#324: Cal Fussman Corners Tim Ferriss

I’ve interviewed legendary storyteller Cal Fussman (@calfussman https://twitter.com/calfussman) on this show before (here https://tim.blog/2016/03/11/the-interview-master-cal-fussman-and-the-power-of-listening/ and here https://tim.blog/2016/08/31/cal-fussman-the-master-storyteller-returns/), but this time, the roles are reversed, and he interviews me! If you are not yet familiar with him, Cal is a New York Times bestselling author and a writer-at-large for Esquire magazine, where he is best known for being a primary writer of the “What I Learned http://www.esquire.com/what-ive-learned-legends/” feature. And this interview originally aired on Cal’s podcast, “Big Questions with Cal Fussman https://www.calfussmanpodcast.com/.” Cal has transformed oral history into an art form, conducting probing interviews with the icons who’ve shaped the last 50 years of world history: Mikhail Gorbachev, Jimmy Carter, Ted Kennedy, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, Jack Welch, Robert DeNiro, Clint Eastwood, Bruce Springsteen, Dr. Dre, Quincy Jones, Woody Allen, Barbara Walters, Pelé, Yao Ming, Serena Williams, John Wooden, Muhammad Ali, and countless others. Enjoy! This podcast is brought to you by Four Sigmatic http://foursigmatic.com/ferriss. While I often praise this company’s lion’s mane mushroom coffee for a minimal caffeine wakeup call that lasts, I asked the founders if they could help me—someone who’s struggled with insomnia for decades—sleep. Their answer: Reishi Mushroom Elixir http://foursigmatic.com/ferriss. They made a special batch for me and my listeners that comes without sweetener; you can try it at bedtime with a little honey or nut milk, or you can just add hot water to your single-serving packet and embrace its bitterness like I do. Try it right now by going to foursigmatic.com/ferriss http://foursigmatic.com/ferriss and using the code Ferriss to get 20 percent off this rare, limited run of Reishi Mushroom Elixir. If you are in the experimental mindset, I do not think you’ll be disappointed. This episode is also brought to you by “5-Bullet Friday http://tim.blog/friday,” my very own email newsletter, which every Friday features five bullet points of cool things I’ve found that week, including apps, books, documentaries, gadgets, albums, articles, TV shows, new hacks or tricks, and — of course — all sorts of weird stuff I’ve dug up from around the world. 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Follow Tim: Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss https://twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferriss https://instagram.com/timferriss/ Facebook: facebook.com/timferriss https://www.facebook.com/TimFerriss/ YouTube: youtube.com/timferriss https://www.youtube.com/timferriss Past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast include Jerry Seinfeld https://tim.blog/2020/12/08/jerry-seinfeld/, Hugh Jackman https://tim.blog/2020/06/26/hugh-jackman/, Dr. Jane Goodall https://tim.blog/2020/04/16/jane-goodall/, LeBron James https://tim.blog/2018/11/27/lebron-james-mike-mancias/, Kevin Hart https://tim.blog/2020/05/20/kevin-hart/, Doris Kearns Goodwin https://tim.blog/2018/09/07/doris-kearns-goodwin-leadership/, Jamie Foxx https://tim.blog/2015/12/06/jamie-foxx/, Matthew McConaughey https://tim.blog/2020/10/19/matthew-mcconaughey/, Esther Perel https://tim.blog/2017/05/21/esther-perel/, Elizabeth Gilbert https://tim.blog/2020/05/08/elizabeth-gilbert/, Terry Crews https://tim.blog/2017/12/20/terry-crews-how-to-have-do-and-be-all-you-want/, Sia https://tim.blog/2020/08/12/sia/, Yuval Noah Harari https://tim.blog/2020/10/27/yuval-noah-harari/, Malcolm Gladwell https://tim.blog/2016/06/21/malcolm-gladwell/, Madeleine Albright https://tim.blog/2020/05/27/secretary-madeleine-albright/, Cheryl Strayed https://tim.blog/2017/03/30/cheryl-strayed/, Jim Collins https://tim.blog/2019/02/18/jim-collins/, Mary Karr, https://tim.blog/2020/11/11/mary-karr/ Maria Popova https://tim.blog/2014/10/21/brain-pickings/, Sam Harris https://tim.blog/2020/05/15/sam-harris-2/, Michael Phelps https://tim.blog/2021/01/21/michael-phelps-grant-hackett/, Bob Iger https://tim.blog/2020/01/16/bob-iger/, Edward Norton https://tim.blog/2019/10/31/edward-norton-motherless-brooklyn/, Arnold Schwarzenegger https://tim.blog/2015/02/02/arnold-schwarzenegger/, Neil Strauss https://tim.blog/2014/06/24/neil-strauss/, Ken Burns https://tim.blog/2019/09/12/ken-burns/, Maria Sharapova https://tim.blog/2017/08/26/maria-sharapova/, Marc Andreessen https://tim.blog/2016/05/29/marc-andreessen/, Neil Gaiman https://tim.blog/2019/03/28/neil-gaiman/, Neil de Grasse Tyson https://tim.blog/2019/10/03/neil-degrasse-tyson/, Jocko Willink https://tim.blog/2016/09/21/jocko-willink-on-discipline-leadership-and-overcoming-doubt/, Daniel Ek https://tim.blog/2020/12/03/daniel-ek/, Kelly Slater https://tim.blog/2020/09/08/kelly-slater/, Dr. Peter Attia https://tim.blog/2019/11/27/peter-attia-fasting-metformin-longevity/, Seth Godin https://tim.blog/2016/02/10/seth-godin/, Howard Marks https://tim.blog/2018/09/25/howard-marks/, Dr. Brené Brown https://tim.blog/2020/02/06/brene-brown-striving-self-acceptance-saving-marriages/, Eric Schmidt https://tim.blog/2019/04/09/eric-schmidt/, Michael Lewis https://tim.blog/2020/05/01/michael-lewis/, Joe Gebbia https://tim.blog/2018/03/08/joe-gebbia-co-founder-of-airbnb/, Michael Pollan https://tim.blog/2018/05/06/michael-pollan-how-to-change-your-mind/, Dr. Jordan Peterson https://tim.blog/2021/03/01/jordan-peterson/, Vince Vaughn https://tim.blog/2017/05/31/vince-vaughn/, Brian Koppelman https://tim.blog/2020/04/23/brian-koppelman/, Ramit Sethi https://tim.blog/2019/05/07/ramit-sethi/, Dax Shepard https://tim.blog/2020/11/18/dax-shepard/, Tony Robbins https://tim.blog/2014/10/15/money-master-the-game/, Jim Dethmer https://tim.blog/2020/05/18/jim-dethmer/, Dan Harris https://tim.blog/2020/11/19/dan-harris/, Ray Dalio https://tim.blog/2017/09/13/ray-dalio/, Naval Ravikant https://tim.blog/2015/08/18/the-evolutionary-angel-naval-ravikant/, Vitalik Buterin https://tim.blog/2021/03/08/vitalik-buterin-naval-ravikant/, Elizabeth Lesser https://tim.blog/2021/03/16/elizabeth-lesser/, Amanda Palmer https://tim.blog/2019/04/18/amanda-palmer-2/, Katie Haun https://tim.blog/2021/02/18/katie-haun/, Sir Richard Branson https://tim.blog/2017/10/09/richard-branson/, Chuck Palahniuk https://tim.blog/2020/09/02/chuck-palahniuk/, Arianna Huffington https://tim.blog/2017/10/18/arianna-huffington/, Reid Hoffman https://tim.blog/2015/08/31/the-oracle-of-silicon-valley-reid-hoffman-plus-michael-mccullough/, Bill Burr https://tim.blog/2017/09/17/bill-burr/, Whitney Cummings https://tim.blog/2015/06/26/whitney-cummings/, Rick Rubin https://tim.blog/2015/05/15/rick-rubin/, Dr. Vivek Murthy https://tim.blog/2020/03/26/vivek-murthy/, Darren Aronofsky https://tim.blog/2017/09/09/darren-aronofsky/, and many more. 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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Tim Ferriss?

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

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Cal Fussman?

  No, I would assume I broke your time.

• 0:12Speaker 01

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

• 0:24Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I do get asked a lot, what I would take if I could only take one supplement. And the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road. So what is AG1? AG1 is a science-driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole food sourced nutrients. In a single scoop, AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut, and immune system. So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first

• 1:04Tim Ferriss?

  subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out, go to drinkag1.com/tim. That's drink A G one, the number one, drinkag1.com/tim. Last time, drinkag1.com/tim. Check it out.

• 1:24Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. Long time no see, long time no hear. 好久不见, or should I say, 好久没有听到你的声音呐? Something along those lines. Little rusty, but I digress. The Tim Ferriss Show is typically where I share the habits and routines of world-class performers, as well as try to spot and discuss the patterns amongst them. This episode is going to be a role reversal, and since I am a professional dilettante, professional amateur of sorts, a little self-conscious about this. However, recently, Cal Fussman, at Cal Fussman, F U S S M A N, the man who has transformed oral history into an art form, that's not my quote.

• 2:10Tim Ferriss?

  And it's not his, that's what people say about him because he's interviewed everyone from Clooney to Gorbachev to Reagan to you name it. He's a big deal. And he is also one of the principal writers or was one of the senior writers behind the What I Learned column for Esquire magazine forever, which is how he got to kick the tires and meet many of these folks. Interviewed me for his podcast. He interviewed me in two separate interviews and in true Cal fashion, he took the conversation to places I never could have expected. He really is a master of the craft of asking questions. And I love speaking with him as a friend, but I also love studying him as an interviewer. Cal said this interview

• 2:55Tim Ferriss?

  was one of his favorites he's ever heard from me because the way he put it was, quote, "We get to learn what made Tim Tim," end quote. We dug into some of the childhood stories that I typically hold back. I don't like to talk about some of the early days and childhood stuff, but Cal can pry it out of me. Cal said he wanted to build a story to understand what happened to me on my journey, how it explains where I am now, what makes me tick, and where I still hope to improve and grow. And I think he was able to unearth all of that. So if you're looking for a true world-class performer, someone who is the best at what they do, then you should probably look for one of my other episodes, tim.blog/podcast.

• 3:40Tim Ferriss?

  There are 300 other people. You can find Jamie Foxx, you can find Arnold Schwarzenegger, you can find chess prodigies like Joshua Weitzkin. But if you want to hear about my somewhat odd, maybe quirky path that took me from my days as a wee lad to where I am now, then this may be an episode of interest. Cal is

• 4:03Tim Ferriss?

  Really, really a fascinating specimen, and I've interviewed him twice. So if you want to hear Cal's side of the story, his entire insane meandering adventure of life, which includes taking shots with Hunter S. Thompson and working alongside Hunter for a period of time, you can hear that at tim.blog forward slash Cal. And you should absolutely listen to more of Cal's interviews. So check out his new podcast, for which I was interviewed, Big Questions with Cal Fussman. So just Google Big Questions with Cal Fussman, F U S S M A N, where he interviews all sorts of folks like Kobe Bryant, and Damon John, and Seth Godin,

• 4:42Tim Ferriss?

  and on, and on, and on. And then there's me, odd man out. So without further ado and preamble, I'm kind of stalling with this intro. I apologize, guys. Here is my interview, AKA being interviewed by Cal Fussman.

• 5:02Cal Fussman?

  Just went off the springboard, brother.

• 5:04Tim Ferriss?

  We just went off the springboard.

• 5:06Cal Fussman?

  So I've been thinking about this conversation for a long time. And I basically had two ways to prepare, I thought. Like, one, I know you. We've been in the sauna together.

• 5:23Tim Ferriss?

  We have.

• 5:24Cal Fussman?

  Met your mom.

• 5:25Tim Ferriss?

  That's right.

• 5:25Cal Fussman?

  Met your dad. We've gone out to eat. You won't let me pick up the check. Listened to your podcasts, read your books. So I do, in some ways, know you. And I thought, well, I could do even more research, or I could try to just wipe my memory clean and approach this in a way that, well, I really don't know Tim, and I'm going to try and forget a little about what I know, and just act like I bumped into Tim Ferriss on the train.

• 6:09Cal Fussman?

  Holy shit, it's Tim Ferriss. How you doing?

• 6:13Tim Ferriss?

  You're pretty good at trains, from my memory.

• 6:16Cal Fussman?

  There you go. I'm good at trains. So, and it's funny, when I went out to see you, I went on a train. And so I thought that would be an interesting way to go. And the more I think about it, the thing that really hits me about you...

• 6:33Cal Fussman?

  Goes to a story about Brian Grazer and Ron Howard. Okay, so one's a producer and the other is a filmmaker. They're partners and I'm interviewing them in the Claridge Hotel in London. And we're talking, we're having a great conversation and in the middle of this interview, a fire alarm goes off and water sprouts from the ceiling. In an instant, Ron Howard rushes to, it was like sort of a kitchen in this room,

• 7:15Cal Fussman?

  and he grabs a bucket and he puts it under the water. At the same time, Ron Howard ran to the bathroom and got the towels and had them down. And I was just amazed at how they both, in a second, went in their own directions to solve the problem and together they came up with the solution while I just sat there watching this. And the more I thought about it, I thought the genius of Tim Ferriss is he does both at the same time.

• 7:55Cal Fussman?

  You're like two people who would, you wouldn't ordinarily need a partner to do the things that you do. And yet you have these skills on different sides of the spectrum that reside inside you and I'm thinking, how did that happen? So let's start at the beginning. I was talking yesterday to this guy, Wim Hof. Oh, yeah. Oh, yes. There you go. I know Wim. Okay, now he goes underwater and...

• 8:32Cal Fussman?

  This stays under the cold for minutes at a time. And when I was asking him how this came about, he explained when he was born, he was born a twin. The second twin. And he came out like basically deprived of oxygen. And he didn't know it until years later, but his whole life became a movement toward the moment he was born with. And I'm wondering, at your birth, did something happen that helped make you who you are?

• 9:10Tim Ferriss?

  It's quite possible. I don't remember all too much, but as I've been told, I was born premature and ended up in critical care. I still have scars. You can actually see one right on my wrist there. It looks like a cigarette burn.

• 9:28Cal Fussman?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 9:30Tim Ferriss?

  I have another one underneath my left nipple, basically. It's in the rib area. And that is from a respirator. I had, as I understand it, five full body blood transfusions to oxygenate the blood properly. And I was in really bad shape, very, very, very tiny and under incubator lights and so on. So I had a lot of, I suppose, trauma, but difficulty coming into the world. And seemed to have recovered. But I was very, but I was very, very, very small up until about the end of fifth grade.

• 10:14Tim Ferriss?

  Very small kid, very much a run.

• 10:16Cal Fussman?

  So has, I mean, your life has been a good part of it, spent in search of getting the most out of your body.

• 10:25Tim Ferriss?

  And definitely.

• 10:26Cal Fussman?

  There's a pretty good relation.

• 10:28Tim Ferriss?

  Well, there is in, in some direct ways, in the sense that the experimentation and the recording of experiments started with primarily wrestling, which was the only sport I really gravitated to, towards, or actually did well in. I was very hyperactive as a kid. And there were some other mothers who recommended to my mom to drain my batteries to put me into something called kid wrestling. I couldn't do, or I really didn't want to do other sports that were team sports because I was so small. I would get, I was bullied and beat up and couldn't compete. I couldn't hold my own with other kids, but weight, uh,

• 11:08Tim Ferriss?

  weight classes exist in wrestling. So the puny little runt could battle the other puny little runt. And then one of them could feel uh, like a winner for a short period of time before they went back to school and got the crap kicked out of them once again. So I was put into kid wrestling and there was really, there's not much technical mastery when you're a little kid in kid wrestling. It's mostly just flopping around. But at some point in high school, uh, certainly, and just before high school began taking it very seriously. And I still to this day have some very serious uh, thermoregulatory issues. So I, I, I don't respond to heat in a normal way. How do you respond to heat?

• 11:52Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, I appear to have, and I've actually done uh, a number of experiments and been involved in experiments to try to better understand it. Uh, I'm very sensitive to say heat stroke, but it doesn't appear because I, at one point, much, much later, after college, volunteered to be a test subject. I'm going to bounce around a little bit here at Stanford University where they were developing a glove for cooling the body. And it was being developed, or at least funded by the military. So the general experiment included wearing full military fatigues, helmet, loaded backpack, and you had an esophageal probe,

• 12:36Tim Ferriss?

  as you would imagine, down your nose. So it's about, I would say two feet long and it's a, it's a plastic tube that you feed down your nose, down your esophagus. So your throat can't close, or your epiglottis can't close, down to get your core body temperature from your heart. So you get as close to the heart as possible. Now unfortunately for me, the military standard temperature gauge is a esophageal probe, but up the other end. So I also had a two foot esophageal probe up the other end.

• 13:12Tim Ferriss?

  And then you'd go, oh, it gets better.

• 13:14Cal Fussman?

  I knew we were gonna get deep here.

• 13:16Tim Ferriss?

  Just jumping right into it. There's not much foreplay in this podcast. And I then had to go into a sauna. I don't recall the exact temperature and march on an inclined treadmill in the sauna to heat exhaustion. And this was done multiple times and they would track everything. And what was, well, I should say in retrospect, should have been expected. It was miserable, of course. And then I was completely non-functional for the rest of the day because my brain had effectively shut off when you marched to heat exhaustion. But I hit that heat exhaustion shutdown point at lower temperatures than other people. So I think it's something in the brain. Maybe there's some gauge in the hypothalamus or something that is off.

• 14:02Tim Ferriss?

  But suffice to say, throughout even high school, and we can come back to this. But when I was in Japan, which was a real formative moment, was hospitalized for effectively heat stroke during a judo competition or a training in the summer because I was overheating. So all of that is backstory to say that really early on, I realized that heat was not my friend and endurance was not my strong suit. I just couldn't last. I would overheat in these wrestling matches. So I had to develop techniques and approaches.

• 14:38Cal Fussman?

  Wow.

• 14:40Tim Ferriss?

  Other tricks like getting very good at cutting weight so that I could level the playing field to actually compete and win in these sports.

• 14:51Cal Fussman?

  So if you could figure out how to really be 15 pounds heavier than you were.

• 14:58Tim Ferriss?

  It would give me a fair shot.

• 15:00Cal Fussman?

  Right.

• 15:00Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. And it certainly is an advantage, but I had other disadvantages. So it would, but it was, it was an area where I realized. Most people were not spending a lot of time analyzing anything. Or, that's a very fancy way to put it. It was, it was just a low hanging fruit for me. Because I was like, alright, well, I'm never going to be the most technical wrestler. I'm never going to be the most persistent wrestler in terms of endurance, because I lacked the physiology for it. But, how many wrestlers are really going to sit down and try to figure out sodium and potassium?

• 15:42Cal Fussman?

  Oh man.

• 15:43Tim Ferriss?

  And read about potassium sparing diuretics and figure out that dandelion root is something that, you know, a 15 year old can actually get a hold of over the counter, which has the properties of certain prescription medications, which should achieve the same thing, etc., etc., etc.

• 15:58Cal Fussman?

  Where did that come from?

• 15:59Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, I, I've always, at least from high school, been fascinated by nutrition. And that does not come from my family.

• 16:10Cal Fussman?

  You know, it's funny, because one of the things, when I think of your dad, I always think of the advertising slogan he came up with. Fill your belly at Big Dave's Deli.

• 16:23Tim Ferriss?

  That's right, that's right. And I won't want to get into the particulars of my family too much, just for privacy purposes. But yeah, I mean, my, I would not say that my parents are nutritional advisors to Olympians.

• 16:39Cal Fussman?

  One other fact about your family.

• 16:43Tim Ferriss?

  They're taking, they're taking better care of themselves, but it didn't come from there. I honestly don't know exactly where it came from. It could have been, I'll just speculate here, I've never actually thought about it, which is a good sign in an interview, that I was a puny little runt. And I was, I was born in the late 70s and then grew up in the 80s. Well, who were the stars in the 80s? You have Schwarzenegger, Van Damme, Stallone.

• 17:11Cal Fussman?

  Whoa, man.

• 17:13Tim Ferriss?

  There are all these ripped, that was the golden era of action films, if you think about it.

• 17:19Cal Fussman?

  You know what? I was out of the country then, I missed it all. So this and this makes sense.

• 17:24Tim Ferriss?

  Well, the plots are pretty easy to follow, so if you wanted to go back. I said I killed you last. I lied. It's very easy to digest material.

• 17:35Cal Fussman?

  Now I understand the opening of your podcast.

• 17:39Tim Ferriss?

  Exactly. Yeah, makes more sense.

• 17:41Cal Fussman?

  Oh, man. So there's one other fact that I just like to bring out because to me it is very interesting. There's, there was like a salesmanship inside your dad and your mom, you come into the house and hey, sit down, let's peel some shrimp and have some dinner.

• 18:01Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 18:01Cal Fussman?

  There is a very welcoming quality to her.

• 18:06Tim Ferriss?

  For sure.

• 18:06Cal Fussman?

  And both of these you, you have.

• 18:10Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, they're very different. They're very different people. And as long as, yeah, as long, as long as we're talking about characteristics, I'm fine with it. The, I'll give another anecdote which shows the difference. So my, my dad loves crossword puzzles. My mom is just incredibly good at also crossword puzzles, but Wheel of Fortune. So their minds work very differently. I mean, she can see one letter and she'll get it in 10 milliseconds. And I don't, my father also has, and you've experienced this, the closest thing to,

• 18:53Tim Ferriss?

  the closest thing to perfect factual recall that I've ever encountered up close for extended periods of time. I mean, he remembers the, where every classmate of his sat in every class he had in elementary school. He remembers every word of fill in the blank language that he learned in fifth grade. And I do not have that. I also don't have. Uh, the, say, within 10 milliseconds, answer, Wheel of Fortune answer, ability of my mom. But it stands to reason that if I'm getting genetics from both sides, I'm somewhere in the middle.

• 19:32Cal Fussman?

  But, but what you do have is the ability to make people feel comfortable around you. Which if you're interviewing people, you gotta have that.

• 19:41Tim Ferriss?

  Seems to help.

• 19:43Cal Fussman?

  And, and also you understand how to sell what you do. So like pieces are starting to come together here.

• 19:54Tim Ferriss?

  Can, may I add another piece?

• 19:55Cal Fussman?

  Sure. Oh, please do.

• 19:56Tim Ferriss?

  So I don't know. I don't think I've ever told you this. So.

• 20:01Tim Ferriss?

  All right. So how did I? Become interested in persuasion and selling and so on? I've always been a night owl. My mom's theory is, so I've always, I mean, since I was a very, very, very little kid, gone to bed typically 2, 3, 4 a.m. My mom's theory is because that's, uh, that, that is due to being under incubator lights at night in the, the intensive care unit or the critical care unit in the hospital as a newborn. Constantly under, under lights at night. And what kind of television is on at 2 or 3 in the morning?

• 20:49Cal Fussman?

  Infomercials.

• 20:50Tim Ferriss?

  Infomercials. So I'd be up late at night. And it's all paid programming. I couldn't go to sleep. And there'd be these, it's Ron Popeil, it's fill in the blank, it's Tony Robbins. And I just became fascinated by, and asked myself why someone would buy one of these things. And at the time, of course, I'm not interested in making money, not interested in building a business. I'm a little kid. But nonetheless.

• 21:20Cal Fussman?

  Oh, this is a big piece.

• 21:21Tim Ferriss?

  You got, you got the Pocket Fisherman, you've got the Topic Hair Powder that you pour on your head.

• 21:29Cal Fussman?

  And you're remembering this like your dad would have.

• 21:31Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. I mean, I do have, I have a very visual memory. So my, my, my dad has not just visual, but also very textual. If that makes sense, and I know that's coming through the optic system. But I tend to remember anything that engages color and motion very well. Which can creep people out because they'll be like, oh yeah, they'll be, hey, we've met before. Yeah, I remember meeting because we were sitting here and there and you were third chair from the left and you were wearing this and that. It's a woman especially. The spider sense for psycho goes off in their head, which is not well founded in this case. It's just the memory that a particular type of memory that I have.

• 22:11Tim Ferriss?

  But yeah, lots of late nights, listening to all of these people.

• 22:18Cal Fussman?

  This Popil guy, I don't remember his work.

• 22:21Tim Ferriss?

  So Ron Popil, I became later interested in going back and figuring out who these people were. Right? So you had, for instance, the thigh master, you probably remember the thigh master.

• 22:32Cal Fussman?

  I do remember the thigh master.

• 22:33Tim Ferriss?

  And the whole story behind that. And then Ron Popil, who, who cut his teeth at state fairs. A lot of these old, old timers, the kind of groundbreakers in infomercials, cut their teeth at these various state fairs. Selling to live disinterested audiences who are walking by. So they'd have to get attention and first get a crowd and then sell the product. Right? So there was a multi-stage process and they had then translated that to television, which is why almost all of these products initially were live demo products. Right? Which Tony Robbins differed from. And so that interested me. I'm like, all right, well, everyone else is doing the slice and dice.

• 23:18Tim Ferriss?

  I can cut through a can and then I can cut through a tomato because it didn't dull the knife. And as a kid, of course, I don't, I have no desire to buy a knife. But I'm looking at the demo. And then you have, say, a Tony Robbins or maybe a handful of others, but really not many, who weren't selling a physical product. And that was interesting to me. Or like the no money down real estate stuff, which made even less sense to me than anything else. I'm like, well, all right, I don't even know where to begin understanding that conceptually. But they're using this guy who's selling whatever no money down real estate is, is using a thousand testimonials. Okay, so he's only using testimonials. That's interesting. Why is he doing that?

• 24:01Cal Fussman?

  Oh man, see, this, this is what fascinates me because for, what you just said about.

• 24:11Cal Fussman?

  First get the crowd, then sell the product is very different from the way a writer or an artist thinks where they're saying, I wanna do, I gotta do this. Somebody's gotta help me do it. Somebody give me some money and allow me to fulfill my dream. And they don't stop to think, well, let me get a crowd first and then I can do what I wanna do.

• 24:44Tim Ferriss?

  So let me add another layer to this, which is, so that's my life from midnight to three o'clock in the morning. The rest of the time, I, from a very, very young age, wanted to be a comic book penciler. So I wanted to be an artist. I literally wanted to be an artist. I wanted to be an illustrator.

• 25:01Cal Fussman?

  Oh, you are two people.

• 25:03Tim Ferriss?

  And I spent all of my time drawing and that was my goal, was to become a comic book penciler. And I was idolized certain artists at the time, specifically pencillers like Jim Lee, who I've been actually, at some point about a year ago, we were trading email to hopefully have me interview him, which would be a lot of fun. And McFarlane and Eric Larson, and I could go down the list, Simon Bisley, all of these artists were, those were the people I idolized from a career standpoint.

• 25:44Tim Ferriss?

  I didn't even think about it as a career, but as, as to what I wanted to do, since I enjoyed drawing and seemed to have a predisposition towards it, that was what I spent the rest of my time thinking about. So you had school, wrestling, comic book penciling, and then I can't sleep, what should I do?

• 26:04Cal Fussman?

  Infomercials. Now I'm beginning to get, the pieces are coming together here, brother. Because like I look at myself. And like I am missing, I am missing pieces here. I wasn't up at three in the morning watching the infomercials.

• 26:22Tim Ferriss?

  Now, there are downsides to that. I mean, it's not all upside.

• 26:26Cal Fussman?

  No, but think about, think about what that gave you.

• 26:28Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 26:29Cal Fussman?

  Just the, the notion of get the crowd first, then sell the product.

• 26:36Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 26:36Cal Fussman?

  That puts you in control.

• 26:39Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, totally.

• 26:40Cal Fussman?

  Which most artists are, they're, they're out of control. They're always looking for the manager or the publishing house or the record company to support their dream.

• 26:52Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, and from the beginning, I wanted to be, uh, control was really important to me. I mean, very beginning and not talking about career aspirations, but just trying to control as many variables as possible. People think of me as uh, some type of risk taker with the early stage startups and everything else. I don't feel myself that way at all. I think about mitigating and decreasing risk all the time. So for me, I like to have control directly or indirectly over as many variables as possible. That's not always a strength, uh, but at least for me, uh, up to, up to this point, it's, there have been a lot of benefits, certainly.

• 27:33Cal Fussman?

  How does money fit into the equation? When you were in high school, how did you see money?

• 27:40Tim Ferriss?

  Once you start working, so I think my first job was 13 or 14. And I was the floor and machine cleaner at an ice cream shop called Snowflake, which no longer exists. Uh, out on Long Island where I grew up. And for people who don't know, I grew up as, as a townie in the Hamptons, which is a weird place to grow up. So to grow up as sort of the rat tail wearing townie in a resort town, anywhere in the world is pretty odd. And that, at that time, I was getting paid, who knows, whatever it was, like seven dollars an hour, eight dollars an hour. And actually, no, I don't, I don't know if it was per hour.

• 28:23Tim Ferriss?

  I think it was per shift because that's what got me in trouble is I got fired from this first job because they, I think it was per shift that I was getting paid because otherwise I wouldn't have been incentivized to do what I'm about to tell you. If they're paying me per hour, I wouldn't have wanted, I, I wouldn't have had any interest in doing things faster.

• 28:43Cal Fussman?

  Uh oh, here we go.

• 28:45Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. So I, I was being told to do things in a stupid way. It was stupid. Like, I'm not gonna mince words. It was just, I was being told to do things in a very inefficient way so that I would be kept busy for the entire period of time. This was not of great interest to me and seemed stupid. So I, for myself at least, devised what I thought was a much better way, much faster way of cleaning,

• 29:15Tim Ferriss?

  cleaning the machines and the floors and so on. And then I would always bring to work, God, I haven't thought about this in a while, a copy of Black Belt Magazine, which was the only martial arts, the, the, the most widely read martial arts magazine at the time. This is before any mixed martial arts, anything had entered the scene. And then I would take my mop, uh, like the mop handle and just like practice made up martial arts stuff. I didn't know what I was doing, like in the back parking lot where no one would see me. So I'd do my work and I'd say, all right, my work is done.

• 29:48Cal Fussman?

  Kind of be Bruce Lee.

• 29:49Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. And then it's like, all right, well now, given that, you know, the, the next, whatever it is, Van Damme movie is coming out next week, or I'd just seen the latest Stallone movie, and I still weigh, you know, a hundred, a hundred pounds, I need to work on becoming Bruce Lee. Uh, needless to say, the boss was not super fond of this. And so he would tell me to do things like, all right, well, I want you to clean it again.

• 30:13Cal Fussman?

  Oh.

• 30:14Tim Ferriss?

  And I'd say, well.

• 30:15Cal Fussman?

  Oh man, the four hour work.

• 30:17Tim Ferriss?

  It's already, it's already clean. You know, the floor is already clean, keep in mind. And, uh, we, that was, that was a partnership destined to fail, I'm afraid. So I was, I was relieved of duty.

• 30:31Cal Fussman?

  Wow.

• 30:31Tim Ferriss?

  A few weeks or months in.

• 30:33Cal Fussman?

  The notion of efficiency is planted at that point.

• 30:37Tim Ferriss?

  That was the efficiency and that was not, uh, client facing. What I mean by that is I didn't have any interaction with the customers there, right? After that, my next job, and, and I worked many, many jobs as a busboy and occasionally was given. The gift of, say, waiting for a table. But I worked in restaurants and I worked for people who've seen The Affair, which I think is a Showtime show. There is a restaurant in that show called The Lobster Roll. Well, I was a busboy at The Lobster Roll, which was one of the highest volume, highest table turnover, which is a good thing in this, in that world.

• 31:20Tim Ferriss?

  Restaurants on Long Island, certainly out on the, on the east end. Not, no offense, Lobster Roll. Some people from the city call it lunch because it has a big sign outside. Just FYI, anybody from Manhattan, nobody calls it lunch out there. It's The Lobster Roll. And it, that was brutal. That was, that was brutal. I also worked, just to paint the spectrum, super low, not low end, but fast, fast food, right? Fast, high volume. And then I worked at restaurants like The Maidstone Arms, which now has a new name, and many, many others in between. So I had a chance in those circumstances to, say, at The Maidstone Arms.

• 32:03Tim Ferriss?

  I remember I had to wear a, a pink, was it a pink button up shirt with a black bow tie? Needless to say, I didn't have either of those. So I had to work to afford.

• 32:15Cal Fussman?

  To get dressed.

• 32:17Tim Ferriss?

  To get dressed.

• 32:18Cal Fussman?

  To go to work.

• 32:19Tim Ferriss?

  And, but that gave me the ability to interact with diners, right? So now I can contribute to getting more tips for the table, which ultimately gets divvied up among the people who are front of house and maybe even back of house. So the cleaning wasn't a great fit for me, I don't think, on, on, on men, on several different levels.

• 32:45Cal Fussman?

  But it actually taught you about efficiency, the way you feel about efficiency.

• 32:50Tim Ferriss?

  Or taught me how much I hate inefficiency.

• 32:52Cal Fussman?

  Okay.

• 32:53Tim Ferriss?

  Or maybe reinforced how much I hated inefficiency. And because I'd already been thinking about efficiency within the context of wrestling. I just hadn't realized that that also all applied in other places.

• 33:05Cal Fussman?

  Wow.

• 33:06Tim Ferriss?

  Right?

• 33:07Cal Fussman?

  Yeah, the pieces are coming together.

• 33:08Tim Ferriss?

  Because if you're, if I'm inefficient on the wrestling, that, what happens? Now I'm into the second period, third period, then my body shuts down, then I lose. So I had to think about efficiency. I never would have used that, I never would have used that word, but that's certainly.

• 33:23Cal Fussman?

  This all comes back to your birth.

• 33:25Tim Ferriss?

  Ah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I suppose, I suppose.

• 33:28Cal Fussman?

  You gotta be.

• 33:28Tim Ferriss?

  I suppose it does.

• 33:29Cal Fussman?

  The most efficient to get the most out of yourself. You couldn't afford to just go along like everybody else.

• 33:38Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, no, I would lose. And I don't know where the dislike of losing came from, but I certainly have a strong dislike of love losing. So that just doing it, following standard operating procedure just wasn't a very attractive option to me.

• 33:54Cal Fussman?

  Okay, so here's one thing I do know. You went to study with John McPhee.

• 34:02Tim Ferriss?

  I had the gift and I'm not going to say that I in any way deserved it more than other kids at Princeton, but I ended up going to Princeton for undergrad and.

• 34:17Cal Fussman?

  Well, take a second to describe who John McPhee is to those who.

• 34:21Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, John McPhee.

• 34:25Tim Ferriss?

  This may sound like a huge overstatement, but you can correct me if I'm wrong. In the minds of many nonfiction writers, I mean, John McPhee is a god. He is, he is.

• 34:38Cal Fussman?

  No debate here.

• 34:39Tim Ferriss?

  The consummate master of his craft. And he's a staff writer, a longtime staff writer at The New Yorker, has at least one Pulitzer Prize. I never know if it's Pulitzer or Pulitzer, but I like saying Pulitzer. So I'll say that like it has two umlauts over the U, which it does not.

• 34:59Tim Ferriss?

  For coming into the country specifically, which was about his time primarily in Alaska. John McPhee is so good at nonfiction writing. And the class that I ended up taking, which was a small seminar. So you applied and provided writing samples was called the Literature of Fact. What a great name, right? As you would expect of John McPhee. M C P H E E. He's so good at exploring and dissecting different subjects that when he writes a book about basketball, A Sense of Where You Are related to Bill Bradley. It becomes the classic.

• 35:38Cal Fussman?

  Right.

• 35:40Tim Ferriss?

  In nonfiction basketball. When he writes a book about. Tennis Levels of the Game. It becomes the classic.

• 35:49Cal Fussman?

  Right.

• 35:50Tim Ferriss?

  Book on tennis. And it goes on. He wrote an entire book about oranges. He wrote an entire book about Iraq. He's, he's, he's written entire books about, uh, classically carved canoes. And you would say to yourself, and you may be saying to yourself, I would never read a book about oranges.

• 36:09Cal Fussman?

  Well, yeah, yeah, you would.

• 36:10Tim Ferriss?

  Yes, you would. Oh, yes, you would.

• 36:13Cal Fussman?

  Yeah.

• 36:13Tim Ferriss?

  And, and just, just to, just to dive into one of the examples I just gave, Levels of the Game, it's about one tennis match. The entire book is about one tennis match. Conceptually, it's hard for me to imagine anything sounding more boring. And yet, it is absolutely gripping as a page turner. And there's a lot more to it, as, as you would certainly expect, but, uh...

• 36:40Cal Fussman?

  Well, what's, what's it like to be in a class with a ma- with a, a god like this?

• 36:47Tim Ferriss?

  Ah, you know, from the ver- from the first day, I felt it was just a huge gift. I mean, I, and I had, I had a good degree of insecurity going into it. I mean, we're, we're talking about someone who had David Remnick as a student, right? I mean, we're talking about, we're talking about a teacher who has not only produced masterpieces himself, but produced students. And I'm not saying, I am not one of them.

• 37:10Cal Fussman?

  David Remnick being the editor of the New York...

• 37:12Tim Ferriss?

  That's right. Who's produced many students who've gone on to just create incredible, incredible works of art. And I, I, I do not think I'm that person at all. Uh, but I could draft behind a lot of those people in the class. So, not only was it a gift to learn from, uh, Professor McPhee, I can't call him John, it's too weird. There are a bunch of people in my life I just can't call by the first name. Uh, it was also a gift to hear the comments and feedback and reading aloud of other students. I do remember very clearly...

• 37:56Tim Ferriss?

  So, all right. Princeton students, generally speaking, pretty confident bunch. Sometimes excessively so. And I remember we had this, the class structure, as I remember it, was, I want to say, one three-hour, two or three-hour group seminar, where Professor McPhee would talk about a given subject, some aspect of structure, which he's very well-known for, and very visual. Very visual in his structuring, which helped me, because I like to draw, right? But I recall, we also had weekly writing assignments. These were short, few pages, whatever it was, three to 10 pages.

• 38:41Tim Ferriss?

  I'd already done quite a bit of writing in school, so I was comfortable with that. And we'd all, we'd all handed in our weekly writing assignments, and we were getting them back. And before he handed them back, I remember he said, he would then later review our writing assignments with us, which was incredible. He said, "Before I hand these out," this is paraphrasing, "I want you to know, you're all good writers. So I don't want you to be thrown off by my edits. You're all good, you got into the class." And he handed back our printed pages that we had given him, and in almost every case, certainly in my case, there was more red ink than black ink. And there were words, oh.

• 39:26Tim Ferriss?

  And you just saw everybody go, "Holy shit." Oh, man. And... But you leave that class a writer. Well, you leave that class a better thinker, because what McPhee does so well, and he has a book that recently came out called The Fourth Draft, about his writing process, which is fantastic. If you're interested in nonfiction writing, if you're really interested, then this book is great. If you're kind of sort of interested in nonfiction writing, more interested in reading nonfiction, then just get Levels of the Game or one of his other books. But...

• 40:03Tim Ferriss?

  He is first and foremost good at clarifying thought. So if you have extraneous words, if you have sentences that are nebulous in meaning, if you have a sequence of paragraphs that logically do not make any sense as a progression, he'll point those out. So it really wasn't, it wasn't providing you with a fancier set of polished words to use. It wasn't a matter of anything that could be differentiated from clarifying your thinking and putting clearer thinking on paper. I smell efficiency. Yeah, yeah, in a way it certainly would be. I mean, in a way, it certainly would be. And taking out, it's, and efficiency is one thing.

• 40:48Tim Ferriss?

  I think also, if you look at my interest in certain martial arts, if you look at my interest in certain wrestlers, if you look at my interest in writing, I think that the, the corollary, or maybe just the, it's not even a cousin, it's like the twin brother or sister of efficiency is elegance. So that's something I think about a lot. Because in elegance, you also have the art. It's not just the science, right? It's not just the mechanics, it's also the beauty of it. And for me, the ability to make something more beautiful by removing the things that

• 41:32Tim Ferriss?

  are adding to drag is just such a cool concept. All the pieces are coming together here. It's such a cool concept. And I mean, now that I'm thinking about it, and you know, post hoc, it's easy for me to try to put all these things together, like, you know, Kobayashi on the cup, oh my god, you know, the usual suspects or whatever. But the red doorknob in The Sixth Sense, I was there all along. But my interest in Japan also, this, the elegance and minimalism of Japan, which I've been obsessed with, obsessed is a strong word, but I think it applies here, for so long, I think it's just the, the elegance. And of course, in Japan, you have the elegance of certain artwork.

• 42:14Tim Ferriss?

  And the minimalism, you also have the efficiency. I mean, we're talking about a country that I think it was during the Meiji Restoration, brought in workplace efficiency and manufacturing efficiency experts who had been largely ignored in the US and elsewhere. And the Japanese would bring them to Japan and then create, say, the entire corporate and manufacturing and design culture of Toyota, which ultimately then displaced US automotive companies then later on, right? They took what was ignored, incorporated, made it better, made it their

• 42:55Tim Ferriss?

  own, and then, at least at that time, won, right? So all of that was so interesting to me. And the literature fact, just as a side note, and it's not really a side note, because it kind of, in my mind, proves the point. When I took that class, without any perceptible additional effort, my grades in every other class went up. And I think it's because the thinking, the sharper thinking, translated to every other class.

• 43:28Cal Fussman?

  And so, at what point is your ability to control your own journey coming in to play, where you can start to live the way you want to live as an artist, because you had that from the drawing and the elegance, and also the ability to navigate the business side, so you weren't dependent on others?

• 44:05Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I can give you, I can tell you, I can tell you the moment in my life I have felt the richest I've ever felt. And this will relate.

• 44:16Tim Ferriss?

  To everything you just said. So little backstory. So what were my jobs in college? To help pay for expenses and everything else? Well, I had, I had a bunch of jobs. One, I was, I was an illustrator. So I did work, I did illustration freelance illustration work, including for Princeton University. So for say, there was a, what is it, student orientation manual that needed illustration. So I did almost all the illustrations for that. There was, I think there were one or two books that I also did illustrations for, not my preferred type of illustration. There's mostly backgrounds and architecture on campus

• 44:58Tim Ferriss?

  and so on, which is not terribly exciting to me. I preferred doing live action figures and so on, humans, animals. But nonetheless, there's that. Then for fun, this is not part of the job, but relevant. I was the graphics editor at the Princeton Tiger. And the primary reason I took that job, which was fun, and it allowed me to just goof off and be a bit of a prankster, was satire magazine, much like The Lampoon, was that I went to visit the offices of the Princeton Tiger, and they showed me the, the desk of the graphic editor. Like, okay, I didn't realize there's a designated desk for the graphics editor, whatever the

• 45:39Tim Ferriss?

  title was at the time. And I opened one of the drawers, and I found a number of drunken sketches from Jim Lee, one of my comic book heroes.

• 45:49Cal Fussman?

  Oh, man.

• 45:50Tim Ferriss?

  Who unbeknownst to me at the time, had gone to Princeton, had had that job. And after some revelry, had come back to the office and sketched out some drawings. And I said, yeah, I'll take this job. And so that was a job, but unpaid. Then I had a job. In Guest Library, which was, so I'd gone from

• 46:13Cal Fussman?

  You know, the pieces are coming together because you'll do a blog and you won't get paid for it.

• 46:18Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 46:18Cal Fussman?

  But you know, there's something good's gonna come out of this.

• 46:23Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, or good for, yeah, good for other people, uh, or fun for me, or both. Oh, and I had a job at Guest Library, uh, which was the library, the attic, as I remember it at least, the attic library of the East Asian Studies Department. And it was terrible. It was like living in a sauna. It was so hot up there. And I was getting paid whatever it was, seven, eight dollars an hour. Then I was asked, so by this point, I was no longer a hundred pounds. I had really gotten into physical training and was whatever I was at the time, actually bigger than I am now. So I was probably a hundred and eighty, a hundred and ninety pounds.

• 47:05Tim Ferriss?

  And one of my friends said, you know, if you, if, uh, if you wanna make some more money, you should safeguard. Now safeguarding is bouncing, but at Princeton, they call it safeguarding. And Princeton has this very odd tradition of eating clubs, which are like coed, social clubs, or think of them as fraternities and sororities combined. So these coed eating clubs where you, as you would expect, eat your meals, where they serve lunch and dinner and so on. And they're all lined up down one street called Nassau Street. And so at least when I was there, students would go out and party and get raucous on Thursday nights and Saturday nights. For whatever reason, those were the nights.

• 47:49Tim Ferriss?

  Saturday makes sense, not sure why Thursday, it's a day of recovery. So Thursday and Saturday, and things would happen. People would get in fights. People would get overly, you know, men would get overly aggressive with women, whatever it would be. So they hired security guards to help keep the peace. And, uh, there were two, I remember two different safeguarding agencies, as it were. And, uh, I chose, I ended up working with one that paid, I think, twenty dollars an hour, which to me at the time, I'm like, wow.

• 48:25Cal Fussman?

  Big time.

• 48:26Tim Ferriss?

  Hitting the big time. So twenty dollars an hour. And, uh, long story short.

• 48:35Tim Ferriss?

  Did not enjoy that job. I was good at it, but I didn't enjoy it because you're nobody's friend. Nobody likes the security when they're drunk. Yeah. Doesn't matter, even if you're actually helping them. And one of my very good friends at the time, who was, I want to say, former, former middleweight amateur boxing champion in the Soviet Union, which is a very big deal, very, very big deal. I mean, that's a I hear that. That's a, effectively, a professional level boxer. And he was a physics graduate student at Princeton. I imagine that, right? Makes sense, on some level. Comic book character of sorts. Fantastic guy, named Ilya. So if you're out there, Ilya, thank you for being

• 49:20Tim Ferriss?

  such a good friend when we were in school. And he was, I was off duty, I was not working on a given night, when he was. We worked together a lot, because I trusted him, he trusted me, and we were good at the job. We could handle, and good at the job does not mean fighting people, by the way. Like, the good at the job means you don't Don't fight people. Yeah. You diffuse situations that would have fights, and you handle simple logistics like, there was this one eating club called Tiger Inn, which was known as being one of the more aggressive eating clubs. Lot of football players, lot of big athletes, very

• 50:00Tim Ferriss?

  heavy drinking culture. And so, as a safeguard, you tended to get paid the most when you worked at, say, TI, as it was known, or some of these other more aggressive spots. Because if you're just going, if you're just, like, saving the computer science nerds from each other, that's a much lower risk Got it. Situation, right? And there were at least two doors, but primarily a front door, which everybody tried to come through, and we would check IDs. And then there was a side door. And so you typically have one guard at each.

• 50:36Tim Ferriss?

  Which were not separated by a ton of space. And Ilya was working with someone that night who, for whatever reason, left his post, left the side door wide open, and there were a number of, there were a number of throwers, meaning track athletes who were shot putters and discus throwers and hammer throwers and so on, who were visiting for a track meet that weekend. And a whole gang of them, huge guys, had shown up at the front door, and Ilya had turned them away because they didn't have IDs. That's part of the job. And they got really upset, and they were like, "We're coming back." Okay. What happens? They come around the side door, and like, one guy grabs him by the neck from behind,

• 51:20Tim Ferriss?

  another guy sort of punches him in the liver, and, I mean, this is, it doesn't matter if you're Mike Tyson. These like, five or six, 230-plus-pound guys, wailing and kicking you.

• 51:34Cal Fussman?

  Oh, man.

• 51:35Tim Ferriss?

  And he ended up in really bad shape. And that, that's when I stopped safeguarding. Because I said, A, it's kind of like motorcycle riding, doesn't matter how good you are on the motorcycle, because there are other people who are bad at driving. Similarly, it doesn't matter if you're Bruce Lee, Mike Tyson combined, if you're working a two-person configuration, and one person leaves the side door...

• 52:00Cal Fussman?

  No control, man.

• 52:01Tim Ferriss?

  No control.

• 52:02Cal Fussman?

  You've got no control.

• 52:03Tim Ferriss?

  Zero, you're done.

• 52:04Cal Fussman?

  Okay. Whoa, whoa, whoa, we got a pause now, because Kevin, the manager, tells me, it's time to talk about the people who make all this possible. Our sponsors. Ahhh. You know why I'm so relaxed? Because I just solved a problem that's been bothering me for a long time. I've had this website and it was good, but I always wanted to customize it, make it my own. And then I was introduced to Squarespace when they became part of this podcast.

• 52:44Cal Fussman?

  It's amazing. They allow you to customize everything with beautiful templates, looks great on mobile, and it's easy to use. So, right here, right now, I'm telling you, I'm taking down the old website and putting up a new one with Squarespace. I'm a free man. Head to Squarespace.com for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code FUSSMAN to save 10% on your first purchase of a website or domain. Enjoy. You know, I talk with companies about hiring and the interviewing process all the time.

• 53:29Cal Fussman?

  So I know how busy people are and how difficult and time-consuming finding the right candidate can be. That's why I was overjoyed to have ZipRecruiter be a part of this podcast. With ZipRecruiter, you can post your job to more than 100 top job boards in just one click. Within minutes of your post, ZipRecruiter's smart matching technology will notify qualified candidates about your job. But here's what I really love. Unlike other hiring sites, ZipRecruiter doesn't depend on the right candidates finding you. It finds them. That's

• 54:08Cal Fussman?

  why 80% of employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate through the site in just one day. And check it out. Anyone who hears me right now can post jobs on ZipRecruiter for free. Just go to ziprecruiter.com/fusman, F-U-S-S-M-A-N. ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire.

• 54:38Cal Fussman?

  And we're back.

• 54:41Tim Ferriss?

  So I stopped safeguarding and I started-

• 54:44Cal Fussman?

  And that's, that's the moment where you're really gripping control over your, over your life?

• 54:50Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, no, no, I'm gonna get there. So I, I realized that I didn't want to go back to $8 an hour in the sauna library.

• 55:01Tim Ferriss?

  I needed money.

• 55:04Tim Ferriss?

  So what could I do? Now, I should also say simultaneously with all of this, like my interest in entrepreneurship has increased. Because there were some entrepreneurship classes at Princeton, uh, which I, one of which I joined at the same time as McPhee's class, which was later called High Tech Entrepreneurship, which had a huge, huge impact on my life with someone named Ed Shao, who was a real mentor. But even before that, what I'd started doing as I was making a little bit of money, bussing tables and so on, is I would call the numbers. This is something I didn't do as a kid. Still, wait, going to sleep at 3 a.m., right? So I'd see these infomercials and I would call the numbers.

• 55:48Tim Ferriss?

  And I, I had figured out how to take a tiny little, uh, micro cassette recorder and go to Radio Shack. And I could, I know this is probably illegal, but, so don't try this at home, kids. But I, I could connect it to record conversations because I wanted to know what the scripts were. It's like, okay, well, I knew what happened on the TV. What happens when you call? And if I say no, if they try to convince me and then I say, oh, it's $29.99, yeah, I can't afford that. What happens? What do they say? What do they do? And then if they send something to me, if, if I, if I buy something, which I didn't do until college. So I, in college, then I was like, all right, well, let me try to buy, let me order something.

• 56:34Tim Ferriss?

  And if I, what's the return process? If I send it back, what happens?

• 56:37Cal Fussman?

  Oh, man.

• 56:39Tim Ferriss?

  If I cancel, what happens? How quickly does it get to me? Do they use first-class mail or do they use priority mail? Do they use UPS? I wanted to just, I just was so, I wanted to know the details. And ultimately, I had, I have, I have something really, I don't know how common it is. I don't have dyslexia. I can read fine, but I have some dysgraphia. So D's, B's end up getting mixed up, or P's and B's get mixed up. Let, I will write letters backwards or upside down. I still do to this day, in English at least.

• 57:17Tim Ferriss?

  And so I had also realized at Princeton, so I have, I have some, some issues with producing text. Uh, reading text a little less so, but the reading volume, this is going somewhere, was so high at Princeton, if you were actually gonna do the classroom reading, which I'm convinced eighty percent of people do not, which is fine, but I at the time felt like that was a requirement for doing well in school.

• 57:47Tim Ferriss?

  Now, certainly, learning and becoming a better human in a liberal arts education should probably be the priority, but ultimately, students wanna do well, and anyone who's gotten into Princeton is probably very competitive. So I was, I was struggling to do all of this reading. There was so much. Uh, and towards the end of high school, and then leading into Princeton, where, you know, on my, on my floor in Forbes, which is one of the residential colleges, I remember kids, oh man, kind of explains a lot that goes on in our world when these people then go on to Goldman Sachs and stuff, but uh, they were like, oh, you got eighteen hundred on your SAT? Yeah, me too. What did you for this? And so all these kids in my, on my hallway

• 58:31Tim Ferriss?

  got perfect scores on their SATs, which I did not. I actually was, my SATs were much lower than the average for Princeton, uh, because I didn't finish them. I was too much of a perfectionist. I actually never finished the test, and I took it multiple times. Uh, so we could, we could psychoanalyze that, but this is all going somewhere. So I compensated in a way, once I got to Princeton, by continuing to look at accelerated learning and speed reading techniques. So could you accelerate your reading speed without sacrificing comprehension? And there's a lot of voodoo and witchcraft and nonsense out there, but there are a handful of methods for increasing reading speed that make perfect sense. If you're just looking at, at the-

• 59:12Tim Ferriss?

  At how the eyes function and how they feed into the optic nerve and how one through fixation points and so on, cicatic movements, I think is how you pronounce, also the jumps that reading entails, reading entails, made scientific sense to me. Like, the mechanisms were all plausible. There wasn't any hand waving. It's like, okay, no, that just like structurally makes sense to me. So, yes, efficiency, again. So it's like, all right, well, if your, if your eye travels across a line, and let's say you close one eye and you try to read a line of text, you'll notice these herky-jerky movements. All right, those are these cicatic movements, jumps from fixation point to fixation point. Your eye doesn't travel in a smooth

• 59:55Tim Ferriss?

  line across, say, a sentence on a page, it just does not. And if you can then reduce the number of fixations you have per line, well, if you go from three to two, you've Just smoothing the line. You're smoothing the line and you're just going to move a lot faster. So I began doing that for myself, and after my friend got his head kicked in, I said, well, what if I took all this stuff that I've been taking notes on, because I've always been a compulsive note taker, so all of the, all of the infomercial stuff, another thing that I ended up doing at that time was, and I didn't come up with this, I had, I had heard it or read it somewhere.

• 1:00:38Tim Ferriss?

  I started to create a three-ring binder, where if I, if I were reading a magazine or an article and I found an advertisement that made me want to buy something, I would take it out, and I would put it into a three-ring binder to try to figure out why it made me want to buy it. So I had all of these, all of these expedition findings, kind of like the butterfly, the butterfly species and so on, that Darwin or someone would collect to analyze later, but in my case, they were advertisements that made me want to buy something. And then I would later try to deconstruct why they made me want to buy Man, you're just looking into the whole process of the business side. Yeah, but I hadn't pulled the trigger. I hadn't really tried anything. That's not

• 1:01:20Tim Ferriss?

  entirely true. I tried something a few years before that. I think it was the very beginning of Princeton, which did not work, which was an audiobook on how to get into good colleges. And I made a bunch of mistakes. The first of which was,

• 1:01:39Tim Ferriss?

  Coming up with a product I was convinced would sell a million copies and not testing, not testing it before manufacturing. So I took all the money I'd made from all this busboying and so on and invested it in manufacturing 400 audio cassette tapes or something like that. I think one or two of which I sold, one to my mom. I think it was, she had bought it and then later told me, but, and then one to god knows who. So it was, it was a huge loss. I didn't throw out those tapes until like 10 years later, by the way. I was like, someday, no, someday people will see.

• 1:02:11Cal Fussman?

  People will realize.

• 1:02:12Tim Ferriss?

  People will realize.

• 1:02:13Cal Fussman?

  The gold in this.

• 1:02:16Tim Ferriss?

  Total failure. And then I, I realized that I could, looking at these various advertisements and so on, do what's called a dry test. And that means you are selling something before you manufacture anything. Secondly, based on buying little things here and there and listening to and the, the phone, the phone scripts, right? Because these operators use decision trees and these scripts. It's like if some, if the person says no to this, do this. If they say yes to this, do this. If they say yes, then try to upsell them to this. If they say no, then try to down sell them to this. And if they agree to blah, blah,

• 1:03:01Tim Ferriss?

  blah, then at the very end, offer them this. If the very, if at this point, they say, no, I can't do it, then you offer them payment terms, whatever it might be. So there are all these different contingency plans. And I put together, I think it was called, this was right before the, this was right before the dot com bust. So this was like 90, 98, 99. And I think I called it speed reading 2.0 or something like that, or enhanced speed reading. I can't remember the exact name. And I, I put out this flyers. So I

• 1:03:39Tim Ferriss?

  printed out these colorful flyers and I promised a, a 300% increase, I think it was a 300% increase in reading speed, which you can measure, words per minute reading speed. In a three hour seminar, or you got a-

• 1:03:54Cal Fussman?

  And this is a four hour work week.

• 1:03:56Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:03:57Cal Fussman?

  This is the foundation of it.

• 1:03:58Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, or you get, you get, you get a hundred and ten percent of your money back. So if it doesn't work.

• 1:04:03Cal Fussman?

  Oh, no.

• 1:04:04Tim Ferriss?

  If it doesn't work, you make money, right? So you're going to come out of it.

• 1:04:10Cal Fussman?

  You certainly weren't deterred by those original cassettes.

• 1:04:13Tim Ferriss?

  Because I had no out of pocket, out of pocket expenses, right? So this is a, this is a service, which ultimately is why I stopped doing it. But this is a service. So I, I then proceeded just so that I wouldn't be caught with my pants down if it actually worked, which I didn't expect it would necessarily. But my downside was so, was so limited that it didn't matter. It was an asymmetrical risk reward benefit, right? Which is always what I look for, even to this day. It's like, all right, well, how can I cap my downside? Because if I, if I always cap my downside, if I have the, if I can really minimize the downside, eventually the upside will take care of itself, right? If I have enough at bats. So, so the, so I had these flyers all over the place. And then I had my, I guess my dorm room phone number.

• 1:04:57Tim Ferriss?

  I don't think I had a cell phone at that point, and my email address. But I had to find a location. I couldn't afford a location. Because I wasn't safeguarding any longer.

• 1:05:07Cal Fussman?

  Oh, man.

• 1:05:08Tim Ferriss?

  And I had eight dollars an hour. So I was like, all right. There were, I don't think there was any date on the flyer, because I wanted the flexibility of like figuring out how to finagle some type of space. And I found a church in town that had a, I want to say it was a daycare area for, for kids.

• 1:05:32Cal Fussman?

  Where is this going?

• 1:05:33Tim Ferriss?

  That would not be used on Saturday afternoons. There was some period of time in which that was available. And so I went in, God, I haven't thought about this in a long time. And I tied, I tithe a little bit, it wasn't very much, but like I tied some money to the church. And I said,

• 1:05:55Tim Ferriss?

  I've noticed you have this space and I was just trying to put two and two together. And it's like, is there any time when this is not used? And is there any possibility I could use it? A first time or not a first time and I said, I'm a aspiring entrepreneur, trying this class. I explained the whole thing. I said, I don't know if it's going to work. It might not, could be two people, could be more. I have no idea, but would it be possible to potentially use this space for a few hours? And I'll leave it in better shape than I found it when I leave. And thankfully, they took, I guess mercy on me or whatever, had some empathy and they let me use the space or they said I could use the space.

• 1:06:37Tim Ferriss?

  And, and then at that point, emails and calls started coming in. So now I'm, now I have to sell on the phone. Oh, all this stuff that you learn from the infomercial. Guess what? I've already, I've already listened to a hundred operators sell on the phone who are backed by companies that are spending tens and hundreds of millions of dollars on ensuring that the scripts work. Oh, man. And This is beautiful. So I end up, my first seminar with, I want to say it was, just for the sake of simplicity, 30 people. So I have a full room of people, 30 people, and they, they come with cash, you know, they've

• 1:07:22Tim Ferriss?

  got 10s and 20s and 5s, they come with checks and not a single refund. So I survived my first three hours. I deliver the measurables, right? So the key performance indicator for you startup folks out there, the words per minute rate with equal or better retention, at least, you know, tripled or, or in many cases quintupled. And I just remember walking out of that seminar with pockets full of checks and 20s and 10s. I mean, I made $1,500 in three hours. So keep in mind, like, I had made, the most I had made up to that point was $20 an hour doing something that was risking life and limb, right?

• 1:08:06Tim Ferriss?

  And then I go into this church daycare room and I walk out with $1,500. There it is. And I just remember, and I couldn't even fit, fit them in my pockets. I remember I had to like fold up checks.

• 1:08:19Cal Fussman?

  Your pockets are bulging.

• 1:08:21Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I had to fold them while I was on a bike. And I remember going straight to PNC Bank. It's my first bank account. Just immediately, I was like, I have to deposit these right away. And so going straight to the bank and having money and checks pressed to the grips on the handlebars, because they couldn't fit in my pockets. So I had these death grips on my bike as I went to PNC Bank and deposited that. And I mean, it really was that day where I was like, holy shit, this can actually work. You actually can do this. And I did a handful more of those seminars, but ultimately realized you have to be in one place to do this. Right? It's a service.

• 1:09:03Cal Fussman?

  Right.

• 1:09:03Tim Ferriss?

  So it's still on some level is physical presence, hours in, money out. And so I stopped doing that when I graduated.

• 1:09:13Cal Fussman?

  And so that moment and what might happen with money, that sounds like a springboard in itself. Because up until that point, had you ever invested in anything?

• 1:09:30Tim Ferriss?

  No.

• 1:09:30Cal Fussman?

  No.

• 1:09:31Tim Ferriss?

  No, no. Actually, you know, I had, with the help of my dad, invested in one company. And, you know, man, if I think about it, like my investment approach hasn't changed that much. Pixar was my first ever investment.

• 1:09:46Cal Fussman?

  Whoa.

• 1:09:47Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, because of...

• 1:09:49Cal Fussman?

  That makes sense, man. You're the artist.

• 1:09:51Tim Ferriss?

  I was the comic book artist. I loved it. I loved animation. So I knew, I felt like I understood the world of comic books and animation really well. Pixar was coming out with Toy Story and...

• 1:10:05Cal Fussman?

  That's your first investment.

• 1:10:07Tim Ferriss?

  And that was, that was the first investment I ever made. The only investment that I recall making until much, much, much later. I mean, well after college. I, I, I don't like things I can't control, like public stocks, right? I didn't feel like later I overcomplicated investment for myself. I read a lot of books on investment and it scared me off. Whereas in fact, my best investments...

• 1:10:33Tim Ferriss?

  To date have Whether it's like, yeah, Facebook, Twitter, Uber, Alibaba, all these. Because I really, really, like, I play in those sandboxes. Like, I understood them so well. And I used, I've used all of them, right? Pixar was, was my only investment, small amount of money. No, nothing up to that, up to that point in terms of external investments. I invested a lot in myself, but.

• 1:11:02Cal Fussman?

  Well, I came into this thinking that you were a one man partnership, but I see now that there are like five different people in there doing all these different things, having all these different talents, but.

• 1:11:18Tim Ferriss?

  And neuroses and difficulties and weaknesses, which might explain all the voices in my head.

• 1:11:24Cal Fussman?

  Yeah. And, and so at what point is it that the four hour work week is going to be born? Like, is there a, a moment in your mind where we could see where everything is leading in that direction, but is there a moment where you know, there it is?

• 1:11:48Tim Ferriss?

  The lifestyle or the book?

• 1:11:51Cal Fussman?

  Well, I, it sounds like the lifestyle led to the book.

• 1:11:54Tim Ferriss?

  Well, so the lifestyle was, was experienced and enjoyed and then somewhat forgotten. So I had that experience with the seminar. Then I became intoxicated by the possibility of tech millions and billions, because this is keep in mind, ninety eight, ninety nine.

• 1:12:12Cal Fussman?

  Squeezed in your hand.

• 1:12:14Tim Ferriss?

  And this was also when a, I'm not going to say classmate, but schoolmate. A few years ahead of me had sold bluemountain.com for something like three or four hundred million dollars. And there were a number of other examples like that. I mean, this is certainly at the top of froth and right preceding the first tech boom. And those numbers were mind boggling to me, right? I mean, it's one thing to make fifteen hundred dollars.

• 1:12:41Cal Fussman?

  Four hundred million.

• 1:12:42Tim Ferriss?

  It's quite another thing to make four hundred million dollars.

• 1:12:45Cal Fussman?

  But something should be pointed out here, the same way you were talking about growing up in the era of Schwarzenegger and Van Damme, you're growing up in the era of.

• 1:12:55Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:55Cal Fussman?

  A kid in college, starting something that can make $400 million.

• 1:13:00Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, those were the, those were the new heroes, right? And I took this class I had mentioned earlier, High Tech Entrepreneurship with Ed Shao, which I, which I had to negotiate with him to get into because I had been,

• 1:13:21Tim Ferriss?

  this is highly relevant, so it'll, it'll, it'll tie in, but I had, I had gone to China. And as an East Asian Studies major, I was first neuroscience, and there's a long story behind the trance, the transition, but I do actually think some animal testing is very, very important, but I couldn't do it myself. It wasn't torture. It was just what they would call perfusing rats after injecting them with retroviruses and so on. I couldn't sacrifice the animals necessary to, to do that, to work in the lab I want to work in. So I became an East Asian Studies major, nonetheless, taking all of these other classes,

• 1:14:02Tim Ferriss?

  like McPhee's class. And at the same time, Ed Shao enters the picture. And his class, along with McPhee's, were in, I want to say this book was the, something like the Student Class Review Guide. That's not the right name, but it was something like that. So it was similar to a registrar's list of classes you could take, but it was an analog version of, say, Yelp. So students could actually rate these classes and give feedback. And Ed Shao's class was, along with McPhee's, way, way up at the very top of the heap. And he was teaching people how to build businesses, how to build companies that could

• 1:14:44Tim Ferriss?

  get sold for hundreds of millions of dollars. But I had, as an East Asian Studies major, taken time to go to China to study at two universities. And I came back and I missed the deadline. I'd missed the deadline for applying. So I, I wrote a letter to Professor Shao.

• 1:15:03Tim Ferriss?

  I said, I'll do any, ultimately, I mean, I made my case and ultimately said, I don't need, I don't need a seat. If the room's full, I can sit on the floor. If you need me to help, I can, I can clean the erasers after class. Like, I will do whatever is necessary.

• 1:15:19Cal Fussman?

  How could he say no?

• 1:15:20Tim Ferriss?

  Please let me take this class. And eventually, he did. So he let me take this class. And that class led me to want to jump in to the tech world. And there was one class, I'm sorry, one company that he had invested in called Trusand Networks, which is a storage area networking company. So at the time, what would have been considered mass data storage. So petabytes and petabytes of data. Oh, my God. You know, who could imagine? Now you can go to, now you can go to Fry's Electronics and buy, you know, a terabyte for $70. But back in the day, we're talking about hundreds, systems worth hundreds of thousands of dollars

• 1:16:05Tim Ferriss?

  and millions of dollars that you'd be selling to, say, American Airlines or to the FBI or whoever it might be, National Geographic Survey. And in that class, we had to do a final project. There are different options for what types of final projects you could do. One was profiling a company. So I decided to profile Trusand as a way to hopefully get my foot in the door and get a job. Long story short, did the whole, did the whole final project and tried to get the job and was turned down. And graduated with no job. Parents were very-

• 1:16:46Cal Fussman?

  After all this?

• 1:16:47Tim Ferriss?

  After all this, parents, parents were very supportive. They're like, take your time. You can come home.

• 1:16:54Tim Ferriss?

  But for myself, even after a month or two of no job after graduation. You're starting to get antsy. Antsy and panicky. So every, every maybe two weeks, I would be emailing this poor CEO, Thomas at True San to try to get my foot back in the door to get a job. And I had heard all of these stories of negotiation and so on from Ed also in this, in this class, because he taught at Harvard Business School and he, and he used the case study method. So we were looking at real stories of real companies, tough decisions they had to make. And then the class, each student in the class as a whole would debate what they would do, given this decision, the company or person's facing. And then

• 1:17:38Tim Ferriss?

  you get to read about what actually happened. So rejection, no, no, thanks. Sorry, we have an in-house human resources person. They are completely backed up. We have more applicants than we can handle. Thanks, but no thanks. He was very polite about it, considering how. But no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no. And then I was, I was, I was gonna give up.

• 1:18:00Tim Ferriss?

  And I was like, you know, let me just try one more hail Mary. And I sent him an email, which was along these lines. Hi, Thomas. I, I, I realized I left out a few pages on competitive analysis in my final project, which was true. That could relate to you, how you compete with network appliance and EMC. Those are the two primary competitors.

• 1:18:25Tim Ferriss?

  As it turns out, this was the part that wasn't true. As it turns out, I'm going to be in the Bay Area anyway. They were based in San Jose. I have a couple of job interviews and meetings. Would it be possible to swing by and give you these pages and just thank you for the time that you spent with me when I was doing the final project? Which of course he could read right through. I would imagine so. And so you replied back, once again politely, sorry. Thanks, but no, thanks. Appreciate the persistence, but we don't have space. Then he had a change of heart. And he said, okay, I can meet you from, I can meet you on Tuesday. I, I think this was the exact time from 1:00 to 1:15. I was like, oh, okay. I said, great. I gotta fly out. Great. I'll see you there. So I couldn't, I didn't have the money because I, I had,

• 1:19:11Tim Ferriss?

  I mean, I burned through any of the savings from the speed reading stuff. Didn't have a whole lot of money, so I bought a standby ticket to California. On a standby ticket, you don't, at least at that time, you didn't check luggage. So I had carry on only, which meant I wore my only, my ill-fitting suit. Like, the only suit I had. Couldn't afford a hotel, so I stayed at a kickboxing gym, which, for those of you in San Francisco, this might make sense. There was a gym called Fairtex, which was located on Clementina Street. This is in 99, probably, 99, 2000, between 5th and 6th, between Folsom and Howard. That's not a good place to be. It was bad, like, a really bad place.

• 1:19:56Tim Ferriss?

  But it was cheaper than staying at a hotel to pay for a fly-in kickboxing camp. And you got to live on the, on the upper floor, sleeping on a bunk bed with some of the Thai instructors, which meant I also had to, to clean my clothing in the sink there, which I did, and it was fine. I didn't have any other meetings, so I, I, I very much hastened to set up other meetings so that I wouldn't feel like I had all my eggs in one basket. But now I had something real to hold on to. Hey, I have, I have an interview in San Jose.

• 1:20:26Cal Fussman?

  Fifteen minutes.

• 1:20:27Tim Ferriss?

  With True Send Networks. While I'm there, I would love to chat with blah, blah, blah. So I was able to actually set up a couple of meetings. And got there at 1 o'clock, and Tom was delayed. I was like, huh, all right. 1, 1, 1 o'clock comes and goes, 1:15 comes and goes, 1:30 comes and goes. And the receptionist, I think her name was Carly. God, she was a sweetheart. She was awesome, too. She was really, not a receptionist, she was really the, I mean, what we would call probably chief of staff now. That term didn't exist then in startups. She was amazing. And she said, all right, well, Tom's delayed, but he'd love for you to meet with Mark. So I met with Mark, who was the COO, if I remember correctly. Great guy.

• 1:21:12Tim Ferriss?

  And we chatted for 30, 40 minutes, however long it was.

• 1:21:16Cal Fussman?

  Puts in the door.

• 1:21:17Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, and eventually, met with Tom, and it was a very short meeting. Nice to meet you, or nice to see you again, because he'd met me, he'd spoken at the class. And he said, so let me get this, just so I'm clear. You're not going to stop bothering me until I give you a job?

• 1:21:34Tim Ferriss?

  And I said, yeah, I suppose that's about right. He goes, okay, great, you're in sales. Wow. So I was the, I found out later, the second to lowest paid employee at the company. Who was the lowest? They did not, one of their like part-time receptionists. Okay. Because later, one of my friends asked for his paid time off. And so someone sent him a spreadsheet with the other names deleted. This is not what you do, by the way, if you're sending someone their paid time off. But it was an Excel spreadsheet and they'd forgotten to delete another tab, which had everyone else's compensation and stock options. So my friend's like, dude, you need to see this. He's like, you're the lowest on the totem pole.

• 1:22:15Tim Ferriss?

  But I was, I, I, I got the job and that came later, but I, they didn't have space for me. So I was. Now you're in sales. I was crammed into a desk in a fire exit, literally like in that tiny doorway in a fire exit. And then I had my, I think we called them systems engineers who were support for technical sales, which I would be.

• 1:22:40Tim Ferriss?

  Brian, who's a really good guy. And yeah, got to it. Now that job ultimately disappeared because the company, like so many at the time, imploded. Rapid growth, nine 11 happens. Financing starts to dry up and. But yeah, we've, we've got another piece to the puzzle here. Saw the death knell. So around that time, I saw the writing on the wall and I said, okay, this is going away. What else do I know? Like I knew the speed ring at the time. And what I did is, this is, I'll, I'll try to keep it short, but I looked at my, one of the things I did is I looked at my credit card statements to determine how, how I spent money. Where did I spend the most money? Where was I price insensitive?

• 1:23:24Tim Ferriss?

  Like for, for the small amount of money I was making in the Bay area, which was at that time, it's still extremely expensive. I mean, it was because there was so much demand, right? There was less supply than demand. So I had roommates and the whole nine.

• 1:23:40Tim Ferriss?

  What do I understand? What could I make that I use myself where I'm price insensitive? So I could go high end as opposed to low end. And it was sports nutrition, so athletic nutrition. And then during lunch hours began using the conference lines in empty rooms at Trusand to try to lay the groundwork for this new company that I would make. And I mean, I didn't have the money or the connections for anything. But I did realize through all the cold calling that I did to CEOs and CTOs who are the people I needed to sell to for my job, that nine to five is the worst time to make phone calls. You either want to call, well, and/or

• 1:24:25Tim Ferriss?

  Seven in the morning? Yeah, seven in the morning or like 6:30 at night. Because very often, the people who started the companies, the presidents, the CEOs, whoever, were there early or there late and the gatekeepers were not. So I started connecting with people in this black box of sports nutrition who really like to keep it a black box for many, many reasons. Because there are contract manufacturers who make different products for competing brands and so on. Started to figure it out and I had just enough kind of neuroscience background and also certainly experience as a consumer to know what I wanted. And then asked all of my coworkers who also were, I mean, smart enough to see the writing on the wall, like, wow, all right.

• 1:25:10Tim Ferriss?

  If a bunch of inside salespeople have been sold, or have been fired, rather, who, I guess in some ways they were sold to other companies, but who had been fired, inside meaning they book meetings for people like me. Their job is outbound phone calls, but they don't leave the office. If a bunch of inside salespeople have been fired, it's just a matter of time before all the outsides people are fired, right? So this is just the first round of layoffs. And I asked them, I said, hey, guys, I think we all know where this is going. I'm trying to start a new company. If I have to, I'll guilt you, but can you please just commit to buying one bottle each? Right? So what did this give me? Then I have 20 of my friends who commit to buying one bottle of something that doesn't

• 1:25:53Tim Ferriss?

  exist yet, which gives me just enough money Get the crowd.

• 1:26:00Tim Ferriss?

  Before you sell the product. Yeah, you need to get the crowd because then you've tested the market, right? So are these people willing to actually spend their money to buy this thing I'm thinking about making? Ultimately, through guilt, hopefully product features and benefits, they agreed to do it. And that gave me just enough money, which was like 20% of what I actually needed to do a manufacturing run, to give me the confidence that I could then go negotiate and pitch the manufacturer to have them drop their minimum to what I could afford. Because I laid out the vision for what this could be and that I'd stick with them as a manufacturer. And it's a bet, but it's a low risk bet for them. It would make a huge difference. I'm sure someone helped you and you were just getting started.

• 1:26:44Tim Ferriss?

  There's probably one person you can remember. Please just give me that one chance. And they were very kind, they agreed, and I kept true to my word. The company exploded and I stuck with them. And then they made a lot, a lot, a lot of money because of it. Ultimately, so just to flash forward, so that company, what I thought was going to be a dream, ended up becoming a nightmare. The company ended up running me instead of the other way around. I didn't know how to manage. I did not know how to scale without myself remaining a bottleneck. Very different from having a seminar, which is very simple, fewer moving pieces. And I burned out and I lost a very important relationship. This girlfriend walked out I had expected to probably propose to. Oh, man.

• 1:27:28Tim Ferriss?

  Everything's going up in flames. Everything's going up in flames. Now, in the meantime, because I'm bootstrapping this, Ed Shao had invited me to give this lecture twice a year on how I was growing my company. You're up in flames and now you're coming in to speak about growing your company? Well, now, but keep in mind, the company itself was successful, but I felt... But you're personally... Unsuccessful. Right, I got it. And I was certainly unhappy. So the mechanics of how to build, I could teach, but the the inner workings and the content and so on were a separate conversation. But I'm doing this twice a year and the talk is changing as I'm changing. Right?

• 1:28:09Tim Ferriss?

  And in 2004, which is when all of these things start melting down, I took a, what I thought was going to be a four week trip, one, one way ticket to London to either rethink all the systems in the business so that I could remove myself as a bottleneck or shut it down. And it ended up working and I took notes on all this because I'm constantly keeping notes, right? And started then imparting some of this in these twice a year classes, lectures that I'm giving to students in high tech entrepreneurship, this class I had taken. And ultimately that four week trip turned into 18 months of traveling around the world. And I mean, you know, the siren song of travel. Once you start, it's addictive. So I ended up with no itinerary.

• 1:28:54Tim Ferriss?

  I had run my whole life in 15 minute or 10 minute Outlook increments for so many years and now I had no plans. So if three people said, what are you doing here? You should go to Galway in Ireland because they have an art festival. Like, okay, I'll go to Galway. And so the- The four hour work week is born. That's right. So I'm taking notes, I'm taking notes on all this, I'm journaling. And I remember where I was, exactly where I was. I was in a, I was in an apartment in a place called Barrio Norte in Argentina, in Buenos Aires. And I had a roommate from Sweden at the time, this really funny dude with dreadlocks, a black guy.

• 1:29:35Tim Ferriss?

  And he had given me a couple of hours to, to do the class via Skype.

• 1:29:44Tim Ferriss?

  And I, and I completely reformulated the class. And I focused instead of on how to scale a business, I talked about what I termed lifestyle design. So how do you start with? The end in mind for how you want to spend your hours day to day in this finite resource and how do you then reverse engineer that with a company or a career? No writer would ever think like this, man. So I taught this class and one thing I did for every class, and this won't surprise you, because if you'll recall, I did all of these experiments with returning products and everything. So I would, I would, one, I would send a feedback form to all the students and what, and I would ask them for different types of feedback and then one of them was other comments.

• 1:30:29Tim Ferriss?

  Do you have any other comments or suggestions or questions? And one of the students, in typical Princeton like dickish fashion, I don't think it was actually a, a real recommendation. I think it was just a snarky response, said, "I don't understand why you're teaching a class of 30 students. Why don't you just write a book and be done with it?" Oh, no. Well, oh, no, but oh, yes. So that then, keep in mind. Yeah, oh, no, but oh, yes. But what's, what's, what's my situation at the time? I have insomnia, as I did before. I can't go to bed until three in the morning. What don't you have in Argentina? I didn't have TV. So my mind would race and come up with potential book. I didn't want to write a book.

• 1:31:11Tim Ferriss?

  I had a very horrifying experience with my senior thesis in college, so I had never wanted to write. I had vowed I would not write. And, but to get to sleep, I had to write down these chapter ideas and what I thought were just frivolous ideas for chapter beginnings, endings, points I could make, stories I could tell about all these people I had met during my travels who epitomized what I was talking about. Just to get to sleep, I took it out of my head and put it on paper, which is something I still do today. And finally ended up back in the US and I have this huge stack of paper. Thank God for insomnia. Thank God for insomnia. And I'll give, I'll give thanks to Jack Canfield here.

• 1:31:54Tim Ferriss?

  So several years before, when I first moved to Silicon Valley, I had volunteered, which is The best way, I think, to to build the network quickly in a place you don't know. I had volunteered for an organization called the Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs. And they did events. So I started just whatever, taking out the trash. Uh, the great thing about volunteering is that most people, because they're not getting paid, do the bare minimum or a little less than the bare minimum. But I went in and I was like, all right, I know I'm taking out the out of the trash, but the iced tea isn't refilled over there. Let me go refill the iced tea. Literally, that's all I needed to do for the people managing the event to be like, that kid's a go getter. Let's have him do more. Like, I refilled the damn iced tea. And within a month or two, they were inviting me to planning meetings.

• 1:32:37Tim Ferriss?

  And then I said, they asked if anyone would like to volunteer to spearhead the next event, which meant inviting speakers, and I raised my hand and they let me do it. So I got to invite people I wanted to meet, including someone named Jack Canfield, who co-created Chicken Soup for the Soul, which has sold hundreds of millions of copies. Oh, man. So I get back from the US. I haven't bothered Jack in any way. I haven't asked him for anything. He's still a friend to this day, by the way. And I took some of the notes. And I was back in the Bay Area, had no idea what to do with my life. I was fine. I wasn't upset. I was a very happy guy at that point, very content. Had cash flow from the business. And I sent him a couple of the notes. And I said, Jack, you know, if this student said this, here's some of my ideas. What do you think I should do with this? I don't really want to write a book, but what are your thoughts?

• 1:33:22Tim Ferriss?

  And before I knew it, Jack was like, all right, I want you to meet this guy, Steve. I want you to meet this person, Jillian. I want you to meet this other woman, blah, blah, blah. And he started making introductions. He said, I think it's great. You should do it. I could see it working on Fox and Friends. And he started, before I could say no, making introductions to potential agents and so on. And ultimately, because I had the time, put together a proposal, which is a business plan, right? And Which you're good at. Yeah, which I'm good at. I'd learned how to do. And Because you're seeing this from the bottom of the business process first. Yeah, I could think about finding the market, who's the market, right? Was it easier for you to write the proposal or the book?

• 1:34:05Tim Ferriss?

  The proposal by a by a by a thousandfold. Yeah. Because the proposal's selling. Right. The book is teaching. Yeah. Those are very different things. And See, in my case? Yeah. The book is easy. The proposal, like, it just shoots fear through me. Oh, sure. Yeah, a lot of writers. A lot of writers don't like, feel very uncomfortable selling themselves. But I think the easiest way, or the reason that was easy for me to overcome is realizing that to sell effectively, you don't have to overpromise, you don't have to blow a lot of smoke. You just have to state the facts using the tools you already have, which is wordsmithing and logical progression and all this stuff that you would get from, say-

• 1:34:50Tim Ferriss?

  Certainly from John McPhee. Certainly from John McPhee. Logical thinking, right? You're just taking out the things that are extraneous that might hurt you. You're not covering anything up, but you're presenting the case like an attorney would. In the most efficient way. Efficient, compelling way possible. And so Steve Hanselman, who had just moved from being a superstar editor and publisher to being an agent, ended up signing on for this wild ride and- Do you have any idea where this is going at this point? No, no, no. The book was rejected 20, I want to say 20, I lose track of the number sometimes. It was either 27, somewhere between 26 and 29 times.

• 1:35:33Tim Ferriss?

  It was rejected by editors and publishers. And what are you feeling when these rejections come in? It was less- You're in sales, so rejections is normal. It's normal. I also- For a writer, that's devastating. So what I had that they didn't have, and this is the reason, rather than feeling sad or rejected, I felt angry and righteous. Which also, by the way, is a double-edged sword. That doesn't always work so well. But the reason I felt, I knew I was right and I felt righteous and I was just pissed at these people is because I had data. I taught 20 classes. I had feedback forms.

• 1:36:17Tim Ferriss?

  I had the experiences- You had the goods. You knew. I knew it sold. I knew it could sell. And I knew it worked, more importantly, right? So it's one thing to say, sell medicine. It's quite another to go through all the trials and so on to ensure that the medicine works. I knew the medicine worked. And they were-

• 1:36:37Tim Ferriss?

  Whatever. You know what? There were rejection letters and some cases were so rude. They were too stupid. Not all of them. Some people were very gracious. And looking back at the proposal, which I've done, quite frankly, does read a bit like the chest puffing of an overconfident at the time, 29-year-old, which I was. Like, it is, it is a little much. Like, I'll be honest. Like, I could see why someone who's a very seasoned vet, who's had 20 years in publishing, would read it and just- Roll their eyes. Roll their eyes. I can understand that. But many of them were too lazy or stupid to ask any questions. And if they'd asked some questions, they would have realized this is a low-risk bet with a high potential return that's been tested. And if they were investors, which they are, by the way, that's what publishers are,

• 1:37:22Tim Ferriss?

  they're recruiting talent and investing in talent, like, just like a baseball team, that they should have taken that bet, and they didn't. Now, ultimately, Crown, just an imprint within Random House at the time, which I guess is Random Penguin or whatever it is now, was my, I could not make this up. I mean, it sounds like a cheesy scene from a movie that would, from a screenplay that would not get sold, but last meeting in New York. So I've had a chance to refine the pitch through all these meetings when I'm getting rejected. Still getting, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, thank you. No, come back later. Very venture capital. I mean, there's, there are a lot of similarities between publishers and venture capitalists. A lot of polite, kind of soft, nebulous nose, like, well, maybe

• 1:38:06Tim Ferriss?

  if it's successful, we want this guy for a second book, so I'm not going to be too rude now. We'll just pass on this one. Which is smarter, which is smarter than being rude. But ultimately, Heather Jackson, who was the editor slash sort of talent scout, right? Because they're acquiring editors and they are talent scouts, they have to find authors, had been contacted by Steve and she set up a meeting where at the time, the decider was Steve Ross, and had this meeting, there were like 20 people in the room. I mean, it's just a, kind of a Death Star meeting, much like people may have experienced at, say, a CAA or WME, right? You walk in, you're just like, wait a second, I thought I was meeting with one person. Why are there 20 people here? At that point, I'm used to it, though. It's like, all right, this is just how publishing

• 1:38:49Tim Ferriss?

  works. And went through the whole pitch, the whole nine yards, and seemed to be getting, like, head nods here and there. But I didn't, I didn't feel like it was there like this. This date was not going to be consummated. Like it was, it was close, but it wasn't quite there. And so, so I've heard this now from, or Steve, my agent, has heard it from other people in publishing who were at Crown at the time, that this is what made the difference. So at the very end, Steve said, all right, or it might've been Heather. It was either Steve or Heather, but they said, all right, well, this has been a great meeting.

• 1:39:31Tim Ferriss?

  Do you have anything else to say or to ask before I wrap up? And I said, yeah, I do. And I said, if you look at my track record, if you look at the things that I've done, I have never half-assed anything. I have an extremely high pain tolerance. So if you take this small bet on this book, I will stop at nothing. I will kill myself to make this a bestseller. I will do everything within my power. I will find other people who can help me with things outside of my power to make this succeed. And Did you see it on anybody's face or reaction? I looked straight at Steve because he was the one who was going to make the decision. And there was a little pause. I said, okay, thank you very much.

• 1:40:17Tim Ferriss?

  And then they bought the book. News came, I guess, a few days later, a week later, maybe. They bought it for a pittance, which good for them. They should, right? I mean, they're in a much more leveraged negotiating position after 27 rejections. Why would you pay a premium? And Amazing. Boom. So that was, and I remember when the book came out and there was a lot, of course, that I'm doing to, to make sure that I am true to my word. I didn't expect it. Well, the other thing is, you know, get the crowd. Yeah.

• 1:40:52Cal Fussman?

  Then do the selling.

• 1:40:54Tim Ferriss?

  Then you do the selling.

• 1:40:54Cal Fussman?

  So I imagine that you were out getting the crowd in the meantime.

• 1:40:57Tim Ferriss?

  Well, there are different crowds too, and that is, there are different sets of customers even for a single product. So in other words, I knew that to sell to readers, I had to first sell to publishers. And to sell to readers, you then have to also sell through publishers to distributors. So I knew that I had to have a story and material for all of those groups. For the book to succeed, it wasn't enough to just sell books to the end reader. I had to know who the customers were, who enabled the book to be shepherded to ideal position at a retailer.

• 1:41:28Cal Fussman?

  And you just broke the business cycle down, piece by piece.

• 1:41:33Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah. And even when choosing covers, I took different covers. I went to the Borders, which no longer exists, in Palo Alto on University Ave. And I found a book that was the same size in the new arrivals or the new nonfiction area. And I wrapped it with the different covers. And I did this between, say, 5:00 and 8:00 PM, so prime time. And I would sit there and I'd keep track of how many times each cover was picked up. So I'd give each one, say, 30 minutes, and I'd compare which cover got picked up the most.

• 1:42:03Cal Fussman?

  Oh, man. No writer thinks like this.

• 1:42:07Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, even the, even the title for our work week was not the original title. The original title was terrible. The original title was Lifestyle Hustling.

• 1:42:17Tim Ferriss?

  I mean, none of this, we might not even be talking right now if that had been the title. So

• 1:42:20Cal Fussman?

  How did that title come into play?

• 1:42:22Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, ended up, actually, you know what? It was Lifestyle Hustling and the Proposal. Then it was Drug Dealing for Fun and Profit, which was the name, which was the tongue in cheek, the tongue in cheek name of my class. That's what I called the seminar because of the sports supplements. And I think it was Walmart or Costco, someone did not like the title.

• 1:42:43Cal Fussman?

  The drug, right.

• 1:42:43Tim Ferriss?

  Right. So one of my customers, before the book could get to my readers, did not like the title. So in retrospect, thank God for that. They didn't like the title. And Crown had a bunch of ideas, but I don't like making, when possible,

• 1:42:59Tim Ferriss?

  Purely emotional decisions based on some type of consensus. Right? I mean, as they say, or I've heard at least, you know, a camel is a horse drawn by consensus.

• 1:43:11Tim Ferriss?

  And I instead said, all right, if we need a new title, give me some time, I'll test it. And at the time, it was the golden years of Google AdWords, which could be tested very inexpensively. And I grabbed about 10 different domain names, right, URLs. And then I had combinations of different titles and subtitles. And so I put those, I bid on different search terms like retirement, around the world travel, whatever it might be. And then an ad would pop up for my book that didn't exist. And it would have whatever, Lifestyle Hustling as the ad headline. And then the ad text would be the subtitle.

• 1:43:54Tim Ferriss?

  And then the link, which would be the URL for that particular book title, which I'd already reserved. And Google mix and matches those automatically. So you don't have to manually test all the permutations and combinations.

• 1:44:08Tim Ferriss?

  And for $200 or $300, whatever it was, maybe less, $150 to $300, within a week, I knew that by far what got the highest click through rate, so it's the same as people picking up a cover and me tracking the pickup rate, the highest click through rate was Four Hour Work Week, and Escape the Nine to Five, so on and so forth. Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich, which ended up being the title and subtitle, had by far the highest click through rate differential and standard deviation. And I took that data to the publisher and that's what we ran with.

• 1:44:46Cal Fussman?

  Oh, man. Number one, I gotta start watching infomercials.

• 1:44:52Cal Fussman?

  Number two, I'm gonna have to run off to interview Kobe Bryant.

• 1:44:57Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I'd say, I'd say it's important.

• 1:44:58Cal Fussman?

  So what I'm, I would like to, if it's okay with you.

• 1:45:02Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:03Cal Fussman?

  Stop here, let's make this Tim Ferriss, the early years.

• 1:45:07Tim Ferriss?

  Yep, chapter, chapter one.

• 1:45:09Cal Fussman?

  Chapter one, and then come back and do chapter two, starting with the phenomenal success of that book.

• 1:45:16Tim Ferriss?

  May I give people a preview of where we are now, so much like, say, a movie, we can be in

• 1:45:23Cal Fussman?

  Do it, do it.

• 1:45:24Tim Ferriss?

  In media rest, and then we can flashback.

• 1:45:26Cal Fussman?

  Teach me, Tim, teach me.

• 1:45:28Tim Ferriss?

  We'll do Star Wars, episode four, and then we can do the, then we can do the prequels.

• 1:45:34Tim Ferriss?

  Well, the, I think what has helped me to do, to achieve any modicum of success in these various areas, and I've certainly had plenty of mistakes, like the audio books and so on, is asking better questions. So first and foremost, I'd like to thank you for helping me to learn how to ask better questions. So that's piece number one.

• 1:45:57Cal Fussman?

  Thank you.

• 1:45:57Tim Ferriss?

  Piece number two is that, in many ways, by reading writing by people such as yourself, I started interviewing people myself, which I was doing for the books. And so the Four Hour Work Week was the first book. The latest book is Tribe of Mentors, right? So if you look back at these people, I had the absolute spectacular luck to meet, whether it's John McPhee or Ed Shao.

• 1:46:27Cal Fussman?

  Oh, I can't wait to read this book.

• 1:46:29Tim Ferriss?

  I am always asked, what do you, what can I do if I don't have access to those people? So what I did was went out and found 130 of people who are the best at what they do, and asked them the 11 or so questions that I've refined over several hundred interviews to figure out what their secrets are. And whether that relates to financial success, investing, physical wellness, training, or otherwise, it's a compilation of profiles of people ranging from, you know, the Maria Sharapovas and

• 1:47:02Tim Ferriss?

  Kelly Slaters of the world, world-class athletes of all different types, two heroes of mine I wanted to reach out to, like Dan Gable, who is- Wrestling coach at Iowa. Exactly. So the McPhee equivalent in the world of wrestling- I got it. Is Gable. So I interviewed Gable. And so on, all the way to different types of writers, people like Steven Pinker and so on. It sounds amazing. Teasing out all of their playbooks. So for people interested in that type of cheat sheet, across every possible domain you can imagine, Tribe of Mentors is the latest, which should be out by the time people hear this. So they can find that at tribeofmentors.com and see sample chapters and the list of all the mentors and everything.

• 1:47:45Tim 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've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance.

• 1:48:26Tim Ferriss?

  And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite 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. This episode is brought to you by Five Bullet Friday, my very own email newsletter. It's become one of the most popular email newsletters in the world with millions of subscribers. And it's super, super simple. It does not clog up your inbox. Every Friday, I send out five bullet points, super short, of the coolest things I've found that week, which sometimes includes apps, books, documentaries, supplements, gadgets, new self experiments,

• 1:49:09Tim Ferriss?

  hacks, tricks, and all sorts of weird stuff. That I dig up from around the world. You guys, podcast listeners and book readers, have asked me for something short and action-packed for a very long time. Because after all, the podcasts, the books, they can be quite long. And that's why I created Five Bullet Friday. It's become one of my favorite things I do every week. It's free, it's always gonna be free, and you can learn more at tim.blog/friday. That's tim.blog/friday. I get asked a lot how I meet guests for the podcast, some of the most amazing people I've ever interacted with. And little known fact, I've met probably 25% of them because they first subscribed to Five Bullet Friday. So you'll be in good company. It's a lot of fun.

• 1:49:53Tim Ferriss?

  Five Bullet Friday is only available if you subscribe via email. I do not publish the content on the blog or anywhere else. Also, if I'm doing small in-person meetups, offering early access to startups, beta testing, special deals, or anything else that's very limited, I share it first with Five Bullet Friday subscribers. So, check it out. tim.blog/friday. If you listen to this podcast, it's very likely that you'd dig it a lot. And you can, of course, easily subscribe anytime. So, easy peasy. Again, that's tim.blog/friday. And thanks for checking it out, if the spirit moves you. This episode is brought to you by Four Sigmatic. You might remember Four Sigmatic, for their mushroom coffee, which was created by those clever Finnish founders.

• 1:50:38Tim Ferriss?

  And when I first mentioned that coffee on this podcast, the product sold out in less than a week. It lights you up like a Christmas tree, which can be really useful. However, recently I've been testing the opposite side of the spectrum, a new product. And that is their Reishi Mushroom Elixir, to help me end my day, to get to sleep. As you guys may know, longtime listeners at least, I struggled with insomnia for decades. I've largely fixed that, but still shutting off my monkey brain has never been easy, still isn't easy very often. And I found Reishi, which I've been fascinated by for a few years now, has been very, very effective and calming. Their old formula, however, Four Sigmatic's old formula, included stevia,

• 1:51:18Tim Ferriss?

  and I like to avoid sweeteners, all sweeteners, for a host of reasons. And I then just pinged them and asked, "Hey, guys, I would love to experiment with this and maybe actually suggest it, but I'd like a version without sweeteners, if you'd be open to it. If too much of a headache, don't worry." And they are always game for experimentation, and so they created a special custom version without the stevia, without sweeteners. Now it is part of my nightly routine. Their reishi elixir comes in single-serving packets, which are perfect for travel, and in fact, I'm about to leave the country right now, and I have a packet in front of me that's just gonna sit in the end of my carry-on bag. You only need hot water, and it mixes very, very easily.

• 1:52:02Tim Ferriss?

  Here's some recommended copy that they put in the read, so I'm gonna read it and then I'll give you my take. Quote, "A warning for those in the experimental mindset. Reishi is strong and bitter, in parentheses, like any great medicine. So if the bitterness is too much, I recommend trying it with honey and/or nut milk, such as almond milk," end quote. So I'm gonna say, "No, you should suck it up and you should drink the tea, because it's not that bitter, and maybe you should take the advice of old Chinese people when they're criticizing young'uns when they say, "不能吃苦," which means you're not able to eat bitterness. Bitter is, in many cases, an indication of things that help liver detoxification and so on.

• 1:52:43Tim Ferriss?

  Not saying that's the case here, but I've tested this reishi elixir on family members, on friends, everybody has liked it. It's a little bit earthy, it's not that hard. So I would just say suck it up and no, don't put in honey or nut milk or any of that shit. Just drink the goddamn tea, it's delicious, I think. If you like pu'er, that kind of stuff, that type of tea, you're gonna dig it. So just try it. Okay, back to then my read. If you'd like to naturally improve your sleep, both onset and quality, I think naturally, you might just enjoy this reishi elixir without any sweeteners. It has organic reishi extract, organic field mint extract, organic rose hips extract, organic tulsi extract. And that's it.

• 1:53:28Tim Ferriss?

  No fancy stuff, no artificial whatchamacallit, anything. So check it out. Go to foursigmatic.com/ferris and get 20% off this special batch. I don't know if they're going to be making much more of this, since it was made specifically for you guys. So do me a favor and try it out so that they continue to be open to experimenting with me to create products for you guys specifically. Check it out, foursigmatic, that's F-O-U-R-S-I-G-M-A-T-I-C.com/ferris, F-E-R-R-I-S-S, and get 20% off this special batch. And you must use the code ferris to receive your discount, F-E-R-R-I-S-S. So again, go to foursigmatic.com/ferris

• 1:54:09Tim Ferriss?

  and then use code ferris for 20% off of this rare exclusive limited run of reishi mushroom elixir for nighttime routines without any sweeteners. Enjoy.