43 Tim Ferriss: Self Talk, Visualization and the Rituals for Success

The is the forty third episode with the tree time New York Times best selling author and inventor of the term lifestyle design, Tim Ferriss. Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

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

• 0:01Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 43 with Tim Ferriss.

• 0:07Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:33Lewis Howes?

  Hey, all you beautiful greats out there. Thanks so much for tuning in today to the School of Greatness. And I'm super pumped for this episode, just like I am every episode, because we've got a very big, amazing guest on today. His name is Mr. Tim Ferriss. And yes, he's a three-time New York Times bestselling author. There are two of them which hit the number one seller on the New York Times best selling list. And that's The Four Hour Workweek, Four Hour Body, and Four Hour Chef. And he's now got a new project that I'm pretty excited about, and I know he is. It's called The Tim Ferriss Experiment. And it's a new TV show, which we're going to talk about today on this show with Tim. I want to dive into

• 1:15Lewis Howes?

  a lot of other things as well. And I'm very excited because a couple of episodes ago, I really got to dive in deep with the one and only Gary Vaynerchuk. And a lot of you have been saying that you've never heard Gary become so vulnerable and open and raw and honest in any interview you've ever seen or heard him speak on. And I feel like we got to capture that in this episode as well with Tim. And I was very gracious of his time and his vulnerability and his willingness to open up and just talk about a lot of different things that's happened to him in his life.

• 1:55Lewis Howes?

  And we really talk about what some of Tim's biggest fears are, the biggest impact on Tim Ferriss's upbringing with his parents and his family.

• 2:05Lewis Howes?

  Tim's own entrepreneurial failures. We talk about the simple, effective way to develop any business idea. We also talk about how to create rituals that lead to success. And something that I was really interested in was learning about Tim's self-talk and how he visualizes what he's going to create in the future. Now, I think this is an important step to anyone's success is what they say to themselves internally and what they visualize before they actually create something. And I also talk about what people, I also talk about what Tim hopes people say at his funeral and what they say about his heart as a person.

• 2:45Lewis Howes?

  So I'm very excited to share this interview with you because it really opens up the world of Tim Ferriss and really who he is. And I'm very excited for you to tap into that. With that, guys, let's go ahead and dive into this episode with the one and only Tim Ferriss.

• 3:10Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back, everyone. Thanks so much for coming on the School of Greatness. Got a great guest on who's actually one of the first guests on the School of Greatness. So this is the first repeat guest and his name is Mr. Tim Ferriss. What's up, Tim? Thanks for coming on.

• 3:23Speaker 01

  Oh, thanks for having me on again, man. It's always a pleasure.

• 3:28Lewis Howes?

  Yes, and being that you are the first person to come on twice, hopefully we'll have you on many more times. But I'm very excited to talk about what the reason you're coming on is because you have a new TV show called The Tim Ferriss Experiment. And it's coming out actually tonight of the recording, but this recording will probably come out in a week. So it'll be out by the time this recording is out and I'm very excited. I watched the first episode. It was amazing. I watched the trailer. It's a great production value. You add a lot of, you know, amazing components to it with your wisdom and your knowledge and how you're hacking everything. So I'm very excited about this series that you have coming out.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  No, I appreciate it. The show has been, some folks may have seen a pilot that I did many years ago on History Channel.

• 4:18Lewis Howes?

  Yep.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  Which was called Trial by Fire, and I did Japanese horseback archery. And the challenge that I've always had with TV really is multifold. Number one, finding a team I can work with who will respect the sort of integrity of whatever I'm trying to teach and not try to create a lot of fake TV nonsense around it, right? Because I think the experiments that I do, whether it's Japanese horseback archery, or we can talk about some of the examples in the new show, like rally car racing and professional poker and drumming and language learning, all sorts of things, they're kind of exciting enough that you don't need

• 5:01Speaker 01

  to manufacture a lot of nonsense, sort of kicking it with the Kardashian style. So I'd like to avoid that. And it's very hard to do that because it's much easier in reality TV to just script the whole thing, which is the ironic part. And the second piece that's been really difficult is closely related to that, which is in TV, usually the host has next to no input on anything. So you have the producers, then you have the host. And so normally, what will happen is, let's say, someone like me will have a book, comes out, does well, they get approached by many different production companies who want to

• 5:39Speaker 01

  sign them to hold agreements. And those are basically usually very onerous agreements that restrict you from doing anything with any other production companies. Then they pitch you to the broadcasters, and they own that relationship. And it's a really, it's a really under-leveraged, bad position to be in. So that happened the first time around. And I ended up not renewing my option because there was a point where effectively they said, "Look..." With creative stuff, like you're the host, we're the producer, like get used to it. And I was like, ah, no, I'm not interested in that. And it took a long time for me to, to take another look at TV with the proper leverage.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  And this show, you know, the Tim Ferriss experiment is different in so much as, you know, I've had, you have two more books under my belt, a lot more experimentation under my belt, better contacts everywhere, so I can actually get the best teachers in the world to participate, which is really cool. So you get to see how they deconstruct things. Uh, like Josh Waitzkin, who's a, considered a chess prodigy. He was the basis for Searching for Bobby Fischer, who is also, happens to be, uh, the first black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu under a legend named Marcelo Garcia. So we did an episode on both chess and Jiu Jitsu simultaneously, which is really, really.

• 6:59Speaker 01

  But the, you know, the, the premise of the show is, is pretty much the same, right? I, uh, I'm tackling a difficult skill each week. Uh, like in the case of language learning, I have three and a half days to learn a language well enough to be interviewed on live TV for six minutes in that language, which is Tagalog. And demonstrating to people that it's, the way you're able to do that kind of thing is by deconstructing a complex skill and making it easy, making it simple. And then using a better toolkit. So you don't need better genetics. You don't need infinite budget or infinite time. You just need a better toolkit. And so the, the show delivers one or two of those tools from the world's fastest learners and best teachers each episode.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  Uh, and that's, that's kind of the, the idea because for instance, I mean, I couldn't swim until well after age 30. So we're doing an episode on swimming, where we'll actually take one of my fans from kind of zero to hero in four to, four to five days. And doing one on building a business, which is the same story, like straight out of the four hour work week, also with a, uh, another mentor. And we're going to take someone from, you know, hopefully zero to hero in four or five days to get their business up and running. So it's, uh, it's a.

• 8:11Lewis Howes?

  You're not doing all of them yourself, then you're bringing in other guests and being kind of more the host of it.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  I am, uh, the entire show is, is a bit of an experiment, which is, uh, appropriate. So I would say I am the guinea pig for, there are 13 shows total. Every, every Sunday at 8:00 PM Eastern, 5:00 PM Pacific is when it, uh. When it broadcasts on HLN, which used to be CNN Headline News, now it's HLN on the dial. And the I am the guinea pig for probably 10 or 11 out of the 13 and then two or three of them are more, I would say mentoring weeks for me where I help someone else overcome their specific fears related to business or swimming or something else.

• 8:56Lewis Howes?

  And what's, what's the main vision behind the reason why you wanted to do this show specifically in the first place? Like what's, what's the message you want to get across? Is it to reach a certain audience? Is it just to continue to spread what you're learning and let others be able to deconstruct things faster? What's, what's the main reason?

• 9:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'd say it's a teaching tool for me and primarily there are a couple of motivations for the show. The first is I think that many of the lessons in the Four Hour Body or the Four Hour Chef have been really, have really impacted people who have, let's say, never been able to follow a diet before. And now that they've lost 200 plus pounds on the slow carb diet, I mean, there are probably every week I hear from someone who's lost 100 plus pounds on the slow carb diet after never, never being able to lose weight before. And it's not because they changed necessarily, they didn't get a, you know, a new set of genetics. They just, they had a shift in mindset and a better blueprint for

• 9:57Speaker 01

  doing it. That's it, you know, and it was made simple. So I want to show people how to do that in any area of their lives, whatever they want to learn. They want to learn a musical instrument for the first time, learn a language for the first time, learn a sport for the first time, get over their shyness. There's a dating episode where I really look like a nervous wreck, which is hilarious. And I don't succeed at all these, by the way. Like I do face plant in some of these episodes. Pretty hard. But that's motivation number one is just to, to help people overcome some of their biggest fears and take big steps and, you know, try to wring more out of life. That's, that's number one. Number two is, you know, I'm 36, not getting any younger certainly, and I wanted to

• 10:42Speaker 01

  Chronicle some of these crazy physical experiments uh before I have a family and settle down a little bit because on once I have kids, I'm not going to want to do the really dangerous stuff, uh certainly not as much anyway. So I wanted to kind of chronicle a bunch of that stuff visually so I can, you know, show my kids and my grandkids how crazy dad used to be.

• 11:03Lewis Howes?

  Uh.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  Uh, and then last, you know, the show was a way for me to tackle some of my big fears and also simultaneously check stuff off my bucket list. So it just seemed like all around uh the right timing to give something like this a shot. And the other, the other piece of the puzzle, I would say is that I was able to handpick the production company I wanted to work with and they're called ZPZ. They do all of Anthony Bourdain's stuff.

• 11:31Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, that's a great show.

• 11:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I don't like, I, I don't, I don't enjoy a ton of TV that's out there, especially in the, the non-scripted or reality TV space, which is not much that I like. But uh they do really gritty cinematic work where the, you know, the hosts can be themselves, they can curse if they need to, and that, that's my style. So that, that's been a fascinating experience as well.

• 11:56Lewis Howes?

  Now, what is your biggest fear, Tim?

• 11:58Speaker 01

  Biggest fear? Well, uh, geez, I mean, I'd say my biggest fear is probably just watching my parents get older, quite frankly, but that's not one that makes for very exciting television. So probably won't make an episode out of that.

• 12:14Lewis Howes?

  But why, why is that your biggest fear, though?

• 12:16Speaker 01

  Uh, I think it's because it's and uh because it is the most painful for me to watch and uh also, I mean, I think, I suspect it will be. My parents are fine now, but uh the most painful for me to watch and also one that is, is very much outside of my control. Uh, and there, there are things obviously that I'm looking into. I've spent time with a lot of scientists looking at life extension and ways of addressing different conditions and cardiovascular disease and blah, blah, blah. But uh I think it's just, it's something that everyone goes through, uh that nothing new there, but.

• 12:56Speaker 01

  One that I have less control over than many others. And so maybe, maybe it's, it's, it's a fear, it's more of a pain than a fear, maybe. Is the best way to look at it. Uh, but it's certainly not something I look forward to.

• 13:09Lewis Howes?

  How influential have your parents been in your entire life? Cause you went away for a number of years to study abroad, is that correct?

• 13:18Speaker 01

  I went, uh, I, I did go abroad for a year to Japan and then went abroad later during college to China. Uh, to study at two universities there. The, the impact my parents has had is enormous. Uh, and I think in large measure because we didn't grow up with a lot of money. And, uh, we weren't dirt poor, but we were, you know, lower middle class. And, uh, didn't get the new bikes. But my, my parents did, I think, two things very well. Number one was they encouraged us to be really curious and try a lot of things. And exposed us to many different things.

• 13:57Speaker 01

  So whether that was say a free aquarium or, uh, doing things outside that were very much like science experiments. I mean, going to the beach and gathering black sand with magnets and kind of learning about magnetism that way. Uh, that was number one. Number two was they, they didn't have budget for a lot of the kind of kid fun stuff. Like, like new bikes or BB guns or video game consoles or whatever. But, uh, they always told me and my brother that there was a budget for books. It's like, look, we, we, if you really like a book, we'll find a way to make it happen. And whether that was the library or, or buying it for us.

• 14:39Speaker 01

  Uh, they, they taught us to associate a very high value with books. And I think, I, I really think that had a big impact.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  And as a result, you know, when I was in, say, I don't know, I'd say third or fourth grade, I had this uh really uh I mean to my mind, you know, expensive like forty dollar hardcover book on marine biology, which had just it was basically a visual guide to fish and sharks and piranha and all that stuff. And uh I would just sit out during recess and read this book because I was a I was a scrawny runt. Uh I was a born premature, I was really, really small until about sixth grade, so my, you know, my best friends were these books that that uh I came to treasure because my parents taught me to do that.

• 15:32Lewis Howes?

  Did you have, so you didn't have a lot of friends when you were in elementary school, middle school?

• 15:36Speaker 01

  I mean, I had a few other uh runt friends.

• 15:40Speaker 01

  But yeah, I wasn't, I wasn't completely by myself, but I was definitely not in the uh the cool kid, the popular kid group at all. Yeah.

• 15:50Lewis Howes?

  So what was your, what was kind of your dream growing up? Did you always have these big dreams that you wanted to inspire the world or create amazing works of art uh or just work in general that would influence a lot of people? Or what was it all about?

• 16:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I I wouldn't say I had any, you know, huge ambitions.

• 16:11Speaker 01

  And I mean, even even looking at my ambitions now, I mean, of course, I always compare it to someone else. So I I wouldn't even, I I think that I'm just doing the best with what I have now. Positive impact, but like compared to Elon Musk or people like that, I I don't feel like my ambitions are big enough uh yet. But growing up, I wanted to be a marine biologist first.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  And that was, that that took me for a pretty good period of time, I'd say five years or so, five to ten years. And then pretty quickly, around the same time, decided that I wanted to be a comic book penciller, so an actual comic book artist. And I took that very seriously uh and did that all throughout high school, uh even into college, ended up as a. Paid illustrator. I did two things to pay some of my bills in college. I was a paid illustrator, so I actually illustrated graphics for books that Princeton University Press put out. And I was also, and the graphics illustrator of the magazine there. And then secondly, I was a bouncer.

• 17:22Speaker 01

  Put on a lot of, put on a lot of, a lot of meat between, say, sixth grade and freshman year of college. So I got, I got a lot bigger. Once, once I figured out how to put on size, I was like, okay, I'm pretty sick of tiny kids, so let me get really stupidly large. And got up to, you know, about 190, between 190 and 200, which is pretty, pretty large from, from a frame at, you know, 5'8" to 5'9".

• 17:46Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  And, and bounced. Those are the two things I did. And the, the graphics, I really didn't stop doing that until the end of college and sort of abandoned it to, you know, quote, "enter the real world", which was stupid, but I think a lot of people do that. They, they drop a lot of these passions in there as to focus on whatever they perceive as being the real world, which to me was, you know, moving out west and joining a startup and buckling down and kind of putting my feet on the ground and, and learning how the real world works, which was not a bad thing. But, you know, I do fantasize about getting back to the, to the illustration.

• 18:24Lewis Howes?

  And when did you realize that the real world was a lie, or at least it was for you, and that you wanted to go back into living your passion? How long, how long of the miserable jobs did you work until you started doing your own thing?

• 18:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would say, you know, but there, there are a few different questions in one there, and I can answer them sort of chronologically. I tested, I played around with, I, or I just, not really chronologically, scattershot. So the, the first is, I played around with entrepreneurship in, in college, really. And even in high school, I, I, I read books like Losing My Virginity.

• 19:06Speaker 01

  By Richard Branson and was very inspired by these Mavericks and wanted to create some type of low maintenance stream of income. Of course, that's common dream, I think. And I was like, oh, my God, it'd be so amazing if I just had, you know, X. And of course, X is this this magical number that almost everyone has, you know, started out, I was making eight dollars an hour. Working in this library at Princeton and then I got the bouncing job, which was twenty dollars an hour. And I was like, oh, my God. I'm rich. And so that that was that was a big step forward. And then eventually I was like, oh, my God, you know, imagine if I could just make.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  Uh, what if I could make like a hundred dollars an hour, or if I could make, you know, three hundred dollars a week, or whatever the number was. Uh, and I I taught a accelerated learning class, actually, at Princeton, which uh, which was really cobbled together. I mean, I used uh, the daycare portion of a church because I couldn't afford to rent a location. So it was on a Sunday.

• 20:08Speaker 01

  Daycare center at like, you know, three P M. Or whatever. And uh, if I remember correctly, it was a fifty dollar seminar, it was three hours long. It's fifty dollars to attend. Uh, money back guarantee, the whole nine yards. If you're not happy, you can take the whole thing. I'll give you your money back. And I I got thirty two people, if I remember correctly. And I have never felt richer in my because, you know, I walked out of that. I had been making twenty dollars an hour with the risk of getting my head kicked in as a bouncer. And the graphics editor position wasn't paid. And uh, the illustrator position was, but it's just I really wasn't making much money at all.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  And I walked out of that seminar. It was, you know, it was a good seminar, but it was a little rough around the edges with, you know, fifteen hundred or sixteen hundred dollars.

• 20:58Lewis Howes?

  You're rich.

• 20:59Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. I mean, you probably do have an idea. You know, first time you have like a moderately successful self made venture like that. Yeah, I had all these checks and twenty dollar bills and ten dollar bills and five dollars, like flowing out of my pockets and uh, had them bunched up in my hands. I was on a bike.

• 21:18Lewis Howes?

  Drug dealer.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah. Bunched up in my hands against the handlebars because I didn't have like my pockets were so full. And I remember I biked directly to the bank. I was like, I have to deposit this stuff right now because. And who knows what's gonna happen and uh that was that was I would say my first real successful attempt. I had actually attempted to put together an audio book before that in high school where I was like, oh my god, this stuff is easy. And I read all these books that made it seem really, really, really easy. And it's not easy. It it can be simple. Uh but I created this audio book for uh basically, I mean, in I guess current language, sort of hacking college admissions.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  And uh I produced this thing. I put like every penny I had into doing a first manufacturing run and didn't sell any. I tried to do it through classified ads. I mean, this was like the real.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  And did not sell anything. I was so depressed. And I didn't throw those audio tapes out until like fifteen years later. I was like, one day, one day, these things are gonna sell. And then I.

• 22:26Lewis Howes?

  They were horrible.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  Oh, my god. I listened to the and there was like my fourteen year old self, like shitty. Copyrighted, not shitty, actually. It was like it was poor recording quality, like classical music that I couldn't use anyways. In the beginning and it was so cheesy. Oh, my god. Like someday, if I can find one of those audio cassettes, I'll put up some of it to be like, alright, here was my like version one. But uh the skipping forward, you know, I dropped the entrepreneurship stuff. Uh eh eh with me as the founder and moved out west to the Bay Area during, you know, ninety nine, two thousand during the the dot com bubble and boom to make my billions that way and

• 23:11Speaker 01

  didn't last very long, of course. Uh but I'd say after the first year or so of working with this startup, I became really jaded with how things were being done. And decided that I wanted to start my my my own company and give that another shot. And that was when I started looking at basically my.

• 23:31Speaker 01

  Credit card statements and where I spent money and it's it's a really simplistic approach that I still think is really valuable. Uh, it's it's still where I think you can find the lowest hanging fruit for business creations. So in my case, I looked at my income, which at that point was forty thousand dollars a year. And then I looked at pre-tax and then looked at where I spent the stupidest amount of money, just percentage wise, you know what I mean? Like where where am I somehow justifying spending an an irresponsible amount of money? And it was with sports nutrition. And I mean, you you're an athlete, you've seen this before. Right.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  It's unbelievable how devout and uh consistent especially guys are with uh sports supplementation. And I was spending hundreds of dollars a month on sports nutrition stuff. And when I talk, when I looked at my buddies who were say, training in jujitsu or whatever at the same time, they all did the same thing and some of them made less than I did. And so decided to lean back on some of my early days where I'd spent time in neuroscience and design a non-stimulant product, which was a pre-workout product. And that later became, you know, Bodyquicken, which uh did exceptionally well, not out

• 24:56Speaker 01

  of the gate, of course. Right. Did exceptionally well, but I remember putting that together and it it took a good, I would say, if I'm guessing here, a good like six months to throw enough against the wall to figure out what worked. Because keep in mind, my only advertising experience really be before that point was the shitty classified ads that didn't do anything. So I was starting from scratch to to try to figure out what worked and what didn't. And there was this new thing out called Google AdWords, which I was one of the first users of and uh. What was this, what year is this, back in two thousand three? Two thousand one. Okay, wow. Thousand two.

• 25:40Speaker 01

  And uh, man, it was a different world. I mean, things are so much easier now. Of course, things are more competitive now in other respects, like Google AdWords is is a lot more expensive than it was then. Uh, but. Uh, that's, that's kinda how it, how it came together. And, you know, since, since then, I've never, never gone back, I guess, in terms of, uh, I'm like, I'm a crappy employee, man. It's just, I get too impatient. I get too angry at inefficiencies. I'm not, I'm not a great employee. Uh, I'm a good, like lieutenant. If I have, for instance, I get, it, that doesn't have anything to do with, uh, bucking authority.

• 26:19Speaker 01

  Uh, I don't mind authority, actually. Uh, for instance, in, say, a wrestling team, we have, uh, someone named John Buxton, Mr. Buxton, uh, in high school, who was an incredibly good coach, incredibly strict, uh, just took us to task and was very, very effective and efficient. I mean, he also raised the endowment for this high school. Keep in mind, it's a private school that I transferred to from like fifty million to five hundred million. The guy was a machine. And in his side, in his, in his extra time, taught the wrestlers because he needed that to keep himself sane. And, uh,

• 27:00Speaker 01

  I don't have an issue with someone like that because he was a tri-varsity athlete in college, uh, was a national caliber wrestler, and he's an excellent coach. So if someone's qualified and doing an excellent job, I'm happy to follow. I have no problem with that. Uh, but as it turns out, in the world of business, it's pretty hard to find those A players. You don't, you don't very often end up with a boss who's giving you more and more and more responsibility, pushing you and pushing you to be better and better and better. And they are magnitudes of order better than you are. Uh, you just don't, in my experience, run into that very often. But, I mean, if, if someone like Elon Musk was like, hey, like, whatever, I want you to be my executive assistant for six months, like, I would probably take that job. You know what I mean?

• 27:46Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 27:47Speaker 01

  I'd probably take that job. Uh,

• 27:49Lewis Howes?

  Unpaid.

• 27:50Speaker 01

  If it turns out that phone call's not coming, so I am, uh, doing my own thing.

• 27:54Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. That's too much. Yeah, I mean, discipline is really a key ingredient for success, in my opinion. I went to a private boarding school where it was very disciplined, you know? We had two hours of study hall every night and in bed by nine thirty. And you had to make your room every day. You had to dress a certain way and The practice was intense, school was intense, and that discipline really, I feel like, something I thrived off of. Again, like you said, when you have a good coach, someone you trust and you believe, who's gonna take you to the next level, so.

• 28:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I would say also, just, this is maybe a side note, but since you brought it up, the, if you're an entrepreneur, and particularly if you're a solo printer or operating on your own, I think you need to create structure and rituals so that you're only applying, you're not burning out your, you're not wasting your thinking horsepower on things that don't matter, right? Does that make sense? So for instance, when I, when I went to, from public school, which was a nightmare, not, not in all places, but on Long Island where I grew up, it was just, it was a terrible school, to boarding school, all of a sudden, I had a lot more structure.

• 29:05Speaker 01

  And just like you said, it was, we had chapel every morning, we had mandatory sports every afternoon, we had classes until, I think, six thirty at night, because we had, we had, we had one class block after sports. Then we had seated meal, coat and tie, a few nights a week, had dress code during all classes. And that structure is really helpful. Some people think of it as confining, I think of it as very freeing.

• 29:35Lewis Howes?

  So helpful, yeah.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  Because you don't have to make decisions about all of the minute bullshit. It's all, it's all figured out. And I think that for entrepreneurs, it's very valuable, for a week, for instance, just to just figure out, what is your ritual going to be in the morning, or when you wake up? What is the first sixty minutes gonna look like? And script it out, and so that you do the same thing every day. And I, I think it's a very freeing experience where you end up feeling more energized, you have more energy and kind of thought power to allocate to the things that matter, as opposed to trying to decide, like, what should I have for breakfast today? No, no, no, like, eat the same thing for breakfast. For a week straight, just remove that so you don't have to think about it.

• 30:19Speaker 01

  And anyway, that's just a side note. I think ritual and routine is extremely important for people who want to be creative.

• 30:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I mean, it's, I hear a lot of my entrepreneur friends who are struggling. They really don't have, they haven't created great habits and they're not disciplined and they're never consistent. And they're always going from one thing to the next and they don't complete things. Whereas, you know, playing, you know, playing sports or going to school or when I was playing pro football. Even, we had an itinerary every day. So all I do is look at the itinerary and show up and I give my best effort to the task at hand. And then, you know, completely rinse and repeat every single day. And I continue to get better and improve and we are striving to achieve our goals. But if you don't have that routine or those habits, it's really challenging to get anything done that's quality that people are going to enjoy.

• 31:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely. And I also think that having a schedule of sorts is very helpful when you take into account things like Parkinson's Law, which of course was in the, in the four hour work week, might be familiar to some people, but meaning that a task will swell to fill the amount of time that you allot it, right? So if you don't have any defined end time, you'll check email all day long, no problem. You know what I mean? And if you, if, or like if you don't have a container, I find sports very helpful for this, just as a bookend to, to close out the day. To do training at six P M where you, you are absolutely protecting that time as much as you would protect any other type of conference call or anything else.

• 31:53Speaker 01

  Particularly if you're, let's say, you're somehow countable to someone else that you're going to do it with, like rock climbing, doesn't matter. Then that blog post will get done in an hour and a half and not in four hours, you know?

• 32:07Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 32:07Speaker 01

  And that, that type of bookend, I think is very helpful.

• 32:10Lewis Howes?

  Right. Now transitioning to the next thing, what I want to know is what is it you think about before something big in your life is about to happen? So, or a big moment, a big opportunity, it could be a speech, it could be a board meeting or a presentation before one of your episodes that you're about to film. What is it that you mentally or visually go through? Your rituals that allow you to prepare for the big moments in life?

• 32:40Speaker 01

  Oh, that's a good question.

• 32:45Speaker 01

  Well, let me think.

• 32:46Lewis Howes?

  Or do you just show up? And take?

• 32:49Speaker 01

  No, I don't. I definitely don't show, I don't just show up. I would say whenever, if it is something that I can rehearse, then I will rehearse. And I remember the first time I had a keynote opportunity at South by Southwest, which was a huge opportunity for me. This was probably 2007, something like that. And I had between 45 minutes and an hour to give a presentation. The first thing I did was I broke the presentation down. I mean, this should sound familiar, right? This is just a geeking thing. So I took the presentation and I broke it into, into three parts. And that meant there were going to be kind of three acts to the keynote.

• 33:33Speaker 01

  And I would, and then I would have a very short introduction and a very short conclusion. So it was like one to two minute intro, act one, act two, act three, one to two minute outro. And what that allowed me to do was rehearse each act by itself. So I never rehearse a keynote all the way through, start to finish, to begin with. I will rehearse each of those acts or each of those segments until that segment is smooth. Then I'll move on to segment two and rehearse that until it's smooth and segment three until that's smooth, and then I'll do them all together. And in the case of South by Southwest, what I did, and I don't do this every time, but

• 34:13Speaker 01

  it's, it will maybe be funny for people to hear, is I was staying with, all the hotels were sold out, so I was crashing in a friend's house in Austin, kind of out in the boondocks. And he had a garage, he had a big garage, and he had three chihuahuas of different sizes. So it was like a giant chihuahua, a tiny chihuahua, and a medium sized chihuahua. This isn't a fairy tale, I'm going somewhere with this. So he, and I, my friend had to go to work, and so I was kind of home alone until I had to head over to the conference center to do this keynote. And so I rehearsed by giving the keynote to these docs. And if, if I, if, no, check, check it out. If I was really animated and like compelling as a speaker, of course, I don't understand what I'm saying.

• 34:56Speaker 01

  But if I was really animated and compelling as a speaker, they would sit there and watch the whole thing. It was hilarious. If I got monotone or like looked down at my feet or didn't make eye contact, they'd just start wandering off. So I rehearsed it with these chihuahuas. But that's an example for keynote, right? So I have a format that I follow. I have a way that I rehearse. I have rituals. For instance, like I don't usually drink diet soda uh for a lot of reasons, but in this case, before I do keynotes, I will drink two diet cokes. And I guess they're probably, I don't know, 12 to 16 ounces each. And that's the reason I do that is uh primarily ritual. It's not because I need that to be the only

• 35:38Speaker 01

  way I get the caffeine. It's because that's what I did for years when I had really good keynotes. And I just decided that that was gonna be my ritual. So

• 35:47Lewis Howes?

  You're like a, you're like a baseball, you're like a baseballer, player who like wears his socks on backwards or something.

• 35:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. Definitely. And I, I think we all have, we have rituals like that. I also slap the back of my neck before I'll go out on stage, just to wake myself up. Uh, so that's one. Uh, if I'm looking at, say, I, I kinda have to give you specific examples.

• 36:09Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 36:10Speaker 01

  If we're talking about a big contract, uh, for instance, like if we're talking about a big deal, whether that's a book deal, or a TV deal, or you name it, uh, usually what I try to do is limit the downsides. So I'll ask myself, like, what are the worst things that could happen? And then I will try to either uh eliminate that from my mind if it's not something I can affect. Uh, if it's, if it's a very serious potential downside that isn't addressed in the contract, I'll have to, I'll try to have clauses rewritten or clauses added. Uh, so, so for instance, in TV, what's the worst thing that could happen? The worst thing that could happen is I end up in a position where they're able

• 36:53Speaker 01

  to damage my reputation and integrity by putting content into the show that I don't believe is true, or actionable, or important, right? Or manufacturing a bunch of storylines that didn't exist, uh, that kinda stuff. Is uh is is not okay with me. And therefore, I needed to find an attorney who could help, who had a track record of helping craft those types of deals for people who have a lot of leverage in one area, i.e. books, but very limited grants in the new area, TV. And uh I will always look to kind of protect the downside. And uh money's a piece of all these deals many, many times.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  But I don't, I don't often be labor that part of things. Uh, the reason being, if you have a hit book or a hit TV show or whatever, you can, you then have a lot of leverage to do things from that point forward, uh, including, let's say, second book royalties, et cetera. Which is why I like Neil Strauss, a friend of mine who wrote The Game and seven other New York Times bestsellers. He doesn't care about his advance very much. He cares about the terms, but he doesn't care about the advance very much because if the book is a huge success, he's gonna get paid anyway, uh, this amount of money. And I have a slightly different tack, but I usually try to limit the downside.

• 38:14Speaker 01

  And I feel like if you can, if you can create enough safety nets and limit the downsides, the upside kind of takes care of itself, right? And then you can like swing for the fences if you know that you've limited the downsides. Uh, so those, those are a few of the things that I think about. Uh, I'd say another that I think about, and as I get older, I think about this more and more, which is, who am I gonna be working with? Uh, specifically, like on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, who are my points of contact? And do I like these people, right? Even if they're really good, like if, if they're extremely abrasive and throw sharp elbows all the time, like I'm just too, getting too old for that shit. I don't wanna deal with it. I don't wanna deal with it anymore.

• 38:57Speaker 01

  And uh, you know, the, I'm very fortunate to be in a position where I don't spend a ton of money. Uh, I mean, I spend a lot of money um on, on certain things I like. Uh, but I, I don't spend, compared to a lot of, of people I know, uh, I don't, I don't spend a lot of money on creature comforts. I don't have a really expensive car, I don't have a really expensive apartment, I don't have a lot of these things. Um, so I, the, I don't have to do deals with bad people to Just keep my lifestyle afloat, if that makes sense. And it's very much by design, it's not accidental.

• 39:37Speaker 01

  And I think it's worth remembering also that it doesn't matter what a contract says. If it's done with a bad person, like you cannot do a good deal with a bad person. And anytime you think that's true, you're gonna get bitten in the ass. And yeah, yeah, it's like every single time, almost without exception, you're like, oh my God, this is a great deal. And it's the honeymoon phase, right? So like everybody's backslapping and high fiving like, oh my God, this is a great deal. Everybody's gonna be happy, this is gonna be great. But in the back of your head, you're like, you know, that guy's kind of a dick or whatever. But whatever, it's a great deal, it's a great deal. And then you do the deal, lo and behold, six months later, a year later, two years later, whatever it might be.

• 40:20Speaker 01

  That guy pops his head up and there's some big pain in the ass problem. Uh, where they're like, ah, you know, like we really don't feel like blah, blah, blah was in the spirit of the agreement. So like, we actually don't want to pay or you know, something, something like that will pop up.

• 40:34Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 40:34Speaker 01

  So yeah, you can't get a good deal with a bad person.

• 40:36Lewis Howes?

  Now, the final, the final part of this, you've given specifics, which I love and I thank you for that. But what I want to really want to know now is what do you tell yourself? What is the self-talk, uh, the positive visualization self-talk? Do you see it happen before it happens? When you're again, shooting an episode, you know, because it might be a little nerve wracking about to be on camera. You want to do a good job or if you're competing in jujitsu or some type of tournament. What is the self-talk, the visualization, the things that you do in your minds to prepare?

• 41:11Speaker 01

  I constantly visualize and I think that, uh, that you do this as well, at least as an athlete you did.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  Well, there's the self-talk, then there's the visualization, and I tend to do this separately.

• 41:25Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 41:26Speaker 01

  When I visualize, I'm usually totally quiet. It's usually some type of rehearsal in my own mind.

• 41:31Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 41:31Speaker 01

  Uh, and I'll do that constantly for episodes because I'll, I'll have an itinerary. We'll have a schedule that I helped lay out uh on some level based on, you know, the subjects I've picked, the, the teachers I've chosen, et cetera. And I will rehearse, I will definitely rehearse sort of intros, outros, soundbites that we need for specific portions of the show, which uh, which usually refer to uh introductions, right? Of some type, whether it's introducing the show and the challenge, introducing the experiments, the location, the teacher, you know, these are things where I have to be factually accurate and I also have to be concise, so I'll rehearse those.

• 42:14Speaker 01

  Uh fortunately, because it is intended to be a verite style, unscripted show, for the most part, I get to just kind of be myself. Uh but a lot of these shows are very, very physical, so I'm doing golf, I'm doing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, I'm doing rally racing, I'm doing, you name it. And for those, I will constantly visualize and I will also review video. This is closely related. I will review video of top performers in those sports uh right before going to bed. So I do video review right before going to bed and then I will end up visualizing or dreaming oftentimes about those skills. Uh that, that's a very consistent practice in mine.

• 42:51Speaker 01

  In terms of the self-talk, usually the self-talk, I'd say when I hit a tough point is something along the lines of you've done harder things before. That, that's usually, I would say, the self-talk. Uh and honestly, like I still think back to those wrestling practices in high school where Mr. Buxton would just crush us and he would do it and

• 43:19Speaker 01

  we thought we couldn't continue and he'd say, "I'm only pushing you because I know you can continue." And, you know, if you need to puke, there's a bucket in the corner and then come right back in because you're up in like thirty seconds, you know?

• 43:30Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 43:30Speaker 01

  And uh there's so many examples like that where uh I will, let's say, I'll be getting frustrated or angry or

• 43:41Speaker 01

  Uh, anti some in some way about something I'm doing now. And I'll just be like, you know what? This maybe uh, this is this is a adult programming, right?

• 43:52Lewis Howes?

  Um, yeah.

• 43:53Speaker 01

  I'll just say, you know, stop being pretty. You've done harder things before. You're getting weak. Like i- if if this is hard for you, you are getting weak. So suck it up and like put on your big girl pant and get it done. Done harder things before and then I'm like, ah, you know, all right, you're right. So I kind of have that. That hard ass coach like on my shoulder is most of my self talk. And sometimes I'll hear. Uh, you know, whether it's girlfriends or family members or. Some friends will say, you know, I should be easier on yourself. You should take it easy, be easier on yourself. And I don't think that's the answer.

• 44:32Speaker 01

  When I meet people who I who I really admire or really good at. Fill in the blank, whether it's athletics or cinematography or whatever, they're all. Hard on themselves. Uh, I mean, they and it's not because they. They think they can be perfect, but it's not going to stop them from trying. Uh, and I I don't know. I I don't think it's a bad thing as long as you know how to turn off some of the time. Uh, so I'd say most of my self talk is, you know, you've done. You've done harder things before, so like suck it up. Stop letting your mind run wild on you. Like all the if there's any negative self talk, it's like, all right, nip that in the bugs. It's not helping. And focus on what you can control. Ignore what you can't control and get it done.

• 45:17Speaker 01

  So I mean, that's it's usually some variation of that.

• 45:19Lewis Howes?

  Nice, I love it. Okay, two final questions.

• 45:24Lewis Howes?

  The first one is. What is it you want people to say at your funeral?

• 45:31Speaker 01

  Uh, what do I want people to say at my funeral?

• 45:35Lewis Howes?

  About you, obviously.

• 45:37Speaker 01

  You never could get a tan. No, not that. Uh, pretty pale though. Uh, let's see, I would want them to say.

• 45:48Speaker 01

  Probably something along the lines of, you know, he wanted his students to be better than he was. Uh, I, I always want to teach people to be better than I am in whatever I'm teaching. So I, I think that would be.

• 46:01Speaker 01

  I think that would be, that's the first thing that comes to mind.

• 46:03Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, I like it. What would you want them to say about your heart?

• 46:07Speaker 01

  My heart? Uh.

• 46:13Speaker 01

  I'd say just that my heart was true, my intent, my, my heart was in the right place. I mean, I genuinely, genuinely did all this stuff because I wanted to show people that things do not have to be as difficult as they seem. Uh, there, there is, there are elegant solutions hiding out there and if I can help unearth those, then that is a, uh, that's a job, that's a job I'm happy to have. Uh, so I'd say just that, that my heart was in the right place, that, uh, you know, the motivations for this were on some level, I guess altruistic.

• 46:48Lewis Howes?

  Right, nice. Final question, what is your definition of greatness?

• 46:55Speaker 01

  Oh, my definition of greatness, uh.

• 47:04Lewis Howes?

  And Tim didn't get any of these questions beforehand, so he's got to think about it for a second.

• 47:09Speaker 01

  Uh, I would say my definition of greatness is

• 47:18Speaker 01

  a setting,

• 47:21Speaker 01

  setting a goal that your former self would have thought impossible and trying to get just a little bit better every day. That's it. Uh, I, I really think that's it. And, uh,

• 47:35Speaker 01

  I think you can find that. Anywhere, you know, the world's best janitor, the world's best, you know, window washer, the world's best tennis player, the world's best, you know, I have no idea, belt manufacturer, you know, artisanal belt maker. Doesn't matter. I think you can find it everywhere, but usually it's setting and that goal could be, you know, I want to be the best janitor in the world. I mean, it sounds silly, but I don't think it is. I think that's a noble goal. Uh, so I'd say it's setting, setting a, setting an ambitious goal that perhaps your former self would have thought impossible and then just trying to get a little bit better every day.

• 48:14Lewis Howes?

  I love it. Where is the best place we can hang out with you online? And tell us again the show times.

• 48:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely. So the, the best place to find me is on the blog. That's kind of the heartbeat of everything I do. Uh, it's fourhourblog.com, F O U R H O U R B L O G dot com. About 1.4 million readers a month. And then on Twitter, at T Ferris, T F E R R I S S. You can learn all about the show at upwave.com/TFX. And the show is The Tim Ferriss Experiment every Sunday at 8:00 PM Eastern, 5:00 PM Pacific. Set your DVRs and on HLN, the channel is HLN, but people can learn all about it on Upwave.

• 48:59Speaker 01

  So at upwave.com/TFX, there are also extras and bonuses and stuff, cut footage and scenes on that page. So I hope people check it out.

• 49:08Lewis Howes?

  I love it, man. Tim, thanks for coming on and thanks for diving deeper than I think I've ever heard you talk about in any interview. So I appreciate you.

• 49:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a product of the questions. So thanks for asking good questions.

• 49:20Lewis Howes?

  My pleasure, man. Thanks so much. And everyone make sure to tune in and watch each and every week and we'll see you soon.

• 49:26Speaker 01

  All right. Thanks so much, Liz.

• 49:33Lewis Howes?

  And there you have it guys. Thanks again so much for being so tentative and listening during this entire interview. If you enjoyed this episode, I would love it if you head over to the site at LewisHowes.com or SchoolofGreatness.com to check out the show notes. Go ahead and share this episode with your friends over on Twitter and Facebook and Google+ and everyone else. And wherever you are listening to this in the world, go ahead and upload a picture on Instagram and tag me @LewisHowes or #SchoolofGreatness and just let me know where you're listening and maybe we'll give you a shout out for our future Fan of the Week. I really appreciate you guys coming on here and the feedback that I'm receiving about the people

• 50:18Lewis Howes?

  that we're bringing on, the guests, what they're opening up about in their lives and their success and their failures. I appreciate the feedback that I'm receiving about that. And I'm going to continue to bring on guests and get them to open up in ways that you've probably never heard them open up before. It's all about reaching your biggest potential and unlocking your inner greatness here on the School of Greatness. So with that guys, you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and make sure to do something great.