#206: Testing the "Impossible": 17 Questions That Changed My Life

This is a special episode of the podcast. It's a sample chapter from my new book, Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers http://www.toolsoftitans.com. What follows are 17 questions that have dramatically changed my life. Each one is time-stamped, as they entered the picture at precise moments. Enjoy! Show notes and links for this episode can be found at www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. This podcast is brought to you by Wealthfront https://wealthfront.com/tim. Wealthfront is a massively disruptive (in a good way) set-it-and-forget-it investing service, led by technologists from places like Apple and world-famous investors. It has exploded in popularity in the last two years and now has more than $2.5B under management. In fact, some of my good investor friends in Silicon Valley have millions of their own money in Wealthfront. Why? Because you can get services previously limited to the ultra-wealthy and only pay pennies on the dollar for them, and it's all through smarter software instead of retail locations and bloated sales teams. Check out wealthfront.com/tim http://wealthfront.com/tim, take their risk assessment quiz, which only takes two to five minutes, and they'll show you for free exactly the portfolio they'd put you in. If you want to just take their advice and do it yourself, you can. Or, as I would, you can set it and forget it. Well worth a few minutes: wealthfront.com/tim http://wealthfront.com/tim. This podcast is also brought to you by 99Designs http://99designs.com/tim, the world's largest marketplace of graphic designers. I have used them for years to create some amazing designs. When your business needs a logo, website design, business card, or anything you can imagine, check out 99Designs. I used them to rapid prototype the cover http://99designs.com/tim for The 4-Hour Body, and I've also had them help with display advertising and illustrations. If you want a more personalized approach, I recommend their 1-on-1 service http://99designs.com/tim. You get original designs from designers around the world. The best part? You provide your feedback, and then you end up with a product that you're happy with or your money back. Click this link http://www.99designs.com/tim and get a free $99 upgrade. Give it a test run.

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

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

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Tim Ferriss?

  No, we're seeing an appropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 01

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

• 0:23Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront, and this is a very unique sponsor. Wealthfront is a massively disruptive, in a good way, set it and forget it investing service, led by technologists from places like Apple and world famous investors. It has exploded in popularity in the last two years, and they now have more than $2.5 billion under management. In fact, some of my very good friends, investors in Silicon Valley, have millions of their own money in Wealthfront. So the question is, why? Why is it so popular? Why is it unique? Because you can get services previously reserved for the ultra wealthy, but only pay pennies on the dollar for them. And this is because they use smarter software instead of retail locations, bloated sales teams, etc. And I'll come back to that in a second. I suggest you check out wealthfront.com/tim.

• 1:08Tim Ferriss?

  Take the risk assessment quiz, which only takes two to five minutes, and they'll show you for free exactly the portfolio they'd put you in. And if you just want to take their advice, run with it, do it yourself, you can do that. Or, as I would, you can set it and forget it. And here's why. The value of Wealthfront is in the automation of habits and strategies that investors should be using on a regular basis, but normally aren't. Great investing is a marathon, not a sprint, and little things that you may or may not be familiar with, like automatic tax loss harvesting, rebalancing your portfolio across more than 10 asset classes, and dividend reinvestment add up to very large amounts of money over longer periods of time. Wealthfront, as I mentioned, since it's using software instead of retail locations, etc.,

• 1:50Tim Ferriss?

  can offer all of this at low costs that were previously completely impossible. Right off the bat, you never pay commissions or account fees. For everything, they charge 0.25% per year on assets above the first 15,000, which is managed for free if you use my link, wealthfront.com/tim. That is less than $5 a month to invest. A $30,000 account, for instance. Now, normally, when I have a sponsor on this show, it's because I use them and recommend them. In this case, it's a little different. I don't use Wealthfront yet because I'm not allowed to. Here's the deal. They wanted to sponsor this podcast, but because of SEC regulations, companies that invest your money are not allowed to use client testimonials. So I couldn't be a user and have them on the podcast.

• 2:33Tim Ferriss?

  But I've been so impressed by Wealthfront that I've invested a significant amount of my own money, at least for me, in the team and the company itself. So I am an investor and hope to soon use it as a client. Now, back to the recommendation. As a Tim Ferriss Show listener, you'll get $15,000 managed for free if you decide to open an account. But just start with seeing the portfolio that they would suggest for you. Take two minutes, fill out their questionnaire at wealthfront.com/tim. It's fast, it's free. There's no downside that I can think of. This episode is brought to you by 99designs. 99designs is a great partner for creating and growing your business. It's a one-stop shop for all of your graphic design needs, whether that's a logo, website, business card, or anything else.

• 3:17Tim Ferriss?

  I used 99designs to get book cover prototypes for The Four Hour Body, which went on to become a number one New York Times bestseller. I also use them for banner ads, illustrations, and other things. With 99designs, designers around the world compete to create the best design for you. You give feedback and then pick your favorite. You end up happy, or you get your money back. It's very simple. You can check out a few of my own designs and those of yours, meaning Tim Ferriss Show listeners, at 99designs.com/tim. And right now, my listeners, you guys, will get a free $99 upgrade on your first design. That's 99designs.com/tim. Check it out. Hello, ladies and gentlemen.

• 4:01Tim Ferriss?

  Ladies and germs, this is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. Where it is my job each and every episode to deconstruct world-class performers, billionaires, chess prodigies, military strategists, actors, entertainers, you name it, to tease out the habits, routines, and so on that you can use, whether those are favorite books, what they do in the first 60 minutes after they wake up, whatever. So this episode is a little bit different. Many of you have been asking me about an audiobook version of Tools of Titans, my new book, which is a compilation of all of these habits and routines and so on, by 200-plus folks in the book. There is no audiobook or audible version coming soon because I'm going to be doing something very, very fun and interesting

• 4:45Tim Ferriss?

  with all of that audio, but it takes some time. So it's going to take at least a few months, but many, many of you have asked for audio, so I'm going to give you a sample. And in fact, I'm going to give you a chapter that is in the book that you've never seen before, never heard before, and there is a lot of that. In Tools of Titans, I'd say about, let's say 60% is the distilled wisdom and tactics and so on from 10,000-plus transcripts from the podcast interviewing all these folks like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jamie Foxx, General Stanley McChrystal, special ops commanders and so on. And 40% is brand-new, new tips from old guests, new guests per se that you haven't met before, like Jack Dorsey, for

• 5:28Tim Ferriss?

  instance, and a lot of new chapters from me. So this is one of them. This is called "Testing the Impossible," "Possibles" in quotation marks, "17 Questions That Changed My Life." So let's jump into it and we'll have some fun with it. The chapter begins with a quote, which is actually the quote I use before every presentation that I give, just about. And it goes as follows. Quote, "Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect," end quote. That is from Mark Twain. Reality is largely negotiable. If you stress test the boundaries and experiment with the so-called impossibles, you'll quickly discover that most limitations are just a fragile collection of socially reinforced

• 6:11Tim Ferriss?

  rules that you can choose to break really at any time. What follows are 17 questions that have dramatically changed my life. Each one is timestamped. In other words, I give you a date, rough or precise, because they entered the picture at a very specific moment. And as I already indicated, this is a sample chapter from The New Tome, Tools of Titans, The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons and World Class Performers. Long, long subtitles, I just love those. Question number one. What if I did the opposite for 48 hours? I'll say each of these twice. What if I did the opposite for 48 hours? And the intention is for you guys to use these questions perhaps in journaling exercises in the morning, not to just think about them for five seconds and then move on. So what if I did the opposite for 48 hours?

• 6:56Tim Ferriss?

  How did this come up? In 2000, I was selling mass data storage to CEOs and CTOs in my first job out of college. And when I wasn't driving around my mom's POS hand-me-down minivan to and from the office in San Jose, California, I was cold calling and cold emailing. That is sometimes called smiling and dialing, and it was brutal. For the first few months, I flailed and failed. Certainly didn't help that my desk was wedged in a fire exit. Then one day, I realized something. All of the sales guys, many of them from EMC and other spots where they'd been superstars, made their sales calls between 9:00 AM and 5:00 PM. Well, that seems obvious, right? But that's part one. Part two, I realized that all of the gatekeepers who kept me from the decision-makers, CEOs

• 7:40Tim Ferriss?

  and CTOs, also worked from 9:00 to 5:00, right? So the secretaries were there from 9:00 to 5:00, the other gatekeepers were there from 9:00 to 5:00, and all the other sales guys were calling between 9:00 to 5:00. What if I did the opposite of all the other sales guys just for 48 hours? That is what came to my mind. And I decided to take a Thursday and Friday to make sales calls only from 7:00 to 8:30 AM and then from 6:00 to 7:30 PM. And for the rest of those days, I would just focus on cold emails. It worked like gangbusters. It was a huge, huge step function out for me and changed everything. The big boss, my target, often picked up the phone directly. And I began doing more experiments along these lines because I was booking more

• 8:25Tim Ferriss?

  sales meetings, I was in technical sales, and closing more deals than almost anybody else, just by making this one change. So what if I did the opposite? I started asking this all over the place. What if I only asked questions instead of pitching? What if I studied technical material so I sounded like an engineer instead of a sales guy? What if I ended my emails with, quote, "I totally understand if you're too busy to reply, and thank you for reading this far," end quote, instead of the usual, "I look forward to your reply and speaking soon," presumptive bullshit? The experiments paid off. My last quarter in the job, I outsold the entire LA office of our biggest competitor, EMC, their giant, the 800-pound gorilla. Question number two. What do I spend a silly amount of money on? How might I scratch my own itch?

• 9:08Tim Ferriss?

  And I'm going to pause here for a dramatic sipping of coffee.

• 9:16Tim Ferriss?

  Number two, I'll say it again. What do I spend a silly amount of money on? How might I scratch my own itch? This came right after the last. So in late 2000, early 2001, I saw the writing on the wall. The startup that I worked for was going to implode, like pretty much everyone else in Silicon Valley in tech at the time. Rounds of layoffs started and weren't going to end. I wasn't sure exactly what to do, but I'd been bitten by the startup bug and intoxicated by just the hubbub and excitement of Silicon Valley. To explore business opportunities, because I didn't know where exactly to point myself, I didn't do in-depth market research. Instead, I started with my credit card statement and asked myself, what do I spend a silly amount of money on?

• 9:58Tim Ferriss?

  In other words, where did I spend a disproportionate percentage of my income? Where was I price insensitive? And the answer was sports supplements, sports nutrition. At the time, I was making less than $40,000 a year, pre-tax, in Silicon Valley, doesn't go very far, and spending $500 or more per month on supplements, which was insane, of course, but dozens of my male friends were doing exactly the same thing, going overboard. I already knew which ads got me to buy, which stores and websites I used to purchase goods, which bulletin boards I frequented, and all the rest of it. So I started to just brainstorm at night and during lunch hours. Could I create a product that would scratch my own itch? And what was I currently cobbling together?

• 10:43Tim Ferriss?

  In other words, what was I creating makeshift solutions for? I had enough science background to be dangerous in that respect, that I couldn't conveniently find at retail. And the result was a cognitive enhancer that I've written about quite a bit in the first book, The Four Hour Week, Brain Quicken. And it was very much based on a cocktail that I put together for effectively smart drug type purposes while I was an undergraduate at Princeton. And at my startup in the meantime, the one that I worked for before everyone got fired, I begged my coworkers to each prepay for a bottle, which gave me enough money to hire chemists or regulatory consultant and do a tiny manufacturing run. At that point, I was off to the races.

• 11:24Tim Ferriss?

  So that is how my first really successful company started by asking this question. What do I spend a silly amount of money on myself? And how might I scratch my own itch? Now, it's important to note here, you can do the opposite, maybe. There are people who will go to fancy MBA programs, say Harvard or Stanford GSB, and you'll have two male co-founders who come out and start diapers.com or something like that and make a fortune. Well, I don't like to depend on my skills of empathy and market research. I would prefer to know I have at least a guaranteed market of one, meaning myself. So whenever possible, I attempt to scratch my own itch.

• 12:05Tim Ferriss?

  Number three, what would I do, have or be if I had $10 million? What's my real TMI? You can change this number depending on what applies most to you. But in other words, you're really asking if I had all the money in the world, what would I want to do, have or be if money were no longer a consideration? That could be if I had $1 million, $10 million, $100 million, a billion dollars, what would I do, have and be? What's my real TMI? And that doesn't stand for too much information. It stands for target monthly income, and we'll get to that. So flash forward. 2004, I'm doing better than ever financially at that point, better than ever before. And Brainquicken was distributed in perhaps a dozen countries.

• 12:47Tim Ferriss?

  I was making more per month at that point than I had been making per year previously. All sounds great, but the problem, I was running on caffeine. Sounds funny since I'm sipping coffee right now. Still do like that caffeine, but I was running on fumes really, working 15 hour days and constantly on the verge of a meltdown. My girlfriend, who I expected to propose to and marry, left me due to that workaholism. And I've told that story in the four hour work week, so be laborate here. But over the next six months of treading water and feeling trapped, I realized that I had to either restructure the business to remove myself as a bottleneck or shut it down. It was literally killing me. So those were the two options on the table for me.

• 13:29Tim Ferriss?

  This is when I began journaling on a few questions, including what would I want to do, have and be if I had 10 million in the bank? And what's my real target monthly income, TMI? So for the latter, in other words, how much does my dream life, the stuff I'm deferring for this magical retirement, really cost if I pay on a monthly basis? And if you want to find some calculators and so on that you can use for this, everybody listening, just go to four hour work week, all spelled out, fourhourworkweek.com/tmi. And there's some useful calculators and so on that you can use. In my case, after running the numbers, most of my fantasies were far more affordable than I expected. I mean, whether it's a ski chalet in Aston Martin, whatever, you name it.

• 14:14Tim Ferriss?

  The fact of the matter was I didn't have to postpone my life to redeem in some type of fantastical retirement 20, 30 years later. It was something that you could start to tackle now very programmatically and actually experiment with in the form of mini retirements, which I've talked about before. So they were far more affordable than I expected. Perhaps I didn't need to keep grinding and building. Perhaps I just need more time and mobility as currency, not more income. This made me think that maybe, just maybe, I could afford to be happy and not just successful. So I decided to take a long overseas trip. Number four, what are the worst things that could happen? Could I get back here?

• 14:56Tim Ferriss?

  So these questions also from 2004 are perhaps the most important of all. So they get their own chapter. I don't have time to go into it right now, but that is the fear setting chapter on page 463 in Tools of Titans. So guys, I think it's the best book I've ever written. Please grab a copy, but we, we don't have the time or space to go into that exact separate chapter. But what are the worst things that could happen? Could I get back here? These are a portion of this exercise called fear setting, which is arguably more important, I think, than goal setting. So number four is what are the worst things that could happen? Could I get back here? Because I really didn't immediately take my trip. I sort of danced around it, imagining all the horrible things that could go wrong for

• 15:37Tim Ferriss?

  about six months in perhaps a good example of the don't happy be worry phase. And fear setting allows you to take the emergency break off and actually take so-called risks, which are actually not risky at all because there is no likelihood or low likelihood of an irreversible negative outcome. Number five, notice that is how I define risk, which is very important, specific. All right. Number five, if I could only work two hours per week on my business, what would I do? If I could only work two hours per week on my business, what would I do? This is an example of an absurd question that can produce very powerful brainstorming exercises and results. And this is another commonality across many of the people in Tools of Titans, by the way. This is just my commentary.

• 16:23Tim Ferriss?

  This isn't from the chapter. Whether it's Peter Thiel asking, so serial billionaire, and certainly in the news a lot these days, asking, why can't you accomplish your 10 year goal in the next or your 10 year plan in the next six months? Or Peter Diamandis or Tony Robbins or many of these other people, they ask absurd questions and there's a lot of power in them. So number five, if I could only work two hours per week on my business? Yes, I know that's impossible, but if you had a gun against your head, what would I do? Or what would you do? So after removing anxieties about the trip with fear setting, the next practical step was removing myself as the bottleneck in the business. Alas, how can I not be a bottleneck in my own business? Question mark is not a good question. So after reading the E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber and the 80/20 Principle by

• 17:08Tim Ferriss?

  Richard Koch, I think it is K O C H, I decided that extreme questions were the forcing function I needed. The question I found most helpful was, if I could only work two hours per week on my business, what would I do?

• 17:21Tim Ferriss?

  Honestly speaking, it was more like, yes, I know it's impossible. And I already mentioned this, but if you had a gun to your head or contracted some horrible disease and you had to limit work to two hours per week, what would you do to keep things afloat? The 80/20 principle, which I've talked about ad nauseam in the four-hour work week, also known as Pareto's Law, is the primary tool in this case. Dictates that 80% or more of your desired outcomes are the result of 20% or less of your activities and inputs. Here are two related questions I personally used. What 20% of customers' products' regions are producing 80% or more of the profit? What factors or shared characteristics might account for this? Right? So I was profiling my highest leverage customers.

• 18:03Tim Ferriss?

  Right? Many such questions later, I began making a lot of changes. I fired my highest maintenance customers, putting more than 90% of my retail customers on autopilot with simple terms and standardized order processes to cut back on all the back and forth communication. And I deepened relationships and increased order sizes with my three to five highest profit, lowest headache customers. And that all led to the next question. This is number six. What if I let them, this means my employees or contractors, what if I let them make decisions up to $100, $500, $1,000? And it goes on. This question allowed me to take my customer service workload from, let's call it 40 to 60 hours per week to less than two hours per week.

• 18:46Tim Ferriss?

  In mid 2004, I was the sole decision maker. For instance, if a professional athlete overseas needed our product overnighted, because after about six months into selling Brain Quick and we realized that athletes were the most price insensitive target market that were approaching us because of increased reaction speed or improved reaction speed and so on, faster times off the blocks, whatever it might be. So if a professional athlete needed our product overnighted with special customs forms, I personally, as the boss, would get an email or phone call from one of my fulfillment centers, asking, how should we handle this? What would you like to charge? And these unusual edge cases might seem like rare exceptions, but they're actually, I would say, most of the time, a daily occurrence.

• 19:29Tim Ferriss?

  Dozens per week hit me on top of everything else I had to do. The fix was really simple. And in retrospect, I'm just astonished it took me so long to figure this out. I sent an email to all of my direct reports along the lines of... Dear so and so, from this point forward, please don't contact me with questions about A, B, or C. I trust you if it involves less than $100 of cost. Please make the decision yourself and take a note, the situation, how you handled it, what it cost, in one document so we can review and adjust each week. Just focus on making our customers happy. End quote. So I did this and I expected the worst, expected all sorts of things to go sideways. And guess what? Everything worked. It was totally fine, minus a few hiccups here and there,

• 20:14Tim Ferriss?

  which I expected. And I later increased that threshold, right? If it costs less than $100, I later increased that to $500, then $1,000. And then my reviews of their decisions in these Excel spreadsheets or whatever, went from weekly to monthly to quarterly. Two, once people were polished, effectively never. And this experience underscored two things for me. Number one, to get huge, good things done, you need to be okay with letting the small, bad things happen. And that's an exceptionally good trade. Number two, people's IQs seem to double as soon as you give them responsibility and indicate that you trust them. Question, number seven, and I think this is a good place for me to take another dramatic sip of coffee.

• 20:57Tim Ferriss?

  I am aerating that for your pleasure. Number seven, what's the least crowded channel? All right, what's the least crowded channel? What does this mean? Fast forward to December 26, 2006. I remember this day really clearly, exactly where I sat at my parents' kitchen table. I really remember it so clearly. I'd just finished writing The Four Hour Work Week and I'm sitting down after a lovely Christmas to think about the upcoming April book launch. What to do? I had no idea. And as a result, I tracked down roughly a dozen bestselling authors, just cold called, cold reached out to these folks, cold emailed. I asked each of them questions, the ones who agreed to interact with me. What were the biggest wastes of time and money

• 21:41Tim Ferriss?

  for your last book launch? What would you never do again? What would you do more of? If you had to choose one place to focus $10,000, where would you focus it? Or where would you, where would you focus? What would you put it into? And I heard one word repeatedly for the, the, the last question, blogs. What are these things, these blogs? They were apparently both very powerful and underappreciated. So my first question to them was, what the hell is a blog? My next questions were, how are people currently trying to reach bloggers? And what's the least crowded channel? So I had used this when trying to reach CEOs and CTOs when I was smiling and dialing way back in the day at my first job. And the people pitching bloggers were generally using email first and phone second.

• 22:25Tim Ferriss?

  And even though those were my strengths, I was good at those two media, those two channels, I decided to experiment with in-person meetings at conferences. Why? Because I felt my odds would be better as one out of five people in a lounge, rather than one email out of 500 emails in an overflowing inbox. And based on all of this, I started looking at trade shows. I started looking at options. Where would bloggers, these mythical bloggers, congregate? I packed up my bags and I headed to Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show in January, which had more than 150,000 attendees in 2005. It's kind of like the Super Bowl of technology releases where all the geeks get to play with new toys. I never even walked in the front door. This is a critical detail here.

• 23:10Tim Ferriss?

  I parked myself at the off-site Seagate-sponsored BlogHouse Lounge. I found out where the lounges were. Where would these people be hanging out in between walking on the trade room floor, in between panels and so on? So I found the Seagate-sponsored BlogHouse, H A U S Lounge, where bloggers were invited to relax, recharge their laptops and drink free booze. So I sat there in the corner, sipped alcohol, asked a lot of dumb questions and never overtly pitched anyone. I really did not hard pitch anyone. I only mentioned the book if someone asked me why I was there. And my answer was, well, I just finished my first book. I'm really nervous about the launch. I'm here to learn about blogs and technology and I really don't know what I'm doing.

• 23:52Tim Ferriss?

  Famous tech blogger Robert Scoble later described my intricate marketing plan as get drunk with bloggers. That was my marketing plan. Apparently, it worked surprisingly well. And the way I'm going to elaborate here a little bit, I would approach a handful of people congregated together drinking. And very often I would ask, can I eavesdrop? Would you mind if I eavesdrop? And I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm trying to learn as much as possible. And they'd look at each other kind of oddly and be like, ah, yeah, whatever. So I'd stick around and I would ask a lot of questions. If they said Ruby on Rails, and I didn't know what Ruby on Rails was, I'd say, you know, I'm really sorry to interrupt, guys, but I'm pretty deep in the ignorance pool here. What's Ruby on Rails? And eventually, someone would generally ask, why are you here? What the hell are you doing here?

• 24:36Tim Ferriss?

  And then I would give the answer I just mentioned. And only if someone asked many different follow-up questions would I say, you know what? Zero pressure, but I have a bunch of these books, these advanced copies from my publisher. I'd be happy to just use a post-it note to indicate which 20 pages I think you'd like most, because based on what we're talking about, I think you'd really like this one chapter, but zero pressure whatsoever. And if after that, they still said, for sure, man, send me, send me a book, I'd love to see it, that's when I sent out advanced copies. And it worked. Go figure. Number eight. What if I couldn't pitch my product directly? And for you audio engineers out there who are gonna give me shit, yes, I know that my peas are popping, so. Peter Piper picked a picket, picked those peppers. There you go.

• 25:21Tim Ferriss?

  All right. Now that I've gotten that out of my system, maybe I should have some more caffeine. What if I couldn't pitch my product directly? During the 2007 book launch, I quickly realized that most media outlets rightly don't give a rat's ass about book launches. They don't care about your product, they don't care about your book, they don't want a sales pitch, they care about stories, not announcements. So I asked myself, what if I couldn't pitch my product directly? What if I had to sell around the product? Well, what might I do? I could showcase people from the book who've completely redesigned their lives, so human interest stories, this is keep in mind for the Four Hour Workweek. I could write about unrelated crazy experiments, but drive traffic to my book-focused website. So if you Google geek to freak, you'll see the result of that.

• 26:06Tim Ferriss?

  It was about gaining an absurd amount of lean mass, I guess it was something like 34 pounds in 28 days. And that was my first ever viral blog post. It hit the front page of Dig, which was a gigantic deal at the time, and it had nothing to do directly with the Four Hour Workweek, except for a focus on efficiency and it involved me. And I published it on my website, which drove people to a website that was optimized for the Four Hour Workweek. All right. What else could I do? I could popularize a new term and aim for pop culture. If you check out the term lifestyle design, which is on page 278 in Tools of Titans, I explain exactly how I went about doing that,

• 26:50Tim Ferriss?

  creating a new term in the popular vernacular. Well, what else? I could go meta and make the launch itself a news item. How can you make your launch itself, what you do, PR-worthy? And I did that with a video book trailer for The 4-Hour Body, as well as a BitTorrent partnership for The 4-Hour Chef, and so on and so forth. People, this includes media, do not like being sold products, but we all like being told stories. So work on the latter. Number nine. What if I created my own real-world MBA? How do you create a real-world MBA? This kicked off in 2007 to 2008, and it explains how I got started in angel investing, which later became the most profitable part

• 27:35Tim Ferriss?

  of my entire life. And to this date, even though I retired effectively two years ago, angel investing and tech investing has created more wealth for me in my life, probably 10x all of my publishing combined than anything else. So that is yet another separate chapter. So see page 250 in Tools of Titans for full details on how to create your own real-world MBA. But the short version is, you approach things much like Scott Adams, who's also in the book, creator of Dilbert, thinks about systems thinking versus goals. So how do you choose and set up projects so that in the long term, you win even if that project is a failure? The way you do that is you make your plans around developing skills and relationships that will persist

• 28:20Tim Ferriss?

  even if this short-term project fails in the eyes of the outside world. So what if I created my own real-world MBA? What would that look like? And you can do that for a lot more than business. You can do that for just about anything. Number 10. Do I need to bake? Do I need to bake cakes? Do I need to bake cakes? No. Do I need to make it back the way I lost it? All right. Hold on, coffee break.

• 28:46Tim Ferriss?

  Do I need to make it back the way I lost it? This was a very important lesson for me to learn. In 2008, I owned a home in San Jose, California, and its value cratered. Now, side note, if I had held it until now, I'd be totally fine. Because it was in Glen, uh, what the hell? Willow Glen, there we go. More accurately, I didn't own the home. In 2008, the bank owned the home, and I had an ill-conceived adjustable rate mortgage. On top of that, I was on the cusp of moving to San Francisco. So to sell would have meant a $150,000 loss. Ultimately, I picked up and moved to San Francisco, regardless, leaving my San Jose home completely empty. And for months after that, friends pressured me to rent it, emphasizing how I was flushing money down the toilet otherwise.

• 29:28Tim Ferriss?

  I eventually buckled, and I suppose, feeling that peer pressure and feeling stupid, followed their advice. And even with a property management company, regular headaches and paperwork quickly ensued. Regret followed. And one introspective night, I had some wine, and I asked myself, do I really need to make money back the same way I'm losing it? And by analogy, if you lose $1,000 to the blackjack table, should you try and recoup it there? Probably not. If I'm losing money via the mortgage payments on an empty house, in this case, do I really need to cover it by renting the house itself? I decided the answer was no. I could much more easily create income elsewhere. For instance, speaking gigs, consulting, et cetera, to put me back in the black.

• 30:13Tim Ferriss?

  Humans are very vulnerable to a cognitive bias called anchoring, whether in real estate stocks or otherwise. And of course, I'm no exception. I made a study of this. A lot of good investors like a book called Think Twice by Michael Mauboussin. I believe that is how you pronounce his name. M-A-U-B-O-U-S-S-I-N. And you can also look on Wikipedia, cognitive biases. And there's a nice little list. So shortly thereafter, sold my San Jose house at a large loss. But here is the important part. Once my attention and mind space was freed up, I quickly made all of that back elsewhere. So do you need to make it back the way you lost it? Or the way you might lose it? And most of the time, the answer is no. Watch out for those cognitive biases. Number 11.

• 30:58Tim Ferriss?

  What if I could only subtract to solve problems? All right. What if, what if I could only subtract to solve problems? Humans are generally incentivized to add. This is a common issue in software development. But back to my story. From 2008 to 2009, I began to ask myself, what if I could only subtract to solve problems? When I was advising startups, I would ask this. But it applies to many, many, many, many other places in life, both professional and personal. So instead of answering, what should we do? Which I would get asked a lot by startups I was advising. I decided first to hone in on answering, what should we simplify? For instance, I always wanted to tighten the conversion fishing net, meaning the percentage of visitors who sign up or buy,

• 31:42Tim Ferriss?

  let's say, to a website or an app or whatever, before driving a ton of traffic to one of my portfolio companies. Because it would otherwise, the, the fish would just slip through the net. These little visitors, if you don't convert, there's very little reason to drive a lot of traffic. And plus, this is something a lot of startups mess up. You don't necessarily get 10 pitches to the New York Times in the first year or two. If they've just featured you for something that you weren't able to convert, they're not going to necessarily feature you a week or a month or a quarter later. Okay. Here's an example. One of the first dozen startups I worked with was named GYMINEE. How do you think you spell that? Exactly. You would never get it right. G Y M I N E E. So we did some work. It was rebranded Daily Burn.

• 32:27Tim Ferriss?

  And at the time, they didn't have enough manpower to do a complete redesign of the site. Adding new elements would have been time consuming, but removing them was not. So as a test, we eliminated roughly 70% of the, quote, above the fold, meaning the first screen you see before you have to scroll down, clickable elements on their homepage, focusing on the single most valuable click. Conversions immediately approved 21.1%. I still have the screenshots from this. It's pretty cool. And that quick and dirty test informed later decisions for much more expensive development. And the founders, Andy Smith and Stephen Blankenship, made a lot of great decisions. And the company was acquired by IAC in 2010. I've since applied this "what if I could only subtract..."

• 33:10Tim Ferriss?

  ...dot, dot, dot, question mark, type question to my life in many areas. And I sometimes rephrase it as, "What should I put on my not to do list?" All right. Number 12. What might I put in place to allow me to go off the grid for four to eight weeks with no phone or email? So what might I put in place to allow me to go off the grid for four to eight weeks with no phone or email? Though a little bit wordy, I've asked variations of this question many times since 2004. And it used to end with, "Not off the grid, but rather allow me to go on vacation for four to eight weeks." But that's no longer enough, and I'll tell you why. Given the spread of broadband, it's extremely easy to take a so-called vacation to Brazil or Japan

• 33:55Tim Ferriss?

  and still work nonstop on your business via laptop, as long as you have the Wi-Fi. This kind of subtle self-deception is a time bomb. So for the last five years, I've asked myself, in effect, what can I put in place so that I can go completely off the grid for four to eight weeks? And in my particular instance, that means, how can I completely remove the necessity to check phone or email for that period of time? To entrepreneurs who are feeling burned out, this is the question I pose most often. Two weeks is not enough because you can let fires erupt and then attempt to repair damage when you return. Four to eight weeks or more doesn't allow you to be a firefighter. It forces you to put systems and policies in place.

• 34:38Tim Ferriss?

  And much like the "can I allow someone to make decisions up to $100, $500, $1,000," right? And you need to ditch ad hoc email triage, empower other people with rules and tools, separate the critical few from the trivial many, and otherwise create a machine that does not require you to be behind the driver's wheel 24/7. And that is why the four to eight weeks or more is so important. It forces you to put systems in place, and the systems far outlive the vacation. And when you come home, you'll realize that you've taken your business and life to the next level. This is only possible if you work on your business instead of in your business, as Michael Gerber might say. Number 13. This is, this is a fun one. It's a very visual one.

• 35:23Tim Ferriss?

  Number 13, "Am I Hunting Antelope or Field Mice?" What? What does that mean? "Am I Hunting Antelope or Field Mice?" I, uh, I could say borrowed, lifted, stole this question around 2012 from former Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich. And I read about it in Buck Up, Suck Up, Dot, Dot, Dot, and Come Back When You Fowl Up. See what they did there? "12 Winning Secrets From The War Room", which was written by James Carville and Paul Begala. I hope I'm pronouncing your names correctly. "The Political Strategists Behind Bill Clinton's Presidential Campaign War Room." And here's the excerpt that struck with me. Here's the excerpt that stuck with me.

• 36:04Tim Ferriss?

  God damn it, Ferris. Hold on, that deserves more coffee. All right, here we go. "Newt Gingrich is one of the most successful political leaders of our time. Keep in mind, this is in the voice of James and Paul. Newt Gingrich is one of the most successful political leaders of our time. Yes, we disagreed with virtually everything he did, but this is a book about strategy, not ideology. And we've got to give Newt his due. His strategic ability, his relentless focus on capturing the House of Representatives for the Republicans, led to one of the biggest political landslides in American history. Now that he's in the private sector, Newt uses a brilliant illustration to explain the need to focus on the big things and let the little stuff slide. The analogy of the field mice and the antelope.

• 36:47Tim Ferriss?

  A lion is fully capable of capturing, killing, and eating a field mouse. But it turns out that the energy required to do so exceeds the caloric content of the mouse itself. So a lion that spent its day hunting and eating field mice would slowly starve to death. A lion can't live on field mice. A lion needs antelope. Antelope are big animals. They take more speed and strength to capture and kill. And once killed, they provide a feast for the lion and her pride. A lion can live a long and happy life on a diet of antelope. The distinction is important. Are you spending all of your time... And exhausting all of your energy catching field mice? In the short term, might give you a nice rewarding feeling. But in the long run, you're going to die. So ask yourself at the end of the day, did I spend today chasing mice or hunting antelope?

• 37:32Tim Ferriss?

  And that's the end of the excerpt. Another way I've approached this is to look at my to do list and ask which one of these, that's the antelope, right? Look at my to do list and ask which one of these, if done, would render all of the rest either easier to complete or completely irrelevant. Question number 14. Could it be that everything is fine and complete as is? This is a tough one for type A personalities. Ah, since you asked, that was sparkling water. Since starting deep work with, I will call it plant medicines in 2013. So see the James Fodderman chapter on page 100 in Tools of Titans and two after that,

• 38:16Tim Ferriss?

  in fact, the two of the three longest chapters in this book about are about psychedelics and psychedelic research as well as my potentially personal schedule. So since starting deep work with plant medicines in 2013, I have doubled and tripled down on cultivating more daily appreciation and present state awareness. The above question, could it be that everything is fine and complete as is? Is one of the questions I ask myself very regularly. It's accompanied by tools and rituals like the five minute journal, which I talk about a lot in the book, but it's effectively a, an AM check in and then a PM post game analysis. Each of those takes five minutes. The jar of awesome, which I have not talked about before, I don't think, but is talked

• 39:00Tim Ferriss?

  about on page 570 and thinking of daily wins before bed along the lines of Peter Diamandis on page 373. But what Peter does, I'll just tell you, he's the chairman of the X Prize and before bed, he will think of his three daily wins. All right. Somewhat similar to what I do with the five minute journal. Now to reiterate what I say in multiple places in Tools of Titans, type A personalities have goal pursuit as default hardwiring. This is excellent for producing achievement, but also anxiety is you're constantly future focused. I've personally decided that achievement is no more than a passing grade in life. It's a C plus that gets you limping along to the next grade in the right direction. But for anything more, and certainly for anything approaching happiness,

• 39:45Tim Ferriss?

  you have to want what you already have, which takes perspective and wanting what you have. Because if you don't want and like what you have, nothing you get will ever make you happy. So number 14 is, could it be that everything is fine and complete as is? Question number 15, what would this look like if it were easy? Or what would this look like if this were easy? And I used this when I was writing Tools of Titans. I've used this for all of my major projects up to this point. This question and the next both came about in 2015. These days, more than any other question I'm asking, what would this look like if it were easy? If I feel stressed, stretched thin or overwhelmed, it's usually because I'm over complicating something

• 40:30Tim Ferriss?

  or failing to take the simple, easy path because I feel I should be trying harder, quote unquote, right? Old habits die hard. So what would this look like if it were easy? This is something that I very frequently journal on in the mornings. And the it or would this or this, what would this or it look like? It really relates to the project in question, right? And it could be a relationship, could be something personal. What would this look like if it were easy? Number 16, how can I throw money at this problem? How can I waste money in quotation marks to improve my quality of life? This one is pretty self-explanatory, but I will add some context.

• 41:13Tim Ferriss?

  Dan Sullivan is the founder and president of a company called Strategic Coach that has saved the sanity of many serial entrepreneurs that I know. And one of Dan's sayings is, if you've got enough money to solve the problem, you don't have a problem. Now, in the beginning of your career, you spend time to earn money. This is completely understandable, totally what I did. It's what everybody has to do. You don't have this resource called money, generally speaking, so you use your time to earn money. But, once you hit your stride in any capacity, you should spend money to earn time, as the latter is non-renewable. It can be hard to make and maintain this gear shift. Certainly, again, old habits die hard.

• 41:54Tim Ferriss?

  So, the above question is in my regular journaling rotation. If I am feeling stressed, overwhelmed, I ask the question that I mentioned before, which was, "What would this look like if it were easy?" And a sub-component of that is, "How can I throw money at this problem? How can I waste money to improve the quality of life?" And they work together really, really nicely. For instance, I'll give you a personal example. I realized not too long ago that I was flying around the country to meet with these scientists or doctors to do various things. And I would fly there, pay for a hotel, and it would take up days and days of my time. And this is so stupid that it took me this long to figure out,

• 42:39Tim Ferriss?

  "Wait a second, I'm flying there and paying for a hotel. Why don't I just fly the doctor to me and pay for his or her hotel? It's the same cost, and I don't have to pack, I don't have to unpack, I don't have to go to the airport. Eliminate all of that headache." So, in that case, it was just break even. But in both cases, what would this look like if it were easy? How can I throw money at this problem? How can I waste money, so to speak, to improve the quality of my own life? And as someone who came from a very lower-middle-class upbringing, where my parents didn't make more than 50K per year combined, it took me a long time to make that gear shift, because it seems like wasting money, but you're not wasting money if you are saving your non-renewable resource, which is time that then allows you to make even more money,

• 43:23Tim Ferriss?

  10x, 100x, whatever that might be. Number 17, this is the last one. Aren't you guys excited? I'm so excited. Number 17, no hurry, no pause. What? That isn't a question. That's true. It's not a question. So, no hurry, no pause. This is more of a mantra, I suppose. It's a fundamental reset. No hurry, comma, no pause. No hurry, no pause was introduced to me by Jenny Sauer Klein. You can find her at Jenny Sauer Klein, Jenny S A U E R Klein, dot com. Who, along with Jason Niemer, who's on page 46 in the book, co-created Acry yoga, one of my current obsessions. The expression, no hurry, no pause,

• 44:07Tim Ferriss?

  is one of the nine principles of harmony, which you can find on the internet. Nine principles of harmony from Breema, B R E E M A, a form of bodywork that Jenny studied for many years. I now routinely write, no hurry, no pause, at the top of my notebooks as a daily reminder. So, the five minute journal, the morning pages, I'll write it at the very top. I also, by the way, use the state story strategy with arrows pointing in that direction from Tony Robbins quite a lot, but we don't have time to get into that. So, no hurry, no pause. At the top of my notebooks is daily reminder. In effect, it's shorthand for Derek Sivers' story of the 45 minute bike ride versus the 43 minute bike ride. And you don't need to go through life

• 44:51Tim Ferriss?

  huffing and puffing, straining and red faced. If you're only gaining, say, 5% extra, in many, many cases, you can get 95% of the results you want by calmly putting one foot in front of the other. So, no hurry, no pause. One former Navy SEAL friend texted me, I was discussing this with him, and he texted me a principle used in their training. And here it is. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Perhaps I'm just getting old. Aren't we all, though? The sands of time flow but one way, my friends. Perhaps I'm just getting old, but my definition of luxury has changed over time. Now, these days, it's not about owning a lot of stuff. Luxury, to me, is feeling unrushed.

• 45:33Tim Ferriss?

  So, remember, no hurry, no pause. And those are the 17 questions slash one liners, two liners. May you find and create many of your own. And in all of these cases, be sure to look for simple solutions. If the answer isn't simple, it's probably not the right answer. But it all starts with the right questions. If you get the right answers to the wrong questions, you're not going to get very far. But if you get even mediocre answers to the right questions, then those are the force multipliers. All right, guys, I appreciate you listening as always. I'm so excited about this book. I can't even begin to tell you, this has been a labor of love. And it's the first book I've actually enjoyed writing. So check it out.

• 46:18Tim Ferriss?

  Tools of Titans is available Barnes and Nobles, Amazon, Books Million, iBooks, IndieBound, Indiegogo, and many more. You can find sample chapters like this one, including the foreword from Arnold Schwarzenegger at toolsoftitans.com. Please buy billions of copies for all your friends and family. And Kamal Ravikant, good friend of mine, brother of Naval Ravikant, who's also in Tools of Titans, actually, they both show up, told me when he was helping proofread some of these chapters at the very end of my deadline. He said, you know, I've bought the Four Hour Work Week for some of my friends who have wanted to start businesses. I've bought the Four Hour Body for a handful of my friends who want to lose weight. I'm going to buy Tools of Titans for everybody. There's something in here, in all these sections, healthy, wealthy, and wise for everybody. So he's buying it for his mom.

• 47:03Tim Ferriss?

  Look at that. Thanks, Kamal. All right, guys, Tim Ferriss here, signing off. I'm going to have some more sparkling water, some more coffee, and maybe, just maybe, a little bit of wine. Much love to you and yours. Happy holidays, guys, and I'm sure that we will be in touch soon. Thanks for listening.

• 47:21Tim Ferriss?

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

• 48:04Tim Ferriss?

  It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by 99designs. 99designs is a great partner for creating and growing your business. It's a one stop shop for all of your graphic design needs, whether that's a logo, website, business card, or anything else. I use 99designs to get book cover prototypes for The Four Hour Body, which went on to become a number one New York Times bestseller. I also use them for banner ads, illustrations, and other things.

• 48:45Tim Ferriss?

  With 99designs, designers around the world compete to create the best design for you. You give feedback and then pick your favorite. You end up happy or you get your money back. It's very simple. You can check out a few of my own designs and those of yours, meaning Tim Ferriss Show listeners, at 99designs.com/tim. And right now, my listeners, you guys, will get a free $99 upgrade on your first design. That's 99designs.com/tim. Check it out. This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront, and this is a very unique sponsor. Wealthfront is a massively disruptive, in a good way, set it and forget it investing service led by technologists from places like Apple and world famous investors.

• 49:28Tim Ferriss?

  It has exploded in popularity in the last two years and they now have more than $2.5 billion under management. In fact, some of my very good friends, investors in Silicon Valley have millions of their own money in Wealthfront. So the question is, why? Why is it so popular? Why is it unique? Because you can get services previously reserved for the ultra wealthy but only pay pennies on the dollar for them. And this is because they use smarter software instead of retail locations, bloated sales teams, etc. And I'll come back to that in a second. I suggest you check out wealthfront.com/tim. Take the risk assessment quiz, which only takes Two to five minutes and they'll show you for free exactly the portfolio they'd put you in. And if you just want to take their advice, run with it, do it yourself, you can do that. Or, as I would, you can set it and forget it.

• 50:13Tim Ferriss?

  And here's why. The value of Wealthfront is in the automation of habits and strategies that investors should be using on a regular basis, but normally aren't. Great investing is a marathon, not a sprint, and little things that you may or may not be familiar with, like automatic tax loss harvesting, rebalancing your portfolio across more than 10 asset classes, and dividend reinvestment add up to very large amounts of money over longer periods of time. Wealthfront, as I mentioned, since it's using software instead of retail locations, etc., can offer all of this at low costs that were previously completely impossible. Right off the bat, you never pay commissions or account fees. For everything, they charge 0.25% per year on assets above the first $15,000, which is managed for free if you use my link, wealthfront.com/tim.

• 50:58Tim Ferriss?

  That is less than $5 a month to invest a $30,000 account, for instance. Now, normally, when I have a sponsor on this show, it's because I use them and recommend them. In this case, it's a little different. I don't use Wealthfront yet because I'm not allowed to. Here's the deal. They wanted to sponsor this podcast, but because of SEC regulations, companies that invest your money are not allowed to use client testimonials, so I couldn't be a user and have them on the podcast. But I've been so impressed by Wealthfront that I've invested a significant amount of my own money, at least for me, in the team and the company itself. So I am an investor and hope to soon use it as a client. Now, back to the recommendation. As a Tim Ferriss Show listener, you'll get $15,000 managed for free if you decide to

• 51:41Tim Ferriss?

  open an account, but just start with seeing the portfolio that they would suggest for you. Take two minutes, fill out their questionnaire at wealthfront.com/tim. It's fast, it's free, there's no downside that I can think of.