#730: Reed Hastings, Co-Founder of Netflix — How to Cultivate High Performance, The Art of Farming for Dissent, Favorite Failures, and More

Reed Hastings became executive chairman of Netflix https://www.netflix.com/ in 2023, after 25 years as CEO. He co-founded Netflix in 1997. Reed is also a majority owner of Powder Mountain https://powdermountain.com/. He is currently on the board of several educational organizations including KIPP https://www.kipp.org/ and Pahara https://www.pahara.org/. Timestamps for this episode are available below. Sponsors: AG1 https://drinkag1.com/tim all-in-one nutritional supplement: https://drinkag1.com/tim (1-year supply of Vitamin D (and 5 free AG1 travel packs) with your first subscription purchase.) Wealthfront https://wealthfront.com/tim high-yield savings account: https://wealthfront.com/tim (Start earning 5% interest on your savings. And when you open an account today, you’ll get an extra fifty-dollar bonus with a deposit of five hundred dollars or more.) Shopify https://shopify.com/tim global commerce platform, providing tools to start, grow, market, and manage a retail business: https://shopify.com/tim (one-dollar-per-month trial period) Timestamps: [00:00] Start [06:34] Alfred Lee Loomis and Tuxedo Park. [07:53] Risk tolerance: nature or nurture? [10:56] Cultivating culture that “eats strategy for lunch.” [15:41] The logic behind generous severance. [17:02] Adapting to Pure chaos. [18:44] Reference checking potential hires. [20:29] Context vs. control. [22:35] Radical candor. [24:15] Guardrails for maintaining work/life balance. [27:04] Farming for dissent. [28:39] Believing in the green crystals. [30:54] High-performance team, not family. [31:59] The keeper test. [32:49] Fire and replace, or replace and fire? [33:59] Beyond Entrepreneurship and other recommended reading/viewing. [37:46] A favorite failure. [40:32] Outstanding leaders. [41:10] Reed’s two “religions.” [42:19] Powder Mountain. [44:44] How Powder Mountain differs from Reed’s other projects. [46:24] Powder Mountain’s biggest challenges ahead. [47:02] Could Reed ever really retire? [47:19] Best investments of time, energy, or money. [48:49] How can we improve education in the US? [52:48] What class would Reed teach? [53:59] Juggling projects without losing focus. [55:04] Philanthropy: Why Africa? [55:32] Being “big-hearted champions who pick up the trash.” [56:28] Reed’s billboard. [58:01] Parting thoughts. * For show notes and past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show https://tim.blog/podcast, please visit tim.blog/podcast https://tim.blog/podcast/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast-description. For deals from sponsors of The Tim Ferriss Show https://tim.blog/podcast, please visit tim.blog/podcast-sponsors https://tim.blog/podcast-sponsors Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (5-Bullet Friday) at tim.blog/friday https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/. 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• 0:00Tim Ferriss?

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• 0:43Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:27Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:47Tim Ferriss?

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• 2:29Tim Ferriss?

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• 3:12Tim Ferriss?

  formula, digestive enzymes, and adaptogens to help manage stress. Now, I do my best always to eat nutrient dense meals. That is the basic, basic, basic, basic requirement, right? That is why things are called supplements. Of course, that's what I focus on, but it is not always possible. It is not always easy. So part of my routine is using AG1 daily. If I'm on the road, on the run, it just makes it easy to get a lot of nutrients at once and to sleep easy knowing that I am checking a lot of important boxes. So each morning, AG1. That's just like brushing my teeth, part of the routine. It's also NSF certified for sports, so professional athletes trust it to be safe. And each pouch of AG1 contains

• 3:56Tim Ferriss?

  exactly what is on the label, does not contain harmful levels of microbes or heavy metals, and is free of 280 banned substances. It's the ultimate nutritional supplement in one easy scoop. So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out, go to drinkag1.com/tim. That's drink AG1, the number one, drinkag1.com/tim. Last time, drinkag1.com/tim. Check it out.

• 4:35Speaker 01

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

• 4:41Speaker 02

  Now would seem an appropriate time.

• 4:45Speaker 01

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

• 4:57Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to interview and deconstruct world-class performers. How do they do what they do? My guest today is Reed Hastings, R-E-E-D. Reed Hastings became executive chairman of Netflix in 2023 after 25 years as CEO. He co-founded Netflix in 1997. In 1991, Reed founded Pure Software, which made tools for software developers. After a 1995 IPO and several acquisitions, Pure was acquired by Rational Software in 1997. Reed is an active educational philanthropist and served on the California State Board of Education from 2000 to 2004. He is currently on the

• 5:40Tim Ferriss?

  board of several educational organizations, including KIP and Pahara. Reed is also a board member of City Fund and Bloomberg. He received a BA from Bowdoin College in 1983 and an MSCS in artificial intelligence from Stanford University in 1988. Between Bowdoin and Stanford, Reed served in the Peace Corps as a high school math teacher, and you can find him on Twitter and LinkedIn as Reed Hastings, easy to find. In this conversation, we cover a lot of critical decisions, critical mistakes, lessons learned, first principles behind many of the important decisions made, culture decks. We talk about farming dissent

• 6:21Tim Ferriss?

  and much more. It is a very strategic, very tactical, practical conversation. So without further ado, please enjoy a wide-ranging conversation with Reed Hastings.

• 6:34Speaker 03

  Tim, so exciting to be here.

• 6:36Tim Ferriss?

  I'm excited to have you. And here we are in Utah, but I'm going to start with someone who is not in Utah, maybe was never in Utah, Alfred Lee Loomis.

• 6:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, wow, that's my great, great grandfather.

• 6:47Tim Ferriss?

  That's right. So long ago, one of the books that inspired me was a biography of Alfred Lee Loomis titled Tuxedo Park. So if you would indulge me and the audience, would you be willing to share just a brief sketch?

• 7:00Speaker 03

  My mom's paternal grandfather was Alfred Lee Loomis. And during World War II, he played a role in developing Loran. The L is supposedly Loomis, but actually it was long range. But he was like our early Bill Gates type. I mean, not as successful, but like sponsoring his own science and lab. It was sort of the gentleman scientist era in the 1940s, but I never met him.

• 7:28Tim Ferriss?

  And he also, this is just to add a little color to the early part of this conversation. Effectively, my understanding is predicted or anticipated the 1929 stock market crash. And that's part of what gave him the funding to then bring these scientists together.

• 7:44Speaker 03

  You know, it's like the guy who did Big Short and, you know, those kinds of things. If you guess right on a big movement of the stock market, it's of great benefit.

• 7:52Tim Ferriss?

  All right, we're going to hop a little further forward to after college. We're going to bounce around. This is sort of the memento style of my brain. So I apologize in advance, but I believe you found yourself in Africa. And you can certainly flesh this out and ended up hitchhiking quite a bit with very little money. And the meta question is, I'd love for you to say just a bit about that experience and how you ended up there. But I'm wondering how you have thought about risk, just. Evaluating risk, that word gets thrown around a lot. People sometimes don't define it very well for themselves, but you seem to perhaps frame it differently than some folks. I'd just be curious how you would speak to that.

• 8:35Speaker 03

  I think I've always been pretty risk tolerant, you know, spent a bunch of college hopping freight trains and traveling around. I spent a couple of years as a math teacher in Africa and then hitchhiking around on every vacation. So that's always been very comfortable for me and I've been lucky that nothing bad has happened. So my stays in jail have been short. And I think all of that very much contributed to my entrepreneurial success, once getting into business and tech, because I wasn't afraid to fail.

• 9:06Tim Ferriss?

  Why weren't you afraid to fail?

• 9:08Speaker 03

  I think a lot of it is random genetics. You know, you either have a propensity to be cautious or a propensity to take risk. So I don't think it's any great character thing I developed. You know, it's more like some people are very risk tolerant and I think it's wired randomly into our DNA.

• 9:26Tim Ferriss?

  So the reason I asked about risk is that there must be some genetic stock component. I agree, right? Some people have high vertical jump. Other people have different mental attributes or cognitive attributes, but it seems like you've also been very good at distinguishing between, and you'll see the tie in, good process and bad process. And I'd love for you to speak to that because it seems like part of that is recognizing reversible versus irreversible or non-reversible decisions in the way that, say, a Bezos might think about one-way doors versus two-way doors. Could you just expand on good processes versus bad processes?

• 10:01Speaker 03

  For me, free solo is bad process because the mistake is the end of your life. So, you know, there are some people a lot more risk tolerant than me and I try to take a lot of risks on things that are recoverable. So as you mentioned, Bezos calls them one-way doors. If there's one-way doors, then they evaluate them very carefully. If it's a two-way door, they're willing to get in and experiment and try. And I think that's a great business philosophy. I share it. So generally, good process tries to help you get more done. For example, Weekly meeting where everyone shares context and moves forward as opposed to just randomly getting together. And bad process is the stuff that tries to prevent error. Let's, you know, check everything.

• 10:44Speaker 03

  Cause it just gets in the way of creativity and in most fields, so not in medicine and not in airplanes, but in most fields. You want to move fast and some things don't work and you fix them fast.

• 10:57Tim Ferriss?

  The interview that I listened to recently between you and another Reid, Reid Hoffman, well known for Greylock LinkedIn, before that PayPal, brought up pretty early in the conversation and I believe I'm getting the phrasing right, the culture deck. And I was hoping to hone in on a few of them, a few of the, the lines of the tenets in that. And just to get your explanation of the genesis story, like where these came from. So the first is, and I'm paraphrasing here, so you can give me the correct phrasing, but the reward for adequate performance is a generous severance package. Are you getting that right?

• 11:31Speaker 03

  Yeah. And the big picture is I'm in the camp that culture eats strategy for lunch. It's all about culture and whether it's my first company, Pure Software, whether it's a second one Netflix or a third one Powder Mountain. It's culture runs through all of that. How do you get human beings to work well together and accomplish amazing things? And one of the aspects of that is being around other incredible performers. So if you think about a sports team, if you want to win a championship and you've got 11 slots, you know, you've got to have the very best player you can get in any position and they have to be a great team player, work well with others.

• 12:11Speaker 03

  So our model is built around that. And so we said adequate performance, i.e. good enough, gets a generous severance package. And the reason we wanted people to focus on that is how different it was because normally adequate for work is good enough to stay. And we said, what if a place was filled just with amazing people? And you had that kind of talent density. And that focus on culture through these three very different organizations. So my first company, Pure Software, was super geeky software, enterprise sales. Second one was film and television streaming around the world. And third is Powder Mountain.

• 12:49Speaker 03

  You know, very different, but what unifies them is this specialist approach, roughly speaking, team, not family around culture. And how effective that can be in very different areas.

• 13:02Tim Ferriss?

  So I believe something like two out of three prospects in the hiring process would get really excited after reading this document or being exposed to this document, but one out of three would balk. I'm wondering when you introduced or when this was in the early days, let's just say, sub 100 employees at Netflix, when did you expose people to the culture deck?

• 13:25Speaker 03

  We always had 50, 100 page slides of what our culture was, and it was used for employees and new employees would get exposed at it at the new employee meeting. And most of the time their managers had told them all about it in the hiring process, but occasionally they didn't. And the new employee would be shocked, oh my God. And so we realized we should really give it to all candidates. But if you do that, it's pretty much public. And of course, it quickly became public. And at first, you know, we were like, oh, but then it was great because it was out in the open and those who loved it, who wanted a high performance team were very into us. And those who wanted job security as their

• 14:06Speaker 03

  main focus were not into us. So it really helped people self-select in a positive way.

• 14:13Tim Ferriss?

  What were some of the line items that quickly helped people to select out? Or put a different way, what were some of the principles that caused the strongest reaction in folks?

• 14:29Speaker 03

  Well, I think you hit one, great performance. The other is probably team, not family. And so, you know, family has been the primary organizational unit for 10,000, 100,000 years. All countries were organized around families, kingdoms. It's only recently that we had, you know, democracies. And certainly, most companies have always been family-based companies. So family units are how we think. And in a family, what we admire is incredible loyalty. You know, your brother goes to jail and you stick by them, right? Parents do anything, you know, and you maintain that love and lack of judgment. However, in a company, you know, a family can be kind of dysfunctional. Think of, I don't know, the

• 15:11Speaker 03

  So that's one crazy family. I would say we were one of the early ones to just point this out and confront it directly by saying team, not family and impeaching family and saying that loyalty is good as a bridge, like over temporary, either company performance or individual performance. But ultimately, we were about performance, just like a championship or wanting to be championship sports team.

• 15:41Tim Ferriss?

  This is going to seem like a very, it is, I suppose, very tactical question, but the generous severance that we just talked about a second ago, my understanding is that's four month minimum and that you did that at Netflix from the very early days. Could you explain why that makes sense?

• 15:57Speaker 03

  Well, the people who were on our team were trying really hard and they may not make it, but they'd done nothing wrong. So we wanted to make sure that they could land on their feet and have a generous severance package. And of course, that's US standards there. So they're higher in Europe because to be generous in Europe is higher than in the US. But think of it as we want people to feel like I'm trying really hard and I'm going to give my all. And if it doesn't work out, I've got a parachute.

• 16:28Tim Ferriss?

  Now, does it also sort of not absolve, but minimize the guilt that managers feel? So you get a more accurate read rather than say putting employees on a performance plan or something like that. And then that takes four to six months or however long anyway.

• 16:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a great insight. I mean, managers generally are people. They like people and it's hard for them to hurt people and it does hurt to let someone go. So the fact that there's a big severance package makes it easier for the manager to cut that person and try to find someone else who will be a rock star in that role.

• 17:02Tim Ferriss?

  So I'd love for you to say a little bit about pure software and some of the lessons learned. It seems like one of the lessons learned, and I'd love for you to expand on this, was that too much process can paralyze on some level, cause all sorts of issues. And that hearkens back to what we were discussing earlier about the good process versus. Bad process and you've spoken about and written about managing on the edge of chaos. And so I suppose I'm wondering how you find the sweet spot between those two. So I would imagine also at Netflix, there are certain processes in place as a company scales. But could you start with pure software?

• 17:38Speaker 03

  In pure, I imagined it as a big semiconductor plant where you're doing process innovation and yield management. And every time we did something wrong, we put a process in place so that that error wouldn't happen again. And we did execute very well in one narrow market, but we lost the sort of creative inspiration. And so when Java came along, you know, then the company was much weaker and we weren't the leader in that. And I realized, oh, we were micro efficient, you know, at the current business. But the real risks to most businesses is the market shifting. And so we should optimize if we wanted to optimize for the market shifting. We had to be to manage on the edge of chaos, to be super creative without tipping into chaos.

• 18:20Speaker 03

  Okay. The chaos really doesn't feel good where, you know, the products don't work. The customers aren't billed. I mean, all kinds of bad things there. And so if you're going to run loose, but not be chaotic, then you have to have really high performance people. That's why that becomes the key part. People who get the overall context of what's going on and don't need a lot of rigidity to get good results.

• 18:44Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. So you mentioned a word that I'm going to hit on in two questions, which is context. So we'll come back to that, but I wanted to ask you about sourcing high performers. Because I have heard you say that you can effectively kick the tires and view, say, hiring as a reversible decision. Right. You can do that, but ideally you would also be increasing the likelihood of somebody sticking as a high performer within your culture. And I've heard you speak about. Doing references well, which means number one, you're sort of cold sourcing those references. Could you speak to that and also how you do reference checks? Because it seems like, at least when I've, I've done very little hiring compared to you.

• 19:26Tim Ferriss?

  But people are very afraid in a litigious society of getting themselves into trouble. So how do you navigate doing a reference call? And how do you navigate that?

• 19:36Speaker 03

  I'll generally start on LinkedIn and look for mutual connections. And the key is that the reference has to be closer to me or someone I know than to the subject. Otherwise, if they're closer, if it's the subject's brother, I'm not going to get the depth of reference. And most of the time, I'm able to find a couple of people that worked with them at such and such a time. And then most of the time I'll try to do a short Zoom. And when someone's on Zoom, they're much less likely to lie to me. And I can ask a couple of questions and they don't feel like it's being recorded. So it has a, creates an appropriate intimacy, but also a sort of semi anonymity. So that's one aspect, but it's just really important and hard.

• 20:20Speaker 03

  And then we'll, again, use lots of different ways to try to find people that worked with the person before and get to them directly.

• 20:29Tim Ferriss?

  Context. So context versus control, let's just say. And maybe you could use, you could certainly use Netflix, but you could also use Powder Mountain. How do you set the context? What does that mean for someone who's heard the word? Obviously, they know what that means.

• 20:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, sure. Well, you know, the typical metaphor we have for companies is industrial companies, right? We've had 200 years of the industrial revolution, factories. You make things, a boss tells everybody what to do. And you're really trying to drive consistency and process. And that's how we have, you know, a million doses of antibiotics that are good and airplanes that are mostly good and that kind of thing. But creative companies, again, like Powder, trying to create an experience of wonder for our guests. What we want to do is really empower people. And so we set context. We say, what are we trying to do? We're sparking wonder. That's our core thing. How are we going to do that? Create this unique place with a mountain recreation.

• 21:23Speaker 03

  And art and beauty. So, you know, we're setting context in that way as opposed to telling employees, you know, when you see a guest smile like this and say these words, I don't know, something very reductionist in that way. We tried to motivate and educate our employees that it's all about that joyous feeling of wonder and how do we spark it? And so again, that's an example of setting context versus control.

• 21:52Tim Ferriss?

  And letting them make the sort of day to day, week to week decisions about how they

• 21:57Speaker 03

  Then then they're both empowered and they use great judgment, you know, about things because they understand how we're trying to change the guest experience, right? Skiing has gotten so crowded over the last 20 years. It's less joyous and we are the distinctly uncrowded mountain. That's our counter positioning. And that's why that context is important.

• 22:17Tim Ferriss?

  I can second that, having just come off of President's Day weekend.

• 22:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:22Speaker 03

  And and have out or it was wide open and, you know,

• 22:26Tim Ferriss?

  Exactly.

• 22:26Speaker 03

  It's really just that we don't take the big passes, the epic icon passes. And that's what keeps it.

• 22:31Tim Ferriss?

  That's a huge, that is a huge, huge advantage. I want to talk about something that applies, I mean, certainly to business that applies in a lot of different areas. And that is, I suppose, what we would call radical candor or transparency. And is it true that at least some iteration of that came from marriage counseling?

• 22:52Speaker 03

  Patty and I have been married 34 years. So we're very fortunate. Early in our relationship, we had a bunch of marriage counseling and the counselor was very good at getting me to see that I was a systemic liar. And I would say things like, you know, family is the most important thing, whatever the phrases are. And then I would stay at work late. And he's like, okay, here's the situation. You're going home for dinner. This employee walks in with this crisis. What do you do? And I'm like, it's easy. I deal with the employee crisis. And okay, so it's like, pretty clear that you're not doing families, the most important thing. And so I was a hypocrite. Once he helped me see that, A, I could modify my behavior at work where it had to be a very severe crisis and very

• 23:33Speaker 03

  Rare and I was less of a hypocrite for Patty and little more easy to tolerate because I wasn't saying things like family is the most important and then I'm not showing up. So that's an example of I think we humans in order to get along in very dense societies have learned to be polite and to say conventional things without thinking much about is that really true? And that misalignment with how we act and what we say can be very hurtful. And so since then, I've been really committed to trying to reflect and say the honest thing. And then, for example, the team, not family or adequate performance as an example.

• 24:16Tim Ferriss?

  Few follow up questions. So with, let's just say, on the personal side, the work crisis versus family time, a lot of people listening certainly will have experience with some degree of tension between work and personal life. What type of guardrails did you set up or conditions so that you wouldn't continue to make that mistake?

• 24:37Speaker 03

  One of the best things I learned from John Doerr was setting a budget. So so many nights a week I would have dinners. So it varied to different phases, but let's say in one phase it was 11 nights. So I had an 11 night budget. And then if Tim Ferriss calls, I might say, okay, I'm going to use one of my 11 slots or not, but I would really stick to the 11 slots. And by having a strict budget that you stuck with, it was easier for the spouse because it wasn't an unlimited thing. And it was easier for me because then, you know, I pick and choose and not say yes to a bunch of other things, which might have been nice, but weren't essential. And again, different people's budget will be different amounts. But by having that explicit agreement, I think it's pretty helpful.

• 25:23Tim Ferriss?

  You don't strike me as someone who has trouble saying no, maybe you are. But would you then, let's just say number 12 comes in, invite number 12 and you say no. Would you state your policy in the sense that I have a budget for 11? Sorry, I'm out of slots and that's that. Or would you just say no?

• 25:39Speaker 03

  Not generally, I would, yes. Good luck. Say, I just can't make it as if I had a big conflict with some other meeting.

• 25:46Tim Ferriss?

  The reason I'm asking about this is it does seem like focus is a strength of yours. And you've been able to institutionalize that in a number of different settings. For instance, to give credit where credit is due with Reid Hoffman and his class related blitzscaling. When you had that conversation and he said, yeah, I reached out to Reid, this Reid sitting in front of me. And I think he asked you to be on a board or something and you're like, sorry, I'm focused on education. How do you phrase those declines? Not to get too much in the weeds, but I am curious because this is something people struggle with.

• 26:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I've always thought the people who really focus on a few things will get the most done. The problems of society are ones that our parents and grandparents couldn't fix. So they're like all very hard. And if you make, you know, some material contribution in one or two areas, that's remarkable. And I think what can happen is people get drawn into 20 different things and they did. Then they don't make much of an impact in any of them. And, you know, once in a while you get an Elon Musk who can do magically wide number of things, but that's very rare. And it's not me. And so to answer your question of how do you say no, I say really, I'm just honest about it.

• 26:58Speaker 03

  I really can't do that because I want to focus, let's say, on education or Powder Mountain or whatever the thing is.

• 27:04Tim Ferriss?

  Coming back to the radical candor or the transparency, there are very few people I imagine in the interview process. We're going to say, you know, I actually prefer to be quietly deceptive in a harmless way. Like on paper, they'll agree. And my question is, how do you, I think this is a term you've used, farm for dissent? Like, how do you actually help encourage that transparency?

• 27:27Speaker 03

  During the hiring process, I think we try to just listen and be intuitive and try to figure out which people to give a shot at. Then when you're in a company, and especially if you're a leader, it's important to farm for dissent. Because it's not normal to disagree with your boss, right? Normal, we learn deference. My job is to please my boss, you know, as opposed to we want people to feel my job is to help Powder or Netflix or Pure Software grow. Sometimes if to help them grow, I've got to be willing to argue with my manager. And that's okay. And so because it's difficult emotionally in most companies to disagree with your manager, we call it farming for dissent. And we have managers do things like, what are

• 28:12Speaker 03

  three things you would do differently if you were in my job? I would regularly, you know, every 18 months or so do that with, you know, 50 top executives and have them write down what would be different. We would be in games, out of games. We would be in porn, out of porn. We'd be in sports, out of sports. 100 different business decisions. What would they do different? And that was an example of farming for dissent.

• 28:39Tim Ferriss?

  When you were going head to head with Blockbuster back in the day.

• 28:43Speaker 03

  Chipping mailing DVDs.

• 28:45Tim Ferriss?

  That's right. So they come out and they decide to launch their attack. And then my understanding is, and I've read and listened to different versions of this, but there were a number of things launched in sort of counterattack that ranged from banner ads or advertising to selling used DVDs. And then, I don't know if it was several months later or a year later, in retrospect, none of those things really contributed to the success that you had, the victory that you had over Blockbuster. How did you take that learning, meaning if we just doubled down on our core competency, we would have probably beaten Blockbuster sooner. How do you, this is not quite the right word, but institutionalize it, put it into the organizational

• 29:30Tim Ferriss?

  memory so that you don't make the same mistake again, or you lessen the likelihood?

• 29:34Speaker 03

  When I was a kid, there was a dishwashing soap crystal, maybe, and supposedly it cleaned better because it had green crystals in it. And it's an example in human behavior of assigning meaning or causality to something. It wasn't very effective, just say, we're a great soap. I had to say, we're a great soap because of the green crystals. And we're the only one that has these green crystals, you know, spread throughout the dishwashing floor. So when you're got a big competitive battle and all your employees and investors are wondering, why are you going to win? How are you going to win? We say, well, we got to talk about the green crystals. And we didn't understand it at first, but we would do various things that were kind

• 30:15Speaker 03

  of irrelevant, like selling used DVDs. And in hindsight, it's because we ourselves needed to believe in the green crystals. Okay. And so there's a temptation in all management teams to like focus on shiny objects in that way as opposed to just focus on we have great soap in that case. So in hindsight, what we did is wow, we really got a, we spent 20% of our effort, not 80, but 20% of effort on green crystals. And we could have done better if we had had the discipline and confidence to just execute on the core better. So that would be DVD shipping times, reducing DVD breakage, better envelopes, you know, making the core work better.

• 30:54Tim Ferriss?

  And I think this is on the Netflix website. My team sent this to me because I was asking a number of follow up questions on the, on the culture deck. And I believe it's very explicitly stated, if you are being disloyal to Netflix, if you disagree with someone and you do not voice that disagreement, or if you disagree with your boss, I mean, it's very, very explicit.

• 31:13Speaker 03

  To disagree silently is disloyal.

• 31:16Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Okay. There we go. In the early days, let's just say sub 100, let's maybe, maybe it's sub 50. Which of the principles in that culture doc do you think were most valuable to have permeate the smaller organization? And it could be the ones that you mentioned.

• 31:34Speaker 03

  Fundamental one is high performance, team, not family. Cause if you've got that, that is the energy driver because everyone around you is amazing. You learn so much, you attract other amazing people. So kind of talent farming in that way, and specifically the density of talent. Almost every organization has some fantastic people. It's an incredible feeling when everybody is amazing.

• 31:59Tim Ferriss?

  So part of that is hiring, part of that is firing. I mean, there's a lot in between. But how did the keeper test? What is the keeper test? And how did that come to be?

• 32:07Speaker 03

  When I was maybe seven or eight years old, I caught a large fish and my dad said, that's a keeper, Reed. So I always remembered that. And when thinking about this test, so the test Test is if someone's thinking about quitting and, you know, going to a different firm, would we try to change their mind to keep them? Or would we say, bummer, but go ahead? And so we wanted to fill the company with people that we would fight to keep. And so that's the keeper test. And what we say is if we wouldn't fight to keep someone, we should proactively give them a generous severance package and try to find someone that we might well fight to keep.

• 32:50Tim Ferriss?

  So I'm gonna ask maybe a mundane question, but well, few. One is how frequently was that done as an exercise for the managers in the company? And secondly, would you fire someone and then find a replacement? Or get the search going for a replacement and then fire the person? I know it might seem like a really kind of nitpicky question.

• 33:10Speaker 03

  Generally, we would let people go and then do the search because you want the search to be open and we want to treat the person with respect. They're trying hard and think of it as we wanted to let people go in the way that we would want to be let go if we're on the other side. Okay. Which is it's difficult, but you know, let's be direct and thoughtful and supportive on it. And then, you know, it's up to managers, how often they might think about it once a quarter. You know, would I really fight to keep that person? You know, and then it's a degrees, right of, oh my God, I'd pull out all the stops. You know, it'd be like, that person's the most incredible too. You know, yeah, I think I'd fight to keep them some, you know, and that's fine. Versus the big one it uncovers is no, if the person left, I'd be fine.

• 33:53Speaker 03

  And that we want to make sure the person, that manager gives that person a severance package.

• 33:59Tim Ferriss?

  I've read at least in two places, maybe three, about your fondness for Beyond Entrepreneurship, Jim Collins, but specifically the first 80 pages, I think, and the ability to go back every year and reread these 80 pages. So I've had Jim on the show twice, I think, and he's amazing. And I've read quite a bit of his work. I've never read that one. What are some of the things that really stick out to you in those first 80 pages?

• 34:23Speaker 03

  And that's where he really does the role of self-discipline, sort of rinsing the cottage cheese for an athlete and the importance.

• 34:30Tim Ferriss?

  Wait, what does that mean?

• 34:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's someone who's so manic about their diet that they rinse the cottage cheese of something, you know, the milk way, I don't know. So for me, this was when I was 32, it came out and it was the first management book that made me feel like I could succeed because it wasn't, you know, like Larry Ellison or these huge personalities, you know? He pointed out of how many people had great success of sort of quiet determination and discipline and how much caring about the organization first over yourself made a difference. So a lot of fundamental precepts, which gave me permission to be myself and not try to

• 35:12Speaker 03

  be Mr. Charisma flamboyant, which is kind of the CEOs that you read about. So I think that's why it was so impactful.

• 35:20Tim Ferriss?

  What are, I'm sure there are, the other handful of books that you have recommended the most or gifted the most to people who are would be entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs slash founders?

• 35:32Speaker 03

  Probably the Jim Collins oriented stuff is good. Patrick Lencioni's, you know, Five Defuncions of a Team, The Advantage, those are excellent. So those are ones. And then, you know, on the more human side, Sapiens, Yuval Harari's book of sort of the meaning of life and understanding the big picture, you know, is extraordinary.

• 35:53Tim Ferriss?

  Do you read much fiction? I know you read the and liked the Overstory, I believe.

• 35:57Speaker 03

  Yep, but no, I don't read that much. I tend to do fiction on film and series and then I'll do biography, although I'll watch, just watched a Helen Reddy biography, I Am Woman. So, you know, I like a lot of nonfiction, both in reading and in film.

• 36:12Tim Ferriss?

  And in film. Any standouts in recent memory?

• 36:15Speaker 03

  Well, again, two days ago, I watched a five-year-old biopic of Helen Reddy, Australian woman who broke through in New York and LA, you know, had incredible number of hits in the seventies and eighties, including I Am Woman. So it's a super well-done biopic.

• 36:36Tim Ferriss?

  Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront. There is a lot happening in the US and global economies right now, a lot. That's an understatement. Are we in a recession? Is it a bear market? What's going to happen with inflation? So many questions, so few answers. I can't tell the future. Nobody can, but I can tell you about a great place to earn more on your savings and that's Wealthfront. Wealthfront is an app that helps you save and invest your money. And right now you can earn 5% APY, that's the annual percentage yield with the Wealthfront Cash Account. That's more than 10 times more interest than if you left your money in a savings account at the average bank, according to FDIC.gov. So why wait? Earn 5% on your cash today.

• 37:19Tim Ferriss?

  Plus, it's up to $8 million in FDIC insurance through partner banks. And when you open an account today, you'll get an extra $50 bonus with a deposit of $500 or more. There are already nearly half a million people using Wealthfront to save more, earn more, and build long-term wealth. So why wait? Visit wealthfront.com/tim to get started. That's wealthfront.com/tim. This was a paid endorsement by Wealthfront. So we could talk about, and certainly I'm open to it, but you've had a lot of big wins. You've had a lot of highlights. I'm wondering if you have any favorite failures, and I'll put that in quotation marks, from Netflix days or before.

• 38:01Tim Ferriss?

  And I say favorite failures, meaning something that really did not go as you had hoped, but that actually somehow set the stage for larger successes later in some fashion.

• 38:12Speaker 03

  I get a little bit of irony in favorite failure. I would say our Quickster episode at Netflix. So we were growing in DVD and streaming since 2011 and we realized the future was streaming. The customers currently were doing DVDs and we decided to split into two companies, one called Quickster to do the DVDs and the other Netflix to do the streaming. It was roughly the right idea, but five years too early. The customers were screaming mad because they mostly used DVD. Streaming at that point, you couldn't get Get to the television. So it was really just like streaming to a laptop. So it wasn't like a very great solution. We didn't have that much content. And what I learned about it was sometimes you can be so strategic, you know, in long term,

• 38:57Speaker 03

  that you don't bring along the customers with you. Then I made it worse by trying to do a YouTube video of an apology. And I had this very odd teal shirt and it was just like everything was wrong.

• 39:13Tim Ferriss?

  I take it there are a lot of comments with the teal shirt.

• 39:15Speaker 03

  Which, which four years later, we burned at a ceremony. So the reason it's the favorite failure is because you can go from a string of amazing successes to arrogance. And that's kind of what happened. And so it's ever since then, we've done a lot more kind of grounded checking.

• 39:34Tim Ferriss?

  So just to follow up related to that internally, how was that decision made? And could you kind of spot the train wreck in the making? If you look at it in hindsight, and then related to that is how do you, I suppose, buy some insurance with better process in the future? If that's the right way to phrase it.

• 39:50Speaker 03

  That's exactly the right way. We didn't do much farming for dissent in those days. So I was messiana convinced this is the right move, looking around the corner. And it turned out that lots of people had severe doubts, but they didn't know the other executives had doubts. So the thing we instituted is on big decisions, we make everyone say 10 to negative 10, whether they think it's a smart idea. Okay. And so if we had done that at the time, we would have seen a whole tons of like negative sevens, negative six, negative eight, and then that would have been shocking. And so establishing a clear input mechanism on big decisions and we'd have the top 50 or 100 people weigh in on it is a very positive step.

• 40:32Tim Ferriss?

  Are there any CEOs or leaders who stand out, let's keep it to CEOs or founders who stand out to you as being courageous in talking about the uncomfortable things?

• 40:44Speaker 03

  Brian, Jeff Bezos, I think is probably a great standout in that and has always been very clear about being customer centric. And, you know, they have various controversies at times, but he's very clear about what they stand for. So I think he might be the standout example.

• 41:02Tim Ferriss?

  Paragon, one of the paragons for sure. So customer obsession, certainly Jeff has written about that since shareholder level one. And you've said that you have two religions, so customer satisfaction and operating income. Could you hit both of those and just expand on what you mean by both?

• 41:19Speaker 03

  Well, I think customer satisfaction is clear, but it's probably incomplete because customers would love to have everything for free. So the challenge is to have great customer satisfaction and to charge them enough to have growing operating income. And that constraint is what makes business challenging, fun, exciting. So I lean into that.

• 41:40Tim Ferriss?

  What were some of the greatest insights or decisions that have allowed you to find that Goldilocks medium that contains both of those?

• 41:49Speaker 03

  You know, I think the main thing is back to setting context. So whether it's Powder Mountain, Netflix, or Pure before that, not saying we're only about customers. I guess just naive, right? We are about customers and growing operating income. And so I think that really, back to the honesty theme that you talked about, you know, it may not be as sexy, but it's more complete context for our employees and shareholders about why we're making certain decisions.

• 42:19Tim Ferriss?

  Let's talk about Powder Mountain. Why Powder Mountain?

• 42:24Speaker 03

  I've been a small skier, you know, because of intense work most of my life. And we've had a place in Park City for a long time and loved raising the kids, you know, here skiing, but it got super crowded. And when you look around skiing all around the United States because of the growth of the Epic and Icon passes has gotten very crowded. And so Powder Mountain is counter positioned as the uncrowded mountain and that creates, you know, some constraints on what we do, but it's an incredible opportunity. Patty and I had a house there and we've enjoyed it, but just really been homeowners and nothing more. And then after Netflix retirement, I was like, oh, here's a project. Why don't

• 43:08Speaker 03

  we figure out private skiing? So about 20%

• 43:12Speaker 03

  Of US golf courses are private and they have, you know, better tee times, nicer clubhouse. You know, the people, you know, that kind of thing. And that's what private skiing is. So we've introduced private skiing on about half of the Powder territory. And so that's skiing just for the homeowners. And then, you know, the people on the lift, the Powder is untracked, you know, because there's only a few hundred families there. It's a pretty amazing. There's a couple of other private skiing places, Wasatch Peaks, Yellowstone, but they're all super expensive and were relatively affordable. So we think it's just a great opportunity, again, in reaction to all the super crowding that everybody's feeling in Tahoe and Colorado and Utah.

• 43:55Tim Ferriss?

  So for a lot of people listening, they might think of Project as making a canoe with their kids. But you're taking on this huge

• 44:04Speaker 03

  10,000 acres.

• 44:05Tim Ferriss?

  10,000 acre skiing territory. I've spent a lot of time there. The skiing's fantastic. You have lots of on-track powder, as you would hope, given the name. Amazing cat skiing. And it doesn't seem like a minor project, I guess, is what I'm saying. So at least to mere mortals.

• 44:21Speaker 03

  No, we've invested over $100 million in it in this first year. We got three new public lifts and one private lift going in this summer. So it's definitely a big project, but also a big opportunity to build a community that's very adventurous, artistic, creative, outdoorsy. I mean, it's an amazing place that we hope to spend a lot of time over the next 30 years.

• 44:44Tim Ferriss?

  So you're in a position, I would have to imagine, where the menu of options is pretty long in terms of how you could spend your time. I'm sure you get plenty of offers and inbound things are interesting. And then that doesn't even take into account the number of things you might be interested in. Of all the things out there, why this? Like, what do you personally get from this experience?

• 45:02Speaker 03

  Helping to nurture a place of beauty with a warm community. So I do Netflix, millions of people, but I don't know most of them who are customers. And then I do a lot of philanthropy and it's education, other things. And again, it affects, hopefully in a positive way, millions of people. But I don't particularly know them. Mountains very intimate. It's this close little community where everyone has coffee together in the morning. So it's doing.

• 45:29Tim Ferriss?

  Sky Lodge.

• 45:30Speaker 03

  Is amazing. It's been upgraded since you were last there. Service is cool. So it's something I can touch and feel. And so I think it resonates in a very deep way because it's personal connection.

• 45:43Tim Ferriss?

  So Utah's famous for champagne powder, light fluffy powder. For people who do not have any familiarity with Utah, where is powder?

• 45:52Speaker 03

  About an hour from Salt Lake City Airport.

• 45:55Tim Ferriss?

  What's the name of the closest town?

• 45:57Speaker 03

  Uh, Eden. Yes, yes. There's Eden and Paradise and Liberty, all some great town names. But we're on a mountain top in Eden, Utah. And it again, it's really extraordinary ski experience because of being uncrowded. And so the powder lasts for days.

• 46:15Tim Ferriss?

  Lasts for a really long time. I've been there where it's lasted a week plus.

• 46:18Speaker 03

  And that's what I want everyone to feel like. It's even better than you said.

• 46:24Tim Ferriss?

  What do you think? And I'm sure you have thought about this. What are the biggest challenges?

• 46:29Speaker 03

  For powder.

• 46:30Tim Ferriss?

  For powder.

• 46:30Speaker 03

  It's been poorly managed for a decade. They just didn't have really good people, but didn't have any money. And so then I get to take it over and waltz in and then invest, you know, again, over a hundred million so far. And it's relatively easy transformation because people want uncrowded skiing. So it's hitting a market opportunity, you know, in a significant way. And then it's just very joyous because we get to like ski in the morning and then do meetings in the afternoon. And so it creates a great team feeling.

• 47:02Tim Ferriss?

  Do you think you are, have the hardwiring to ever retire in a capacity without an enormous project?

• 47:10Speaker 03

  Unlikely. I do like being engaged and making a contribution. So I hope to be able to do that for a long time.

• 47:19Tim Ferriss?

  What is one or two of the best investments you've ever made? Doesn't need to be financial, could be investment of time. You know, Warren Buffett talks about Dale Carnegie, public speaking courses. I mean, it's a bit of the Yashuk's grandpa thing that he's got going. But do any particular investments of time, energy, money come to mind as a real?

• 47:37Speaker 03

  Well, if you mean financial investments, the little few times I've done investing, I've lost my shirt and I realize I'm just so optimistic. I'm like, anybody who's have a good idea, I'm like, sure. You know, so I think it's a different DNA than investors have that are differentially good investors. So I'm a pure index fund investor. I'm Netflix plus index fund. So if we broaden the definition of investment to think about time and energy, I put a lot of work into charter schools and I've done that over the last 25, 30 years because I see a real opportunity for these nonprofit public schools to create great learning environments and great teaching environments. And so I've been on the board of KIP Academy, one of them for 20 years, been on the board

• 48:21Speaker 03

  of many of the other related charter organizations. And they're somewhat controversial because they're not the same as the district schools. But I think it's a very healthy kind of creative tension. And the cities that have high charters, percentage of charters like Denver and Washington DC and Indianapolis have done much better than other cities. So it really is a positive effect, you know, on kids and on the profession of teaching where again, you can start your own public school.

• 48:50Tim Ferriss?

  I'd love to chat some more about this. So starting with my first book, even before that, but 2007, I became involved with donorschoose.org where I was an advisor and then Quest Bridge, which seemed to do a lot of really good work. And at least from my perspective, I was deeply interested in education because I recognize how my trajectory differed from a lot of my friends growing up because of educational opportunities. It seems like an excellent way to try to maybe level the playing field is to, strange a statement, but when you see a movie like Waiting for Superman, I'm not sure if you saw the documentary, but you can leave the theater or after watching this movie.

• 49:29Tim Ferriss?

  Feel quite demoralized, like low performing teachers can't be fired and X, Y, and Z, that there are all these challenges inside the US public school system. What are some of the changes that you would like to see that you think can be catalyzed in some meaningful way?

• 49:42Speaker 03

  The fundamental problem in the US public education is our school boards turn over pretty quickly, especially in large urban districts, which makes the superintendents or the CEOs turn over quickly. So the average superintendent tenure in Dallas and Denver and Atlanta and Boston and LA is three years. So superintendents come in, they last for, you know, a little bit of time, the school board changes, and then the superintendent is changed. And so, you know, why is that? Because the school board members run on change. That's how they got elected. And these are big prizes, running big organizations and big budgets, and then you go on to city council and state representative and all those things.

• 50:24Speaker 03

  So we've got a system that because the superintendent changes constantly, the organization is kind of chaotic. You know, it's not some well-run nonprofit like the Red Cross or Sutter Health, or it's not certainly a for-profit. But the main issue is that turnover. And so shifting to nonprofits running public education, it would be a big positive from where we are now, and that's what charter schools are. Again, in some cities like Washington, you know, it's about half of the kids go to one of the charter schools, one of the nonprofit schools. In Atlanta, it's about a quarter. Denver, it's about a quarter. Indianapolis, it's about a half. So we're making a lot of... In New Orleans, it's 100% of the kids.

• 51:07Tim Ferriss?

  So for, just for clarity for people listening, because almost everybody will have heard the term charter school, but that means it's not dependent on taxpayer dollars, it's dependent on fundraising? Or how does that work?

• 51:18Speaker 03

  It's just a public school. So it gets full tax dollars, but it's run by a nonprofit instead of the school district, a government entity. So that's the big difference.

• 51:28Tim Ferriss?

  What are the, and maybe this isn't the objective, but what are the biggest challenges to scaling charter schools in the United States?

• 51:34Speaker 03

  Usually it's the political climate. So it's difficult in blue states. The unions generally oppose charter schools because then they would have to organize many different nonprofits as opposed to one big school district. So that's more expensive for them. But in red states, which are relatively low, union charters are growing very quickly because, you know, parents want choice. The teachers want a climate that's innovative. And when they work in a nonprofit, it can be very stable and have great leadership for a long time because it's got a stable board of directors. So that's the big differences of governance. So when you express the frustration that people at Donor Shoes or others feel, it's because people have been trying to fix

• 52:14Speaker 03

  the school districts we have for 100 years and they've made very little progress because they get a program in and then the superintendent changes and the program goes. So all the work that Annenberg and Gates and others have done, you know, it gets deployed in some school districts for a couple of years and then it gets unwound. Whereas the charter schools are very stable and continue to grow. They're not all perfect, but the parents have an ability to choose and the kids and the families. And so if it's not a great charter school, you could move to another, but it is free, like public schools.

• 52:48Tim Ferriss?

  If you were to teach a class, it could be a seminar, it could be one day, it could be a semester. Let's just say for the time being that was an obligation, anywhere from fifth grade up to, you know, masters. What age range would you choose and what would the subject matter of the course be?

• 53:03Speaker 03

  You know, because when I was 22, I was teaching high school math.

• 53:07Tim Ferriss?

  Math.

• 53:07Speaker 03

  I think I jumped right back in there, you know, it just brings back so many great memories of helping kids solve problems and gain confidence. So I don't know if that's the strategic answer of the highest impact, but in terms of the emotional payoff, it is the highest.

• 53:25Tim Ferriss?

  God, you know, I had one, this is not to turn this into a personal therapy session, but I was pretty good at math back in the day and I had a really abusive teacher in 10th grade and I just got turned off. On the other side, my brother, same school, had a fantastic 10th grade teacher and then he went on to get a PhD in statistics and so on and so forth. It's just wild how these little things-

• 53:44Speaker 03

  Well, it's horrible that that happened to you, but it happens again to kids all over and in particular in lower income, big cities where the average level of teaching is not that high.

• 53:59Tim Ferriss?

  So you have all of this involvement in education, it's very deep involvement. Now Powder Mountain is your primary focus, is that fair to say? Do you continue to do the education or do you have a conversation or send out emails to those people to set expectations that now you've shifted focus and therefore there's a firewall, here's your budget for certain things? How do you make that transition from one focus to-

• 54:22Speaker 03

  So over 25 years, I was CEO of Netflix, which consumed a lot of my time and I did philanthropy a couple of days a month. And I do powder intensely and I do philanthropy a couple of days a month.

• 54:32Tim Ferriss?

  I got it.

• 54:33Speaker 03

  It hasn't really changed. And then now I'm doing a bunch of work in Africa on economy and technology, sort of better cell phones, better coverage, solar, things that I hope will stimulate the economy. So I'm in Africa once a quarter and, you know, some country doing some investment and trying to make a difference there. So that's my kind of additional frontier that I didn't spend that much time on during Netflix, but I've got a little more time now.

• 55:05Tim Ferriss?

  Now, is Africa in this case, the chance beneficiary of you having been assigned to Africa way back in the day? Or could it just as easily have been someplace in Latin America or else?

• 55:13Speaker 03

  You'll notice that. So, most people are very strategic. And for me, what I've ordered in my causes, education and Africa economy, basically because I was a Peace Corps volunteer math teacher. So I think I'm just trying to relive my 22-year-old self.

• 55:29Tim Ferriss?

  Seems to be working out pretty well, as far as I can tell. What else are you doing at Powder Mountain that is different or exactly the same as, say, what you did at Netflix? In other words, what lessons have you carried over, if any?

• 55:42Speaker 03

  Fundamentally, on the culture, we talk about being big-hearted champions that pick up the trash. So the big-hearted is the warm and loving and caring, which we didn't have enough of at Netflix. Okay, at least in the culture description. The champion is someone who wants to win and is willing to go the extra mile to win. And then the who picks up the trash is the self-responsible, self-disciplined, self-learning, you know, does the right thing when no one's looking. So I think at Powder, we actually, with our employee phrase of big-hearted champions who pick up the trash, that's who we want to hire. We actually are better than the old Netflix description, you know, that I've learned from because we're willing to be tighter, more memorable, and more loving. That's the big-hearted part.

• 56:28Tim Ferriss?

  Makes me also think of, you mentioned Lencioni earlier, makes me think of the advantage a little bit, the humble, hungry, and smart.

• 56:33Speaker 03

  Absolutely. No, very, very impactful.

• 56:36Tim Ferriss?

  Does rhyme. What would you, metaphorically speaking, put on a billboard, a message to get to millions or billions of people?

• 56:43Speaker 03

  I might say, "Hope is everything." I think the fundamental positive human force is hope, hope of better things in the future. And we live in a very imperfect world, we always have. We are very imperfect creatures. We always, you know, have been and will be. And then we have hope of trying to do better. And so, when people lose hope, then, you know, it's a very tough situation.

• 57:09Tim Ferriss?

  How do you cultivate that in someone? Let's say there's a parent listening and they have a kid who's, doesn't have any clinical psychiatric disorder, but maybe they see the glasses half-empty, they're barraged by negative news and headlines on social media, and they're just kind of apathetic. What would your advice be to that parent in terms of what they can do to help?

• 57:29Speaker 03

  I would say, in that case, the kids are being withdrawn in protection from a world that confuses them or doesn't treat them well. So it's trying to understand From the kid's perspective, why are they feeling that way? And then certainly, you know, helping them understand that growing up is really tough. And then by the time you get to 20 and 30 and 40 and 50 and 60, you start to know yourself better. And it doesn't feel as bad, it feels better. And there is hope of great happiness in the future for them.

• 58:01Tim Ferriss?

  Well, you have very, you were talking about high density of talent. You have a very high density of clear, actionable thoughts. We've checked a lot of boxes. Reed, is there anything else that you would like to say or discuss before we land the plane? I mean, I'm not in a rush, I've got time.

• 58:18Speaker 03

  So excited to be with Tim and hope we get to do this more often. And love to have you and your listeners all come to Powder Mountain.

• 58:28Tim Ferriss?

  Check it out, folks. Powder for days. Thank you, Reed. Is there any place you would like to point people? Is there a website for Powder Mountain?

• 58:36Speaker 03

  PowderMountain.com. Right on the nose, baby.

• 58:39Tim Ferriss?

  Right on the nose. Well, thank you very much, Reed, for the time. I really, really appreciate it. It's nice to be looking out the window at Snow as we're talking about Powder Mountain. And for everybody listening, we will put everything discussed in the show notes as per usual at tim.blog/podcast. And until next time, just be a little kinder than is necessary to others, but also to yourself. And thank you for tuning in.

• 59:05Tim Ferriss?

  Hey, guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off. And that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests.

• 59:48Tim Ferriss?

  These strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to tim.blog/friday, type that into your browser, tim.blog/friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I view AG1 as comprehensive nutritional insurance and that is nothing new. I actually recommended AG1 in my 2010 bestseller, more than a decade

• 1:00:31Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:01:11Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:01:56Tim Ferriss?

  is not always possible, it is not always easy. So part of my routine is using AG1 daily. If I'm on the road, on the run, it just makes it easy to get a lot of nutrients at once and to sleep easy knowing that I am checking a lot of important boxes. So each morning, AG1. That's just like brushing my teeth, part of the routine. It's also NSF certified for sports, so professional athletes trust it to be safe. And each pouch of AG1 contains exactly what is on the label, does not contain harmful levels of microbes or heavy metals, and is free of 280 banned substances. It's the ultimate nutritional supplement in one easy scoop. So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today.

• 1:02:37Tim Ferriss?

  You will get a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out, go to drinkag1.com/tim. That's drink AG1, the number one, drinkag1.com/tim. Last time, drinkag1.com/tim. Check it out. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Shopify is the all-in-one commerce platform that powers millions of businesses worldwide, including me, including mine. What business you might ask? Well, one way I've scratched my own itch is by creating Cock Punch Coffee. It's a long story. All proceeds on my end go to my foundation, SISI Foundation, to fund research for mental

• 1:03:22Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:04:08Tim Ferriss?

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