#130: Daymond John and How to Turn Weaknesses into Strengths

Usually, it's my job to deconstruct world-class performers. This time around, the tables are turned. Many of you have wanted to hear me interviewed, so this week Daymond John http://daymondjohn.com/ (@thesharkdaymond https://twitter.com/TheSharkDaymond), star of ABC's Shark Tank https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shark_Tank and the CEO and founder of FUBU http://www.fubu.com/, is in charge and asking the questions. Daymond has a new book called The Power of Broke http://daymondjohn.com/pages/pobpreorder, and he is an expert interviewer and interrogator. In this episode, you'll learn untold stories about my beginnings and the advantages that exist when you think you're at a disadvantage. If you've ever felt like a beginner in business or find your back against a wall, you will learn how to take your situation or a lack of resources and turn it into a strength. 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 Audible http://audible.com/tim. I have used Audible http://audible.com/tim for years and I love audio books. I have 2 to recommend: The Graveyard Book http://www.audible.com/pd/Teens/The-Graveyard-Book-Full-Cast-Production-Audiobook/B00LXHQO22/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20 by Niel Gaiman Vagabonding http://www.audible.com/pd/Travel-Adventure/Vagabonding-Audiobook/B00GCHWZHG/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20 by Rolf Potts All you need to do to get your free audiobook and a free 30-day trial is go to Audible.com/tim http://audible.com/tim. Choose one of the above books, or choose between more than 180,000 audio programs. That could be a book, a newspaper, a magazine or even a class. It's that easy. Go to Audible.com/Tim http://audible.com/tim and get started today. Enjoy! This podcast is brought to you by TrunkClub http://trunkclub.com/tim. I hate shopping with a passion. And honestly I'm not good at it, which means I end up looking like I'm colorblind or homeless. Enter TrunkClub http://trunkclub.com/tim, which provides you with your own personal stylist and makes it easier than ever to shop for clothes that look great on your body. Just go to trunkclub.com/tim http://trunkclub.com/tim and answer a few questions, and then you'll be sent a trunk full of awesome clothes. They base this on your sizes, preferences, etc. The trunk is then delivered free of charge both ways, so you only pay for clothes that you keep. If you keep none, it costs you nothing. To get started, check it out at trunkclub.com/tim http://trunkclub.com/tim.

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 to shake. Can I answer your personal question?

• 0:08Speaker 01

  No, it would seem inappropriate to have that.

• 0:12Speaker 00

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

• 0:23Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Audible, which I have used for years. I love audiobooks, and I have two to recommend right off the bat. Number one is perhaps my favorite audiobook of all time, and that is The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, the only audiobook I've wanted to immediately listen to a second time as soon as I finished. It's amazing, you will thank me, The Graveyard Book. The second is Vagabonding by Rolf Potts, which had a huge impact on my life and formed the basis for a lot of what became The Four Hour Work Week. So, all you need to do to get your free audiobook and a free 30-day trial is go to audible.com/tim, and you can choose one of those two books, The Graveyard Book, Vagabonding, or more than

• 1:06Tim Ferriss?

  180,000 audio programs. So that could be a book, that could be a magazine, that could be a newspaper, it could be a class, it's that easy. Go to audible.com/tim, that's audible.com/tim, and grab a book. Enjoy.

• 1:23Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Trunk Club. You know I've used them, and here's why. Especially in the holiday season, last-minute gifts, crowded airports, the family, you have enough crap to worry about during the holidays without having to think about mixing and matching, picking out, buying clothing, Trunk Club has your back. Here's how it works. Trunk Club takes the hassle out of shopping by shipping you a trunk of clothes that fit perfectly, make you look amazing, and in this case, they would include custom-picked fall and winter styles. So, go to trunkclub.com/tim. You answer a couple of simple questions about your style, preferences, and size, and you're assigned an expert stylist. They curate clothing from top-premium brands, and you approve of what you like. All this is free. And just like that, a trunk arrives on your doorstep, filled with hand-picked clothing that are

• 2:07Tim Ferriss?

  perfect for you. Try them on. Keep what you like, easily return what you don't in their prepaid trunk. And this is not a subscription service. Super important because I don't buy clothing that often, but I do it every once in a while. And I've used Trunk Club this way. You only pay for the clothes you keep from your trunk. No hidden charges, just great clothes. It's the busiest, most hectic time of the year, so save your brain cells. You can still look fantastic without spending a lot of time on trying to do that. Get started today and Trunk Club will style you for free, plus free shipping both ways. You only pay for the clothing that you keep. So check it out, trunkclub.com/tim. Again, that's trunkclub.com/tim.

• 2:48Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. It is usually my job to deconstruct world-class performers, whether they are, say, military strategists, hedge fund managers, chess prodigies, athletes, entertainers, screenwriters, et cetera. But this time around, the tables are turned. Many of you have wanted to hear me being interviewed and I may bore you to tears, but this is an attempt. And in fact, we have Damon John, who is CEO and founder of Fubu, which he turned into a business with more than $6 billion in sales. But it all began with a $40 budget and no outside funding. And Damon has a new book out called The Power of Broke.

• 3:28Tim Ferriss?

  You can check out all sorts of cool aspects and offers of this at powerofbroke.com. And he is an expert interviewer and interrogator. You may also know him, of course, as one of the stars of Shark Tank. But we've known each other for quite a few years. And what you're going to hear is an interview that was then sliced and diced and put in a synopscized form into the book about some of my beginnings that you may not have heard of. So it's like the four-hour work week, this luxury lifestyle design, blah, blah, blah. But you oftentimes don't know about driving around, this is me, that is, a used minivan that was a hand-me-down from my mom,

• 4:08Tim Ferriss?

  or giving keynote presentations to chihuahuas to try to develop my presentation skills because I was so nervous to go on stage, et cetera, et cetera. So we dig into a lot of... The advantages you can have if you think you are at a disadvantage. So desperation, lack of funding, no background, training, network. How can you take the power of broke in this case? The power of being a rope beginner, starting from scratch and turn it into a strength? That's what this conversation is about. You should definitely check out The Power of Broke. It has interviews with people not only yours truly, but with the founder of Under Armour, EDM Superstars,

• 4:52Tim Ferriss?

  people from every possible field you can imagine about their rocky beginnings and how they turned a lack of resources into a strength. So without further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Daymond John.

• 5:07Speaker 03

  So what's up? You got me here, this is Shark Daymond John, and I have the pleasure of bringing my buddy on to talk about The Power of Broke. And my buddy's name is Tim Ferriss. I don't think he needs any introduction, but I'm gonna actually read a couple of points because I do know many of the things that Tim has done and is still doing, but I want to make sure that I really put it in perspective because there's so many things. So Tim, of course, is an author, an entrepreneur, an angel investor, and also really a human guinea pig. And I think that Tim exercises the power of broke whether, you know, when he is looking and vetting deals or whether he is actually physically becoming a human guinea pig for something

• 5:51Speaker 03

  or he's putting out his book and information or he's just out there learning. So I learned from Tim a lot and I just want to basically introduce Tim Ferriss. How you doing, Tim? I'm great. All right. Nice to be here. Thank you. Well, thanks for being here with me. So now, you know, the first thing I want to talk about is basically, you know, when you came out and you decided to come out with the four-hour work week, right? You know, we all, the theory of the power of broke is the fact that we don't utilize money to accomplish a job. And I don't care if you're working at, you know, at Ford. You know, it's about ingenuity and it's about thinking, but it's not about the actual dollars. The dollars will come, but being creative. Why would somebody give you a book deal?

• 6:35Speaker 03

  Because I'm told that you got turned down by 26, 27 authors. I got turned down by 27 banks. I guess that's a lucky number.

• 6:42Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 6:42Speaker 03

  What was the challenge of, you know, getting a book deal and getting it out there?

• 6:47Tim Ferriss?

  Well, the first problem, if you want to look at it as a problem, was that I never wanted to write a book. So there was an accidental career and I had a few students, I was guest lecturing at the time, recommend that I write a book. And I was like, "That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. I can't write. Don't want to write anything longer than an email. Not going to do it." And when the notes started coming together from this class and a few friends of mine were like, "You should just make this a book. You have all of this material that you could turn into something." I tried to put it together and eventually got introduced to a couple of the right people, which, by the way, actually I'm going to take a back step. So the person who introduced me to my agent was Jack Canfield, who was co-creator of Chicken Soup for the Soul. I think this is probably most relevant to the power of Brooke.

• 7:31Tim Ferriss?

  The way I met him, people are always asking me, "How do you meet your mentor?" But you send him an email and ask him to be your mentor. I'm like, "No, that's not what you do because they have enough of a job. They don't need another full-time job, especially an unpaid one." Was I had just moved to Silicon Valley years prior. Didn't know anyone, didn't have any money. I was driving my mom's hand-me-down minivan, which was like, it was horrible. Not good for dating. And I decided to volunteer for a startup nonprofit that held events. And so I busted my ass as a volunteer, kept on taking on more responsibility and kept on asking for more, for more, for more. And eventually they were like, "All right, well, this guy's a go-getter. We don't have many of those among the volunteers because they think it's volunteer work. They don't have to work hard."

• 8:16Tim Ferriss?

  And I was invited to one of their board meetings and they chose me to lead the next major event. What did that mean? The important thing here was that I got to invite, I got to choose and invite the panelists and the speakers. So I invited Jack Canfield, co-creator of Chicken Soup for the Soul, 100 million-plus books sold. The guy who created the Pet Rock, co-founder of Electronic Arts, the founder of Cliff Bar, all these people that I wanted to meet, right? So I had no money, no connections. The only thing I had was time, right? That was it. So flash forward a few years.

• 8:48Speaker 03

  I want to stop right there for one second because... You know, you bring up a very valuable point, you know, that you went and you wanted to be mentored or you want to be some, you know, in an environment.

• 8:58Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 8:59Speaker 03

  And, you know, I know that you and I and many of us mentor people, but a lot of people don't realize what's in it for the mentor.

• 9:05Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 9:05Speaker 03

  Everybody comes and their pitches, I need, I need, I need, I need, and you know, then my pitch is, well, you need, so I need to sleep less to help you, I need to do that, and then, so you know, your theory was, let me go and contribute.

• 9:18Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 9:19Speaker 03

  Let me also go and, you know, I'm gonna get up before everybody, I'm gonna go to bed after everybody, and I'm gonna become a rock star there, and I'm gonna add value, and that value will then return to me.

• 9:28Tim Ferriss?

  Right, and at the time, I had to borrow that credibility.

• 9:30Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 9:31Tim Ferriss?

  So in the beginning, I had no background, I had no, I hadn't been on the cover of any magazines or anything like that, so I, I worked with this nonprofit that did bring in media. So they, as an organization, had people from Forbes and, you know, whether it was the tech crunch of the day, whatever, would show up, and that's why the panelists wanted to come.

• 9:50Speaker 03

  Right.

• 9:51Tim Ferriss?

  And, so flash forward many years later, and I never bugged Jack, I never asked him to mentor me, just every once in a while, if I had a real life decision question, and it was not frequent, I would send it to him. And eventually, many years later, and we're still friends, but he's like, you should make this a book? And before I knew it, he's like, I'm interested in this person, this person, this person, this person. Alright, so that's how I met the agent, who was, at the time, a brand-new agent. He was a superstar editor, but a brand-new agent. So he also was in a situation where he had, you know, no resources, no reputation as an agent. And then we went out to sell the book together. And got turned down violently by almost everybody. It wasn't just a polite, no, thank you, it was this is crap, this is garbage, who is this idiot to tell me, how old is he again, to tell me A, B, and C?

• 10:36Tim Ferriss?

  People were very, very offended in some cases, which is still kind of mystifying to me, but...

• 10:41Speaker 03

  But let me ask you something, you know, with all those turn downs by what you would say would be... Individuals who know the world, they know the pulse and they're telling you it's crap.

• 10:51Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 10:51Speaker 03

  Now, there's the fine line of we are in love with our product.

• 10:55Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 10:55Speaker 03

  And we're too in love where we're not taking reality in hand.

• 10:58Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 10:59Speaker 03

  Was there a way that you were measuring it going, no, I'm taking the pulse here or there.

• 11:04Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 11:04Speaker 03

  And I know I'm on to something because

• 11:06Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 11:07Speaker 03

  we have to be realistic. Not all entrepreneurs or people are gonna get an A, you know?

• 11:10Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, for sure.

• 11:11Speaker 03

  Ninety percent are gonna get an F, right?

• 11:13Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, right.

• 11:13Speaker 03

  At what point did you say, this is not an F, it's an A, or even a B?

• 11:17Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, what gave me confidence, I think there were two things. So,

• 11:24Tim Ferriss?

  the first was I'd been testing this material on live classes for years. And I always did feedback forums and I knew what people responded best to. I knew how to hit a pulse. The people who were in a position to buy my book were not my target audience. And so they, it didn't register for them.

• 11:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:45Tim Ferriss?

  The, the, the, they didn't have the same pain points, maybe.

• 11:49Speaker 03

  Got it.

• 11:50Tim Ferriss?

  And, so, but it was demoralizing. I mean, twenty plus rejections and, and not mild rejections. It was really kinda demoralizing. And I started to doubt myself a little bit here and there, but I believed in the value of the content because it was a true story of my experience and what had worked for me. And I'd written the book, or what I'd written at that point at least, basically as an email to two friends. And two very specific friends with very specific problems. And, and we had one meeting left, I remember, because I went to New York, flew to New York to go to these in-person meetings with my agent. I was just like, no, no, no, no, goodbye, no. And this, it sounds like, straight out of a movie, but it's, it's true. The last meeting was with Crown.

• 12:34Tim Ferriss?

  And the Crown is an imprint, basically a subdivision of Random House.

• 12:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:38Tim Ferriss?

  And I was just thinking to myself, well, all right, this is the last meeting, so hopefully, I'm gonna be the most polished, right, number one. And we had the meeting, we had the meeting, and you can kinda feel a meeting if it's working or not, and it wasn't, it wasn't working. And so I'm sitting there and people are getting it, like intellectually, they're like, okay, I get it. But they, they weren't having the visceral response. And at the time, there was a guy named Steve Ross, who was in charge of Saying yes or no. He was the guy. And he was way down at the end. It was one of those kind of like Death Star meetings. They do it at CIA and all these places where they bring in like 30 people. And I'm like, I don't even know who, I can't remember the people's names. And I remember that towards the very end, Steve was like, is there anything else you'd like to say before we we kind of cut and then we can follow up with you? It was one of those like, don't call us, we'll call you kind of like lead ups.

• 13:23Tim Ferriss?

  And I was like, oh god, here comes number 30 or whatever. And I just, I told him, I was like, absolutely. I said, I don't half ass anything. And this is paraphrase, but it was just like, if you look at my records, whether it's in sports, whether it's in tango, whether it's in anything, like I will do anything required. I will kill myself if necessary to make this book a bestseller. And it will be a bestseller. You guys should buy it. And he was just like, that's ballsy.

• 13:49Speaker 03

  And that's it?

• 13:50Tim Ferriss?

  And that's, that later, I had no idea like how the decision making process went. But then about a year or two later, word came back to me there like, yeah, was that last thing you said? It was that, that was the end of the meeting.

• 14:03Speaker 03

  How fast, how fast did they go to, you know, contract or, or let's start writing? Or let's start putting it together after that?

• 14:10Tim Ferriss?

  You know, once, they also got it at a very good price, right? So it's a balance of factors, right? But they're like, alright, this guy seems crazy enough.

• 14:18Speaker 03

  You know, we're managing our expectations, we're not paying a lot for it. And this guy is a workhorse probably.

• 14:24Tim Ferriss?

  Right, right. And they're like, we place bets all the time. Like, alright, sure. Like, this guy seems crazy enough. And it took just a couple of weeks. You know, within a couple of weeks, it was, it was time to write.

• 14:34Speaker 03

  Well, that's great. You know what? And honestly, I never heard the details of that story, but it has all the, it has all the personality to a traditional power or broke theme, which is, number one, you didn't overburden the potential mentor, whoever it was. Number two is, you know, that person, and it happened with that potential mentor as well as at the end of this, this part of your life. The decision-making person said, he's gonna do it with or without me. And I wanna be part of the ride.

• 15:05Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 15:05Speaker 03

  I think also that as being turned down by twenty-seven, you know, publishers, I think that there's a couple of things here. You had proof of concept. And that's what made you believe that you can go because you had already tested it.

• 15:18Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 15:19Speaker 03

  I also think that a couple of other things. There's one, there's one thing I believe. If everybody loves it, you get the lowest common denominator, I believe. So I think that it's that.

• 15:28Tim Ferriss?

  Or they're lying to you.

• 15:29Speaker 03

  Or they're lying to you. And you know, and a hard no is at least better than maybe, I'm saying, maybe I'll call you back.

• 15:35Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, right.

• 15:35Speaker 03

  Right, so, so I think that that all exercises exactly what I try to tell people. We share to, share with people is the power of broke. And then now, we have the book.

• 15:46Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 15:46Speaker 03

  It's, it's, it's, uh, somebody believed in you now. And oh, oh, the other one I like, the point is, you know that Asian that nobody was working with?

• 15:54Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 15:55Speaker 03

  That you found and you became partners with?

• 15:57Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 15:57Speaker 03

  When I found my partners, they were, you know, in, you know, my, my partners who ended up, uh, helped me distribute clothes.

• 16:05Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 16:05Speaker 03

  They were number twenty, thirty, forty in the business. I noticed that everybody likes to go to number one and two. I wanna go to number twenty, who wants to be number one or two?

• 16:12Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 16:13Speaker 03

  Right, because

• 16:14Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 16:14Speaker 03

  They have the connections, they have the pipeline, they just don't have the product and or the grit of the newer

• 16:20Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 16:21Speaker 03

  position.

• 16:22Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 16:22Speaker 03

  And that's what you found, so.

• 16:23Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 16:24Speaker 03

  Okay, now all of a sudden, you, uh, you have this book deal that you, uh, you really told them that you were going to change the world and become a bestseller, which, uh, is one of the hardest things to do, especially at the time when books were starting to plummet. They give you a deal, the deal, they don't give you a lot of money, and even when they give you a lot of money, they barely do any marketing.

• 16:43Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 16:44Speaker 03

  Now you have to go out and market this book and you have to deliver on your word. What happens? How does that happen?

• 16:50Tim Ferriss?

  So the, uh, I remember very, very clearly, it was, uh, let me get this right. It was December twenty-sixth.

• 16:58Tim Ferriss?

  2006, so the book was slated to come out April. Uh huh. And I've been thinking about this for a while, but what I realized, like you said, publishers tend to put money behind books they've already put money into. Right. And they hadn't put any money into mine, really. And so it was my job to try to figure out how to market, but I didn't have free rein. I didn't have a full hand of options because the publisher didn't want me meddling with a lot of stuff. They're like, "No, no, no, we might do stuff with print, we might do stuff with this, we might do stuff with that." And what that left me was online. And online is obviously a big category. Keep in mind, this was end of 2006, beginning 2007. Yeah, so there wasn't a Twitter, right? Twitter was just coming out. It was baby. What was out at that time?

• 17:41Tim Ferriss?

  So it would have been Google, obviously you have AdWords and things like that, Facebook. You had Twitter, which was very nascent. And MySpace was... MySpace was sort of, yeah. Okay, got it. And there were, but there was kind of word on the street that like bloggers... Bloggers were interesting. Who are these blogger people? Yeah. And so I realized, all right, if online is the only sandbox I can play in, I should probably figure out what the hell blogs and bloggers are. And it's embarrassing to say it at this point, but... So I went online, I remember the day after Christmas, I'm like, "I really need to figure this out." Everything I thought I was gonna do, I'm not allowed to do, apparently. So I searched, you know, most influential bloggers.

• 18:24Tim Ferriss?

  And Technorati came up at the time, a few things, a number of different things came up. And I saw Summit, there was this, some type of, oh no, it was CES, that's right. Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas. And to my mind, because I used to do, I used to have to sell mass data storage systems. When I graduated from school, the first job I had was like Boiler Room, selling storage area networks. So I made a lot of cold calls and a lot of cold emails. And I realized, okay, well, what is the hardest way to get ahold of a blogger? The most crowded way is probably email. They're getting tons of email. The second most crowded would be phone, right? But they don't just put their phone on the internet, for the most part. Unless it's Robert Scoville, who ended up being very instrumental. And then the least crowded is in-person.

• 19:08Tim Ferriss?

  And so I decided that I was gonna try to track down, how do I find groups, like herds of bloggers in one place? And I looked at CES, and I bought a ticket to Vegas, and I never went to CES. I ended up going to, I started asking around. Effectively, like, where can I meet bloggers? Where could I ask bloggers questions? And they said, "Oh, you should go to the lounge." Seagate's sponsoring a lounge called The Blog House, H-A-U-S, and it's free booze and free wifi for bloggers. I was like, "Perfect." And so I go to this blog house. And tip for people, always be nice. Be nice. And this is where it's gonna get really... That becomes really crucial.

• 19:49Tim Ferriss?

  So I walk in, there's a woman who's helping people get situated and sign in and checking their wristbands. And I was very nice to her, I didn't know anybody. And sat down and just... I would sit in on conversations. And I'd basically just say, "Hey, guys, I'm first time in CES. I don't know anything. Do you mind if I just eavesdrop? I would buy you a round of drinks, but it's free. I'll go get you some drinks." And they're like, "Uh, yeah, okay, whatever." And I just did that over and over and over again. And it turned out later, you know, because I was kinda lost, like Babe in the Woods. And I was speaking with this woman, Miriam, who was helping people check in. And everybody wanted, at that time, to talk to this guy named Robert Scoble, who was just... He was a big deal. He was the guy. Like, if you wanted somebody to talk about you or anything you were doing, he was the guy.

• 20:33Tim Ferriss?

  But everyone was on top of him. I mean, everyone was just, you know, clamoring to get ahold of this guy. And I felt like that was not the right way to talk to him. I didn't want to be one of 20 people trying to get his attention. And it turned out, low and behold, you know, I brought this up to this woman who was helping me check in, and she was his wife. And so she's like, "Oh, you know, no problem. You can meet Robert. He's really easy to talk to, no problem. And so just like, wait until they're done doing their thing." So like, hang out. I have nothing else to do. Hang out for another hour and a half, two hours, three hours, whatever it was. And she made the introduction. And that, a very small mention from Robert, is one of the critical things that started the entire snowball.

• 21:17Tim Ferriss?

  And I took my experience at CES because I felt like it was positive. There weren't any big results yet, because the book hadn't come out. But I was like, "This seems to be working somehow." Like, I'm getting that sixth sense that things are starting to gel. And because I was very honest, I didn't try to impress anybody. This is another thing, I didn't try to impress anybody with what I knew about tech or anything. I would be the first person if they're like, "No, no, no, Ruby on Rails." And I'd be like, "I'm sorry, I'm deep in the ignorance pool here, like I'm drowning. What is Ruby on Rails? I'm sorry, guys." And it was so uncommon that people would do that and admit when they didn't know something, that people would then start asking me questions. "What are you doing here?" "I'm working on my first book." "Okay, what's your book about?" And I would just let them kind of draw it out of me. I wouldn't pitch, I wouldn't go into full pitch mode, because that's just like, it's just like trying to go on dates.

• 22:02Tim Ferriss?

  You can't just suddenly give a woman a five-minute pitch, like it doesn't work. Like desperation doesn't work. Go over the jugular, doesn't it? It doesn't work. And so I went to South by Southwest and managed to like finagle, beg and plead and negotiate and go through many, many different people to try to get a speaking spot. And they're like, "No, no, no." And Hugh, Hugh Forrest, who runs South by Southwest Interactive is now a good friend. But at the time, like he must have been so irritated, he kept on trying, kept on trying. He's like, "No, no, no, no, no." And then they had a cancellation, I think, like a very last-minute cancellation. They're like, "Okay, you can go into the sponsored room where people are gonna be like eating and drinking." Non-ideal, right? But you'll be in the Adobe, I think it was the Adobe such-and-such room. And you'll have a half hour or an hour.

• 22:47Tim Ferriss?

  And when I gave that presentation, and I didn't have a place to stay, all the hotels were sold out, God, all those memories are coming back now. I stayed. Don't cry, I mean. No, I know, I know, I'm gonna get tear up here. So I stayed at a friend's house, you know, I love this. And I was so nervous about giving my presentation. He had three chihuahuas, all of different personalities, different sizes. And I went into the garage and the dogs came, because I thought I was gonna go get food. And I gave my presentation to these chihuahuas over and over and over again. And of course, well, I assume they couldn't understand a word I was saying. But if I was boring, like if I didn't move around, if I wasn't engaging, they would take off. And if I was like doing this kind of stuff, and like, you know, to really Tony Robbins-ing at them

• 23:29Tim Ferriss?

  and keeping them engaged, then they sat there kind of like mesmerized. That could be the stupidest forever. Oh, no, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, exactly. But they're like, "I don't know, whatever he's doing, he looks like he's, it's exciting, so I'll watch." And I went, I gave this presentation, the tech failed, I remember that. I had a whole presentation and like the laptop, like the internet connection was dead. I was like, "Okay, guess I'm just gonna have to wing it." And, but I rehearsed so much, gave this presentation, and that was just, that's where it took off.

• 24:02Speaker 03

  Well, first of all, I think the most important thing that I don't know if everybody else is gonna learn, but I have two hot dogs and two chihuahuas, so I'm gonna start doing my pitches. Because no matter what level we're at in life, we're still pitching, right? But I think the valuable thing that you mentioned in the story, a couple of things. First of all, what you said about the bloggers is going, you know, at them the normal, traditional route. You know, individuals who are in the space, they are approached a million times. And I had the same problem with music artists and producers. I can go down and try to find them at a conference when they're getting 9,000 cards or something like that. You know what I did? I started trying to find a way to meet them in clubs and hang out at the studio because, you know, a music artist is not waking up until 2 o'clock in the afternoon because they're not performing. They're in the studio all night, so I tried to do that, of course.

• 24:47Speaker 03

  I think also, one of the most important things you said is, be nice to everybody. You know, Mary Kay made a statement years ago, of course. Everybody's walking around with an invisible sign on them saying, "Make me feel important," right? And many people think that this whole thing of walking around with, "Yeah, I need to speak to the man." That's not probably gonna get you as far as speaking to the wife, or the daughter, or the kids. And many times, even with Shark Tank, something will, a product I'll have, it'll air. I'll call all my big to-do guys, "Hey, I wanna do a deal with you." And they'll go, "Yeah, whatever." Let them be home in the bed with their wife, watching TV, and some chips. And that product then airs, and she goes, "Oh, my God, I would use that."

• 25:31Speaker 03

  My phone lights up the next day. So, the most trusted advisors of individuals are the people they love. And make sure you're nice. And especially even if they don't love them, and they trust them like their secretaries or their doctors. These are the people that can say, "Hey, this is a good guy, or this is a great girl." So, I love those stories. And that's absolutely the most amazing thing. And I think that one of the last things are, is your transparency. Don't walk in the room like you know everything, because... When you're talking to very seasoned people, there's a certain code and or language that we speak. Not that it's hidden, but there's certain things you would say that can pick up that we know that you're lying or we know that you don't know what you're talking about.

• 26:14Tim Ferriss?

  Right, absolutely.

• 26:16Speaker 03

  So now, all of a sudden, you got the book deal. You meet the bloggers. The book, you know, where does the book end up in life at that point? You know, and just give us the, basically, the, what grade did you get on that book?

• 26:27Tim Ferriss?

  Ah, well, you know, the book, book was hard to write. I still find writing really difficult. And book launches, and I constrained what I spent also. I could have spent more, and I chose not to. I kept my, my, my expenses really tight. I mean, it was like five to 10 grand. And that's mostly just flying around trying to find people.

• 26:49Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 26:51Tim Ferriss?

  But part of the reason I kept it tight is that it made my, it required that my thinking was more precise, and it required that my thinking was unorthodox, right? So even if you can afford more, whether it's time, money, whatever, it doesn't mean you should use it because you don't want all of that margin for error necessarily. You want to force the hard thinking. So when the book came out, I remember I was, I was killing myself for this, for this book launch. And so I should also point out that, you know, the, the point of the four-hour week and all the case studies in it is that you control this currency called time, and you can allocate it to things that either give you the most pleasure or the highest leverage, right? And in this case, I knew the book was going to give me the most leverage if executed well.

• 27:36Tim Ferriss?

  So I was just killing myself, you know, kind of after doing an 80/20 analysis. I'm like, this is where my time is best spent. And I did, I don't know if you, I'm sure you've probably done satellite radio tours before where you just walk in and you do like 40 radio shows in a row. It's exhausting. And I was towards the end of the day, this was a Wednesday, I'm pretty sure it was a Wednesday, and I was just demolished. And I got a call from my editor, and I was like, oh, hey, Heather, how's it going? I'm dead, I'm really beat. Like, I don't know if my brain's going to be very helpful right now. She's like, well, hi there, Mr. New York Times bestselling author. And I was like, can I curse? I was just like, I was like, Heather, please don't fuck with me right now. I'm so tired. Please don't. And she's like, no, you hit the list. Like, you are, you're on the extended list, but you hit the list. And I was just like.

• 28:23Tim Ferriss?

  And you know, I just kind of leaned back against the wall, fell down, and I was like, kind of sitting there with my head in my hands, and I was like, wow. You know, I'd wanted it, but like, on some level, didn't think it was gonna happen. And so the first book just explodes and goes ballistic, I mean, goes completely nuts, and hits the New York Times list, stays on the New York Times list for about four and a half years unbroken, every week. Hits number one, gets translated into now forty-something odd languages, and still sits around like two hundred on Amazon now.

• 28:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, and the book, the book's amazing, and obviously that's why I value your contribution to, for this time, you know?

• 29:03Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, of course.

• 29:04Speaker 03

  You go on after that, you go and do The Four Hour Body.

• 29:08Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 29:09Speaker 03

  Correct, and again, bang, right, out of there. Now, all of a sudden, you know, you decide to do exactly what you do best, you start to look at the next best opportunities where the trend and/or the people are going, because, you know, as they say, you know, you want to be where it's going to be, not where it's at now.

• 29:28Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 29:29Speaker 03

  You go do a deal, right, and what happens with this book deal you go to do?

• 29:32Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, so, yeah, exactly, so like Wayne Gretzky, right, you want to go to where the puck is going to be, not where it is. And I noticed a trend where, with The Four Hour Work Week, the percentage of digital sales, ebooks, was about, I'd say, six percent in the first month or two, because Kindle was also just becoming a thing.

• 29:50Speaker 03

  Right.

• 29:51Tim Ferriss?

  And then for The Four Hour Body, it was about twenty-five, thirty percent. And I could just, I could see where the trend was going, and where consumption was going of printed material. So I had an opportunity to be the first major book acquired by Amazon Publishing, which is not self-publishing. So Amazon was, and did, launch Amazon Publishing, which would pay advances, recruit authors, and compete head-to-head against the big six, you know, the Simon and Schuster's, the Random Houses and everything. And so I had a chance to be the first, right? And I like being first, there are a lot of risks with that, you take a lot of arrows, if anything's gonna go wrong, you're gonna feel it. But I just, I love doing it, it's one of those things, that's what gets me excited.

• 30:35Tim Ferriss?

  And I was like, you know, like, if that's a wave no one's surfed before... I want to try that. And so decided to partner with Amazon and it was huge news. Went out New York Times, everything, and I expected there to be some blowback, right? Expected there to be some issues, but man, were there a lot of issues. Barnes and Noble, somewhat expected. It boycotted the book, so no. Barnes and Noble, the biggest, the biggest guys. Yeah, the big, the big guy, like the big guy. And then a ton of other folks in the UK, Canada followed suit. Then the Indies followed suit. And then what I didn't expect was the big box guys, who are also afraid of Amazon for

• 31:15Tim Ferriss?

  related but different reasons, Costco, Target, Walmart, all boycotted the book. So now you're in a situation, or I was in a situation where it's like, okay, my entire reputation, the last three years of my life, and I put about three years into each book, hinges on getting this to as many people as possible, and I have effectively zero retail distribution. Right. Now what? And I had to do a bunch of very unorthodox things to try to get it out into people's hands. So one, and there's, there's an expression you hear sometimes in publishing, which is the hardest place to sell a book is in a bookstore. Why? Because there are a million other books.

• 31:55Tim Ferriss?

  And I, I started reaching out to other people with large retail footprints, and Panera Bread was one of them. And, and it turned out I had a lot of fans at Panera. And as a benefit of the first book, and so we, we did sort of a shock and awe campaign in New York City specifically around all the other publishers to like fire a warning shot. And so the, the book distribution through Panera was done primarily in New York, but it was for the PR benefit. Right. Right? Because it wasn't planned to do the whole thing nationwide. And we're talking about the Four Hour Chef at this point. Four Hour Chef, right. So we're doing Four Hour Chef, and we launched it with a, a secret menu also at Panera, where

• 32:38Tim Ferriss?

  people could get slow carb items, which means no bread. At Panera, means bread. So we did all this simultaneously. I also, so I had to think about, basically going back to square one, because it's as if I have. Almost as if I have no money, because I have no retail distribution at all.

• 32:55Speaker 03

  No, you didn't have, it's not that you didn't have any money, you were actually negative. You had enemies.

• 33:00Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I had enemies, right.

• 33:01Speaker 03

  Right, so you couldn't even, if you had money, you couldn't go into that.

• 33:03Tim Ferriss?

  Even if I had money, I couldn't buy my way into placement at the end cap, right? In Barnes & Noble, what wouldn't happen. Right, exactly, so I was, I actually had a deficit.

• 33:09Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 33:10Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, so we did a bunch of, of really interesting things. Uh, we also, basically, at the same time I took over Panera, negotiated really well and took over, uh, a portion of the taxi cabs in New York City who'd have run a trailer for the book. And, uh, simultaneous with that, did something which cost, uh, really no money at the time, uh, got in touch with BitTorrent. And BitTorrent, for those people who don't know, I mean, it's a, it's a peer-to-peer file, file-sharing network, basically, they, they wouldn't like that description very much, but, uh, where you can find almost anything, and, and they wanted to establish themselves, and this is where you have to figure out what other people want, I know you know this, but it's like, you, it can't just be the "I need, I need", like you said. What does, what do other people want? And I sought out people like BitTorrent, because they want to establish themselves

• 33:55Tim Ferriss?

  as a way for legitimate artists or producers to spread content to new fans. And I was like, "I can be your poster boy."

• 34:03Speaker 03

  Right.

• 34:03Tim Ferriss?

  And I will, I basically gave them the same pitch I gave to Crown, right? When I sold my first book, I was like, "I will, I will do everything."

• 34:10Speaker 03

  I'm going hard.

• 34:11Tim Ferriss?

  I'll go hard, because this, I need this. So I will do everything I can to put you guys on the map with, like, mainstream media as a legitimate source of distribution. So did a big partnership with them, a ton of content given away for free, email gates, which means we got email addresses for people who signed up to get these things for free. Long story short, it was the, the entire torrent bundle, uh, so if you see, Four Hour Chef bundle, you can still find it, was, uh, downloaded, I think, more than two and a half million times.

• 34:37Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 34:38Tim Ferriss?

  And it became, at the end of the day, in, when we looked at, at it in retrospect, like, the number five, I think, most downloaded torrent of the entire year, ahead of some of the biggest musicians you've heard of. And, all of these things helped drive it, uh, to, you know, number one, Wall Street Journal, hit the list, stay there, sat there for a while. And would I have sold more books if I had full retail rollout? Probably. Would it have forced me to be as innovative? Probably not. Do I regret having made the decision? No.

• 35:08Speaker 03

  Exactly. And yeah, that's it. And I think you are the epitome and you sum it all up. I mean, you know, the lessons, the takeaways from there are two things. Uh, number one is, uh, you know, people believe that, that after they get to a certain stage in life, or if they get to that certain stage in life, they're not gonna have roadblocks and obstacles. So whether you're Steve Jobs who was fired over at Apple, or you're Bill Gates and the government is coming after you for this, uh, to try to, try to choke you, or you're Donald Trump and you leverage too much of your properties or your Daymond John, and after Fubu goes, they go, "Oh, that was just a fad. People don't like baggy jeans. Oh, uh, it's never gonna happen again." Don't think that it's ever going to stop. Actually, the more successful you become,

• 35:53Speaker 03

  You just trade up. Yeah, you just trade up. Exactly. You just trade up the haters, right? But on the also, uh, what you, you also have, um, really showed me and everybody who's watching is, at whatever level you get, you have to roll up your sleeves and you have to dig in deep and you yourself have to do it. If you think you're gonna allocate it to everybody else and the whole idea about being a boss and an owner is to sit home and do this and that, I don't believe that success is gonna follow that. So you go ahead and break all the records and of course, the book goes off to doing, uh, really, really impressive numbers and it's still out there. And you know, I just wanna sum this all up because, uh, first of all, here's where, um, I find you amazing. Um, uh, I find the fact that you, you, you find new and, uh,

• 36:37Speaker 03

  viable veins to go out there and push your agenda as well as enrich people's lives. Because if you really look at not only how you've gotten there, what you've put out is probably the most valuable thing, uh, that we have in our lives. There's only three things that really can, um, help us in life or hurt us. It's, and it's time.

• 37:03Speaker 03

  It's your health and it's your nutrition and they're all married together. And if any one of those three fall, you can't be successful.

• 37:12Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 37:12Speaker 03

  And I'm not talking about success is necessarily going to be money.

• 37:15Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 37:16Speaker 03

  You can't have a productive life as a father, a mother, a child, you know, a loved one, and/or you can't have success. So first of all, that's valuable and I really urge everybody who's watching this to please, please read the books and I am a huge fan of it. I'm just gonna sum it up with some of the other things that Tim has done and this is going to be very, very short. But Tim is an investor and advisor in things such as, you may have heard of them, Facebook, Shopify, Uber, Evernote, Angel List, Twitter, and the list goes on. I will list everything and every way that you can really check out Tim's materials and I'm a big fan of his. Thank you, Tim, for hanging out with me and I really did learn things. I'm a student of life, man.

• 37:58Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, thank you. This is great.

• 38:00Speaker 03

  I appreciate it, man.

• 38:00Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 38:07Tim 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.

• 38:50Tim 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.

• 39:11Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Audible, which I've used for years. I love audiobooks and I have two to recommend right off the bat. Number one is perhaps my favorite audiobook of all time, and that is The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, the only audiobook I've wanted to immediately listen to a second time as soon as I finished. It's amazing, you will thank me, The Graveyard Book. The second is Vagabonding by Rolf Potts, which had a huge impact on my life and formed the basis for a lot of what became The Four Hour Work Week. So, all you need to do to get your free audiobook and a free 30-day trial is go to audible.com/tim and you can choose one of those two books, Graveyard Book, Vagabonding,

• 39:53Tim Ferriss?

  or more than 180,000 audio programs. So that could be a book, that could be a magazine, that could be a newspaper, it could be a class, it's that easy. Go to audible.com/tim, that's audible.com/tim, and grab a book. Enjoy.

• 40:11Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Trunk Club. You know I've used them, and here's why. Especially in the holiday season, last-minute gifts, crowded airports, the family, you have enough crap to worry about during the holidays without having to think about mixing and matching, picking out, buying clothing, Trunk Club has your back. Here's how it works. Trunk Club takes the hassle out of shopping by shipping you a trunk of clothes that fit perfectly, make you look amazing, and in this case, they would include custom-picked fall and winter styles. So, go to trunkclub.com/tim. You answer a couple of simple questions about your style, preferences and size, and you're assigned an expert stylist. They curate clothing from top-premium brands and you approve of what you like. All this is free. And just like that, a trunk arrives on your doorstep,

• 40:54Tim Ferriss?

  filled with handpicked clothing that are perfect for you. Try them on, keep what you like, easily return what you don't in their prepaid trunk. And this is not a subscription service, super important, because I don't buy clothing that often, but I do it every once in a while, and I've used Trunk Club this way. You only pay for the clothes you keep from your trunk. No hidden charges, just great clothes. It's the busiest, most hectic time of the year, so save your brain cells. You can still look fantastic without spending a lot of time... On trying to do that. Get started today and Trump Club will style you for free. Plus free shipping both ways. You only pay for the clothing that you keep. So check it out. trunkclub.com/tim. Again, that's trunkclub.com/tim. And until next time, thank you for listening.