#804: Robert Rodriguez, The Wizard of Cinema Returns — The "Fear-Forward" Way of Life, How to Overcome Self-Doubt, Learning to Love Limitations, and Counter-Intuitive Parenting That Works

Robert Rodriguez is a film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer, editor, and composer. Rodriguez has written, produced, directed, and edited a series of successful films including El Mariachi https://www.amazon.com/Mariachi-English-Subtitled-Carlos-Gallardo/dp/B008Y7IV4S/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20, Desperado https://www.amazon.com/Desperado-Antonio-Banderas/dp/B000KEK65U/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20, From Dusk Till Dawn https://www.amazon.com/Dusk-Till-Dawn-Quentin-Tarantino/dp/B009JZUJIK/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20, the Spy Kids https://www.amazon.com/Spy-Kids-All-Time-World/dp/B0B6PYRC39/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20 franchise, Once Upon a Time in Mexico https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B00BXLF6PE/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20, Frank Miller’s Sin City https://www.amazon.com/Sin-City-Recut-Extended-Unrated/dp/B00P2TB1JS/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20, and many more. Robert recently launched Brass Knuckle Films https://brassknucklefilms.com/, an investable action film slate. This episode is brought to you by: Cresset https://cressetcapital.com/tim prestigious family office for CEOs, founders, and entrepreneurs: https://cressetcapital.com/tim (book a call today) AG1 https://drinkag1.com/tim all-in-one nutritional supplement: https://DrinkAG1.com/Tim https://drinkag1.com/tim (1-year supply of Vitamin D (and 5 free AG1 travel packs) with your first subscription purchase.) Wealthfront http://wealthfront.com/Tim high-yield cash account: https://Wealthfront.com/Tim https://wealthfront.com/Tim New clients get 3.30% base APY from program banks + additional 0.75% boost for 3 months on your uninvested cash (max $150k balance). Terms and conditions apply. The Cash Account offered by Wealthfront Brokerage LLC (“WFB”) member FINRA/SIPC, not a bank. The base APY as of 1/30/26 is representative, can change, and requires no minimum. Tim Ferriss, a non-client, receives compensation from WFB for advertising and holds a non-controlling equity interest in the corporate parent of WFB, which creates a conflict of interest. Individual experiences and outcomes will differ. Instant withdrawals may be limited by your receiving firm and other factors. Investment advisory services provided by Wealthfront Advisers LLC, an SEC-registered investment adviser. Securities investments: not bank deposits, not bank-guaranteed or FDIC-insured, and may lose value. * Timestamps: [00:00:00] Start. [00:08:19] Recounting what’s happened in the 10 years since Robert’s last appearance on the show. [00:11:23] The freedom of limitations. [00:14:08] Fruit-bearing “failures.” [00:16:09] How Robert stumbled onto his own brand of counterintuitive parenting. [00:18:42] How fan investing for Brass Knuckle Films works. [00:23:59] How to effectively pitch a movie idea. [00:26:55] The time to start your art is now. Aim high. [00:33:00] The value of learning by doing. [00:43:31] The power of labels to elevate or diminish our ambitions. [00:47:51] Why lack of access is a myth. [00:49:08] No human doubts — when not knowing is half the battle. [00:54:25] Fear forward past the confines of the comfort zone. [00:59:02] Interactions with the enigmatic Rick Rubin. [01:01:53] Harnessing the creative spirit: action first, inspiration second. [01:07:00] Living is reliving: why Robert wants you to start journaling. [01:15:38] “Don’t just parent. Partner.” [01:22:47] In defense of what some call nepotism. [01:28:27] Why the double R naming scheme in the Rodriguez household? [01:30:04] Tribe talk. [01:33:38] Robert’s favorite exercise-related life hack: the rock walk. [01:36:15] 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/. For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts https://tim.blog/transcripts. Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books https://tim.blog/books. Follow Tim: Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss https://twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferriss https://instagram.com/timferriss/ YouTube: youtube.com/timferriss https://www.youtube.com/timferriss Facebook: facebook.com/timferriss https://www.facebook.com/TimFerriss/ LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/timferriss http://linkedin.com/in/timferriss 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?

  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 world-class performers, to break down how they do what they do. What are the frameworks, tools, influences, so on and so forth, that have helped make them who they are? My guest today is back at long last. He is one of my most requested guests for a follow-up, Robert Rodriguez. He is a film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer, editor, and composer. He does everything, absolutely everything. And to give you an idea of the genesis, while a student at the University of Texas at Austin, UT Austin, that's right here in my backyard, in 1991, Rodriguez wrote the script to his first feature film

• 0:45Tim Ferriss?

  while sequestered at a drug research facility as a paid subject in a clinical experiment. I'm not making that up. That paycheck covered the cost of shooting his $7,000 film, El Mariachi, which won the coveted Audience Award at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival and became the lowest-budget movie ever released by a major studio. If you want the full story on that, listen to our first conversation, which you can find in the show notes. Rodriguez wrote about these experiences in Rebel Without a Crew, A Perennial Guide for the Independent Filmmaker. Really, it is a guide to bare-bones, bootstrapped entrepreneurship of any type. It's worth reading. Then he went on to write, produce, direct, and edit a series of successful films, including Desperado, From Dusk Till Dawn,

• 1:29Tim Ferriss?

  The Faculty, and the Spy Kids franchise, which is huge. Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Frank Miller's Sin City, We Can Be Heroes. And he's also collaborated with director James Cameron on the film adaptation of Alita: Battle Angel. His films have grossed more than $1.5 billion at the box office. Then, in 2000, I suppose somewhere in the middle there, Rodriguez founded Troublemaker Studios in Austin, Texas, which I've visited a number of times. It's worth checking out if you ever have the chance. He recently directed the Lady Gaga Ariana Grande video Rain On Me and Episodes of the Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett and launched Brass Knuckle Films, an investable action film slate. What does that mean? If you've ever wanted to pitch Robert Rodriguez a film idea or get profit participation in

• 2:14Tim Ferriss?

  action films and sequels, he tells you all about it in this conversation. But there are lots of tactical takeaways, lots of actionable bits of advice that you can use, and that is his style. He had an entire dossier of things he'd been collecting over the last nine, 10 years since our last conversation that he wanted to share on this podcast specifically. So you can find him on X at X.com/Rodriguez, R-O-D-R-I-G-U-E-Z, and on Instagram slash Rodriguez, at Rodriguez. He's Rodriguez everywhere. So now, just a few words from our sponsors. We'll get right to this very, very practical tactical conversation with Robert Rodriguez.

• 2:58Tim Ferriss?

  Listeners have heard me talk about making before you manage for years. All that means to me is that when I wake up, I block out three to four hours to do the most important things that are generative, creative, podcasting, writing, et cetera, before I get to the email and the admin stuff and the reactive stuff and everyone else's agenda for my time. For me, let's just say I'm a writer and entrepreneur. I need to focus on the making to be happy. If I get sucked into all the little bits and pieces that are constantly churning, I end up feeling stressed out. And that is why today's sponsor is so interesting. It's been one of the greatest energetic unlocks in the last few years. So here we go.

• 3:40Tim Ferriss?

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• 4:24Tim Ferriss?

  Experience the freedom of focusing on what matters to you with the support of a top wealth management team. You can schedule a call today at cressetcapital.com/tim. That's spelled C-R-E-S-S-E-T, cressetcapital.com/tim to see how Cresset can help streamline your financial plans and grow your wealth. That's cressetcapital.com/tim. And disclosure, I am a client of Cresset. There are no material conflicts other than this paid testimonial. And of course, all investing involves risk, including loss of principal. So do your due diligence. Way back in the day, in 2010, I published a book called The Four Hour Body, which I probably started writing in 2008. And in that book, I recommended many, many,

• 5:08Tim Ferriss?

  many things. First generation continuous glucose monitor, and cold exposure, and all sorts of things that have been tested by people from NASA and all over the place. And one thing in that book was Athletic Greens. I did not get paid to include it. I was using it. That's how long I've been using what is now known as AG1. AG1 is my all-in-one nutritional insurance. And I just packed up, for instance, to go off the grid for a while. And the last thing I left out on my countertop to remember to take, I'm not making this up, I'm looking right in front of me, is travel packets of AG1. So rather than taking multiple pills or products to cover your mental clarity, gut health, immune health, energy, and so

• 5:52Tim Ferriss?

  on, you can support these areas through one daily scoop of AG1, which tastes great even with water. I always just have it with water. I usually take it first thing in the morning, and it takes me less than two minutes total. Honestly, it takes me less than a minute. I just put it in a shaker bottle, shake it up, and I'm done. AG1 bolsters my digestion and nutrient absorption by including ingredients optimized to support a healthy gut in every scoop. AG1 in a single-serve travel packs, which I mentioned earlier, also makes for the perfect travel companion. I'll actually be going totally off the grid, but these things are incredibly, incredibly space efficient. You could even put them in a book, frankly. I mean, they're kind of like bookmarks. After consuming this product for more than a decade, I chose to invest in AG1 in 2021

• 6:37Tim Ferriss?

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• 7:18Tim Ferriss?

  very seriously. There's no better time than today to start a new healthy habit. And this is an easy one, right? Wake up, water in the shaker bottle, AG1, boom. So take advantage of this exclusive offer for you, my dear podcast listeners, a free one-year supply of liquid vitamin D plus five travel packs with your subscription. Simply go to drinkag1.com/tim. That's the number one drinkag1.com/tim for a free one-year supply of liquid vitamin D plus five travel packs with your first subscription purchase. Learn more at drinkag1.com/tim.

• 7:57Tim Ferriss?

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

• 8:01Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 8:03Speaker 02

  Now would be an appropriate time.

• 8:07Speaker 01

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

• 8:20Tim Ferriss?

  All right, Dr. Rodriguez, here we are again. Yes. It has been almost 10 years. You believe it? 10 years. And I can't believe it's been almost 10 years now. My decision to go bald early was helpful in making me look somewhat similar to the way I was then. I always wear a black shirt. And some people may not know also, when I first moved to Austin, which is coming up on eight years, awesome nuts.

• 8:46Tim Ferriss?

  I did not have any plates or silverware at my house. And I invited you over for dinner, not even thinking of this. And you're you're kind enough to bring over. I still have it, this red plate and a couple of your like dungeon forks and knives. So thank you for that.

• 9:03Speaker 02

  Sure, absolutely.

• 9:06Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, a lot has happened in the last 10 years. And we've continued to hang out and talk. And you have a whole new bag of tricks. Our first conversation was a barn burner of an episode.

• 9:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:18Tim Ferriss?

  People were super excited by it. There's a lot of tactical advice. And you have explored a lot. You have found a lot. You've fine tuned a lot.

• 9:28Speaker 02

  You stumble upon new things. You stumble upon them, literally, you know? So, yeah, we adopt them and I've stored them away so I can tell you about them.

• 9:36Tim Ferriss?

  Look at this.

• 9:36Speaker 02

  And I've stored 10 years worth of stuff.

• 9:40Tim Ferriss?

  So we opened the vault and here we are. Let's just start with a very broad question. I mean, what are some of the things that come to mind that have happened since we last spoke?

• 9:50Speaker 02

  Well, what's wild is just like a month ago, we just put out an audio book for the first time for Rebel Without a Crew, the book that kind of started it all.

• 9:59Tim Ferriss?

  And when was that published?

• 10:00Speaker 02

  In the 90s, in like 95. Cause I remember Desperado, Dust Till Dawn, Four Rooms, and that book all came out within four months. And my son, my first born, five things, so the packed year. Four months, I'll never forget. But it was full of stories and my diary on how I did mariachi. And it really, to this day, people come up and say, not only did it help them start becoming a filmmaker, but it helped them start their own business, you know? Or it just applied to so many things is, you know, the idea of just taking on a big challenge, betting on yourself, going where no one else is. That's very entrepreneurial stuff. What's wild though is I hadn't read it since I wrote it. So when I had to suddenly do an audio book for it a couple of months ago, I was astounded. I'd forgotten so much of the details.

• 10:44Speaker 02

  And I was like, ah, now I see why it was so inspirational. It blows your mind because, you know, when you're younger, six months feels like six years.

• 10:53Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  But now, when you hear the dates, because the dates of my journal, how quickly I go from clearly clueless and penniless filmmaker, making a movie, having the idea, having a movie, doing it by myself.

• 11:09Speaker 02

  Trying to sell it to Spanish Home Video to instantly being the toast of the town. This is unbelievable. You could see why people would read the book and just drop it and go, I gotta go make something because the only reason that happened is because he took action. He got up and made that movie.

• 11:23Tim Ferriss?

  What do you hear most from that book from readers? Because one that pops up a lot from our episode, because we talked about it a bit, and also stuck with me in the book was, and I'm sure you have a better way to phrase this, but basically making a list of assets, right? Not focusing on what you don't have.

• 11:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, focus on what you do have.

• 11:45Tim Ferriss?

  Right. So if you got a turtle, you got a pit bull, and you got a friend who's a school bus driver. It's like, all right, we're going to figure out how to work that into the script.

• 11:53Speaker 02

  And it's all point of view, right? It's like you can really concentrate on what you don't have in life. And that becomes your focus, and then that becomes your life. All the things you don't have, but you never get. But when you leverage what you do have, it's all about leveraging what you do have. It's also a thing I call freedom of limitations. Like if we had to make a movie right now with this room, that's it. It's kind of very freeing. It's like, okay, this is all we have to work with. You can come up with a million ideas. When you can do anything, remember, we're trying to make a short film.

• 12:22Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I know.

• 12:23Speaker 02

  When you've got unlimited, it's harder, is it not?

• 12:26Tim Ferriss?

  I have to say, that is one of my great embarrassments. We're going to talk about it.

• 12:31Speaker 02

  Very, we are going to talk about it because it's exactly what we're talking about. Because you can do anything.

• 12:37Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 12:37Speaker 02

  And a lot of times when you can do anything, you can't do anything.

• 12:40Tim Ferriss?

  The canvas is too wide.

• 12:41Speaker 02

  It's too wide.

• 12:42Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 12:43Speaker 02

  So the smaller aperture, the fact that I had very little things was a blessing. And people took that lesson, applied it to business. And the whole time I'm reading this, you can hear I'm laughing. And I stopped several times, many times during the book to update. I go, by the way, what you just heard never happened before this and never happened against it. It's very rare. This is lightning in a bottle. And it's like a movie. You see incredible setup payoff, setup payoff, where a setup, huge setup falls in my lap. Don't even know what to do with it. It pays off in a huge way, two weeks later, and then three weeks later, then four weeks later. And then you also see why, like, I was really bummed I couldn't sell the movie to Spanish Home Video.

• 13:26Speaker 02

  I was going to sell it for $20,000 before Christmas and the contracts weren't through. I went home a failure and said, Merry Christmas. I didn't sell the movie. I was really bummed. And then you see, because it's so a journal. One month later, I had an agent suddenly because of the movie. Good thing I didn't sell it. I was chasing those guys down for the contract. They could have had it for $20,000. Two months later, I sell it for 10 times that.

• 13:51Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, incredible.

• 13:52Speaker 02

  And I'm the toast of the town and getting my first movie deal. I mean, it's unbelievable. When I was reading it, I was like, now I see.

• 13:58Tim Ferriss?

  I remember.

• 13:58Speaker 02

  Why? Because when you're living it, you don't know how special it is. Till later, 30 years later, it's like, it's still is an unbelievable story. And I think it will still inspire people today.

• 14:08Tim Ferriss?

  And in that example too, it makes me think of advice I got from a mentor of mine at one point. And he said, sometimes you need life to save you from what you want.

• 14:17Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 14:18Tim Ferriss?

  In that instance.

• 14:19Speaker 02

  That's what I really wanted that. And when something doesn't work out, we think we made a mistake. Like, that's one of my, you know, favorite stories, you know, the keys to your next success is in your failure because you followed your instinct. You gotta dig in deep and look. And I show you that, like, I made a movie called Four Rooms. It bombed. But I took it on instinct, not because I thought it would make money. If I just be upset about it and be bummed about it, like, wow, I must have made a wrong choice. I haven't learned anything. But if I go sift through it, the ashes of that failure, I find, I got the idea for Spy Kids from that because I saw Antonio and his Asian wife looked like a cool international spy couple because they're dressed in tuxedos. And I thought, what if these two kids have to save the world? There's five of those movies now. And then also, it's an anthology and it didn't work.

• 15:01Speaker 02

  But I thought, instead of four stories, maybe three stories, one director, not multiple directors. I'm gonna try it again, even though those anthologies never work. Why would I do that? Because I just did it and I saw what I could do better. And that was Sin City. Two of my biggest movies came directly from a movie that you would consider a failure. So you only know that by journaling, by keeping track of the things that you thought were a mistake. And you realize, oh, with time, that was the right instinct. But sometimes the only way across the river is to slip on the first two rocks. It's the only way to get there. And if you don't do it, you don't get there.

• 15:35Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, and I'm sure we'll talk about this more. When I talk to people and they say, yeah, I journal, right? I'm like, you do, but you should see what Robert does. And I'm sure we'll talk more about journaling because it makes me think of one of my friend's mothers, very sweet, older lady. She was on a chairlift. Skiing, she's still very active. She lives in Idaho. She was chatting up the woman next to her on the ski lift. She's like, oh, what do you do? And the woman's like, I'm a swimmer. And she goes, oh, me too. I'm a swimmer. And it was Dara Torres, the Olympian, right? So it's kind of like, there's journaling and then there's capital J marquee lights journaling, which we'll get to. But I want to ask you first, because I just experienced this, was it yesterday? I'm time traveling because there's a whole warp with South by Southwest.

• 16:17Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 16:18Tim Ferriss?

  But I got to see you on stage with your daughter, Rhiannon.

• 16:23Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 16:24Tim Ferriss?

  And I thought to myself, holy shit, she's really good, right? Like, I was gonna clap anyway, like, no matter what, obviously. But I thought to myself, wow, she's really good. I wonder how many performances she's done. And the answer was?

• 16:39Speaker 02

  I know. I waited till the end, because I didn't want to tell anybody. I want to make sure it went right. She never, ever performed before on stage?

• 16:47Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 16:47Speaker 02

  Or to a crowd?

• 16:48Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 16:49Speaker 02

  But we'll get to this thing later, because I want everybody to hear this. It's so inspiring. And I've stumbled upon it. It's counterintuitive parenting. The kids step up. But we'll get to that, because it's a big thing to do.

• 17:02Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 17:02Speaker 02

  But yeah.

• 17:02Tim Ferriss?

  Because it comes back to like, parenting and also modeling and coaching, right?

• 17:07Speaker 02

  And creating a space.

• 17:08Tim Ferriss?

  How do you imbue that creative?

• 17:11Speaker 02

  Right.

• 17:11Tim Ferriss?

  Not just capability, but confidence into other people. So.

• 17:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. I stumbled upon it. I'll tell you where it started. It started on Spy Kids.

• 17:19Tim Ferriss?

  All right.

• 17:19Speaker 02

  My kids were much younger than my two actors. My two actors were eight and 11, Alexa and Daryl. And my kids were younger. You know, when you're learning how to raise kids, you tend to go a little easier on your kid. Not to the Spy Kids, because they're actors. I'm treating them like performers. So they were having to do, there's no kid stuntmen. They're having to do their own stunts. They're having to do the daily, daily challenges, mind bending challenges for these little kids to be action stars. They're like mini Tom Cruises that you're just throwing them. And there's no training for that. And at the end of it, I would just see them become so confident and superhuman. They're even today, the actors. And I would tell myself, I need to make sure I challenge my own kids

• 18:00Speaker 02

  like this. Because I saw them go from just regular kids into super kids over the course of those three films. So I started putting my kids, making movies with us. Like, one of them came up with Shark Bongo. I put him in as actors, as stunt kids. And I kept thinking, I wonder if they're gonna really resent me later for putting them to work at a young age because it wasn't their passion. These two kids that were in the movie, they wanted to be actors. That's a difference that they chose. But I tried it anyway. It was an experiment because I thought maybe it'll give them a cut. And boy, it is just opened up a whole world.

• 18:33Tim Ferriss?

  All right.

• 18:33Speaker 02

  And we'll get to.

• 18:34Tim Ferriss?

  So you're gonna, we're gonna come back to that.

• 18:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's big. And I'm gonna tell you some famous people that it's inspired and you'll go like, oh, it was directly because of something I told them.

• 18:42Tim Ferriss?

  All right, all right. So we're gonna get to that. Now, right next to Rhiannon, there is a huge screen. And there are other things that were being launched slash announced. So what else?

• 18:55Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. We had a, the reason we had a big party at my studio on the back lot of my studio, which still has the huge 90,000 square foot Alita set, because I'm resourceful enough to put it in a corner of my studio where I could keep it. Since 2016, we built it with steel support beams so we could have forever. It's the largest standing set in the country, if not the world.

• 19:16Tim Ferriss?

  No kidding.

• 19:16Speaker 02

  Well, because they mow them down after each movie because the next movie's coming in. But I put it in a corner of my big section of my studio so we can have it to film for Mexico, for other cities, you know, we've used it on every movie since then. So we had our party back there to announce this new movie company that I'm doing because I realized I have so many resources there. You know, you've seen my studio. I've got that huge set. I've got all the vehicles, every prop we've ever made, every costume. And usually that savings gets passed on to studios. They just piss it away because you know, it's just like they got so much overhead. So I thought, let's make a slate of action films. It's called brass knuckle films. Just action is action. There's an international appetite always. In fact, if you were to ask Netflix right now what they need, they

• 19:58Speaker 02

  would say, action, action, action. We don't have enough action. So let's make something that everyone needs and wants. Slate of four pictures, only that fans are usually an afterthought. They're only like, right now, people are showing their movies at South by Southwest to get the fans, to get their friends to go spend money on their movies for the privilege of seeing the movies. What if they made money on those movies?

• 20:18Tim Ferriss?

  All right.

• 20:19Speaker 02

  So you, for the cost of a badge, can invest into my brass knuckle films for a slate of films. That means you got four bites at the apple. One of those is gonna make money and sequels and you share in all that because you're at the ground floor of development. And that's the revolution that we're doing. And you, people come up to me all the time with movie ideas saying, I got an idea for you. And they tell me, and they're ready to give it to me. So I know you get to come be a co-creator because one of the movies in that slate is going to be picked from one of the fan investors. And even at the lowest level, everyone gets to pitch us their action movie idea. And the top 20 gets to pitch it directly to me. So you can be a co-creator and fan. But there's other perks, the perks alone would get you creative. It's not crowdsourcing. It's not Kickstarter. You're actually an investor.

• 21:02Speaker 02

  We're using Republic, which is, you know, can use even unaccredited investors can come invest in this. And it's a platform, investing platform. They've done it in sports and other arenas, but this is now for film. And my movies especially because I've got all my resources to keep the budgets low. Like, you know how much the original John Wick cost?

• 21:20Tim Ferriss?

  No idea.

• 21:21Speaker 02

  20 million.

• 21:22Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 21:23Speaker 02

  20 million. The last one was a hundred as the audience group. So we're making budgets between 10 and 30 million. That's like a lower to mid-range budget, right?

• 21:32Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 21:33Speaker 02

  That's not a lot of money for the chance to make something that could turn into a billion dollar franchise that it is. We just keep making bites at the apple. One of those is going to turn into that.

• 21:43Tim Ferriss?

  It's like 100 capital. I mean, it's.

• 21:44Speaker 02

  And it's so fun because the fans, people, the other thing people always ask me, you want to believe? Could you kill me in your movie? I'd love to die in your movie. Can you just have me die in your movie? Chop my head off, run me over, shoot me. Everyone wants to die. So that's one of the perks. So you put in enough money, you get to die on screen in a creative way, whatever. It's a lot of fun.

• 22:02Tim Ferriss?

  I miss that. Somebody comes in, they say, hey, I like that. I like the model a lot. I want to take 90% of it. Are there kind of limits on what investors can do?

• 22:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is just for the, the development. This is to like, give us money. Cause we already, we can get the money for an action film. We can already fund the whole thing.

• 22:17Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, sure.

• 22:17Speaker 02

  I mean, the international buyers alone, and we could keep the domestic.

• 22:21Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 22:21Speaker 02

  And sell it to all these guys.

• 22:22Tim Ferriss?

  It's like publishing. You like sell the foreign rights and use that to kind of.

• 22:25Speaker 02

  We sell the foreign rights to go ahead and make it if we want. Or if we have such a big idea, we could take it to a studio and get all the freedoms of an independent film. We have a lot of avenues because they just need it. This is the thing. The problem is they don't know how to make an action movie.

• 22:37Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 22:38Speaker 02

  At a price. Cause they have too much over and they're just too big. They spend so much.

• 22:42Tim Ferriss?

  Well, the incentives are.

• 22:42Speaker 02

  And that's why John Wick was an independent movie. That's why Beekeeper wasn't in the movie. Because you can go make those for less, but there's always an appetite. We're not making. Dream projects or you know, art films, you know, we're not, this is going to be just things that put food on table because I want the fans to win.

• 22:59Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 22:59Speaker 02

  Because it's going to be one, a great story. And two, they should, they should enjoy it because other ones, when, when you've made a movie at a studio, you didn't even know what you got.

• 23:08Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 23:09Speaker 02

  Then you take it to the fans and show it to them in a private screening. They give you notes and then you go, oh, we screwed that up. We gotta go fix that. We gotta reshoot that. They're brought in at the end and then told to go spend their money on it.

• 23:20Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 23:20Speaker 02

  It should start with the fans and as well as finish with the fans. So that's the revolutionary thing we're doing because it's just like Rebel that I could. It's part of my whole democratizing the process, making it, removing the smoke and mirrors, and letting us all enjoy that process together. Because I've seen the phenomenon of creating a new label. A label on yourself, a label on a business, and we'll get to that because I have it written down. You'll see the value of brass knuckle, but I'll tell you where I did it before. Because this is something that's happened since our last 10 years. And it's a mind blower and it ties into what the first thing you asked about family.

• 23:57Tim Ferriss?

  All right, sweet. So before we get there, I am so curious because you've written, and I'm sure you've read a lot of scripts. If you get 100, 200, 400, 500, who knows?

• 24:11Speaker 02

  Pitches.

• 24:12Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, pitches, right. So you're not getting a script.

• 24:14Speaker 02

  No.

• 24:14Tim Ferriss?

  So what form does the pick?

• 24:16Speaker 02

  Well, we'll give them a format. It's, it's short. It's like, you could be like, it should be less than five minutes. So maybe a two or three pages at the most, maybe one to three pages, something to tell your story. And if you've already written, I've had a lot of people come and say, I have an action script for you. Can I enjoy? I said, well, come be an investor and you can pitch it. I tell you, I've sold more pitches from scripts I'd already half written or written because I know more about the story. I really know it. So when I go to pitch it, it's very easy for me to tell you the story. You've got a much better chance than someone who's just making a pitch.

• 24:45Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 24:45Speaker 02

  But. We'll give you a format. We'll teach you. I want to train people how to do it so that they know. So it's kind of a film school, too. Can you give us just a teaser of some of the ingredients of a good short pitch? A good pitch is anything, if we could sit here right now and I could tell you a story about, you know, there's a guitar player who comes into town. He's all he want. Music is his life. And that's all he thinks about. All he wants to do is find a place for somebody, you know, to hire him. He goes into a bar in this new town that he walks into. They don't hire musicians. He leaves. Second later, a guy with a guitar case full of weapons comes in, shoots the place up because he's after the main bit

• 25:27Speaker 02

  honcho to leave a message. So now the word gets out. Find the guy in black with a guitar case full of weapons. It's mistaken identity thing. By the end, he'll become the guy with a guitar case full of weapons. And he becomes, every movie's like a ballad, a sad tragic ballad. He's gonna meet somebody, she's gonna help him, she's gonna die. And he goes to the next town, but no longer can play the guitar because he gets his hand shot. So now he has to become that thing. Yeah, that's it. That's a pitch. But I can tell you that pitch because I already made that movie. I already wrote that script. It was harder when I was first just trying to figure it out. I was just taking little cards. But a pitch could be something like that, where I would see the potential in it and go, this one, we can still work on

• 26:09Speaker 02

  it. We're gonna hire a writer. It's that seed of an idea that gets people to stop and listen, that you wanna, that you wanna find. That's the lightning in the bottle sometimes is just the idea. And everyone's got an idea, just like everybody wants to get killed in the movie. So it's like, this is how we're gonna make it fun for the fans. Because who's gonna consume it? At the end of the day, it's the fans, not the zombies in suits that are up there who don't even watch these movies. I go up there, the disconnect blows my mind. You go talk to some, not all executives, but you go to some studios, you can tell they don't pay to go see a movie. They don't watch movies. They don't love movies. It's a business. And then you go talk to the fans. I was just South by Southwest. They're losing their minds. They tell you about all the movies they've seen, about all the things they collect. They should be sharing in that, not the executives. They're

• 26:54Speaker 02

  just gonna piss it away. So you're very good at hooks. So before we start recording, when we were out on the sidewalk, about to come into the building, you were like, yeah, there's this one line. There's one line at the end that I figured out. What was the line? Oh, at the end, when that, so when I told them all about this investment opportunity, at the end, I said,

• 27:17Speaker 02

  So this is how you manifest, because I've been talking about manifesting. They asked me the question, Robert, you're very positive, but do you have any human doubts? Yeah. And I said, no. And I told them why. And they were all clapping afterwards. So at the end, I said, okay, one more thing on manifesting. This is how you do it. Next year, it's our goal to come back to South by Southwest with our first brass knuckle film. Now, ask yourself this, if you have the opportunity to invest in being part of it and pitch an idea, there might be that idea. Wouldn't you rather be sitting up here with us than down there in the audience? That's how you manifest. They all cheer. Mic drop. Mic drop. Goodbye. Yeah, it's true. You hit it. You set a target. I was talking about my old trainer. I had an old trainer who'd be like, we'd be working now. And you can tell he's just making up his way.

• 28:02Speaker 02

  200, 200 setup, 200 pushups. And we just go, go, go, go. You know, just picking a big number and then just hitting it. That's kind of what you need to do, because if you aim low, you'll hit low. But if you aim high, you might, it might go low, it might go there. And like Mariachi, when you read the book, it went straight up. But if I hadn't taken the action, it would never have happened. So, so many people, wait, that's the discussion we had about, remember you were talking about making a short film? Yep. And I said, we just got to commit to making it. We just got to go ready or not. Here we go. Let's set a date. We almost did it, but then both our schedules, both of our schedules got whacked. But you, you understood the lesson. I understood the lesson. Because I told somebody this whole thing. And he was there right where you were sitting.

• 28:44Speaker 02

  I think I told you, somebody was right here and they said, wow, everything you're saying makes sense. You know, I've got a project. All the pieces are actually pretty much there. I just guess I'm not ready. And I said, that's going to be on your tombstone. Here lies so and so. He was never ready. Why is it that art, you have to be ready for? In life, you didn't know you're going to get a flat tire. You didn't know you're going to go to work and be fired. You didn't know the fires, you're going to be raging. Every day, you're like this, you know, trying to move with the, you're not ready. You're not ready for anything life is throwing at you. But you make, you become ready on the spot, right? Why is it that we think art and life should not be the same? Why art has to be, you have to be ready before you can begin? That, that's no relation. They should be the same.

• 29:27Speaker 02

  You're not going to be ready until you're almost done with a project because a lot of the answers you need are not going to happen until you're on the journey.

• 29:34Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 29:34Speaker 02

  And that's what keeps most people from doing it.

• 29:36Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 29:37Speaker 02

  And so that's why I was going to show you that in real time, but we are going to do it.

• 29:40Tim Ferriss?

  We're going to do it.

• 29:41Speaker 02

  We're going to make a short film. You're not going to know what you're going to make it on. And it's going to fall in our lap because we start the process.

• 29:47Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 29:48Speaker 02

  That is a huge, huge, huge lesson.

• 29:51Tim Ferriss?

  You got to start it.

• 29:52Speaker 02

  You just have to start.

• 29:53Tim Ferriss?

  You got to start. I mean, in a couple of weeks, you know, I have this, I don't even know if I've told you about this. I have a card game I've been working on kind of secretly for like two years.

• 30:01Speaker 02

  Card game?

• 30:02Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, card game.

• 30:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, you always love, you're always gifting me card games.

• 30:05Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love card games.

• 30:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 30:06Tim Ferriss?

  And the reason that it happened ultimately is just booking a flight to go spend time with a master game designer and deciding by the time we leave, we're either going to have a game or we will have stopped. Because we did a couple of, I would say, B minus attempts.

• 30:25Speaker 02

  Right.

• 30:26Tim Ferriss?

  Where we didn't commit in that type of way.

• 30:28Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 30:29Tim Ferriss?

  And we met in different places around the country and we would play test different options and different concepts. And then this final trip was like, okay, look, we're both really busy. We've given this a few shots. This time, we're just going to pound our heads against the wall.

• 30:45Speaker 02

  You're aiming up there now.

• 30:46Tim Ferriss?

  And we're going to have a game or this is it. And that kicked off the whole process. Now it's going to be in thousands of stores.

• 30:54Speaker 02

  That's great. That's the way, that's, you know, you used to ask me, how do you get so much done? It's like, you know, I set the bridge on fire and then I run across. Otherwise it's not enough steak. You have a way out, like the last ones.

• 31:07Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 31:07Speaker 02

  You had a, you had a way out.

• 31:09Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 31:09Speaker 02

  Y'all didn't have that goal.

• 31:11Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 31:11Speaker 02

  You'll take the escape route.

• 31:13Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's easier.

• 31:14Speaker 02

  But if you just have, you've burned the bridge, you've got to go. When we have a deadline, it's a blessing. Like today, I even asked you earlier, yesterday, I said, do you really need it by tomorrow? Because we could push it to later. We go, no, let's do it.

• 31:25Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 31:25Speaker 02

  So when you have a deadline, you said, you make it happen.

• 31:27Tim Ferriss?

  You make it happen.

• 31:28Speaker 02

  But we tend not to do that with ourselves.

• 31:30Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 31:30Speaker 02

  And it's a crippling thing.

• 31:35Tim Ferriss?

  Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. It's the new year and many of you no doubt are planning for the year ahead. I'm doing the same and of course, one thing that tends to be top of mind is setting financial goals, getting your finances in order. And it's a mess out there. The hyper complexities of the US economy, global economy can be very confusing and there's a lot of conflicting advice, but saving and investing doesn't have to be complicated. Here's something refreshingly simple to use and that's Wealthfront. Wealthfront is an app that helps you save and invest your money. Right now, you can earn 4% APY, that's annual percentage yield, on your cash from partner banks with the Wealthfront cash account.

• 32:17Tim Ferriss?

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• 33:01Tim Ferriss?

  Thinking of the audiobook that you just produced and the book, we have spoken over the years about you writing another book. Yes. So, what happened? What happened to that one? What happened to that one? You told me, right after we had our talk, you said, "Did you finish that book?" Because I sounded like I was almost ready. The idea was called The Creative Life, because, you know, I gave a talk once about Pro Max or something about creativity. They introduced me and they said, "Robert Rodriguez, cinematographer, editor, composer, screenwriter." And they went through all my credits. Yeah. And I got up there and I said, "I feel dizzy just hearing all that stuff." And there's this book out, I always see it in the bookstores at the airports, called The One Thing, about doing one thing.

• 33:46Tim Ferriss?

  And I was thinking, "Well, that doesn't apply to me, because I obviously..." But then I thought, "There actually is one thing that I do, when I think about it. It's not those jobs. I live a creative life."

• 33:56Speaker 02

  I apply creativity to everything I do. And that's why anything that touches creativity is open to me. So I can paint, I can draw, I can do anything because 90% of any one of those jobs is actually the creative part. The technical part about any one of those, whether it's music, say 90% creative. Some of the best musicians don't know how to read or write music. That's the technical part. So I realized that that is like, as I did all those jobs, that was the thing. So I want to write a book called The Creative Life, where every chapter is about raising your kids, painting, drawing, filmmaking. You're going to see the same lesson over and over because it all applies. So that was the idea. And you ask what happened to it? It's like, I'm going through this whole new chapter that's so massive.

• 34:41Speaker 02

  I would feel dumb to put out the book now because I know this is going to change all my thinking. And it was when I turned 50, I thought, I wonder if there's some other job I could have where I don't have to be doing as hard a work as filmmaking. With the knowledge I have, there must be. So I don't even know what jobs are out there. This is the first job I ever got was making movies. I was so young. So I literally bought jobs for dummies and was looking through it. No joke, because I had these little icons, just to see what's even out there.

• 35:11Tim Ferriss?

  What's in there?

• 35:11Speaker 02

  It's like, I don't want that, I don't want that. It got to filmmaker and that little icon is a guy with his arms up like this and said, this is the best job. Get to be creative with your friends, make stuff, and then just sit back and let the money roll in. Said, but it says, but 99% of film students don't get this job. So forget that dream. Oh, clearly I got the best job. But I used to think, well, I guess I could keep making movies. I guess that's been good to me. I guess I could just keep making more. But then I had to work with my kids for that Red 11 project. Remember, where it was one where we had to do another mariachi, another $7,000 movie, but with digital cameras and show people how it's done today. We were going to make one and I made all the other filmmakers that were in our group.

• 35:56Speaker 02

  For this TV show I was doing called Rebel Without a Crew, you'd only bring one person, just like I had Carlos Gallardo, the main actor from Mariachi. Only one person, you gotta do everything. He can be your sound man, or he can be your cameraman, but you gotta do everything. You gotta edit, you gotta shoot it, you gotta write it, and you got two weeks. Like, I had only two weeks to do Mariachi. And I saw the filmmakers, just like that thing I was saying about the kids pushing them, they'd only done short films. None of them had done a feature. This is your first feature, and we're gonna document it. So documentary camera's gonna be on you, like, you know, reality TV. I saw them turn superhuman between the first week and the second week. Once they started shooting, they had no idea how they were gonna do it. They were like, "Oh my God, this is just so hard." By the second week, I go to ask them how it's going. They're already talking about their next three films.

• 36:38Speaker 02

  Suddenly, their idea of what Impossible was went from that to that.

• 36:42Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 36:43Speaker 02

  And so I did that as well. I wanted to do that, but with my kid, Racer, I picked one kid, my son, Racer, who hadn't been working with me in film at all for a while. I brought him to be my co-writer, my co-liter, my sound guy, and I didn't show him how to use the sound equipment. I waited till we were about to start filming, then I was like, "Okay, this is how it works. Go." And we're documenting. And I wanted to show people that even without any experience, you can go make a movie in two weeks with no money. And we did. And that thing ended up going to festivals, even getting over to Directors' Fortnite at Cannes. People were flying us and paying us to go speak about our masterclass on how we made that movie and show clips from the making of. We're making money from this little no-money movie.

• 37:25Speaker 02

  The only reason we had to stop doing a tour, we went to Colombia, we went to Sweden, we went to Paris. I mean, we were doing really well. My kids were like, "Dad, you're right. This is really, this is really worth it." I said, "Yeah, better than I thought. We only had to stop because we're shooting We Can Be Heroes." But the reason, I'm talking about this label, what blew my mind about is my kids, I thought they were gonna-

• 37:44Tim Ferriss?

  Labels you apply to yourself.

• 37:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. That'd be to yourself and to just a label, like a company, a fake company within your realm, like Brass Knuckle. I would call that a label. I still do other things. But that has a very specific target, and I'm getting all kinds of ideas just popping in my head because I started that. It's just this phenomenon, like, ideas I never would have thought of before, because now it's got a place to go. Just like with yourself, there's a label, I'll tell you about, came about that with yourself that really transformed. But my kids, I thought, "They're gonna resent me again, I'm afraid. They might resent me for having to do this $7,000 movie for two weeks and see how much hard work it is." Because they had other, they had their own interests. They weren't gonna want to make movies. But I said, I need him to be in it because he'll be a good example. And I made my other son act in it because he made those knives. I wanted, I was inspired to make one of their

• 38:29Speaker 02

  characters a knife guy. And I asked him to do the score too, with me, write the score. And I thought, they have their own interest. They're going to work on this one day and hate it. I'm great, I'm prepared for that. Instead, they came at the end of the day, all excited, their eyes all bugging out of their head. And they were like, Dad, the actor didn't show up, the script didn't match the location at all. And when we asked you in the morning, what were we gonna do? You said, I don't know. We'll figure it out. And we thought, just finally, finally, the movie that stumped my dad, but then by the end, we figured it out. They're all excited. I went, oh, they don't realize that's the creative process. That's every day on a movie. But it's also every day in life. It's the same.

• 39:12Speaker 02

  And I realized on the making of that movie, so little of what I was teaching them was filmmaking. It was all life lessons. How to take on this impossible challenge. Two man crew making a feature. I didn't know we were gonna go to Cannes. I actually didn't predict any of that. I just wanted to finish for the project. But you get blessed because of that. And the label we created is because my son had come to me and said, I wanted to draw comics, but I wasn't born in the golden age of comics, but I am born in the golden age of technology. So I'm thinking, maybe instead of doing storytelling through comics, give up the drawing thing and do it like with VR. So let's start a VR company. Let's start a company. I'll show you how this works. All these VR companies need people

• 39:55Speaker 02

  to buy their helmets. They need product. I call them up and say, I have a VR company. They'll give us money to go make them a short film. Sure enough, I just said, here, we're all have double R names, all the kids. Let's start a company called Double R. It's the label we made. So now we're gonna make t-shirts, we're gonna make notepads. And they loved them. They were looking at it. Because now, any project, any of you have, if Rhiannon has an album she wants to do, or Rebel wants to put it on, I think we can do it through Double R. It's our company. Now, when you have a company, you have a label. It's now manifested. Now you gotta do stuff to fill, you have to do stuff to put into it, right? You get all these ideas. Michelle Rodriguez and Norman Reedus are in this movie called The Limit.

• 40:35Speaker 02

  Remember that one? They made us a logo, double R logo, big logo. It went in front of our $7,000 movie also. It went around the world. That same year, three projects in one year. I went to Netflix to ask what, if they needed any movies. And they said, we need family. Spy Kids type thing. Can you come up with something? Kind of came up with it in the room. People are always ripping off Spy Kids. I should just rip off myself. Little kids have to save their parents. Only what if there are superheroes and the parents are superheroes that get captured, like the Avengers get captured? Little kids with superpowers, they don't know how to use them yet. And the little girl who has no powers has to wrangle them together, to work together, to go save the day.

• 41:17Speaker 02

  Simple pitch, right? I wrote it out, brought it with my kids. We came up with all these fun, special powers we've never seen in any movie. We took it, we sold it. It's the biggest movie on Netflix. Most watched and rewatched movie in their history. Nothing can touch it because kids watch it over and over and over. And that has a big glorious, the same double R logo in front of it. And my kids were just like, Dad, this really works. I was like, better than I thought. I was just doing it as an example. I did not know it was gonna put food on the table in that way. So I'm gonna do that again with Brass Knuckle, but with the fans, because we've done that before. Because I told them, come be a part of it, because proximity is everything. Remember I showed

• 42:00Speaker 02

  you that painter I went and watched and how my painting changed? Even though he didn't teach me one thing, except I saw that he just had a regular brush, regular paint. He didn't know how he was gonna tack it each time. It made you go like, oh, I thought I needed to know something. I had a mental block. And I went and did it again. And I was like, there it was. It was unbelievable. The proximity sometimes sees your loss. I tell people, if you come be a part of the company, the proximity to us as a filmmakers, making this stuff, you're going to get 10 ideas, 20 ideas on your own. You're going to see your own thing. You'll be part of this, but it's almost like a masterclass without me even trying to teach you. That's just what I found by being proximity, by being around James Cameron, by being around George Lucas, by being around Spielberg.

• 42:45Speaker 02

  They didn't necessarily give me lessons, but just seeing how they moved through the world, even for just a moment in time, transforms you completely.

• 42:53Tim Ferriss?

  So let's say somebody's listening to this, and those are big names, out of reach for most folks.

• 42:58Speaker 02

  But they're equivalent in their world.

• 43:00Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 43:01Speaker 02

  They're equivalents of people that they really admire, that if they just had proximity to them, they didn't even have to get a lesson from them, and they would just, it would just change. Because you're just, you know, your parents used to tell you this, be careful who your peers are. That meant one thing when you were younger. It means even more now when you're older, like, surround yourself with people who are heavy hitter. We talk to each other all the time because it just raises our game. Remember you coming over to my house and seeing, hey, what chopper is that that you're using? You know, you're like seeing upgrades that you can have. Just by proximity, you pick stuff up.

• 43:32Tim Ferriss?

  Can you say more about labels and?

• 43:34Speaker 02

  So label, I'm going to give you my favorite label example. And it's a thing I've realized now when I did the audiobook that I already knew and had forgot. People would come up to me sometimes and tell me some quote from my book, and I'd be like, that's from my book? I was smart back then. What happened? But there was something I said in the book saying, stop aspiring. Stop saying you're an aspiring filmmaker. People come up to you, I'm an aspiring filmmaker. The words we use are really strong. You're always going to be aspiring. You're never going to get there if you call yourself somebody who's on the journey. Say you're a filmmaker. Make a card. Make a business. I said, make a business card that says, I did, director, cinematographer, editor.

• 44:16Speaker 02

  Then what do you have to do? Just like the label, you have to conform your identity. You have to go do that stuff now. And suddenly I have movies out. You go make movies because that's what a filmmaker does. What does an aspiring filmmaker do?

• 44:27Tim Ferriss?

  Aspire.

• 44:28Speaker 02

  Aspires. Yeah, you aspire. I knew that back then, but I'd forgotten it. The reason I remember it is, okay, you always remark, hey, Robert, you're always in good shape. Did I ever tell you I hate sports? I hate working out. Did I ever tell you that?

• 44:41Tim Ferriss?

  I'm not sure you told me.

• 44:43Speaker 02

  All through high school, they would want me to be on the team. Small school, I was so tall. Please come be on our team. I was like, I don't know. Which sport? Football. Any of them, basketball, football. We need players and you're so big, come be on the. I was like, I don't even know how these games are played. I've never followed sports. I'm a filmmaker, I'm an artist, I'm a musician. And there's a line in the faculty Elijah Wood says, that's my line I used to tell people. I don't think you should run unless you're being chased. I just did not love exercise at all. But then later, when I was making movies, my back kept going out because I was doing Steadicam because I was sitting drawing for long hours. My back every year would go out really bad where I needed like a walker and a cordless on shots, you know, cordless shots on my back. I remember Ricardo Montalban in his wheelchair at eighty-four and I had a walker on Spike

• 45:27Speaker 02

  Kids Two, my back and I goes, Robert, I'm eighty-four, what's your excuse? You have to work out. I was like, I know, I know, but I don't know how. I hate sports, I hate working out. The next year I worked with Stallone on Spike Kids Three and I said, how can I get better shape so my back doesn't keep going out? He goes, get the trainer. Anyone who ever got anywhere physically had a trainer. Say even you, don't you know, don't you just go train? No, he said, no, no, I, I'd rather rearrange my sock drawer than go work out. I was like, well, even if you even need a trainer, what chance do us mortal men have? So I got a trainer and I would hide from him. I would pay him not to show up. I hated it. I hated working out.

• 46:09Speaker 02

  I would feel sick when he's coming over and I would half-ass the workouts, you know, because I hated. So this woman, friend of mine from Mexico, older woman. My doctor told me I have to stop smoking, so I'm not smoking right now. I said, you're going to go back to smoking because your identity is a smoker. You're saying you're a smoker, you're going to go back. You have to change your identity. You have to say, I'm a non-smoker. I'm a non-smoker. Because then if you just identify yourself as that, you're going to then conform to your identity and you're going to, what does a non-smoker do? They hate smoke, makes them sick. Stay away from cigarettes. All right, I'll try that. I don't know if it worked because I didn't follow up, but right away I thought. Hey, I should apply that to myself. What, what the, it's a good thing to go checklist yourself every few years.

• 46:54Speaker 02

  Where are some places that I'm not doing that, that I can change the label? So you know what I did? And you gotta go 180. If you go by degrees, you ain't gonna get anywhere. 20%, 30% bullshit. 180. Of course I hate working out. What do I say to myself all the time? I hate sports. I hate working out. Hate exercise. I love food.

• 47:14Speaker 02

  I have to change my identity. What am I, what did I said? I'm an athlete. I'm an athlete. I'm an athlete. By the next day, everything changed. What does an athlete do? Loves to work out, makes time to work out. There is no time, but you make time when you love something. You eat right, because you're an athlete. As soon as your identity changes, your label, you conform to that. So that's the power of identity and the words we choose to describe ourselves. I catch people all the time describing themselves and I go, you gotta change that. Already out of the gate, you're talking about yourself in a way that's not gonna help them.

• 47:51Tim Ferriss?

  Besides the aspiring, which you mentioned, where people are handicapping themselves.

• 47:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:56Tim Ferriss?

  By labeling, using that term. Within, say filmmaking, are there other ways that you see people handicap themselves? Just in terms of how they view themselves, or their situation, or what they have or don't have. Are there any other common patterns that come up?

• 48:16Speaker 02

  Common ones? I don't know. They just kinda seem to, anything that kinda takes you out of the game early by a belief you have. I don't have access, or whatever. Everyone has access now. You have a phone. You can make actually a story on a phone, or you can write, or. I just say, whenever I hear anyone use some kind of negative connotation to something like, "Well, I wanna make something, but I just don't have the time." It's like, you just, there's no time. If you're waiting for time to have, it's not gonna have. All the time's gone. There's no time. But we can make time. We can make time for anything that we put our mind to. So don't give me that shit. That's like taking a hatchet and chopping off your left leg before the race. You literally did this to yourself.

• 48:55Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 48:56Speaker 02

  You just hobbled yourself for no reason with these beliefs and it's all you. You're your own worst enemy. You're like the one in the audience in your way. The biggest obstacle in your life is you, always. I asked this question outside because I was curious what your answer was. But one of the questions that came up was, so Robert, you're real positive. Do you have any human doubts?

• 49:15Tim Ferriss?

  I wanted to come back to that. Yeah. And your answer was no.

• 49:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, we'll come back to it. I just didn't want to forget. It seemed like I could work it in here.

• 49:20Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, no, don't get after it. I wanted to, because I'm sure a lot of people are like, what? No doubts?

• 49:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:27Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. So walk us through that.

• 49:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. So they said, Robert, you're real positive. Do you have any human doubts? And I said, to give me a chance to think, because I had never heard it that way, human doubts. But I said, what do you all think? And then I see people going, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Because that's the real answer you would probably give. But I like to do counterintuitive for everything. So I went, no. Why? Because that's a manifestation, isn't it? I have no human doubts because I know the process too. You can't wait to be ready. They say knowing is half the battle. What's the other half? Not knowing. I think that's more important because that's where the magic is. You don't know what the other half is.

• 50:08Tim Ferriss?

  Not knowing is half the battle.

• 50:09Speaker 02

  That's, yeah, not knowing is the major part of the battle. I got there to the set. I didn't know I was going to do any of it. But as soon as I saw how limited the options were, suddenly it became very clear. There was only one way to do it. And if you have that confidence going into each day, you shouldn't have any doubt. You shouldn't have any fear. A failure, my biggest successes came from my failures. So why would I fear that? What doubts? I couldn't think of any. Can you think of a doubt I should have? Like, give me an example of one I doubt. You think, or even you, what doubts would you have?

• 50:39Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, I think I need to basically take the last four minutes and just listen to it every morning. I just need to replay that every morning. I think it's a good reminder.

• 50:47Speaker 02

  Okay, but what doubts do you have?

• 50:49Tim Ferriss?

  I'll tell you, I mean, and this is, you know.

• 50:51Speaker 02

  It's a good question. I didn't think of any.

• 50:53Tim Ferriss?

  My parents aren't listening to this, but like I grew up in a, in a household where there was a lot of. There's a lot of negativity and there's a lot of, we don't have X because we're never gonna have Y because we can't ever have Z because.

• 51:08Speaker 02

  Did you already prove that wrong though?

• 51:09Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, no, exactly.

• 51:10Speaker 02

  Alright, now you go off your own history now.

• 51:12Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, absolutely. No, totally. So there's, there's software to overwrite.

• 51:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:16Tim Ferriss?

  And.

• 51:17Speaker 02

  Those are formative years. So yeah, that's, that's hard.

• 51:20Tim Ferriss?

  And I can't think of any excuses that you should have.

• 51:23Speaker 02

  Well, just you even, what doubts would you think you would have? Just so I could hear, because then I'd go, okay, I agree with that. I just hadn't thought of any, the spot, it was so on the spot, I was wondering what you would answer on the spot.

• 51:33Tim Ferriss?

  You know what I appreciate about the question is how effective it is at making you stumble because of the human doubts.

• 51:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:42Tim Ferriss?

  Do I have inhuman doubts?

• 51:43Speaker 02

  Let's just drop the human.

• 51:45Tim Ferriss?

  Let's just drop human. No, I know, I know. I just love that. I'm like, wow, that's masterful.

• 51:49Speaker 02

  Have you dropped that?

• 51:50Tim Ferriss?

  Judah move.

• 51:51Speaker 02

  Doubts, what doubts do you have? They wanted to humanize you because you sound like Superman when you talk. You know, a lot of times when we give these talks, everyone thinks you're Superman. But we know each other. We know that we all have weaknesses and this and that. But we don't want that and we don't want to manifest that, so we don't dwell on it.

• 52:05Tim Ferriss?

  Totally. I would say that my inclination would be, if I were on stage in your place, I probably would have said yes. But then if we dug a little deeper into what that means to me, I think it would differ from probably how a lot of people would use it.

• 52:18Speaker 02

  Right.

• 52:18Tim Ferriss?

  So I would have doubts in the sense that I don't know how something is gonna turn out. But that doesn't, but that doesn't mean that I don't get started. And that doesn't mean that I stop experimenting because.

• 52:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:32Tim Ferriss?

  My whole thing is like, look, for instance, like I'm launching this game, people are like, what? A game? Like, that doesn't make any sense. It doesn't connect to the other things that you're doing. I'm like, exactly. Because I want to see what's behind door number three and I'm not gonna know unless I do this thing that's off menu. So what, like, what are you gonna do with it? What's next? I have no idea. Because anything I could plan now is not going to be as interesting as a lot that is going to surface if I do well with whatever the next step is in front of me. That's it. That's all I need to figure out. And a lot of the time, you're. As you said, you're going to get there and circumstances will have changed. The thing that was supposed to get shipped from the warehouse isn't there.

• 53:16Tim Ferriss?

  You're like, okay. And actually, side story, I'll keep it super short. And then I want to actually ask you about a name that came to mind when you said the creative life, because then I thought the creative act and I thought Rick Rubin. And I know you've met Rick Rubin, so I want to ask about that. But when I had my very first presentation in South by Southwest, 2007, it was the launch of the four hour work week and I had put together the most incredible presentation of my life. I had rehearsed at a friend's garage to his chihuahuas. That was the only test audience I had. And if they got bored and walked away, I had to change my, my presentation. That was the only fine tuning. But I was so proud of this huge deck that I had put together.

• 54:01Tim Ferriss?

  PowerPoint. I get to the venue, my computer crashes. And it's like, well, here we are.

• 54:08Speaker 02

  Now, now what? Got to roll up the sleeves now.

• 54:10Tim Ferriss?

  And it ended up being so much better than if I had used the slides. It ended up being so much better because I'd rehearsed enough that I knew the material. I didn't need the visual references. That was a self doubt that I had, that I wouldn't be able to give it without the slides. And then the slides went away and it was better than.

• 54:25Speaker 02

  So you might have, and so you could have a doubt, but you're not going to live and breathe by that. You're going to push past it really quickly because you should have fear. You should have some fear going into something.

• 54:34Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 54:35Speaker 02

  I call it fear forward.

• 54:36Tim Ferriss?

  Fear forward.

• 54:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, fear forward. Yeah. Like have the fear, but don't, don't let it cripple you. Just go forward knowing you're doing something that's outside of your comfort zone and you're going to reap great benefits.

• 54:46Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 54:47Speaker 02

  You might slip on the first two rocks. It might be four rooms.

• 54:50Tim Ferriss?

  Should be.

• 54:51Speaker 02

  But if you don't look at it with a negative point of view, you turn it into a spy.

• 54:53Tim Ferriss?

  I think that's an RR merch T-shirt opportunity.

• 54:56Speaker 02

  I told somebody that usually they went fear forward. I like this. I guess that's kind of catchy. But I tell you, I got to tell my kids this after we did this project together. I said, now you really know how it works. Cause like my son racer said, he was helping me with a, with a film, right? By the end of the two weeks, they interviewed him about it. He's waxing philosophical about the creative process like he's been doing it for a decade.

• 55:19Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 55:20Speaker 02

  He said, I never knew how my dad. Did El Mariachi, I mean, every day was, everything was just falling apart, but we'd figure it out. Every day was figuring it out. I never knew how he did that movie for no money, but now I do because we just did it. Yeah. He didn't know either. He just started. Most people never start. He figured it out day by day. And now he knew it in his blood because he had just done it. So I got them together and said, this was the greatest project we could have done together when you work with your kids. Cause they get to be in the boat with you figuring stuff out. They see you trying to figure it out and they're figuring, they're part of the solution. We're going to get into this. I'm going to talk about nepotism and why anyone who says anything negative about nepotism is you just get slapped in the face and kicked in the

• 56:05Speaker 02

  balls by their kids. It'll blow your mind. All right, we're going to come. But we'll get back to, but this is the main thing. This is the main thing about this is that I told them, if I ever get hit by a bus, you all know what to do now because we just did it. It's all life lessons. Yeah. You get together, you make your plan, which is like your script. You make it as bulletproof as possible. So then you can go do your film shoot. So you can go take action. Watch it all fucking fall apart. It's like your projector thing. And then that's when you roll up your sleeves and go, now let's take this chicken shit and make chicken salad. And it always comes out better. It always comes out better than your original

• 56:46Speaker 02

  plan. Every time, wash, rinse, repeat. That's life. You just learn the most valuable lesson of life on this little microcosm of what life is, which is a movie. Cause remember life and art should be the same. You're writing a story and you're writing your own story while you're doing it. The story of who you are and who you're going to become and what you're going to achieve. As you're writing a fake story, that's why they go together. That's why people identify with stories. You're literally, we're writing our own story. So do you have doubts? Yeah, but I'm gonna write past it. I'm gonna write my story to where I'm not the guy that has doubts. So that's the power of creativity and labeling. And that's a label. Am I gonna say I'm a guy who has doubts? No, because then guess what? And now I have doubts.

• 57:26Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 57:27Speaker 02

  And if there is a doubt, I can identify, I'm sure, like you just did, figure out a way past it right away. So that's why I would just say blanket. I don't have any doubts because I don't want to be the guy that has doubts. And I'm gonna figure out, you know, it's kind of like you have to make your business card first that says a guy with no doubts. I'll add that to it. I have no doubts. I remember Kevin Smith, filmmaker, Clarkson, all that. He sent me a script called Dogma. He said, I wrote this script. It's got special effects. It's all out of my wheelhouse. Said, but you wrote it. And he goes, yeah, but it's definitely a Robert Rodriguez movie. You directed. Why didn't you want to direct it? It's too big for me. Well, now you have to make it. You fear forward. You're doing something that pulls you out of your wheelhouse. And you're gonna, he was so thankful that I told him that and that he did it, gave him the permission to go

• 58:12Speaker 02

  do it. And it transformed his career, you know, because now he wasn't doing the comfort zone. He was now going way beyond, reaching way beyond. So fear forward, get out of the comfort zone. That means you're on the right track. If you don't have fear on something you're gonna do that day, probably fucking wasting your time. You're doing something that you're just spinning your wheels. So you want to put yourself out there. That's not the same as having doubt. I don't think. I think it's just, it's a, it's a good litmus test. I have a little bit of doubt that this is my daughter's gonna be able to perform tomorrow because it's the first time in front of a crowd. She may get nervous. I don't know. She's never seen a crowd. She might step out and see the crowd and freeze. Who knows? But I don't want to put that out there because I don't want to manifest that. I want to manifest, and we're gonna have cameras filming. We're gonna

• 58:54Speaker 02

  make this a big moment. And she rose to the occasion because that's what happens.

• 58:59Tim Ferriss?

  She looked like a seasoned vet. So Rick Rubin, his very first podcast, as far as I'm aware, was on this podcast, The Tim Ferriss Show.

• 59:08Speaker 02

  All right.

• 59:08Tim Ferriss?

  Ages ago. It was in his sauna. He actually, he actually didn't think I was gonna say yes, because he had a barrel sauna at what was Shangri-La in Malibu, ended up burning down. Sadly, this is quite a few years ago now. But he said, okay, okay, we'll do the podcast. At that time, he basically did next to no media. And he said, we'll do the podcast, but it has to be in the sauna. And we're gonna do the sauna, and then cold plunge, and then sauna. I was like, all right.

• 59:34Speaker 02

  Just sweating it out.

• 59:35Tim Ferriss?

  So we did it in the sauna. Now, the one thing. We neglected to consider was not the temperature of the recorder because I could put that on the floor and it was fine. It was the mic. So we had to wrap those in towels. As we did the interview, but you got to meet Rick handful of years ago.

• 59:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:54Tim Ferriss?

  What was that like? I don't want to even speculate. I mean, I have my own guesses as to like how you guys might mesh or interact. But what was that like?

• 1:00:03Speaker 02

  Oh, it was wonderful. He showed up at my house.

• 1:00:06Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 1:00:08Speaker 02

  You know, he's in town producing a band. I heard he wanted to meet me. So I said, yeah, you can just come to the house. So he shows up at my house. So I figured out he's probably heard some of my podcast stuff very similar to, you know, his creativity. We all approach it differently. We all have our own theories like, so he shows up and he goes, I don't know who you are or what you do or anything about you, but I had a feeling I was supposed to come meet you. So I said, you came to the right place. I'm going to show you my house. You know, you see my crazy house. I'm going to talk about my house. I'm talking about how I drew it first, envisioned it, built it. By the time I finish telling you about my house, you'll know who I am. So I go out and I give him the whole tour and he's like, okay, okay. Yeah. That's just like my house. It might've been the one in Malibu. That's just like my house in somewhere. And he goes, we're the same guy.

• 1:00:54Speaker 02

  So we go outside where my waterfall is and I pull, we sit and he puts his feet up and we just start talking. I just start, he just wants to hear about it. So I started telling him what we're talking about, all this creativity, my whole spiel on it. And he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're going on and going on and going on, going on. I'm doing most of the talking. And then as we're leaving, he said, I want to give you my book. I'm about to put out a book. This book wasn't out yet. So he ran to the car, came back out and it was just like a galley version of the book.

• 1:01:23Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:23Speaker 02

  I said, what is this? And he go, actually, it's pretty much everything we were just talking about is in there. And I was like, really? Okay. I'll give you my books. I gave my books, the picture I have, I'll show you is him with my book in front of my house.

• 1:01:34Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, that's.

• 1:01:35Speaker 02

  And then he left. And then when he left, I'm reading, I'm like, oh my God, I read the book. It's so similar, but different to things that I owe. Cause we all come at it from a different area, but his solutions were similar, but different because it's from a different world than mine. Same questions, same kind of things. It's that hive brain. I don't know. And you said this before, you said, Because you're a creative, I know other creatives like this, you have one foot in the magic realm. And it's like when your foot's in there, you pick up the signal from the others. You all kind of get ideas from each other before you even met. It's why you knew to show up. And I've had people just show up drawn there, knowing they're supposed to be there, not knowing why. It's this kind of magical thing that when you get into the creativity world,

• 1:02:18Speaker 02

  you really are tapping into the universe in a way to get your ideas. Cause your, your brain's not smart enough. I'm not smart enough to come up with these ideas. They're out there, you know? And everyone in every discipline has a different line for that. Like Keith Richards says, I don't come up with these riffs. They're all floating around. I was just the first one to pull it down and use it. You know, they all have their version of that, that it's not from them. And that's the best way to think, cause then, then there's no ego evolved. And if you have no ego, that it's just, you're a conduit for this creative spirit to come through you. Well, then you can do anything. I can be a good pipe. I just get my ego out of the way and let it come through. Cause you know, when you're in a flow, you know, you start, I don't want to write this book. And then you start writing and the first few lines come out. Then it starts going and you can't even believe what's coming out. It's because creative spirit, and my theory is, doesn't have hands.

• 1:03:02Speaker 02

  It's waiting for you to get off your ass and pick up the pen and then it can help take over. And so always take action. That's why I say always take action. Don't wait to be inspired. Action first, inspiration second.

• 1:03:15Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:16Speaker 02

  Cause if you wait to be inspired, like to make your short film, good luck, they ain't ever coming. But if you just start making the film.

• 1:03:22Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:23Speaker 02

  Ideas you never in a million years would have come up with, come into your head because it's not you. It's coming through you now. It's like, finally, you're gonna go make that film we've been wanting to make. Creative spirit must be very disappointed in people who don't take action, who sit there. And I tell you why I figured this out. When I was a cartoonist at 19, I had a daily cartoon strip. It'd have to, it'd take me hours to draw it. I would have to draw a little bit, try to figure out a joke. And I'd have a deadline every day or I wouldn't get paid. And I needed the money. I already had two jobs. So one day I thought, I gotta figure out a better, easier way. I wonder if I could just come up with a method where I go home, sit and just try and picture it. Just picture it and then go draw it. Mm hmm.

• 1:04:06Speaker 02

  And I'd sit there for hours and be like deadlines of, oh shit, I gotta go do this. I'd have to pick up the pen and draw. And as soon as I started drawing, I would draw one drawing, three others, and then it was kind of, oh, this kind of drawing kind of goes with that. I put that there and then that would be formulated. That's the process. It's not going to come to you if you're just sitting on your ass waiting for it to make magic. You have to physically pick up the pen or pick up the camera or pick up the guitar. And then it's like, thank God, because it doesn't have hands. Now I can come through. Now, now let me take over. Yeah. And that's the whole magic of creativity. So you shouldn't have any doubts if you could do it. As soon as you say, wow, I don't know how I did that. I wonder if I can do it again. You just shut the pipe because your ego got in the way. You thought it was you.

• 1:04:50Speaker 02

  It's not you. It's coming through you. So just be a clear pipe. I know that works because I taught that to my kids in a class when they were younger. And right away, they each wrote a book. It was unbelievable because they didn't have any, anything to unlearn. You know, they didn't have any experience yet. Where we all have more doubts now because we're older, we're like, ah, you know, it's like that, that thing where you teach a class full of grade school kids who can write a novel, who can be the president, who can do an opera, who can dance ballet. They all put their hands up because they don't know better. You keep asking them as the years go on, hands start going down, even with no life experience. They just all stop believing they're that person without any evidence that they're not.

• 1:05:32Speaker 02

  I always wanted to be that kid who had his hands up, no matter what. Even if it was something I didn't know how to do, put your hand up because you'll figure it out as you go. Don't have a doubt. Just go do it. Just go do it. Seems to be working for you. It's been working. It's that, it's that, do you remember that movie Bean There with Peter Sellers? He's so naive. Yeah. He's just a gardener. Yeah. But he gets hit by a car and ends up in Washington. And everyone thinks he's so smart because he's just talking about the garden and they all read into him. And by the end, he walks across the lake. Oh. Because he doesn't know you can't. Doesn't know you can't do it. It's the most beautiful movie you could see. Peter Sellers, I think, got an Oscar for it, or nomination at least.

• 1:06:16Speaker 02

  And it's amazing. And you're just like, oh my God, they all think he's this prophet. And everyone's quoting him and doing their own version of what he's saying, but he's just saying, when the roots are strong, the garden will flourish. And everybody's like, whoa.

• 1:06:32Speaker 02

  But that naive quality, you want to keep that naive quality. That's what got me to do mariachi. I didn't know it couldn't be done. It was only till later when people said, how'd you make that movie for $7,000? You know, that's impossible. I was like, really? You're just like, it didn't seem that hard. But if you're telling me, I guess I just followed my nose and I ended up at the top of my own Everest somehow. I wasn't trying to do that, but it's some people was impossible. But to me, it was just solutions I came up with to make up for what I didn't have. Yeah. What does your journaling look like these days? Or what insights have you had? I hope I can inspire everybody to journal because it's really weird. I go do a talk and I say, how many people keep a diary or journal? It could be like a group of 400 people. I'll see two hands, three hands.

• 1:07:16Speaker 02

  I'm like, oh my God, if I can leave you with any impression. My big thing now, I tell people, this is my theory, living is reliving. Because you know, you go to like a concert and people have their video cameras up and everybody said, put it away, live in the moment. Counterintuitive, I say, the moment fleets. Yeah. You're not going to even remember it tomorrow. Do you even remember who was standing next to you yesterday? You know, like from day to day, shit just goes by because we see life at 96 frames per second, 20K resolution, surround sound, like right now I'm looking at you, but I can see there's a glass here. I can see in the peripheral, there's someone over here operating this thing.

• 1:08:00Speaker 02

  A year from now, five and then 10. All our three pound meat computer can process. It might have a file photo of you in a T-shirt, me in a T-shirt because we kind of remember each other that way. But the metadata will be some kind of narrative that we spoke and had a good time. Yep. That's it. That's all you're going to have. And when you journal, I'm shocked. I was trying to figure out when I bought certain guitars. I couldn't remember. I knew some were gifted, but I couldn't remember. I just did a word search in my journals because I have a year by year journal. Guitar, guitar, guitar. So I've read and it shocked me that, oh, wow, I thought I bought this one. It was a gift from this person. How can I not remember that? This is a big guitar. This is like a $10,000 guitar. How would I not remember that? And I would read a little bit of the diary around it.

• 1:08:45Speaker 02

  I was floored. Have you go back 10 years?

• 1:08:47Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:48Speaker 02

  Even 15 years. It's like you're reading someone else's journal. You're reading someone else's journal and it's like, I guess I just have to take it for what it's there.

• 1:08:56Tim Ferriss?

  Well, my mom actually gave me a box of papers that was sitting in one of the rooms in my childhood home. She said, what do you want to do with this? And I opened it up and in that box were printed out emails that I had sent my mom when I was 15 from Japan to tell her what I was up to. And I did not remember. That was one of the most formative experiences of my life. I have a lot of memories from that period. I did not remember 99% of what I put in those emails.

• 1:09:28Speaker 02

  It's got like a dehydrated version that you have to put water on to reconstruct. But even then it mostly just fades away. You don't even recognize it. So it's so important to keep your history, but imagine what's your favorite jokes? And your favorite things about life that you share with your brothers, your family, your, you know? It's all past stuff. So living is reliving. My kids now love watching the movies of them growing. I shot so much video and kept journals of all their childhood. They all journal now, but they have their whole childhood because I gave them their journals of their childhood. They got their whole life journaled, but I've been showing them home movies recently because I've been digitizing all the old tapes. And I thought, they're not going to dig this. Some of this shit looks like VHS. It's so cruddy. And compared to today's HD stuff, I was showing them footage of them younger and I have tons of it.

• 1:10:12Speaker 02

  I thought later in life, I could rewatch and relive their wonderful childhood, right? Forget it. You don't remember. I don't remember even filming this stuff. It's like new adventures of. We're watching it, not knowing what's going to happen next. And they're watching it. I saw my son leaning into the screen to see what was around the corner. I said, you just leaned into the screen. He said, oh, wow, I left the living room. This is like virtual reality to me. And I was like, wow, that's interesting. Then I realized why compared to our memory. That's virtual reality, even the crappiest VHS tape. You hear the sounds, you see the place, you start reformulating. They cannot stop watching it. Every time they come over, we watch new fun tape.

• 1:10:55Speaker 02

  And we found classic new things that become benchmarks of humor and jokes that become iconic. Reliving is living. Like my mom turned seventy five and I said, "We gotta do something for your seventy fifth birthday." And she said, "No, no, no, no, no, I don't want anything done." "Why not?" "'Cause nothing can top my sixty fifth birthday." "Sixty fifth, what happened then?" "Oh, you gave me a car and you flew in everybody from out of town." I was like, "Really? I don't remember that. It was only ten years before. I must have tape." I looked it up, found the tape, put it in. "Oh, my God, I didn't remember anything." So I recut the tape, took it to her and we had a big party and I showed the tape. She was crying more. Now she knows, when she gets the key, what it means. She's like, "Oh, my God." I was like, "I don't have to do anything anymore. We'll just play the old tapes."

• 1:11:39Speaker 02

  It was more appreciated the second. Living is reliving because that's when it becomes iconic. And in the moment, this is all just flying by and we don't know what's important. It's only by journaling that you go, "This person's no longer with us." "What he said changed my life and I didn't know. And I forgot that he told me this at this time. If I had not journaled that." So if your life is worth anything, write it down. Cause then you'll be surprised how much of it is more valuable than you think. And you're only gonna know that by journaling.

• 1:12:07Tim Ferriss?

  What's your process? Is it like end of day word document?

• 1:12:11Speaker 02

  End of day at twelve, twelve AM, an alarm goes off, says journal. Cause I figured by twelve at night, I was finished with most bullshit, that I can actually sit and do it. I've actually got my partner writing journal now. Never kept a journal before, but because of the stuff I just said, it's trying to see the value in it. And they send me their journal too. That's always the best. If your partner also journal, seeing someone else's perspective on a big event. I say, "You have to journal every day if you don't want." But at least the big events, Valentine's, Christmas, birthday, special trip, journal. I'm gonna take you on a trip, but journal for me and give me that as a gift.

• 1:12:48Tim Ferriss?

  Bullet, is it bullet points?

• 1:12:50Speaker 02

  I tell you what, I used to sometimes just do bullets, just like, I try to write more now. Cause I've gone back. I try to write more, just more detail about what happened, just, just because it's gonna be gone. Now I know it goes away. It's not going to trigger your memory. In the earlier days, if I only had time to write some bullet point type stuff, I would just do that because I thought my memory, you know, come in. No. Gone. Yeah. Gone. It's someone else's journal. Yeah. Just know that. Even like seven years ago, before my son started writing music for me, he had told me, I found a diary and he said Rebel told me his one year, five year and 10 year plan. It was great. And I was like, what did he, what did he tell me? I don't remember.

• 1:13:32Speaker 02

  And I asked him, did you have it somewhere? He goes, oh yeah, I have it on my phone. Oh, shit, it's not on my phone. It's in my diary. No, please find it and send it because now I want to know. Now I know because your whole life changed after that. I really want to know now with more interest than when you first told me. Because now we know that that whatever you said is not the path that ended up. And so, yeah, journaling is so powerful and so needed because you think you're going to remember. It's just a meat computer. It's, it's not going to remember it at all. And now I just find myself having to leave myself breadcrumbs all day because my memory is fading anyway, just to know what I'm doing, much less what I already did. Yeah. But it does become iconic and you find some really fun stuff. And I find, if we

• 1:14:15Speaker 02

  find a video, oh my God, this is the best thing. We find a video of us playing, having a great time at 2003. And the weird thing you'll find, if you videotape your kids and journal, you find these weird 20 year full circle moments. You know, full circle moments like we just started working with a studio, their favorite animation studio in Japan. They love Japan. They love Japan. They're all about Japan, Japanese knife making. They build houses with no nails, my kids. Oh yeah, the joiner is amazing. I found the videotape, first time I told them about Japan. Me telling them and I had, I taped it because I wanted to see their reaction because it was like, you're going to love this place. And you see their eyes light up and they

• 1:14:57Speaker 02

  watch it now and go, that was the moment of inception. That was the moment we never forgot and we built upon. And to see that is amazing. But then you go back to the journal because there's stuff in the journal that's not on video and vice versa. And I go, wow, you know what we were doing, what I was doing while we were playing all those games? I was wheeling and dealing big deals in LA for Once Upon a Time Mexico and Sin City, you know, and they see the context of what was happening in between those moments. Yeah. And you get this clear picture of, oh, my God, you can totally be all in as a dad and all in as a businessman. And that teaches them about life. Like, wow, you can have it all. You really can. You know, it just, it just helps in so many ways to document your life. Do you have any other parenting hacks?

• 1:15:41Speaker 02

  The biggest life hacks is just working with your kids. Like I said, I stumbled upon it, but then when I saw Racer being so excited about what he learned about the creative process, and then I realized everything I was teaching them was life lessons. I went from fearing that they were going to resent me to realizing, I'm going to make all of them work on a film of me. That's just going to be, this is what you gotta do. Part of the deal. Part of the deal. Not so that you can become a filmmaker, because you're going to learn more about life. These are life lessons. And it's the best way to do it. It's project based. It's challenging. So my son, when we did We Can Be Heroes, I thought, okay, he's done a few scores for me because he'd been playing piano since he was four. They

• 1:16:23Speaker 02

  all played piano. And it was just to connect right to left side of the brain. That's all we gave them that for. But he was our best piano player. And at the end, he did his last recital, high school was finished, and he was already doing knives, Japanese knives making. And he won Forged in Fire. Oh, my God, did I tell you he won Forged in Fire? My son got on, when he was 18, got on Forged in Fire. It was a TV show. And won that TV show, out doing all these other blacksmiths because he'd been teaching himself Japanese knife making. And I asked him, how did you win? You won $10,000? How did you, what was your mindset? You were using tools you'd never even used before. They were just throwing stuff at you and problem solving, creative problem solving. And he gives me this samurai answer that I, that I love. He said, I convinced myself

• 1:17:05Speaker 02

  that I'd already won. Somehow I won. So when I'd come up against the challenge, instead of thinking what I had to do to get past the challenge, I just needed to remember what I did to get there. I was just like, whoa. Some Musashi Samurai stuff. Wow. I was like, wow. But again, you'll come up with innovations when you're thrown into the fire. And so he was doing so good with the music, he composed a couple of scores for me, but they were just all synth based for Red Eleven, for that short film that was a VR film. We can be heroes, though. That's my bag. I do orchestral stuff. We'll do the score for that together. That way I can teach him orchestral scoring. That'll be the next stage. He writes the first piece, not even a picture. He saw what picture I was editing. He went,

• 1:17:49Speaker 02

  wrote it to me. It's like John Williams was huge, was massive. And I was like, okay, yeah, sure. Let me check it out. I'll try it to picture. I didn't want him to see me try it to picture. I put it to picture. It matched. I doubled it, tripled it. It fit this whole five minute sequence. I called him up 10 minutes later. Come back up here and watch. It hits everything perfectly. If you could do more of this there, more of that there. He was stunned. I said, good news and bad news. Good news is, it's awesome. Bad news is, I can't help you at all. I don't know how you did this. Where did you learn music theory? They don't teach you that on piano, because I never learned theory and I was always proud of that. That's the 10%. I thought you didn't need to know. No, I'm different. Now he can manipulate music because he knows theory. He goes, oh, I learned it

• 1:18:32Speaker 02

  on YouTube. I was like, well, I'll tell you what, you're gonna have to write the whole score, but I'll help you. I'll be your assistant. I'll edit it. I'll show you how you can repeat themes. And he sat there and he did it. And he was just, I could just see, he was just under the gauntlet. I said, dude, this is the only way to learn. Throw you in the deep end. You get a lung full of water, we'll fish you out. And his eyes were like this big. But years later, he came back to me and said, I'm so thankful you did that. My whole life changed because you put, I didn't know I could do it, but I had no choice. He knew I could not help him. I wasn't doing it as some kind of weird teaching exercise. I had no, I said, let me see your charts. The thing you have going on in the bassline only? I would do a whole score with that. How'd you come up with all this others? I

• 1:19:17Speaker 02

  can't help you. And I remember the conductor said, you know, we recorded in Vienna. Stop midway. I think you sent me a video. Of him conducting? Yes. I said, go learn on YouTube real quick how to conduct. Cause I want you to conduct one of them. Cause I want video of you with the James Bond orchestra, conducting your own piece. Cause I never got to do that. Yeah. And it's, you're so proud when your kids can take on a challenge. And you see it just transforms their life. But he, the Vienna conductor stopped the score and said, this is a magnificent score. I can't believe you're 20. He was 20 at the time. But again, you throw your kids in the deep end. And I tell this to all the parents I can, because it's counterintuitive. A lot of parents would say, I don't want to push. But I tell you, if you have the opportunity to work with your kids,

• 1:20:01Speaker 02

  do it because it enriches your life. Because you are mentoring them. They're mentoring you because they're figuring out shit like that, that you never would have thought of. You're doing a project based thing together. That's impossible, that you're all going to overcome together. Now, how many parents do you know like try to give their kids advice on, on their job and their kids just like, dad, you don't, you don't know. You're not my shoes. You're in their shoes. You're all trying to figure it out together. So you're actually useful. You're not just some Geppetto who's worried about their kid all the time. I always say, don't just parent, partner. Cause after a certain age, as soon as they're teenagers, they replace you with their peers because you become useless to them. If you win a relationship last long time, partner. Don't parent anymore. They, they don't need a parent anymore. They need a partner.

• 1:20:46Speaker 02

  They need a mentor. They need an OB one. Cause that's what they look for in their life mentors. Be their mentor. Their confidence grows when they're mentoring you back. And they're seeing their confidence soar. And it's family time. You're checking all the boxes. I don't even do anything anymore. I don't take any job, any assignment unless it's going to involve my children. Because life is so good that way. You're checking all the boxes. You're preparing them for life. You're learning from them. They're learning from you and it's family time. I was telling this to Stallone. I was having dinner with Stallone and his wife. This pre-COVID, right after COVID, something. I had just done We Can Be Heroes, this movie, the biggest movie on Netflix. And I was telling my son, did score. I wrote it with my kids and all this. And Jennifer was like,

• 1:21:31Speaker 02

  Her eyes were just wide, like, whoa, she hit Stallone, she goes, "You don't work with your daughters. You don't work with your daughters." And Stallone was like, "Ooh." I was like, "Well, man, I don't want to get anybody in trouble here." You know, maybe I should reel it back a little bit. But sure enough, next year, his daughters have podcasts. He would show up every once in a while to help boost some ratings and stuff. Now they have a TV show, Family Stallone. If all of them together, working together, they live in that dream. And they're just so happy. So I tell people, because people can't hear it when they hear it. They just need to know someone did it and that it worked to know, "Oh, I have a way to try that with my kids." Because I didn't know my kids would want to work with me. You know what happened was my kid's teacher told me,

• 1:22:16Speaker 02

  "You know, your son racer, when he was like 15, he loves knights. We're studying knights and we're talking about squires." And I asked, "Well, who would you want to apprentice under?" And he said, "My dad." I was like, "Really? He's never told me that. Did he say that?" He goes, "Yeah, he said it to your dad." I was like, "Wow." How'd that feel there? It was wild. It made you... See, kids have egos too. Yeah. They don't want to just tell you that. They might tell someone else, but they're not going to tell you. So don't assume. Don't assume they don't want to be part of your life or be part of your work. Since I've been working with my kids since they were very young, I didn't know it would keep going for 20 years, you know? And now it's just become the thing that we do. And they endlessly inspire me because they just have that confidence built in.

• 1:23:01Speaker 02

  But we're building a go-kart together. So I tell, I know some parents would dismiss it as an opportunity like that and call it entitlement, but wow, you're so wrong, so wrong. Let me set you straight. Because this would be, you know, a curse on your life if you don't at least know this. I would say, and I'm curious if you agree you're not, or if you have your own position on it. I would say that if you have an opportunity to work with your children, if you're in that position, because I don't know, maybe not all jobs adapt to that, but take it. It's a tremendous gift to everyone involved and beyond. Because if you refuse to do so, because you're afraid other people will call it nepotism, you are missing out the most important opportunity of your collective lives.

• 1:23:44Speaker 02

  Because look, what happens as parents when we pass away? Don't we just give everything that we created to our children? Is that not entitlement? They had no part in building? There was an opportunity to build this with them so that when they inherited, they could go, "I made this with my dad."

• 1:24:06Speaker 02

  Right? Right? So it's like, "Oh, thanks, Dad, for all this shit that I had no part of, that you went and made without me being involved at all, getting that chance to have that mentorship, go both ways, to build something together, to have that family time together." Because you were afraid someone would call you up for nepotism. Thanks. I'm having a ball, and it's inspiring everyone who's a parent to go partner instead of parent their child and have a relationship to last your whole life.

• 1:24:45Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. I mean, what strikes me about it also, I mean, there's trust fund kids or trust farians have a, have a new term. Well, it's, it's not exactly the same, but it gets used similarly nepo babies, right? But the connotation of that word, I don't think applies to you at all because at least, and this is not the Merriam-Webster definition, but when I think of nepotism, there is a sort of unearned giving implied.

• 1:25:10Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:25:10Tim Ferriss?

  Right? There's an unearned giving implied. And then there is teaching, which you do. And then there is another thing, I would say a step above that, which is enabling someone specifically to have the confidence that they can figure it out, that they can learn, right? You didn't tell your son to go to YouTube and learn music theory, but you put him in situations or you hinted at forthcoming situations that would require a lot of tap dancing and figuring things out. And if we were to create some type of like Maslow's hierarchy of working with your kids.

• 1:25:56Tim Ferriss?

  There are different things you can impart or give, and I would say the lowest level is giving someone a fish, right? Instead of teaching them to fish. But then above teaching someone to fish, teaching your kids to fish is saying, hey, whether it's piano, fishing, music theory, or something that you are going to come up with on your own as a solution to a problem or a challenge or a dream that I can't even think of, I'm going to put you into enough circumstances that you have the confidence you can fear forward. You have the confidence that not knowing is half the battle, but you will get there.

• 1:26:34Speaker 02

  You can tell them that stuff all you want, but when they're doing it with you, they learn so much better. I mean, that's why I said-

• 1:26:39Tim Ferriss?

  It's like you sitting on the couch with your kids behind you, trying to come up with the comic strip. It's not gonna happen.

• 1:26:43Speaker 02

  It's not gonna happen. But you can tell them all that, but it's different when they've lived it too. And that's why I did the whole, if I get hit by a bus, you know what to do, because it's true. Now they know it in their bones. When I did a talk in Columbia with a $7,000 movie that we did together, me and the boys, we went, they flew us down there to go talk, and everyone was, it's Columbia, these guys live in poverty. They were leaning forward to find out how to make a movie with no money, so they could get out of there. And we were talking, and one woman was asking a question about screenwriting, and I was giving my answer, and Racer said, because he had written the script with me now, he wanted to stand up and say, what he's saying is really true, because he had lived it already. It wasn't, this is stuff he'd heard before, but now it really sank

• 1:27:25Speaker 02

  in because he was there. And what's cool is if you build your family up like your team like that, you know what I hear so much now that I hadn't, probably because I'm older and I've been around longer, a lot of people will just assume I'm too busy to do whatever project I'm doing alone. So they say, yeah, we can't wait to work with you and your team. Most people have a team. My team is my kids. And it's got, it's more jobs. Like a video game company wanted to be in partnership with me and said, well, let me tell you who my team is. All my kids are gamers. I got them into games when they were really little. They know this world inside out. One of them's even a game designer. That's my team, and they're in my house. We love this. We want to work with you, and we're going to take it to the next level, because we've done this other project and this other project,

• 1:28:07Speaker 02

  and this was the process we did. Done deal. We're doing it now. Now my kids get to make a game, a real game, like a big ass game. And you get to do it together because you've already trained them to be. And it used to be a joke when I had so many kids, I had five kids. I would say, oh yes, my future cast and crew, I would just say it as a joke. Hey, it turned out to be true. They're my cast and crew.

• 1:28:27Tim Ferriss?

  So is there anything to the story of the double Rs besides the fact that you have the double Rs? Is there more to it?

• 1:28:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, double Rs was just from a family of 10 kids. My mom's name is Rebecca and my sister's name is Rebecca. We're the only double Rs, my mom, my sister and me. And I always just loved the alliteration of that, you know, like the double Rs. It was, it was really powerful. R, Rebecca Rodriguez, Robert Rodriguez. So, once you named the first kid with an R name, well, then the second one, and then the third one. And I gave them regular middle names. They didn't have to be, you know, so like is Rocket, Valentin Rodriguez, Avellan. It can be Valentin Avellan, or it can be Rocket Rodriguez.

• 1:29:10Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:10Speaker 02

  Or Racer Rodriguez, or Maximiliano Avellan. They can, if they want to go into politics and not be pro wrestlers, they can change their name. You know, but I didn't know they were going to keep those names past childhood. I thought it was just fun kid names.

• 1:29:21Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:21Speaker 02

  Everybody has five names. One is Rogue, Joaquin, Cecilio Rodriguez. One has five names, so he can pick his identity. I want him to just use it as a little.

• 1:29:29Tim Ferriss?

  Every time he has to fill out a government form, he's like, oh, god damn.

• 1:29:31Speaker 02

  I'm not going to use that. But they didn't want to get rid of their first names. They loved their first names. So I thought, let's keep, if everyone's keeping their first name, let's own it. Double R is kind of a cool logo. What's fun was that it just looks cool. Double R, it means all of us. And it makes us like a tribe and it makes us all, and it gave them a lot of pride. I was surprised how much pride they had in it and they all started coming up with ideas. Rick Rubin comes over and he saw them holding a picture up and he goes, a double R. He goes, that was my artist name when he was a, you know, a DJ. He was double, he was double R. I was like.

• 1:30:02Tim Ferriss?

  That's amazing.

• 1:30:04Speaker 02

  This is one of my other favorite things that when I've told parents, they go, I want to try that with my kids. It was something I stumbled upon. Nor was having some kind of family talk with the kids. We usually have these things we call tribe talks, where you talk about anything. It's like, like we're a tribe, like we help each other out. They get so excited about a tribe talk. Let's have a tribe.

• 1:30:21Tim Ferriss?

  And the tribe talk is like asking one another for help?

• 1:30:25Speaker 02

  I just have a new thing I want to talk about that's going to affect their lives later. Have a tribe talk about this. They're like so excited because they learn about something that I want to share with them to prepare them for life. Something that I might have just learned that I wish I could take a time machine and tell myself, you can't. The closest thing to it is telling your children. Because I used to think, any advice I give them, I'm afraid, might probably just go in one ear and out the other because it's not real to them yet. They probably have to live through it and find their own mistakes. No, they would process it and give it back to me. And I would be like, where'd you get that philosophy? You told me that. I didn't tell it to you like that. I said, I might have said glass is half empty or half full. Oh, yeah, well, we built upon it. Well, they take what you tell them and build upon it, right?

• 1:31:07Speaker 02

  So this one was, I thought, I'm going to be very honest with them and tell them all the major decisions I made in life. Walk them through, because there's a funny scene. It came up because of a movie we did in another Spike Kids. There's a scene where the parents are talking about Operation Fireball with such memories about it. And the little girl asks, what is that exactly? Oh, we beat up the bad guy. We blew up his lair and all this stuff. And she's just like, you could have done it a better way. You could have gone to him nicely. You could have talked to him, seen his aesthetic. And it plays it out, right? I thought, I'm gonna try that with my kids. I bet if I told them all the decisions I was faced with, that a lot of times are lose, lose. There's no, there's no clear way to go. And as you think 10 years later, you'll see what the real answer should have been?

• 1:31:50Speaker 02

  Nothing. There's never clarity sometimes. I'm curious to see what they would have done with the knowledge more evolved. So I walk them through. It was fascinating. It was fascinating. At every turn, okay, A or B, which way would you go? I'm not going to tell you what I did. They both suck. And do you know what they say? I don't want to have to pick. No, you have to pick. I had to pick. You have to pick. They picked. Every time it was the same until one, they go.

• 1:32:23Speaker 02

  It's a big one. You go, well, if that's the circumstances, that's what the knowledge you have? You go, yeah, that's all the knowledge you have. I would have done what you did too. I would have left. I should have done that. I didn't. I stayed. Let me tell you what happened because I stayed. I should have done that. I knew I should have done that. But I went ahead and stayed because that's the right thing to do. I did the right thing. And it blew up in my face. Watch. The right thing by external. Right thing, external. External status. Anyone else, counterintuitive though, would say, with the evidence you have, counterintuitive is sounds should go that way. So you picked the right thing. I should have done that, but because I decided to do the right thing. You just felt so good after. And they were so excited knowing now what life really is like.

• 1:33:08Speaker 02

  It's gonna throw shit at you. That's no clear answer, even with all this time, no clarity. They know that it's a lot tougher and they're invested because it's you and them in a way. So I tell parents, I told, I won't tell you, but several hours were like, I'm gonna try that with my kids for sure. I'm curious to see what they say. Cause you wanna see if they remix a better version of you. But you might be surprised. It's just as unfathomable to them to have an answer as you did. Uh, okay. Life hack, my favorite life hack. Have you seen? I showed you that little spark amp, right? That I can play guitar. Okay, okay. Yep, in your kitchen. You know, no time, even when you try to make time, you can't make consistent time.

• 1:33:50Speaker 02

  Supposed to walk 10,000 steps, you know, for your health, especially after 50 or whatever. Time for that. Takes an hour, an hour and a half. I don't have enough things to listen to or phone calls to make to go do that. Then I love guitar. I can't be playing guitar for a freaking hour. You know, we listen to Tom Morello on this masterclass. You wanna get better at guitar? Play for an hour a day. If you wanna get better than that more. So I started trying to do an hour a day. I couldn't do it consistently. So I'd be like, God, I wanna play guitar. I have no time to walk. So I put them together. This spark amps, they have some that are really small. And now they just came out with the headphone ones. That you just put it on. It's the amp is built in and you plug in your guitar wireless. And I used to have just the one in my pocket, their older one. And I put a playlist on of backing tracks, drums and bass for songs, my favorite songs

• 1:34:34Speaker 02

  that I play to, and I walk just around my house and you forget you're even there. It's like the Angus Young workout, you know, he's always, he's always doing that. Or Eddie Van Halen running around. The music drives you, you don't even, the room is gone. You're in a stadium, you're walking across the stage. Your house is bigger than most stages, walking across. I put on like an hour to an hour and a half playlist. This was like 10 or 12 songs. Easy, 15,000 steps, 17,000 steps, easy. You don't even know you did it. You don't even remember walking. You're so transported, you're so busy doing this. That I'll be at the end of my playlist going, I'm gonna keep playing this. You just keep walking. That's why you saw me in the crowd, walking through the crowd.

• 1:35:19Speaker 02

  I'm so used to playing, walking. I went, I went walking through the crowd, greeting everybody that I knew instead of, I said, well shit, I can play and walk and not have to look at my, because I got that training. But anyway, anyone who's a guitarist, the best life hack, you get an hour plus practice every day. I got so much better on guitar because of it. And you're walking and you're not even feeling it. I don't even remember doing it. Biggest life hack here, I couldn't wait to tell you. It is, I call it the rock walk.

• 1:35:48Tim Ferriss?

  The rock walk.

• 1:35:49Speaker 02

  Gotta do the rock walk. My friend goes out in the neighborhood with his thing. He just walks around the neighborhood.

• 1:35:54Tim Ferriss?

  When I saw you on stage with your daughter, that's the most I've seen you play guitar. I've only seen your guitars in the house.

• 1:36:00Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:36:01Tim Ferriss?

  But that was the most actual playtime I have seen.

• 1:36:04Speaker 02

  Wow, yeah, yeah. That's so funny too. That's right, because I don't go just play songs.

• 1:36:08Tim Ferriss?

  With the Hello Kitty guitar.

• 1:36:11Speaker 02

  Rocking the Hello Kitty. It's a good guitar. It looks great.

• 1:36:14Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Robert, we'll have to do this more than once a decade, but thank you so much for all the stories and I took a ton of notes. How can people learn more about Brass Knuckle Films? Where should they go? Where should they check out?

• 1:36:30Speaker 02

  There's a brass knuckle films, you know, website where you can learn all about it, get all the updates, show you how you can invest. You'll see all the perks and things for the different levels. Get a part of it. It's a community I think is really going to appeal to anyone who's a fan of action movies, but also filmmakers, but just people who are interested and people who consume. Don't just be a consumer, make the money back. I want you to make the money so that you're not just consuming and watching a movie. If you like movies, this is the best way. It's, I tried to figure out ever since I was a kid, how can I get paid to watch movies? Cause I watch movies all the time. It's the closest thing.

• 1:37:09Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, brass knuckle films. Beautiful. All right, folks, we're going to link in the show notes to everything. Tune up, block slash podcast. Thank you, Robert.

• 1:37:16Speaker 02

  Thank you for giving me a forum to tell people that I know people were here because you're, everyone listens to your thing. Cause I just, I just like with my book, I always wanted, as soon as I made mariachi, I wanted to share it with people because I knew I would have appreciated hearing that as a filmmaker who had no money from a family of 10, that it was possible because everyone made it sound like it was not. So I just wanted to shout it from the mountaintop and I still feel that same way as I discover things I want, I want to tell people because it, the feedback loop is amazing, you know, when people come back and tell you how they worked it into their life in their own way. It inspires you all over again, inspires you even, you're like, well, you just inspired me now to go try it that way. So yeah, I love sharing that.

• 1:37:53Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Incredibly energizing. It's a virtuous circle and for everybody listening and watching, till next time, be just a little bit kinder than is necessary to others and to yourself. Thanks for tuning in. 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.

• 1:38:37Tim Ferriss?

  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. 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. Way back in the day, in 2010, I published a book called The Four Hour Body, which I probably started writing in 2008.

• 1:39:22Tim Ferriss?

  And in that book, I recommended many, many, many things. First generation continuous glucose monitor and cold exposure and all sorts of things that have been tested by people from NASA and all over the place. And one thing in that book was Athletic Greens. I did not get paid to include it, I was using it. That's how long I've been using what is now known as AG1. AG1 is my all-in-one nutritional insurance and I just packed up, for instance, to go off the grid for a while and the last thing I left out on my countertop to remember to take, I'm not making this up, I'm looking right in front of me, is travel packets of AG1.

• 1:40:05Tim Ferriss?

  So rather than taking multiple pills or products to cover your mental clarity, gut health, immune and health, energy and so on, you can sport these areas through one daily scoop with AG1, which tastes great even with water, I always just have it with water. I usually take it first thing in the morning and it takes me less than two minutes total. Honestly, it takes me less than a minute. I just put it in a shaker bottle, shake it up and I'm done. AG1 bolsters my digestion and nutrient absorption by including ingredients optimized to support a healthy gut in every scoop. AG1 in a single serve travel packs, which I mentioned earlier, also makes for the perfect travel companion. I'll actually be going totally off the grid, but these things are incredibly, incredibly space efficient. You could even put them in a book, frankly, I mean, they're kind of like bookmarks.

• 1:40:50Tim Ferriss?

  After consuming this product for more than a decade, I chose to invest in AG1 in 2021 as I trust their no compromise approach to ingredient sourcing and appreciate their focus on continuously improving ONE Formula. They go above and beyond by testing for 950 or so contaminants and impurities compared to the industry standard of 10. AG1 is also tested for heavy metals and 500 various pesticides and herbicides. I've started paying a lot of attention to pesticides. That's a story for another time. To make sure you're consuming only the good stuff. AG1 is also NSF certified for sport. That means if you're an athlete, you can take it. The certification process is exhaustive and involves the testing and verification of each ingredient and every finished batch of AG1. So they take testing

• 1:41:35Tim Ferriss?

  very seriously. There's no better time than today to start a new healthy habit. And this is an easy one. Wake up, water in the shaker bottle, AG1, boom. So take advantage of this exclusive offer for you, my dear podcast listeners, a free one-year supply of liquid vitamin D plus five travel packs with your subscription. Simply go to drinkag1.com/tim. That's the number one drinkag1.com/tim for a free one-year supply of liquid vitamin D plus five travel packs with your first subscription. Or just learn more at drinkag1.com/tim. Listeners have heard me talk about making before you manage for years. All that means

• 1:42:18Tim Ferriss?

  to me is that when I wake up, I block out three to four hours to do the most important things that are generative, creative, podcasting, writing, et cetera, before I get to the email and the admin stuff and the reactive stuff and everyone else's agenda for my time. For me, let's just say I'm a writer and entrepreneur. I need to focus on the making to be happy. If I get sucked into all the little bits and pieces that are constantly churning, I end up feeling stressed out. And that is why today's sponsor is so interesting. It's been one of the greatest energetic unlocks in the last few years. So here we go. I need to find people who are great at managing, and that is where Cresset Family Office comes in, you spell it C R E S S E T.

• 1:43:03Tim Ferriss?

  Crescent Family Office. I was introduced to them by one of the top CPG investors in the world. Crescent is a prestigious family office for CEOs, founders, and entrepreneurs. They handle the complex financial planning, uncertain tax strategies, timely exit planning, bill pay, wires, all the dozens of other parts of wealth management, just financial management that would otherwise pull me away from doing what I love most, baking things, mastering skills, spending time with the people I care about. And over many years, I was getting pulled away from that stuff, at least a few days a week, and I've completely eliminated that. So, experience the freedom of focusing on what matters to you with the support of a top wealth management team.

• 1:43:45Tim Ferriss?

  You can schedule a call today at cressetcapital.com/tim. That's spelled C R E S S E T. cressetcapital.com/tim to see how Crescent can help streamline your financial plans and grow your wealth. That's cressetcapital.com/tim. And disclosure, I am a client of Crescent. There are no material conflicts other than this paid testimonial. And of course, all investing involves risk, including loss of principal. So, do your due diligence.