early on in my marriage and in my career. To do things like move to Los Angeles and start this crazy company called Maker Studios. Because I didn't have debt, because I didn't have all these bills, I didn't have a car payment, I didn't have a, well, I did, I did have car payments and student loans and all of that stuff. Because I read, one of the very first books I ever read was Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad Poor Dad. And that was all about OPM, use other people's money, leverage other people's time. And you talk a lot about that in The Four Hour Work Week. But to me, it was, it was so stressful to have debt.

• 2:34:35Speaker 00

  And it was like, not if you could afford that, but could we fit that monthly payment into our budget? You know, we bought furniture, 90 days, same as cash, all that rat race stuff. By getting out of all of that, it freed me up to have the courage to try something new. So I always recommend Dave Ramsey and his books. But if I think about it, the book that I've given out the most is The Book of Mormon. Because I was a missionary for two years and that's all I did is pass that book out. And I think it has value. Whether you believe it's scripture, like the Latter Day Saints believe, or if it's just a made up book that was written by Joseph Smith,

• 2:35:16Speaker 00

  there's stories in there that really will help you learn how to have faith in yourself, have faith in something greater than you, have hope in the future of an eternal life.

• 2:35:28Tim Ferriss?

  So here's a question for you. So I was thinking, when you mentioned sort of the truth behind the cliche, I was thinking about parables also.

• 2:35:35Speaker 00

  Right.

• 2:35:36Tim Ferriss?

  And books like The Alchemist.

• 2:35:37Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 2:35:37Tim Ferriss?

  Books like Siddhartha from, by Herman Hesse. And the impact they can have, lasting impact they can have on people. If someone who is a non-believer would like to read a part of The Book of Mormon that you think could have an impact on them despite their lack of theology,

• 2:35:59Tim Ferriss?

  is there anything in particular that you would point them to?

• 2:36:01Speaker 00

  There is a chapter, I believe it's Alma. I'm a bad Mormon, I should know this. Alma 2, I'm looking up on my phone right now. There's a prophet by the name of Alma, which I think is, the reason I'm going to suggest this is because it's actually a science experiment that you can do on spirituality. Where in this, it's like a parable, well, it's a story in Alma 2 where he talks about...

• 2:36:30Speaker 00

  At least, if you don't believe in God, the first place to start is have a hope that there's a God. I just think like, well, what if you could make up whatever you wanted and it was true, which obviously is, you know, not what I'm suggesting, but to me, when I'm like, have a crisis of faith where I'm like, what if God doesn't exist? Like, what if this is all made up? What if we die and we're just worm food? Like, that stresses me out to think about that because I feel, I've worked so hard on my relationships with my wife, with my kids, building this family, for it to end in dust, isn't okay with me,

• 2:37:10Speaker 00

  right? Even to the point where, this is where I've, I've said to people, if you don't believe in God, you should believe in the technology that's gonna make us immortal. Because that Facebook page that I was just explaining, it lends to immortality for humans, like, in the next 10 to 20 years, where we can print off organs, we can 3D print livers, you know, we can embed chips into our body now, like, we're getting into all that kind of stuff. So to me, that doesn't contradict God. To me, all knowledge is, is, is God's knowledge, you know, like, we need to learn everything there is. And if He created our

• 2:37:52Speaker 00

  bodies, then we're gonna slowly learn how to create artificial intelligence.

• 2:37:56Tim Ferriss?

  Well, there's all, and I mean, the living in Silicon Valley too, I know people who are doing some pretty out there stuff. I mean, in the name of like, Ponce de Leon's Fountain of Youth, or immortality, they're all-

• 2:38:11Speaker 00

  Transcendent Man-

• 2:38:12Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, Transcendent Man-

• 2:38:13Speaker 00

  Ray Kurzweil-

• 2:38:14Tim Ferriss?

  Ray Kurzweil-

• 2:38:14Speaker 00

  Is a favorite documentary of mine.

• 2:38:16Tim Ferriss?

  And, and I was, so I've, I was an advising faculty member for a period of time for Singularity University, based at NASA Ames. And, so you have the pills, you got the potions, you have stuff like Metformin for extending life. You also have people who are looking at blood transfusions with younger people, which is very interesting. So replacing their own blood-

• 2:38:36Speaker 00

  It's like vampire stuff, yeah.

• 2:38:37Tim Ferriss?

  -vampire style. And it just goes on and on. Stem cell stuff, regeneration of destroyed connective tissue, which is something I'm experimenting with right now with some very off-label- Medical compounds, we'll call them.

• 2:38:52Speaker 00

  Is that what you call them?

• 2:38:53Tim Ferriss?

  That's what I'll call it for now. That's a separate conversation. So you mentioned Transcendental Man as one of your favorite documentaries. So let's go there. What are some of your favorite documentaries or movies?

• 2:39:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, Transcendent Man was very interesting to me. I'm a huge Morgan Spurlock fan. He just helped me make a documentary that we're working on. Well, it just premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. It's called Vlogumentary. It's a documentary of this YouTube world and how creators like me have made a living making videos on the internet. So I'm a big Morgan Spurlock fan.

• 2:39:30Speaker 00

  Forks Over Knives is, if you want to get into health, is a great documentary. I'm sure everybody's been on Netflix. What's the other one that's like that? Forks Over Knives?

• 2:39:40Tim Ferriss?

  Well, there are a bunch, there are a bunch. Yeah, this gets into some heated territory pretty quickly, but are you talking about the sort of vegetarian oriented documentaries?

• 2:39:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:39:52Tim Ferriss?

  There's another one that I haven't seen because I think-

• 2:39:55Speaker 00

  The Garrison Therapy? What is-

• 2:39:57Tim Ferriss?

  Well, there's one called Cowspiracy.

• 2:39:59Speaker 00

  Oh, yes.

• 2:40:00Tim Ferriss?

  Conspiracy. But like my point, my ask of creators would be if you want to, if you want to persuade people with an argument who are not a part of the choir, in other words, you're not preaching to the converted, do not name your documentary Cowspiracy. I'm just not going to be able to take that seriously, unfortunately. There might be good stuff in it, but it's just, it's, that's, that's not how you use a honeypot to convert, the hard to convert.

• 2:40:29Speaker 00

  Right.

• 2:40:30Tim Ferriss?

  But any other, any other docs or movies that come to mind?

• 2:40:34Speaker 00

  Um, dude, I'll tell you a movie that's coming out that I saw at the Sundance Film Festival. I don't know when it's coming out, but it's called Captain Fantastic with Viggo Mortensen.

• 2:40:44Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 2:40:44Speaker 00

  And it's a story about a father who is kind of sick of society and he takes his, well, the mom and the wife of the family has passed away and I won't tell you how, and she, and so he takes his- Kids into the forest and they like live off the land and he teaches his kids everything he knows. He has all these books and part of the movie is like, you know, he doesn't want to go back into society. Anyways, I saw it at Sundance. I bawled my eyes out. Look for it in theaters. I don't know when it's even coming out.

• 2:41:14Tim Ferriss?

  Captain Fantastic.

• 2:41:15Speaker 00

  Fantastic. Viggo Mortensen is the father in it.

• 2:41:18Tim Ferriss?

  Kind of my ultimate fantasy aside from the family members passing away part.

• 2:41:21Speaker 00

  It's like Swiss Family Robinson in today. It's really cool. Like the opening scene is them chasing a deer down. And killing it to for food.

• 2:41:31Tim Ferriss?

  Amazing. Yeah, I need to see that. What $100 or less purchase doesn't we can fudge that a little bit. Has most positively impacted your life in recent memory?

• 2:41:49Speaker 00

  That's a good question. I didn't think about an answer to that one. $100 or less. It probably, you know.

• 2:41:54Tim Ferriss?

  It could be more. It's flexible. Like what purchase that is not outside of everyone else's reach?

• 2:42:02Speaker 00

  This is a little more pricey than that, but the boosted board, the electric skateboard.

• 2:42:05Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 2:42:06Speaker 00

  Which is more like $900, but um.

• 2:42:09Tim Ferriss?

  They have a few different models.

• 2:42:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, you can get cheaper ones.

• 2:42:12Tim Ferriss?

  So I also have a boosted board in my garage and what I decided was the most fun for me on the boosted board. I'd like to hear your opinion, but the boosted board I also put in this crazy quarterly box. You can check out quarterly, this company that sends out quarterly boxes that people can subscribe to. But I created, the boxes usually cost like a hundred dollars to subscribe. And I was like, you know what? I want to do a holiday mega box. It's like five grand. I don't remember. It was like 1500 or five grand and just filled it. It was a, it's two huge like Raiders of the Lost Ark crates. And they included a boosted board.

• 2:42:46Speaker 00

  No way.

• 2:42:47Tim Ferriss?

  But what I realized for myself is that I like the sensation because it's so odd of carving uphill.

• 2:42:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:42:55Tim Ferriss?

  Because the board can go what 22 miles an hour.

• 2:42:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:42:58Tim Ferriss?

  And you can, they're longboard effectively and you have a hand controller that allows you to accelerate or decelerate. That's the other cool thing. Like going downhill, you can brake.

• 2:43:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:43:07Tim Ferriss?

  And charge it like a Prius.

• 2:43:09Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 2:43:09Tim Ferriss?

  And yeah, the boosted board's awesome. You have to be careful. And when you start, do not start on the highest speed setting because it will shoot out from underneath you. And when you do start, you need to get into like a power stance.

• 2:43:26Speaker 00

  They scare me. Yeah, that's a fair warning. If you get a boosted board, do not kill yourself because, and I think they make it hard to turn it on the fastest. It comes auto default to the slow setting.

• 2:43:36Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 2:43:36Speaker 00

  And because I was trying to turn it up to the fast setting. I'm like, how do I, I had to get into the instructions like,

• 2:43:40Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 2:43:41Speaker 00

  figure it out.

• 2:43:41Tim Ferriss?

  Which is good. Which is good.

• 2:43:42Speaker 00

  Powerful.

• 2:43:42Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Get a helmet and you're, if you're someone like me, you know, 38 and I got on it and suddenly I like reverted to my 12 year old self. And I'm like, oh yeah, I totally used to do this. Don't get too carried away with that emotion.

• 2:43:56Speaker 00

  Uh, here's what I would say. Unless you can run 23 miles an hour, be very careful. Because if you're gonna hit a rock or something and if you're going 22 miles an hour, you're gonna eat your face. Uh, the reason I bring up the boosted board is because I'm just so excited about the power of batteries. Batteries are getting so much stronger. You see with all those hoverboards that all the YouTubers are riding. Now these electric skateboards that can take you up a hill. That's magic to me. Like me and my brother growing up, it's like, if we could have had something like that, we'd have gotten in so much trouble.

• 2:44:28Tim Ferriss?

  You probably wouldn't even be sitting here.

• 2:44:30Speaker 00

  I would not. I would definitely have injured myself.

• 2:44:32Tim Ferriss?

  You're the guy who does backflips on skis.

• 2:44:34Speaker 00

  On skis, yeah. And we were talking yesterday where I think the evolution of that with how many quadcopters we're seeing. I really think we're on the cusp of a personal battery powered quadcopter where you can kind of get in this little self encapsulated helicopter dome and fly around.

• 2:44:54Tim Ferriss?

  Just have a harness.

• 2:44:55Speaker 00

  Yeah. I don't see, I don't, in fact, if you go on YouTube right now, you can see a guy who was built a platform out of these quadcopters. And he can stand on it with a hand control and fly, standing on top of like six quadcopters that he built out of this platform. So it's gonna get real Jetson like here pretty soon.

• 2:45:12Tim Ferriss?

  It's coming.

• 2:45:13Speaker 00

  In the next five years.

• 2:45:15Tim Ferriss?

  Now, I usually ask about morning rituals, but it might involve, well, it sounds like Zeke, you're John, you're Great Dane staring straight down your face until like anxiety and sixth sense wakes you up. Or kids jumping on you. I don't know, but do you have any particular rituals that are important to you and your family in the first, say, 60 to 90 minutes of waking up?

• 2:45:37Speaker 00

  Definitely. Um, and it. It's only evolved, you know, since like my three oldest are all in school now. But I used to sleep in like till 10 or 11. But I, it's rare if I'm in bed after 8 a.m. now. Because either Zeke is with his giant Great Dane snout right in my face with his stinky breath, or the kids are running in, you know? And, you know, two out of seven days of the week, we have a kid that ends up sleeping with us because they had a nightmare or something. And I'll just wake up and there's a kid in our bed because they came in during the middle of the night. But we pray. Every morning before the kids go off to school, we kneel down as a family and we say a prayer. And whether you think that's crazy or not, I mean, think about just the aspect of having

• 2:46:22Speaker 00

  kids, because in the prayer, we say what we're grateful for. We're thankful for our health, we're grateful for our house, we're grateful for each other. Help us to be kind, help us to be loving. And we say these words and we take turns. And I, you know, I'll say, Gavin, we say the prayer this morning? Avio, you say the prayer this morning? And that's one thing that my wife and I have tried to focus on before we send our kids out the door every morning, is we want to have a family prayer. We'll kneel down, and sometimes it's 7:00 in the morning and I'm still asleep and they'll come in to say the morning prayer and I'm still laying in bed and they'll all just like kneel at the foot of the bed. And I'll get up and like roll over like, okay, I'm ready to pray, I'm ready. And we'll say our little morning prayer. And I think it just gives us a good tone.

• 2:47:07Speaker 00

  It helps my kids have an eternal perspective, which I think all people should have. We should always be conscious of, we came from somewhere, now we're here on this earth, and then we're gonna go somewhere. Which is, I guess, your next rapid fire question. If I could put anything on a billboard, what would it be? No, look at you, yes sir. You're gonna die someday. Or maybe I just have it say, you're going to die. And that seems gruesome, but having a healthy understanding, and my grandpa taught me this. My grandpa would always talk about, um, when he died. In fact, he bought his coffin five years before he actually died. And so he would, when people would come over, he would take them down into the garage and show them his coffin. And I remember like getting in it, you know, it's like I've been in my grandpa's coffin.

• 2:47:52Speaker 00

  And teaching them that like, death isn't something to be feared, but you know, life should be lived to the fullest because you're gonna die. And I just love conversations like that because to me, that's what has real meaning. Cause to me, the things that matter the most last the longest. And to me, families are forever. I believe that my wife and I will be joined in holy matrimony for all time and eternity. In, um, you know, traditional wedding ceremonies, you hear until death do you part? And I'm like, bullshit, no, why would you part at death? Um, so that's kind of where I come at it, you know, and that's what I teach my kids.

• 2:48:36Speaker 00

  I, I teach them that I married this beautiful, you know, daughter of God, who I cherish and who is their mother. And I even so far, my relationship to my wife is so important to me that, and I don't want my kids to know that she's a priority over them. But my wife and I's relationship isn't more important than my kids and I relationship, but they need to know how strong that is. They need to see that mom and dad are solid. And so a lot of times me and Colette consciously make decisions to not let our kids come between us. So we never do the like, go ask your mom, go ask your dad.

• 2:49:16Speaker 00

  It's like me and her need to come up with a decision and we are a united front that then goes and informs the kids on if they can do such and such.

• 2:49:24Tim Ferriss?

  So some of the, the, the strongest families that I've encountered in the last five to 10 years are really explicit about what you just said, but they would, they would, they would perhaps in some cases say like, my relationship with my wife or my husband comes first. And then my relationship with my kids because it prevents that, uh, mutiny from breaking out or that like dissension in the ranks.

• 2:49:48Speaker 00

  But mom said, yeah.

• 2:49:49Tim Ferriss?

  All of that, which then turns, it, it creates a really, I think, sort of a caustic isn't the right word, insidious. Uh, it plants an insidious seed that can, uh, that can cause all sorts of problems later. But that's, that's something that I've seen over and over again with the. The marriages or families that seem to work, which at least where I live is in the minority sadly.

• 2:50:15Speaker 00

  I mean, family is on the decline. I think the the foundation to our society is the family. Like, we all, whether you like it or not, all come from a family. We are all from a mother and a father, whether you know who that person is or not. Um, but I do, I mean, I'm softening saying this now because I don't want to like offend my kids or like make people think I don't love my kids. But yeah, like my relationship with my wife is way more important because guess what? The kids are gonna leave. They're gonna turn 18 and leave the house. And then it's just gonna be me and my wife. So if if we've let them come between us and all of a sudden the kids are out of the house and it's like, oh, we don't have a very good relationship because, you know, the kids have like drove this wedge between us all these years. Uh, it's gonna be a crappy situation. So

• 2:51:00Speaker 00

  me and my wife's relationship is most important, and I think our kids know that.

• 2:51:05Tim Ferriss?

  You get married at age, remind me?

• 2:51:07Speaker 00

  Twenty-two.

• 2:51:08Tim Ferriss?

  Twenty-two. What advice would you give your 25-year-old self?

• 2:51:13Speaker 00

  I was listening to the last podcast with Mike Rowe and hindsight, I say, is not 2020, it's 4K. Hindsight is 4K for the internet kids out there. Uh, but you at 25, where was I when I was 25? We had just had our first kid. I think Colette was pregnant. That's right when I dropped out of college. Uh, maybe I would have said drop out of college sooner.

• 2:51:39Speaker 00

  Um, but I don't think I would change anything. I think I agree with Mike Rowe in the sense that I would tell myself, don't worry, it's gonna be okay. Um, things are gonna work out. And I love that question because it's like, it's easy to think, well, what would I tell my 25-year-old self? So then I think, well, if I'm 45 and I'm asked that question, what would I tell my 36-year-old self?

• 2:52:01Tim Ferriss?

  This is something I think about a lot, actually, and I actually journal. One of, sorry, I'm hijacking this for a second just because, uh, I've had a lot of, had a little, a lot of purity, but the, so one of the only pieces of writing that I've lost that made me really, really Really sad for an extended period of time was I sat down and I wrote a short story and realized only afterwards it was very similar to this piece written by Borges. But where I sat down and with ended up seated across the table from a stranger. Uh, and it turned out to be my future self. And so I asked them for advice and they gave me advice.

• 2:52:40Tim Ferriss?

  And it was a fun story, but I also, I mean, this sounds so kind of weird, but got a lot of good advice just by going through the exercise.

• 2:52:50Speaker 00

  Right.

• 2:52:50Tim Ferriss?

  And I was like, that's odd. I don't know what I just did there. It seems like a, a, like a kind of a, a really funky magic trick. But what, so what would your?

• 2:53:01Speaker 00

  That's what I, I mean, what you just explained is exactly what I was going to suggest is think about how old you are right now. And think about being a 10 year older version of yourself and then think, what would I probably tell myself as an older version of myself? And that is the wisdom that I think you found in that exercise.

• 2:53:23Speaker 00

  You know?

• 2:53:25Speaker 00

  Stephen Covey says, you know, begin with the end in mind. And so I think having this eternal perspective where you're thinking about the timeline of your life, where you came from, where you're going, who you want to become. You can kind of like delve into certain moments in that timeline. And specifically the past, because you can see where you've come from, but just thinking futuristically in a sense where, okay, what am I gonna? You know, what are probably my suggestions to myself in five years from now, and then start living those things? I think you're going to exponentially, you know, grow faster than you would have.

• 2:54:04Speaker 00

  It's all about measuring, right? It's all about a measured life, about being conscious of your decisions, about looking at your attitudes, about what you think. Talking about books I mentioned earlier, As a Man Thinketh is to me, one of the most powerful books that you can read. And it's short. It's like a hundred pages and there's so much truth in the fact that. Everything that you do physically starts as a thought in your mind. So if you don't want to become whatever, don't think about those things. And if you find that you're thinking about a certain thing, that's going to manifest itself physically eventually. So your thoughts are a very,

• 2:54:47Speaker 00

  and sometimes people get crazy thoughts, right? Like, sometimes you might think you're crazy because of all the stuff that comes in your mind, but you have to be conscious and it takes self-discipline.

• 2:54:56Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I think part of the development of that discipline, I mean, for me, it's been morning meditation practice, but also been the developing, or I should say rather practicing the role of observer as opposed to being trapped in yourself and run by your emotions and not being aware of them or observing them. An exercise like taking 10 minutes to write down what your 45-year-old self, like in my case, right, or 50-year-old self, would say to me now, gives me a degree of separation where I can look somewhat objectively, like step off the roller coaster ride that is my life and be like,

• 2:55:37Tim Ferriss?

  that's a fucking weirdly designed roller coaster. Like, hold on here, why'd the architect do it that way? We should really like change this turn. People are gonna definitely gonna get sick on turn four. Let's fix that. And another way that I do that, I mean, I'm not particularly religious, so I don't have a like, what would, what would Jesus do bracelet or anything? But I have a handful of friends who are very highly developed in ways that I am not, right? So I have friends who are very zenned out and effective in high-stress circumstances. I'm very good at doing that in crises. I'm not so good with the small things. I get really riled up by the little things. And so I might say,

• 2:56:17Tim Ferriss?

  ask myself, you know, what would Matt Mullenweg, this is a friend of mine who's, who's really impressive on a lot of levels, like what would Matt Mullenweg do in this situation? Like, how would, fill in the blank, right? How would Eric Weinstein think about this? And if I'm overreacting and feeling myself slip into a negative state, I'm like, let me hit pause here. How would these other people I know really well?

• 2:56:41Tim Ferriss?

  Respond to this right now. What would their advice be to me?

• 2:56:43Speaker 00

  Right.

• 2:56:44Tim Ferriss?

  And I find that is an extremely helpful exercise, which takes practice. So you get into the habit of doing it.

• 2:56:51Speaker 00

  So, speaking of that, vlogging is great practice because when you're editing yourself, you are watching yourself. And that is exactly what you need to do when you talk about becoming an observer of yourself. Because when you're in your mind, you like make excuses for yourself, right? Where like, well, I'm, or maybe you're not even conscious of some of the things that you're doing or saying. Or if you're rude to somebody, maybe you don't even realize that you're doing that. But if you're able to step out of your body in a sense and look at yourself from a third person point of view, which is, I've been able to do much more because I've edited myself for so long. I'm able to see the things that I'm saying and then tell myself, you shouldn't say that because of this and this and this.

• 2:57:37Speaker 00

  It's hard to explain, but like almost try to picture, you know, as you sit there, close your eyes and imagine that you are standing behind yourself and that you're looking at the back of your head. And that is a practice that you can do to kind of help pull yourself out and become an observer of your life. And that's when I think there's power to be like, well, I shouldn't have done that. This is good. I should do that. And then, you know, you can be the architect of your roller coaster and you can change turn three.

• 2:58:06Tim Ferriss?

  Well, that's also the detachment that Jaco talks about. Very similar approach. Well, this has been really fun Shay. I'm glad you came here to, to Acro Yoga and Russian Bath and, and do it all.

• 2:58:23Tim Ferriss?

  Is there any ask or request for my audience? Anything you'd like them to consider, think on?

• 2:58:30Tim Ferriss?

  Before we get to where they can find you and all of that good stuff?

• 2:58:32Speaker 00

  I mean, I just, it's the same conversation that we've been having is, um, take a look at your life, you know, and.

• 2:58:42Speaker 00

  Know and have hope that you can make it whatever you want it to be. And then just go about, you know, the task of doing it. And it's through hard work, through reading, through experience. The real success is in the doing of the thing. So you can say and listen to a bunch of stuff, but to make action, to do stuff, to get up early, to, you know, make your bed, doing the hard things is what will bring you success. So get used to work and fall in love with it, you know? Find those things that you hate and find those things that you dread and embrace them.

• 2:59:22Speaker 00

  And once you do that, there's no fear left because you've kind of allowed yourself to go into the dark. And, and it reminds me one quick story. I remember when I was working at the granite shop, dude, 4:30 was the worst time of day because those last 30 minutes would just drag on and I would stare at the clock like 30 more minutes, 29 more minutes, 28 more minutes. You've done it in school or you've watched the little hen move slowly. And one day I was like, why am I just dreading this last 30 minutes every day? It sucks to hate, like we talked about, hate this 30 minutes of my life. And so I remember one day where I was like, I'm just going to clean this shop. I'm going to turn on some music in this last 30 minutes. I'm just going to clean this shop and I hated clean this shop because it was a mess. And all the other guys would just throw silicone tubes on the ground. It would piss me off.

• 3:00:07Speaker 00

  So I just started going to work. I just started working and all of a sudden I looked up at the clock and it's 5:45. I'm like, I just stayed 45 minutes past. So quit procrastinating, dive into the hard stuff and allow yourself to make a mistake. Like you're going to mess up and just never quit, keep going.

• 3:00:26Tim Ferriss?

  Get started.

• 3:00:27Speaker 00

  That's it.

• 3:00:28Tim Ferriss?

  All right, my friend. So where can people find you? What are you up to? What would you like them to check out?

• 3:00:34Speaker 00

  I'm Shay Carl on all the social medias. You can follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Shay Carl. I just wanted to talk about a website called Social Blue Book that I'm really excited about right now. That's like the thing I'm really excited about blowing up right now. It's a place that influencers can go to find their value. If you find yourself with 5,000 Twitter followers and there's a brand that wants to pay you to promote their product and you have no idea what to charge them, you can go to socialbluebook.com and you can log in, you know, through your Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and they'll give you real values of what your tweets are worth. If you made a video for somebody promoting a product, it'll, it'll give you your value

• 3:01:17Speaker 00

  based on statistics like watch time, thumbs up, comments, interaction. And it also has a great tool where you can submit, or brands, if you're a creator, can submit brand deals to you, and there's a whole form where you can just type in, you know, the ask. Check it out. If you're an influencer, it's a great tool to negotiate with brands. Socialbluebook.com is really cool.

• 3:01:44Tim Ferriss?

  Everybody listening, as always, links to books mentioned, channels mentioned, pages, et cetera, will be found and can be found in the show notes, so visit that for all of the delightful things that we discussed at fourhourworkweek.com/podcast, all spelled out. And as always, and until next time, thank you for listening.

• 3:02:13Tim Ferriss?

  Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up. In the world of the esoteric as I do, it could include favorite articles that I have read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite

• 3:02:58Tim Ferriss?

  of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it.

• 3:03:17Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Born Fitness Coaching. Born Fitness Coaching offers concierge coaching, a three to one coached client model. In other words, each client receives unlimited messaging and interaction on a private app with three coaches to ensure they don't fail on three things. One certified coach for diet, one certified coach for fitness, and one coach to keep track of all the rest, lifestyle, accountability, and consistency. Each plan is customized to you, adjusting to your preferences and needs based on, for instance, food, budget, equipment available, experience, and time that you have. Clients that follow Born Fitness programs for six months have a 95% success rate. And for Tim Ferriss Show listeners, Born Fitness Coaching has created a custom

• 3:04:02Tim Ferriss?

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• 3:04:51Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront, and this is a very unique sponsor. Wealthfront is a massively disruptive, in a good way, set it and forget it investing service led by technologists from places like Apple and world famous investors. It has exploded in popularity in the last two years and they now have more than $2.5 billion under management. In fact, some of my very good friends, investors in Silicon Valley have millions of their own money in Wealthfront. So the question is, why? Why is it so popular? Why is it unique? Because you can get services previously reserved for the ultra wealthy but only pay pennies on the dollar for them. And this is because they use smarter software instead of retail locations, bloated sales teams, etc. And I'll come back to that in a second. I suggest you check out wealthfront.com/tim.

• 3:05:36Tim Ferriss?

  Take the risk assessment quiz, which only takes two to five minutes, and they'll show you for free exactly the portfolio they put you in. And if you just want to take their advice, run with it, do it yourself, you can do that. Or, as I would, you can set it and forget it. And here's why. The value of Wealthfront is in the automation of habits and strategies that investors should be using on a regular basis but normally aren't. Great investing is a marathon, not a sprint, and little things that you may or may not be familiar with, like automatic tax loss harvesting, rebalancing your portfolio across more than 10 asset classes, and dividend reinvestment add up to very large amounts of money over longer periods of time. Wealthfront, as I mentioned, since it's using software instead of retail locations, etc.,

• 3:06:17Tim Ferriss?

  can offer all of this at low costs that were previously completely impossible. Right off the bat, you never pay commissions or account fees. For everything, they charge 0.25% per year on assets above the first $15,000, which is managed for free if you use my link, wealthfront.com/tim. That is less than $5 a month to invest a $30,000 account, for instance. Now, normally, when I have a sponsor on this show, it's because I use them and recommend them. In this case, it's a little different. I don't use Wealthfront yet because I'm not allowed to. Here's the deal. They wanted to sponsor this podcast, but because of SEC regulations, companies that invest your money are not allowed to use client testimonials. So I couldn't be a user and have them

• 3:06:59Tim Ferriss?

  On the podcast, but I've been so impressed by Wealthfront that I've invested a significant amount of my own money, at least for me, in the team and the company itself. So I am an investor and hope to soon use it as a client. Now, back to the recommendation. As a Tim Ferriss Show listener, you'll get $15,000 managed for free if you decide to open an account. But just start with seeing the portfolio that they would suggest for you. Take two minutes, fill out their questionnaire at wealthfront.com/tim. It's fast, it's free. There's no downside that I can think of. Just take a look, see what portfolio they would create for you, and you can use that information however you want. Wealthfront.com/tim. And until next time, thank you for listening.