Tim Ferriss: Why You Should Stop Over-Optimizing Your Life
Tim Ferriss on Lifestyle, Podcasting, and Naval - April 22, 2024 (12 months ago) • 01:10:00
Transcript:
| Start Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
Shaan Puri | By the way, where's the camera? This episode is not for you.
| |
Shaan Puri | This episode is for me. I haven't listened to this guy for a long time. I read his books. I used to gift your book; it was one of the most gifted books I had for a long time, maybe the first 10 years of...
| |
Tim Ferriss | My career. | |
Shaan Puri | And I would say you're about to... I'm giving you the "4-Hour Fever." They're like, it's called the "4-Hour Work Week."
| |
Tim Ferriss | I said.
| |
Shaan Puri | You're going to read this, and then for four hours, you're going to question everything in your life. I called it the "four-hour fever." It's normal, don't worry. Call a doctor if it lasts beyond four hours.
So today, I have a bunch of things that I think maybe the audience will know. Honestly, I don't give a shit; I just wanted to ask you the questions I want to know. | |
Tim Ferriss | **I think that's the key to a good podcast.**
| |
Shaan Puri | Exactly. So, one of the things I wanted to know is, you talked about this space where you're like, "I'm thinking about what's next." I've been there. I sold my company, and now I'm wondering, "What's next?" I have a lot of friends that are in that spot.
What's the approach? Because it can be paralyzing to have a thousand options, especially when you have a track record. You have a track record of success, and that almost adds some difficulty to the answer of "What's next?" because it's got to be good. It can't be something tiny.
So, how does Tim Ferriss approach the "What's next?" question?
| |
Tim Ferriss | I think it can be tiny in a sense, right? I mean, let's just... I'll answer your question, but let's just note that the podcast started as "I'm gonna try to do 6 episodes." That's tiny.
| |
Shaan Puri | So, did this podcast... well, yeah, this is a tiny.
| |
Tim Ferriss | So, I think that to quote Seth Godin, who is really wise beyond what people would expect, he walks the walk. He’s a real operator who has authored an unorthodox life for himself, and I have a lot of respect for Seth.
You know, he said, "Big things, the big dreams, changing the world—those are easy to hide behind." He’s like, "But doing the smallest thing possible, the next action, you can't hide behind them." Right? It's a pass-fail situation.
| |
Shaan Puri | That again? So, big dreams are easy to hide behind.
| |
Tim Ferriss | Yeah, but when you make something small...
| |
Shaan Puri | Next, I do six.
| |
Tim Ferriss | Episodes if | |
Shaan Puri | You don't.
| |
Tim Ferriss | Do six episodes.
| |
Shaan Puri | You failed to do 6 episodes.
| |
Tim Ferriss | But it's like, "I'm gonna change the world and do this," and blah blah blah, great. But, you know, not to quote everybody in the world, but like kind of David Allen's GTD [Getting Things Done] salad.
Okay, great. What's the next physical action? Right?
Okay, now you have a report card that I can give you because you've just made yourself accountable to me in a way to do this thing that is very discreet.
So, I don't underestimate the small things. I think the big visions can be helpful at times, and I could give examples of that where it's been helpful for me.
But to answer your question in terms of choosing the next thing, I'll say up front, I don't know what my next thing is right now. But how do you...?
| |
Shaan Puri | Approach that. | |
Tim Ferriss | How do you approach... well, there are a few ways.
So the first is I make, I suppose, a menu of things I would like to try.
| |
Shaan Puri | Okay.
| |
Tim Ferriss | Which is often a thing: a list of things I would like to learn. I just returned from three days overseas with a game designer, prototyping games. | |
Shaan Puri | Nice. | |
Tim Ferriss | And board games or... | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, yeah. Sweet. | |
Tim Ferriss | And that's something I'm trying. We'll see. There's a lot that goes into even choosing the things on that list, but...
| |
Shaan Puri | And do you have a box on the menu? Like the part of the menu where it's like, "Yeah, we have sea urchin." Do you have the weird box where you're like, "Let me think of some non-obvious options?" | |
Tim Ferriss | Oh, I try to do this.
| |
Shaan Puri | Stuff, right? | |
Tim Ferriss | No, no, because there are tons of stuff that I could do that would be straightforward, predictable, or reliably profitable. That's the most seductive, right? I'm not saying they're bad options, but like, I could make a course. Yeah, I could. I know I could execute that and make it do really well, right? I know that I could potentially create some type of membership platform or mastermind or something like that, and I think I would enjoy some of these things.
However, let me come back to the criteria. So, whether I'm coming up with my list, I go for weird. If there's something weird, that is a huge plus. Kind of, yeah, that's like a turbo boost for inclusion, right?
| |
Shaan Puri | You're. | |
Tim Ferriss | Not bending to the social expectations or norms, right? Those are the weird things. That's why they seem weird.
Chances are, if those end up on your list, either they're easier for you than they are for other people, or you're going to have the enthusiasm and therefore endurance to do it longer, right? Harder, more intensely, with greater purpose than other people.
Those are all huge competitive advantages. Not that all of life is a competition, but to stand out in a crowd, right? You need to...
| |
Shaan Puri | Weird ones are like the immigrants. It's like, you got here. If you made it here, you already have shown some amount of... there must be some strength that got you onto this list.
| |
Tim Ferriss | Oh, totally.
| |
Shaan Puri | Because you had a negative filter associated with it. Yeah, yeah.
| |
Tim Ferriss | Or you just come from better, like, more resilient or risk-taking genetic stock, right? Yeah, if I could invest in, like, first or second generation immigrants... if I could just choose a... I could... if I could only choose certain filters, that would be.
| |
Shaan Puri | I have a very high opinion of Mormons. I love them! If you're from Ukraine, I'm listening. If your name is Dimitri, I love that too! Tell me more. What's your idea? Come closer. | |
Tim Ferriss | Yeah, so the short synopsis of how I choose projects is I look for projects that can be successes for me long term, even if they fail short term.
What that means is projects where, by any external measurement or perception, they can be a failure. However, in the process of pursuing those things, I develop or deepen relationships or develop or deepen skills that are durable. Right? And those then...
| |
Shaan Puri | Even if snowballs... something like that.
| |
Tim Ferriss | Those snowball, right? So if I do like 5 or 4 projects and they all fail, I am developing relationships with the type of people I want to develop relationships with. I'm developing new skills, and then I start to bridge all those things. I'm paying attention, I'm taking good notes.
My experience is, eventually, you win, right? Whatever that happens to be, that's kind of it. Honestly, outside of that, I would say these days, I'm getting old as... well, you know. It's all about energy and energy out. Like, does this give me more energy doing this, or do I have substantially less?
| |
Shaan Puri | Right.
| |
Tim Ferriss | And that's a product. It's not just about what you're doing, where you are, or who you're interacting with. I pay attention to that stuff because I could do something that people might see as frivolous, like archery. I could pick a whole ton of activities that seem like a waste of time, but that's like plugging my iPhone into the wall.
It's like, "Oh, now I have a 100% charge instead of a 20% charge." There's a lot more that I can do with this phone, right? Just because I plugged it into the charger in the circus funhouse doesn't mean I have to use it for the circus funhouse.
You get to transfer it to other things. So that's also something, as a fundamental currency, that I pay a lot of attention to.
| |
Shaan Puri | I'll tell you two related things. Last night, I was at dinner with a mutual friend, Joe Gebbia, the founder of Airbnb. He was saying, "Oh, what are you in town for?" I replied, "Oh, I'll do a couple of podcasts." We were talking about it, and he asked, "Okay, so what's a win? Why do you do that? You fly into town, you leave your kids, you make an effort. What are you looking for out of these?"
I said, "Well, I just want to leave with more energy than I came with. Really, I want the guest to feel that way too. At the end of the day, the only way I can guarantee success out of this is if you walk out of here feeling energized rather than drained from this conversation." I've been using that heuristic, and it's so powerful to consider, "Where's my energy after an activity, and how am I leaving the people around me?"
Also, I wanted it to be mutually beneficial in that way. The second thing he said, which I thought you'd find interesting, was about an exercise I do called the "Perfect Tuesday." I mentioned that life is not really about these peak experiences. Yes, there are moments like going to see a total eclipse, which is apparently a totally emotional experience if you're there. I think it's happening in Dallas this weekend or whatever. But those moments are few and far between. Most of your life is just normal Tuesdays, over and over again.
So, I put a lot of effort into thinking about what a dream average day looks like for me and then try to live that dream. We were talking about it, and I asked him, "How close are you to your Perfect Tuesday?" He has all the resources in the world; he sold Airbnb, they went public, it's a super success. One of the things he said was, "That's a great question. I go to the gym for my physical fulfillment, and then I work, which is great. I feel productive and useful to the world, and I have my family, which is love."
However, he said, "I don't really make time for creativity anymore." He's a designer by trade, and he mentioned, "I would need a creative gym. I feel like if I sat down and started sketching, it almost feels like I'm wasting time. It's like, 'What am I doing here?'" I found that really interesting, and I feel like you do a good job of making time for things, even if they're not societal norms for what people do. I try.
| |
Tim Ferriss | Yeah, I try to do it for sure. Do you?
| |
Shaan Puri | Have your version of a creative gym.
| |
Tim Ferriss | Yeah, I mean, I was playing the drums earlier today. So from a financial perspective, that could be seen as wasted time.
But the financial stuff, and we can talk about it, is very useful for certain things. I mean, money only has a certain utility. It's kind of like, yeah, you can eat until you're full, and then you can eat until you're stuffed, and then you eat until you're sick. But at what point do you stop eating?
There's a point beyond which food ceases to serve any positive function, right? And then, like, things in excess kind of become their opposite. So you have to be very careful with money and other things, you know? Alcohol, power, fame—they can distort a lot of things. | |
Shaan Puri | How do you keep that in check? It's hard to keep some of those things in check.
| |
Tim Ferriss | I mean, I just know too many rich people now to think that money fixes the inner game or the most problematic kind of psychological challenges that people have. It doesn't at all. It can fix a lot; money can fix money problems, right? But that's just one category of issues.
And yeah, it's incredibly useful as a vehicle for other things, but I find a lot of folks very uncreative about how they use money. So, I would say make time for the creative gym more so in the last handful of years.
I've spent time with concept artists doing concept pushes, building fictional worlds, and playing the drums. Earlier today, I had an art teacher, Stan Prokopenko, who runs Proko.com. He's an amazing teacher. We worked on a whole bunch of different aspects of drawing, live charcoal sketching, shading, and so on.
One could make the argument that, "Isn't it nice? Great, you have all this time; you get to do what you want to do." But I will say also that when I have been at levels of peak performance professionally, I usually have a creative outlet of some type. It may not take the form of charcoal.
| |
Shaan Puri | Right.
| |
Tim Ferriss | Drawing is a bit on the nose as far as creativity goes, but like, jujitsu is creative, right? So, going to the jujitsu gym and learning how to operate in that free-flowing environment, that's very creative.
| |
Shaan Puri | Right.
| |
Tim Ferriss | So, if you're working on anything that requires a level of extreme present state awareness, improvisation, and experimentation, like you're in the creativity game.
| |
Shaan Puri | Right.
| |
Tim Ferriss | So, there are a lot of ways to do that.
| |
Shaan Puri | I got a book recommendation from you.
| |
Tim Ferriss | Oh yeah, I haven't seen this book in a few decades. I've never heard of it.
| |
Shaan Puri | This book, an old book, is called *Toughness Training for Sports* and is by Jim Loehr. Do you remember anything from this book? You probably read it a long time ago.
| |
Tim Ferriss | I mean, I read that when I was probably 15 or 16. I do remember that there is an inventory—there's an assessment in there. It's 2 or 3 pages long, and you're intended to give that to your coaches, peers, teachers, and people around you. Effectively, it's for like a 360 review of different factors that affect mental toughness. Yeah, and I did that when I was 15 or 16.
| |
Shaan Puri | This one, right? | |
Tim Ferriss | Oh, there you go! Yeah, there we go. So, the competitive adjective profile.
I found this book incredibly helpful. Later, I had Jim Lehrer on the podcast and did some training with him and a tennis pro. Having that 360 review from a mental toughness perspective was incredibly helpful to me. It provided me with a level of awareness that I couldn't have developed on my own. | |
Shaan Puri | Right, and one of the things it talks about is basically, if you haven't read the book, it's like there's talent you're born with.
| |
Tim Ferriss | Yep, there's. | |
Shaan Puri | Skills, which everybody else understands, you practice, and then there's performance.
| |
Tim Ferriss | Yep. | |
Shaan Puri | And there's a gap between talent and skill. That gap is called **practice**.
There's also a gap between skills and performance, and that's basically your **toughness training**. He calls it, I think, the **ideal performance state**.
| |
Tim Ferriss | And it's. | |
Shaan Puri | Like, if you ever played sports, you know this: some games are off. You think, "Oh, I just wasn't fully locked in." I just wasn't... I didn't play up to my potential.
So, what causes that versus those days when you get in a flow state or you're just totally dialed in and you kick butt out there? Well, that's because you were in your ideal performance state.
This is not just for sports, obviously. This can be for how you show up as a dad at home, it could be for work, or it could be for this podcast. How do I show up in my ideal performance state? Do you do things to be in your kind of ideal performance state for you?
| |
Tim Ferriss | Do I... I would say that also just to highlight a few other things in here. I haven't looked at this in a very long time—20+ years—but it discusses at length stress and recovery, deloading phases, prioritization, and awareness.
There are all of these different checklists and assessments that you might use after a given training session, stress evaluations, and so on. All of which helped me to become more aware of cause and effect in what I was doing.
I had a fantastic... I mean, my best season by far after reading this book, and there are other factors that played into it.
| |
Shaan Puri | Hey, real quick! You know, one of the cool parts about what we're doing is that people have reached out and told me that they've built actual $1,000,000 businesses. They made their first million off an idea they heard on the show. That is crazy! That's wild! That's why we want to do the show, and we want to see more of that.
One of the questions we get asked over and over again is, "Is there some kind of idea database or spreadsheet where we list out all the different business ideas that we've talked about?" Well, the answer is finally yes! The fine folks at HubSpot have dug through the archive and pulled out 50+ business ideas and put them into a business idea database. It's totally free! You can click the link in the description below to get the database for you.
Alright, now back to the show.
| |
Tim Ferriss | In terms of ideal performance states, I've become less focused on optimization overall. I would say just because so much of it just does not matter at all and the amount...
| |
Shaan Puri | **Breaking News: Tim Ferriss Optimization**
| |
Tim Ferriss | Yeah, I mean, there's a place for...
| |
Shaan Puri | Who needs it?
| |
Tim Ferriss | There's a place for it, but it's like, are you taking a taxi from the start to the finish line of a marathon because it's efficient? I mean, like, speed reading poetry is...
| |
Shaan Puri | Right, like... | |
Tim Ferriss | There's a supposed "cult of optimization" that is appealing on a lot of levels, but it ends up being a hammer looking for nails. It gets applied to everything, and I think that misses the forest for the trees sometimes. I've been guilty of that for sure.
In terms of optimization, I would say let's take today as an example. I had a great day today. It was pretty uncrowded. I had a few team calls, meaning employee calls, earlier today. Typically, those are on Tuesday, but it got shifted forward because I was traveling yesterday.
It was a beautiful day outside here in Austin, which helps, of course. I went for a walk, got a cold brew coffee, and had a phone call with a friend. I came back, did a bit of work, knocked off a few emails, and handled a couple of pending angel investments and deals of that type. I had to get back to some lawyers, and that took about 15 to 20 minutes.
I printed out some documents to prepare for a podcast that I recorded earlier today, and then I did a 7-minute cold plunge at 40 degrees, which is pretty chilly. That'll wake you up! | |
Shaan Puri | 7 minutes continuous | |
Tim Ferriss | Yeah, that’ll wake you up. I use that in part because I knew we would be recording this late. I didn’t want to consume too much caffeine early in the day and then end up not being able to sleep since we’re recording this at night.
I also had a little bit of titration with light green tea before recording my own podcast. After walking a bit, I had some synthetic ketones, specifically beta-hydroxybutyrate, which helps cognitive performance quite a bit. So, it can act as a stand-in for me for more caffeine.
Let’s just say I had a blended mix of cold brew and green tea about 30 minutes prior, along with the synthetic ketones. I also had light meals. If I have a lot of mental lifting to do, I generally eat pretty lightly—mostly protein, a little bit of fat, and a small amount of carbohydrates.
And here we are, that’s the day. I got a great night’s sleep last night, which isn’t always the case, but it was last night. For me, that is an optimized day. There’s not a lot crammed into it. I’m not executing this sophisticated time management Tetris to be as efficient as possible, but I’m keeping the main thing the main thing.
The main things were team one-on-one calls, being physiologically and literally prepared in terms of documentation and research for the podcasts I recorded, and being in a good state for having this conversation. That’s it, right? You don’t have to do a lot every day.
| |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, I think that's **effect** versus **efficiency**, right?
| |
Tim Ferriss | **Effectiveness over efficiency.**
| |
Shaan Puri | Efficiency would be more like maximum output per unit of time, regardless of what the output is directed towards. Is that right?
| |
Tim Ferriss | Yeah, it's... if you think of **effectiveness** as what you do, **efficiency** is how you do any given thing. But doing something really well doesn't make it important, so...
| |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, I'm a Tony Robbins guy. He calls it "majoring in minor things."
| |
Tim Ferriss | Yeah, majoring in minor things is not a great way to go. I also fritter away time and lose days to bullshit. Or, I don't sleep well, and then I'm grumpy. I have too much caffeine, and I have a shitty night's sleep. I suffer from all that stuff.
Yeah, I'm human; I make mistakes. But if you're thinking about projects as experiments, using the criteria that I laid out before, and you're doing your best, you're going to falter. You're going to make mistakes.
But to keep the main thing the main thing, and to have a good rationale for why that main thing is the main thing, over time, you tend to perform pretty well. You just ship a lot more than most people.
Even if you go a month without doing anything right—if you get fuck all done for a month—sometimes that happens to me. But I try. I would almost rather do that. And I guess my version of doing fuck all might not look like fuck all, but...
| |
Shaan Puri | I would.
| |
Tim Ferriss | I'd rather do that than rush into committing to something that doesn't meet my criteria. I'm uncomfortable not being busy, right? Because that's how you end up overcommitting to things that, longitudinally, eat up years. | |
Shaan Puri | You said you're comfortable not being busy? Yeah, yeah, that's a big one.
| |
Tim Ferriss | Yeah, just... I mean, the best way to get what the outcome of busyness should be, which is right, like big effects over time, or it could just be more joy, is not by engaging in nonstop action.
In a sense, it's similar to my startup investing. It's like having very tight parameters, a lot of constraints, and not breaking your rules. It's the equivalent of blowing your bankroll in poker or blackjack.
In startup investing, it would mean you have no real thinking around portfolio construction. You don't have enough positive constraints, so you get overenthused about a ton of things. You put out all these bets too quickly, and then you lose all your money.
Or you just can't play the game very long because you were never playing the long game to begin with. In life, that bankroll is your time, and that's nonrenewable. You can always make more money. | |
Shaan Puri | I've heard you say something like, "People who are on 24/7 or they're just like hustle, hustle, hustle, grind, grind, grind," you're like, "That's actually a dangerous form of laziness."
| |
Tim Ferriss | Yeah, **indiscriminate action**. Indiscriminate action was a form of laziness.
| |
Shaan Puri | When people say, "I need to do X," and then they respond with, "First, I'm going to do research or make a long list," it's like that's fancy procrastination.
Shouldn't you just... you don't need a list of 100 prospects. Just call one. Let's start with that.
| |
Tim Ferriss | Yeah, and we all have our favorite forms of procrastination. Like reading is one of mine, right? I have to be very cautious about reading. I love reading, and no one's going to say, "You should stop reading." Yeah, and they're like, "Oh, so diligent doing..." | |
Shaan Puri | So much homework, but he is so sophisticated.
| |
Tim Ferriss | Yeah, so sophisticated.
| |
Shaan Puri | I want to ask you about your book in a second, but before we do that, teach me about the art of podcasting. You've been doing this for 10 years now.
| |
Tim Ferriss | Yeah. | |
Shaan Puri | You've done many high-stakes interviews, whether it's picking your favorite famous person or a person you admire.
What can you teach me about the first five minutes of a podcast?
| |
Tim Ferriss | First five minutes... maybe five seconds. I don't know.
| |
Shaan Puri | Beginning of a podcast.
| |
Tim Ferriss | Yeah, I mean, the most important 5 minutes are the conversation I have before I start recording with someone.
Okay, so that would be putting them at ease to the extent possible. Alright, my job is to make you look as good as possible. Every guest has final cut.
So, let it all hang out and we can cut whatever you want to cut. You'll get a transcript. Nothing's going to get published before you give it the okay.
| |
Shaan Puri | Put the walls down a little bit.
| |
Tim Ferriss | Yeah, put the walls down. General housekeeping: if you need to take a water break, bathroom break, or pause, that's totally fine. If you want to start a story over again, that's all good too. I'll keep an eye out for things that I think we might want to cut, like if you accidentally mention your kids' names or something like that.
So, like, this guy's done a lot. Person B is actually looking out for me, and Person C has actually sat in my seat during interviews. I always ask, and almost nobody asks this. It's such an easy layup in terms of differentiating yourself.
Ask interviewees what success would look like. What would you look back on six months from now and say, "I'm so glad I did that"? Why? What does success look like? Even if they don't have an answer, they're so unaccustomed to being asked anything like that that they're like...
| |
Shaan Puri | And it's like being a good boyfriend. It's like he cares. It doesn't matter if he brought me the water; I could have gotten the water myself. But the fact that he did shows he's thinking about me. He cares.
| |
Tim Ferriss | Yeah, so I would say that that pre-record conversation is something I don't see very often. Mhm, really, when I get...
| |
Shaan Puri | I didn't do it today.
| |
Tim Ferriss | Well, yeah, I mean, sometimes that's fine, right? It's like I'm comfortable in this environment.
| |
Shaan Puri | Right.
| |
Tim Ferriss | And we've had contact before. Yeah, but it's not always going to be the case. It could also be the case that somebody's very experienced, but they're rushed. They got into an argument with their husband or wife the night before, and their publicist is frazzled and off their meds or whatever. They're just running from thing to thing to thing, and then boom, they get plopped in front of a mic or in front of a computer, and they're like, "Okay, go. Yeah, you're talking to this guy named Tim."
You need to give them an on-ramp, if you can, to decompress a little bit from that experience. It doesn't always work, but it's worth the investment, in my experience. So, even if I have to give up 5 to 10 minutes of the interview—let's just say they have a hard stop at 90 minutes or 60 minutes—I will still give up that time.
So, that's one. In the first 5 minutes, I would say it depends a lot on the profile of the person. I don't mean fame; I mean, have they been interviewed a thousand times? In a case where someone's been interviewed a thousand times, I want to ask them a question that shows I've done an inordinate amount of research. So, I'll ask them something that, for instance, I'll very frequently dig up...
| |
Shaan Puri | Like a deep cut, I've noticed you do this.
| |
Tim Ferriss | Yes, a 3rd grade teacher or a mentor that helped them when they were at one school, transitioning from one place to another, got mentioned in passing in a profile in The New Yorker eight years ago. I'll be like, "Who was so-and-so? Right, tell me about so-and-so." And they're like, "Okay."
That can get them off of autopilot. Whether someone's been interviewed a lot or very little, I will often ask them beforehand. There's a lot of prep that goes into it. If there are any "greatest hits" stories, I'm like, "What are stories people respond really well to that stick with them? That people have brought up with you a year later, two years later?"
They could be an academic, right? Academics talk to people, right? Just not necessarily Tony Robbins or Edward Norton, but they're in front of people, so they should have probably some examples, anecdotes, or studies—things that really stick with people.
Okay, great. I will then figure out a question or a cue, or I might even ask them to suggest one to prompt talking about that, and I will lead with that for two reasons. First, I'm starting with something that my audience is likely to resonate with. Number two, I'm giving them a win, right?
| |
Shaan Puri | It's a fastball.
| |
Tim Ferriss | I'm giving them a win upfront, and that is helpful. Oftentimes, when someone doesn't know where the conversation is going to go, I always try to tell people where I am likely to start. That's part of the pre-conversation.
I'll say, "I'm thinking about starting with this," right? Because I don't want to cause anyone to stumble out of the gate or for us to get caught on our heels. This is probably where I'm going to start. Do you think that's a decent place to start?
If they're like, "Well, I don't know," if it's like some random thing I read on the internet that isn't true, I want to know that before we start. If they're like, "Oh yeah, yeah, that'll work," great! Now I've planted that seed. Their brain's working on that while we're doing the housekeeping, while we're talking about everything else.
Then we start, and it's usually pretty smooth, at least running out of the blocks. So those would be a few things that come to mind for the first five minutes. That's a great answer.
| |
Shaan Puri | Very helpful to me because we usually do the show with Sam. That's the core of the show: it's me and Sam hanging out.
Our dynamic is very simple. It's like, "Dude, have you seen this?" It's just a random show, like the random show you do. That's very much the core of our show.
If we have guests on, it's because we want them to do that with us. But then occasionally, there are guests where it's actually us scratching our own itch. I really want to meet this person. I want to get to know what they're really like, and I want to ask them the questions that I don't feel like I've heard from them.
It's similar to how some people say you should write the book you wish you could read. If somebody else had written it, you wouldn't write the book. That's the way I feel about when I do an interview like this. It's like, "What is the question that I haven't heard?" In addition to the greatest hits, because you'd want to explore those a little bit together as well.
| |
Tim Ferriss | And it also depends on what you mean by a good podcast, right? So there's good for you or me personally, and then there is good for the audience, whatever the audience is, right? Depending on the show, I've gone back and forth on that.
Sometimes I'll do a show for the audience every once in a while. I'll have a couple of "Scooby snacks" for myself, but I'll do something that is really for the audience. That is a risky approach. | |
Shaan Puri | It seems safer, but it's actually probably riskier.
| |
Tim Ferriss | You can get shaped by your audience and then become a bit of a domesticated oxen, getting driven by what you perceive to be the preferences of your audience.
But I have the Henry Ford maxim in mind, which is—I'm paraphrasing here—but effectively, people don't really know what they want or need, which includes you and me.
By the way, for that reason, rather than playing the speculation game, follow your own interests. The risk there is that you end up playing "inside baseball" and really doing something that is not necessarily transferable to your audience.
As far as I'm concerned, maybe I just have the luxury of being a relatively early mover in podcasting. If your goal is to do this for hundreds and hundreds of episodes—or if that's not the goal at all—but if your goal is to continue having this amazing, ridiculous job, which is just absurd, then you’ve got to play the long game.
Part of the long game is, right, it's like training and recovery. So if you need to take a couple of episodes as recovery, purely self-interested just for you, that's what you do. I don't have any compunction about that.
The personal is the most universal. Also, it depends on your audience size, of course. But with the size of my audience, if something is bothering me, if something is really piquing my curiosity, if something's in my head at night and just won't go away, chances are there are at least a few thousand, maybe tens of thousands of people who have the same thing going on.
| |
Shaan Puri | Right, I heard this great quote from my buddy: "How much has the world benefited that Tim Ferriss decided not to just keep selling supplements and to do other things?"
What would the world have been like had that not happened? I think that's a great compliment.
| |
Tim Ferriss | **Yeah, that's a very huge compliment. Very kind.**
| |
Shaan Puri | If you go from selling supplements, which makes a lot of money, it's like a very clear direct payoff. You could do good at it. To being an author, that's not usually a good... it's not usually an upward career move, let's say. So, why did you do it?
| |
Tim Ferriss | There are a few things I would say. The first is that I didn't end up selling the supplement company until 2009. So, whenever possible, I have things running in parallel. I do not view myself as a risk taker; like, if anything, I would...
| |
Shaan Puri | **Be a risk producer.**
| |
Tim Ferriss | I'm a risk producer, like a risk mitigator for sure. I'm very good at capping downside risk. In this particular case, I already knew that from an intellectual perspective. That sounds too pompous, but I'm struggling to find a better modifier.
Let me put it a different way: my learning curve with the sports nutrition supplement world had flattened largely. I understood the basic mechanics; I understood distribution. It wasn't that interesting to me, and it was also an industry that was, and still is, marred by a lot of bad behavior. | |
Shaan Puri | Right and | |
Tim Ferriss | Unbelievable tactics, in some cases, just outright deception. I mean, legal and illegal. I really struggled being associated with that.
If we really flash back and look at what I thought I might end up doing as an adult, I always wanted to be a teacher. In part, this was because I had these amazing teachers who had a huge impact on my life. They kind of saved my life in a bunch of ways. I think I could have gone in a really bad set of directions, and they helped prevent that.
So, I thought when I get enough experience in life—which is not now at the age of 29—but eventually, it would be really nice to be a teacher and have that kind of impact. I thought about being a 9th or 10th-grade teacher. I still haven't done that. I mean, I've done some volunteer teaching, but I had been going back, I want to say since 2003, to Princeton to teach this guest lecture. I was invited to come back and speak.
| |
Shaan Puri | I've tried to find these online many times. By the way, they're not online. I wish you would upload them.
| |
Tim Ferriss | Yeah, they're not alone. I don't think I recorded them. I might have recorded one or two; I'm not sure. But if I could find them, I'd be curious to see them. I'm sure I would. Well, I'm sure. | |
Shaan Puri | What kind of her out of that, right? Like, you basically have the notes of...
| |
Tim Ferriss | Your lifestyle... yeah, the notes from that. Because every time I spoke, it was twice a year. Ed Shao, the professor of high-tech entrepreneurship, provided me feedback because I had the harebrained idea of doing everything bootstrapped. All the other guest speakers had these venture-backed companies, and some of them were huge. I was small fries by comparison, but I was doing it my way. I was taking a different approach.
So I came back, and twice a year, a lot happened in my life at that time. I mean, it was trench warfare... dog years, right? It's like if you ask anyone who's had the manic depressive experience of being involved with crypto, it's like, "Yeah, what does last year feel like?" They're like, "17 years."
| |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, exactly. | |
Tim Ferriss | And it's similar, I think, when you're running a company in its early stages. It's like, yeah, or two months ago, it's like a...
| |
Shaan Puri | A lifetime ago, it's like Obama when he...
| |
Tim Ferriss | Left the office. Yeah, yeah. Oh, went from black.
| |
Shaan Puri | To gray hair? Yeah, exactly. Four years. I mean, look at me.
| |
Tim Ferriss | Right, no hair. So, I would say that the desire to teach and the really positive feedback I got from workshopping the lessons and principles in this class led me to conclude a few things.
Number one, I really enjoyed teaching. Number two, teaching in that format in front of 20, 30, or 40 students didn't scale. Now, I think "scale" can be a dirty word, dangerous, and overly seductive for a lot of folks, but it wasn't going to enable me to reach a lot of people.
Then, I was done from an identity perspective with the supplements, so I was looking for something new. I had an author friend of mine—this is a shortened story that could be really long—but effectively, he said, "You should write a book," and started introducing me to agents and editors, even though I didn't want that.
I was just looking for feedback, and suddenly I had all these introductions. So, I was like, "Okay, let me start having these conversations."
I had also, at that time, returned from a year and a half—or about a year and a half—of this global walkabout, which I chronicle some of in the book. I went to Argentina and this, that, and the other thing. I came back and I was like, "Okay, what next?"
I'm not motivated to really go into hyper-growth mode with this company. This isn't going to be my thing for 10 years or 20 years, so what next? That coincided with these introductions. You know, the book was eventually accepted, and there was an offer made, but a lot went into it—26 or 29 rejections from publishers and so on.
But I knew the material worked. I had the confidence because I'd workshopped it with a live crowd over and over again. I knew it worked. | |
Shaan Puri | Right.
| |
Tim Ferriss | And I frankly love experiments. That's the way I model my whole life.
So, I viewed the book as an experiment. I was like, at the very least, it's like an MBA. It's like, "Alright, it's a break from whatever I was doing that looks acceptable on a resume or career trajectory." It's like, "Alright, let me try it."
| |
Shaan Puri | Great mask for unemployed, right? Yeah, I'm writing a book. Great! I'm getting an MBA. | |
Tim Ferriss | Yeah, great mask for unemployed... and then everything went bananas.
| |
Shaan Puri | Well, you did the podcast that way too, right? It was an experiment. You were like, "I'm gonna record, I forgot what, 6 episodes." You built yourself a golden bridge. If you wanted to retreat, you were like, "Hey, I'm gonna try this. I'll do 6. It's either gonna be a wonderful 6-episode series or it's gonna be the next thing." But like, I'm gonna just portion off this experiment versus making a huge commitment.
| |
Tim Ferriss | Yeah, give yourself grace, Flexen. I mean, framing it for yourself but also for other people. Whatever you do as an experiment gives you a graceful exit.
It's so simple, but it's such a strong form of psychological leverage that I think very few people use. Right? They're like, "My next thing is this." I'm like...
| |
Shaan Puri | Oh, totally! I felt that before. I felt that pressure to have an answer.
| |
Tim Ferriss | Yeah. | |
Shaan Puri | I want to ask you about a couple of your core principles that I've found very useful. I want you to unpack them. One is the **Law of Category**.
| |
Tim Ferriss | Can... | |
Shaan Puri | You explain what the law of category is and maybe how you used it.
| |
Tim Ferriss |
Sure, the **Law of Category** is taken directly from a book called "The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing." The Law of Category, in brief, is a description of the power of creating new categories. Rather than trying to be the best in a crowded category, it's about trying to be the only one in a new category.
That's where Amstel Light comes in with the first light imported beer, okay?
| |
Shaan Puri | There you go.
| |
Tim Ferriss | Or in the U.S., let's just say low-cost airlines like Southwest. There are a million examples that you could find.
The **Law of Category** is also, I would say, an encapsulation of something that might be called the **Blue Ocean Strategy** versus the **Red Ocean Strategy**. There’s a book called *The Blue Ocean Strategy* that I would also recommend people read in combination with this chapter from *The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing*, specifically the Law of Category.
I think I put it in either *Tools of Titans* or *Tribe of Mentors*; I liked it that much. I went through all the brain damage of getting permissions to include it. Those two pair well with an article you can find for free, which you could read in 15 minutes, called *1,000 True Fans* by Kevin Kelly on kk.org. You can find that, and they’re all driving at the same thing, which is positioning and differentiation, and trying to figure out how you can be the first at something.
Now, sometimes that turns into a bunch of hand-wavy smoke and mirrors nonsense, like we discussed earlier. But at least as an exercise, it’s worth considering.
For instance, one of the questions I was going to ask you, which you can answer or we can just use it as a sample question, was: When a die-hard fan of your show is talking to someone who does not know the show, how would you ideally like them to describe the show?
That is a question of positioning. Branding gets turned into this huge process with flowcharts and tons of agencies and companies, and this and that. I’m sure there are people who are very sophisticated with their approach, but at the end of the day, for me, brand is what people consistently associate with X. X could be you, or it could be the show. How do they describe it?
| |
Shaan Puri | It’s right. | |
Tim Ferriss | That's it. That's your brand. I mean, just like a brand, where does the term "brand" come from? Like, brand on cattle, right?
So from that perspective, I think it's very useful when you're considering doing a new project. It's not about how you can be the best competing in the same way against people doing the same thing. That is not the frame.
Even if you end up emulating other people or borrowing best practices, I think it makes sense to start with examining the law of category and thinking about blue ocean approaches.
This is why, for instance, with my podcast, we're now at the 10th anniversary. I don't really see a viable path forward for me that is heavily video-focused, even though I think there are going to be some significant taxes to pay for that.
Podcasts have a huge discoverability problem, yes, and a huge long-term sustainability problem. YouTube offers a solution in the form of what is it? The second largest search engine in the world. I understand why it makes sense for a lot of people to harness that as one engine for growth. It makes a lot of sense, but it's crowded.
It's really crowded. By anyone's definition, it would be a red ocean, and it's definitely going to get redder. For that reason, maybe I make the decision in six months: you know what? Forget it. I'm going to go whole hog. Let's see what happens.
| |
Shaan Puri | Right, right. | |
Tim Ferriss | But I don't have a really high degree of enthusiasm for that right now. Enthusiasm is important, right? Which means I'm not going to have the endurance compared to someone like Chris Williamson. If people are like, "Who is this Chris?"
Furthermore, I feel the threads of life pulling me in other directions. So doing it half-assed would be the worst thing I could do. Doing it 6 out of 10 would consume resources and not be particularly effective.
So I'm trying to decide if I want to take a barbell approach with podcasting on some level, which I've experimented with. Explain.
| |
Shaan Puri | That’s the barbell approach.
| |
Tim Ferriss | All right, the **barbell approach** could be applied. I mean, this is a term I'm borrowing; I don't know if it originated from Todd or Nassim Taleb when he talks about investing.
Right? Like, super risky stuff and then really boring stuff, let's just say fixed income or the S&P 500 or something. Right? Like, super boring stuff and really risky stuff where you have a capped downside but potentially huge upside. In his set of games, it would probably be some type of **black swan option** position and then nothing in between. That's it, right?
You could apply that to exercise; you could apply that to many different things. As I'm applying it, I would say within the format of podcasting, you would have no video whatsoever. That would be on one end of the spectrum.
I've done that. I've experimented with walk-and-talks where I have a headset on and I am recording with someone. We are talking and getting exercise, and it's great! I feel better because I'm not sitting down for 3 or 4 hours or whatever the amount of time might be. I love it! I love doing it.
So, I think that there's a possibility, doing that with a lot of enthusiasm, joy, and curiosity, I might be able to make up for the lack of video with those elements. I would probably do higher frequency also, right? Because of that.
Then, on the opposite end of the spectrum, I might actually, for instance, tomorrow, have a nice video setup. I have effectively a studio. It's not a wrap-around immersive avatar-led screen, but it is a nice studio setup.
| |
Shaan Puri | It's what used to be considered really nice. It's what you tell. Yeah, you saw the craziness. Yeah. | |
Tim Ferriss | Yeah, I wouldn't call it cinematic, but it's high-quality video, right? I would probably shy away from stuff in between. We'll see. Let's see. | |
Shaan Puri | This barbell principle applies to so much, right? Investing, you're talking about it with a project. How I could approach a project...
Mhm. Ben and I have been talking a lot about how we do this with our network. It was like, "Man, we're meeting so many people," but it's like death by a thousand Zoom calls. I just... I'm not gonna do it.
Yeah, yeah. So what am I gonna do? Not talk to these people? Like, no.
So we decided there's a barbell approach: a bunch of random texts where there's no obligation for either side to reply. It's just like, "Hey, thinking about you," or "Hey, check this out." That's it. Quick text.
Spend a half day or a full day together. I'll fly to you; let's have a good time.
We started doing this, and oh my god, it's like... yeah, I feel like I've cracked the cheat code of relationship building that would otherwise feel very draining and overwhelming.
| |
Tim Ferriss | Yeah, the **barbell approach** can be applied to a lot. I apply it all over the place.
Another example would be speaking engagements. I very rarely do speaking engagements, but it's either free—where I would maybe even pay to be in front of the audience because the event and the audience are so interesting—or it could be a pro bono thing.
It could also be ultra premium, like the highest watermark. Whatever company or organization paid me the most I've ever been paid.
| |
Shaan Puri | Right.
| |
Tim Ferriss | That's my new minimum, right? Like, whoever is going to meet or exceed.
| |
Shaan Puri | That’s right.
| |
Tim Ferriss | That's it. I will probably do 2 to 6 engagements a year. That's it.
| |
Shaan Puri | You did this early on. I remember you had your blog, or I think it was during the blog days. You were like, "Everything's free! I'm gonna give everything away for free. I'm not gonna be a kind of online course slinger like most people."
Once you get a little bit of following, it's like, "Hey, would you like half a million dollars? Would you like a million dollars? You could just sell this course."
Then you were like, "I'm either gonna be all free or I'm gonna be ultra premium." I remember you did this. What's it called?
| |
Tim Ferriss | Opening the kimono.
| |
Shaan Puri | The kimono... yeah, opening the kimono. It's like a $10,000 thing, but a lot of us would be happy to pay that because it's like, "Oh man, I've gotten so much free value."
I have the means, and you're like, "Cool, I only need a small number of people," which might make it a more enjoyable event for me. Was that the kind of calculus there?
| |
Tim Ferriss | Yeah, it's free or ultra premium. Generally, I mean, that's how I try to approach things. Also, because ultra premium gives you a lot more margin for error, you can afford to experiment, right?
So, it's a virtuous set of conditions that you can set in the beginning. It also poses a creative problem that I enjoy, like setting the price. I set the price before I figured out the content. I was like, "Alright, let me figure out the price, and then I want to figure out..."
It wasn't just $10,000; it was like $10,000 if you apply and are accepted in the first 6 hours or something. Then it got more expensive. It went to $12,500, then to $15,000.
My creative challenge was, "Okay, how do I make this event?" So, it was a 2 or 3-day event, and I was done more than a decade ago. It's a long time ago. I've only done that one event as far as paid events go.
| |
Shaan Puri | Right.
| |
Tim Ferriss | And I was like, "How do I make this event worth that amount of money? How do I exceed the cost of this event in the first two hours, and then the rest is just gravy?" And that's a question.
| |
Shaan Puri | That's a great question.
| |
Tim Ferriss |
Yeah, and that was the challenge. Part of the answer was, "I'm gonna give people my actual book proposals for the first two books that lay out everything." Like the marketing plans, all the nitty-gritty, the sales pitch, and all sorts of details. Because people were there for... I guess we would call it now "content marketing."
| |
Shaan Puri | Right.
| |
Tim Ferriss | Right, they wanted to know how to launch books. They wanted to know how I had launched these books.
Okay, let me just skip the conceptual overlay. I'm just going to show you exactly what I did. Open the kimono... boom! Opening the kimono.
Then I did an exercise to answer that question. It was very simple. We had something like 120 people apply; I mean, we had tons of people apply, and we were trying to vet for "assholes" to omit them, right? So we had questions that were bear traps for "assholes."
We wanted to make sure I have an audience—a very enthusiastic audience. The last thing I would want is for someone to take out a second mortgage or max out their credit cards to come to some event, right?
So first off, it was like wire transfers only; we were not accepting credit cards. I had, but it's going to sound weird, a warning/lecture in text which stated: "I do not want you to go into debt for this." This has to represent, I can't remember what the percentage was, but no more than X% of your current savings, excluding your retirement accounts.
| |
Shaan Puri | And give him a stern talking to.
| |
Tim Ferriss | Yeah, and so I had a couple of questions about finances, right? Because I really didn't want to have the guilt on my conscience of knowing that somebody, after the fact, went into the red or put themselves into a really compromised position to come to this event.
I do have fans who would do that. I remember one guy, in response to one of the finance questions, he said, "Well, I appreciate you being my financial nanny, but if you want to come onto the tarmac to look at my jet when I come, you're welcome to." And I was like, "And you're out."
| |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, thanks for that.
| |
Tim Ferriss | You have done exactly that. | |
Shaan Puri | Passed the financial qualifier. | |
Tim Ferriss | Yeah, I... | |
Shaan Puri | Was like, "But you failed the second test." I was... | |
Tim Ferriss | You fell into the exact bear trap that I was setting for you. Thank you for disqualifying yourself. We do not need you in a small event. | |
Shaan Puri | **Financial nanny** is good, though. I like that! Yeah, maybe it's a good service we can have for other people.
| |
Tim Ferriss | So, clever here: financialnanny.com.
We had something like, let's call it, 100 people in the room. There was an attendee book with very short bios—maybe not even bios—and there were bios for everybody.
I had every single person stand up in the room. I was like, "This is gonna take a little time, but bear with me, folks. I think this could be interesting."
I'd never done this before, so I didn't know how it was going to turn out. I said, "Everybody's gonna stand up, they're gonna say their name, and they're gonna have a brag," which is...
| |
Shaan Puri | Give them permission. | |
Tim Ferriss | Yeah, like, don't give me some fluffy, bullshit, humble thing. Right, right? This is not the time or the place. Don't be like, "Yeah, I write books sometimes," and it's like a 10-time New York Times bestseller. Like, mother, don't pull that stuff. Get up and brag! I'm giving you permission. I'm actually giving you a requirement.
Then you have an ask. Make an ask of the audience, and then you have a give. It's like something that you're really good at, or it could be anything. So get up, and it's like a brag, an ask, a give.
I was like, everyone else is active this whole time. You are listening and you're writing this stuff down. If somebody has an ask that you can help with, write their name down. And if there's a give that you want to discuss with someone, write their name down.
Just doing those few things, the proposals, and then everybody standing up. By the end of that day, people were like, "Okay, this is already 10x."
| |
Shaan Puri | Right. | |
Tim Ferriss | What I spent... this is amazing! And then it was just gravy from there.
| |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, I think the easy thing to gloss over in that is, like, cool, it's a cool story, obviously. But the takeaway for me, and for anybody listening, is that the question of—or the technique of—first, I'm going to set the price, then I will ask myself how I can over-deliver on that value or deliver in the first two hours, where that was a no-brainer transaction for them.
That question led you to such a different result than if you had just said, "What event should I do?" That's an average question, a common question. I feel like you have a lot of these powerful questions, and you've said something like, "Questions are like a pickaxe for the brain."
| |
Tim Ferriss | Yep. | |
Shaan Puri | It's how you dig the gold out of the brain, and I love that metaphor. I'm a collector of questions. I've got a swipe file of about 100 questions. Mostly, people think they're interview questions. No, no, these are questions that I need to ask myself to get my brain to ask a better question and get a better answer.
One of my other favorites of yours is, "What would this look like if it was easy?" I used it today for this interview. It was like, "Oh, how about great! I gotta do an interview today." Alright, oh man, this could be difficult. There's so much content. "What would this look like if it was easy?"
| |
Tim Ferriss | What was your answer?
| |
Shaan Puri | What would it look like if this was easy? It would be me being genuinely enthusiastic and excited to meet you. You would feel that from me, and you would walk out of here thinking, "Oh, I actually had an interesting conversation."
He didn't just ask me 10 questions, but maybe Sean said 2 or 3 interesting things that got me thinking. Because I know what Tim wants out of an experience: if he learned something, it's probably a good experience.
Or if he heard 1 or 2 provocative things that he might think about later, that's a useful use of an hour for you. So I thought, well, I'm good at that. Let me just not withhold those, which would be common in a podcast where I'm only going to ask you questions. I'll mute myself to make sure that you're at the time.
But in this case, given that you have a platform and you've been so vocal in the past, I thought, "Oh, maybe I'll let myself do that." Because I think if I give Tim 1 or 2 nuggets that are interesting, he'll walk out of here feeling like it's a great experience.
| |
Tim Ferriss | Yeah, totally. So, what other questions do you have on that list that you use a lot that maybe I haven't heard?
| |
Shaan Puri | Okay, I'll give you a couple of them.
Am I leaning into my absolute strengths and unfair advantage as much as I could be? What this really is, is I call it the **theoretical max**. I had a friend who had an app one time, and his developer or product manager was saying, "Oh, the response rate on our push notifications is like 10%."
He’s like, "Guys, if we just got that to 15%, then the rest of our funnel looks great." They were like, "Oh, we tried a bunch of baby tests, didn't work." He goes, "Go in there right now and just write, 'Your Uber is arriving.'" This app was not Uber. They sent it out, and like 50% of people responded.
He goes, "That's now the theoretical max. Don't ever do that again." But like, don't give me the BS that... because before that, they were like, "People just got... people are too numb. There are too many apps, too many notifications." They had all kinds of stories.
Yeah, yeah. And he's like, "Actually, let me just torch that BS real quick."
So the theoretical max question is basically, "Am I leaning into my superpower or my unfair advantage to its theoretical max?"
And so, like, I'd ask you that: What is your unfair advantage?
| |
Tim Ferriss | I ask that question to myself a lot. I try to edge into it a few different ways. I'll ask friends of mine, "When have you seen me at my best?" That's one. Or, "What do you see me do that is easier for me than for other people?"
| |
Shaan Puri | Right. | |
Tim Ferriss | I think my unfair advantage is at this point. I have a lot, just in terms of audience and platform, and so on. But if we're talking about just what I can take with me—what I can walk out of here with—I would say it is an ability to ask unusual questions.
I also ask the "dumb" questions when I'm trying to learn something from someone, from a book, from a video; it doesn't matter. I'm always asking these various questions. Then, I can take whatever I learn and, I suppose, I could try to deconstruct this.
I consider myself a fast learner. If I can get to X in 6 months, which is usually pretty good—sometimes super impressive, sometimes not, depending on the thing—overall, on average, I'm going to learn things very quickly. I have a method for this. If it takes me 6 months to get to...
| |
Tim Ferriss | I can get almost anyone to that same point in three months or less.
I realized I also had so many false starts and I tried so many things that didn't quite work. I tried a lot of things that were common, but it turns out they should be removed from the learning process entirely.
I'd say those are what come to mind.
| |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, my first reaction was, "If I was Tim Ferriss, what would I say?" I think my first reaction would be, "I can get any guest on my podcast, really, that I want." I mean, every guest is within reach. Mhmm.
| |
Shaan Puri | Said, "Well, that doesn't really need to."
| |
Shaan Puri | Be about the podcast necessarily. Yeah, anybody I want to talk to is within reach.
| |
Tim Ferriss | Yes. | |
Shaan Puri | That's interesting. That's not true for most people. Even if you are booking tons of guests or you're meeting cool people, like, you probably aren't at the theoretical max. You're not at the "your Uber is arriving" level of leaning into that supercar.
| |
Tim Ferriss | You heard your mom is dead too.
| |
Shaan Puri | Test theoretical max. And so, but then even further, it's not only can you get in touch with them—okay, that's easy—but like you can go in and you can get people to "open up the kimono." Because your reputation is, "I'm Tim Ferriss. I learn things. I've interviewed people. I deconstruct the things that they're great at. I ask them questions." People will come to you in an interview ready to open up the kimono.
| |
Tim Ferriss | Yeah, totally. | |
Shaan Puri | That's interesting. Another interesting thing is, like, you said you went to visit the game designer in Europe for three days. That's cool! That's kind of like throwing your weight around into your unfair advantages.
You could probably pick up the phone, and if somebody is the best game designer in the world, they would be honored to say, "Oh, Tim Ferriss wants to come and learn my stuff from me. Fantastic! Please, I'll block out three days." That's cool!
How many more times could you do that? I would start to have a little bit of a brainstorm around that.
There's another question I find really, really valuable, and that is: "What is the silly story I'm telling myself?" It immediately puts you on the defensive because you're like, "Why would I tell myself a silly story?"
| |
Tim Ferriss | But. | |
Shaan Puri | We are all constantly telling ourselves silly stories about why we can't do this, why that's going to be hard, why that's not going to work for me, why that will take forever, and why this person is not responding to my thing. It's because of ABCD? No, actually, it's probably not.
So, identifying the silly stories is important. It's like I'm a Harry Potter guy. I don't know if you've read Harry Potter, but like there's...
| |
Tim Ferriss | I don't care about it.
| |
Shaan Puri | The Boggart, right? The thing that will present itself as the thing you fear. The way to get rid of it is with a spell that is ridiculous. You basically, if you're scared of spiders, put the spider on skates, and then it can't walk. It actually becomes funny instead of scary.
The same thing can be done with the silly stories in my life. As soon as you start to [interrogate] them out, it's typically things that you've made real. But when you sit down and you interrogate that story, it turns out it was just as fictional as an easily replaceable story that might be better for you.
So, yeah, that's one that I ask quite often because it's the one that I hate. It's the question that I hate, but that's a good one. That's the one I need.
| |
Tim Ferriss | Yeah, I suppose if I could choose one question, the only question I could ask would probably be some version of that.
| |
Shaan Puri | Would you have it in mind what it would be, or no?
| |
Tim Ferriss |
No, I mean, we're just... we're constantly... I mean, the my favorite answer to the question that I ask most guests at some point: "What would you put on a billboard?"
My favorite answer I've ever had was from a hospice care physician named BJ Miller, who's helped thousands of people to die.
| |
Shaan Puri | And helped them to die... helped them survive.
| |
Tim Ferriss | Well, he didn't... yeah, he didn't euthanize them, but he's midwifing them through transition to death if they have terminal cancer or something like that.
His answer—he actually confessed to me—he got from a bumper sticker somewhere. But his answer was, "Don't believe everything you think." That's it.
Don't believe everything that you think. And, you know, having some method for cross-examining those beliefs—right? These thoughts we take to be true—is really, really critical. So that's a good one. Yeah, I like that.
| |
Shaan Puri | I want to leave you with one thing, which is Naval. You're friends with Naval; he's a fascinating guy to me. I've never met him in person, only chatted online and whatnot. I really respect the guy and admire a lot of things about him.
Do you have any stories about Naval? Anything that you noticed early on or a moment you observed that reflects the wisdom or the insightfulness that he has?
| |
Tim Ferriss | Yeah, Naval's one of my favorite people. He's very, very smart and hilarious, and he does not suffer fools gladly at all, which I like. You don't have to guess what Naval is thinking, which I deeply appreciate.
The first thing that came to mind is probably not the kind of example that you would expect, but it's actually the first time I met Naval. I went into a coffee shop in the Mission in San Francisco. I ordered a coffee and was waiting at the counter when I noticed this very attractive girl standing next to me. She was very friendly and smiled, so I started talking to her. I was kind of chatting her up, you know, hitting on her, hoping to ask her for her number and take her out. Who knows, maybe dinner, maybe drinks... who knows?
Then I see Naval walk up with this huge grin on his face, and he's like, "I see you met my girlfriend."
| |
Shaan Puri | And I was like, "Oh yeah, but..." | |
Tim Ferriss | He's like Naval, and he just had this huge grin on his face. It was just like, "Wow!"
| |
Shaan Puri | What a good way to address it.
| |
Tim Ferriss | Like, totally calm. Then we started talking, and we hit it off. That was probably, God knows when, I don't know, 2008 or something. | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, you're like a man crush. Actually, move out of the way.
| |
Tim Ferriss | Yeah, face palm. And that was it. I just admire Naval for his ability to speak truth and ask uncomfortable questions. He doesn't go out of his way to be rude, but he's less inclined to the type of people-pleasing that I'd say many people are predisposed to, myself included.
There are definitely times when I might be too polite or tell white lies to make people feel good. It's like normal human social lubrication, right? Nothing major. But, you know, if my girlfriend's put on a few pounds and she asks, "Do I look fat?" I'm like, "No." I'm not going to say, "Yeah, you look really fat." Not to say that Naval would say that, but he's direct in a way that cuts through the noise and is very refreshing to me.
| |
Shaan Puri | Have you been able to pick up or learn anything from him in terms of, you know, tactical stuff on the investing side or tons of other things?
| |
Tim Ferriss | The investing side... I mean, I think the site was way back in the day, Venture Hacks. Oh yeah, that he and Nivi co-authored. I mean, that was basically the kind of Wikipedia bible of angel investing and advising for the inside game on venture capital. I mean, Naval is Jedi level when it comes to early stage investing. Very technical, he just ends up in every deal you would ever want to be in. It's like the sort of... you know, Pinky and the Brain meets Forrest Gump meets Siddhartha. You're just like...
| |
Shaan Puri | How is it? | |
Tim Ferriss | He in every cap table.
| |
Shaan Puri | Right. | |
Tim Ferriss | He's incredibly skilled as an angel investor. We don't even have enough time in the hours and hours of conversation to begin to describe what I've learned from him there.
He's very curious and interested, and it's not at all limited to business. If it's David Deutsch or other thinkers, he introduces me to a lot of eclectic thinkers from different disciplines. His exploration is certainly not limited, as it is with a lot of people, to the sport of business, finance, or investing.
A lot of people are one-trick ponies that way; he is not a one-trick pony. So, I admire that as well.
| |
Shaan Puri | I have a funny naval story. I have a buddy who was doing some work when Facebook launched its platform. My buddy made an app; it was one of the silly apps that I don't remember from back then. It was like people throwing sheep at each other and stuff.
| |
Tim Ferriss | Like that. | |
Shaan Puri | He was doing one of those silly apps, but it was clear that, oh, the Facebook platform is like an opportunity. Smart Silicon Valley people were interested.
My friend is sitting in Georgia, and Naval is in San Francisco. He gets an email from Naval, basically from the "Contact Us" page or whatever, saying, "Hey, I'd love to meet with you sometime to talk about your app. I'm a venture capitalist here in San Francisco."
My friend doesn't know who Naval is or what venture capital is, but he's like, "Okay, sounds interesting." He's open to it. The next email is a plane ticket: "Here's a plane ticket. It goes out tomorrow."
So my friend is like, "Okay." He gets on a plane, flies out, and meets Naval in his office. Naval asks him questions for like 30 minutes, and my friend is thinking, "I had no idea what the right answer should have been, but I'm giving my honest answers."
Naval then says, "Hold on," goes into the other room, comes back with a printed-out term sheet, and says, "Here, I'll give you half a million dollars or something for some percentage of your company."
My friend, who is like 23 or something, is just like, "I don't know who this Indian guy is. I don't know what the deal is. I don't understand any of the words on this page. My app is stupid. I don't know why he wants to invest in it. I don't really understand this."
So he's like, "I just don't feel comfortable right now." Naval, at the time, was saying, "I think Facebook is going to be huge. I think it's going to be the platform where you do lots of things. You're not just going to talk to friends on there; you're going to be able to do X, Y, Z. That's my thesis. That's why I want to invest in this."
My friend was like, "Honestly, this is kind of a stupid idea. Why is this not a business?" So he gave him that pitch. My friend was like, "Wow, that sounds awesome. I didn't realize all that. I had stumbled into this potential gold mine."
So he said, "Listen, man, I just don't understand what this thing is. I just need to think about it." Naval was like, "No problem."
By the way, that same week, he meets Keith Rabois, Max Levchin, and a bunch of other people who are also giving him the same pitch but in different flavors. Keith Rabois was like, "You should come work for us." My friend was like, "I don't want a job."
Keith said, "See all these people right there? They're all programmers. They're going to put you out of business tomorrow." He was like, "This is a stupid app. It's not a business. You're wasting your time doing this."
| |
Tim Ferriss | Out of business. That isn't a business.
| |
Shaan Puri | I live in my mom's bedroom. Like, what are you talking about?
So then I said, he goes, "You know, the great thing about Naval though is that, like, 15 years later, my friend, a very successful tech entrepreneur, he actually dug up that old term sheet. He said it was so fair. He could have taken advantage of me, and I didn't know anything. It was incredibly founder-friendly and fair."
He said that told him a lot about Naval. But at that time, when a lot of people were in the heated moment about this kind of gold rush in the Facebook app days, and I was clearly a novice, he operated with very high integrity. I thought that said a lot about him.
| |
Tim Ferriss | Yeah, that matches with my experience. I've always seen that in the bowl. Yeah, for sure. | |
Shaan Puri | Right on! Well, Tim, thanks for doing this, man. I really, really appreciate it.
| |
Tim Ferriss | Yeah, my pleasure, man. Thanks for taking the time.
| |
Shaan Puri | Mission accomplished.
|