#325: Lessons from Richard Branson, Tony Robbins, Ray Dalio, and Other Icons

This particular episode of The Tim Ferriss Radio Hour explores success, a slippery and dangerous term if ever there was one. The particular guests selected for this episode represent not only achievement, but also appreciation and a well-rounded version of what I consider to be a successful human being. This episode features: CDBaby founder Derek Sivers https://tim.blog/derek/ on the importance of challenging your own definitions of success. Performance coach Tony Robbins https://tim.blog/2016/08/10/tony-robbins-on-achievement-versus-fulfillment/ on best lessons learned from working with legendary investors. Venture capitalist Chris Sacca https://tim.blog/2015/05/30/chris-sacca/ on missed opportunities and the commonalities of successful people. Legendary investor Ray Dalio https://tim.blog/2017/09/13/ray-dalio/ on the three things that make up a successful life. Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson https://tim.blog/2017/10/09/richard-branson/ on the best thing his parents taught him. I hope you enjoy this episode of The Tim Ferriss Radio Hour! This podcast is brought to you by 99designs http://99designs.com/tim, the world's largest marketplace of graphic designers. I have used them for years to create some amazing designs. When your business needs a logo, website design, business card, or anything you can imagine, check out 99designs http://99designs.com/tim. I used them to rapid prototype the cover http://99designs.com/tim for The Tao of Seneca, and I've also had them help with display advertising and illustrations. If you want a more personalized approach, I recommend their 1-on-1 service. You get original designs from designers around the world. The best part? You provide your feedback, and then you end up with a product that you're happy with or your money back. 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Follow Tim: Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss https://twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferriss https://instagram.com/timferriss/ Facebook: facebook.com/timferriss https://www.facebook.com/TimFerriss/ YouTube: youtube.com/timferriss https://www.youtube.com/timferriss Past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast include Jerry Seinfeld https://tim.blog/2020/12/08/jerry-seinfeld/, Hugh Jackman https://tim.blog/2020/06/26/hugh-jackman/, Dr. Jane Goodall https://tim.blog/2020/04/16/jane-goodall/, LeBron James https://tim.blog/2018/11/27/lebron-james-mike-mancias/, Kevin Hart https://tim.blog/2020/05/20/kevin-hart/, Doris Kearns Goodwin https://tim.blog/2018/09/07/doris-kearns-goodwin-leadership/, Jamie Foxx https://tim.blog/2015/12/06/jamie-foxx/, Matthew McConaughey https://tim.blog/2020/10/19/matthew-mcconaughey/, Esther Perel https://tim.blog/2017/05/21/esther-perel/, Elizabeth Gilbert https://tim.blog/2020/05/08/elizabeth-gilbert/, Terry Crews https://tim.blog/2017/12/20/terry-crews-how-to-have-do-and-be-all-you-want/, Sia https://tim.blog/2020/08/12/sia/, Yuval Noah Harari https://tim.blog/2020/10/27/yuval-noah-harari/, Malcolm Gladwell https://tim.blog/2016/06/21/malcolm-gladwell/, Madeleine Albright https://tim.blog/2020/05/27/secretary-madeleine-albright/, Cheryl Strayed https://tim.blog/2017/03/30/cheryl-strayed/, Jim Collins https://tim.blog/2019/02/18/jim-collins/, Mary Karr, https://tim.blog/2020/11/11/mary-karr/ Maria Popova https://tim.blog/2014/10/21/brain-pickings/, Sam Harris https://tim.blog/2020/05/15/sam-harris-2/, Michael Phelps https://tim.blog/2021/01/21/michael-phelps-grant-hackett/, Bob Iger https://tim.blog/2020/01/16/bob-iger/, Edward Norton https://tim.blog/2019/10/31/edward-norton-motherless-brooklyn/, Arnold Schwarzenegger https://tim.blog/2015/02/02/arnold-schwarzenegger/, Neil Strauss https://tim.blog/2014/06/24/neil-strauss/, Ken Burns https://tim.blog/2019/09/12/ken-burns/, Maria Sharapova https://tim.blog/2017/08/26/maria-sharapova/, Marc Andreessen https://tim.blog/2016/05/29/marc-andreessen/, Neil Gaiman https://tim.blog/2019/03/28/neil-gaiman/, Neil de Grasse Tyson https://tim.blog/2019/10/03/neil-degrasse-tyson/, Jocko Willink https://tim.blog/2016/09/21/jocko-willink-on-discipline-leadership-and-overcoming-doubt/, Daniel Ek https://tim.blog/2020/12/03/daniel-ek/, Kelly Slater https://tim.blog/2020/09/08/kelly-slater/, Dr. Peter Attia https://tim.blog/2019/11/27/peter-attia-fasting-metformin-longevity/, Seth Godin https://tim.blog/2016/02/10/seth-godin/, Howard Marks https://tim.blog/2018/09/25/howard-marks/, Dr. Brené Brown https://tim.blog/2020/02/06/brene-brown-striving-self-acceptance-saving-marriages/, Eric Schmidt https://tim.blog/2019/04/09/eric-schmidt/, Michael Lewis https://tim.blog/2020/05/01/michael-lewis/, Joe Gebbia https://tim.blog/2018/03/08/joe-gebbia-co-founder-of-airbnb/, Michael Pollan https://tim.blog/2018/05/06/michael-pollan-how-to-change-your-mind/, Dr. Jordan Peterson https://tim.blog/2021/03/01/jordan-peterson/, Vince Vaughn https://tim.blog/2017/05/31/vince-vaughn/, Brian Koppelman https://tim.blog/2020/04/23/brian-koppelman/, Ramit Sethi https://tim.blog/2019/05/07/ramit-sethi/, Dax Shepard https://tim.blog/2020/11/18/dax-shepard/, Tony Robbins https://tim.blog/2014/10/15/money-master-the-game/, Jim Dethmer https://tim.blog/2020/05/18/jim-dethmer/, Dan Harris https://tim.blog/2020/11/19/dan-harris/, Ray Dalio https://tim.blog/2017/09/13/ray-dalio/, Naval Ravikant https://tim.blog/2015/08/18/the-evolutionary-angel-naval-ravikant/, Vitalik Buterin https://tim.blog/2021/03/08/vitalik-buterin-naval-ravikant/, Elizabeth Lesser https://tim.blog/2021/03/16/elizabeth-lesser/, Amanda Palmer https://tim.blog/2019/04/18/amanda-palmer-2/, Katie Haun https://tim.blog/2021/02/18/katie-haun/, Sir Richard Branson https://tim.blog/2017/10/09/richard-branson/, Chuck Palahniuk https://tim.blog/2020/09/02/chuck-palahniuk/, Arianna Huffington https://tim.blog/2017/10/18/arianna-huffington/, Reid Hoffman https://tim.blog/2015/08/31/the-oracle-of-silicon-valley-reid-hoffman-plus-michael-mccullough/, Bill Burr https://tim.blog/2017/09/17/bill-burr/, Whitney Cummings https://tim.blog/2015/06/26/whitney-cummings/, Rick Rubin https://tim.blog/2015/05/15/rick-rubin/, Dr. Vivek Murthy https://tim.blog/2020/03/26/vivek-murthy/, Darren Aronofsky https://tim.blog/2017/09/09/darren-aronofsky/, and many more. 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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

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

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Derek Sivers?

  Now would be an appropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 01

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

• 0:24Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:04Tim Ferriss?

  subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out, go to drinkag1.com/tim. That's drink A G one, the number one, drinkag1.com/tim. Last time, drinkag1.com/tim. Check it out.

• 1:25Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show. This is Tim Ferriss speaking, and I should clarify that this episode is an edition of the Tim Ferriss Radio Hour, where I share the patterns and themes of world-class performers that I've identified after more than 300 guests on the podcast. This particular episode is going to explore success. What does that mean? What a slippery, dangerous term. And the particular guests I selected for this episode, I would say represent not only achievement, but also appreciation and a well-rounded version of what I consider to be a successful human being. And by any objective measure, certainly financially or otherwise, I've interviewed some

• 2:10Tim Ferriss?

  of the more successful people on the planet. And in the next hour, we will revisit specific conversations that discuss the tips, disciplines, habits, and mindsets, perhaps most importantly, that separate world-class performers who reach their goals from those who fall short. This episode includes wisdom from Derek Sivers.

• 2:29Derek Sivers?

  I learned this the hard way at my last company because we had a quarter million customers. So when I'd send out an email to everyone, if any sentence was at all unclear in any way, I'd get like 50,000 confused replies from people.

• 2:44Tim Ferriss?

  We also talked to Tony Robbins.

• 2:45Tony Robbins?

  You've got to become an investor. You've got to be an owner, not a consumer. Right? And the way to do that, frankly, we all know, but very few people do. And that's you take a percentage, you lock it down, you never see it, it's automated, and you put it aside for investment and that just occurs.

• 2:59Tim Ferriss?

  You'll hear from my good friend, Chris Sacca.

• 3:01Chris Sacca?

  Venture capital, I mean, it's totally unfair. People give me their money. I draw a management fee off it so they pay me to take their money and invest it for them.

• 3:09Tim Ferriss?

  Legendary investor Ray Dalio.

• 3:11Speaker 06

  I think three things make up a successful life by and large. First, you have to have audacious goals, big dreams.

• 3:18Tim Ferriss?

  And we can't talk success without including Sir Richard Branson.

• 3:22Richard Branson?

  One of the best things my parents taught me, going back a long way, if I ever said anything about anybody, they would sit me in front of the mirror for 10 minutes in order to sort of let me know how badly it reflected on me.

• 3:38Tim Ferriss?

  As a preface before we jump into the conversations with these guests, I thought it might be helpful to set the stage. And that is with an observation that I have made certainly in interacting personally with many of my podcast guests and many name brand folks in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. And that is the following. The superheroes you might have in your mind, the idols, icons, elite athletes, billionaires, and so on, are nearly always walking flaws who've maximized one or two strengths. Now, I'm not saying that is true of the people in this episode, but in general, this is true. And there are some mutants, there are some freaks of nature who are the equivalent of the Usain Bolt. Of the business world, for instance, but they are rare.

• 4:23Tim Ferriss?

  In general, humans are very, very imperfect creatures, which would be a generous way to put it. And you don't succeed, and most of the people I've interviewed don't succeed in quotation marks because they or you have no weaknesses. Instead, you succeed because you find your unique strengths and focus on developing habits around those strengths. And you can get only a few things right consistently and outperform almost everybody else. And I think that, for instance, the investment styles of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, who are both brilliant, granted, but who focus on being consistently not stupid, not consistently smarter than everybody else, which perhaps is a form of being smarter, and so on and so forth.

• 5:05Tim Ferriss?

  But it's important to keep in mind, rather than putting these people on a pedestal and viewing what they do as unreachable, and in a way then absolving yourself of the responsibility of trying to improve yourself, that everyone is fighting a battle and has fought battles you know nothing about. There are many mega-successful people who battle with depression, with pasts that might include alcoholism, you name it. And that is not necessarily true of the people in this episode, but I think it's important to underscore that so that you think that through incremental improvement, you can actually put yourself in a position to achieve seemingly impossible things. And that is the truth. So everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about. The icons in this episode are no different.

• 5:50Tim Ferriss?

  Everyone struggles, so take solace in that. And now, without further ado, let's jump into some of the things that separate those who achieve what they set out to do from those who don't. Let's start with Derek Sivers. @Sivers on Twitter, S-I-V-E-R-S. He is one of my favorite human beings. Think of him as a philosopher, king, programmer, master teacher, and perhaps merry prankster. Originally a professional musician and circus clown, whole long story behind that to listen to my long interview with him at tim.blog/derek. Derek created CD Baby in 1998. It became the largest seller of independent music online with $100 million in

• 6:33Tim Ferriss?

  sales for more than 150,000 musicians. In 2008, Derek sold CD Baby for $22 million, giving the proceeds to a charitable trust for music education. He is a frequent speaker at the TED conference with more than 5 million views of his talks. Since 2011, he has published 34 books. What? Including a book titled Anything You Want, which I've personally read at least a dozen times.

• 7:02Tim Ferriss?

  When you think of the word "successful," who is the first person who comes to mind and why?

• 7:07Derek Sivers?

  Well, the first answer to any question isn't much fun, because it's just automatic, right? Like, what's the first painting that comes to mind? Mona Lisa? Oh, name a genius. Einstein? Who's a composer? Mozart? But this is the subject of the book Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. There's the instant, unconscious, automatic thinking, and then there's the slower, conscious, rational, deliberate thinking. So I'm really, really into the slower thinking. Like, breaking my automatic responses to the things in my life and slowly thinking through a more deliberate response instead. And then, for the things in life where an automatic response is useful, I can create

• 7:52Derek Sivers?

  a new one consciously. So, like, what if you asked, "When you think of the word 'successful,' who's the third person that comes to mind? And why are they actually more successful than the first person that came to mind?" Well, in that case, the first person would be Richard Branson, because he's like the stereotype, right? He's like the Mona Lisa of success, to me. And honestly, you might be my second answer, but we could talk about that a different time. And my third and real answer, after thinking it through, is that we can't know.

• 8:27Derek Sivers?

  Without knowing a person's aims, right? Like, what if Richard Branson set out to live a quiet life, but like a compulsive gambler, he just can't stop creating companies? Well, then that changes everything and we can't really call him successful anymore.

• 8:43Tim Ferriss?

  What are the most common misconceptions about you?

• 8:46Derek Sivers?

  Oh, I feel pretty understood. I don't think people are thinking about me enough to conjure up any misconceptions. You know, we think the goal of writing and communication is to be understood, but I think a better goal is just making sure that you're not misunderstood. I learned this the hard way at my last company because we had a quarter million customers. So when I'd send out an email to everyone, if any sentence was at all unclear in any way, I'd get like 50,000 confused replies from people, which would take my team like a thousand man-hours to go through. So now, anything I put out into the public is rewritten and edited like crazy until

• 9:30Derek Sivers?

  I think it's as clear as can be.

• 9:32Tim Ferriss?

  What are you world-class at that people might not realize? Or what do your friends know you're world-class at that the rest of the world doesn't know about?

• 9:40Derek Sivers?

  I've got the world's longest attention span. I'll just sit down and do one task for like 12 hours straight, or all day for 25 days in a row, you know? I actually, I love that my kid is getting it from me by the way that we play. Like, whenever we play, I never say, "Let's go, time to go." We just do something until he's ready to move on. Like, he'll lead me to the river and just throw rocks in the water for a couple hours. And then we'll go to the ocean and build a fort out of driftwood for hours, and then draw in the sand with shells until he's sleepy. You know, we've always done it this way since he was, you know, like a one-year-old. Other families would come play on the playground for 20 or 30 minutes at a time, but we would

• 10:24Derek Sivers?

  just be there for hours with him fully immersed in some newly invented game. And what's funny is that nobody else can hang with us like this, like not even his mom. Everyone else gets so bored. People ask if I meditate or do yoga, but nope, my daily life feels like working meditation. Even being with my kid is like meditation, as you can tell. Okay, now we're doing the format today where we're going to open up the phone to callers. But you know, since it's Christmas Day, phones are a little slow. Hey, there's a call.

• 10:56Speaker 08

  Hi Derek, this is Dave DiGiovanni from Kalamazoo, Michigan in the USA. Thanks for doing the podcast with Tim. Thanks for taking this question. You've helped a lot of people make money and I'm just wondering if success in business has to be more complicated than that. I get overwhelmed reading all the, you know, there's so much content out there on how to make money, how to grow your business, how to start a business. And I'm just wondering if business needs to be more complicated than coming up with ideas on how to help other people succeed. Thank you.

• 11:27Derek Sivers?

  Well, let's talk about two things. Simple versus complicated and easy versus hard. So look at running. If you talk with people who hate running, you'll hear them say, "Ugh, first you have to get your running clothes, then you get dressed, and then you gotta put on your shoes and you gotta lace them up just right. Well, then you gotta stretch and then you gotta warm up. Then afterwards you need to cool down and you need to shower. It's such a pain." But if you talk with people that love running, they'll say, "Yeah, you just pop out for a quick run." And if you ask them about the steps involved, they'll say, "There's just one. You know, you just run."

• 12:07Derek Sivers?

  So knowing that we have this human nature to think of things we like as simple and things we don't as complicated. Well, you can use this to deliberately simplify how you think of something you're avoiding, making it more appealing. So, an ultra marathon is simple. You just run 100 miles to the end. But that doesn't mean it's easy, right? So, success in business can be simple. You just find a need that people are proving they're willing to pay for and then find a profitable way to solve that need for them. But it doesn't mean it's easy. So what you have to do is notice in your mind when your complications are

• 12:50Derek Sivers?

  holding you back, and then turn the dial towards simplicity in your mind. So you just jump out the door and start running. But then notice in your results when your simplified approach might be holding you back. Right, like perhaps you're using only one tool in your toolbox and you need to learn others. And as for all the business advice out there, well, you know, if information was the answer, then we'd all be billionaires with perfect abs. So really you, and yeah, you, listening to this, most of you probably just need to shut that shit off, put your blinders on and get out the door and start running. Metaphorically speaking, that is.

• 13:32Speaker 09

  Hi, this is Tobin in Boulder, Colorado. And my question is, what should someone ask to determine their own utopia? Thanks.

• 13:40Derek Sivers?

  First, ask yourself, is this in theory or in practice? Like, have you proven from your experience that this is really what works best for you? Whatever idea you have, you have to challenge it. You need to argue against it because there are so many things that seem great in theory. Right, like, for example, say you're living in a little apartment in a noisy city. And so you think that you'd be happy if only you had a big place out in the silent country. And so you do it, you splurge, you buy a place, or you sign a year-long lease. And then you move out to the country and, uh-oh. After two months, you realize that you missed too many things about the big city.

• 14:23Derek Sivers?

  You made the wrong prediction. And it happens the other way, too, right? Like, people moving from the quiet burbs to the big city. Or somebody who's an employee that thinks they'd just be happy if they could quit their job and start their own business. And oops, doesn't always work out like that. So my recommendation is to do little tests. Like, try a few months of living the life you think you want, but leave yourself an exit plan, being open to the chance, the big chance, that you might not like it after actually trying it. The best book about this subject is Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert. His recommendation is to talk to a few people that are currently where you think you want

• 15:08Derek Sivers?

  to be, and ask them for the pros and cons, and then trust their opinions since they're right in it, not just remembering or imagining.

• 15:21Speaker 00

  This is James McGill from Sligo, Ireland, and my question is, how do you define success? And what habits or skills are most important to living a successful life? Thanks.

• 15:32Derek Sivers?

  Okay, well, first, let's define success. Ask yourself if you think Robin Williams and Philip Seymour Hoffman were successful actors. I think it's a tough call. Like, my first reaction is yes, but the more I think about it, my answer moves halfway towards no. As a different example, think of someone you know who that you'd consider be like the definition of a total loser. And now you give that person a million dollars, are they now a winner? Of course not. And that sounds like a contrived example, but a lot of fame and fortune is dropped into the lap of people who were just the right face in the right place at the right

• 16:14Derek Sivers?

  time, but are actually miserable, awful people by any definition. So the more you think it through, the more you realize that you have to define success first by your inner game, not some outside measure of money or fame, right? Mastering yourself, your mind, and your actions. But now, if you only master yourself, and you don't help anyone else, well, then we'd call you happy, but like, nobody would define you as successful. So the very definition of success must include how much you helped others. And I'll bet that if you helped thousands of people, even if you didn't ultimately

• 16:56Derek Sivers?

  profit from it, but you were personally miserable, well, we might still call you successful because you helped others, right? So the point is, if you want to be undeniably successful, you need to both master yourself and help others.

• 17:15Derek Sivers?

  Don't focus on the money or the fame. The real success is mastering your emotions and actions and actually helping lots of people. So, the definition. But now you asked, "What habits or skills are most important to living a successful life?" Well, by this definition, habits and skills. Number one, the skill and habit of managing your state and your emotional reactions and actions. Number two, knowing what people need in general and what you need in particular. Number three, people skills. How to see things from the other person's point of view and how to communicate from their point of view.

• 17:58Derek Sivers?

  And number four, the ability to focus, learn, practice, and apply what you learn. If you can do those four things, you can do anything. You can first be happy without depending on anyone or anything in particular, and then you can understand what people need, learn how to provide it, and make sure they know it.

• 18:22Tim Ferriss?

  Next up is Tony Robbins. @TonyRobbins on Twitter and elsewhere, the world's most famous performance coach. He's advised everyone from Bill Clinton to Mikhail Gorbachev to Serena Williams and Leonardo DiCaprio to Oprah, who calls him "superhuman," by the way. That's Oprah calling someone that. I love Tony's work and his personal Power 2 set, which I listened to in my POS-used minivan while I was commuting during my first job, helped me start my first company. And recently, I should say, over the last several years, I've had the chance to work with Tony, get to know him directly, and it's been an incredible experience. Tony has worked with many legendary investors, including Paul Tudor Jones, who he's coached

• 19:03Tim Ferriss?

  for more than 10 years, Ray Dalio, Carl Icahn, David Swensen, Kyle Bass, and many more. These are the hard-to-interview unicorns who consistently beat the market despite the fact that it's considered by impossible by many folks. And Tony has done a great job of, I would say, condensing the lessons he's learned from them.

• 19:23Tony Robbins?

  And some guys are like Templeton, I got to interview him multiple times before he died. It's like wait for the bloodletting. No, blood in the streets, that's what you invest, yeah. Blood in the streets, but it's like when maximum pessimism hits, that's when you make all your money. That's what he did. And then there's the guys like Bogle, which is it's the index baby. And these days even Warren Buffett, it's the index baby. So they all have their approaches, but what's in common, I think, is I'll tell you four things I saw that stood out. And one is overly simplistic, and that's why people don't pay attention to it, but these guys pay attention to it. They don't lose. Half the peak of weakening is not losing, and they are obsessed. Every single one of them is obsessed in not losing money. I mean, a level of obsession that's mind boggling. And it isn't just these investors, you know, Sir Richard Branson, for example, you know.

• 20:07Tony Robbins?

  People see Richard and he's such an outgoing playful crazy guy. He's kind of an introvert in some areas, but when it comes to athletics and taking on challenges, he's out in the world. But, you know, his first question to every business is what's the downside and how do you protect it? Right. Like when he did his piece with Virgin, I mean, that's a big risk, gonna start an airline. He went to Boeing and negotiated a deal that he could send the planes back if it didn't work out, and he wasn't liable. I mean, that's the level these guys think at. So they look to see how do I not lose money first? Because the average person has no clue, if I lose 50% in 2008, well, guess what? You gotta make 100% to get even, not 50%, because your principal's gone down somewhere. So it's like, people don't understand, you lose 60%, it's 200% to get even.

• 20:48Tony Robbins?

  And so the average person, you know, lives in a world where they try not to lose money, but they're not obsessed. These guys are obsessed. Second thing they all have in common, every single one of them is obsessed with asymmetrical risk reward, which is a big word. It simply means they're looking to use the least amount of risk to get the max amount of upside, and that's what they live for. So I'll give you an example. Paul Tudor, when I first went to do the turnaround, when Paul was having some challenging times, he'd broken his leg. You know, think about this, he did better than anybody in history of the world during the biggest stock market drop in history, literally. And then he went to the mountain, he went to the moon, now what? And so, lost a bit of the edge and, you know, got involved in other things and so forth. And now he's got a broken leg, he's not going to the office, and I gotta come in. So I had to go watch that film, that's the first thing I did.

• 21:33Tony Robbins?

  The white tennis shoes. I wanted to go see everything about him, study his physiology, the way he used to move, because this guy's not moving at all, what his face was like, how he breathed, tone of his voice, what were the physical strategies, what were the psychological strategy, or the financial strategies? I got to go, you know, to Druckenmiller and Soros, I mean, the world I got access to back then was unbelievable. See, what was he like then to put the plan together to do this turnaround? And when I started making those shifts in him, and you could see the shift happen immediately, it got really exciting, I got hooked on what was gonna happen. So, as I, I did this same process, basically, guess what, I'm thinking about two things at once, I did the same process during these interviews. I didn't just look at the trading strategies, I looked at the psychology of what set it up. But here's what I found with Paul Tudor at the very beginning, getting him back on track.

• 22:17Tony Robbins?

  When he was at his best, he made sure every single trade had what he called a five to one. That means if he was gonna risk a dollar, he wasn't about to risk it unless he was certain he was gonna make five. Now, you're not always right, so guess what? If I risk a dollar to make five and I'm wrong, I can risk another dollar and I still make four. I can be wrong four times out of five and still break even. Their secret is not that they don't, they're not wrong. It's they set themselves up where they risk small amounts for big rewards proportionally. Paul, you know, if he's right one out of three times, he still makes 20%. So, the average person risks a dollar trying to make how much? Dollar ten? That's right, about a buck ten. If I could get 10%, wow, my dollar, right? If 20% would be unbelievable. How often can you be wrong? Not very often.

• 23:03Tony Robbins?

  Not at all, right? You're in the hole, you're starting from the hole, and you gotta build back up. So, they're asymmetrical worth. Like, I was with Kyle Bass, and Kyle Bass risked, check this out. In the middle of the subprime crisis, he made $2 billion out of $30 million because he risked, for every six cents he risked, he had an upside of a dollar. Six cents for a hundred. Well, you could be wrong 15 times, and you're still okay in that area. I mean, he was brilliant to figure it out, he's a genius, figured it out, but that risk reward is why it is. He showed his kids, he taught, I said, "How do I teach this to the average investor?" And he said, "Well, you can teach them the way I taught my kids." And I said, "How'd you do that?" He goes, "We bought nickels." So what do you mean you bought nickels? He said, well, I did research. I had this question. That's another thing that all these guys do. They ask a better question. We talked about they get better answers, right?

• 23:48Tony Robbins?

  Better quality question, better quality answer. What's wrong with me? You'll come up with stuff. How do I make this happen no matter what? You'll come up with different answers. So his question was, where in the world is there a riskless trade with total upside? And he started looking around and he said, I'm worried about inflation. So he decided, well, gosh, of all the currencies in the world, a nickel, what it's made of today, it's not made mostly of nickel, by the way. He said, it's costing the US government nine and a half cents to make a nickel. That's how our government functions. I'm gonna spend almost 10 cents to make something worth half as much, right?

• 24:21Tim Ferriss?

  The Pentagon Plan.

• 24:22Tony Robbins?

  Yeah, that's right. It's the perfect plan. So he said, but you know what? Just the actual material value, right? Is 6.8, whatever it was, six, something, six and a half, I'll call it for round numbers. So he said, if I buy a nickel, it's never going less than a nickel unless you believe the US government's gone. So I've got something that never goes down in value. So I got a guaranteed return, you know, I'm not gonna lose my principal. But day one, it's worth 36% more than the day I bought it. How many investments can you have 100% guarantee of no loss and have 36%? I said, yeah, but that's smelt value. And I saw they passed a law a few years ago. I think Charlie Rangel, whoever was, was the one who pushed it through. He goes, yeah, but Tony said, that doesn't matter. He said, let me tell you why. He said, look at pennies. When they changed it from pure copper to tin and all things they've changed, what happened to the old pennies?

• 25:06Tony Robbins?

  There's a scarcity of them. And now a penny from those days is worth two cents. It's 100% more valuable. So he said, at some point, the government cannot continue to do something that costs twice as much. Some point, they'll make a change in the materials. And then all these nickels are worth an unbelievable amount. So he said, I just show my kids, here's a risk. You need to think different than everybody else. Don't think I have to take huge risks for huge rewards. Say, how do I take no risk and get huge rewards? And because you ask that question continuously and you believe in answer, you get it. So, you know, he said, listen, if I could put my, convert my entire wealth in nickels right now, is that I do it? I said, you're insane. He goes, I am insane. But it's the best possible fundamental investment. He started telling me how to do it. He bought 40 million nickels.

• 25:46Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 25:46Tony Robbins?

  He has 40 million nickels. It fills up a room bigger than this, right?

• 25:50Tim Ferriss?

  Better be on the ground floor.

• 25:51Tony Robbins?

  And he had his kids dragging him in and they're all laughing, having fun, I mean, this like their little treasure.

• 25:55Tim Ferriss?

  So he can legitimately do like the Scrooge McDuck backstroke. You're a pool full of nickels.

• 26:00Tony Robbins?

  For real, nickels. So that's Ace of Mexican War. I'll give you one more and I'll shut the hell up.

• 26:05Tim Ferriss?

  No, no, no.

• 26:05Tony Robbins?

  You're asking me, you're telling me the differences. I want you to know there are differences. We can spend hours and hours on the differences, but what I think is useful is what's aligned, because then it gives something universal that can be applied.

• 26:15Tim Ferriss?

  Absolutely.

• 26:16Tony Robbins?

  The other one for them is they absolutely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, know they're going to be wrong. You will look at these talking heads on television and people screaming you and hitting bells and telling you what to buy and they're right, right, right. The best on earth, the Ray Dalio's, right, the Pebbles, the, you know, I don't give a who you're talking about. You want to look at Carl Icahn, they all know they're going to be wrong. So they set up an asset allocation system that will make them successful. They all agree asset allocation is the single most important investment. There wasn't one person in terms of your vehicle, but it wasn't the most important thing, no matter how they attacked it. Asset allocation was the element there. And the last one is they are lifelong learners. I mean, these people are machines, like you, like me, like Peter, like most of the people you and I share as friends, they just are obsessed with knowing more.

• 27:00Tony Robbins?

  Because the more they know, the more they realize what they didn't know, and then they apply that and they go to another level. And every time you think you're the best you can be in anything in life, your body, your motion, your spirit, your finances, there's always another level. And these guys live by it. And the last one that I found, almost all of them were real givers. Not just givers on the surface, like money givers, that's wonderful, but really passionate about giving. And it showed up once they saw what I was doing was legitimate and was really real. I mean, then they're opening up three hours of their time with something that maybe these guys will never give.

• 27:30Tim Ferriss?

  I think it was Dalio who said something along the lines of like losers react, winners anticipate.

• 27:36Tony Robbins?

  It's actually me, but that's okay.

• 27:37Tim Ferriss?

  It's you.

• 27:38Tony Robbins?

  I'll give it to Ray Dalio.

• 27:39Tim Ferriss?

  Take that as a compliment. No, but the point being that the, and I guess Mark Twain quote is also in there, which was what history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.

• 27:50Tony Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 27:51Tim Ferriss?

  So there are going to be crashes. There are going to be black swan events. And you want to have a plan in place for when that happens.

• 27:59Tony Robbins?

  Exactly right.

• 28:00Tim Ferriss?

  And

• 28:00Tony Robbins?

  Ray Dalio actually said something in there that stuck with me brutally. He said, I don't care what it is that you think you're great at investing in, or you like. Most people invest in what they like, real estate or stocks. Or what they think they're good at, or what they've raised with. He said, whatever asset class you invest in, I promise you in your lifetime, it will drop no less than fifty and more likely seventy percent at some point. And he said, that is why you absolutely must diversify. Cause you're saying, but I can make so much more in this side. You know, I've had people throughout the years, I teach this bucket theory. This idea that if you want to do is make asset allocation simple, it sounds like such a big word. Yeah. It's just buckets. Some of my money is going to go in a secure bucket.

• 28:40Tony Robbins?

  That bucket is like a church people, I'm gonna, it's not going away. It's very secure type investments. Its upside is not gigantic in terms of speed, but you know what? It, the compounding process, if you give it enough time, those low returns are giant returns still, but you're not gonna lose. And then there's this bucket called, what most people call growth bucket, I call it risk growth, because it's really risk first. Yeah. And on that, I'm taking bigger risks for potentially greater rewards. And now the question is, how do I balance these? Am I sixty forty, fifty fifty, eighty twenty? And that's designed really by three things. Number one, what's your real risk tolerance, not what you think it is. Yeah, and they're never the same. They're never the same. You know, I do, I do these wealth mastery programs in a few years and invariably I'll do some crazy thing like I'll say, every stand up, make change. They look at me, I go, make change.

• 29:25Tony Robbins?

  And they start reaching their pockets and making change. And so somebody will pull out five bucks and ten bucks and somebody pull out a hundred dollars and they'll, someone will come up and they'll take it and give them five bucks. And they're like, you know, they don't know how to react. So this goes on for three or four minutes, some music's going on, I go, okay, stop, right, sit down. And then they go on like I'm talking about something else. And invariably, somebody's like, hey, wait a second, I want my, I want my hundred dollars back. So what are you talking about? They said, I want my hundred dollars back. The game's over. I said, what did you, what did you think the game was over? Did you think the game had ever gone over? Right? And who said it was your hundred dollars? Yeah. Right? And it's like, they, it takes a while where they finally get, you know, I'm stressed about a hundred dollars. What do you think is gonna happen when you lose a million or half a million or a hundred thousand or ten grand?

• 30:06Tony Robbins?

  I mean, your risk tolerance is not what you think it is. So when you find out what your risk tolerance is, and we got great ways to do that in the book. And then you figure out, really, how much time do you have? If you're younger, you got more time to make mistakes and so you can take bigger risks. You know, you got timeline on your part, this part. And then the next piece is how much is your cash flow? What's, what's gonna be the real flow? If you look at those three things, now you can decide how much goes in my secure bucket, how much goes in my growth. And if you don't make that decision, it's the most important investment decision of your life, according to everybody I interviewed, like what percentage secure, what percentage growth and risk? Then when things come up, you're always going to go for the growth risks. It looks so sexy and exciting. And I can't tell you how many people over the years have done this. They're telling me, why would I put money over here when I've got this real estate? I'm making 120%. I have a friend that built some of the first big condos in Vegas back in the boom time.

• 30:51Tony Robbins?

  And he, he actually went to my programs, sold the business he had, made $200 million, invested in these condos, started building the panorama towers and places of that nature. And he was up to like three quarters of a billion. I kept saying to him, dude, take some of your growth money and put it in the secure bucket, right? And how many times I told you this? It was tone, I love you. I made $200 million because you, but now, you know, I'm really like, what I touch goes in the gold. I'm listening to his ego and I'm going, I love your brother. But I said, you know how many times I have this conversation? And then guess what happens in 2008? How much you thinking about? He was worth three quarters of a billion dollars. He'd grown that rapidly in those short years. What do you think happened to his net worth?

• 31:30Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I'm guessing it went down according to the Ray Dalio prediction.

• 31:33Tony Robbins?

  How about minus 400 million?

• 31:35Tim Ferriss?

  Oh.

• 31:36Tony Robbins?

  He didn't just lose what he had, he lost everything at and beyond. So then he's trying to negotiate.

• 31:41Tim Ferriss?

  So he was leveraged.

• 31:42Tony Robbins?

  He was leveraged out, right? Riped himself out. So most people don't put enough in the security bucket is the lesson. And a guy like Dalio provides you a strategy that's got great sustainability, but there are many approaches in the book. But you do have to decide how much is secure, how much is growth? And I show you how to do that.

• 32:00Tim Ferriss?

  Chris Sacca, at Sacca, S A C C A, was once the cover story of the Midas issue of Forbes magazine. And I've known him for some time. But that's what happens when you are, for instance, an early stage investor in companies like Twitter, Uber, Instagram, Kickstarter, and many more. Chris is the, the name, the face behind what will most certainly be the most successful venture capital fund of all time, lowercase one. Here are a few thoughts on success that I've found fascinating.

• 32:32Tim Ferriss?

  What are the commonalities, or are there commonalities, when you look across these founders for whom success and massive scale just seems predestined? What are the commonalities?

• 32:43Chris Sacca?

  Well, I think something, so we'll take Ev and Travis as examples, but across our most successful founders, you know, let's use a Matt Mullenweg WordPress. That's a billion dollar company now, billion plus. These guys are all incredible, incredible listeners. So when they do open their mouths, it can be bombastic and offensive and aggressive and in your face, but they're all incredible listeners. And I don't just mean in casual conversation. I mean, these guys go out of their way to interview other people. They really, if you catch Ev, he's got a notebook always, and if you ask him to see the first, you know, last few pages of the notebook, he's just meeting with other people

• 33:26Chris Sacca?

  who's billionaires and kind of leaders whose jobs might not overlap with his at all, but from whom he's learning. Voracious reader. Part of why Medium started was he was really back deep into long-form content when he took a break from Twitter. And so that guy is just constantly learning, studying, studying. And so when he speaks, it matters, but he's listening more than he speaks. You know that about Mullenweg, one of the most thoughtful people. I've never seen anyone read as many books as that guy does and retain all the knowledge.

• 33:58Tim Ferriss?

  He's prolific. And he also, I mean, he listens to anyone that he's sitting down with. Doesn't matter if it's, you know, the waitress or a primary school teacher. We've done a lot of traveling together. He was on the podcast also. Very good listener.

• 34:12Chris Sacca?

  Yeah. And so, and again, you just look across the board, these guys are learning, they're modeling, they're constantly researching, they're gathering data. Travis would think it a competitive disadvantage for you to know exactly what's going on in his head sometimes, so he'll listen. And it's an amazing talent, I think, is a commonality across those people.

• 34:34Tim Ferriss?

  With the investing game that you've obviously been a participant in for quite a while now...

• 34:43Tim Ferriss?

  You have to say no a lot. And I was, you know, took a close look at poker in the last year with the TV show. And there were a couple of quotes that came up quite a bit along the lines of, you know, I made my money sitting, not playing hands. And but, but that having been said, what are some of the deals, the whales that got away?

• 35:05Chris Sacca?

  Yeah, so first of all, I mean, this is a rigged game, right? And, and I'm just looking to make it even more rigged. So for those who don't know, venture capital, I mean, it's totally unfair. People give me their money. I draw a management fee off it, so they pay me to take their money and invest it for them. If I make money, then I pay them back the management fee. And then after that, we split the profits and I get a really big chunk of the profits. And if I lose money, that's fine. It doesn't come out of my pocket. I keep my fee and my investors lose money. That's how this industry works. That's bananas, right? And at some point, it's going to break because it's a...

• 35:46Tim Ferriss?

  You've also incepted me with the term bananas, which I've started using compulsively. Mazzio also has done the same thing. He works with Chris.

• 35:53Chris Sacca?

  Yeah, it's, it's just an unforgivably unfair rigged game that's in favor of the venture capitalists. And so, so that the reality is the risk of an investor doesn't begin to compare to the risk of a founder. And so, you know, that's one thing that kind of drives me crazy sometimes about some investors. And I love the entrepreneurial spirit that goes into building a firm. I mean, I built my firm from scratch and there's certainly founder type lessons in there. But, but your cash will positive from day one when you start a venture fund. And your, your downside is incredibly limited by the structure of the fund.

• 36:32Chris Sacca?

  So, so that said, what it allows me to do is place some bets on some stuff that I, I'd like to think success is inevitable, those things. But I can take, I can look at the risk analysis and say, okay, this is a binary outcome of one or a zero. And some of those things just don't get there. You know, one of my...

• 36:53Chris Sacca?

  One of my kind of constant recurring nightmares is about the stuff I passed on.

• 36:57Tim Ferriss?

  No, that's, yeah, exactly. That's what I was, that's what I was trying to ask.

• 37:00Chris Sacca?

  You know, I've done some deals where I thought it was going to be a lot bigger and it, you know, it ends up going away. But, so the Dropbox guys, I met those guys very early on while they're still in my Combinator. I got an early look, you know, had an opportunity to do the deal and I pulled those guys aside and I was like, hey, look, at Google, we were using a version of this called Platypus, you know, which became G Drive. And they're going to crush you guys, man. So you should probably find some other product to pivot to. That probably cost me hundreds of millions of dollars. The

• 37:32Tim Ferriss?

  Did they give you a pat on the head and walk away?

• 37:34Chris Sacca?

  No, I mean, it's, when I see Drew, the CEO of Dropbox, I bring it up before he can. That's, this is my defense. Yeah, I just get, I get it out there right away. The Airbnb guys at Y Combinator, same thing.

• 37:48Tim Ferriss?

  Incredible business.

• 37:49Chris Sacca?

  An amazing business. They want to be proud of too. I mean, that's, I'm, I'm really jealous. I'm not in that business. Not just for the money, but I love what they do. I'm really, admire them a lot and their culture. But at the time, they were, they were allowing you to rent out a room in somebody's house while the owner was still there. And that just seemed really scary to me. And I pulled the guys aside and I was just like, guys, you know, somebody's going to get raped or murdered in one of these houses and the blood is going to be on your hands. I literally said that out loud to them. And what's that worth? Like 15 or 20 billion now?

• 38:21Tim Ferriss?

  Now, in fairness, you, you're probably not wrong, right? I mean, at a certain scale.

• 38:24Chris Sacca?

  At scale, it has to happen.

• 38:25Tim Ferriss?

  Something's going to happen.

• 38:26Chris Sacca?

  Yeah. I mean, I like to say sometimes, like, when you think about scale, like, someone who works at Walmart murdered someone last night.

• 38:33Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 38:33Chris Sacca?

  There's just no doubt about it. At that scale, with a few million employees, one of them murdered somebody last night.

• 38:39Tim Ferriss?

  You have to look at it like Edward Norton in Fight Club, like an actuarial analysis for insurance. Which is terrifying, but that's the reality of big numbers. But

• 38:50Chris Sacca?

  But there's a, I'll tell you, so there's one other famous one. There's a bunch of these, but actually I'll give you two. Nick, because I wasn't reminded of this until recently, Nick Woodman from GoPro came to Google. Now, I wasn't an investor at the time, but I did a lot of Google's investments and partnerships. And so Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, said, hey, will you come in here and sit with this pitch? He's a friend of a friend, said, we got to meet this guy. So Woodman comes in with GoPro. And Eric's like, I don't know. And I was like, we'd be foolish to do this deal. How is this guy from Santa Cruz going to compete with all these Asians and building hardware? You can't hold a candle to the Taiwanese and the Koreans. It was like, no dice, man. Let this guy go. And I think I introduced him to somebody over YouTube just as a consolation.

• 39:35Chris Sacca?

  I saw that dude this winter skiing. He's worth like $3 or $4 billion now. And he didn't forget that meeting. So, and then the Snapchat guys, I gave a talk in LA and they came up to me. I never met them before. They came up after the talk and said, we're big fans. We'd really like to work with you. And I was like, eh, sure. I mean, I know you guys are up to something cool. I admire it. I took like eight weeks to set up the meeting. And by then, the benchmark guys had done that deal. That's again, oh my God, I can't imagine how much money we've left on the table as a result of that. So, you know, I like to say when I'm wrong, I'm wrong. When I'm right, I'm really, really right.

• 40:17Tim Ferriss?

  Ray Dalio, @reydalio on Twitter, is one of the 100 most influential people in the world, according to Time, and one of the 100 wealthiest people in the world, according to Forbes. Because of his unique investment principles that have changed industries, CIO Magazine dubbed him, quote, "the Steve Jobs of investing," end quote. Ray believes his success is the result of principles he's learned, codified and applied to his life and business. Those principles are detailed in his book, aptly titled Principles. And he included some of his wisdom in our interview.

• 40:49Tim Ferriss?

  If we flashback to when you first began Bridgewater Associates, so out of your two-bedroom apartment at 26 years old, do you recall any of your first big wins or things that you considered big wins at the time? And I'd love to just hear you describe what made those a big win? In other words, the thinking behind it.

• 41:15Speaker 06

  The funny thing is, I can hardly ever remember my big wins. I do remember my big losses or my big mistakes.

• 41:25Tim Ferriss?

  We can talk about those too.

• 41:26Speaker 06

  It's so funny because, you know, I look at it and I said, "Well, I guess I must have had a bunch of wins or successes because of, you know, how things have went. You know, the business is good and done well and all of that. But like I think of my history and I really think of those mistakes. And I think that's so great because it shows that that's a much better learning tool. But, okay, so my big wins. You know, no, I think about that at that time. I think, no, the things I remember were the fun things.

• 42:09Speaker 06

  A guy, you know, guys I played rugby with and parties and those kinds of things. I don't remember a particularly big winning. Well, I do remember some things. You know, I remember one time when we got the Kodak account. Again, I was, you know, in a position it's, "Okay, here's a guy and he's analyzing the markets and then he has a small team of people and he's analyzing the markets." And so I didn't have a long track record and I didn't have an institution and, you know, sort of competing with the big institutions of the world, the JP Morgans and everybody.

• 42:52Speaker 06

  And by the way, we beat them. But anyway.

• 42:58Speaker 06

  Which shows that the individuals, the powers within the individual. But anyway, I remember when we got the Kodak account. Um, because at the time Kodak was, um, you know, a big, important client. And them giving us that account was a big deal for us because it was kind of a stamp of institutional, um, approval. And it was, oh, I remember, you know, the money mattered too, because we would know that we were a bit more financially secure. So I remember that as a big win and I remember it so terrifically because we were asked to submit, um, research information.

• 43:39Speaker 06

  And we were just a small team of people and, you know, we stayed up all night and with, you know, pizza and beer and all of that. And, um, I remember it so sweetly because it was the dream of making our miracle happen. And we, and the pulling together, that's the meaningful relationships part. I believe that I want meaningful work and meaningful relationships. And so that was what that was about and we got the account and we won and that was, you know, that was a big deal.

• 44:15Tim Ferriss?

  Why did you guys win?

• 44:16Speaker 06

  I think it's a combination of, of being, you know, totally unconventional and having better processes. And then there's a hell of a lot of determination. I think three things make up a successful life by and large. First, you have to have audacious goals, big dreams.

• 44:39Speaker 06

  Then when you are headed toward those goals, you're going to have problems. You're going to deal with reality. You have to deal with those problems and that reality realistically, learning from mistakes.

• 44:57Speaker 06

  Writing down those principles and the like. So that's the second part. Dealing with reality in a practical way where you learn about mistakes. And then the third is determination. Because if you're going for your goals and you're encountering your mistakes and you're learning and you do that with determination, you're going to get better all the time. You can't help but get better. And you do that a long enough amount of time and you're going to far exceed your dreams. My success has far succeeded what I ever imagined, you know, one bit at a time. And it's just that process.

• 45:39Tim Ferriss?

  If you were to conversely look at intelligent people who are unhappy, what do you think the primary causes of that unhappiness are?

• 45:50Speaker 06

  I think it goes back to this notion of meaningful work and meaningful relationships. Intelligence and happiness probably have no correlation with each other. In studies, it's repeatedly been shown and money is very little correlated with happiness. The highest correlation with happiness is community. Am I part of a community? Do I feel connections with other people? That's been, you know, literally genetically programmed into us from, it's estimated between a million and two million years ago before it was, we were even mankind.

• 46:30Speaker 06

  So that sense of meaningful relationships, I think, is very, very important. And if you have meaningful work, like you're on a mission and you have meaningful relationships. I think it's almost impossible not to be happy. I mean, there'll be unhappy moments in your life that you encounter this thing or that. But the people who are unhappy seem to be missing those things.

• 47:02Tim Ferriss?

  Last but certainly not least, we have Sir Richard Branson, @RichardBranson on Twitter and everywhere else, founder and chairman of The Virgin Group, a world famous entrepreneur, adventurer, activist, and business icon. He has launched a dozen billion-dollar businesses and hundreds of other companies. I loved our conversation and highly recommend you check it out, of course, listen to the whole thing, but here are a few highlights you might find valuable.

• 47:28Tim Ferriss?

  You strike me as a really good negotiator. By necessity, you'd have to be. If you had, say, a would-be entrepreneur or a university senior, someone who's about to graduate and go into the real world, and you wanted... They tell you that they want to become a very good negotiator, a very good dealmaker. How would you train them, or what would you recommend they do or read to become a better negotiator or dealmaker? Because you seem very, very astute and subtle and structuring things in very smart ways. What would you say to someone who wants to develop that skillset?

• 48:06Richard Branson?

  I'm sure that there must be ways of being taught it, but in my opinion, nothing beats personal experience. My education was being thrown into the jungle, being thrown into the real world, aged 15 or 16, and having to survive. And it was an incredible education. I learned about everything in life. I'd traveled a lot. I'd met people all over the world. I had to do a lot of different negotiations. I think as I got older, I've realized that one of the most important things about a negotiation is striking a deal that is fair

• 48:49Richard Branson?

  to both sides. I also realized as I get older that you're always going to come across the same people time and time again in life. And so, your reputation is everything. In my new book, Finding My Virginity, I talk about our dealings with Delta and how they felt that they'd... Legged us over in a clause in a contract and how they came to us to rectify it. And that's something I'll never forget and most likely will be partners with Delta for the rest of my life because of that, that kind of approach. And so I think if you realize that your reputation is all you have and your personal

• 49:31Richard Branson?

  reputation, the reputation of your brand, then you've got to make sure that you're negotiating a deal that you're not going to be unhappy with and that, and you think of all the things that could potentially go wrong and how you can get out of it if something goes wrong, but equally important is trying to strike a fair balance with the people you're negotiating with.

• 49:54Tim Ferriss?

  And when we're looking internally, you mentioned how your teammates at the record company thought you were crazy when you brought up the airline. Are there any business ideas that you're glad your coworkers or team have prevented you from doing?

• 50:10Richard Branson?

  As you know, my nickname is Dr. Yes. And I have books like Screw It, Just Do It. I think, to be honest, if I want to do something, one of the advantages of owning the company is I can normally ultimately get away with it. I mean, I'll try obviously to carry people with me, but and I'm sure there've been one or two things where I have bullied the process through where I've regretted, well, not regretted, I've never regretted anything, but where perhaps I should have listened more to others. But I can't think of anything where they persuaded me not to do it. I think most likely, when it comes to a decision about whether to do something or not, I'd like to think of myself as a benevolent dictator.

• 50:57Richard Branson?

  I get that. That's the one thing I sort of generally get my own way on. We would never have gone into space travel. We'll come to that, I'm sure, later on in this talk, unless I was to do things against the sensible, what would, on paper, be sensible advice of my fellow directors.

• 51:17Tim Ferriss?

  We will definitely get to space travel. What I'm curious about, because it seems if I look at many of the businesses that you've started, the positioning is often against a particular incumbent. In the case of, say, airlines, for instance, that seems to be a common element in a lot of the company or product launches. And I want to connect that with just some of your well-known adventures. And you'll see where this is going in a second. I mean, you've driven a tank down Fifth Avenue, crossed the English Channel in an amphibious car, took a 407-foot jump off the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas, gone from Morocco to Hawaii in a hot air balloon.

• 51:58Tim Ferriss?

  You are very, very adept at PR stunts, getting attention for the things that you do and the companies that you do. Are there any particular best practices or a playbook that you have found to be very, or principles for that matter, helpful with the launching of a new company or product?

• 52:22Richard Branson?

  I don't think so. I mean, I'm a great believer in trying, if your team work really hard to launch a new business with you or for you, the least I think I can do is make a fool of myself, make sure that that new business ends up on the front page of the newspapers rather than an anecdote on the page of the newspapers. So if that means having to use myself to put the new company on the map, I will do so. And I will try to do it in a way that makes people smile and that doesn't horribly backfire on me. Occasionally, it has backfired. And I suppose it's like being a host to a party. I mean, if you're the host of the party, if you stand in the corner of the room and

• 53:04Richard Branson?

  you sip your sherry and stand around with your fellow directors all in suits, everyone's going to have a thoroughly dull party. And yeah, nobody will have a good time. If you're the host of the party and you're first in the swimming pool and everybody else jump in too, yeah, they may be a bit cold for the rest of the evening, but they're going to have a great evening. And I think the same applies when you're launching a business. Make sure that you put it on the map and just occasionally it will backfire.

• 53:38Tim Ferriss?

  You mentioned space travel, which I do want to use as a touching off point to ask you, roughly 50 years after starting your first business, why, why write Finding My Virginity? What was the catalyst for that? Why do it?

• 53:54Richard Branson?

  I actually think everybody should write a book about their lives. I persuaded a number of people to write books about their lives, Steve Prosser, for instance, anyway, and a number of people. But you know, you don't have to led a very public life. I think everyone's led interesting lives. Your children and your grandchildren will be fascinated by the lives, the lives you lead. And so I wrote a book, Losing My Virginity, when I was a young man, about all the adventures. You know, it became a bestseller and sold millions of copies. But you know, I was, I was quite a young man when I wrote it. And

• 54:35Richard Branson?

  the last 20 years or so, I've been very full and very rich and extraordinary. So, so I thought I would write, in a sense, a sequel to Losing My Virginity, which, which we called Finding My Virginity. And if I live another 20 years, a virginity found, I suspect, will be my last. But we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll see how we go. But no, but I think, you know, I think it's important. I love reading, reading and learning. And I think others might enjoy, hopefully will enjoy it. And you know, when I write books, I try to, I try not to make them like a, you know, and then, and then we did this, and then we did that. Just try

• 55:17Richard Branson?

  to make it a really good gripping read and, and an enjoyable read. And, and not try to sort of cram in everything one's done in 20 years. But, and hopefully people can get a few gems from it as well.

• 55:29Tim Ferriss?

  What is the book or books you've given most as a gift? And why? Outside, outside of your own book, are there any particular books that you've given or recommended to others the most?

• 55:43Richard Branson?

  Well, climate change is something which I've, I've spent a lot of time on. I would highly recommend a book by Tim Flannery called The Weathermakers, which was one of the books that opened my eyes to the problems that we have in the world. I'm just reading Homo Deus, which I find is, and I will carry on to read Sapiens, his first book, or one of his first books, and I just love, you know, love the style of his writing and, you know, I love books where you're learning, you're learning something from them and rather than, if I want to, if I want fiction, I'll get a good film out. So if I'm, if I'm reading books, I like to read books which have got some substance.

• 56:28Richard Branson?

  I love.

• 56:29Tim Ferriss?

  In the last, let's just call it five years or so, what new belief, behavior, or habit has most improved your life, or what, what habit has improved your life? Could be any new belief, behavior, or habit that has markedly improved your life.

• 56:44Richard Branson?

  If we could go back a bit further than the last five years, I think.

• 56:48Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah, we can, no, we can go back, we can go back as far as you like, absolutely.

• 56:51Richard Branson?

  One of the, one of the best things my parents taught me, going back a long way, if I ever said anything ill about anybody, they would sit me in front of the mirror and for 10 minutes and in order to sort of let me know how badly it reflected on me. So, you know, I like to think I've never, generally, never spoken ill about other people. And I think that's been one of the, one of the, you know, best bits of advice that I've ever given, sorry, I've ever received or, and obviously then given. Archbishop Tutu, who chaired the elders, which is an organization that we've run for, for 10 years now, you know, he was the epitome of forgiveness with the Truth and Reconciliation

• 57:36Richard Branson?

  Commission in South Africa, when Nelson Mandela, you know, took over PA. And, you know, I think just, you know, people, nations, you know, should try, we should all try to run based on that philosophy. And I think the world would be a happier place if that, if that happened.

• 57:55Tim Ferriss?

  You, you mentioned Nelson Mandela, this is clearly not one of my stock rapid fire questions, but I've, I've heard you refer to Nelson as a mentor. Are there any key lessons or takeaways or memorable sentences or anything that come to mind when you think of your interactions with Nelson Mandela?

• 58:17Richard Branson?

  Well, you know, I was lucky enough to get to know him very well over the years, even to the extent that on July the 18th, we shared a birthday and he would ring me every single birthday to wish me a happy birthday. And, you know, I remember, yeah, the sadness when I didn't get that call not so many years ago. You know, he had an absolute joy for life and, you know, he would dance, he would smile, he would embrace everybody. But he had a tough side to him as well. And I remember one lunch I had with him early on in our relationship where, you know, I'd been warned that he was always trying to extract money for good causes. So, you know, we had the first course, then

• 59:01Richard Branson?

  we had the second course, then we had the pudding and we were on to the coffee and I thought, my God, I put away with it. And then, and then he turns to me and says, ah, Richard, last week I had lunch with Bill Gates and he gave me $50 million for such and such a course. And anyway, so he did not miss an opportunity. Yeah, I mean, I've not, apart from maybe Archbishop Tutu, I've really never met, I haven't met anybody as extraordinary in my lifetime this thing.

• 59:34Tim Ferriss?

  Well, there you have it, folks. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Tim Ferriss Radio Hour, focusing on success and more importantly, the prerequisites, some of the ingredients that lead to success. And very often, it's by focusing on the mindsets and the approaches and the tools that leads you to success as opposed to chasing the specter that you might call success. These Radio Hour episodes continue to be an experiment, so I always appreciate your feedback. Let me know what you did like, let me know what you didn't like, how we can improve it, or other topics, or themes that you'd like me to cover. So please let me know on Twitter, at T Ferriss, T F E R R I S S. And until next time, thank you so much for listening.

• 1:00:20Tim 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.

• 1:01:03Tim 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.

• 1:01:23Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by 99designs. I've used 99designs for ages, since even before podcasting was a thing. And I've used them for all sorts of graphic design needs. They are fast and they are convenient. Whether you need a logo, website, book cover, or anything else. I've done competitions, for instance, for book covers related to the Four Hour Body. 99designs makes great design accessible to everyone and it makes the process so much easier. And I used them recently for artwork and illustrations inside of my Tao of Seneca set of books. So this is a collection of Stoic writing and modern interviews and so on. So for the Tao of Seneca, I decided to use their one-to-one project service.

• 1:02:08Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:02:53Tim Ferriss?

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