#569: ESPN Co-Founder Bill Rasmussen — Fear{less} with Tim Ferriss

Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast, where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers to tease out the routines, habits, et cetera that you can apply to your own life. You’ll get plenty of that in this special episode, which features my interview with Bill Rasmussen from my 2017 TV Show Fear{less} https://youtu.be/WsbtHlce95U. The “less” is in parentheses because the objective is to teach you to fear less, not to be fearless. Fear{less} features in-depth, long-form conversations with top performers, focusing on how they’ve overcome fears and made hard decisions, embracing discomfort and thinking big. It was produced by Wild West Productions, and I worked with them to make both the video and audio available to you for free, my dear listeners. You can find the video of this episode https://youtu.be/WsbtHlce95U on YouTube.com/TimFerriss https://www.youtube.com/timferriss, and eventually you’ll be able to see all episodes for free at YouTube.com/TimFerriss https://www.youtube.com/timferriss. Spearheaded by actor/producer and past podcast guest Vince Vaughn https://tim.blog/2017/05/31/vince-vaughn/, Wild West Productions https://twitter.com/wildwest has produced a string of hit movies including The Internship https://www.amazon.com/Internship-Vince-Vaughn/dp/B00F55HNBY/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20, Couples Retreat https://www.amazon.com/Couples-Retreat-Vince-Vaughn/dp/B009CFYVJK/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20, Four Christmases https://www.amazon.com/Four-Christmases-Vince-Vaughn/dp/B0091X5IWM/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20, and The Break-Up https://www.amazon.com/Break-Up-Vince-Vaughn/dp/B009CFY4NS/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20. In 2020, Wild West produced the comedy The Opening Act https://www.amazon.com/Opening-Act-Jimmy-Yang/dp/B08K39LBD2/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20, starring Jimmy O. Yang and Cedric The Entertainer. In addition to Fear{less}, their television credits include Undeniable with Joe Buck https://audiencenetwork.att.com/audience/undeniable/season-5, ESPN’s 30 for 30 episode https://plus.espn.com/30-for-30 about the ’85 Bears, and the Netflix animated show F is for Family https://www.netflix.com/title/80028732. Please enjoy! * This episode is brought to you by “5-Bullet Friday https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/?utm_source=timblog&utm_medium=timblog&utm_campaign=podcast-sponsorship,” my very own email newsletter that every Friday features five bullet points highlighting cool things I’ve found that week, including apps, books, documentaries, gadgets, albums, articles, TV shows, new hacks or tricks, and—of course—all sorts of weird stuff I’ve dug up from around the world. It’s free, it’s always going to be free, and you can subscribe now at tim.blog/friday https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/?utm_source=timblog&utm_medium=timblog&utm_campaign=podcast-sponsorship. * A recap of ESPN’s opening night. [05:34] What accounts for Bill’s lifelong obsession with sports? [07:41] How Bill’s family — especially his father — encouraged him to excel from an early age. [09:46] By the time he got to college, what did Bill imagine he would do for a career — and what ultimately put a crimp in his ambitions? [11:20] What did Bill learn during his initial foray into the working world, and how did this lead to the start of his first business? [13:47] How did Bill segue from this first business into the world of sports broadcasting? Was his lack of experience at the beginning any hindrance? [17:01] What does Bill’s self-talk sound like when he’s trying to convince himself to try something new? [21:33] As confident as Bill is in trying new things, he’s not lived a life without self-doubt-inducing setbacks. Here’s one that led to the much bigger success that would become ESPN. [23:04] What ESPN looked like in the conceptual stages — when its financial reserve consisted of a $9,000 credit card advance. [29:40] How Bill and his team drummed up additional funds for the fledgling network. [31:50] The clever reason behind shrink-wrapping the early NCAA pitch deck. [35:29] Enter Walter Byers. [37:07] What launch day and the days leading up to it looked like. [39:06] The best decision made at ESPN. [41:32] 24 hours, seven days a week is a lot of television to fill. What are some of the more esoteric ways that time has been filled at ESPN? [42:33] Why did Bill leave ESPN at 2:05 p.m. on June 25th, 1984? [44:08] Bill’s secret to effective pitching and negotiation, and a few book recommendations. [45:09] ESPN has the power to bring people together — except for when someone needs a scapegoat for divorce proceedings. [46:44] What does success mean to Bill, and who does he think of when he hears the word? Does he consider himself a success? [47:45] If Bill had to give a high-profile, 20-minute talk about something unrelated to what made him famous, what would the topic be? What book would he recommend to someone who wanted to learn more about this topic? [48:57] Current challenges. [50:19] Bill’s best advice for someone seeking to launch their own business. [52:00] What Bill’s billboard would say. [53:17] * For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast https://tim.blog/podcast/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast-description. Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/. For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts http://tim.blog/transcripts. Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books http://tim.blog/books. Follow Tim: Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss https://twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferriss https://instagram.com/timferriss/ Facebook: facebook.com/timferriss https://www.facebook.com/TimFerriss/ YouTube: youtube.com/timferriss https://www.youtube.com/timferriss Past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast include Jerry Seinfeld https://tim.blog/2020/12/08/jerry-seinfeld/, Hugh Jackman https://tim.blog/2020/06/26/hugh-jackman/, Dr. Jane Goodall https://tim.blog/2020/04/16/jane-goodall/, LeBron James https://tim.blog/2018/11/27/lebron-james-mike-mancias/, Kevin Hart https://tim.blog/2020/05/20/kevin-hart/, Doris Kearns Goodwin https://tim.blog/2018/09/07/doris-kearns-goodwin-leadership/, Jamie Foxx https://tim.blog/2015/12/06/jamie-foxx/, Matthew McConaughey https://tim.blog/2020/10/19/matthew-mcconaughey/, Esther Perel https://tim.blog/2017/05/21/esther-perel/, Elizabeth Gilbert https://tim.blog/2020/05/08/elizabeth-gilbert/, Terry Crews https://tim.blog/2017/12/20/terry-crews-how-to-have-do-and-be-all-you-want/, Sia https://tim.blog/2020/08/12/sia/, Yuval Noah Harari https://tim.blog/2020/10/27/yuval-noah-harari/, Malcolm Gladwell https://tim.blog/2016/06/21/malcolm-gladwell/, Madeleine Albright https://tim.blog/2020/05/27/secretary-madeleine-albright/, Cheryl Strayed https://tim.blog/2017/03/30/cheryl-strayed/, Jim Collins https://tim.blog/2019/02/18/jim-collins/, Mary Karr, https://tim.blog/2020/11/11/mary-karr/ Maria Popova https://tim.blog/2014/10/21/brain-pickings/, Sam Harris https://tim.blog/2020/05/15/sam-harris-2/, Michael Phelps https://tim.blog/2021/01/21/michael-phelps-grant-hackett/, Bob Iger https://tim.blog/2020/01/16/bob-iger/, Edward Norton https://tim.blog/2019/10/31/edward-norton-motherless-brooklyn/, Arnold Schwarzenegger https://tim.blog/2015/02/02/arnold-schwarzenegger/, Neil Strauss https://tim.blog/2014/06/24/neil-strauss/, Ken Burns https://tim.blog/2019/09/12/ken-burns/, Maria Sharapova https://tim.blog/2017/08/26/maria-sharapova/, Marc Andreessen https://tim.blog/2016/05/29/marc-andreessen/, Neil Gaiman https://tim.blog/2019/03/28/neil-gaiman/, Neil de Grasse Tyson https://tim.blog/2019/10/03/neil-degrasse-tyson/, Jocko Willink https://tim.blog/2016/09/21/jocko-willink-on-discipline-leadership-and-overcoming-doubt/, Daniel Ek https://tim.blog/2020/12/03/daniel-ek/, Kelly Slater https://tim.blog/2020/09/08/kelly-slater/, Dr. Peter Attia https://tim.blog/2019/11/27/peter-attia-fasting-metformin-longevity/, Seth Godin https://tim.blog/2016/02/10/seth-godin/, Howard Marks https://tim.blog/2018/09/25/howard-marks/, Dr. Brené Brown https://tim.blog/2020/02/06/brene-brown-striving-self-acceptance-saving-marriages/, Eric Schmidt https://tim.blog/2019/04/09/eric-schmidt/, Michael Lewis https://tim.blog/2020/05/01/michael-lewis/, Joe Gebbia https://tim.blog/2018/03/08/joe-gebbia-co-founder-of-airbnb/, Michael Pollan https://tim.blog/2018/05/06/michael-pollan-how-to-change-your-mind/, Dr. Jordan Peterson https://tim.blog/2021/03/01/jordan-peterson/, Vince Vaughn https://tim.blog/2017/05/31/vince-vaughn/, Brian Koppelman https://tim.blog/2020/04/23/brian-koppelman/, Ramit Sethi https://tim.blog/2019/05/07/ramit-sethi/, Dax Shepard https://tim.blog/2020/11/18/dax-shepard/, Tony Robbins https://tim.blog/2014/10/15/money-master-the-game/, Jim Dethmer https://tim.blog/2020/05/18/jim-dethmer/, Dan Harris https://tim.blog/2020/11/19/dan-harris/, Ray Dalio https://tim.blog/2017/09/13/ray-dalio/, Naval Ravikant https://tim.blog/2015/08/18/the-evolutionary-angel-naval-ravikant/, Vitalik Buterin https://tim.blog/2021/03/08/vitalik-buterin-naval-ravikant/, Elizabeth Lesser https://tim.blog/2021/03/16/elizabeth-lesser/, Amanda Palmer https://tim.blog/2019/04/18/amanda-palmer-2/, Katie Haun https://tim.blog/2021/02/18/katie-haun/, Sir Richard Branson https://tim.blog/2017/10/09/richard-branson/, Chuck Palahniuk https://tim.blog/2020/09/02/chuck-palahniuk/, Arianna Huffington https://tim.blog/2017/10/18/arianna-huffington/, Reid Hoffman https://tim.blog/2015/08/31/the-oracle-of-silicon-valley-reid-hoffman-plus-michael-mccullough/, Bill Burr https://tim.blog/2017/09/17/bill-burr/, Whitney Cummings https://tim.blog/2015/06/26/whitney-cummings/, Rick Rubin https://tim.blog/2015/05/15/rick-rubin/, Dr. Vivek Murthy https://tim.blog/2020/03/26/vivek-murthy/, Darren Aronofsky https://tim.blog/2017/09/09/darren-aronofsky/, and many more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:00Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Five Bullet Friday, my very own email newsletter. It's become one of the most popular email newsletters in the world with millions of subscribers, and it's super, super simple. It does not clog up your inbox. Every Friday, I send out five bullet points, super short, of the coolest things I've found that week, which sometimes includes apps, books, documentaries, supplements, gadgets, new self experiments, hacks, tricks, and all sorts of weird stuff that I dig up from around the world. You guys, podcast listeners and book readers, have asked me for something short and action-packed for a very long time, because after all, the podcasts, the books, they can be quite long. And that's why I created Five Bullet Friday. It's become one of my favorite things I do every week.

• 0:43Tim Ferriss?

  It's free, it's always gonna be free, and you can learn more at tim.blog/friday. That's tim.blog/friday. I get asked a lot how I meet guests for the podcast, some of the most amazing people I've ever interacted with, and little known fact, I've met probably 25% of them because they first subscribed to Five Bullet Friday. So you'll be in good company. It's a lot of fun. Five Bullet Friday is only available if you subscribe via email. I do not publish the content on the blog or anywhere else. Also, if I'm doing small in-person meetups, offering early access to startups, beta testing, special deals, or anything else that's very limited, I share it first with Five Bullet Friday subscribers. So, check it out, tim.blog/friday.

• 1:26Tim Ferriss?

  If you listen to this podcast, it's very likely that you'd dig it a lot, and you can, of course, easily subscribe anytime. So, easy peasy. Again, that's tim.blog/friday, and thanks for checking it out, if the spirit moves you.

• 1:42Speaker 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?

• 1:50Speaker 02

  Now would be an appropriate time.

• 1:53Speaker 03

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

• 2:07Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers, to tease out the routines, habits, etc., that you can apply to your own life. You will get plenty of all of that in this special episode, which features an interview from my 2017 TV show, Fearless. The "less" is in parentheses because the objective is to teach you to fear less, not to be fearless. Fearless features in-depth, long-form conversations with top performers, focusing on how they've overcome fears and made hard decisions, embracing discomfort and thinking big along the way. It was produced by Wild West Productions, and I worked with them to make both the video and audio available to you for free, my dear listeners. So, thank

• 2:49Tim Ferriss?

  you, Wild West. You can find the video of this episode, which is gorgeous, I think they did an incredible job, on youtube.com/TimFerriss. Remember, two Rs, two S's, youtube.com/TimFerriss. And eventually, you'll be able to see all of the episodes for free at youtube.com/TimFerriss. So, you can swing over there and see what is currently up. Before we get started, just a little bit more on Wild West. Spearheaded by actor, producer, and past podcast guest Vince Vaughn, Wild West has produced a string of hit movies, including The Internship, Couples Retreat for Christmases, and The Breakup. In 2020, Wild West produced the comedy The Opening Act, starring Jimmy Oh Yang and Cedric the Entertainer. In addition to Fearless, their television credits include Undeniable with

• 3:33Tim Ferriss?

  Joe Buck, ESPN's 30 for 30 episode about the 85 Bears, and the Netflix animated show F is for Family. Wild West has also produced the documentaries Give Us This Day, Game Changers, subtitle Dreams of BlizzCon, and Wild West Comedy Show. And now, without further ado, please enjoy this wide-ranging conversation from Fearless.

• 3:57Tim Ferriss?

  I'm Tim Ferriss, author, entrepreneur, angel investor, and now TV host. I've spent my entire adult life asking questions, then scouring the globe to find the answers. On this show, I'll share the secrets of pioneers who have faced their own fears. We'll dig into the hard times, big mistakes, tough decisions, and how they got through it all. The goal isn't to be fearless. The goal is to learn to fear less.

• 4:24Tim Ferriss?

  Welcome to Fearless. I'm your host, Tim Ferriss, and on this stage, we will be deconstructing world-class performers of all types to uncover the specific tactics and strategies they've used to overcome doubt, tackle hard decisions, and ultimately succeed. By show of hands, how many people here wait for, say, the morning paper to get their sports scores? It's a big fat zero. How many of you can remember when television wasn't available 24 hours a day? Anyone all right of my generation or a little bit older? Got a few hands. And when I say Bristol, Connecticut, what do you think of?

• 5:00Tim Ferriss?

  After meeting my guest tonight, you'll associate it with one thing, and that is sports. Against all odds, he set out to change the course of television and the status quo as we know it. And in the process, he created one of the most iconic and recognizable brands in the world. Please welcome the founder of ESPN, Bill Rasmussen.

• 5:33Tim Ferriss?

  Bill, we have so much to talk about. I have so many questions for you.

• 5:36Bill Rasmussen?

  I hope you don't have dinner plans.

• 5:38Tim Ferriss?

  Is that an invitation? I think that might be an invitation. But before we get to all the questions I'd love to ask, we have a video that I want to roll, and then I'd love for you to describe for people what it actually is.

• 5:48Bill Rasmussen?

  Okay.

• 5:49Tim Ferriss?

  So, let's take a look.

• 5:51Speaker 05

  Yea, verily, a sampler of wonders. Hi, I'm Lee Leonard welcoming you to Bristol, Connecticut, 110 miles from New York City. Why Bristol? Because here in Bristol is where all the sports action is, as of right now. Now, here's another innovation on ESPN, and it's going to be a big part of our future. The Sports Center with George Grand. He'll have the latest on what's happening all around. George?

• 6:18Speaker 06

  Thanks, Lee, and welcome, everyone, to the ESPN Sports Center. From this very desk, in the coming weeks and months, we'll be filling you in on the pulse of sporting activity, not only around the country, but around the world as well. If it takes an interview, we'll do it. If it takes play-by-play, we'll do it. If it takes commentary, we'll do that, too. That's the way we'll function from the ESPN Sports Center, and we'll be filling you in on further updates as the broadcast progresses.

• 6:53Tim Ferriss?

  So, we're gonna delve into, of course, the path that led you to that point, but what was the video that we just saw?

• 6:58Bill Rasmussen?

  That was opening night, and the first words that were not there were about "if you're a fan."

• 7:05Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, we do have that, so we may-

• 7:06Bill Rasmussen?

  I can give it to you right verbatim if you want it.

• 7:09Tim Ferriss?

  Let's hear it verbatim, yeah, let's go with that. I'm ready, I'm ready.

• 7:11Bill Rasmussen?

  Because we were pretty involved that night, as you might imagine. "If you're a fan, if you're a fan, what you'll see in the next minutes, hours, and days to follow may convince you you've gone to sports heaven. Beyond that blue horizon is a limitless world of sports, and right now, you're standing on the edge of tomorrow. Sports, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, from ESPN, the Total Sports Cable Network."

• 7:39Bill Rasmussen?

  That's better than tape, isn't it?

• 7:41Tim Ferriss?

  So, this, I guess, leads me to one of my very first questions. I've read that you were obsessed with sports as a kid.

• 7:48Bill Rasmussen?

  I was, indeed.

• 7:49Tim Ferriss?

  Now, did you have an impeccable memory for different aspects of sports? But what type of obsession was it?

• 7:54Bill Rasmussen?

  Well, it all started, this is a very appropriate time to be talking about this, but since the Cubs have finally won. Are there any Cub fans around? We have to have Cub fans.

• 8:07Bill Rasmussen?

  My grandfather actually saw all six games of the 1906 World Series when the White Sox beat the Cubs, the only all-Chicago World Series ever. And he talked to me about baseball and the White Sox, because I was living on the South Side, from a very young age. And before I knew it, I had a glove in my hand and a ball in my hand, and by the time I was in the fifth grade, I was playing in organized games, and it just, I've always been obsessed with it. And for some reason, I have a memory for statistics. And I can, you know, we can talk about the Cubs or the White Sox or whatever, and names stick in my head from days when I was living in Chicago.

• 8:49Bill Rasmussen?

  And the Cubs didn't have Chris Bryant at third base, they had Stan Hack at third base. And they didn't have Rizzo at first base, they had Phil Cavareta at first base. I mean, and it's just always been there, I don't know why.

• 9:00Tim Ferriss?

  And do you remember your first baseball game that you saw on television, or your first media experience on television or otherwise?

• 9:10Bill Rasmussen?

  It was 1947, the Yankees were playing the White Sox. And my father, I had played a game somewhere, my father said, "Let's stop, I want to show you something," because one of the local establishments, quote-unquote, had a TV, and they were gonna, that was 1947, must have been WGN probably, doing the game. Picture was about this big, and it was in a cabinet about as big as the dresser in your bedroom.

• 9:37Tim Ferriss?

  So it'd be like if you took your smartphone and just put it on your wall, that's sort of, basically what the TV looked like?

• 9:42Bill Rasmussen?

  Yeah. That's about it, size-wise.

• 9:47Tim Ferriss?

  Tell me a little bit more about your father.

• 9:49Bill Rasmussen?

  He was always encouraging, he encouraged all of us, we were all going to get a college education. I was the first one in the entire family, he was the 11th of 11 children, and I was the first one to get to graduate from college. And always 100% supportive, but I'll tell you, he was a real taskmaster. The deal was, my two brothers and sister used to come with me, we'd pile in the car if I was playing a game, because it was, we're all gonna support Bill, you know, and that was great. And if I got a hit, we would all get a soft ice cream.

• 10:21Bill Rasmussen?

  Cone on the way home. So I had a lot of real supporters on the side, you know, on the sideline. Two brothers and sister. And if I didn't get a hit, my father would drive the same route and he wouldn't even take his foot off the gas, he'd drive right by. And my brothers and sister would just be all over me. What did you do? Why didn't you, you know, you should have run faster for this, you should have done that. Why did you swing and miss? Why did you strike?

• 10:44Tim Ferriss?

  How old were you at the time? This is kind of being a picture for us.

• 10:48Bill Rasmussen?

  I'm in the 14 or 15 year old age, yes.

• 10:51Tim Ferriss?

  So that's a very, maybe I'm just projecting here, but you know, 14, 15, 16, I was a very, I didn't, hadn't found my footing in the world. That type of pressure would be, I mean, not terrible, but just a real thing to consider. Did you, how did you, did that affect how you played or did you say anything to yourself?

• 11:09Bill Rasmussen?

  No, I just, I just always wanted to get a hit, you know? Everybody wants to get a hit. Everybody wants to bet a thousand, nobody can. It's just the way it is. Some days you go four for four and some days you go oh for four.

• 11:20Tim Ferriss?

  And if we, we jump to college, what did you think you were going to be?

• 11:24Bill Rasmussen?

  You know, when we were in college, the only thing we all knew was we were going to go on active duty in the service. We had no, there was no thought about what was going to happen next. We, and that was literal. Our choices were, unlike many years later, we had, we did have choices, four choices. Do you want to be called to active duty September 15th, November 15th, January 15th, or March 15th? That was it. Turns out they didn't, they didn't really mean that. They just took you when they wanted and my name came up in November and, do you know how hard it is? You've graduated from college, you want to go do something, work gainfully somewhere. And they say, well, what about, well, yeah, actually I have to go on active duty on November

• 12:09Bill Rasmussen?

  15th. No jobs. I mean, I graduated on June 6th and I ended up actually being a...

• 12:19Bill Rasmussen?

  I'm not even sure what you call it, but I was unloading trucks of produce at night at the local grocery store. That was all, you couldn't get a job. But nobody minded because that was what we had to do. That was during the Korean War, of course.

• 12:33Tim Ferriss?

  Now, if you hadn't been during wartime, had you thought of, or was baseball even a prospect?

• 12:41Bill Rasmussen?

  Oh, yeah. Oh, I was gonna play third base for the White Sox. Man, look out. I was gonna do it.

• 12:45Tim Ferriss?

  But you don't mean that as, say, you know, a third grader saying, someday I'm gonna be a professional baseball player. You actually had the chops.

• 12:51Bill Rasmussen?

  Oh, no. I was, I was gonna play. That's all there was to it. I could run and field. And one summer, we were playing in a summer league, and an unknown then and now could have been record was, I never got caught stealing the whole season. And so we were in the last game of the season. I thought, if I steal one more, I didn't have to run. I hadn't been caught all season. If I get one, you know, always wanna get one more. That's gonna be pretty cool. End the game, end the season. Nobody's ever done that. Man, I had second base stolen. I said, I've done it. I let up for one second. Whap. Ball was there and I was caught. I was out. From that moment, and I can feel that moment right now, sitting here talking to you, Tim, I let myself down and I've never done that. I wanna go all the way through the finish

• 13:36Bill Rasmussen?

  line. Every time, and I, and I think of that lesson. And I thought about that in business. I thought about that when I was in the Air Force. And sitting here today, talking to you.

• 13:45Tim Ferriss?

  It's keeping your eye on the ball.

• 13:47Bill Rasmussen?

  Keep your eye on the ball, keep focused, never, never let up until you accomplish what you wanna do.

• 14:00Tim Ferriss?

  And that's the difference, right? I mean, it's the last, that last 2%, which separates being out from being safe.

• 14:05Bill Rasmussen?

  Maybe it's the last 2/10ths, or 2/100s, whatever it is.

• 14:08Tim Ferriss?

  How did that translate to after college? I mean, you have a very long resume. You did a lot of different jobs. But how did that, say, translate to whether it's the Air Force or the business world?

• 14:18Bill Rasmussen?

  Well, when I started, I got out of the Air Force in November 1956 and went to work for Westinghouse right after the first of the year.

• 14:27Tim Ferriss?

  And was it at Westinghouse that you started to learn about advertising, television, things like that?

• 14:32Bill Rasmussen?

  Yep, it was. And I was working in the advertising department. And one of the things to answer your preceding question was the sales department would go out and they the sales manager would have all of these this was a national company, obviously. They were all I don't know they had say fourteen twelve or fourteen districts across country or regions and they would go out and set up this great program get all of the materials printed get all of the the corrugated displays printed get everything and ready and the problem was that this program would be introduced and it'd be fourteen weeks later before they got the material for the program so I went to the advertising manager and I said I have a great idea I said we've got to improve this and I did

• 15:17Bill Rasmussen?

  are you familiar with carbon interleaved forms does that ever ring does that even

• 15:21Tim Ferriss?

  Carbon interleaved forms are these like triplicates that leave an impression I'm just guessing here

• 15:26Bill Rasmussen?

  That's exactly what it was and so I said let's make one and we'll color code them one for this they had the large lamp division the automotive division the photo photo division and so on different colors for each one so if you're a guy who's selling photo lamps you send in the right color we've got three copies and we'll you know still didn't improve things so I said tell you what I'll quit and start a business and we'll do that and the business was Add8 Inc started in nineteen fifty-nine it lasted it may still be there but I know in fifty years later it was still functioning in Carney, New Jersey

• 15:59Tim Ferriss?

  So you identified the need within a business while you were still getting paid and then offered to solve it by starting your own business

• 16:06Bill Rasmussen?

  By quitting and starting my own

• 16:07Tim Ferriss?

  So you already had a customer before you even started

• 16:09Bill Rasmussen?

  We did

• 16:09Tim Ferriss?

  Your business

• 16:10Bill Rasmussen?

  And we made it you talk about making decisions about business of course you know we stepped out and we had Westinghouse and we said well we'll see who else can do it we went down the street and owned small business here small business here small decided that wasn't the way to go because small businesses are more of a pain in the neck to take care of and try to collect your money really tough whereas Westinghouse the end of the month check arrived automatically so we decided we would stop talking to the little businesses and we went to Well, we went to General Electric, we went to S and H Green Stamps, which was a big company at the time, General Foods, all the big companies, and they said, "Great idea." And you know what? Never had a default after that. So we learned another lesson. Do

• 16:55Bill Rasmussen?

  business with people who are good business people.

• 16:58Tim Ferriss?

  And actually have the funds and the budget.

• 17:00Bill Rasmussen?

  To make it work.

• 17:01Tim Ferriss?

  This became a gigantic operation. I mean, it seems like it was an immediate hit. And how did you segue then from this to broadcasting?

• 17:11Bill Rasmussen?

  This was pretty repetitive. Every day, you go in and you have a big order and you fill it and they pay you and so on. And I was getting old. I was approaching 30. I didn't want my life to go by without something. Well, when I found out I couldn't play baseball, I decided that I could become a broadcaster. Now, I had no radio experience, obviously, because all I'd been is in the Air Force and Westinghouse and this. I'm not sure if you've seen a magazine called Broadcasting. And they used to run little two-line ads, like little want ads. There was one for a sportscaster in Westbury, Rhode Island. And I can remember, just as we're sitting here now, walking in, "Hi, how are you?" and so

• 17:50Bill Rasmussen?

  on. "Did you bring a tape?" "No." "Didn't bring a tape?" "No." "Well, what station you work for?" "Never worked for a radio station." He said, "Well, you answered this thing for a sportscaster." He said, "Why do you think you can be a sportscaster?" I said, "Because I know I can do it." He said, "You're kidding me. You don't have a tape, you've never done it, but you know you can do it." I said, "Yep." He said, "You know what? Based on this approach, I'm putting a new station on the air in Amherst, Massachusetts. And if you'll help me put it on the air, you're my sportscaster."

• 18:25Tim Ferriss?

  So, all right, hold on. I want to pause for a second. So, the force of will, sort of, shitspa, right? That just willed that into existence.

• 18:40Tim Ferriss?

  There's gotta be a little bit more to it. Did you just stare him down? Or was it, you let the silence do the work? I mean, what else was it?

• 18:47Bill Rasmussen?

  Well, no, I just told my story and I guess it was just the silence and he pondered, not very long. And what I didn't realize is his station was going on the air, this is now October. He said, "I'll start you January 1st." Because they were going to have to do field strength testing of the signal and so on.

• 19:06Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 19:07Bill Rasmussen?

  What I didn't realize was Amherst, Massachusetts, in January. The snow was about hip-deep and you had to go out into the farm fields and hold up this little, you know. Can you hear me now? One of those kind of things? And so we did that and we went on the air on April 1st.

• 19:23Tim Ferriss?

  Wait, did you have to do that?

• 19:24Bill Rasmussen?

  Yeah, that was my, that's what I had.

• 19:26Tim Ferriss?

  That was part of the gig?

• 19:27Bill Rasmussen?

  That was part of the gig, yes. So I had to go do that. And we went on the air April 1st and then I. University of Massachusetts was located, still is, in Amherst, Massachusetts. It was a small school and of about 10,000 students.

• 19:39Tim Ferriss?

  I almost went to Amherst, I was in grade school.

• 19:42Bill Rasmussen?

  So I said, "Why don't we do UMass football?"

• 19:46Bill Rasmussen?

  He didn't care, he wasn't a sports fan. He said, "You know, I hired you as a sports guy." So I went up and I met the, introduced myself to the athletic director. "Hi, Warren McGurk was his name." "Hi, I'm Bill Rasmussen, local radio station." "We'd really like to talk to you about doing your football games." He said, "You wanna do the games? Go ahead."

• 20:05Bill Rasmussen?

  I said, I didn't say it to him, I said to myself, "What did he just say? Go ahead." No requirement for discussion, no requirement for a contract, and especially no rights fee. So off we went and got the rights to do UMass football. But of course, I had never done a football game because I had never done any radio before I got there.

• 20:25Tim Ferriss?

  So how'd that go? What about, what was your first?

• 20:28Bill Rasmussen?

  First game?

• 20:28Tim Ferriss?

  Your first game like?

• 20:30Bill Rasmussen?

  It was fun.

• 20:32Bill Rasmussen?

  It was the University of Massachusetts, the University of Maine in Orono, Maine. We didn't have anybody else at the station, so I've been talking to their sports information people and the sports information director, a veteran who'd been there for some 20 years, said he would be my color guy. So all the way from Amherst to Orono, Maine, I was thinking, should I tell him I've never done a football game before? Worse yet, should I tell him I've never even seen a college football game live before? I said, nah.

• 21:06Tim Ferriss?

  Extraneous. He'll figure that out on his own.

• 21:09Bill Rasmussen?

  Let's just go for it. So that's what we did. We just went in and started talking. Not a problem, never heard a word. Massachusetts won 14 to nothing. We drove all the way back and he never said a word about, I didn't know you hadn't done this, or nothing. I never said anything.

• 21:25Tim Ferriss?

  Don't ask, don't tell.

• 21:26Bill Rasmussen?

  Yeah, he didn't say anything. I didn't say anything. We did the whole season. It was great. I mean, if you don't try, you never get anywhere.

• 21:35Tim Ferriss?

  No, I agree.

• 21:36Bill Rasmussen?

  You have to try.

• 21:37Tim Ferriss?

  When I do something new, I like to try a lot of new things. I'm a novelty seeker and very frequently unqualified for whatever it is that I'm trying to do. A very good friend of mine said once, a very successful investor, he said, if I always did what I was qualified to do, I'd be pushing a broom somewhere. And I really believe that. At the same time, I get a little nervous, maybe, before doing something, especially publicly, that I haven't done before. Did you have any type of... What is your self-talk like, if anything? And what does that warm-up look like?

• 22:18Bill Rasmussen?

  It's kind of like a movie in my head. I know it's going to work. I've already seen it up here before it happens.

• 22:22Tim Ferriss?

  You're visualizing it work.

• 22:23Bill Rasmussen?

  Yeah. You have to prepare. And I do that to this day if I'm going someplace to do something that requires specifics. I know all the specifics, frontwards, backwards, and all of those specifics around it before we get started. And as you mentioned earlier, for some reason, I've been blessed with a really good memory.

• 22:45Tim Ferriss?

  Well, it's a powerful asset to have also. I mean, just as in terms of types of memory for your chosen field, it was a very nice.

• 22:51Bill Rasmussen?

  It was a very good one, yeah.

• 22:53Tim Ferriss?

  And you have, I mean, you've winged it a fair amount, which I think, I mean as a compliment, with preparation.

• 22:59Bill Rasmussen?

  Not a, not a fair amount.

• 23:00Tim Ferriss?

  A lot.

• 23:01Bill Rasmussen?

  A lot.

• 23:02Tim Ferriss?

  A lot, okay, all right. I won't hedge. I think a lot of people who are watching might think, oh my God, this guy is just exuding more confidence than I've seen in every extended member of my family combined. So they might say, oh, this guy has no weaknesses. He's never had any self doubt. What is one of those things that, that wasn't part of the highlight reel?

• 23:23Bill Rasmussen?

  Well, getting fired is always kind of a traumatic moment.

• 23:25Tim Ferriss?

  Is there a particular getting fired?

• 23:28Bill Rasmussen?

  Well, the one that, the one that's most particular to me was getting fired. I, I was with the New England Whalers, the World Hockey Association for four years in the mid seventies. They, the World Hockey Association had been around for four years and they'd been in the playoffs, won the championship one year and were in the playoffs. And in nineteen seventy-seven, seventy-eight, they missed the playoffs. And you know, when a team misses the playoffs, after all that success, they have to have some changes. They fired everybody in the front office, me included. None of us had, by the way, skated one stride for the team that lost all of, all those games and missed the playoffs.

• 24:04Tim Ferriss?

  No, is that?

• 24:05Bill Rasmussen?

  That was Memorial Day weekend. Following, we were supposed to do a TV show to talk about the Whalers' past and the Whalers' future with a guy in, in Hartford. And I called him and said, you know, Ed, you probably don't want to talk to me because, and he said, yeah, yeah, we're gonna do the show. I said, no, I don't think so because I was just fired. He said, well, you gotta come down and talk to me. I don't have anybody else to talk to. So he said, so come on down. So I went down and saw him that first week in June. We began to talk about maybe doing some Connecticut basketball or maybe, maybe, why not the whole state of Connecticut? Why not add Wesleyan and Yale and Fairfield and so on? And that was, that was a really great idea. I mean, there was no Big East. And so he said, okay. So right away, I said, okay, we gotta figure out how to hook them together.

• 24:48Bill Rasmussen?

  I knew how to put a tel-, a network together because with telco, I'd done it with radio in Massachusetts and with the Whalers and so on. So. I called Snetco, Southern New England Telephone Company. And the guy's name was Bill something, I remember that. I can't remember his last name now. But I told him what I wanted to do. Connecticut had all of five cable systems operating. That's all five. I said, I wanted to hook them all together so we could do a broadcast from one point to all of them at the same time. How much is it going to cost? Simple question. Put them together, tell me how much it's going to cost. He said, well, you're getting a cart ahead of the horse here. He said, it's going to take us some time to put together and we have to go through and

• 25:32Bill Rasmussen?

  do an evaluation or something. I said, well, how long is it? I'm thinking it's going to be, you know, 48 hours, I'll have an answer. He said, well, it takes about 18 months to do this. I said, it takes what? He said, 18 months. So I went back and said to him, this isn't going to work, it's going to take 18 months. He was officing at the Plainville, Connecticut, branch of United Cable was headquartered in Denver. And the general manager heard us talking one day and he said, you know what? He said, I don't know about that idea of yours of hooking all the cables together. He said, but here's something you might look into. RCA has got this thing called a satellite. Nobody seems to know much about it. But I've got the phone number for RCA America in New York. I'll just give it to you.

• 26:16Bill Rasmussen?

  You call them and you figure it out. So I said, I'd like to speak with someone about RCA America about time on one of your satellites. Oh, yes, sir. Wait a minute, I'll get you somebody to... Guy came on and said, Al Perenello, may I help you? I said, yeah. I briefly described what I wanted to do and he said, where are you in Connecticut? I thought, wow, this is pretty good. Told him and he said, I'll be up there tomorrow morning. Now, we didn't have an office. Where's he going to come up to?

• 26:45Tim Ferriss?

  This is another one of those, what do you mean, you don't have a tape situations?

• 26:49Bill Rasmussen?

  So I just, so we went down and I talked to the vice president, he was giving me the number, he got me into it. So I said, can we use your conference room? Very nicely appointed conference room. They spent a lot of money putting it together. And he said, we have a company policy, I have to charge you for it. And I thought, oh, boy. He said, "Well, 20 bucks would be too much." So we gave him a $20 bill and we had a conference room. And he came up and he explained everything. And at the end of his whole presentation, he said, "There's one thing that we used to offer, but we don't anymore because nobody has ever been interested in it. 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and it's a five-year contract. $34,167 a month."

• 27:28Bill Rasmussen?

  Okay, and so he went off. And my son Scott and I started talking about that overnight. We called him the next morning, and it was really a funny conversation the next morning. So I didn't know the difference between satellite, transponder, and all that, you know, jargon. So I just called and I said to him, "Al, we'll take one of those." He said, "One of what?"

• 27:50Tim Ferriss?

  That thing you were talking about.

• 27:51Bill Rasmussen?

  That, you know, what you did just about what I did because at my desk, I went, "One of those things." That transponder, that satellite thing we were talking about. And he said, "You mean a transponder?" Yeah, that's what I mean. And that started it. So he said, "You've got it. We'll paper it over, obviously." So that was all we needed. We went down into Hartford, the capital of Connecticut, incorporated ESPN on Bastille Day, July 14, 1978. Off we went.

• 28:20Tim Ferriss?

  So we've talked a lot about satellites, transponders, everything in between. I'll take one of those. So I thought it would be fun to bring up a video that explains how some of this works.

• 28:31Speaker 07

  Years ago, tales of Jules Verne and Buck Rogers were made of dreams and wild bits of imagination. Today, modern technology has taken those dreams and that imagination and turned it into a reality that allows us to bring a television picture into your home via satellite. The picture you're watching right now has been taken by a camera, sent through some sophisticated equipment to this earth transmitting station, which in turn feeds a satellite located 22,300 miles above the equator, just south of Hawaii. Our cameraman takes a picture at a football stadium, for example. That picture is fed into our ESPN remote truck, out of the remote truck to an earth transmitting station, up to the satellite over the equator, back down to an earth receiving station over a cable in your hometown, into your television set in your living room.

• 29:25Tim Ferriss?

  So, everybody got it? That was like, virtual reality back in the day.

• 29:30Tim Ferriss?

  Alright.

• 29:31Bill Rasmussen?

  One take, too, by the way. That was the only take, because it was 6:30 and we were going on the air in 30 minutes.

• 29:37Bill Rasmussen?

  They said, "Don't mess it up."

• 29:39Tim Ferriss?

  Don't mess it up. So ESPN, what was the original incarnation? You said you incorporated it. When you incorporated it, what in your mind was ESPN? And how did you choose the name?

• 29:52Bill Rasmussen?

  We knew we were going to do 24-hour sports at that point. We had made that decision. And a colleague, he was a partner in an advertising firm. One of their clients was the Connecticut Natural Gas Company, who was running a promo for an energy-saving program. Recognize the letters? E-S-P.

• 30:16Bill Rasmussen?

  To do animation in those days was very, very expensive. And we had no money. We started this whole thing with a $9,000 credit card cash advance. So, you know, you have to husband your dollars. They had this great graphic, and there was something circling the globe. And here was, you know, clouds and all this motion, and they had done it. And it said, "E-S-P, E-S-P," going around. And so, he called and he said, "You know, I think you guys have a great idea. I'd like to come to work for you." And I said, you know, we couldn't hire anybody. And I said, "Well, I'll tell you what. That Connecticut Natural Gas thing, if you can bring that graphic, minus the, you know, no audio, just bring that graphic, and we can put our own words to it, you're hired." He called me the next morning, he said, "When do I start?"

• 31:01Bill Rasmussen?

  I nearly fell over. I couldn't believe he'd pull it off. He got permission from Connecticut Natural Gas to take the stuff that they had paid for, the graphic, the visual, and brought it to us. And so, we had the E-S-P. Well, that wasn't going to work. We thought we would be the ESPN, Sports Programming Network, but somebody already had a Satellite Programming Network, so we couldn't use it. So, he had the E on the front end, and we figured we could add the N on the back end. And we'll see. That the original version of ESPN was the E period, S period, P period, network. And it was a kooky-looking logo, I have to tell you.

• 31:41Tim Ferriss?

  And it sounds a lot like registering these days in a website. It's dope, man. You're like, oh, that one's taken. This one's taken. Well, if we hadn't a letter here, subtract one here, add another one there.

• 31:50Bill Rasmussen?

  Yeah. So now it's time to move ahead and we're looking for funds.

• 31:54Tim Ferriss?

  You got a nice chunk of change. We can talk about it. I think it was 9,000, 30,000 kind of family and friends. Correct me if I'm wrong.

• 32:00Bill Rasmussen?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 32:01Tim Ferriss?

  And then Getty Oil came.

• 32:03Bill Rasmussen?

  There was an interim step in there.

• 32:04Tim Ferriss?

  There was an interim step. What happened?

• 32:06Bill Rasmussen?

  We had some appointments with some very, very big and powerful companies. The Pittsburgh Plate Glass people, the Campbell Soup Foundation. I mean, they were big companies and with TAF Broadcasting, do you remember that? They went out of business. I don't know at what point along the way. Anyway, we went out there. I visited with them. I actually met with the board and the chairman hosted me. We had a delightful lunch. We talked a little bit and then he walked me to the front door and out into the parking lot for my rental car. And he said, "We really appreciate your coming." And he figuratively, you know, patting me on the head and saying, "You're a delightful young man. Thank you for coming today,

• 32:49Bill Rasmussen?

  but I have to tell you, your ideas simply will not work. Oh, and one other thing," he said, "there will be no cable television three years from today." TAF Broadcasting went out of business. I just don't remember when. Cable television's live and well.

• 33:09Tim Ferriss?

  How did you feel when he said that to you and dismissed you in the parking lot?

• 33:15Bill Rasmussen?

  I thought he made a mistake. He was a nice man. I wasn't going to say anything nasty to him. I had no negative reaction to him. I just knew he was wrong. I just thought he made a mistake. He had a great opportunity and they might still be around today if he had made the right decision. That sounds copy. I didn't mean it that way.

• 33:33Bill Rasmussen?

  But that was the sixth company we had been to and then we ended up coming out to Getty Oil. Met with the vice president and explained the whole thing and he was very skeptical and so on. But what I didn't know is that he was a gentleman who really liked the idea. Because it was putting him close to television and he lived in Hollywood and all this kind of stuff. And many, many years later, this finance manager told me, he said, "You don't know this." But his office was on the 18th floor and he called me when you left his office and he said, "I swear before you got..." The elevator got to the bottom floor. He had called me and said, "George, we're going in the television business." Because he wanted to be in the television business.

• 34:16Tim Ferriss?

  Was this a chicken and the egg issue? Were you basically saying, "We've... Getty family's totally behind us, we got this nailed down, so you should really give us the programming?"

• 34:25Bill Rasmussen?

  Oh, no, it wasn't just those two, it was... You've seen the jugglers, they can throw five of them in the air at the same time? Here's... And this literally happened, if we were talking to Getty... We were doing very well with RCA and the satellite, although we hadn't signed a contract yet.

• 34:40Tim Ferriss?

  But they weren't contractually obligated to you because they put the paper down, right?

• 34:43Bill Rasmussen?

  Yeah.

• 34:44Tim Ferriss?

  Nice, good move.

• 34:45Bill Rasmussen?

  We are making a lot of progress with the cable operators. We have... Well, how many... They never asked how many we had signed early on, but we were making a lot of progress with them. And program with the NCA, it's natural for the NCA. Now, if we're talking to the NCA, they say, "Well, how are you going to finance this?" Oh, we're talking to Getty Oil, they are 100% behind this. As a matter of fact, their finance manager is coming in the next meeting so we can explain all of it. And it just went like that. And of course, when we were talking to the cable operators, it was, "We've got the financing with Getty, we've got the programming with the NCA." And all we need is you to let your subscribers know. And they will be fans of ours and customers of yours and increase your... You know.

• 35:23Tim Ferriss?

  So, the programming though, I mean, that's the lifeblood in a lot of ways. I mean, you need the capital, but you also need the programming. So, this is a good point to talk about something we have here that I'm not going to open up and we're going to get to.

• 35:35Bill Rasmussen?

  Oh, you have a broken arm if you open that.

• 35:36Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah, I can't open this. This is a shrink-wrapped copy of the original ESPN pitch deck to the NCAA. A, why is this shrink-wrapped? And then, B, can you describe...

• 35:47Bill Rasmussen?

  If you hand it to me, I'll show you what we did.

• 35:49Tim Ferriss?

  All right.

• 35:50Bill Rasmussen?

  This is really easy. We had a very creative printer and he was very much on our side helping us get things done. And I don't know if you can see what this says. He said, "I'm gonna design this for you because you don't know what you're doing." And I said, "Okay." And I said, "Well, we gotta get these copies out to the NCAA." And he said, "No, no, no, I'm not, you cannot do that." He printed six copies, shrink wrapped all of them, and I said, "Why are we shrink wrapping them?" He said, "Because if you put an open book in front of somebody in a meeting, they will begin to flip through it before you finish saying what you have to say."

• 36:20Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, that's very smart.

• 36:21Bill Rasmussen?

  If you put a shrink wrapped book in front of them, they won't, they'll be looking right and left until somebody else starts to open it, they won't touch theirs. And you get to finish your story and then you cue them and say, "Now, open your presentation." And then we walk through it.

• 36:35Tim Ferriss?

  That is very smart.

• 36:36Bill Rasmussen?

  And I've used this as an example, I can't tell you how many times. It's a very, very effective tool. It's amazing.

• 36:44Tim Ferriss?

  That is, I've seen so many pitches, I mean, in my other life, I do a lot of investing in early tech mostly, and I've seen so many dozens of pitches fail because what happens is exactly what you said. People start flipping ahead.

• 36:59Bill Rasmussen?

  They lose focus.

• 37:00Tim Ferriss?

  They're busy, they're distracted, and they're not listening at all to what the person is saying. And before that person can get two sentences in, they've already found an objection and it's game over.

• 37:07Bill Rasmussen?

  Yep.

• 37:08Tim Ferriss?

  So what then, tell us more about the pitch meeting with the NCAA. So what were, what were other keys of the pitch?

• 37:14Bill Rasmussen?

  Well, at first, the first meeting was in October when we presented this book. So he said, "Well, I'll have to talk to Walter about this." But he said, "The best thing you can do is keep working through the TV committee." So we went to a TV committee meeting in October, we went to another one in December, we went to another one in January, and I'm getting tired of going to TV meetings. We don't seem to, I've never seen Walter Byers at this point. I still haven't seen him. On January 25th, we're at the Kansas City Marriott Airport, doing yet another TV committee meeting. And the back door of the meeting room opens and it's Walter Byers. He comes in, sits down. Right in the middle of a sentence, doesn't say, "Excuse me," doesn't say, "Any, doesn't have a question," he just comes in, sits down.

• 37:52Tim Ferriss?

  Hill Caesar, there he is.

• 37:53Bill Rasmussen?

  Yeah, where he is, he's there. So I kept talking. I mean, literally, I kept talking. And he stood up and he said, "How do I," right in the middle, no introduction. I mean, everybody knew who he was. He said, "How do I know that you're not just on a fishing expedition, you're just looking to use our name to go out and raise some money?" And to this minute, sitting here talking to you, Tim, I don't know why I said it or where it came from, but I said... You give us the name of your bank and on July 1st we'll deposit 50% of whatever amount we come to an agreement. Sat back down. Two guys next to me, JB Dougherty from K S Sweet and George Connor, the financial guy from Getty, turned about as white as this table.

• 38:37Bill Rasmussen?

  And worse than that, Walter gets up, walks out the back door and slams the door and leaves. I was sure it was all over. Copey adjourned the meeting, Tom Hanson came up and said, Walter wondered if you could stay over another night and come out to the office and meet with us. And that started, that was January 25th. By March 1st, we had a written contract signed.

• 39:00Tim Ferriss?

  So let's, let's talk a little bit about the launch itself. So you get these pieces of the puzzle arranged. You manage to juggle successfully and you have these incredible commitments. And by the way, I want to just underscore something for folks. It seems like, and please feel free to jump in, but you can, you can get really, really far in life, further than you would expect just by asking, why not? I've noticed you brought that up a couple of times, like, why not? What's worse could happen? And the launch though, I really want to dig into.

• 39:44Tim Ferriss?

  So between signing all of these folks, getting all these commitments and your first air date, how much time elapsed?

• 39:52Bill Rasmussen?

  We signed the NCA on March 1st. We hired Chet Simmons from NBC. He came on board July 31st. We were signing subscribers, cable subscribers, multiple system operators all through that period. Chet came on board on July 31st and we said we're going on the air September 7th and he said, no, we're not because the building hadn't even topped, they hadn't even finished the walls of the building to the point where they could put the tree on top and say, well this is as high as we're going, you know? Chet was convinced we couldn't go on, but the contractor said, we'll have it ready for you. And they did. There's, that's kind of a picture of what it looked like.

• 40:30Tim Ferriss?

  Now, that looks like the same tie that we saw in that video earlier. Was that the same day? No.

• 40:35Bill Rasmussen?

  Well, yeah, we finished the building by 6:30. No, that wasn't the same day, but it probably was the same tie.

• 40:40Tim Ferriss?

  So we have a photo of you guys in the control room behind the scenes.

• 40:44Bill Rasmussen?

  You could see how positive we all were.

• 40:45Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. So what is the conversation happening in this room when you guys are doing this first broadcast?

• 40:54Bill Rasmussen?

  That particular moment, there wasn't a word being said.

• 40:56Tim Ferriss?

  But in general, I mean, were there, what was, paint a picture for us of that day?

• 41:01Bill Rasmussen?

  Yeah, we pictured at 6:30 at night, we're going on the air at 7:00. We hadn't recorded some of these things by that time, so there was a little bit of angst building among people. And we still had the contractor outside cleaning windows, because we had all glass windows so people could see into the control room, into here and there. And speaking of the master control room next to the studio to run the show, it didn't work. ESPN actually wanted the air from a remote truck out behind the building. We were on the air with ESPN for about a month from the remote truck out back, which is kind of funny, but that's, that's the way it was.

• 41:32Tim Ferriss?

  What were some of the, with ESPN, some of the best and worst decisions that you made?

• 41:40Bill Rasmussen?

  I think the best decision was SportsCenter.

• 41:42Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 41:43Bill Rasmussen?

  I mean, you have to understand the context of the day. ABC, NBC, and CBS, they commanded 93% of the audience at 6:30.

• 41:53Tim Ferriss?

  93%?

• 41:54Bill Rasmussen?

  93%. America tuned in to the evening news. And we said we were going to put SportsCenter on at 6:30. What, what do you think the first reaction was from everybody outside of our enthusiastic little bunch?

• 42:08Tim Ferriss?

  DOA, can't be done.

• 42:09Bill Rasmussen?

  You're crazy, you're crazy. They have 93%. I said, but the other 7% will watch us? What do you mean the other 7%? Well, maybe they're sports fans. Fast forward many, many years, and I don't know what it is today, but I know it's under 15% watch the big three networks, and of course, there are a lot more channels and so on. I don't know what they, I know there are many nights that SportsCenter has, and depending on what's happening in the sports world, they produce some pretty big numbers.

• 42:33Tim Ferriss?

  So you have a lot of hours to fill. 24 hours, it's a lot of hours. And so you had to, in some cases, really slot in a wide spectrum of different sports. So I thought it'd be fun to take a look at just a handful of those sports.

• 42:48Speaker 07

  From Penn State University, ESPN brings you the NCAA Championship Fencing. So, we go into event number three of the day, Bruno the Sabre. And this one's kind of a throwback to the old movies of the swashbuckling pirates and the three musketeers.

• 43:05Speaker 06

  Next, Division III Cross Country Championships. Enjoy.

• 43:10Speaker 08

  NCAA Championship Cross Country on ESPN.

• 43:15Speaker 08

  Today from the Duran Eastman Golf Course in Rochester, New York. It's the Division III Championship.

• 43:28Tim Ferriss?

  And you had some very esoteric sports.

• 43:31Bill Rasmussen?

  I was gonna use the word esoteric. It's hard to believe we turned anything down, right? We had a group from New York City come to us and ask us what rights fee we would pay them to televise their New York City Rooftop Platform Tennis League.

• 43:49Tim Ferriss?

  So you were receiving the pitch in this case?

• 43:51Bill Rasmussen?

  Yes, and we said, uh, don't think so. We had a lot of people present serious proposals, but that one was probably the farthest out in... That was not in left field, that was in deep left field and farther. It was gone.

• 44:08Tim Ferriss?

  Perhaps this is a good place to ask, just for people who are wondering, uh, when did you leave ESPN?

• 44:17Bill Rasmussen?

  It was sold.

• 44:18Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 44:19Bill Rasmussen?

  So I can tell you exactly when I left. It was 2:05 PM, Friday afternoon, June 25th, 1984.

• 44:26Tim Ferriss?

  Bill Rass must have liked it, gentlemen.

• 44:33Bill Rasmussen?

  And the reason? They had a... That's a big check. Yeah, so from Memorial Day, 1978, to June 25th, 1984 was my active tenure with ESPN.

• 44:47Tim Ferriss?

  Do you ever regret having left? Do you wish you could have stayed longer?

• 44:51Bill Rasmussen?

  Not for a second. And I think of all of the things that have happened, the creation of literally hundreds of thousands of jobs for freelance people, for network people, for... All the teams have their own networks now. And basically ESPN spawned all of that. And I'm really proud of that. I'm pleased.

• 45:09Tim Ferriss?

  If somebody wanted to get good at negotiating or just pitching like this, do you have any particular recommendations for them? I know I have a few books that had a huge impact on me. I'll share what those are. But do you have any recommendations?

• 45:20Bill Rasmussen?

  I think, one, you have to know as much as you can possibly know about your subject. The other thing is, I don't have to know all the details about your business. What are your goals? And what's your general business? I don't have to know all the details about my business. Where do we want to go and where do we want to take it? I'm not a... I'm not an engineer. I'm not a mathematician. I'm not an accountant. I'm none of those things. But I kind of have an idea to put the idea together and have a general knowledge of some statistics that makes some sense.

• 45:51Tim Ferriss?

  Well, you have a really good combination of a number of things. And I remember at one point reading an article by a gentleman named Marc Andreessen. So Marc Andreessen is a billionaire. He was co-author of the Mosaic web browser, so the first really popular graphic web browser. And he noted that most CEOs are kind of in the top 20% in two or three fields. But they're very rarely the Michael Jordan of just one thing. You have to have a few overlapping skills. And the good news is it's a lot easier. It's a lot easier to plan that and engineer that in your life than it is to try to aim to be that one Michael Jordan. So the books I was going to mention for you guys, if you're interested, I found very helpful. Getting Past No, a little more realistic than Getting to Yes, in my opinion, and then Secrets of Power Negotiating.

• 46:36Tim Ferriss?

  I would get the audio if you can, because you can tell with the cadence of Bill's voice and the delivery, there's a lot of nuance. Let's see if we can pull up some audience questions. This is from Lex. How does it feel to have captured the attention of so many people and our boyfriends and bring them together through sports?

• 46:54Bill Rasmussen?

  Well, it wasn't always that way. In our early days, some of the men in the audience got so enamored with ESPN that we were on the air barely a year and we were named in a divorce action. A lady in Texas included us because her husband was paying more attention to ESPN than he was to her. And when it arrived in Bristol, our general counsel, and our whole legal department was only one person, so our general counsel went, "Oh my, we're dead. What's gonna happen?" And our PR lady said, "We want to spell her name right," and she put out a press release. And that turned out to be the first of many times ESPN has been frequently named in divorce suits.

• 47:38Bill Rasmussen?

  For alienation of whatever. I don't get it, but...

• 47:42Tim Ferriss?

  Addictive entertainment. Addictive entertainment. Aside from family members, when you hear the word "successful," who is the first person who comes to mind?

• 47:51Bill Rasmussen?

  Successful. Success is described in so many different ways. When I think back to my father surviving the Depression, getting four kids through college, coming through World War II, that was a success.

• 48:10Tim Ferriss?

  What is success to you?

• 48:13Bill Rasmussen?

  Getting a good night's sleep, I guess.

• 48:19Tim Ferriss?

  So this...

• 48:20Bill Rasmussen?

  Seriously, when you get older, you'll find...

• 48:22Tim Ferriss?

  No, no, no. I do take it seriously, because I've always had onset insomnia. And by the way, Jodie Foster, I think, has said, "Success is sleeping well." Like, it's a good indicator of what you're doing right or what you're doing wrong.

• 48:34Bill Rasmussen?

  Well, and you have so much more energy the next day to do more things.

• 48:38Tim Ferriss?

  Do you feel like a success?

• 48:41Bill Rasmussen?

  Not really. You know, I'm just a guy from the South Side of Chicago. I've been blessed to be involved in a lot of really good things that turned out well. But I don't, you know, I don't walk down the street in my ESPN jacket across the back or anything.

• 48:57Tim Ferriss?

  If you had to give a high-profile talk, 20-minute talk, on something that is not something you're known for, like ESPN, what might you talk?

• 49:06Bill Rasmussen?

  I'm an avid, avid reader, and I'm a serious advocate and a serious student of American history. All the way back to the Civil War, but particularly in World War II. Just because I lived through it. I mean, I lived through the military part of it. I was in the high schools in Chicago, we're all military. They all had ROTC units. We had the various and sundry parades. We're all, you know, and it just... Especially living in the World War II period, you got such a sense of country and patriotism.

• 49:42Tim Ferriss?

  If somebody wanted to immerse themselves in that, if you had a friend, student, doesn't really matter, someone who really wanted to immerse themselves in that history, what books would you recommend they start with, or any places to start?

• 49:56Bill Rasmussen?

  The first one I would, and I'm now reading it for the second time. So, and it's a little book, it's 789 pages. You have to immerse. I mean, you have to really get into it. It's called "December 1941." And if you read that book, you'll find out so much about politics, war, America, and the resiliency of this country. It's just, it's an amazing, amazing book.

• 50:22Tim Ferriss?

  Current challenges, or if you had to pick one of your current challenges or problems that you're facing.

• 50:28Bill Rasmussen?

  We're starting a new business. It's called Hometown Networks. And what we're gonna do is, we have been, I have been an advisor to a company that has come up with incredible, I don't know how they do this stuff. It's one single 4K camera, one microphone, and a little black box. You can produce any baseball game, football game, hockey game, whatever you want, soccer game. And he wants to do it for high schools all across America, or secondary schools, or town recreational areas and so on. I think it's a great idea. So I've agreed to help him.

• 51:00Tim Ferriss?

  So if I were to, if I were to ask you then, what's next for Bill Raspous, and that would be a big component of it, it sounds like?

• 51:07Bill Rasmussen?

  Yeah, that's what I'm doing now, because I, first of all, you talk about four-hour work weeks, well, I, you're pushing the envelope there.

• 51:15Tim Ferriss?

  Getting aggressive, getting extreme.

• 51:17Bill Rasmussen?

  Yeah, no.

• 51:18Tim Ferriss?

  Well, no.

• 51:19Bill Rasmussen?

  But I, but I really, I don't, I don't wanna work at it full, and I don't work full, I, I don't work full-time in the sense that people think of going to work.

• 51:27Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 51:28Bill Rasmussen?

  Work up here, as you're thinking about things. But I think it's a great opportunity for not only youngsters playing, but for parents, for grandparents, for relatives, anywhere, because streaming goes anywhere in the world now. If I have a, if I have a kid playing in Florida and you're living in California, and you say, what's, you know, Sam up to today? Tune in tonight, you can find him, you'll watch him. Make sure that all those people who are gonna benefit from this learn all about it, and that's what we're doing.

• 52:00Tim Ferriss?

  Learn all about it. So I only have, I only have two questions left. If there's anything you would like to say as parting comments, recommendation, suggestion, thoughts for people who are going out on their own adventurous careers, maybe they're just getting started?

• 52:13Bill Rasmussen?

  So I think it's really simple. In my view, when I look at a new business... It doesn't get very complicated. It's a short business statement, hopefully, mission statement, hopefully no more than six words, and then follow the facts, five facts. You need financing, advertising, content, technology, and customers, subscribers, customers. That's what we used in ESPN. I think the same thing works to this very day. If you keep it that simple, you'll win.

• 52:40Tim Ferriss?

  One of the patterns that it seems has come up a number of times here that is worth mentioning is that it seems like for the most important decisions, for doing the big things, the timing's never really good. Like, the timing's never perfect. There's always something not ready, there's always someone who's walking out the door, there's always a partner who's leaving, there's always something. So if you wait until the timing is perfect, or when it feels really good, you're never going to be ready.

• 53:02Bill Rasmussen?

  You're never going to be ready. You just have to be ready. You have to move when you're ready to go, and everybody else has to catch up or walk alongside you, one or the other. Or, as Ted Turner says, "Lead, follower, get out of the way." He's right, he's right to the point.

• 53:16Tim Ferriss?

  So, you guys are both to the point, and you like six words a lot. I don't know if this will end up being six words, but if you had a gigantic billboard, and can put anything on it, and of course, what I'm asking is really if you could get a short message out to a huge audience, what would you put on that billboard?

• 53:31Bill Rasmussen?

  ABC NBC.

• 53:32Tim Ferriss?

  ABC NBC.

• 53:34Bill Rasmussen?

  See, I'm back to six words again.

• 53:36Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 53:37Bill Rasmussen?

  And back to the two networks I work for. Always be curious, never be complacent.

• 53:39Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, that's a good one. I like that. ABC NBC. Bill Rasmussen, everybody. He's not done.

• 53:54Tim 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.

• 54:37Tim Ferriss?

  And 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.