#224: The Random Show - Drinking Urine, Exploring Japan, and Figuring Out Life

Coming to you from a late night in rural Japan, this is a special edition of The Random Show. Per usual for The Random Show, I am joined by Kevin Rose (@KevinRose http://www.twitter.com/kevinrose), serial entrepreneur, world-class investor, and all around wild and crazy guy. We discuss Japan and how to do it cheaply, building apps, urine drinking, love and marriage, beauty and absurdity in 2017, why Kevin doesn't have New Year's resolutions, favorite books, and much more. Enjoy! Show notes and links for this episode can be found at www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. This podcast is brought to you by iD Commerce + Logistics http://tim.blog/scale/. I'm asked all the time about how to scale businesses quickly. Rule number one: remove unnecessary bottlenecks. Many businesses can do so by outsourcing inventory management and fulfillment to a company that makes this its primary focus. iD Commerce + Logistics http://tim.blog/scale/ is just such a company. It helps online retailers and entrepreneurs outgrow their competition by handling all types of details -- from inventory to packing and shipping. I depended on iD to handle these types of details when I launched The 4-Hour Chef so I could focus on promoting the book. As a listener of this podcast, you can get up to $10,000 off your start-up fees and costs waived by visiting tim.blog/scale http://tim.blog/scale/ or idcomlog.com/tim http://idcomlog.com/tim/. This podcast is also brought to you by Wealthfront https://wealthfront.com/tim. Wealthfront is the future of financial advice. It's become especially popular among my friends in Silicon Valley and across the country because it provides the same high-end financial advice that the best private wealth managers deliver to the ultra wealthy -- but for any account size, at a fraction of the cost. Wealthfront https://wealthfront.com/tim monitors your portfolio every day across more than a dozen asset classes to find opportunities for rebalancing and harvesting tax losses, and now manages more than $5 billion in assets. Unlike old-fashioned private wealth managers, Wealthfront is powered by innovative technology, making it the most tax-efficient, low-cost, hassle-free way to invest. Go to wealthfront.com/tim http://wealthfront.com/tim to take the risk assessment quiz, which only takes 2-5 minutes, and it'll show you -- for free -- exactly the portfolio it would recommend. If you want to just take the advice and do it yourself, you can. Or, as I would, you can set it and forget it. Well worth a few minutes: wealthfront.com/tim http://wealthfront.com/tim. As a Tim Ferriss Show listener, you'll get your first $15,000 managed for free if you decide to go with its services.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Three. Hello. My name is Kevin. No, Tim, I'm telling you, I think that if you really focused on masturbating, it would, it would just really help you out.

• 0:14Speaker 00

  You need to start your own Milt company.

• 0:17Tim Ferriss?

  Milt, Milt Duds.

• 0:18Speaker 00

  I've been telling you, Milt Duds are the future.

• 0:22Tim Ferriss?

  Milt Duds are the future. MiltDuds.co.nz, everybody, check it out.

• 0:28Speaker 00

  Milt Duds.

• 0:29Speaker 02

  Optimal, minimal. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:37Speaker 03

  Now would be an appropriate time.

• 0:41Speaker 04

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

• 0:53Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by ID Commerce and Logistics. I'm asked all the time about how to scale businesses quickly. Rule number one is removing unnecessary bottlenecks that are a headache and also an emergency brake on growth. For many companies, one of the first things they should outsource is inventory management and fulfillment. There are companies that do this all day long perfectly for fast-growing companies. ID Commerce and Logistics is one such company. They focus on helping online retailers and entrepreneurs outgrow the competition by handling all types of logistics for you. They manage your inventory, pick, pack, and ship, and handle everything you can imagine so that you can focus on the things you are best at instead of all of these details under the hood.

• 1:35Tim Ferriss?

  I partnered with them myself during the launch of The Four Hour Chef so that I could focus on promoting the book, which is what I'm good at, and they ensured that things I'm not good at got done perfectly. In other words, that readers were happy with dozens of different products we needed shipped out during holiday crunch season. ID Commerce and Logistics works with many different types of businesses, including e-commerce, consumer packaged goods, subscription boxes, and dozens more. They're also integrated with top e-commerce platforms such as Shopify, my personal favorite, Magento, BigCommerce, and others, which makes the startup integration and partnership seamless.

• 2:10Tim Ferriss?

  ...of this podcast, you can get up to $10,000 of your startup fees and costs waived. That is a big discount. Just visit tim.blog/Scale. That's tim.blog/Scale. Or you can go to idcomlog, that's I D C O M L O G dot com forward slash tim. You can go to either one. The easier one to remember is probably tim.blog/Scale.

• 2:40Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront. Wealthfront is the future of financial advice. They've become incredibly popular among my friends in Silicon Valley and across the country because they provide the same high-end financial advice that the best private wealth managers deliver to the ultra wealthy, but for any account size and at a fraction of the cost. For instance, they monitor your portfolio every day across more than a dozen asset classes to look for opportunities to rebalance or harvest tax losses. Now, would you do the same? Are you doing the same? Probably not. And the power is in the software. Wealthfront now manages more than $4 billion in assets, which is up from around 2.5 billion when they started advertising on this podcast. They're growing incredibly quickly. Unlike

• 3:24Tim Ferriss?

  old-fashioned private wealth managers, Wealthfront is powered by innovative technology, making it the most tax-efficient, low-cost, hassle-free way to invest. They don't have bloated sales teams or retail locations, so they can deliver all of this sophisticated financial advice and these services at a fraction of the cost of a traditional financial advisor. So at the very least, go to wealthfront.com/tim and take their free risk assessment survey. It only takes a couple of minutes and Wealthfront will recommend a personalized portfolio of investments. In other words, they'll tell you exactly where they would put your money. So even if you don't use their service, you have a huge leg up and you have additional information for making good decisions. They use investment theory to automate good financial

• 4:06Tim Ferriss?

  behavior and decisions that people typically don't make, but should. So go to wealthfront.com/tim to get your first 15K managed for free or just to get more details. Check it out, wealthfront.com/tim.

• 4:23Tim Ferriss?

  Hello ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss and it is a late night edition of The Tim Ferriss Show. And I'm recording this from rural Japan, trying not to wake the friendly neighbors. So I'm going to keep this short. This is a special edition random show. And for those of you who have not experienced the random show, it is, as the name would indicate, a random collection of exchanges between myself and Kevin Rose, entrepreneur, one of the best stock pickers, both in public markets and in the startup game, early-stage investors I've ever met. He's incredible and also hilarious, where we really just banter and talk about our favorite things, new discoveries, what we're up to.

• 5:04Tim Ferriss?

  And in this particular episode, we discuss Japan and how to do it cheaply, how to do it in a very, very fun way, different recommendations. We talk about building apps. Kevin is extremely good at this. And the exact process, we brainstorm out loud and discuss things we haven't gotten into before. Talk about urine drinking, long story, we'll get to that. Love and marriage difficulties therein and thereof. Beauty and absurdity in 2017. Why Kevin doesn't have New Year's resolutions this year. Favorite books and much, much more. We do talk about Japan a fair bit, but lest we bore some percentage of you guys who aren't really into Japan,

• 5:47Tim Ferriss?

  I would also recommend you check out some of my collected thoughts on my favorite recommended bucket list items, as well as cheap or free diversions and incredible options in places like Tokyo. And you can find that in a two-part blog post. You can go to tim.blog/japan. This is all free and it shows you how to get the most out of Tokyo for less than, say, a trip to New York. So it is a fun post. It's one that I put a lot of thought into and had friends help me with as well. tim.blog/japan, if you've ever thought about Japan, fantasized about going to Japan.

• 6:32Tim Ferriss?

  Why don't we get that on the calendar for you? And this will help you plan a lot of it and to spend your money very, very wisely. Tim.blog/japan. So without further ado, please enjoy this episode of The Random Show with Kevin Rose, @kevros on Twitter and all the socers. Socers. It is late and we've had a lot of sake. Enjoy.

• 6:56Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss.

• 7:00Speaker 00

  And I'm Kevin Rose. Hello, friends. Long time no chat.

• 7:03Tim Ferriss?

  Long time no chat. How jo bu chae. Hisashi boridane. The last one is effectively long time no see in Japanese, which is appropriate because we are here for a special edition of The Random Show in Kanazawa, Japan.

• 7:18Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 7:19Tim Ferriss?

  And why are we in Japan, Kevin?

• 7:22Speaker 00

  Well, it's a good question. It's been, it's been a while since we've been, the last time we were on this side of the world was China. No. No.

• 7:34Tim Ferriss?

  It was when you got engaged.

• 7:35Speaker 00

  That's right. You were out here. I got engaged in Tokyo for a cherry blossom festival and you were here and we ended up hanging out. But this is my 40th birthday yesterday, which is kind of nuts. So we did a little trip, invited six or so really close friends and yeah, it's been, it's been a ton of fun.

• 7:57Tim Ferriss?

  And we're sitting here in a very traditional Japanese-style inn, Yokan. And we have, we're sitting on tatami mats. We have a low table in front of us. We're sitting cross-legged and we have some booze. We've already had a fair amount of sake. So instead we've switched gears. I have some red wine. You have whatever that is.

• 8:17Speaker 00

  I have a Suntory Premium Malts Beer, which is brewed with pride, is what it says on the outside there. So.

• 8:23Tim Ferriss?

  Japanese do everything with pride.

• 8:24Speaker 00

  Everything with pride. I love it. Cheers.

• 8:26Tim Ferriss?

  Kampai.

• 8:27Speaker 00

  Kampai.

• 8:27Tim Ferriss?

  So kampai. We'll do a couple of language things and then we'll get into our usual. Random odds and ends, bits and pieces, but kampai is empty glass. That is cheers in Japanese and Chinese, same characters. Gambe, also empty glass.

• 8:45Speaker 00

  But the funny thing is, you told me this, it doesn't mean chug.

• 8:48Tim Ferriss?

  Doesn't mean chug.

• 8:50Speaker 00

  No, most people think when you say kampai, you just like, just put it straight back. You chug it, boom, done, slam the glass, that's it.

• 8:56Tim Ferriss?

  Which is not true, yeah.

• 8:57Speaker 00

  But there's another word.

• 8:59Tim Ferriss?

  There is.

• 8:59Speaker 00

  What is it again?

• 9:00Tim Ferriss?

  Ikki.

• 9:01Speaker 00

  Ikki, so if you go ikki, ikki.

• 9:03Tim Ferriss?

  Ikki, ikki, ikki, like ikki, ikki is one breath, one breath, and that means chug.

• 9:09Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 9:11Tim Ferriss?

  So different uses to be used sparingly or all the time in the case of keros. And we are at Adaya is the name of the place. And if you hear any waterfall like sounds in the background, that is because we have a natural onsen bringing water into the rooms where there are wooden tubs that are effectively indoor/outdoor. There's an open wall, so you look out into a forest slash hillside and the steam pours out into the great outdoors. It is winter, so there's tons of fog and mist and so on. It's just a magical place.

• 9:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's absolutely beautiful. And one of the reasons why I chose this place to stay is, one, I had never stayed in a ryokan, like traditional Japanese house before, and I always wanted to do that. And number two, when you're talking about an zen, like a natural spring, it's very difficult because in Japan, if you have any tattoos whatsoever, you are forbidden from doing the onzen. Like you can't go in-

• 10:10Tim Ferriss?

  Public baths.

• 10:11Speaker 00

  Public baths, because they say that you're a yakuza.

• 10:14Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's associated with organized crime. So if you have tattoos, as Kevin does.

• 10:19Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 10:19Tim Ferriss?

  My Little Pony on both deltoids.

• 10:21Speaker 00

  They're beautiful. I got the long haired with the tassels. It's quite a breathtaking thing.

• 10:27Tim Ferriss?

  It is breathtaking. And you are not allowed to go to public baths, or most of them. Also true in, say, hotels where they have beachfront. You're not allowed to go on the beach if you have exposed tattoos.

• 10:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, and also hotels when you're going to just use their kind of spa. Cause I went in there one time, I was staying at, I think it was a peninsula, and went in to use a spa, and she goes, tattoos? And I said, yes. And she handed me flesh colored tape.

• 11:01Speaker 00

  Like a little square of tape. And, and I have a few, and I was like, I'm gonna need the whole roll. And it ended up not being, it didn't actually happen. I didn't go in, so I would have been kicked out. But this is nice. It's in our room. So every single room here has its own little private bath, hot water being piped in. And it's, it's been very relaxing.

• 11:23Tim Ferriss?

  And I should say also, we're not gonna talk about Japan the whole time, but I do think Japan is worth highlighting for a few reasons. I mean, I was an exchange student here at age 15, which was really my first time abroad. And that year completely changed my life. I lived with host families. I went to a Japanese school. I was the only American in my class photo, which was very easy wears Waldo, all in school uniforms. So like crew cut, white head, and then all Japanese kids, about 5,000. And it has proven to be such a subtle and nuanced culture. Simultaneously, you can come here as someone who doesn't speak Japanese,

• 12:06Tim Ferriss?

  get completely lost, be completely bewildered. The English level is generally pretty low here. So it can be a totally alien environment where you can't read any signs, and it's not dangerous.

• 12:17Speaker 00

  Right. And the people will go above and beyond to try and kind of decipher what you're saying with your hands.

• 12:26Tim Ferriss?

  Well, not only that, so why don't you tell the story of Tony and the earphones?

• 12:30Speaker 00

  Well, what are your phones?

• 12:32Tim Ferriss?

  The earphones that he dropped on the sofa.

• 12:34Speaker 00

  Oh, oh, oh, yeah, yeah. So two days ago, well, there was two stories. Okay, so this is classic Tokyo for you. And, and it's part of the reason why I love Japan so much is like, the people here are just so friendly and really concerned with your well-being. So Tony, one of the, the members that was traveling with us, that is traveling with us, he dropped his, his headphones. And just, you know, we're talking standard kind of Apple headphones, you know, white cord, whatever. And we walked into a coffee shop.

• 13:06Tim Ferriss?

  And now, just for context, this is on one of the busiest streets. In a shopping district.

• 13:12Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 13:12Tim Ferriss?

  In Tokyo.

• 13:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, so there's people just, you know.

• 13:14Tim Ferriss?

  Fifth Avenue in New York City.

• 13:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, just like all over the place, just, you know, probably stepping on the headphones and whatnot. Somebody on the second floor of a building across the street was looking out the window, saw that these, these, these small white headphones fell out of his pocket, ran down the stairs, grabbed the headphones, figured out which coffee bar we had gone into and then proceeded to enter in and hand back the headphones, which was just nuts. And then on top of that, the exact same coffee bar, I had gotten out of a taxi, left my cell phone in the taxi. And, you know, of course, when you're in the States, you're like, shit, like my, my cell phone's gone. I'm never going to see it again.

• 13:58Speaker 00

  And so I used Find My Phone, you know, the, the Apple built in feature so you can see where the, your, your phone is. I used it off of my wife's cell phone. And, you know, it's 20, 25 minutes away from where we're at in a taxi. And I'm like, God damn it. Like, how am I ever going to get this back? And I, I pressed the button to, which sends a signal to the cell phone. So it sends out an audible alert to the, you know, so anyone, whoever is, is nearby can hear that. All of a sudden, I'm watching on GPS. The phone starts getting closer and closer and closer. This driver drives all the way back 20 plus minutes, comes up the stairs to the coffee shop where he dropped, where I had, I had left him, and then hands me my phone back.

• 14:40Speaker 00

  I tried to tip him, you know, I'm thinking like, in the States, you know, you give somebody 20, 40, 50 bucks. Like, thank you so much. He wouldn't accept my tip and was just so polite, bowed to me and left. It's just like, oh, man, it just, it makes you, when you live, when you live in the States, you're just like, what, what happened?

• 14:59Tim Ferriss?

  Well, we have a few friends with us. And it also makes you feel like a. In many, many, many instances, an uncivilized hairy savage.

• 15:10Speaker 00

  That's what I'm saying.

• 15:11Tim Ferriss?

  You wake up feeling, you know, you're gonna be ashamed of at least seventeen things that you do that day.

• 15:17Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 15:18Tim Ferriss?

  But it's a wonderful environment. And one thing that I want to underscore before we move on, and I'm sure we'll come back to it, is that you don't have to have a lot of money or spend a lot of money to enjoy Tokyo. This is a common misconception. It can be extremely expensive, but it doesn't have to be extremely expensive. And certainly, Japan as a whole doesn't need to be extremely expensive. When I was here at fifteen, I had no money whatsoever. And you can, for instance, find stores that you would recognize, like 7-Eleven, that are completely different from the equivalent at home. And you can go into a 7-Eleven, for instance, and you can grab one of my favorite on-the-go bites, which is onigiri.

• 16:00Tim Ferriss?

  These are rice balls wrapped in dry seaweed and filled with various meats, vegetables, or fish, say tuna, whatever it might be. And those typically cost about 110 yen. So let's just call that a dollar. And you can find those at 7-Eleven, a store called Sunkus, S-U-N-K-U-S, or Lawson. And it's packaged in such a way that you pull apart the plastic, which keeps the seaweed separate. It automatically wraps this rice triangle. And you have effectively an entire meal right there for somewhere between one and $2.

• 16:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, you know what's funny? I don't know if I told you this, but I was out here with David Chang, who is, I would say, I'm sure a lot of people are familiar with him, but he's one of probably the top five chefs in the United States.

• 16:45Tim Ferriss?

  Very famous Momofuku.

• 16:47Speaker 00

  Momofuku, yeah, just like.

• 16:48Tim Ferriss?

  Milk Bar, right?

• 16:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, Milk Bar. And we happened to be here on the same trip with some friends. And he was ranting and raving about the 7-Eleven egg salad sandwich. And this is like, you know, a multi, like, you know, I think he has three Michelin stars at one of his restaurants. I mean, top of the world chef freaking out about a 7-Eleven. Different 7-Eleven than the United States.

• 17:11Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 17:12Speaker 00

  I mean, not high-end food by any means. I mean, a couple bucks for this egg salad sandwich, but prepared with, like my beer says, prepared with pride.

• 17:22Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, there's so much, a couple of other go-tos I'd suggest in Tokyo. If you can get a ticket, go to the Ghibli Museum, G-H-I-B-L-I Museum, which is the museum. It's, think of it as the Disney Museum for the Walt Disney of Japan, and that's Miyazaki Hayao. He did Spirited Away, my favorite movie, My Neighbor Totoro, a whole long list of blockbuster and kind of genre-defining anime films. And it is, it is one of the most incredible museums I've ever been to. It's in the middle of what they call Mitaka Forest, which is right next to or is Inokashira Koen. And then a lot, a lot of things in Japan are also free.

• 18:01Tim Ferriss?

  You can go to Harajuku, H-A-R-A-J-U-K-U, where you can find on the weekends Elvis impersonators doing their dancing. This has been going on for decades now. And you can also go to Takeshita Dori, which is, I guess, Takeshita Street or Alleyway, where you find dozens or hundreds of teenagers and high schoolers doing cosplay. So they wear these crazy outfits and walk up and down the streets or showing off the weirdest outfits imaginable.

• 18:29Speaker 00

  Some people are into that.

• 18:30Tim Ferriss?

  A lot of people are into it.

• 18:31Speaker 00

  Like, do you, are you kind of like, when you see a cosplay, are you, because it's like a sexual thing?

• 18:36Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, well, for so, you know, I think that for some people that might be part of it, but I think that it's just a form of, of hyper-expression in a culture where a lot of people feel very repressed or overly polite most of the time.

• 18:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:53Tim Ferriss?

  And so then they blow it out on the weekends and they like put in pink contacts and white hair and 12-inch platform shoes and wear the wackiest shit imaginable.

• 19:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, maybe more of a, in the, in the States cosplay is like a bigger, because they dress up like video game characters and things like that when, you know, Comic-Con and whatnot.

• 19:12Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah. Well, there are a lot of things that are...

• 19:15Speaker 00

  That's not really Japanese cosplay, though.

• 19:16Tim Ferriss?

  There are a lot of things that are regular in other countries that end up being adopted by weird niche groups in the US and take on... In some cases, like creepier, weirder elements, right? Like Tango in Argentina, normal. Tango in some places in the United States, super weird.

• 19:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:34Tim Ferriss?

  And I'm just saying that as someone who loves Tango and dances, dances in many places, but primarily in Argentina way back in the day. Same thing with Japanese stuff. It's like, oh, manga, cool. And then you find like a little subculture in a given city in the US and you're like, wait a second, it's all 40 year old guys who are like reading creepy, half porno hentai manga. Okay, I don't think I'm gonna hang out here.

• 19:55Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 19:56Tim Ferriss?

  Anymore. So, segue.

• 20:00Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 20:00Tim Ferriss?

  How do we segue from that? Let's segue from hentai. Hentai, you can look up, those people interested. There are two books that have helped me review and prep for this trip in terms of Japanese that I'd like to suggest people check out if you're interested in Japanese. Very short, and I was able to get through these really quickly. The first is probably for people who speak more intermediate Japanese, so you'd want some basics first, but it is 13 Secrets for Speaking Fluent Japanese. And this is by, I think it's Giles or Giles, G.I.L.E.S. Let's say Giles. Murray, M.U.R.R.A.Y. So 13 Secrets for Speaking Fluent Japanese, very, very helpful. And then the second is maybe a bit dry for some people, but I like very concise grammar

• 20:44Tim Ferriss?

  summaries that are quick reference. This is Japanese Verbs and Essentials of Grammar. And that is by Rita Lampkin, L.A.M.P.K.I.N. You were mentioning, I want to say, or at least this came up before we started recording, app, an app, apps, and app development.

• 21:07Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 21:08Tim Ferriss?

  And you said you wanted to talk about it.

• 21:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, we can kind of segue into just what we've been up to lately.

• 21:14Tim Ferriss?

  Sure.

• 21:15Speaker 00

  Because that's what we do at The Random Show. If you've tuned into previous episodes where we just get hammered and talk about weird stuff. So, yeah, so I want to get your take on this and kind of do a real time. You know, just hash something out because I haven't told you anything about that. Oh, I've told you a little bit about it, but I think it'd be fun to do on, on air and tell, and show people kind of what we're, what it's like to brainstorm some, some of this stuff. Sure. So here's the deal lately. So in my career, for people that, that, that know me and don't know me, um, you know, I built a bunch of different software applications, both on the web and mobile and worked at Google for a few years and done investing and things of

• 21:58Speaker 00

  that nature. Recently I've got back into building apps. And so I built an app around fasting that helps people do intermittent fasting that I wanted to give away for free. And that's a completely free app. Um, it's called Zero. Um, and then I wanted to do another app recently, um, around meditation. So meditation has been a hobby of mine on and off, I will say, um, like most of our friends that meditate for probably the last, I'd say three or four years. And I took, um, a course in transcendental meditation here, probably, um, six months ago, really enjoyed it, mantra based meditation. So when I say mantra, I'm talking about, um, you receive a word, you repeat that word over and over again. You've done this before, Tim, obviously.

• 22:43Speaker 00

  Yep. And you kind of go into more of a, um, kind of a, what would you call that state? It's almost like a hypnosis type state when you're doing the word over and over again. Very relaxing. Um, anyway, a different form of meditation versus a general mindfulness meditation. So one of the things I was thinking about for this app is to actually go completely public on the Supda Nuts creation of the application. So starting off by showing the wireframes, um, doing a kind of weekly video and showing off, um, you know, how you make certain decisions around app design, um, how you make usability trade offs, like what,

• 23:27Speaker 00

  what gets included in the app, what gets excluded. Um, you know, how you have to re-record audio because you don't like certain, uh, pieces of the audio you're putting together. There's a lot, there's, there's a thousand things that go into app creation, but it's also really scary because at the same time, You know, when anyone, any new entrepreneur is developing anything new, you kind of want to keep it close to the vest a little bit because it's kind of like your own secret sauce. It's your own proprietary stuff. What do you think about going out, going very public? Because you are a very guarded guy.

• 24:00Tim Ferriss?

  Not about some things.

• 24:02Speaker 00

  But having known you for many years now.

• 24:05Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 24:05Speaker 00

  Like you tell, when you're working on a new book, and I've seen you now through many books, you, you won't even share chapters of the book. You, you keep that stuff very close and very tight. What are your thoughts either way on doing something like this?

• 24:20Tim Ferriss?

  So the, the book, books are a unique animal to me in that respect, where I feel like memes can inadvertently be released into the wild and gain traction in ways that are unforeseen. If you start talking about a book that is going to take potentially three years to do, too early. And then that can create.

• 24:50Speaker 00

  Knockoffs.

• 24:51Tim Ferriss?

  Knockoffs and maybe push the way forward in such a way that you were paddling in the perfect place. And now you're going to be six, 12 months or more late to a party where you would have a superior product. But since you're not the first to market, you're not the first to mind share. So with, with books, I think that crowdsourcing ideas and feedback is most valuable in my experience when you have a clear idea first of what you would like to do. And then you use the wisdom of crowds to select from options that are of equal appeal to you. In other words, if you say, all right, we're going to include one of these three features, but we only have the manpower to focus on one. I like all three equally. Then let's, let's let the crowd decide.

• 25:36Tim Ferriss?

  I find that very actionable and helpful in many cases. But like, what should I write about?

• 25:43Speaker 00

  Right.

• 25:43Tim Ferriss?

  And let me just pick and choose and make a Frankenstein's monster. I find that very, very difficult. But in the case of an app, what is the? From where you are now to potential launch, what type of timeline are we looking at?

• 26:00Speaker 00

  Three months.

• 26:01Tim Ferriss?

  I wouldn't be worried at all.

• 26:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm not too concerned about it. I'm just curious to think about. It's a lot of work, obviously, to air it all out there because you don't want to be this one way communication where you just are pushing out content and you're not taking in feedback.

• 26:16Tim Ferriss?

  Sure.

• 26:17Speaker 00

  So, you know, I was gonna do a custom Slack group where I invited in a few hundred people, have them listen to the different various meditations as they're being developed because I'm gonna do both male and female voices guided meditations. I'm gonna be, I want to be the first app to actually teach mantra meditation.

• 26:37Tim Ferriss?

  Nachos, nachos, nachos.

• 26:39Speaker 00

  Nachos, nachos over and over again. That is not gonna be one of the mantras. So, yeah, anyway, it's just, it's a new thing for me to actually, because, you know, in building so many different pieces of software over the years, when I had started DIG here back, gosh, like 10 years ago and Reddit, and we had competitors around, we were very cautious about which features we launched because they were getting cloned so quickly. Like, almost like you said, whereas like, if you kind of like put out there this idea for a genre, all of a sudden you can have 10 or 15 other books spring up before yours is actually out there and they gain mind share, right?

• 27:16Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 27:17Speaker 00

  So, I don't know. It's just me, it's potentially me being just a little bit gun shy here.

• 27:22Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Sorry to interject. I would just say that I do small, I would say, test group development for a lot of the content that goes into my books.

• 27:34Speaker 00

  Well, this is what you did for your first, actually, book cover, right? Or the name of it, right? Weren't you doing?

• 27:40Tim Ferriss?

  Did Google AdWords testing.

• 27:41Speaker 00

  Well, didn't you also print out covers and put them on a book? Tell people that story.

• 27:46Tim Ferriss?

  I did, yeah. This is a story fewer people know. So, a lot of people have heard about how I used Google AdWords to come up with, not to come up with, but I had about a half a dozen titles and subtitles. That were of equal appeal in effect for the four hour work week and tested them on Google AdWords for 150 or $200 over the span of a week and figured out very quickly, or Google figured out for me which combination worked best to maximize click through. Then that just went to an under construction page. But the other way that I tested was I printed out sample covers, different covers, once the title had been decided, and wrapped them around books that were the same size and

• 28:27Tim Ferriss?

  put them up on shelves at the borders that used to exist on University Ave in Palo Alto and sat there keeping track of how many people picked up different covers.

• 28:37Speaker 00

  Based on the title?

• 28:38Tim Ferriss?

  Based on the cover.

• 28:39Speaker 00

  Or based on the cover design?

• 28:40Tim Ferriss?

  That's right.

• 28:41Speaker 00

  Okay. Yeah. Because you'd already decided the title.

• 28:44Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, so I'd swap the covers every whatever it was, hour or so, and just stand there.

• 28:48Speaker 00

  What were some of the covers? Do you remember what they looked like?

• 28:50Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, it was mostly color scheme.

• 28:52Speaker 00

  Okay, so it wasn't like...

• 28:54Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, it was mostly color scheme. There were some design elements, but I test, I do test. But I would say a few things. Number one, you could capture the process and then release those after the app is launched. I think that would still be of equal value. I don't think you need to broadcast them while you are still in development. I don't think that's a necessity. Quick question for you, though, because I've wondered about this myself. I use Slack internally for a lot of my work with my team, but I've heard mixed reviews about Slack channels for communities. Some people seem to love it. I've had other people who will remain unnamed.

• 29:35Speaker 00

  Well, they cap it.

• 29:36Tim Ferriss?

  Who say, "Don't do it, it's a huge headache." Why use a Slack channel as opposed to, say, a private Facebook group?

• 29:44Speaker 00

  It's a great question. I actually thought about both. You know, I might go Facebook. The problem with Slack is due to the nature that it is just a real-time chat. I think that the expectation is a more immediate response from you.

• 30:00Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 30:01Speaker 00

  Versus it being just a general post in a Facebook group, which, you know, you can get back to in a Dare to and you know, you and I are both really busy people. I have a feeling that I probably will go Facebook.

• 30:12Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 30:13Speaker 00

  And Slack has a cap too.

• 30:14Tim Ferriss?

  Slack also doesn't have nested comments.

• 30:17Speaker 00

  Right. Well, they just added, they just added something like that.

• 30:20Tim Ferriss?

  Did they? Cause that drove me, drives me insane.

• 30:23Speaker 00

  No, it's not nested comments, but it's, it's kind of like sub threads around a single comment.

• 30:27Tim Ferriss?

  Right. That's what I mean.

• 30:27Speaker 00

  Yeah. So it doesn't show up as a straight nest in the timeline though. You kind of like click through into it. It's a, it's a little bit funkier than a standard nested comment, but yeah, they've added that. But you know, honestly Slack has been.

• 30:40Tim Ferriss?

  Can I add a side note?

• 30:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:41Tim Ferriss?

  Just in case anyone from Facebook is listening to this, request, please, pretty please. If I could sort my comments by most liked or upvoted, that would make my life so much easier. On my fan page, on facebook.com forward slash Tim Ferriss, when I poll people or ask, uh, when I ask my audience for feedback on things like, hey, for a thousand square feet or less, what type of yurt or small house should I build on such and such a plot? Then I get all these incredible responses, but there seems to be no, and I've, I've asked some people at Facebook about this. There's no clear way that I have found to sort by most likes.

• 31:23Speaker 00

  Hmm. I feel like there's a.

• 31:24Tim Ferriss?

  Isn't that crazy?

• 31:25Speaker 00

  Don't they have a sort by most interesting?

• 31:27Tim Ferriss?

  They said, they have sort by most, uh, I think it's best or top or something like that, but it's an algorithm. It's not a straightforward most liked.

• 31:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:38Tim Ferriss?

  Indicator. So go figure. Uh, but the, uh, why, why a meditation app? What, what is driving you to do it? And what do you, what does success for you look like? Say you launch it in three months, three months after that, how will you know it, it has been successful or not?

• 31:55Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, well, a couple of things. Why? Um, I've seen changes in my own body and my own feelings in terms of a, just reducing anxiety and overall just happiness in general. And just giving me a little bit of space. You know, to be honest, there's a lot of great apps out there. I think that Calm and Headspace are two great ones.

• 32:19Tim Ferriss?

  Definitely.

• 32:20Speaker 00

  I've used both of them for, for many, many sessions. Um, one of the things that, um, I.

• 32:28Speaker 00

  When I started taking TM, that transcendental meditation that teaches mantra-based meditation, it was a very expensive process. You know, for most people, spending $1,500 on a three-day course is just, you know, that's a big chunk of their pay. Yeah, for sure. And so mantra meditation is, don't get me wrong, there's a lot of coaching there that I think is really valuable that TM provides, but I think that the concept is very, is pretty straightforward. Yeah. And so, honestly, I'm at the point in my career where I'm not trying to, you know, knock on wood, I've done fairly well in terms of investing and other things that I've, I've done. And this isn't about creating a big, multi-billion dollar business. It's

• 33:13Speaker 00

  about putting something out there that the world will enjoy, that is free, that people can get into. So, you know, I, I want to make an app that teaches both mindfulness and the kind of the more breathwork-based mindfulness meditation, as well as mantra meditation. And then also, I should have said breathwork as being a separate category. So, teaching more of the, the kind of yoga breathwork. And then a way to, to layer on some light social features. So, one of the things that none of these apps do is they don't allow you to engage really in a community and, you know, with your friends in a social

• 33:58Speaker 00

  way. And it's, it's a very difficult thing because you want to make sure that this isn't an ego-driven thing. It's not about, oh, I meditated more than you, so I'm better. It's more about encouraging each other to have a regular practice. And so, you know, I've built a lot of, of social apps in the past, and I think I can, I'm hoping that I can kind of tread lightly there and get the right mixture of features that are both high-quality guided meditation, along with unguided meditation, which I've, I've got some really amazing and beautiful kind of like, different chimes and gong sounds to bring you back to your awareness. But duck sounds. We can put ducks in there if you want. We can have a little Tim Tim shout-out if you want, whatever you'd like.

• 34:46Speaker 00

  But you know, it's one of those things when you're an app developer and you start using apps, they never fit you because you didn't build it.

• 34:54Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 34:55Speaker 00

  You know, and so I look at these apps and I'm like, I love them. They're great, but they're not what I would build. So this, I just want to have my own little take on it. And so it doesn't, for me, success doesn't mean, you know, 10 million people using it. It's, it's if I can just attract some more people to get into meditation and find a little bit more space in our life and a little bit less stress, I'll be happy.

• 35:18Tim Ferriss?

  What is the motivation behind wanting to share the step by step? Like you said, it's a lot of work to do that well.

• 35:26Speaker 00

  I think that one of the things, if you've taken a look at the podcasts that I've done in the past on my own, you know, through the journal podcast or the foundation series, it has been this theme of interviewing entrepreneurs to encourage other people and let other people realize that entrepreneurs, they're, they're just like anyone else. And so if they can see how we make mistakes along the way, because to get to a final product, to get to like a 1.0 version that you launch, you change your mind 50, 75, 100 different times before you actually launch something. And so, you know, there'll be so many times

• 36:10Speaker 00

  where I'll build something, I'll get it in my hands, meaning build it in wireframes, build it in design.

• 36:16Tim Ferriss?

  Just for those people who don't know the term, what are wireframes?

• 36:19Speaker 00

  So wireframes are essentially what, what I use and what, what most people use as their very first layout, meaning that, let's just say you're going to design the front page of Instagram as an app. You would draw a box and type in picture goes here. You would draw a circle and say, user profile photo goes here.

• 36:41Tim Ferriss?

  Like storyboarding beats choose your adventure for.

• 36:45Speaker 00

  Right. Yeah, it's a blueprint. It's a house blueprint. So you look at it.

• 36:48Tim Ferriss?

  Visual flowchart in, with different actions.

• 36:51Speaker 00

  Exactly. So if, if click this goes to this page, if click this goes to that, if. On motion notifications does this, you know, so it's a very complex kind of series of just well, they call it wireframes because it is like wire boxes. And then you get that on the phone. So you can kind of tap around. So you make these mockups that you can actually tap on with your finger and walk through. And oftentimes you'll be like, oh, that doesn't feel right. Or gosh, I wish this icon was over here, or this doesn't make sense. So there's a lot of iteration that goes into that. And I just want people to, and I know so many people and entrepreneurs or potential entrepreneurs that have talked to me in the past have always said, I'm scared to make

• 37:33Speaker 00

  that leap and I don't think I have it in me. And I think if I can expose to people that how many mistakes that we all make in building these things that maybe they'll think like, well, gosh, I could do this too. I just want to encourage more creativity amongst would be entrepreneurs. If that makes sense.

• 37:50Tim Ferriss?

  It does make sense. Let me ask you a question that I've already asked you, but we didn't really get into because I've been fascinated by and used apps for a really long time for all sorts of things. And like many people out there have had some ideas for apps. I've had listeners and readers of mine request apps, say from me for different things.

• 38:15Speaker 00

  Easily have an app, a very popular app, I'm sure.

• 38:17Tim Ferriss?

  But, but my fear has been not does not the onus of designing a good app, which I think with the people that I know, with the people that you know, with the people that I have access to, and maybe even people listening to this podcast who want to help, that designing a good app is achievable. My fear has always been to do that and then be on the hook for updating indefinitely for the rest of my life, every week, every day, whatever it might be, that you're just at that point caught in a very taxing and labor intensive maintenance mode. And you said, well, no, you just have to design it right the first time, or something along those lines. So could you elaborate on

• 39:00Tim Ferriss?

  that? Because the fear, and this comes from a place, maybe that is

• 39:06Tim Ferriss?

  No longer relevant, but having used, for instance, V Bulletin.

• 39:09Speaker 00

  Right.

• 39:10Tim Ferriss?

  As Bulletin.

• 39:10Speaker 00

  V Bulletin, oh my god.

• 39:12Tim Ferriss?

  And it was just like every day was a fire drill with some type of vulnerability or botched something and it was.

• 39:18Speaker 00

  Explain to people what that is for people that don't know. That's old school talk.

• 39:21Tim Ferriss?

  V Bulletin is, or was, very popular bulletin board software. So if you wanted to build.

• 39:27Speaker 00

  Message board.

• 39:27Tim Ferriss?

  Message board. If you wanted to build a forum or something along those lines, you could use V Bulletin. And the amount of headache and spam infiltration and moderation and nonsense that I and my team had to deal with on a probably weekly basis was just unbelievable, primarily because of updates that either were completed improperly or sometimes completed or additional bug fixes needed. It was really a big headache. And of course, when I pick up my iPhone almost every day, it's like 37 notifications on App Store.

• 40:03Speaker 00

  New updates, yeah.

• 40:03Tim Ferriss?

  New updates for every app.

• 40:04Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 40:06Tim Ferriss?

  How can you minimize the amount of maintenance that goes into something?

• 40:09Speaker 00

  So let me put it this way. Some things have gotten a hell of a lot better. Some things still require a little bit of work. So let me, let me start with what's gotten better. So back in the day, when you built an application for the web or anything else, you had to host your own software. So roll your own servers. I mean, there were times when, when dig was really taking off and gosh, we had 38 million people using our site every month. And I had, oh gosh, I want to say 75 to 100 servers that we physically would move into a location and rack mount, like screw them in and hook them up. And, you know, it was, you had to touch the actual metal, right?

• 40:53Speaker 00

  So Amazon was probably, they were the first ones to really take over, them and RackSpace and a couple others. Decided, okay, we know that's a headache. Let's, let's get rid of that problem and actually allow sysadmins to interact with these servers, but they don't actually have to touch the metal. We'll do all the rack mounting for them. Okay, so now, fast forward to today, a lot of this stuff is magic. And when I say magic, meaning that Google and Amazon and a few others have really created

• 41:30Speaker 00

  these automatically scaling databases and services that you can essentially, if you pay them enough money, will automatically scale. Meaning, I'll give an example. Let's say you create an application and you're like, okay, this looks like a fun little social photo sharing application. Back in the day, you'd have one little rented server that you paid $99 a month for. And if you become popular, your server falls over, it stops working, you're screwed, you're running all over the place, you're, you're, you're paying people to rack mount more servers for you. Google has figured out, and, and many others, Microsoft and, you know, all of the, the

• 42:12Speaker 00

  big players these days have figured out that they will handle all of that and automatically scale things for you. And they've created certain types of databases and other services that more or less automatically scale. So if you become Snapchat overnight, it's just a matter of dollars going in.

• 42:33Tim Ferriss?

  Just a matter of your credit limit on the Amex you have on file.

• 42:36Speaker 00

  Exactly, exactly. So there's none of that concern anymore. So that's the nice piece that's been taken care of.

• 42:40Tim Ferriss?

  So we're talking about, say, Amazon Web Services.

• 42:43Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 42:44Tim Ferriss?

  What are some of the other?

• 42:45Speaker 00

  I mean, Microsoft, Heroku to some extent, even though it's a little bit more managed and sits on top of Amazon. You know, Oracle has some stuff that plays in this space. All, all the big players have.

• 42:56Tim Ferriss?

  All the usual.

• 42:57Speaker 00

  All the usual.

• 42:58Tim Ferriss?

  Usual suspects.

• 42:59Speaker 00

  Exactly. So the thing that is difficult, the one thing that is, that is tough, is that you still manage the application. So if you're building an app, let's just say Snapchat, for example. And you want to make a change to a feature in your app. So if you have the Tim Ferriss app and you're like, okay, I want to feature podcasts, but guess what? You know what? I want to add blog posts now, too. You have to write that additional change, or if there's a bug in your app, you have to fix that bug and push out a new release. Or if there's a new iOS version that comes out that deprecates some of the old features that were in your old iOS version, you have to then upgrade your version of that software, rewrite some code, and then

• 43:39Speaker 00

  re-release it. So, long story short, and trying to get less technical, but you maintain the app, the backend, what scales and allows people to use it, is a lot easier to scale, but you still have to make sure to support your app and keep it current.

• 43:54Tim Ferriss?

  So what should the expectation be then? Let's just say, or let's not make it abstract. Like, if I did a long weekend jam session, came up with some wireframes with a couple of competent folks, just grounded out with a lot of caffeine, and then went into development, you said three months, let's say I gave myself and the team, whatever, three to six months to ship.

• 44:23Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 44:24Tim Ferriss?

  And got it out there. Okay, boom, it goes out.

• 44:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:26Tim Ferriss?

  What should my expectations be in terms of maintenance for the next year?

• 44:31Speaker 00

  Your expectation should be that within the-

• 44:33Tim Ferriss?

  If it has moderate popularity.

• 44:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:35Tim Ferriss?

  It's not Snapchat, but it also just doesn't die on the vine.

• 44:39Speaker 00

  Okay, so within the first 48 hours, there's going to be a bunch of bugs that show up, just because you have a mass of people using it for the first time. That's to be expected.

• 44:47Tim Ferriss?

  Sure.

• 44:47Speaker 00

  Different OS versions, everyone's running-

• 44:49Tim Ferriss?

  Happens with books, too, by the way.

• 44:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly.

• 44:52Tim Ferriss?

  Oh shit, I misspelled my own name on the cover page. Great.

• 44:55Speaker 00

  A little bit easier to fix in the app world, but yeah, so that's going to happen. So you've got to push a pretty quick release out after that. But again, it's a few- Little code fixes and you submit it to the App Store and it goes right out and everybody gets the update, at least those that choose to update. And then, you know, it's just a matter of usage in terms of dollars. So with an audience of your size, let's say you have a few hundred thousand people using it. If it's pretty image intense, that's going to cost you some money. You know, you could be thousands of dollars per month.

• 45:28Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 45:28Speaker 00

  That's not, that's not out of the question. You know, I have an app called the little fasting app, Zero. It doesn't require any backend, which is awesome because it's all localized on the phone. So I don't have to pay anything for that. It just runs.

• 45:42Tim Ferriss?

  It's like a software program that runs on the phone.

• 45:44Speaker 00

  Right, exactly, exactly. Stores all the data locally, all that good stuff. So, so that's really easy. If yours is just pulling an RSS feed and making a really easy way for people to have a conversation and enjoy your podcasts, that's a pretty straightforward thing. That's not going to cost you a lot of money. I mean, it's going to be next to nothing. You probably wouldn't even need a backend to do all of that. So, you know, it's just the cost of actually developing the app. And so, you know, that can range from anywhere from a few thousand dollars to 10 or 15,000 dollars.

• 46:13Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. In terms of cost. So I'm not, I'm not concerned so much with the cost of, of bandwidth.

• 46:18Speaker 00

  Maintenance is not a ton, by the way.

• 46:20Tim Ferriss?

  It's more managing developers to, it's like, oh shit, Apple rewrote the book and came out with an OS that makes half of the app obsolete.

• 46:29Speaker 00

  Though, they, they always give you a lot of time. Anytime Apple makes a major change and they say, hey, this is going to be deprecated over, you know, it's, it's always a year. And then it's not, you're not going to be rewriting stuff from the ground up. I mean, there was a point where that happens every few years, like Apple will move from Objective C to say Swift, which is their new programming language, which they did a few years ago. But still, they support the old stuff. So, you know, it's not the end of the world, but. The upside is huge. I mean, you have the ability to push notifications. Anytime someone that's listening to this, when you receive one of those push notifications, that is such a very powerful way to pull people back into your brand and back into

• 47:12Speaker 00

  your product to get them to be your top of mind then, right? Like, how else, right now, can Tim Ferriss tell you about something new in his life? Via Twitter? Sure, but how many people are actually going to be on Twitter?

• 47:25Tim Ferriss?

  Twitter's like throwing a golf ball into the, you know, the Niagara Falls. I'm hoping that somebody sees it.

• 47:31Speaker 00

  You hope somebody sees it on Facebook. You could boost the post and get a little more people to see it and you pay a little bit of dollars there. But when you own your own app and you get people to opt in for those push notifications, those are real actionable things that people swipe into and then they're back into your experience. So the engagement is really high and worthwhile.

• 47:50Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I mean, what I've fantasized about is, for instance, having the ability to centralize all of the various bits and pieces of the experiments I'm doing and so on in one place, right? So you would have the social feeds and all that stuff within the app, but then you'd have the podcast, then you'd have the ability, for instance, when I'm traveling, as I do a lot, if I'm in Nashville, or I'm in Tokyo, or I'm in Detroit, or wherever it might be, I could actually send push notifications based on location.

• 48:23Speaker 00

  Oh, absolutely.

• 48:23Tim Ferriss?

  To people within 100 mile radius to say, hey.

• 48:26Speaker 00

  It's called geofencing.

• 48:27Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, geofencing. So it's like, in two days, I'm going to buy drinks for anyone who wants to swing by Joe's Bar at this time and this night and just push it out to people who are in that zone.

• 48:40Speaker 00

  I've told you, you should build your own app.

• 48:42Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 48:42Speaker 00

  It doesn't have to be that crazy. Start off with something that people can just opt into, get some great updates from you, and, you know, you can slowly expand it over time. You don't, that's the one thing that I always try and encourage people to do is, this doesn't have to be everything on day one. Like, that's the beauty of software updates. Like, start with what you think are the, take your laundry list of 15 features that you would like to see in the next two years, narrow it down to three to five that you must have for a version 1.0, and go launch with that.

• 49:14Tim Ferriss?

  Well, who is it? Reid Hoffman has said if you're not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you ship too late.

• 49:20Speaker 00

  That's right. That's right. That's great advice.

• 49:22Tim Ferriss?

  Which doesn't apply necessarily to books, by the way, but software.

• 49:26Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 49:26Tim Ferriss?

  That you can update quickly, for sure. So what else? What else is new, man?

• 49:30Speaker 00

  Gosh, that's, that's kind of my focus right now. You know, I've been bouncing around, doing different kind of board advisory stuff, doing a little bit of angel investing, helping out Houdinki, where I spent a bunch of time there, and building apps. So this is going to be my new, my new thing. I will say, before, I want to get into your stuff, but the last thing I will say is if people do want to join all this stuff, I have an email newsletter called The Journal, and just head on over to thejournal.e-mail, and you can sign up there, and I will send you a way to take part in this meditation app. I'd love to have you, have you try it out and tell me what you think. But I want to know, dude, I want to know what you've been up to, because you've been busy as hell.

• 50:15Speaker 00

  I feel, I feel like, when I first invited you to the birthday thing out here in Japan, I didn't know if you were going to make it, because you, you've been doing the, the book launch madness tour.

• 50:26Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, that's, that's effectively wrapped up. I mean, what, what a lot of people don't realize is that I've never done a technical book tour. I've always done, at least for the last three books, my rhythm, and I'm actually going to have a mini documentary coming out soon about this, because I hired, for the first time ever, hired a videographer to follow me around during week one of the Tools of Titans book launch, which ended up putting it at number one New York Times. And the first time I've had a book in consecutive weeks from the get-go at New York Times number one, and he tracked the whole thing. So you get to see behind the scenes. But the point I was going to make is that I do

• 51:07Tim Ferriss?

  two weeks in New York, typically in late November, early December. Then I take a breather over the holidays, and then I hit the ground running again on the West Coast this time for two weeks. And that's it. That's effectively the book launch, because, keeping in mind that a lot has been set up and put in motion months before the actual publication date. So there are things that are locked and loaded and ready to go on day one, or day zero, I guess. But the-

• 51:38Tim Ferriss?

  The book launch was, book launch is 24/7 engagement. At least I treat it that way because I would rather overdo it or overcommit by 20% and feel like I've left everything on the playing field than to dial it back, go 80%, hit number two or number three. Very competitive, so I don't respond well to that. Congrats on that, man. Thank you. You hit it. But it's like, I would rather overdo it for a short period of time and leave no doubt that I did everything that could have been effective, rather than going 70 or 80%,

• 52:19Tim Ferriss?

  not hitting the goal, and then ask myself every point thereafter, what if? Like, what if I'd done that extra 20%? And it was a spectacular experience. So that is now wrapping up. It's effectively wrapped up. I mean, really, the last event for the, well, there are two sort of last events. There was Jimmy Fallon, being on Jimmy Fallon, which was fantastic. Did some acro yoga with Jimmy, listens to the podcast, hey Jimmy? And had a fantastic time. Jimmy's awesome. You've spent time with him. He is, for people who wonder, Jimmy is everyone you would hope him to be. Like, he is the sweetest, most encouraging, most positive guy you

• 53:04Tim Ferriss?

  could imagine. And it's so noticeable, and I'm not going to name names, but I've been on a lot of media, and TV jobs are really hard jobs. I'm not talking about Jimmy, although his job is very hard. I'm talking about everybody. It is a really tough business. And the staff on that show are happy people. Like, they were joking around, having a good time. It was a really, really exciting and affirming culture to observe when I went on the show. So there was Jimmy Fallon, and then there was the Castro Theater event that I did in San Francisco. And that was effectively the tail end of it. So right now, I'm in a

• 53:45Tim Ferriss?

  period of slack, a bit of a... How does that make you feel? You know, I'm practicing getting more comfortable with that. I like to have a big thing in the works and to have, I like to have around in the chamber, ready to go. And I'm very good, and I think you and I are both good at setting goals and then backing into that goal and setting a timeline, just like you're working on your apps, right? I mean, you think about it very methodically and that is fantastic for achievement, but it makes you very future focused. And I think that you can leave appreciation and happiness on the table a lot of the time

• 54:29Tim Ferriss?

  if you're always future focused. So I'm trying to deliberately not have an immediate huge project to jump into next. And how does that make me feel? I'll be honest, at times very uneasy because I'm, I feel like things are red hot. I feel like there's a lot of encouragement from other people to strike while the iron is hot. And I think that selectively, that's not bad advice, but I remember BJ Novak said to me once on this podcast, in fact, and I'm paraphrasing here, but he's like, if Will Smith doesn't do a movie for three years, people aren't like, where's Will Smith? That guy hasn't done anything. Like if he can all, if you're, if you have some degree of talent or ability, you can

• 55:14Tim Ferriss?

  get other people's attention again if you have to. And so I think that sense of urgency where it's like, no, I have to do another big thing or else, or else what? It's, I don't think that there's that, I don't think that pressure is, is intrinsically healthy or helpful necessarily. So right now, you know, I just finished reading this book, I think it's Cal Newport, who wrote a book called Deep Work, just about really mitigating the reactivity that a lot of people experience. On a daily or weekly basis to focus on different types of deep work, whether that's blocking out three more, three hours in the morning, whether that's blocking out a day a week, whether that's blocking out a few weeks a year,

• 55:59Tim Ferriss?

  as Bill Gates does, to effectively go off the grid and do a lot of deep reading, deep thinking. Having some type of commitment and scheduling in advance that allows you to do that is something I've been thinking about a lot. So this year, I've been proactively looking through 2017 and blocking out extended periods of time for unknown purposes.

• 56:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was curious about those unknown purposes because I would say that, you know, I first met you when you launched your first book at the launch party.

• 56:30Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, Hunt for Rent in October.

• 56:32Speaker 00

  Work week, yeah, on the boat.

• 56:34Tim Ferriss?

  On the SS Jeremiah working Homeland Security warship. If people want to, it's for rent in San Francisco.

• 56:39Speaker 00

  That's right. You can rent out a boat for a party. It's actually pretty badass, the old warship. But the one thing that I've seen you do is you've found your next thing every few months or every six months or so, something like that.

• 56:54Tim Ferriss?

  Sure.

• 56:56Speaker 00

  What do you want, what do you want your tombstone to read?

• 57:02Speaker 00

  You know, like, what's it, what's it going to be? When you sum it all up and you, you pass away, we're all going to die.

• 57:08Tim Ferriss?

  Sure.

• 57:09Speaker 00

  What, what's, what is, what is Tim Ferriss at the end of the day?

• 57:13Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you know, I don't think it'd be something grandiose. I think it would be a teacher who always wanted his students to be better than he was. I think that's it, something along those lines.

• 57:24Speaker 00

  You consider yourself a teacher then?

• 57:26Tim Ferriss?

  I mean, I'm more than a writer, for sure. Writing is just a vehicle for trying to impart things that I've learned and.

• 57:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, but your writings are teachings and some, I think every, everything that you've done has been about teaching, right?

• 57:39Tim Ferriss?

  In some, in some capacity, absolutely. Where it's, it's, it's a vehicle. It's a tool that I use to teach. And I always thought I was going to be a ninth or 10th grade teacher, actually. But the, I think it's a very critical window for a lot of kids. I know it was for me. And it just so happened that the book, and now the podcast even more so, provides, because it can be a secondary activity versus a book.

• 58:11Tim Ferriss?

  An opportunity to reach more than, say, a classroom of thirty to fifty kids, or fewer, and takes it to the millions instead, which is a huge opportunity. And I think about it a lot. I think it's a huge opportunity. It's a huge responsibility not to squander it.

• 58:28Speaker 00

  What do you want to teach people?

• 58:31Tim Ferriss?

  I want to teach people how to think bigger, question the limitations that they've set for themselves, that have been absorbed from people around them, whether that's family, friends, critics, otherwise, and to test, to test intelligently, to experiment intelligently. I think if you do those three things, you're set for most things, at least in terms of goal achievement. I think if you, if you, if you train yourself, and by train, I mean, practice in some systematic way, thinking big, questioning limitations

• 59:14Tim Ferriss?

  that you've accumulated, or that you've assimilated from other people, and then experimenting intelligently, and knowing how to limit your losses, and how to think about downside in a, in a non-fearful way, if that makes sense?

• 59:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 59:30Tim Ferriss?

  In, in, in effect, learning to be able to ask, you know, what's the worst that could happen, and then planning experiments in that, within that, the boundaries. Yeah, I think you're kind of set for most things, whether that's learning a language, building a huge business, helping a group of people overcome drug addiction, whatever it is. I think that those, those three are very, very, very critical.

• 59:52Speaker 00

  So when people look at, at kind of what you've done over the last few years, you know, you've launched a series of successful books, you just made the cover of Entrepreneur Magazine, which is awesome.

• 1:00:05Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:07Speaker 00

  I think from the outside looking in, and I, I know I've had, been fortunate as well to have people ask me a very similar question, which I want to ask you, is, you know, they tend to think that people that have a little bit of success, they have it all figured out.

• 1:00:23Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:23Speaker 00

  They, you know, and I think in reality, at least for me, that's never been the case.

• 1:00:28Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:28Speaker 00

  What, what, what don't you have figured out?

• 1:00:33Tim Ferriss?

  I mean, I think you could ask me, what do you have figured out? And I'd have trouble coming up with answers. And that that list is a lot easier because because the more that I, oh, yeah, I could give you. I think that.

• 1:00:47Speaker 00

  What are things that you struggle with?

• 1:00:49Tim Ferriss?

  Ah, thinking about marriage and kids.

• 1:00:51Speaker 00

  A little deep here tonight.

• 1:00:52Tim Ferriss?

  Thinking about marriage and kids for sure.

• 1:00:54Speaker 00

  Okay, marriage and kids, relationships is tough.

• 1:00:56Tim Ferriss?

  Is is tough because if I'm looking at it empirically as, say, an investor in certain social constructs, as it's typically.

• 1:01:11Speaker 00

  Why is that tough for you though?

• 1:01:12Tim Ferriss?

  Hold on though, as it's typically formed or organized, marriage has does not have a good success rate. It just doesn't. I mean, like empirically data driven in the United States just does not so.

• 1:01:25Speaker 00

  But this is the data driven side that you can't, I feel like you can't, how can you apply data to love? Like, I feel like those things.

• 1:01:33Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I think I think marriage is, I think love, well, I was gonna say is necessary, but not sufficient. But even love is not necessarily necessary for successful marriage. I know that sounds weird, but I know people who've had arranged marriages, learned to love each other over, say, 20 years and have wonderful families. I know also a higher percentage of people who were passionately in love didn't think about long term compatibility or value orientation and ended up imploding into, you know, like a supernova of sort of psychological destruction and financial destruction.

• 1:02:14Tim Ferriss?

  So I haven't ruled out marriage, although I think it's largely unnecessary and an unhelpful legal construct in a lot of respects. Kids is more interesting to me, but it's, those are a few areas in my life with a lot of variables involved, changing variables, both known and unknown, that is is tricky. It's tricky. And I like to be really good at whatever I do.

• 1:02:48Speaker 00

  I know you do.

• 1:02:49Tim Ferriss?

  So diving into something and be like, well, if it works out, it's gonna be awesome. If it doesn't. Could be like a complete disaster for myself and those I care about most. That's not an easy leap of faith for me to make. So, so, so those, those are two examples, right? There, there are plenty of things I don't have figured out, but I would just-

• 1:03:07Speaker 00

  Let me ask you a question about love. I want to go on this one-

• 1:03:09Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, boy.

• 1:03:10Speaker 00

  Cause come on.

• 1:03:11Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I'll do it.

• 1:03:11Speaker 00

  Let me, let me go a little bit deeper here. Have a little sip of wine.

• 1:03:15Tim Ferriss?

  I've been drinking so much sake this-

• 1:03:17Speaker 00

  I know.

• 1:03:17Tim Ferriss?

  Pinot Noir tastes like sake, which is really weird.

• 1:03:20Speaker 00

  We've had a lot of sake tonight. So, the thing that, that you know is that you are a weird dude. And that's one, that's one of the reasons why we're friends. And I, and I think is so awesome is because we both like to get into really weird shit and, um, and kind of experiment on weird stuff.

• 1:03:40Speaker 00

  You, I gotta, I gotta say this story. I'm sorry, Tim.

• 1:03:43Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, God.

• 1:03:43Speaker 00

  Don't cut this out of the episode. I know you have the final files, but don't cut it out. You told me-

• 1:03:49Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, boy.

• 1:03:49Speaker 00

  In the car today. Can I say it?

• 1:03:52Tim Ferriss?

  Sure, I don't know what's coming.

• 1:03:53Speaker 00

  That you drank your own urine.

• 1:03:57Speaker 00

  Just because you were curious to what it tasted like.

• 1:03:59Tim Ferriss?

  Well, no, let me, let me back up. Let me give some context here. So, I was, I, I have a friend-

• 1:04:05Speaker 00

  Ladies aren't running-

• 1:04:07Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, no.

• 1:04:07Speaker 00

  Knocking on your door saying-

• 1:04:09Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, no, it's-

• 1:04:10Speaker 00

  Maybe a few, but-

• 1:04:11Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's, it's not-

• 1:04:12Speaker 00

  Those are marriage material.

• 1:04:13Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Not in my Bumble profile, but the, uh, it's not, not usually what I lead with, but the avid urine drinker. Urine acid forward. No, I, I met a few different folks over a relatively short period of time. One guy who said his aunt, I think it was, and then he was Indian. He said his aunt drank her urine, something like once a month or something like that for medicinal purposes, which didn't make a lot of sense to me. But I had, uh, read various accounts of people drinking urine, whether they were on a lifeboat or fill in the blank, right? And, uh-

• 1:04:49Tim Ferriss?

  Of all of the weird things I've done, I mean, I have taken out whole blood samples, have spun in centrifuges, reinjected locally into injuries. I've had things like, you know, BMP compounds that I've imported to inject into connective tissue. I've done some very odd stuff.

• 1:05:08Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 1:05:08Tim Ferriss?

  I mean, really, really odd stuff. And I realized I'd never, I'd never had a sip of my own urine.

• 1:05:16Speaker 00

  You've also never ate a shit sandwich.

• 1:05:19Tim Ferriss?

  No, I, well, I know. We were talking about this earlier, because one of our friends was like, well, it's a slippery slope. I'm like, yeah, before you know it, you're eating shit sandwiches for lunch. It's like, no, not quite. I mean, and yeah, so yes, I'm a weird guy. And I did over sink, because I thought I might puke after a day of fantastic hydration, had a sip or two of my own urine. And it wasn't that bad. I got to tell you, like, the Tim Ferriss 2016 vintage.

• 1:05:47Speaker 00

  Bottle it.

• 1:05:48Tim Ferriss?

  Was quite tolerable.

• 1:05:51Speaker 00

  You gotta have a few fans out there to pay for that.

• 1:05:53Tim Ferriss?

  It's quite tolerable. Well, where were you going with that? So yes, I did mention that.

• 1:05:56Speaker 00

  I was just saying that, like, you know.

• 1:05:57Tim Ferriss?

  I had a little bit too much caffeine earlier today, and I was volunteering all sorts of information.

• 1:06:02Speaker 00

  The only place that I was going with that is that, like, as being weird.

• 1:06:05Tim Ferriss?

  And by the way, just so people out there don't start drinking their piss every day, I'm not recommending it, guys. I was just curious. So I'm not.

• 1:06:13Speaker 00

  You're curious. That's fine.

• 1:06:15Tim Ferriss?

  I can guarantee you, I cannot think of a single legitimate doctor that I know who would recommend you drink your own urine.

• 1:06:21Speaker 00

  That's right. So, kids, don't try that at home.

• 1:06:24Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, don't try that out.

• 1:06:25Speaker 00

  I guess where I was going with that is just that, you know, being such odd ducks as you and I both are, it's got to make dating and finding that right person difficult in terms of, like, you probably have a different standard, they probably have a different, like, is that a hard match to find?

• 1:06:45Tim Ferriss?

  Well, you know the answer. It is. Of course it is. And I think also, the, I am not convinced at all, I'm actually quite convinced probably the opposite, that I need to, or want to date like a long haired version of Tim Ferriss. I think that would be

• 1:07:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:07:02Tim Ferriss?

  possibly a complete nightmare. Probably would be a complete nightmare. So I'm looking more for a compliment.

• 1:07:10Tim Ferriss?

  Then an overlap, if that makes sense.

• 1:07:13Speaker 00

  That's fair.

• 1:07:14Tim Ferriss?

  There are certain things that-

• 1:07:15Speaker 00

  That's smart.

• 1:07:16Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:18Speaker 00

  That may be too hardcore.

• 1:07:18Tim Ferriss?

  And in my defense, I've had some great relationships in the last, say, decade. I've had a lot of long-term, very healthy relationships.

• 1:07:29Speaker 00

  So what about the work stuff? What don't you have figured out?

• 1:07:32Tim Ferriss?

  Thanks for the life raft. The work stuff, I will tell you, I think that I'm not preoccupied by work. Like, I just don't. There are a lot of micro details that I haven't figured out, like Slack versus Facebook group, right? Like, all right, maybe I don't know exactly which of those. But that's such a, that's such window dressing. It's not material. It's a trivial, mundane thing that I'll think about because I find the technical aspects of it interesting or something. But on a macro level, there are no looming troublesome work questions that I'm grappling with at the moment.

• 1:08:11Speaker 00

  You seem to have found your life's work, then.

• 1:08:13Tim Ferriss?

  You know, I didn't, in a sense, I feel like the podcast, it started off as a break from writing and a creative outlet, a way to minimize verbal tics and improve my thinking and learn to ask better questions.

• 1:08:28Tim Ferriss?

  And I recognized from the beginning that it was effectively my favorite part of the book writing process without the writing, being able to interview experts and develop, hear their thinking, get a better understanding of their routines and what makes them tick and non-obvious solutions and all of that, but also to develop and improve my own thinking. And I thought about it as my favorite part of book writing without the writing. But now it's its own thing. And the podcast itself is something I enjoy so much and was never expected, it was never expected to go as long as it's gone. I mean, I'm at 225, 250 episodes now. It's nuts, man. We did the first one.

• 1:09:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, I know we did. That was a drunken episode.

• 1:09:14Tim Ferriss?

  That was a very drunken episode.

• 1:09:16Speaker 00

  You were like, I'm thinking about doing a podcast. I was like, alright, well, you know, because I did podcasts, I'd done over 500 episodes of Dignation. You know, and so I was like, okay, whatever. And let's practice, let's, let's have some wine. And it turned out to be a shit show, but it was.

• 1:09:31Tim Ferriss?

  It was such a shit show.

• 1:09:33Speaker 00

  It was fun.

• 1:09:33Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, man.

• 1:09:34Speaker 00

  I was there, I feel, I feel very honored to have kicked it off with you, so that's awesome.

• 1:09:38Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it was fun. So the, the work stuff, I would say the, the question I'm asking myself this year, 2017 for me is, I've resolved to think a lot about absurdity and beauty as criteria for projects that I take on. Because neither of them lend themselves very well, and we could debate this, but neither of them immediately lend themselves very cleanly to analytical sort of quantification that I rely on so heavily. Does that make sense? Like, I'm good at that.

• 1:10:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, so let's, give me an example, absurdity and beauty.

• 1:10:20Tim Ferriss?

  Well, absurdity, I would say in simple terms would be doing things just for the fuck of it.

• 1:10:27Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:10:27Tim Ferriss?

  That from the outside looking in, or maybe to anyone, don't seem to make any sense whatsoever.

• 1:10:33Speaker 00

  Urine.

• 1:10:34Tim Ferriss?

  No, even that has a story.

• 1:10:36Speaker 00

  Doesn't make any sense to anyone.

• 1:10:37Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, but the narrative behind it is, kind of makes sense. Like, if, if, if you were to tell that story to anyone who really knows me, they'd be like, of course, Tindrag is fucking urine.

• 1:10:45Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 1:10:46Tim Ferriss?

  Big surprise, that guy's a lunatic. But I really want to have more fun playing with the rules, the so-called rules out there. And whether that takes the form of large-scale pranks, or misdirection, or just general weirdness.

• 1:11:07Speaker 00

  To what end? What do, what are you hoping to achieve from absurdity?

• 1:11:10Tim Ferriss?

  There is no hoping to achieve, I would just say that.

• 1:11:12Speaker 00

  But I would imagine if you're gonna do something absurd, you're hoping, you have to have some hypothesis around what you want to achieve out of that.

• 1:11:20Tim Ferriss?

  I think it will stretch my mind in ways that I haven't stretched my mind before. By in every, almost every culture, if you look at mythology and say, traditional ceremonies, there is, there's a person designated, almost like a court jester, to speak truth to power, to play in the realm of the absurd, to be the prankster. And in some cases, they will do exactly the opposite of what social convention is. So if you're there in a very strict society, for instance, where people never eat with their mouths open, I'm just making this up, but they might run around, say, eating rice and dropping it all over the place out of their mouths.

• 1:12:05Tim Ferriss?

  For this, this temporary period, like carnival back in the day, where they're doing everything they're not allowed to do the rest of the year. And they act as a boundary tester and a walker between worlds, in a sense. I, I think there's a, I just, this is gonna sound odd, but I'm already admitted to drinking my own urine, so I, I think there's a lot of power. I, I just sense there is a lot of latent potential and power in that space, and we don't play enough in that space. I certainly don't. Hyper logical, and I think there's certain limitations to that.

• 1:12:49Tim Ferriss?

  And that in lieu of thinking, trying to think bigger, think bigger, think bigger, which has a place, that thinking stranger and stranger and stranger will actually get me more of what I want or need, some of which I might not even realize I need. So there's that. And I think at my heart also, I mean, you saw me earlier today in the car, on fire. I'm a joker, and I haven't done a lot of that.

• 1:13:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:13:16Tim Ferriss?

  Like, really, I haven't really embraced that. And I don't, so there's, that's, that's a component of the absurdity piece. And then beauty. Because, and this is maybe tied into the absurdity, I recall very closely my podcast with BJ Miller, one of my favorite podcasts I've done, hospice care physician, or palliative care physician, who's helped more than a thousand people die.

• 1:13:43Speaker 00

  I listened to his TED Talk, it was wonderful.

• 1:13:45Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, it's incredible. So we spoke for, whatever it was, two hours, and I asked him if he were bringing a patient in who was going to die in weeks or months, and they weren't very social, if they weren't going to interact with other patients, and say bake cookies, for instance, which is one of the most therapeutic activities that he mentioned for a host of reasons. And I should say also at the same time that when someone is in hospice, the expectation of people who come in to visit is sometimes that they will be having these Tuesdays with Maury-type, wide-ranging, philosophical,

• 1:14:27Tim Ferriss?

  existential conversations that are pregnant with meaning at every turn of phrase. And that's just not what happens. Like, a lot of dying is just going through your day-to-day routine, like brushing your teeth, and like taking a shit, and like watching TV, and just waiting for the end to come. It's not all huge philosophical breakthroughs. And that's where the bacon cookies comes in, in part because it's on behalf of nothing but the tasting and the smell and the communal interplay of these different patients. It is present state and present moment. But I asked him if someone's not going to do that, not engage, what would you give them? If you could give them three things. And he mentioned a comedy, he said plenty of space, I think he said, plenty of time and

• 1:15:10Tim Ferriss?

  space for just staring off and thinking, and then a book of Mark Rothko paintings. And I asked him about the Mark Rothko paintings specifically, and he explained, Mark Rothko paintings are, in effect, extremely expensive painted squares. Like $80 million for a huge painting, it's two orange squares on a canvas. And I asked him why, and he said, and I'm paraphrasing, but in effect, he wanted people to...

• 1:15:39Tim Ferriss?

  Consider and ponder how beautiful something potentially meaningless or pointless could be. The beauty in the meaninglessness. And that conversely, when people are getting closer to death, they grapple with some of these very big questions that might not have very good answers. So what happens after I die? Why me? Why now? These questions that are very stress inducing and can lead to a very difficult time and a very unpleasant time right up until death. So instead pondering the fact that maybe there is no answer to this, and maybe that's not a bad thing.

• 1:16:23Tim Ferriss?

  And that you don't need all the answers. You can experience beauty, you can observe beauty in the mundane and in these fucking painted squares that sell for 80 million dollars. And you can look at this and you can try to make sense out of it. And chances are you won't be able to make sense out of it. But yet, at the same time, you can behold some sense of aesthetic beauty and absorb that. And I've thought about that a lot because I'm a pattern. I think humans are pattern recognition machines and we look for answers and meaning and sense and logic in everything around us. And sometimes that produces more pain than joy, I think.

• 1:17:08Tim Ferriss?

  Certainly that's true for me. So those would be, I think, a few of the reasons why I want to do more art projects, in a sense. And that maybe this year isn't the year of big things for me. It's the year of little things.

• 1:17:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm with you. I just recently took a woodworking class that I, you know, was just one night a week for several weeks. And woodworking was something that my father was really into before he passed away. And I never really got a good chance to, um, honestly, I just was, was too busy to really pay attention. And just as, you know, dad is just always in your mind is always going to be around forever. And, um, turns out that's not the case. And the smell of sawdust to this day reminds me of my father. And I got back into that and it's, it was been pretty awesome. Actually, when we get back, when I get back to New York, um, a couple of days after we take off, I'm,

• 1:18:06Speaker 00

  I'm going to be taking a traditional Japanese woodworking class as well.

• 1:18:09Tim Ferriss?

  Kidding.

• 1:18:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:18:10Tim Ferriss?

  Do you want to tell people about where we went this afternoon?

• 1:18:12Speaker 00

  Oh, man. We went and saw one of, uh, Japan's living treasures.

• 1:18:20Tim Ferriss?

  Is it true? Dari told me you were like, hey, yeah, I'm into woodworking too.

• 1:18:24Speaker 00

  Did you? To him? No, I didn't say that. How would I even communicate that to him? I'd have nobody even say that.

• 1:18:31Tim Ferriss?

  We visited, uh, let's see, it was, uh, let me think. Kawagita, Mr. Kawagita, who's a national living treasure in Japan.

• 1:18:44Speaker 00

  In, in terms of woodworking, and I think there's one of seven total.

• 1:18:49Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:49Speaker 00

  And he was the youngest to ever receive the national treasure at

• 1:18:53Tim Ferriss?

  59, I want to say.

• 1:18:54Speaker 00

  59 and now he's

• 1:18:55Tim Ferriss?

  82.

• 1:18:56Speaker 00

  82.

• 1:18:56Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:57Speaker 00

  Beautiful stuff.

• 1:18:59Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, amazing.

• 1:19:00Speaker 00

  We both got suckered in and bought a few of his pieces.

• 1:19:02Tim Ferriss?

  I'm so happy about it.

• 1:19:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, so am I.

• 1:19:04Tim Ferriss?

  And these pieces in some cases take five, 10 years to make because they have to slowly whittle down a huge piece of wood to smaller and smaller forms. And at each step, they have to effectively let the wood rest to dry, among other things, so they can work with it effectively. And, uh, I didn't know that about the sawdust. So, I mean, when you walked into that workshop, sawdust, shavings everywhere.

• 1:19:28Speaker 00

  Oh, absolutely. Just reminds me of my dad. Yeah. A hundred percent. It's cool. I love doing stuff like that, though, in the same sense that of kind of pushing yourself into uncomfortable situations. Um, Dari and my wife thinks I'm crazy because I, I try to find at least, uh, I would say three to five things per year that push me in new directions. Um, for example, uh, it was snowing in New York recently and I like to walk around in Birkenstocks, uh, in the snow. And my feet freeze. I don't know why I do it, but I like how it brings me to the present moment. It sounds crazy, but one of the things I really enjoy about meditation

• 1:20:12Speaker 00

  is I can calm the mind.

• 1:20:15Tim Ferriss?

  This is also one of those, don't try this at home, kids.

• 1:20:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, I know, but.

• 1:20:19Tim Ferriss?

  Don't lose your toes.

• 1:20:20Speaker 00

  But it's, I'm, it's not like I'm out there for like four hours, but you know, I go out and take my dog out for a walk and, and I think people look at you a little strange, but it just like, you feel life. You feel that moment. You feel, I can feel it right there, you know? And I love, I think that's why I did Wim Hof's ice training. It's also why I've done extended fasting, like, things like that just really force you into kind of just this, this, this, this very, very, very present moment, which is awesome. And it's, it's hard to get there. I'm not going to act like I'm some zen-dout Buddhist master because I, 99.9% of the time, I am not. But you know what I'm talking about?

• 1:21:01Tim Ferriss?

  I do.

• 1:21:01Speaker 00

  You go into a meditation and most times, to be frank, meditation is just your mind jumping all over the place, being monkey mind.

• 1:21:08Tim Ferriss?

  Nachos, nachos, nachos.

• 1:21:09Speaker 00

  Every once in a while, nachos, nachos.

• 1:21:12Tim Ferriss?

  Quack.

• 1:21:13Speaker 00

  I've never done the duck. No, but every once in a while, it, it just turns into something beautiful and, and that's, that's what I want more of. So, anyway.

• 1:21:22Tim Ferriss?

  So how are you thinking about producing that more for yourself this year?

• 1:21:26Speaker 00

  Gosh, you know, I, I, this is the first year that I actually did away with New Year's resolutions because I don't want to force myself into having to prove something, or I'm actually just going to take it month by month. You know, I just turned 40. I feel pretty confident where I am in, in life and I want to be more vulnerable and just kind of.

• 1:21:54Speaker 00

  You know, I feel like-

• 1:21:55Tim Ferriss?

  Vulnerable to whom?

• 1:21:57Speaker 00

  To everyone, to everyone. I feel like my entire life I spent trying to build up to be something and constantly try and find the next level, to level up, to look for, oh, if I can only make X number of dollars more per year, oh, if only I could achieve this, if only if my startup could do this. Like, it was always this trying to push to level up. And it's just, man, one, I can't do it anymore because it's physically pulling me down. And two,

• 1:22:32Speaker 00

  there's no happiness to be found there. Like, you know, like, I think you and I have been very fortunate in that we've done some amazing things in terms of things that money can buy. And I can tell you that there's just, that's not where it comes from. Like, just because you are sleeping on a slightly better mattress, or have better walls, or a better front yard, or whatever it may be, that's not gonna make, your happiness starts in the brain, you know? It's like, and until you can settle that, and come to peace, and come to terms with your brain, nothing physical is gonna fill that void. Yeah, it's something that people always say. I mean, I'm not saying anything new here, but I realize that. And so, you know, I watched

• 1:23:16Speaker 00

  that documentary, The Minimalists, you've heard about those guys? I like their general message. I think that the idea of just like scaling back, and I've sold a bunch of stuff on eBay, I hadn't used eBay in like years, and I just got rid of a bunch of shit, and I'm happier. I have less things to maintain, less things, less garbage. I have a new rule. Oh, gosh. Well, this, I don't know if this is gonna sound, this is my rule. I get, I'm one of those people that get very wrapped up in the hot new thing, meaning that if someone's like, oh, you should try this supplement. And I know you're like this, Tim, because you told me you have like 20 bottles of unopened supplements of-

• 1:23:54Tim Ferriss?

  Well, we were talking about the 2 AM Amazon Prime Delirium. We're like, that's a fantastic idea. And then you're like, wait, why do I have three different like Chinese foot massages? How did I get these? You're like, oh, I see what happened.

• 1:24:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, it's easy to just want more things. And so, my new rule is that if it's gonna cost, you know, probably I'd say more than $50, $75, I wait 30 days.

• 1:24:23Speaker 00

  And if in 30 days, I still really, really want it and it makes sense in terms of like, you know, your budget or whatever it may be, and my wife's not gonna be pissed at me, then you know, you can decide to buy it or not.

• 1:24:34Tim Ferriss?

  So how do you keep track? You put it on Amazon wishlist?

• 1:24:37Speaker 00

  Yes, I save it as a wishlist. Yeah, if it's on Amazon, I do. Otherwise, I put it in a reminders doc and I gotta tell you, I've done this for-

• 1:24:43Tim Ferriss?

  Reminders doc where?

• 1:24:45Speaker 00

  Uh, just there's a reminders app built into Apple.

• 1:24:47Tim Ferriss?

  I see.

• 1:24:47Speaker 00

  And I will tell you that I've done this now for about three months and I would say 80 to 90% of the shit I would have normally bought, I just don't buy anymore. It's awesome. It is awesome. And I'm less stressed. I have less crap.

• 1:24:59Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:00Speaker 00

  I've done this with clothes. I just donated a ton of my clothes that I don't wear. And I probably have a quarter of the clothes that I used to. You were talking about, we'd, before we sat down, you said, I have 300 t-shirts.

• 1:25:11Tim Ferriss?

  No, I didn't say 300. He said, I said, I have too much shit and I, and I pulled out this shirt that I'm wearing right now, which I got for free, which I love. It's very comfortable. But I was like, I probably have 50 t-shirts. That's fucking ridiculous. A and B, I guarantee you, anyone who's spent time around me could be like, oh yeah, those are the eight t-shirts that you wear. You don't even wear those other 40.

• 1:25:33Speaker 00

  Oh yeah, I wear black t-shirts most nine, I would-

• 1:25:35Tim Ferriss?

  I've been fantasizing about going a little jobsy and then just getting a uniform, being like, okay, I'm gonna wear Miss Nana Manchinos with a black t-shirt and like van slip-ons and that's it.

• 1:25:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's, that's hard on the dating life though. Like, my wife would be like, change it up a little bit, you know?

• 1:25:53Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I, I'm okay. I wouldn't have anyone to veto my monotony. I mean, there, there's no one who would care enough to, about that kind of thing, to veto the monotony of my wardrobe, which let's be honest, is not exactly, you know, Gucci, uh-

• 1:26:11Speaker 00

  Catwalk wear. I gotta say, that's one of the things that I've, you know, we- We did this little, well, I don't have to talk about what we did, the dinner thing about going. We did this little thing at dinner where when I turned 40, I went around the table and talked about things that I really admire about everyone that was at the dinner. And one of the things that I, I don't know if I'd mentioned this about you, but that like, as you've increased your popularity and wealth and everything else over the years, you still, you still keep it the same, man. You got t-shirts and like flip flops and cheap shoes and all kinds of shit. I love that though. That's like, you just keep it real, which is kind of awesome.

• 1:26:46Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Well, I worry about, and we talked about this.

• 1:26:48Speaker 00

  Experience stretching.

• 1:26:49Tim Ferriss?

  So you call experience stretching. I don't know why it's called experience stretching, but hedonic adaptation, same thing, which is the unfortunate phenomenon of adapting to

• 1:27:04Tim Ferriss?

  new levels of comfort or quality in the things that you own.

• 1:27:09Speaker 00

  Oh, I can explain it.

• 1:27:10Tim Ferriss?

  So that your, your new baseline, your new baseline for below which you become dissatisfied and unhappy goes higher and higher and higher.

• 1:27:18Speaker 00

  I've got the best explanation ever. So here you go. You start off, you have a wonderful trip planned to Maui and you're like, gosh, I'm going to the beach. This is going to be awesome. Right? That's amazing.

• 1:27:28Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:29Speaker 00

  Then you see a sunset. You're like, oh, beautiful sunset. That was great. I really enjoyed that. You go to bed. Next day you wake up, another sunset, beautiful sunset. Oh, guess what? I'm going to have a glass of scotch with this. It's 12 year scotch. This is great. Next day you wake up, oh, you know what would be great? That glass of scotch again. But you know, if I added a cigar to this and they got these Cuban cigars my buddy got me, I'm going to have one of these, right? And you keep adding on and layering and experience stretching this entire time. And all of a sudden, guess what? That sunset, the original beautiful, amazing gift that you had that first night is not so special anymore. Because you don't have your scotch, you don't have your cigar. And if you experience stretched this whole thing and there's, it's very difficult to go back from there.

• 1:28:14Tim Ferriss?

  Where did you hear this? Where did you get the term? I'd never heard it before you brought it up.

• 1:28:19Speaker 00

  Ah, some book. I'd have to go figure. This was a few years ago, some book I read.

• 1:28:22Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, so this, this hedonic adaptation thing is something I think about a lot. And part of why, you know, I was just in, in, you mentioned Maui, I was just in Kauai a few weeks ago with Laird Hamilton and Gabby Reese. So Laird Hamilton, famed big wave surfer. Everybody should see Riding Giants documentary. It'll blow your mind. And Gabby Reese's wife is equally impressive in a million ways. And a bunch of other folks like Brian McKenzie and so on for XPT training, which was ice exposure, heat exposure.

• 1:28:56Speaker 00

  I love that.

• 1:28:57Tim Ferriss?

  Underwater weight training.

• 1:28:58Speaker 00

  Don't love that.

• 1:28:59Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, which is, which is intense. And a number of other things. Kelly Starrett was also there. All of these people have been on the podcast. And the, the safe dosing of pain and/or discomfort, maybe, in those circumstances. And the practice of, this is part of what appeals to me of the idea of a uniform also, is getting, say, not fancy t-shirts, but like Hanes, just wearing something super basic, right? A few dollar t-shirt for a period of few weeks would help me to remember,

• 1:29:39Tim Ferriss?

  or it would help to reinforce the fact that A, nobody really gives a shit.

• 1:29:46Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:29:46Tim Ferriss?

  Most people are like, maybe one out of 100 people will even notice. And then, second, that it doesn't matter. Like, it doesn't materially impact in any other way my life. And in fact, it simplifies a lot. And by doing that, I will be less likely to feel compelled. I don't buy a lot of clothing now, anyway.

• 1:30:05Speaker 00

  You're already like that, dude. It doesn't have to be the same thing over and over again. And you want a little variety for your spouse, though, you know?

• 1:30:12Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, no, I hear you. But I mean, I'm not quite there yet, A. But B, I do think that the fasting and these various practices, and this comes straight, if you really want to get nerdy people listening, you could check out, this is available on public domain. If you search for Seneca on Festivals and Fasting. That is letter 13 in a collection of letters called The Letters to Lucilius. And it talks about setting aside a certain number of days each month, or a week each quarter to subsist on the cheapest of food, the coarsest of dress, et cetera,

• 1:30:57Tim Ferriss?

  so that you offset this hedonic adaptation, which leads to some pretty miserable outcomes. Taken to an extreme, you and I both know, and have spent time with people who have hundreds of millions of dollars, who are miserable cunts.

• 1:31:11Speaker 00

  Oh, for sure.

• 1:31:12Tim Ferriss?

  I mean, they're really unhappy people. And they're like, oh, my day was ruined because my friend only brought me a $500 bottle of wine instead of a $1,000 bottle of wine. I can't even drink this.

• 1:31:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's too bad.

• 1:31:24Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, that's disgusting. It's a terrible place to end up. And not that I'm afraid of that because I drink like $4 wine from Trader Joe's and I'm perfectly happy most of the time. But I worry about that, something I worry about a lot.

• 1:31:38Speaker 00

  I don't think you need to worry as much as most people, man.

• 1:31:41Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 1:31:42Speaker 00

  You're pretty.

• 1:31:43Tim Ferriss?

  I don't have very expensive tastes, except when it comes to Japanese lacquerware, apparently.

• 1:31:47Speaker 00

  And horse saddles.

• 1:31:49Tim Ferriss?

  And horse saddles, yeah.

• 1:31:50Speaker 00

  You go to Tim's house and he's got like crazy ass gold plated horse saddles and shit.

• 1:31:54Tim Ferriss?

  I do have some weird stuff that I collect also from Japan. Uh, man, well.

• 1:32:02Speaker 00

  This is fun.

• 1:32:03Tim Ferriss?

  Another wide ranging random show. Anything else that you would like to mention before we?

• 1:32:10Speaker 00

  Uh, yeah, you know, I've, I've, I've got two things I'll mention. A little plug at the very end. My once a month newsletter, which I.

• 1:32:18Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, two times, two times in one show.

• 1:32:20Speaker 00

  Well, listen, I, it's a podcast too. I, I, did I tell you, I tell you I started my podcast back up again?

• 1:32:26Tim Ferriss?

  Are you?

• 1:32:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:32:27Tim Ferriss?

  Really?

• 1:32:28Speaker 00

  Well, it's under the journal now, but yeah. So I have a newsletter called The Journal. You can subscribe at thejournal.e-mail. It's once a month.

• 1:32:35Tim Ferriss?

  Great newsletter.

• 1:32:36Speaker 00

  It's a great newsletter. I got about 70,000 people on there that check it out. So I hope you join for that. It's also a podcast. I just had, uh. Some great guests on. I've added Elon Musk and a bunch of other folks on there. I hope you'll give it a listen. You can just type in the journal Kevin Rose into iTunes and find it there. So, thank you, guys. Appreciate it.

• 1:32:57Tim Ferriss?

  Give a couple more recommendations for people who want to explore. One is a sake recommendation.

• 1:33:04Speaker 00

  Oh, my God.

• 1:33:04Tim Ferriss?

  That we all had. And.

• 1:33:07Speaker 00

  We went to the factory.

• 1:33:09Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:33:09Speaker 00

  Gulped it down.

• 1:33:10Tim Ferriss?

  We had the most hilarious, I have to just mention this tour, because so sake factory tour is on the itinerary. So, we show up and this guy ended up being great, but he's like, oh, hey, you guys. All right, great. Take off your shoes. Come on in. This is all in Japanese. And so, we come in and he kind of walks us quickly past a bunch of these tanks containing sake. He's like, all right, you got it? All right, good.

• 1:33:39Speaker 00

  Look at the tank. It's bubbling.

• 1:33:40Tim Ferriss?

  Look at the tank bubbling. All right, great. That's the tour. And then walks us into his tasting room.

• 1:33:46Speaker 00

  No, no, no. Wait, before that, the one thing he did do is at the end of the tank.

• 1:33:50Tim Ferriss?

  This was the clincher.

• 1:33:51Speaker 00

  This is the clincher. Go ahead.

• 1:33:52Tim Ferriss?

  So, he has, he had a sipping ladle, in effect, is the best way I'll describe it. And he gave us some extremely fresh, unpasteurized sake, which I'll be honest, folks. I'm a Japanophile. I've spent a lot of time here. I've had a lot of sake. Most of it kind of tastes the same. I mean, I know that's going to offend a lot of people, but generally, most of it, you're kind of like, eh, okay.

• 1:34:17Speaker 00

  Good sake is good sake.

• 1:34:17Tim Ferriss?

  It's sake. I mean, if it's terrible, it's terrible, right?

• 1:34:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:34:20Tim Ferriss?

  But this stuff was fucking unbelievable. Everybody.

• 1:34:26Speaker 00

  I wanted to drink the whole ladle and it was a big ladle.

• 1:34:29Tim Ferriss?

  And everyone on this trip can consume a fair amount of alcohol. These are experienced drinkers.

• 1:34:38Tim Ferriss?

  And everybody was astonished. So we go in, then we go into the tasting room and we're expecting he's gonna sit down. He'll be like, here, well, first we're gonna have this. Let me tell you about the notes and blah, blah, blah. But no, he sets out these glasses next to

• 1:34:52Speaker 00

  We each get one cup.

• 1:34:53Tim Ferriss?

  About, yeah, yeah.

• 1:34:54Speaker 00

  One glass.

• 1:34:55Tim Ferriss?

  10 bottles in a row. And he's like, yeah, no, just get in the line like buffet style and go down and have a glass of each one.

• 1:35:01Speaker 00

  And he puts the, the alcohol like pours into the, the bottle at the top.

• 1:35:07Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:35:07Speaker 00

  Did you go to that?

• 1:35:08Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah. Like a bartender.

• 1:35:09Speaker 00

  Like a bartender. Yes. And so we just went down the line and just got hammed.

• 1:35:13Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Basically, every person was ham boned by the time they were done with like a 45 second tasting of 10 glasses of sake.

• 1:35:20Speaker 00

  So we were in and out like 45 minutes hammered and then bought all the sake.

• 1:35:23Tim Ferriss?

  Are the most efficient sales job ever. However, the sake is amazing. So this one is, has the hilarious name of Kiss of Legend, Japanese sake. And this is Junmai Daijinjo. Junmai is pure sake or unadulterated, literally means pure rice. Junmai, which I believe just means they haven't added separate alcohol into it, which you can taste for sure. And then Daijinjo, which means about, I think, I want to say 60% or so of the rice husk.

• 1:35:58Speaker 00

  I think it's a little bit higher than that.

• 1:35:59Tim Ferriss?

  Maybe higher has been removed. And this should be reasonably easy to find. I'm blanking on the producer name in my kanji or a little bit difficult to discern at this point in the evening. I would also say for those people looking for a book to read, I'm reading right now and I'm, I'm gonna blank on the author name, but it is so far fantastic called Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. And spectacularly well researched and well written and complements my favorite podcast series of episodes I've ever listened to, which is Hardcore History.

• 1:36:38Tim Ferriss?

  That's Dan Carlin, Hardcore History, Wrath of the Khans. So I think they're very, very complimentary. If you're more of an audio person, you could either listen to Wrath of the Khans on Hardcore History or get an audio version of this book that I'm reading right now. And I'm only about 5% into it, but it's incredibly intelligently written and just a compelling and well researched.

• 1:37:03Tim Ferriss?

  Account of this figure and the legacy they've left behind.

• 1:37:08Speaker 00

  Awesome. And last thing I'll plug is a documentary called The Birth of Saki. I know we've talked about

• 1:37:14Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:37:14Speaker 00

  Before.

• 1:37:15Tim Ferriss?

  Fantastic.

• 1:37:15Speaker 00

  But all shot on really beautiful HD cameras. I guess everything's shot on HD these days, but.

• 1:37:22Tim Ferriss?

  Shot on beautiful standard depth.

• 1:37:23Speaker 00

  Standard VHS. No, but it really does cover the entire creation, kind of soup to nuts on creating Saki and how much labor actually goes into the process. It's a really touching story. So check it out on Netflix.

• 1:37:38Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, you know what? Since you mentioned your newsletter, I think I will mention mine as well. I'm pretty sure you can get to this Five Bullet Friday. It's very popular. Got lots and lots of folks, probably close to a million now, who get this every Friday. It's just a couple of recommendations, cool things that I found, like the Saki or the book or other things that I've come across. And you should be able to find it if you go to tim.blog/friday. That's tim.blog/friday. It's free. And you can check that out. Birth of Saki, fantastic. Kevin Rose.

• 1:38:16Speaker 00

  Hi.

• 1:38:17Tim Ferriss?

  Happy birthday.

• 1:38:19Speaker 00

  I got it, guys.

• 1:38:20Tim Ferriss?

  And we will talk to you guys soon. And signing off, you'll be able to find links to all of the things that we mentioned, all the goodies, at the usual show notes page, that's tim.blog/podcast. And until next time, thank you, guys, for listening.

• 1:38:36Speaker 00

  See you, guys.

• 1:38:37Tim Ferriss?

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

• 1:39:19Tim Ferriss?

  And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out, just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront. Wealthfront is the future of financial advice that's becoming incredibly popular among my friends in Silicon Valley and across the country because they provide the same high-end financial advice that the best private wealth managers deliver to the ultra wealthy, but for any account size and at a fraction of the cost. For instance, they monitor your portfolio every day across more than a dozen

• 1:40:01Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:40:42Tim Ferriss?

  the very least, go to wealthfront.com/tim and take their free risk assessment survey. It only takes a couple of minutes and Wealthfront will recommend a personalized portfolio of investments. In other words, they'll tell you exactly where they would put your money. So even if you don't use their service, you have a huge leg up and you have additional information for making good decisions. They use investment theory to automate good financial behavior and decisions that people typically don't make but should. So go to wealthfront.com/tim to get your first 15K managed for free or just to get more details. Check it out, wealthfront.com/tim. This episode is brought to you by ID Commerce and Logistics. I'm asked all the time about how to scale businesses quickly.

• 1:41:26Tim Ferriss?

  Rule number one is removing unnecessary bottlenecks that are a headache and also an emergency brake on growth. For many companies, one of the first things they should outsource is inventory management and fulfillment. There are companies that do this all day long perfectly for fast-growing companies. ID Commerce and Logistics is one such company. They focus on helping online retailers and entrepreneurs outgrow the competition by handling all types of logistics for you. They manage your inventory, pick, pack, and ship, and handle everything you can imagine so that you can focus on the things you are best at instead of all of these details under the hood. I partnered with them myself during the launch of The 4-Hour Chef so that I could focus on promoting the book, which is what I'm good at, and they ensured that things I'm not good at got done perfectly.

• 1:42:11Tim Ferriss?

  In other words, that readers were happy with dozens of different products we needed shipped out during holiday crunch season. ID Commerce and Logistics works with many different types of businesses, including e-commerce, consumer packaged goods, subscription boxes, and dozens more. They're also integrated with top e-commerce platforms such as Shopify, my personal favorite, Magento, BigCommerce, and others, which makes the startup integration and partnership seamless. As a listener of this podcast, you can get up to $10,000 of your startup fees and costs waived. That is a big discount. Just visit tim.blog/Scale. That's tim.blog/Scale.

• 1:42:52Tim Ferriss?

  Or you can go to idcomlog, that's I-D-C-O-M-L-O-G.com/tim. You can go to either one. The easier one to remember is probably tim.blog/Scale.