#526: B. Jeffrey Madoff — Dealmaking, The Hidden Persuaders, Working with Ralph Lauren, and Finding the Secret to Life in the Mojave Desert

B. Jeffrey Madoff — Dealmaking, The Hidden Persuaders, Working with Ralph Lauren, and Finding the Secret to Life in the Mojave Desert | Brought to you by Public Goods http://publicgoods.com/tim high-quality everyday essentials, LinkedIn Jobs http://linkedin.com/tim recruitment platform with 750M users, and ExpressVPN http://expressvpn.com/tim virtual private network service. More on all three below. Jeffrey Madoff (@madoffproductions https://www.instagram.com/madoffproductions/) began his career in fashion, becoming one of the top 10 designers in the US before switching careers to film and video production. He has directed award-winning commercials, documentaries, and web content for clients around the world, including Ralph Lauren, Victoria’s Secret, and Tiffany. His book, which is based on the class he teaches at Parsons School of Design, is Creative Careers: Making a Living with Your Ideas https://www.amazon.com/Creative-Careers-Making-Living-Ideas/dp/0738246700/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20. He has been a featured speaker at Wharton School, Princeton University, NYU Steinhardt, Google Next, Barclays’ Rise and Verizon on the topics of creating a brand and creativity. He works with private equity firms and investment banks, such as Lazard, to create the brand story for companies that are being sold or startups looking to attract investment. Madoff is also a playwright and theater producer. His play Personality: The Lloyd Price Musical https://www.drtmnyc.com/productions/personality-the-lloyd-price-musical/, based on the life of the titular Rock & Roll Hall of Fame legend, will have its world premiere in March of 2022 at People’s Light theater in Malvern, Pennsylvania. He graduated with honors from the University of Wisconsin with degrees in philosophy and psychology. He was also on the wrestling team, which, combined with his academic studies, prepared him for a life in the film business. Please enjoy! This episode is brought to you by Public Goods http://publicgoods.com/tim! https://www.publicgoods.com/discount/TIM?redirect=/pages/tim-ferriss?utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=FERRISS&utm_medium=partnerPublic Goods is the one-stop shop for sustainable, high-quality, everyday essentials made from clean ingredients at an affordable price. Public Goods http://publicgoods.com/tim searches the globe to find healthy, eco-friendly, and innovative products and then packages them using a single, streamlined aesthetic for your home so you can get all of your premium essentials in one place and avoid buying from a bunch of mismatched, single-product brands. Multiple people on my team were already using Public Goods http://publicgoods.com/tim, and now, so am I. 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• 0:00Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:28Tim Ferriss?

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• 2:06Tim Ferriss?

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• 2:47Tim Ferriss?

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• 3:30Tim Ferriss?

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• 3:45Speaker 01

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

• 3:51Speaker 02

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 3:53Speaker 03

  Now would seem an appropriate time.

• 3:56Speaker 02

  What if I did the opposite? I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 4:09Speaker 04

  Having a heat wave, tropical heat wave.

• 4:12Tim Ferriss?

  That's right. I think we might keep that in the intro. Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of a very, very warm Tim Ferriss Show. I'll come back to that. My guest today is B. Jeffrey Madoff, M A D O F F. Jeffrey began his career in fashion, becoming one of the top 10 designers in the U.S. before switching careers to film and video production. He has directed award-winning commercials, documentaries, and web content for clients around the world, including Ralph Lauren, Victoria's Secret, and Tiffany. His book, Creative Careers, subtitle Making a Living with Your Ideas, is based on the class of the same name he teaches at Parsons School of Design. Jeff has been a featured speaker at Wharton School, Princeton University, NYU Steinhardt,

• 4:56Tim Ferriss?

  Google Next, Barclays Rise, and Verizon on the topics of creating a brand and creativity. He also works with private equity firms and investment banks such as Lazard to create the brand story for companies that are being sold or for startups looking to attract investment. He graduated with honors from the University of Wisconsin with degrees in philosophy and psychology. We'll talk about that. He was also on the wrestling team, might sound familiar, which, combined with his academic studies, prepared him for a life in the film business. You can find him online, acreativecareer.com, madoffproductions.com, and then on social and Instagram, @acreativecareer, as well as @madoffproductions. And Jeffrey, Jeff, welcome to the show. So fun to see you.

• 5:38Speaker 04

  Fun to see you, too. Thank you for having me on.

• 5:40Tim Ferriss?

  And to paint a picture, I am sweating profusely. The A.C. has broken in this home at an undisclosed location. And to hydrate, because I have nothing that is cold besides what is in my hand, I have hard kombucha, and Jeff is drinking carbonated water. So this is an unfair fight to begin with. We'll see where this all goes. And I thought we would start with a, I suppose, the beginning of a story that I cut short when we were having lunch earlier today. And it came about because of the phrase scratching your own itch or scratching my own itch. And you mentioned Ralph Lauren, which I confirmed is not Ralph Lauren, as many people will say,

• 6:25Tim Ferriss?

  but Ralph Lauren. So I thought we would just start there. And if you could tell me the story that I so rudely interrupted earlier because I wanted to keep it for the beginning of the show.

• 6:34Speaker 04

  Well, I was talking to Ralph about how he got started, what motivated him to start a business. And Ralph's muse were the movies. He loved films and he would really lose himself in the fantasy of the movie house. And he'd look at people like Cary Grant and Fred Astaire and Gary Cooper. And he wanted to dress like that. And he wanted to find suits that were cut like that and ties that were wide like that. And they didn't exist. And he started designing first with ties, then moved into the rest of menswear. And he started designing that stuff because it was stuff that he liked. And he figured, I'm not the only one that wants to dress like a movie star.

• 7:14Speaker 04

  And so I said to him, you know, you've kept your pulse on the consumer for so long. How have you done that for so many decades? I mean, that's quite a feat. And he said, which is a kind of scratch your own itch thing. He said, I know who my consumer is because I am the consumer. And so I thought that was just a really brilliant insight, not unlike when you and I spoke, when I interviewed you and you talked about your book, The Four Hour Work Week. You know, it was the same kind of thing, you know?

• 7:47Tim Ferriss?

  For sure. Yeah, being, and that was also, I mean, you, you have spent so much time in front of students and speaking that I know in some respects, you know, what you've done in the classroom at Parsons School of Design is, is in some respects scratching your own itch. And that is kind of doing what feeds and nourishes you or checks the box for an unmet need. And I had

• 8:14Tim Ferriss?

  Written this book because it was the book I couldn't find. And furthermore, I then had workshopped that, although I didn't know I was doing it at the time, by speaking to students. And I knew what students responded to, and I knew what fell flat. And it was sort of like a comic working on their one hour special. It's like you cut, you refine, you test again. And that was the reason why after 26, 29, however many rejections it was, I still kept going. People sometimes ask about how I maintained the faith. And I always point out, it wasn't faith. Like, I already knew that at least there was a verified market of one, which is ahead of a lot of folks. So let's talk about these degrees in philosophy and psychology. You've written in your book that, at the time when you graduated, the wisdom factories

• 8:59Tim Ferriss?

  weren't hiring. So what did you do after graduation?

• 9:04Speaker 04

  Well, I went to work in this boutique. And I'd actually been working there before graduation. And it was this little clothing boutique in Madison, Wisconsin, where I went to college. The wall behind the cash register is where we had the stereo system. That puts it into a timeframe of many, many years ago. And we were in the base of a rooming house. So when somebody OD'd and fell down the stairs, the arm would skip across the album. And we'd go, oh, there goes another one.

• 9:34Tim Ferriss?

  Rooming house, that's, what is a rooming house?

• 9:36Speaker 04

  A rooming house is somewhere between an apartment and a hotel. You know, you pay every week, you have a room upstairs. And let's say that the clientele aren't necessarily very upscale.

• 9:49Tim Ferriss?

  Got it.

• 9:50Speaker 04

  In the campus where we were in downtown, this rooming house was kind of notorious.

• 9:57Tim Ferriss?

  And what was sold in the boutique?

• 9:59Speaker 04

  Well, you know, we sold clothes at the, you know, the old impulse buy, as they say, where at a restaurant, it might be mints, or when you're checking out at the grocery store, it's candy bars and magazines. We had hash pipes and rolling papers.

• 10:16Speaker 04

  That was the impulse by.

• 10:17Tim Ferriss?

  Location, location, location, right?

• 10:20Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 10:20Tim Ferriss?

  Underneath the rooming house.

• 10:21Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 10:22Tim Ferriss?

  And how did that job inform your path, if it did?

• 10:27Speaker 04

  Well, you know, yes, it did, but I know how it informed it in retrospect. You know, I didn't realize that before. And that is my firm belief, here's some of the practical information. I think that everything you do, if your eyes are open, informs everything else you do. And so I didn't know anything about clothing design. And I was totally naive. I thought that when I saw fabric on the bolt, I thought that was wholesale because it hadn't been made into anything yet. So I was ignorant. Fortunately, not stupid.

• 11:05Speaker 04

  You know, and the difference is ignorant, you can learn, stupid's forever.

• 11:12Speaker 04

  So, you know, I did, I did learn and, you know, and I wanted to go back and refer to what you had mentioned in terms of your book. Because I think this is a really important part. And that is, you had at least 29 rejections. I believe it was like 34 before.

• 11:29Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it was a lot of rejections. I was also rejected for my first job. That was 30, 30 plus rejections. Quite a few.

• 11:37Speaker 04

  So, you know, so what's that component? That keeps somebody going in the face of all those rejections as opposed to giving up? You know, and I think that when I'm asked about entrepreneurship and business and that sort of thing, you know, what, what's a key ingredient? And I'm curious if you agree with this. I think it's perseverance.

• 12:03Tim Ferriss?

  You know, you mentioned ignorant, but not stupid. I think I would add to that informed perseverance. Because I think that you can smash your head against a wall and never break through. But if you have some informational advantage, meaning in my case, I had this feedback from students. I knew that the material worked in front of live audiences, including people who would land squarely in the demographic the book would be positioned for. So I do think that's a huge component. You know, if you have informed belief.

• 12:40Tim Ferriss?

  Having the commitment to persevere through the pain, I think, is a large deciding factor. And I should also just add as color for this conversation, because people most likely have no idea. We first met in 2007 or 2008, shortly after the first book had been published. You helped with the For Our Body. Many, many of the photographs from the photo shoot and photo shoots that we did related to exercises were a product of your help. We've definitely kind of been along jointly for each other's rides over the last, it's hard to believe, decade plus now. And I love this type of conversation

• 13:23Tim Ferriss?

  with a friend, because it gives me the very unnatural, asymmetrical opportunity to just pepper you with all sorts of questions that I get to choose in a fairly lopsided way, although this can certainly be a conversation. But it also gives me an excuse to do a bunch of homework on you, which would otherwise seem really creepy. So let me ask you, just as a way of looking at your earlier years, what or who are The Hidden Persuaders? My understanding, this is a book that had some effect on you. The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard. Is that a fair statement?

• 14:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, it is. Interesting you bring that up, going back through the memory bank here. Because I think I was in seventh or eighth grade. And I read this book. And The Hidden Persuaders, what it related to is how products are placed, and what creates desire. And this was long before behavioral economics was applied to consumerism and that sort of thing. So to give a simple example, the colorful cereal boxes would be on the lower shelves, so that the kids would pull it off the shelf. And basically nagged their parent, usually their mother at that point, into buying it.

• 14:46Speaker 04

  And so there were all these things. I'd never thought about strategic placement of products or anything like that. And then I started realizing, wow, there's a whole science to this in terms of trying to elicit preferences, trying to place things in the right eye line. And the fact that instead of being at five feet, which might be eye level for the mother, it's down at two feet where it's eye level to the kid. And so the kid will take it off the shelf. So Packard's book was like, wow, I had never thought of that before. And it was really cool.

• 15:18Tim Ferriss?

  How did you end up going from fashion as a designer, where you found quite a bit of success, to film and video production? How and why?

• 15:32Speaker 04

  Is this a mini-series?

• 15:33Tim Ferriss?

  This is the beginning of our mini-series. Episode zero.

• 15:39Speaker 04

  I wanted to move to New York. And my financial backer was a very good guy, but he made it clear from the beginning that he was backing my company because we banked at his bank and that the employees, which, you know, I was 22 and I had like 110, 120 employees.

• 15:58Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 15:59Speaker 04

  I provided jobs for Wisconsinites and we banked at his bank. And when I made the decision that I wanted to move to New York, he said, you know, I'm not going to continue to back you if you do. You know why I invested. And so I had to make a really big decision at that point in my life, which is, you know, I think 24, and do I, am I a failure if I close the business? You know, what does this mean to me and who I am? You know, I was the type that went out there and competed and did things. And now I would be closing down a business that I had started. Is that failure? What is that? And I decided,

• 16:43Speaker 04

  and I think part of this is an influence of my dad, which is I learned that Money comes and goes. Time only goes. And

• 16:55Tim Ferriss?

  That's a great way to put it.

• 16:56Speaker 04

  And, you know, I mean, I like the, the way that words relate, you know, like you can spend money, you spend time, you waste money, you waste time investing in your future. That's a really weird concept when you think about what does that mean? And so I decided

• 17:15Tim Ferriss?

  If anyone heard that, that's Molly trying to eat flies that are deftly avoiding her maw. Please continue.

• 17:23Speaker 04

  You know, I was so tempted to snap at that one myself, but I figured I didn't want to interrupt the sound.

• 17:28Tim Ferriss?

  Don't want to throw your neck off.

• 17:29Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 17:32Speaker 04

  So, you know, I made the decision to close down the business and it was really based on that kind of a conversation of realizing I could never replace the time, but I could replace the money.

• 17:43Tim Ferriss?

  Quick interruption. Was the desire to go to New York to play in the big leagues of design?

• 17:50Speaker 04

  Well, I was already playing in the big leagues and what made me unique was I was doing that from Wisconsin.

• 17:56Tim Ferriss?

  So why go to New York and enter the Shark Tank?

• 18:00Speaker 04

  Why go to New York? Because I discovered I'm a stimulus junkie. I love the energy of New York, the activity, you know, if you're bored in New York, it's on you.

• 18:12Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 18:13Speaker 04

  There is so much going on all the time and I can go hear a jazz concert, see a play, eat at a great restaurant and walk to all those places. I love it. That's why, you know, flying saucers land in Wyoming and New York, you can't find a place to park. So I was seduced by the energy of New York and wanted to be there. And one of the people I did, uh, bought fabrics from, he said to me, do you know anything about the movie business? And I said, not really. I mean, I've read some books. I love film, but not really. And he said, well, my son is your age and you're a bright kid. You have a good head on your shoulders. Would you mind meeting him?

• 18:57Speaker 04

  Cause he's getting involved with some people and he's not going to listen to me, but maybe he'll listen to you. Would you mind meeting with him? He's your age. No, I don't mind at all. Happy to. Well, the people he was involved with was Dennis Hopper. William Burroughs and Terry Southern. And Tommy, the son, had bought the rights to Junkie, which was one of William Burroughs's novels. And Dennis Hopper was going to direct it and star in it. And so this was interesting, you know? I mean, you've got Dennis Hopper coming off of Easy Rider and then Apocalypse Now.

• 19:39Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you gotta, I think for people who are listening, who maybe don't recognize the name or the gravitas at that time associated with that name, I mean, that's a big deal.

• 19:48Speaker 04

  It was a very big deal. And he had just come off of filming Apocalypse Now with Marlon Brando, another iconic film name. And Dennis would get the checks from Zoetrope, which was Francis Ford Coppola's film studio, endorse it on the back, then give it to Burroughs's assistant, and he would go out and score drugs and buy alcohol.

• 20:10Tim Ferriss?

  The shortest line between two points.

• 20:15Speaker 04

  That is correct. That's correct. So I saw, wow, Zoetrope, that's Coppola's studio. Oh, there it goes. And when I met Dennis, we really hit it off. And it was kind of a weird way that we hit it off. I've never shared this before, but it's funny. I think you'll get a kick out of it. I said, you know why I'm familiar with you, Dennis? He goes, yeah, man, I know, vroom, vroom, vroom, Easy Rider. And I said, actually, it's not Easy Rider. He said, what? I said, no, I remember all those Warner Brothers TV westerns, and everybody would be wearing Hollywood wardrobe of what a cowboy looked like, but you actually had the 10 gallon hat and actual authentic cowboy clothes. He goes, man, you're blowing my mind, man.

• 21:00Speaker 04

  Nobody ever said that, man. You know what I would do, man? I would take my own money and I would go to Arizona, I'd go to Texas, and I would buy authentic, actual western clothes, man. Nobody's ever said that to me. That was my money, man. So he loved me after that, that I know. That was where the fashion background kicked in.

• 21:18Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, no kidding.

• 21:19Speaker 04

  So it was really funny. So I was granted a part in this movie.

• 21:23Tim Ferriss?

  Acting role.

• 21:25Speaker 04

  An acting role. He wanted me to act in it, which I thought would be a blast. Although it became clear that this was never gonna get made. Because these guys were staying at the Chelsea Hotel, which was another awesome destination in New York. And they would get up at about five in the afternoon, have something to eat, then start drinking, doing blow. And by about two in the morning, it had devolved into Dennis and Terry Southern arguing, who actually wrote Easy Rider, they'd have the same argument. It was like, it was like Groundhog Day. The loop would start. Yes, yes, it was like an Escher drawing, you know?

• 22:09Speaker 04

  And so they would argue with each other, really animated arguments. You thought they were gonna get into a fight, which they never did. It's like fear and loathing in New York City. And the funny thing was, is that Burroughs would sit there and he would click off his hearing aid. Because he didn't wanna listen to any of this stuff. So he'd click off his hearing aid, they'd argue, and then they'd fall asleep. And then I'd get there the next day at around five, see the mirror with all the finger scrapings on it from the blow. And I said to Tommy, "They're gonna squeeze you out of this, and this movie's never gonna get made." "What do you mean? It's my film." And I said, "These guys can't get it together to go have dinner."

• 22:54Speaker 04

  You know? You think that they're actually gonna get a movie made? Not gonna happen. Yeah. Sure enough, about two weeks later, they offered him money to buy his part out. So you were Nostradamus. I was Nostradamus. Or just somebody who realized, "These guys can't get out of their own way, it's not happening." So they offered him four times as much money as they paid for it. And I said, "Take it. How long have you held the rights?" He said, "Four months." "So you've quadrupled your money in four months, and this film's never gonna get made? Take the money and run." So the reason, Tim, that you've never seen me on the big screen, is because the film never got made.

• 23:38Speaker 04

  But at least he got his money out of it.

• 23:40Tim Ferriss?

  And how did you go from that into being involved in production?

• 23:46Speaker 04

  God, it's so convoluted how things happen, but there was a lawyer who was representing William Burroughs, and he thought I was an interesting guy. We were around the same age. He was young, and he wanted to introduce me to some people. And what I had seen that was really attractive to me is the promise of what it could be to make a film and tell a story like that. That was really exciting to me. So I met these people that were starting a company, a production company, and they asked me to join them. And I did, and taught myself how to shoot, how to edit, how to light, how to do all that stuff.

• 24:24Tim Ferriss?

  Two questions. Why did the lawyer do that? Presumably, he's got many things he could spend his time on. So why do you think he offered to make introductions? And then number two, without any previous production experience, why did that production company want to bring you on?

• 24:42Speaker 04

  They wanted to specialize in fashion. And so my knowledge of fashion had value to them. And when we first started watching some of the videos they had done together, I was able to distinguish between, like, when I saw work I really liked, said, who's that cinematographer? And then we'd watch for another hour, and then something come up and said, that's the same cinematographer, isn't it? They said, yeah, how did you know? I could recognize the style and recognize, you know, how it was done. And so they were interested in my fashion knowledge. That was one thing. And I kind of had, for whatever reason, an innate, and I can tell you the reason, actually, an innate understanding

• 25:23Speaker 04

  of the medium. So earlier, I mentioned, I think everything you do informs everything else you do. Well, when I was designing clothes, it would start with a sketch. I'd have to cost out what were the materials, what was the labor, how long would it take to get made? Could I ship it by a deadline, collect the money for it, and start the cycle over again? Well, making a film, you start off with storyboards, you know, a concept. You figure out the costs of the labor involved, the cost of the materials and rentals involved, and can you complete it by this time and deliver on deadline?

• 25:58Tim Ferriss?

  I would imagine that there's the process similarity, but that also...

• 26:03Tim Ferriss?

  Whether it's by nature or nurture, I don't know, but your ability to look at fashion and the components of fashion visually in high definition had to also be reflected in your ability to spot the same cinematographers, right? A certain visual acuity, I would imagine, also helped.

• 26:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, that helped and that was certainly developed as I was doing the fashion work. That's a part of what I do is, you know, dealing in those visuals. So yeah, you're right. And I think that, you know, jargon is what separates a lot of fields as opposed to if you look at just the protocol and the practice, most businesses are the same. In those very broad strokes, they're very much the same.

• 26:52Tim Ferriss?

  The vernacular, the terminology is different.

• 26:54Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 26:55Tim Ferriss?

  Different dialects of the same language.

• 26:56Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 26:57Tim Ferriss?

  And the lawyer, why did he help you?

• 26:59Speaker 04

  So the lawyer helped because he was more, more than a lawyer, he was a dealmaker.

• 27:07Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, that's a great point.

• 27:08Speaker 04

  And so he was really interested in bringing me into this mix to show them he knew people. And that's really why he brought me in. He said, you know, this guy's got the fashion knowledge you need. He's working on this film. He has a sense of what production is. You guys ought to meet. And so that was why, because that was part of his selling point was that he knew people.

• 27:32Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Which I should point out is, I think, one of the things that separates in some cases, really good lawyers from great lawyers is that they are dealmakers and they're very creative about getting deals done. And they recognize that by getting deals done, they ultimately have the most renewable resource of repeat clientele they could ever want. But there are very technically legally adroit lawyers who are perhaps more interested in billable hours and the kind of micro level tactics, but they're not dealmakers at heart. And they're very different animals, really different. So I'm glad you mentioned that.

• 28:17Tim Ferriss?

  I'm going to grab another hard kombucha and be right back. I'm going to ask you about success and definitions thereof with your students.

• 28:26Speaker 04

  Well, I just want to mention one, make a comment about your lawyer thing. And that is, In that definition of good lawyers who can recognize a potential deal and do something, they're also kind of like, if they were a doctor, they would infect you so they could treat you. Because they create more work for themselves by putting those deals together.

• 28:47Tim Ferriss?

  I mean, I guess there are sort of, not to use Dungeons and Dragons parlance, but they're like constitutionally, there are sort of, there are the light arts for doing that, and then there are the dark arts. And they're different. They're very different. So let's talk about students. At the beginning of every semester at Parsons, you ask your students to define success, or at least you've done that many times. Why do you do that? And you can answer this in whatever order you'd like. And what have been some of the insights or answers that stick out? Or what are you looking for? Let's just explore why you do that. Because you mentioned when you had to, or chose to lay off, whatever it was, 110, 120 people in Wisconsin, you were asking yourself, is this failure?

• 29:32Tim Ferriss?

  Does this mean I'm a failure? Like, what does this mean? Right? And we're meaning-making machines as humans. So you asked students to define success. Why?

• 29:43Speaker 04

  I think it's really important to question some fundamentals that maybe you never asked yourself. So what does success look like? I think is a really important question. And it doesn't mean, by the way, that your definition can't change. I mean, my personal definition has changed. But I think it's always important to sort of have your own compass going on and knowing what it is you're after, what it is that you're doing. And so some will say, well, you know, having enough money, and oftentimes money is attached to this, having enough money so that I don't have to worry about anything. And I said, so, having enough money so you're not worried about anything, can you be making

• 30:26Speaker 04

  that much money, however, also hate doing what you're doing every day you're doing it, would you still consider yourself successful? And so that starts a dialogue. So I use that as kind of a kindling in the hopes of igniting a dialogue about thinking about what does success really mean? And one of the things that I think is overlooked in so many circumstances is context and looking at that in context and looking about, you know, what success is. I mean, the nature of success to me changed when I got married, when I had kids, and then I thought of a separate definition of success when my business was going really well. And that was, I'd

• 31:09Speaker 04

  consider myself successful when I could say no without any negative financial consequences. So the freedom to say no was a big part of success for me. But now I'm at a different stage of life, and I would say that my definition of success has evolved for me into engagement. I want to be engaged in what I'm doing. I want to be excited about doing it. I want to look forward to it. And I don't care how much money I be getting. If I'm not engaged, if I'm not involved, I don't want to spend my time doing that.

• 31:46Tim Ferriss?

  What does engagement feel like? Like, how would you know you're engaged?

• 31:51Speaker 04

  You know you're engaged when you are unaware of the time that passes, that you are so in the zone of the work that you're doing, that time doesn't mean anything and you love doing it, and that you look forward to the next time you get to do it. And that can also mean the group of people that you're collaborating with and working with, that you just enjoy that process. And to me, that's what's really important is, you know, knowing and understanding why I want to do this, and that it brings me fulfillment. And I think that's really important.

• 32:34Tim Ferriss?

  How do you choose who you interview for your class? I mean, you've interviewed some enormous names, Taylor Swift being just one example. How do you choose them? What are the criteria? Or what are you looking for? What are you hoping to share with your students? How do you go about guest selection?

• 32:52Speaker 04

  Now, this is interesting because this is also scratching your own itch.

• 32:55Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. Tell me more.

• 32:58Speaker 04

  You know, and by the way, Taylor Swift was, is part of a Victoria's Secret job. She didn't do my class, just to be clear.

• 33:04Tim Ferriss?

  Got it. Nonetheless.

• 33:06Speaker 04

  You know, I think that I think her legal department contacted me.

• 33:10Tim Ferriss?

  Fair enough.

• 33:12Speaker 04

  She never did that. He's misrepresenting. So my criteria for a guest is, is have they demonstrated in some way, whether it's a lecture I heard, their book that I read, an article, whatever, that they've got knowledge that I think is interesting, compelling, can bring about a change in the way people look at things, make people aware of things. So it's really, you know, it's scratching my own itch. I find what they're doing really interesting and I love the idea of being able to talk to somebody and explore what they do and learn from what they do. Teaching is a fabulous way to learn.

• 33:55Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it really is.

• 33:56Speaker 04

  And I love learning.

• 33:57Tim Ferriss?

  So, side note for people, I don't know if this footage can even be found anywhere, but thanks to your introductions, you may remember, if people could find this, it would be hilarious. There was a very unusual promo that I did for The Four Hour Chef during one of the Victoria's Secret annual events. And I ended up cooking some dish and I think it was Alessandra Ambrosio or Ambrosia and then Adriana Lima next to me. And I have never felt like such a hobbit slash bridge troll. I mean, the visual was so hilarious because A, they're super tall and obviously stunningly

• 34:42Tim Ferriss?

  gorgeous, and they're in heels, and there I am, like three feet shorter with some kind of Willy Wonka jacket on, trying to make god knows what. It's quite hilarious. So if people can find that, I highly recommend taking a look at it. Finding people who are interesting. I want to shift to someone who may or may not be interesting and we're going to move from New York City. To the Mojave Desert. Can you please tell the story of the life coach who lived deep in the Mojave Desert?

• 35:13Speaker 04

  I'm laughing because I, I, I love that you picked that.

• 35:19Tim Ferriss?

  And I don't know the story. I do, I do not know the story. I'm just using the prompt because I want to hear you tell the story.

• 35:27Speaker 04

  I may have to reread my book.

• 35:31Speaker 04

  So there was this person that I heard about who supposedly had insights into what makes life meaningful and eternal.

• 35:45Tim Ferriss?

  And how old were you at the time?

• 35:47Speaker 04

  And I was in my late twenties, early thirties.

• 35:52Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 35:53Speaker 04

  You know, the seeking ages. And I heard about this person who lived deep in the Mojave Desert and that for a fee, for a fee, you know, he would share that knowledge. And so it was really hard to get there, by the way. It's not like there were direct flights to this place or anything. And so I make this journey, which involved plane flight, then a train, then walking and, you know, a car. And it was like quite a thing to get to this

• 36:32Speaker 04

  isolated place. And I go in and there's this kind of very beatific man, smooth skin, you know, like porcelain. And he's sitting, you know, cross legged on the floor and he motions me in and asks me to sit down. I sit down and he said, you were a seeker. I'm thinking, well, yeah, I made it here. Seeking something that's not under the umbrella of big insight. And he said, you see this fire?

• 37:13Speaker 04

  Yes. He said, first, I want you to close your eyes.

• 37:18Speaker 04

  And I closed my eyes and he said, you know, I'm closing my eyes. And he said, you've opened your eyes. And I'm thinking, well, how'd you see that? Your eyes are shut. I was testing you. What's going on here? So he said, close your eyes and I want you to allow your mind to go blank. And I want you to think of nothingness. So I won't tell you where my mind went, but it didn't go to nothingness. And he said, now, I want you to open your hand and place it in front of you. And I opened my hand to place it in front of me. And he said, your right hand. And I'm thinking, again, how did he know? His eyes are closed.

• 37:59Speaker 04

  And he said, put your palm towards the ground and move it in front of you. And that's where the fire was. So I move in front. He says, now, I want you to slowly put your hand into the fire. Okay. And I opened my eyes and said, are you fucking crazy? I'm not putting my hand in the fire. And he said, you don't know how many people I have to stop once they start putting their hand down and I reach out. We're in the middle of fucking nowhere. If they burn their hands seriously, I'm in the shit and they're feeling miserable and we're probably 120 miles from any kind of hospital. So thank goodness you had the good sense not to do that. You want a beer?

• 38:39Speaker 04

  And so he hands me a beer and he's got this diamond encrusted can opener. And he said, yeah, one of my followers sent me this. You believe this? They spent their money on a fucking diamond beer can opener? So he takes a big sip of it and I do. And he said to me, you came here for the secret, right? And I said, yes. He said, okay, here's the big secret. I said, what's that? And he said, there is no secret. If you had put half of the effort into your own career and what you're doing, into what it took you to get here, you would have been far ahead of the game. Everybody comes here thinking that I've got some secret

• 39:21Speaker 04

  and they're so invested in all the, what it takes to get here, that I feel like I have to do something. And I said, what about the eternal life thing? And he said, listen, you live in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of people coming up wanting a piece of you and all the answers from you. It feels like an eternity. And I said, why do you do it? And he goes, that's a living.

• 39:46Tim Ferriss?

  That's amazing. Okay, a few follow ups. How did you hear about this guy? And what impact did that have, if any, on you?

• 39:58Speaker 04

  Okay, here's the big reveal, Tim.

• 40:00Tim Ferriss?

  You are the man sitting cross legged.

• 40:04Speaker 04

  And simultaneously across from myself.

• 40:08Speaker 04

  The big reveal is that I wanted to end my book with a parable. And so I made that story up.

• 40:16Tim Ferriss?

  I like it.

• 40:17Speaker 04

  And I can't tell you how many people said, well, who is this guy? And all of that kind of thing. And what inspired me to write it is that there are so many self acclaimed people with insight. And so many people who were clamoring to share in that insight. So it'll somehow unlock the secrets of riches and long life to them. And I thought, you know what it really takes, and I don't know any exceptions to this rule, unless you're born into money, is it takes a fuckload of work. That's what it takes to do what I've done, what you've done, what everybody I know who has accomplished something has done.

• 41:00Speaker 04

  So there are no secrets. What there is, is the hard work, the perseverance, and you know, that keeps you going after what you're going for. There aren't any secrets to unlock. You gotta do the work.

• 41:18Tim Ferriss?

  Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. It's summer of 2021 and with all the rapid changes we've seen since last year, small business owners are busier than ever. Time spent searching for and interviewing the wrong candidates for job opening could be time better spent growing a business, growing your business. That's why LinkedIn Jobs has made it even easier and faster to reach candidates worth interviewing. Create a job post for free in minutes on LinkedIn Jobs to reach your network and well beyond to the world's largest professional network of more than 750 million people. That's a lot of people. People focus on candidates with the skills and experience you need. Use screening questions to get your role in front of only the most qualified people.

• 42:02Tim Ferriss?

  Then use the simple tools on LinkedIn jobs to quickly filter and prioritize who you'd like to interview and then hire. LinkedIn jobs helps you find the candidates worth interviewing faster. Did you know that every week nearly 40 million job seekers visit LinkedIn? Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash Tim. That's LinkedIn.com slash Tim to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.

• 42:29Tim Ferriss?

  I want to talk about a particular type of work.

• 42:33Tim Ferriss?

  Quote, I was hired to sell shoes, not be a zookeeper. Please elaborate.

• 42:41Speaker 04

  Those don't go together for you?

• 42:45Speaker 04

  So when I was a kid, I was about 16. A new shopping mall was opening in Akron, Ohio, which is where I grew up. I'm going to piggyback the story, piggyback the monkey story. Feel like Dr. Dolittle right now.

• 43:06Speaker 04

  There was a manager there and it was a chain of stores. They had run an ad for somebody who was at least 23, had shoe selling experience and was married. I was 16, unmarried and never sold a shoe.

• 43:21Tim Ferriss?

  So why let that stop you?

• 43:23Speaker 04

  Well, that was my thought.

• 43:24Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 43:24Speaker 04

  You know, truly. And so I met with this guy and you know, I had done door to door sales. I'd done all kinds of selling.

• 43:31Tim Ferriss?

  What did you sell door to door? Not to digress.

• 43:34Speaker 04

  I was a fuller brush man, which maybe many of your listeners don't even know what that is.

• 43:38Tim Ferriss?

  I don't know what that is. Paintbrushes?

• 43:41Speaker 04

  No, fuller brush was like kitchen stuff and personal grooming stuff. And went around with a sample case. You'd start off so they wouldn't slam the door in your face. You'd say, I've got a free gift for you. That was a big thing back then.

• 43:57Tim Ferriss?

  It's like being a missionary.

• 43:58Speaker 04

  Yes. And you get, you get a choice of one of three gifts that we've got this week. And then you try to sell them, you know, shampoo or dish soap or whatever. One time a woman opens the door wearing a robe and her hair is wrapped up in a towel. And I said, in our special this weekend, it may interest you, since you just got out of the shower is our hairspray. And she said, well, you know, I actually could use the hairspray now. Can I, do you have a sample? And I said, yeah. And so I pick up the aerosol, everything was aerosol back then. Yeah. And I handed the aerosol can and she starts to, she first brushes her hair, then she sprays this. And as she's spraying, and I see, oh, man. I handed her the oven spray.

• 44:46Speaker 04

  So I take the can back before she like looks at it and puts it back in the thing. She's going, this was very firm. And I'm thinking, yeah, and food won't stick to your head either. She actually bought it. She was probably, probably disappointed with the actual hairspray. But, you know, I had 30 seconds. Yeah. To engage a potential customer before they close the door in my face. Yeah. I mean, nowadays I don't even think you get anybody to open the door. But back then you could. So it was actually amazingly good experience for selling. And that also prepped me for retail when somebody walks into the store. How do I engage them and get them selling?

• 45:29Speaker 04

  So I had that conversation with Bob, who was the manager. And he said, look, I can't hire you. You know, you're supposed to be 23, you're 16, you're supposed to be married, you're single. I just love that the number is 23. Yeah. And he went on to found 23 in me. I'll just kidding, just kidding. So anyhow, I said, I can't hire you. I'm really sorry. I like you, but I can't hire you. And I said, well, I sold you and you've got to, it's got to be harder to sell you than a pair of shoes. And he laughed, said, I'm sorry. So as I'm walking out, he comes after me and he said, all right, fuck it. You're hired. And he hired me.

• 46:14Speaker 04

  I said, why are you hiring me? And he said, well, you're right. You sold me. I'm going to take a chance on you. Well, that was really good management because although he had policies, when he saw what he thought would be a good opportunity, and I, in fact, I was a very successful salesman for them. He was willing to take a chance, take a risk and do something and sort of make the perimeter for the job qualifications a bit more elastic to fit me in. Well, in the back of the store, there was a monkey.

• 46:47Tim Ferriss?

  In the back of the shoe store.

• 46:48Speaker 04

  In the back of the shoe store, uh, there was a monkey and.

• 46:54Tim Ferriss?

  Attention, do I have your attention? Interested? Interest? Are you interested? Yes. Decision? Have you made your decision for Christ? And anyway, for those who don't get the reference, you can look it up.

• 47:08Speaker 04

  And, uh, as you had said earlier, this is an adult show.

• 47:12Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 47:13Speaker 04

  So the idea behind having a monkey in the back of the store, which by the way, would never, ever happen these days.

• 47:21Tim Ferriss?

  Not up to code.

• 47:22Speaker 04

  No, no. Uh, so the, you know, since it was a family shoe store, the mother would come in and she'd say to the kids, go back and look at the monkey.

• 47:32Tim Ferriss?

  What could go wrong?

• 47:33Speaker 04

  By the way, a phrase that I had never heard before or since, go back and look at the monkey.

• 47:41Speaker 04

  And so there was a, when we first opened, there was a name the monkey contest.

• 47:46Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 47:47Speaker 04

  And the monkey's name, the winning name was Solo. Now, at that time, The Man from Uncle was the most popular TV show and the hero's name was Napoleon Solo. That's why everybody thinks we chose the name Solo. The truth, revealed here for the first time, is we named it Solo because all the monkey did was masturbate.

• 48:15Speaker 04

  And it's so, of course, what would you do sitting here?

• 48:18Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, put our monkey in a cage. That's what I would do.

• 48:21Speaker 04

  And so the mother would then look back to look at her kids and she'd see the monkey furiously masturbating. She'd say, get away from the cage. Get away from the cage.

• 48:33Speaker 04

  So somebody had to clean the cage. Finally getting to your point. And the assistant manager, you know.

• 48:40Tim Ferriss?

  The masturbating makes that task so much worse. I didn't, I didn't know that detail.

• 48:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, I didn't want to reveal everything over lunch.

• 48:50Speaker 04

  And so the manager, Jimmy, says to me, the assistant manager, I want you to clean out the monkey cage. And there were five other employees and I was by far the youngest. And I said, do you ever clean out the monkey cage?

• 49:07Speaker 04

  And he said, I told you to clean out the monkey cage. And I said, and by this time, the other employees gathered around because he was very animated when he said that. And I said to him, I'll take my turn if everybody else takes their turn. Otherwise, I was hired to sell shoes, not be a zookeeper.

• 49:28Tim Ferriss?

  He must have loved that.

• 49:29Speaker 04

  He said, I told you to clean out that cage. And then Bob, the manager who hired me, had heard this and walks over. And he says, Jimmy, why don't you show them how to clean the cage properly? And then you'll take your turn, Jeff will take his, and then everybody else will take theirs. Well, I was okay with that because then everybody was treated equally and fairly. And I wasn't treated differently because I was a kid. And I was often the top selling salesperson. So again, I learned something about management from that, which is first of all, hear people, listen and hear people. Don't just assume because the assistant manager said, I'm not doing something.

• 50:12Speaker 04

  There maybe there's a reason, maybe there's something to learn from that. Maybe there's something to make the situation better for the employees or whatever. And again, he demonstrated this very common sense, good judgment. And that stayed with me to this point, traumatized by the masturbating monkey, but learning, learning from his management prowess, which I thought was quite good.

• 50:37Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, my God, masturbating monkeys. Glenn Gary Glenn Ross, Alec Baldwin's performance is my reference from earlier for people who've missed it.

• 50:44Speaker 04

  Good reference, by the way.

• 50:45Tim Ferriss?

  Thank you. Thank you. And the last is action. A I D A flipped over on the chalkboard. I think he was nominated for an Oscar for that, like six minute performance, which is just incredible.

• 50:58Speaker 04

  David Mamet wrote it.

• 51:00Tim Ferriss?

  Such an incredible writer. I mean, just stunning, stunning writer. This is a complete non sequitur, but I have to ask, and I know we're jumping around, but that's the nature of our conversation.

• 51:10Speaker 04

  As did the monkey, by the way.

• 51:12Tim Ferriss?

  As did the monkey. So from monkey masturbation to 2009. So you are Madoff, as you reminded me very kindly before we started, because I was asking you about Lauren versus Loren. Now, there is a Madoff who became quite famous in the wider world.

• 51:34Tim Ferriss?

  So I don't know if this is accurate. Were you actually quoted in the New York Times as saying, I got a package at my office, which I returned to the post office because it was addressed to Bernard Madoff with no return address? Is that you being quoted or is that somebody else?

• 51:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, it is.

• 51:47Tim Ferriss?

  So what was that? What was, did that year turn into a massive headache for you? Or was it really just a comical distraction for a short period of time?

• 51:59Speaker 04

  It's interesting. It was a few things. So first of all, my first initial, although I go by my middle name, Jeffrey, my first initial is B.

• 52:06Tim Ferriss?

  B, right.

• 52:07Speaker 04

  For Ben. And

• 52:09Tim Ferriss?

  Not Benjamin.

• 52:10Speaker 04

  Not Benjamin and not big. Well, let me say that. Let me phrase that differently. But anyhow, yes, it's Ben. And I would get calls all the time, my office would get calls because it was Madoff Productions. The mnemonic, so you can keep it clear in your own mind, is he made off with the money. I'm Madoff. So we got this package and the package was addressed like a kidnap note. You know, there were letters cut out of a magazine or magazines.

• 52:46Tim Ferriss?

  That sounds promising.

• 52:47Speaker 04

  Yeah. And I thought, eh, doubt if this is anything good, you know? But I didn't know it was even potentially dangerous.

• 52:56Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, it could be a bomb, for sure.

• 52:57Speaker 04

  And I had gotten so many calls at all hours of the day and night. Four in the morning, I would get calls.

• 53:05Tim Ferriss?

  From people who had lost their money to Madoff?

• 53:08Speaker 04

  Yes. And I, you know, I had real compassion for these people because in good faith, these people invested and they had lost their money. And so I got some really horrible calls, some people who were crying and begging. And I said, it's not me. And Bernard has been sentenced. Do you think that you're going to find a number in the phone book? There were still phone books then. I'm not him. And, you know, I got a call at five in the morning from Fox and Friends.

• 53:45Speaker 04

  It rang, I pick up the phone and they say, you know, I forget the person's name from Fox and Friends, we'd love to have you on today. You know Bernard Madoff is being sentenced and we'd love to have you on. I said, well, first of all, let me be clear. At five in the morning, you are not my friend. And no, I have no interest on being on your show. And I said, well, we know it's early, but we wanted to get to you today. And I said, you think that I want your audience to see me on the screen, then you talk about Madoff or Madoff being sentenced with my face on there and they're going to think it's me. I want absolutely no part of this. Nothing but upside.

• 54:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's right. That's right. Exactly. Sounds like a wonderful opportunity, you know. And could you put a target on me too? And, you know, Do you have any anthrax up in the barrow? Well, and I was aggressively pursued for the David Letterman show. They wanted me to- Just because you had a name that was spelled the same way? Yeah. So they wanted to do top 10 reasons for not having the last name.

• 54:57Speaker 04

  And so they called me a few times and it happened, my studio was less than a block away from Letterman's studio. And so his producers invited me over, trying to talk me into it. And I said, look, I understand that you guys have to entertain your audience every night, five nights a week. And I'm not interested in making fun or making light of the pain that so many people have suffered, nor am I interested in being the butt of jokes because my last name is spelled the same way. He said, well, do you know how big our audience is? Do you know how huge an ass you could appear to our- To so many people. Our national audience.

• 55:36Speaker 04

  Yes. Yeah. I said, I'm aware. You know, no. And, you know, but what ended up happening, so there was, there was a period of time, and obviously to this day, I'm still asked about it, when my mom died, and this was in 2010, I'm in Akron with my wife, we're at the funeral home, and the funeral director is looking at the certificate and he says to me, I couldn't help but to notice the last name.

• 56:08Speaker 04

  I said, what, you usually don't check when you're gonna bury somebody? And he said, well, I do see the last name. May I ask, are you related? And I said, yes, it's my mother.

• 56:21Speaker 04

  So that ended that discussion. But what I did, though, was I wrote an article. I get a call back from the Daily Beast, and I hadn't submitted it. I sent it out to a bunch of friends, and somebody must have submitted it. It was called, I'm Not That Mad Off. And

• 56:38Tim Ferriss?

  Or I'm Not That Made Of.

• 56:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, right. Correct. And, uh, yeah, I've never gone into this. This is kind of bringing back memories, not all of them good. And so the Daily Beast said, this is what, we love your article. I said, thank you. We'd like to publish it. Thank you, but we want you to make one change. And I said, and what's that? Well, you have a line in there. It's very funny. It's very clever, but you have this line in there that we'd like you to take out. And I said, and what's that? And they said, you say that wealthy people often cloak themselves in religious and philanthropic causes to inoculate themselves against criticism.

• 57:18Speaker 04

  And I said, yeah. So we'd like you to take that out. I said, no.

• 57:24Speaker 04

  And they said, well, I mean, we'd love to run it, but we would like to take that out. And I said, how much are you paying me for this? Zero, but I wouldn't take it out anyhow. And I said, no, that's integral to the piece.

• 57:35Tim Ferriss?

  Why did they want you to take that out? That's as far as I'm concerned, it's a statement of fact. It is. I mean, you don't have to look very far to get a lot of confirming evidence. Why did, did they give you a reason?

• 57:47Speaker 04

  No, other than, you know, they thought that it was very clever and good, but they didn't like that part because it got serious. So I said, no. The next day I got a call from the Huffington Post. Love your article. I said, thank you. We'd love to run it. I said, as is? They said, oh, we wouldn't change it. Absolutely. And then that led to me writing for them. So I did around 50 some articles because I wanted to get down the discipline of writing regularly. So they didn't impose that on me, but I did an article a week for them for a little better than a year. And so it actually ended up being something good.

• 58:22Tim Ferriss?

  So I don't know if this is gonna be a natural segue or not.

• 58:26Speaker 04

  Like all of our others, monkey masturbating.

• 58:28Tim Ferriss?

  Like, yeah, all of my monkey masturbating to Glenn Ross segues. Ah, I'm a natural, folks.

• 58:37Tim Ferriss?

  Just, just goes to show how far you can get with perseverance and a lot of ignorance.

• 58:41Speaker 04

  But that's how, you know, since we've known each other, the conversations are like pinball.

• 58:45Tim Ferriss?

  They're always like this. They're always like this. Yeah. Pinball meets racquetball meets LSD. Uh, Lloyd Price. Who is Lloyd Price?

• 58:55Speaker 04

  Well, Lloyd Price is a dear friend who died on May 4th. And Lloyd Price is, and I hate this term because it's beaten to death, but it's true in his case, an icon. One of the founding fathers of rock and roll. He's in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And his first song, Laody Miss Clody, back in 1952, broke down the wall that was called Race Records, where you could only buy records by black artists in black record stores. And Laody Miss Clody sold, and was the first record to sell this much, over a million copies. No record by a young person had ever sold anywhere near that.

• 59:35Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, that's crazy. I mean, it's a crazy record.

• 59:37Speaker 04

  And by the way, at that time, which would have been my grandparents' generation, kids didn't buy records. The only kid records were Shirley Temple. You know, kids did not buy records. It wasn't a market. So there were a bunch of independent labels around the country that sold blues, gospel and jazz. And this was the breakthrough album. So there are many rock and roll and musical scholars that consider it the cornerstone song of rock and roll. And it was covered by Elvis, by the Beatles, by Bruce Springsteen, on and on and on. And I met Lloyd. We really hit it off and I was hired.

• 1:00:15Tim Ferriss?

  When was that?

• 1:00:15Speaker 04

  I met him in like 2012 or 13, something like that. And I was asked to do a documentary about him because they wanted to start getting his story out there in hopes of doing something. And so I researched him and I met him first, really liked him, and then researched him and did this documentary. And I was so taken by his story because it takes place at the crossroads of the youth movement, the birth of rock and roll, and the civil rights movement. And I felt like this is a story that needed to be told. Most people don't know Lloyd's

• 1:00:55Speaker 04

  story and just how influential he was. And in breaking down that wall that was called Race Records, "Nobody's Prejudice Against Green."

• 1:01:04Tim Ferriss?

  That's very true.

• 1:01:08Speaker 04

  And he opened the doors not only for black musicians, but for young musicians. And that started that tidal wave that became rock and roll. So he and I became very close friends. And I said to him, after doing the documentary, "I know I can capture your voice. I want to tell your story." Little did I know that meeting him was going to be a life-changing event. Because since then, I wrote the first few scenes, read them for Lloyd.

• 1:01:42Tim Ferriss?

  So let's pause here for a second. So you wrote the first few scenes of what?

• 1:01:46Speaker 04

  Of a play.

• 1:01:47Tim Ferriss?

  There we go.

• 1:01:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, I wrote the first few scenes.

• 1:01:51Tim Ferriss?

  How did you get to a play? Did you already have it in your mind when you said, "I can capture your voice"? Was it in the form of a play?

• 1:01:57Speaker 04

  Yes. And although movie was in the back of my mind as the next step, but play, there's something about theater and live performances, whether you're seeing a play, whether you're seeing a comedian, even a live concert, where the talent is at risk the entire time they're in front of an audience. Because in movies, you can do another take.

• 1:02:23Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:24Speaker 04

  On a play, you can't.

• 1:02:26Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I love that.

• 1:02:28Speaker 04

  You know, and so that risk, I find profound and profoundly seductive because you have to be there, present in the zone, to really be good at what you're doing. And I have so much respect for the talent that I work with and the actors that I work with. It's incredible. And comedians...

• 1:02:48Speaker 04

  They put a product out there and they get immediate feedback. You know, it's no A B testing, right? You know, they

• 1:02:55Tim Ferriss?

  They laugh or they don't.

• 1:02:56Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 1:02:57Tim Ferriss?

  There's no charity. If it's not funny, they don't laugh.

• 1:02:59Speaker 04

  That's right. Yeah, and you can't talk them into, you know, that was funny.

• 1:03:05Speaker 04

  That's right. That's the proof. And so you've got to pivot quick and recover quick. And if you get angry at your audience for not doing it, that's a death knell of your career.

• 1:03:17Tim Ferriss?

  I stopped you when you said, I wrote the first few scenes. I don't know if you remember that thread to pick up on that. Wasn't sure where the thought was going. You wrote the first few scenes of, I'm not sure if it was called this at the time, but Personality subtitle, Lloyd Price musical, based on his life. And what happened when you wrote the first few scenes?

• 1:03:40Speaker 04

  Well, I wrote the first few to tell him the kind of voice I wanted to do the play in.

• 1:03:44Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:03:45Speaker 04

  So when I read them out loud to him, he loved it. And I said to him, he said, you've got it. And I said to him, but there's something really important that we need to understand right now. And he said, what's that? And I said, you're the messenger. This story is bigger than you because your life and what you did changed the face of music. Created with instrumental and creating this new form. And you're the messenger. And he said, Jeff, I've been waiting years for somebody to say that to me. And they all puff smoke up my ass. And it's not about my ego. It's about wanting to tell this story. That's why I want you to do it.

• 1:04:30Speaker 04

  And that began a friendship and a collaboration that lasted until his death. And now I have an additional. Mission and purpose, which is to keep his legacy and story and music alive.

• 1:04:48Tim Ferriss?

  So many questions. I want to ask you first, how did it feel? What was it like to hear him say that to you? I've been waiting to have somebody say that.

• 1:04:59Speaker 04

  It was really gratifying. What I said could have pissed him off if he was a lesser person. But his ego didn't get in the way of that. And Lloyd had a phrase.

• 1:05:11Speaker 04

  The truth needs no defense.

• 1:05:12Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, that's great.

• 1:05:14Speaker 04

  And I love, yeah, I love that. I love that. And yeah, he had another one, which I thought about as I was raising money for this. Which is, I was telling him about some of the meetings and so on. He said, Jeff, you gotta understand something.

• 1:05:29Speaker 04

  There's a million ways to say no.

• 1:05:34Speaker 04

  There's only one way to say yes. You write a check.

• 1:05:41Tim Ferriss?

  Right. We'll get back to you. Let us think on it.

• 1:05:44Speaker 04

  And there are people, by the way, that just love having meetings. And they think it's cool to have a meeting about a play and all of that kind of thing.

• 1:05:51Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. If you want to, all you can eat buffet of that, just spend a bunch of time in Los Angeles and get plenty of practice. Oh, fucking meetings and phone calls. Geez Louise. So. As it stands right now, where is this musical? What's the state of affairs?

• 1:06:10Speaker 04

  So the state of affairs is back in September of 20, we had a, we got a theater deal. We did a workshop. First of all, let me say that if I knew how long it took to mount a play, I would have started when I was younger.

• 1:06:23Speaker 04

  And we did a full up workshop with choreography in the end of March 2019. We got a theater deal. And that theater deals with People's Light Theater in Malvern, a very good regional theater. And we're very excited about that.

• 1:06:39Tim Ferriss?

  That's in Pennsylvania.

• 1:06:40Speaker 04

  Yes. And we were, we were going to open in March of 21.

• 1:06:48Speaker 04

  With COVID, I had to make the decision because theaters, by the way, get booked up a year and a half to two years in advance. So in September of 20, I made the decision to see if we could move it, if my management could move it to 2022, which is what we did. That was prescient of you. We would have been really screwed if I was wrong. Yeah. Fortunately, or not fortunate, I wish COVID was over. Yeah. But my hope is that by March, we'll not only all be safe, we will believe that we're safe and that people will be attending theater, which is, you know, beginning to happen. Bruce Springsteen opened his show on Broadway last weekend. I mean, today's June 30th that we're doing this. It is June 30th.

• 1:07:31Speaker 04

  And last Saturday, I'm just putting a timeframe on this, Springsteen was the first Broadway show to open and he sold out. Wow. And three weeks before that, The Colbert Show invited full audience without face masks. They just had to pass a COVID test and show proof of vaccination and he's been full to capacity every day since. Those are all good omens. So that's really good. Yeah, the roaring twenties. Here we go. So we're now in the process, I am raising some more money because that's, you know, it's like any startup. It's like the tech startups you've been with, you know, you cross a certain threshold, then you got to raise money for the next stage and then you cross that stage and you got to raise money for the next stage. We've got wonderful talent involved. Sheldon Epps, who's the director, is phenomenal, has been with me since the

• 1:08:16Speaker 04

  beginning, as has Shelton Beckton, who is the musical director, and Chester Gregory, who plays Lloyd, and Stanley Mathis, who plays Logan, who was Lloyd's mobster mentor. And many, many awards across these people. Yeah, we have creative team, David Gallo, who's won multiple Tony Awards, is doing set and projection, and Rob Kaplowitz, who is doing sound design, is a Tony Award winner. And we just have a tremendous number of people involved who are so good and so committed to the project. That's very gratifying. And you might like this, when I hired Sheldon,

• 1:08:59Speaker 04

  which was before we did our first reading, and I really liked him and I liked his insights into theater and everything else. And so I said to him, I want you to know I have a no asshole rule. And he laughed and says, well, I think I know what you mean, but why don't you explain it to me? And I said, if you are an asshole, but you're paying me, I'll put up with it, but I will never put up with abuse. But if you're an asshole and I'm paying you, I won't put up with it. And he laughed and said, we're in the same place. And we have built such a sense of community for each of the productions we've done.

• 1:09:42Speaker 04

  And it's been just a joy. And the thing is, and I said this to the assembled cast before we did our workshop, is, and I think this is a general life lesson for me anyhow, which is never let anybody rob the joy of the process. Because the process is what's magic. The process is what's so much fun. And that's the journey on your way to that finished product. That process. I mean, that's where the real stories come in, as you're on that journey.

• 1:10:14Tim Ferriss?

  It's also the bulk of your time.

• 1:10:17Speaker 04

  That's right. That's right. Because once it's up and on its feet, there's a lot less to do.

• 1:10:22Tim Ferriss?

  Is it fair to say that, and I know very little about theater, but that the People's Light Theatre in Malvern and certainly others sort of around the epicenter of Broadway act as effectively feeders if they're successful into Broadway?

• 1:10:39Speaker 04

  Yes. Yeah, it is. And that's from whether it's La Jolla Playhouse in California, or whether it's Goodman Theatre in Washington, you know, there are many regional theaters of very high order. You know, the Public Theater in New York is a regional theater. That's where Hamilton started. La Jolla Playhouse is where Jersey Boys started.

• 1:11:00Tim Ferriss?

  No kidding.

• 1:11:01Speaker 04

  And those were all like what we have enhancement deals. But the big caveat is if you're successful.

• 1:11:07Tim Ferriss?

  Could you define for people who don't know the term enhancement deal?

• 1:11:10Speaker 04

  An enhancement deal basically means that a theater, a good regional theater will set aside a certain amount of money for original productions. Maybe they do one or two or tops three a season. So they have their fixed budget and then on our end, we have to enhance that budget with the rest of the financial contribution. So they're putting up the set shop, they're building the sets, they're building the costumes, they're doing the marketing and sales, they're doing all of those things. And if there is any recoupment, they'll be able to get that. So we're not producing it. But what we are doing is marketing from that. You know, that's the

• 1:11:50Speaker 04

  idea. But we've enhanced their budget. So we're both able to put on a play that the cost would be prohibitive for either party alone, but together in pooling resources, we're able to do the production.

• 1:12:03Tim Ferriss?

  It's very similar, not entirely. It's not a, not a perfect parallel, but very similar to the marquee titles that a publisher will select. They'll handpick a few that they'll kind of double down on in terms of, of betting their bandwidth and capital to back. Very, very similar.

• 1:12:20Speaker 04

  Did you find, by the way, I'm just curious, after the success of The Four Hour Workweek, and I think it's fair to say that that launched your career.

• 1:12:28Tim Ferriss?

  Sure. I think that's fair to say.

• 1:12:31Speaker 04

  Did you get any kind of response from any of the publishers that had originally rejected you, that wanted in on your next book or anything like that?

• 1:12:39Tim Ferriss?

  You know, I did get a couple of letters from publishers who rejected me, not only rejected me, but did so with no grace whatsoever. I mean, really abrasively rejected me. And I don't think I replied to any of them. I found them amusing. I found them very amusing because you can say no. In many different ways, and there were people who said no, but did it taking just an extra sentence or two to encourage me, even though it wasn't a fit for them. And it was really just an extra sentence or two and a shift in tone, just a few different words. And that made a real world of difference.

• 1:13:24Tim Ferriss?

  For instance, there was an agent, she may still be an agent, really, really capable agent named Gillian Manus, who did not take me on as a client, but gave me a lot of really good advice and feedback and was very generous and gracious in how she interacted with me. And a bunch of her advice helped me in my writing of the book, even though I ended up working with an agent who I still work with, Steve Hanselman. And I have the utmost respect for her. And I think she is, she is a better player, a more competent actor in that field because of the way she handled herself. And she had no reason to do it at the time.

• 1:14:05Tim Ferriss?

  I shouldn't say no reason, but I felt like it was her default way of existing in the world, because I had nothing to offer her at the time. But there were examples like that. And then there were the counter examples of people who were just like, who the hell are you, kid? This is a dumb idea. Goodbye. And it just struck me as so short sighted in a way. Even if your job is to say no, 99% of the time, which is certainly true for venture capitalists as another example. I mean, a lot of people say no 99% of the time. It strikes me as a very good investment of time to decide in advance how you're going to do that with some degree of grace. So yeah, absolutely.

• 1:14:48Tim Ferriss?

  I received letters from some of them and none of them were going to get a bite at the apple before, you know, the publisher who took a calculated risk on that first book, for sure. And they got a great deal, as they should have, right? I mean, I was, after all, I'd been punched in the face and kicked in the nuts 30 times or whatever it was. So I didn't exactly have a lot of leverage.

• 1:15:11Speaker 04

  But that's smart to be aware of because a lot of people get very resentful about rejection.

• 1:15:17Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:17Speaker 04

  But they don't look at it in a context of, I have got no backstory here yet.

• 1:15:23Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:24Speaker 04

  I can't point to my successes in this world.

• 1:15:28Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, totally. And it goes both ways, right? Like you can be gracious in receiving no.

• 1:15:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:15:34Tim Ferriss?

  I think that's very important. And, you know, these days, it's like, I get through various channels, you know, hundreds of communications a day, and 90% plus of those are asking for something. And it's not physically possible for me and my team to even respond to all of those. But if we do, it's usually a no. And it's usually a polite decline. And that's how I phrase it with my team. I'm like, please, polite decline. And some people get extremely upset. And they do the equivalent of responding rudely, as the publishers did, but they do it from the perspective of the person who's asking for something. They get very morally outraged and offended. And then they burn the bridge.

• 1:16:20Tim Ferriss?

  I say, no, thank you. I can't do this right now, or there's no bandwidth, or I'm heads down on projects, and they get really offended. And they guarantee that I'm never going to do something with them in the future by responding in a very overly sensitive, brusque way. So it's definitely a two-way street. Like, if you're going to try to do anything in the world, like, you need to get used to people saying no to you.

• 1:16:45Speaker 04

  There's a lot more no's than yeses. And, you know, the question that I have is, you know, how does one construct that emotional moat around that part of your psyche that you want to protect, and you realize, they don't know me. This, you know, this, what's going on here has nothing to do with who I actually am.

• 1:17:08Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:09Speaker 04

  You know, I think establishing that moat is critical for emotional survival. Otherwise, more kicks to the head.

• 1:17:15Tim Ferriss?

  Totally. And also, you know, I have... Now, on the receiving end, developed tremendous empathy and compassion for people on the receiving end. Because in the beginning, you know, I might ask someone for a book blurb and they would say no, and I would be very upset. I wouldn't respond rudely. I knew, I think I knew enough not to do that, but it would stick for a while and I would be very upset. And I'd be like, why would they say no? Like, this is such an easy ask. And this, and this, and this. And I can come up with a laundry list of reasons why they should have said yes. And now that I'm in the receiving seat, like, it's physically impossible to respond. I mean, it's like, if I look at my phone right now, it's like, I've got 98 unread text messages from close friends.

• 1:17:59Tim Ferriss?

  And then I have another, like, 253 unread text messages on Google Voice, and it just goes on and on. 834 notifications on calendar. I mean, I can't physically respond to this many things. And it is entirely possible that the vast majority of people, or a high percentage of people who say no to you, will say no because they just don't have the bandwidth to figure it out. And just because it's not a fit for them, which you should accept as valid if they say it's not a good fit, doesn't mean it's a bad idea. It just means that your shoes are too fucking tight, it's not gonna fit on their feet, or whatever. It's not the right fit.

• 1:18:43Tim Ferriss?

  And it's gonna take a while if you have a novel idea, and if you're unproven in a particular area, it's gonna take a while to find Cinderella with that glass slipper. Right. It's just gonna take a while. And it doesn't matter if you've had a lot of success in one area, it doesn't automatically copy and paste to the next. In many respects, you're gonna have to start over. And, you know, I really respect you for doing that, not once, but multiple times. You know, sort of taking your, not necessarily leave, but departing from a well-trodden path that you know very well, where you have all the connections and you understand all the dynamics.

• 1:19:24Tim Ferriss?

  To explore an area where you're inevitably going to face more no's. And I hesitate to say rejection because I don't view those as exactly the same. Do you know what I mean?

• 1:19:36Speaker 04

  What's that distinction?

• 1:19:37Tim Ferriss?

  Well, it's like rejection, I guess, just has such a negative connotation. Whereas no, not right now, no, not for me. Don't quite have the stigma or the stickiness of rejection. Rejection is just such a, for me at least, has such a heavy connotation. So I don't think about it that way. And it's been a strange journey and an interesting one. Let me ask you a question with respect to fundraising without giving out your personal contact information. So I think that would be a terrible, terrible idea.

• 1:20:18Tim Ferriss?

  I've seen that backfire before. Where could people go to maybe learn more about the production or consider supporting what you're doing? With personality, the Lloyd Price musical?

• 1:20:33Speaker 04

  Well, as of yet, because it's too early. I mean, tickets don't even go on sale till September. So, you know, if somebody was interested, they could message me it on LinkedIn.

• 1:20:43Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. That's easy.

• 1:20:45Speaker 04

  Big Jeffrey Madoff.

• 1:20:47Tim Ferriss?

  All right, we'll include that in the show notes as well for people. So you can, you can direct message Big Jeffrey Madoff on LinkedIn. And great, I mean, if that works, that's easy. I can suggest people do it that way. And those who are motivated will figure it out.

• 1:21:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, and if they have just a bag of cash, they want to drop off. I can give us the many convenient drop off locations.

• 1:21:11Tim Ferriss?

  Well, let's, let's talk for just a little bit longer. In the process of doing homework, I saw somewhere that you've read everything by Raymond Chandler. I think that's how you said the last name.

• 1:21:21Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:21:21Tim Ferriss?

  James Elroy, you talk about, Michael Lewis, Charles Dickens. You've clearly read a lot. Aside from your own book, which just as a reminder is Creative Careers subtitle, Making a Living With Your Ideas. Chaz, I think an average of five stars on Amazon, it's very well reviewed. What books? Have you given most as gifts to other people?

• 1:21:46Speaker 04

  Well, you preempted the actual answer, which is my own.

• 1:21:49Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, that's, that's, that's why I preempted.

• 1:21:52Speaker 04

  God damn you.

• 1:21:55Speaker 04

  There are books that I have suggested to people.

• 1:21:59Tim Ferriss?

  That's, that's good enough.

• 1:22:00Speaker 04

  You know, and so a book that was really amazing to me, Michael Lewis wrote, well, first of all, I think Moneyball was astounding.

• 1:22:11Tim Ferriss?

  Spectacular, spectacular book.

• 1:22:12Speaker 04

  Yes, and

• 1:22:13Tim Ferriss?

  I'm trying to get Billy Bean on the podcast.

• 1:22:15Speaker 04

  Oh, really?

• 1:22:16Tim Ferriss?

  I am. We'll see. Fingers crossed. Billy, if you're listening, I'd love to have you on.

• 1:22:19Speaker 04

  I mean, Michael Lewis is, as a nonfiction writer, is so good.

• 1:22:26Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, mind boggling.

• 1:22:27Speaker 04

  And the way that he's able to make things understandable without dumbing them down, he's just so good. And I've read everything he's written, except his latest book. I haven't read that yet about pandemic, but I will.

• 1:22:42Speaker 04

  Moneyball, which was great, which, you know, I read Moneyball and Freakonomics back to back and it was like,

• 1:22:48Tim Ferriss?

  That's a good combo.

• 1:22:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was like a case study, right? But I love The Undoing Project.

• 1:22:54Tim Ferriss?

  You know, I know the story of The Undoing Project, but I haven't read the book.

• 1:22:58Speaker 04

  It's brilliant. I had read about 15 years ago, I read Heuristics and Biases by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky.

• 1:23:06Tim Ferriss?

  Quick side note, I was a test subject of Danny Kahneman's at Princeton, where I was a subject in some of his experiments, just as a quick side note.

• 1:23:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:23:15Tim Ferriss?

  Anyway, please continue.

• 1:23:18Speaker 04

  Well, you know, they created the field of behavioral economics.

• 1:23:22Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, in Green Hall. I was sitting there in front of a computer, looking at things on a screen and hitting spacebar or whatever the indication was. Yeah, wild. Never, never met him.

• 1:23:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, they're brilliant. And the

• 1:23:35Speaker 04

  Thinking about thinking and why we believe what we believe, I found so amazingly insightful and useful and I was just blown away by it. I just absolutely loved it. So, the Undoing Project went into who they were as people and it just even enhanced even more what their whole mission was in terms of behavioral economics. So, I loved that. But Michael Lewis' books I have recommended tremendously. Same with Timothy Wu.

• 1:24:09Tim Ferriss?

  Timothy Wu? I don't know the name.

• 1:24:12Speaker 04

  So, he wrote The Master Switch. He's a professor at Columbia University. It's incredible about dissemination of media and the attention economy. I may have screwed up that name, but it's Timothy Wu, W-U, and he's brilliant. And I kind of read him like I put together Freakonomics, you know, with heuristics and biases with Timothy Wu. I put together James Gleick and information, which is, God, it's an amazing book. I love things that make me look at things differently and, you know, challenge my own beliefs in really interesting

• 1:24:54Speaker 04

  ways. So, those are the kinds of things that I recommend. I read mostly nonfiction. Back when I was reading a lot of fiction, I loved Raymond Chandler. Raymond Chandler created the prototype, Philip Marlowe, the hard-boiled detective who's got integrity and a bowl of rye in the deep desk drawer. And his books, I was always sorry that they ended because they were so much fun to spend time with those characters and I really loved it.

• 1:25:22Tim Ferriss?

  Have you ever read Motherless Brooklyn?

• 1:25:25Speaker 04

  I saw the film.

• 1:25:26Tim Ferriss?

  I thought that Edward Norton and the team did a really nice job with that.

• 1:25:30Speaker 04

  They did. And, you know, I thought it was really interesting and of course, the eccentricity of having detectives with turrets, you know, was just kind of interesting.

• 1:25:43Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:43Speaker 04

  And I'm a sucker for any of these, you know, movies, whether it's L.A. Confidential, which is one of the best ones, but, you know, with the fedoras, you know, and I just, I love that genre, you know, the film noir-ish kind of genre. I just love it. And James Elroy, who I mentioned, who-

• 1:26:02Speaker 04

  Like writes with a blowtorch, you know, it's

• 1:26:05Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, please elaborate.

• 1:26:07Speaker 04

  He, his use of language has such velocity to it and is so strong. And he wrote L.A. Confidential, that was based on one of his books, yeah. And the movie, which I loved, was like a Disney version of the book.

• 1:26:27Tim Ferriss?

  That's hard to imagine.

• 1:26:28Speaker 04

  I know, but if you read the book, which I'd highly recommend.

• 1:26:31Tim Ferriss?

  By the same name?

• 1:26:32Speaker 04

  Yes, yeah, it's, it's wickedly rough, but, but really good if you like that genre.

• 1:26:40Tim Ferriss?

  I love it. I am, I'm looking for more fiction. I've really been drawn to fiction recently, having been a nonfiction purist for decades, but I can't remember who said this. So I don't know the attribution. Somebody can figure this out, but you know, the masks we wear tell us more about the truth than the, the real faces we own or something like that. Right? Like the, the masks often tell us so much. And so I do feel like fiction can convey deeper truths, sometimes as effectively or more effectively than nonfiction. I've really been drawn to that craft recently. And do you have any favorite documentaries or movies?

• 1:27:19Speaker 04

  Oh God, this, you know, as you know, I love film, so to name a film is really tough. I mean, I recently re-watched for the 19th time, I don't know, To Kill a Mockingbird, which I loved and I had the additional joy of turning my kids on to it when they were like 12 and watching it with them. And there are certain points in that film that I cry.

• 1:27:52Tim Ferriss?

  Intense subject matter.

• 1:27:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, but I've got really smart kids and, and they, they loved it. And I loved when I saw tears welling up in their eyes at the same points that had happened with me when I watched the film. And it's just so beautiful.

• 1:28:09Speaker 04

  Quick sidebar to that. So I had done a film for Eliza Minnelli at Radio City, and there was a big party afterwards in the Rainbow Room, which is as glamorous as, you know, the movies make it. It's gorgeous space and it's wonderful. Gregory Pack was sitting there. And I said to my wife Margaret, it's weird sense. I said to my wife Margaret, as opposed to my wife Alice or my other wife. I said to Margaret, my wife, you want to meet Gregory Pack? This is in 1991. And she said, I'd pass out. I said, come on. So we go over and I shake hands with him and said, I've always wanted to shake Atticus's

• 1:28:53Speaker 04

  hand. And Atticus Finch is the character that he played. And he said, you know, it's interesting that you say that. And he has, by the way, one of the great voices of all time. I was just speaking with Alan Pacula, who produced the movie. And we were wondering if that movie would be made today. What do you think? And I said, I don't know. But what a sorry statement about our culture it would be if a film that was that great wouldn't have been made. And I said, were you aware that you were making something that was going to live on for generations? And he said, you know, I've made over 174 movies.

• 1:29:32Speaker 04

  Never before or never since did I have the feeling that I had when I was making that. And the very first scene, he said, you know, we shoot movies out of sequence. And I said, yeah, I'm aware. And he said, the very first scene is actually the courtroom scene, although it happens later in the movie. And I walk out on set and Harper Lee was there. I don't know that name. Harper Lee wrote it. She wrote To Kill a Mockingbird. And when I walked out onto the set, she got up, burst into tears and left. She came back about an hour and a half later and I walked over to her. You know, he was wearing a three-piece linen suit, which is what her father always wore.

• 1:30:15Speaker 04

  And she said, I'm sorry, I was so overwhelmed by how you reminded me of my father. But there was one thing that was missing. And he said, what was that? Said, he always had his pocket watch and a watch fob.

• 1:30:31Speaker 04

  And then she hands him her father's pocket watch.

• 1:30:34Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 1:30:35Speaker 04

  Which he put into his pocket. And she said, whenever he was giving a closing argument, he would rub his thumb over the face of the watch, the pocket watch. And I said, wow. And he said, and when I got the Academy Award for Best Actor for that film, as I was giving the speech, I had my right hand in my pocket and was rubbing my thumb over the face of the watch. I said, oh, wow. And then he takes his hand out of his pocket and says, would you like to see the watch? And he hands it to me.

• 1:31:07Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 1:31:09Speaker 04

  And I thought, man, wow. That was to me like somebody seeing the sacred shroud of Turin or something. I mean, it was just amazing, really amazing. But that's a film that not only was the book great, the movie was great.

• 1:31:23Tim Ferriss?

  So I have to interrupt for a second because this reminds me of an experience that we had where we're at some party, I can't remember where it was, LA or something like that. And I was a huge fan of Jason Statham's. I don't know if you remember this. And he walked right past us at this event and ended up, whatever, you know, 100 yards behind us in the, the middle of this throng of this, this crowd. And I think I mentioned something along those lines. And you're like, well, should we go meet him? And I was like, ah, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. And you just grabbed me and we marched right up to him and said hello, and he was extremely friendly. He was very, very kind and gracious, also built like a brick shithouse.

• 1:32:08Tim Ferriss?

  I mean, God, is that guy well, well built. And funny enough, you know, I saw that photo about a year ago and I was like, wow. Since I've lost my hair, I'm kind of converging on Jason Statham. Have you always had that chutzpah to walk up to people? Or was that developed or how did that come to be?

• 1:32:27Speaker 04

  Oh, God, yeah. First of all, I just love when Gentiles use words like chutzpah.

• 1:32:34Speaker 04

  After you were telling me that your ancestors came here in like the 16th century or something like that, mine didn't. They were kicked out of a country. But, you know,

• 1:32:46Tim Ferriss?

  I like to keep my, my, my doors up.

• 1:32:50Speaker 04

  You know, I, I think most people don't mind you approaching them if it's about something nice. So I had a short conversation with him because I said, you know, my son is a huge fan of your movies. And when I watched them with him, I said, you know, you've got something going on. I mean, you can act. You've got chops. You can really act. And he said, Oh, man, thank you. And we talked for just a moment or so. And then I said, would you mind if we got pictures with you?

• 1:33:19Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:20Speaker 04

  And so the sure way to make sure that nothing happens is do nothing.

• 1:33:27Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:28Speaker 04

  So worst case scenario, he says, get away from me, kid. You know, worst thing he does is he says no.

• 1:33:34Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:35Speaker 04

  But we both ended up with picture that we really enjoyed. And it was nice to meet him because he was a very nice guy.

• 1:33:41Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, really sweet guy.

• 1:33:42Speaker 04

  And so it was cool. And I have seen his, they're married now, I think. His wife, I had shot many times because she was a model and, you know, I did some videos with her and she was, she was really, really a nice person, too.

• 1:33:57Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I was supposed to have Jason and I think Guy Ritchie on the podcast some time ago. And then without any explanation, we were all slated to go. And then the phalanx of God knows what in between, very last minute canceled. So maybe someday I'll get to actually thank him in person for being so cool on our first encounter. Here's a question that might be a dead end. And I accept that possibility and I'll, I'll take the blame if that's where it goes. But nonetheless, I will ask.

• 1:34:30Speaker 04

  Good preamble, though.

• 1:34:31Tim Ferriss?

  Thank you. Thank you. I specialize in preambles. If you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere, metaphorically speaking, right? This is to get a message, a quote, an image, anything out to billions of people. What might you put on that billboard? Doesn't have to be an original, could be from somebody else, whatever you want, something non-commercial.

• 1:34:54Speaker 04

  Well, if it was an actual billboard,

• 1:34:58Tim Ferriss?

  Hmm.

• 1:34:59Speaker 04

  I would say, pay attention to the road.

• 1:35:05Tim Ferriss?

  That's a very B. Jeffrey Madoff answer.

• 1:35:10Speaker 04

  And if it was a metaphorical in terms of just a metaphorical idea that I wanted, you know, people to get would be, stay curious, keep learning.

• 1:35:22Tim Ferriss?

  Hmm. Stay curious, keep learning. I think you've done an excellent job of that. So you walk the walk.

• 1:35:28Speaker 04

  Well, you're very kind.

• 1:35:29Tim Ferriss?

  It's true. It's true. I've seen it over and over again. That's very inspiring. And

• 1:35:35Speaker 04

  But it's fun. I mean, that's, you know, when you and I first met all those years ago, the conversation, which was going to be, you had a half hour, I think. And then we were like four and a half hours later.

• 1:35:47Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I remember.

• 1:35:48Speaker 04

  As we were ricocheting all over the place like that. I mean, it's a very enjoyable thing to do when you're talking with somebody who, I don't want to presume you respect me, but you know.

• 1:35:59Tim Ferriss?

  I do respect you.

• 1:36:00Speaker 04

  But, you know, the same, it's like, it's, it's fun. And you also unearth things about oneself that you might not have hit on otherwise, or you see it in a different way. And I think that's a great thing about doing a podcast, isn't it? When you get to talk to people that you find interesting and, you know, all of that.

• 1:36:20Tim Ferriss?

  Totally. In some ways, all the more so when I know someone and have the excuse and the pretext to do all this creepy due diligence. That would otherwise be really strange. And, you know, I think this is a pretty good place to start to wrap up. Jeffrey, are there any other things you would like to mention? Any requests you have the audience, anything you'd like to say, closing comments, anything at all? That you would like to add before we bring this first conversation to a close?

• 1:36:51Speaker 04

  Well, I am going to be taking in a leap into the podcast world because of all the guests that I've had in my class. You know, I think that you being a master of that, and I've been, you know, learning podcastian.

• 1:37:07Speaker 04

  And so I'm looking forward to that because it's just, you know, I think like you, I think it's accurate to say it's about spreading ideas.

• 1:37:14Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:15Speaker 04

  And that's what's fun, you know, to do that engaging with people about ideas. I am proud of my book. I think that that was an interesting thing, especially as I was going through some of the same things I was writing about, you know, in terms of, that was one of the things when I was thinking about, well, was I a failure and all that? And, you know, writing a book about things you've experienced in life can be therapeutic at the same time and bring things up that maybe, you know, I wouldn't have thought about otherwise. And as I had already mentioned about the teaching is that teaching is such a great way to learn, is such a great platform to engage with ideas.

• 1:37:58Speaker 04

  And I've got an audience that changes every semester. I really enjoy it and am very grateful for an opportunity like this where, you know, we can just pinball back and forth and talk about the kinds of things that interest us. And in scratching our own itches, we hope that we also do the same for our audience.

• 1:38:18Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Well, I'm excited for you to get into the podcast game. You're a natural and you're already doing the heavy lifting and you're doing the interviewing. You know how to do it. You are an expert storyteller and it's just a matter of sharing the audio. So I think you'll do very well. And to just repeat where people can find you, there are a few different options. Acreativecareer.com. That is at A Creative Career on Instagram. The book is Creative Careers, subtitle, Making a Living with Your Ideas. Check it out. You can also find Madoff, not Madoff, MadoffProductions.com, which can be found at Madoff Productions on Instagram.

• 1:39:00Tim Ferriss?

  If you are interested in learning more about possibly supporting personality.

• 1:39:07Tim Ferriss?

  Subtitle, "The Lloyd Price Musical," which I'm very, very excited to see. You can direct message BJeffreyMadoff, M-A-D-O-F-F, on LinkedIn. Is there anything else, anywhere else that people can find you? Or any other links or any such things that we should mention?

• 1:39:26Speaker 04

  Well, hopefully they'll look, well, actually, they will be hearing that podcast. This is kind of surreal self, another MC Escher thing. I was going to say, you could tell them about this podcast, but the only way that they would hear it. It's like, I had a teacher that would say, "And if you're not here today, please raise your hand." What?

• 1:39:45Speaker 04

  So, no.

• 1:39:50Tim Ferriss?

  So people can search-

• 1:39:51Speaker 04

  I've got nothing else.

• 1:39:52Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, people can search your name and podcast. And by, by the time this is reaching their ears, perhaps they can find it. And also, if it is live, I will link to it in the show notes, along with everything we've talked about, all the books, all the people, all of the everything, at tim.blog/podcast, as per usual. And what fun, BJeffreyMadoff. Thank you so much for making the time and putting up with this sauna infused with hard kombucha. It's been a lot of fun.

• 1:40:24Speaker 04

  I loved it, and thank you very much for having me on. I really appreciate it.

• 1:40:28Tim Ferriss?

  Absolutely. And until next time, to everyone out there listening, thanks for tuning in. 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.

• 1:41:10Tim Ferriss?

  It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close- Friends, for instance, 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 ExpressVPN. I have been using ExpressVPN all the time, constantly since the summer of 2019. And I find it to be a super reliable way to make sure that my data are secure and encrypted

• 1:41:52Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:42:34Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:43:18Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:44:02Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:44:46Tim Ferriss?

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