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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news. This is Masters in

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Speaker 1: Business with Barry Ritholts on Bloomberg Radio.

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Speaker 2: This week on the podcast Yes I Know, I say,

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Speaker 2: I have an extra special guest every week. This week,

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Speaker 2: I have an extra extra special guest. Tim Ferris, best

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Speaker 2: selling author of numerous books, including The Four Hour Workweek,

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Speaker 2: host of the Tim Ferris Podcast. He's got a bajillion

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Speaker 2: downloads on that. He's written five number one best selling books,

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Speaker 2: including Tools of the Titans. He also has a new

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Speaker 2: card game out called Coyote, which is getting a lot

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Speaker 2: of buzz. He co created this with another gaming company

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Speaker 2: called Exploding Kittens. You probably know Tim from some of

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Speaker 2: his books or conversations or ted Talks or what have you.

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Speaker 2: I find him to just be such a thoughtful guy.

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Speaker 2: He is really the chief scientist of his own experiment,

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Speaker 2: the Tim Ferriss Experiment, where he's constantly trying to figure

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Speaker 2: out how his body works, how his psychology works, how

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Speaker 2: his emotional world works, and has tried a variety of

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Speaker 2: different things and sort of fastidiously documented what does and

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Speaker 2: doesn't work for him. That's what led to his productivity book,

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Speaker 2: The Four Hour Workweek, It's what led to his health

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Speaker 2: and fitness book, The Four Hour Body, On and on.

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Speaker 2: He just tries a whole bunch of things, figures out

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Speaker 2: does the AB test, figures out what works and what doesn't.

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Speaker 2: I thought this conversation was fascinating, and I think you

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Speaker 2: will also with no further ado, my discussion with Tim Ferris.

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Speaker 3: Thanks for having me well here.

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Speaker 2: It's nice to have a fellow podcaster in here. I

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Speaker 2: don't have to explain how this rolls. What I want

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Speaker 2: to do is I'm excited about your book. I know

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Speaker 2: you have a new game out that we want to

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Speaker 2: talk about. But I have to start by delving into

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Speaker 2: your background, which is really fascinating. Bachelors and East Asian

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Speaker 2: studies from Princeton. What were the original career plans?

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Speaker 3: So that was after a major switch. So the original

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Speaker 3: career plan was actually neuroscience. So oh, no sentence major

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Speaker 3: And there are a few reasons I wanted to focus

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Speaker 3: on that. I have Parkinson's and Alzheimer's and hereditary bipolar

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Speaker 3: and so on.

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Speaker 2: So wait, we could have a whole nother discussion on neurodivergency.

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Speaker 2: And I was kind of fascinated by a lot of

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Speaker 2: what you have done seemed to be hacks to manage

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Speaker 2: and operate around whatever deficits you're working with. Some deficits

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Speaker 2: come with separate surpluses. But how significant were all these

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Speaker 2: deficits to forcing you to come up with a methodology

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Speaker 2: of just navigating life?

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Speaker 3: Well? The depression piece was a huge challenge for most

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Speaker 3: of my life, and thankfully that has changed with a

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Speaker 3: couple of different approaches and different tools. And that's one

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Speaker 3: of the drivers for the initial neuroscience. And there was

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Speaker 3: someone in the Department of psychology but within the focus

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Speaker 3: of neuroscience named Barry Jacobs at the time, and I

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Speaker 3: was interested in Barry Jacobs as a possible mentor because

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Speaker 3: he was focused on the role of serotonin in sleep

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Speaker 3: and mood regulations of the neurobiology of depression. He also,

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Speaker 3: and this was early days, he had an interest in

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Speaker 3: psychoactive substances, including LSD. So my interest in psychedelic compounds

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Speaker 3: goes back a very very long time. That would have

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Speaker 3: been nineteen ninety five ninety six, but I couldn't personally

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Speaker 3: do I realized and it is important and it is

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Speaker 3: necessary at this point in time. The animal testing on rats.

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Speaker 3: He used cats for a lot of the circadian rhythm studies,

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Speaker 3: but I couldn't euthanize these rats after doing various tests,

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Speaker 3: and it wasn't actually torture of any type. I just couldn't.

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Speaker 3: I couldn't be hands on with that at the time,

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Speaker 3: so I switched to East Asian studies, but with a

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Speaker 3: focus on mostly language acquisition. So I was still in

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Speaker 3: the realm of let's just say cognitive neuroscience, but more

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Speaker 3: on the linguistic side. Danny Kahneman, I actually volunteered to

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Speaker 3: be a research subject in a bunch of his studies,

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Speaker 3: no kid, yeah, just to see what that was.

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Speaker 2: Like at the time. Had he already won the Nobel

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Speaker 2: and like I think it was one to oh two.

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Speaker 3: So no, not yet, not yet. So this was super

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Speaker 3: early days, still very well known on campus. But I

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Speaker 3: guess it would have been Greenhall. They were pretty boring,

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Speaker 3: to be honest. The tasks hitting space bars or something

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Speaker 3: to indicate when you see a flashing green box in

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Speaker 3: the upper left hand corner of one of these very

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Speaker 3: old school monitors. But that was one of the ways

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Speaker 3: that I earned whatever was five dollars an hour pay

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Speaker 3: for something.

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Speaker 2: Was he ever in Princeton I kind of remember he

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Speaker 2: was at Princeton and then Vancouver and then California, so.

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Speaker 3: Maybe yeah, he bounced around, but at that time.

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Speaker 2: Princeton, huh, really really interesting. So I get the transition.

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Speaker 2: I guess if you're going to pick some space related

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Speaker 2: to neuroscience, Asian studies can occasionally overlap with that.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and I had been an exchange student. My first

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Speaker 3: real trip outside of the US was as an exchange

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Speaker 3: student at age fifteen to Tokyo, Japan, amazing where I went

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Speaker 3: to a Japanese school for a year.

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Speaker 2: Are you fluent it all?

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Speaker 3: I am? Yeah, I still speak read less so right,

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Speaker 3: because you really have to practice that to keep it up.

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Speaker 3: I can still speak and read Japanese. And then got

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Speaker 3: a couple of others.

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Speaker 2: I have a friend, Noah Smith, who is physics and

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Speaker 2: economics like a killer double major, and he's spent summers

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Speaker 2: in raves Kyoto says, Tokyo, you have to go when

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Speaker 2: that must have been fascinating at fifteen, that has to

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Speaker 2: be a little overwhelming.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a fascinating very for someone who grew up

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Speaker 3: on Long Island.

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Speaker 2: And that's why you're an East Hampton kid, right.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, And at that point only spoke English, very alien.

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Speaker 3: That has the benefit of being incredibly alien but incredibly safe.

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Speaker 3: And the additional benefit that people tend to speak, if

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Speaker 3: they speak at all, terrible English, which means you have

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Speaker 3: to learn Japanese. Huh So, in contrast with a lot

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Speaker 3: of if you go to Spain or if you go

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Speaker 3: to Norway, good luck learning Norwegian because people are going

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Speaker 3: to default English, that just doesn't really happen in Japan.

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Speaker 3: So not mentioned the fact that I got there before smartphones,

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Speaker 3: so I couldn't just escape to texting with my friends.

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Speaker 3: I was stuck.

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Speaker 2: It was or to use Google Translate to actually talk to.

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Speaker 3: Me didn't exist. Yeah, you were stuck, and that was

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Speaker 3: a huge, huge benefit. So that is another reason. Actually,

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Speaker 3: another reason why I chose Princeton was because it had

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Speaker 3: the one of the strongest, if not the strongest, East

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Speaker 3: Asian studies programs for at that time, I was most

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Speaker 3: interested in Japanese and Chinese, which I would have taken

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Speaker 3: even if I had majored in neuroscience.

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Speaker 2: Huh So you graduate in two thousand, I'm kind of

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Speaker 2: fascinated that very quickly you start writing The Four Hour

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Speaker 2: work Week, which was published in seven like that is

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Speaker 2: a shockingly short period of time. You're in your twenties

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Speaker 2: when you're selling what essentially becomes one of the top

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Speaker 2: selling books of seven I mean it was on every

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Speaker 2: bestseller list. I don't have to tell you this, but

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Speaker 2: I want listeners to understand. So the first question is,

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Speaker 2: what on earth motivated you five years out of college

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Speaker 2: to say I think I'm going to write a book.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, so, I actually explicitly never wanted to write anything.

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Speaker 3: This is a commitment I made to myself after graduation,

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Speaker 3: longer than an email ever. Again, that was the promise

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Speaker 3: because my senior thesis I felt almost killed me. So

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Speaker 3: I didn't want to write anything. But one of my

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Speaker 3: professors at Princeton who really changed the trajectory of my life,

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Speaker 3: a professor named ed shaw Z Scchau were still in touch.

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Speaker 3: He was a former competitive figure skater, took companies public,

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Speaker 3: one of the first computer science professors at Stanford. He

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Speaker 3: did everything taught at Harvard Business School, etcetera, etcetera, ETCETERA

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Speaker 3: real polymath, renaissance man, and he taught a class called

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Speaker 3: high Tech Entrepreneurship, which was electrical engineering four ninety one.

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Speaker 3: But you didn't need to be an engineer. I wasn't

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Speaker 3: and that class is what convinced me to move west.

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Speaker 3: Keep in mind the timing. This was just before the

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Speaker 3: dot com inclusion to chase my riches and engage in tech,

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Speaker 3: and in two thousand and one, after that startup I

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Speaker 3: joined had imploded, I started my own company and I

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Speaker 3: was bootstrapping it. I didn't raise any outside financing, and

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Speaker 3: so Ed asked me to come back and talk to

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Speaker 3: students about bootstrapping. So I went back twice a year

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Speaker 3: to do this short lecture to students, and in one

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Speaker 3: of the feedback forms after years of doing this, one

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Speaker 3: of the students, who was not being serious, put in

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Speaker 3: his additional comments, I don't understand why you're teaching a

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Speaker 3: class of undergrads and graduate students. Why don't you just

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Speaker 3: write a book and be done with it. And I

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Speaker 3: had really bad insomnia for decades, including at that time,

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Speaker 3: so I would get these half baked ideas for chapter

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Speaker 3: titles or content or whatever, and I couldn't get to sleep,

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Speaker 3: and I would just jot it down and the notes

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Speaker 3: from the classes as I was teaching, which changed over

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Speaker 3: time to track my experiences, and these insomnia Middle of

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Speaker 3: the night notes formed the backbone of something. Sent it

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Speaker 3: to a mentor of mine who was an author and

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Speaker 3: unbidden without asking me, was like, I think this is

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Speaker 3: a great idea. Here meets so and so meet so

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Speaker 3: and so introduced me to various editors and agents. Keeping

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Speaker 3: in mind now looking back twenty eight or twenty nine,

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Speaker 3: publishers meaning imprints said no, and then Crown bought it

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Speaker 3: for next to nothing.

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Speaker 2: I love all the examples. I'm a big William Goldman fan,

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Speaker 2: whose book and Ventures in the Screen Trade Amazing introduced

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Speaker 2: the phrase nobody knows anything into the popular culture. And

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Speaker 2: he talks about all the studios passed on Star Wars,

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Speaker 2: all the studios passed on Raiders? Was it paramount that

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Speaker 2: passed on et because hey, we have this other alien

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Speaker 2: adventure called Starman, nobody remembers today, and.

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Speaker 3: You could go to other you can go anywhere fields Starbucks,

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Speaker 3: everybody passed on Starbucks.

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Speaker 2: Quid Games. The author couldn't get it sold for ten years,

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Speaker 2: ultimately had to sell his laptop because he was so broke.

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Speaker 2: I love the John Wick story. You have, like this

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Speaker 2: top action hero could not get Hong Kong Gun Fou

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Speaker 2: made in Hollywood ended up funding it himself along with

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Speaker 2: I'm trying to remember the other actress who kicked money

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Speaker 2: and it's now a two billion dollar franchise. So the

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Speaker 2: best selling book that all the imprints passed on not

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Speaker 2: a surprise at all. It is a throw everything against

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Speaker 2: the wall business model and we don't care and we'll

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Speaker 2: see what sticks. And they missed this.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's a hits driven business in some ways,

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Speaker 3: very similar to the angel investing later, I mean sure,

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Speaker 3: type of kind of parallel distribution. And what's been wildest

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Speaker 3: about Four Hour work Week, which is really a book

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Speaker 3: on increasing per hour output, which is why it found

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Speaker 3: a toe hold in tech and then the first New

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Speaker 3: York Times coverage had Mark Injries and the famed entrepreneur

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Speaker 3: and now venture capitalists talking about it. He wants to

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Speaker 3: work eighty hours a week, but he wants to get

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Speaker 3: each of those hours to produce ten times as much

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Speaker 3: and that's the basic underlying theme of the book. So

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Speaker 3: what's wild about it is almost all the tech tools

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Speaker 3: that I recommend and additional resources have expired. But even

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Speaker 3: in twenty seventeen, when all of that stuff was irrelevant,

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Speaker 3: the principles, the frameworks and so on. It ended up

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Speaker 3: being on the Amazon Top ten most highlighted books of

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Speaker 3: all time list.

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Speaker 2: Meaning from the Kindle version that's so highlight.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, in twenty seventeen, so that would have been eight

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Speaker 3: years later when all of the tech tools were just

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Speaker 3: dinosaurs at that point, which has been it's been cool

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Speaker 3: to watch.

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Speaker 2: So I have I'm thumb through the book over the weekend.

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Speaker 2: I read it way back when, and I'm revisiting an

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Speaker 2: old copy which I should have brought in to have

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Speaker 2: you signed. And my wife says, four hour work week.

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Speaker 2: What's She's an art teacher, fashion illustration and design. She's like,

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Speaker 2: what's that about? And I say, I know this is

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Speaker 2: not going to be a conversation that's going to go

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Speaker 2: any place productive, So I just say the Parato principle.

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Speaker 2: She's like, what's that. Well, eighty percent of the value

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Speaker 2: we derive from most activities, clients, effort, whatever comes from

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Speaker 2: twenty percent of whatever that data set is. And she's like, oh,

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Speaker 2: is that true. I'm like, yeah, kind of really seems

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Speaker 2: to be true. Oh okay, And I know immediately like

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Speaker 2: this is not her sort of book, but how grossly

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Speaker 2: am I oversimplifying the four hour work week by just

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Speaker 2: reducing it to Parado points.

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Speaker 3: I think if you had to pick one principle in

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Speaker 3: the book, that's a good one, that's it right to

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Speaker 3: focus on. Now, it assumes a few things that sometimes

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Speaker 3: get missed, right, so people can jump to strategy before

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Speaker 3: they really interrogate their direction or reasons for doing something.

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Speaker 3: So the definition phase of that book, where you're really

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Speaker 3: getting very clear on which target you are aiming for,

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Speaker 3: I think is a might sound strange, but an often

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Speaker 3: under emphasized precursor to then doing an eighty twenty analysis.

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Speaker 3: Because for eighty twenty or preto principle analysis, you're looking

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Speaker 3: at which twenty percent of the inputs roughly right, it

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Speaker 3: could be ten, it could be one percent are producing

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Speaker 3: the outsized percentage of the returns. Now, that could be

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Speaker 3: looking at your customers if you run a business, right,

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Speaker 3: it could be looking at your physical exercise, what's producing

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Speaker 3: the adaptations. That's a little trickier to do, but you

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Speaker 3: can figure it out. You could look at it with

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Speaker 3: medications too. I mean it's like there are a lot

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Speaker 3: of ways to apply it. And Vilfredo pareto notice this

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Speaker 3: in everything from agriculture and like pea production to wealth distribution.

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Speaker 3: It applies all over the place. And actually Richard Koshkoch

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Speaker 3: has written a lot on this subject under the moniker

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Speaker 3: of the eighty twenty principle. But I'd say, if you

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Speaker 3: had to pick one principle, that's the one. Sure.

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Speaker 2: Since we're sitting here in Bloomberg, I just have to

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Speaker 2: point out it's very much true for your portfolio, the

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Speaker 2: vast majority of your gains. And if you read some

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Speaker 2: of the research by people like Bessembinder, Hendrik Bessembinder in

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Speaker 2: Arizona State, it's not even twenty percent that's generating returns.

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Speaker 2: It's one or two percent. Yeah, that creates the vast majority.

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Speaker 2: So there's pareto principle, hyper preto principle. But it's kind

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Speaker 2: of fascinating that you use this as a way to

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Speaker 2: hack your own productivity, effectiveness, comfort level, mental health. Like

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Speaker 2: you've applied this across a wide range of items. Have

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Speaker 2: you ever found a space where it doesn't work?

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Speaker 3: I haven't, to be honest.

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Speaker 2: It's just consistent everywhere.

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Speaker 3: It seems to be practically a lot of nature that

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Speaker 3: a few things, the critical few versus the trivial many.

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Speaker 3: It's it's almost always a few things.

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Speaker 2: Critical few versus the trivial many. Yeah, that that is

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Speaker 2: fabulous summation of that. I really I really like that.

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Speaker 2: So let's let's stick with the book for a moment. Sure,

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Speaker 2: in the book, you have a lot of practices and

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Speaker 2: tools and routines. I know some of them are still

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Speaker 2: valid today. Some of them may or may not have,

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Speaker 2: for lack of a better word, expired. What were the

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Speaker 2: most important items you learned? What are the ones that

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Speaker 2: people speak to you and say, hey, this resonated, this

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Speaker 2: really had a big impact on me.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say the first is let me zoom

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Speaker 3: out and say that. I went back and I looked

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Speaker 3: at the book, which is always tough for me on

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Speaker 3: some level because I published it when I was twenty nine, right,

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Speaker 3: I'm turning forty eight soon, and so there's there's a

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Speaker 3: little bit of chess puffing and so on because I

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Speaker 3: was completely unknown at the time, which makes me WinCE.

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Speaker 3: But overall, the principles are still things that I apply

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Speaker 3: all the time. But the tech tools like using go

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Speaker 3: to my PC. No, of course, not that's changed. That

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Speaker 3: world has changed, but the principles and the frameworks, the

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Speaker 3: exercises still apply. So there, I would say a few

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Speaker 3: things get echoed to me a lot. One is the

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Speaker 3: practice of fear setting.

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Speaker 2: Fear setting, define fear setting for them.

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Speaker 3: Sure, it's very simple. So fear setting is based on

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Speaker 3: the I think accurate assumption that oftentimes we are taught

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Speaker 3: to set goals, or we have a framework for trying

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Speaker 3: to set goals like smart, right, specific, measurable, et cetera,

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Speaker 3: with a timeline. But if you have the emergency break

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Speaker 3: on with some set of amorphous fears about starting a business,

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Speaker 3: quitting your job, getting engaged, getting divorced, taking a vacation

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Speaker 3: from your job or your business, whatever it might be,

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Speaker 3: that that is the kind of rate limitter and what

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Speaker 3: you can do. And people can find this for free

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Speaker 3: if you just go to watch my ted talk which

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Speaker 3: has I don't know twelve million views now.

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Speaker 2: On eighteen tight minutes of here's what to do with

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Speaker 2: your life.

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Speaker 3: Yah, Well, just focuses on this exercise of fear setting,

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Speaker 3: which I still do probably once a quarter. And the

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Speaker 3: basic idea is you take whatever you're considering that you

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Speaker 3: haven't yet done because you have some degree of fear apprehension,

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Speaker 3: you write down all of the worst things that could happen.

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Speaker 3: Let's just call it a list of twenty in excruciating detail,

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Speaker 3: make them specific. Then you have another column, which is

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Speaker 3: what you could do to minimize the likelihood of each

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Speaker 3: of those things happening. Last column. If each of those happened,

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Speaker 3: what could you do to recover or temporarily stop the bleeding? Right? So, okay,

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Speaker 3: you try business after quitting your job, which, by the way,

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Speaker 3: I don't recommend. You can moonlight and do various things

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Speaker 3: to hedge against risk, but then it doesn't work. Okay,

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Speaker 3: can you temporarily airbnb a bedroom in your house or

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Speaker 3: your bed? Can you get a job bar attending, just

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Speaker 3: to get back on your feet, Sure, of course you can.

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Speaker 3: So when you start to do that, and then there's

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Speaker 3: a separate page where you also write out the costs

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Speaker 3: of inaction, which is a neglected step. When people are

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Speaker 3: considering what they're doing, they look at the risks of

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Speaker 3: doing something, but they don't look at the risks of

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Speaker 3: not doing that thing. So if you telescope out a

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Speaker 3: year three years, what are the financial, emotional, familial, or

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Speaker 3: relationship costs of not doing the thing you're considering? And

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Speaker 3: when you then look at these things which represent your

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Speaker 3: thoughts trapped on paper, A lot of people are able

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Speaker 3: to do the scary thing. So I would say that

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Speaker 3: that one gets echoed a lot. And then this concept

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Speaker 3: of many retirements, so engineering a way such that you

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Speaker 3: can take four weeks completely off the grid or disconnected,

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Speaker 3: which is very very very achievable.

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Speaker 4: It's four weeks in a row or a week every quarter,

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Speaker 4: like three to four weeks in a row.

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Speaker 2: Wow, that's a lot.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, And what that forces you to do also is

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Speaker 3: upgrade your sort of systems and policies and automation in

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Speaker 3: your life or in your business or even in your

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Speaker 3: job by teaching subordinates how to do things autonomously. And

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Speaker 3: the value of all those things outlives the many retirement.

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Speaker 3: So I'd say those are two that come back a lot.

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Speaker 2: It's interesting that you're approaching laying out the pros and

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Speaker 2: cons and things that lead to fear in a new venture.

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Speaker 2: I can textualize that a little differently. You and I

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Speaker 2: have both interviewed Ray Dalio. Yeah, and raise great in

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Speaker 2: innovation and contribution to finance. Finance has this very much

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Speaker 2: fake it till you make it attitude never admit error. No, no,

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Speaker 2: it'll be great. Don't why if it didn't work out

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Speaker 2: this year or work out next year? And Ray very

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Speaker 2: much said, no, that's wrong. We're all going to make mistakes.

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Speaker 2: It's really important to learn from those mistakes. And I

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Speaker 2: want to say he's the first guy that really put

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Speaker 2: that out at all.

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Speaker 3: I have not to mention the transparency of having almost

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Speaker 3: all meetings recorded, accessible by anyone within his firm, I mean.

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Speaker 2: Which is kind of horrifying.

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Speaker 3: They did some pretty wild stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's

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Speaker 3: a fascinating character.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely, But it leads to the question, what you're talking

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Speaker 2: about is really a way to prep yourself for a

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Speaker 2: fear of failure? Is that fair to describe it?

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Speaker 3: And sure, yeah, or you know what, it's a fear

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Speaker 3: of failure, But oftentimes it's this, it's the fact you

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Speaker 3: can achieve. Well, it's going to be very very hard

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Speaker 3: to achieve your goals if they're not very specific and clear.

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Speaker 3: Even if you fail partially, that's fine. You can still

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Speaker 3: do great things. I think the parallel is that if

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Speaker 3: your fears are unclear, nebulous, it's just a feeling in

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Speaker 3: your gut, but you don't trap the specifics on paper,

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Speaker 3: they're very difficult to overcome. They will still be a

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Speaker 3: break in your life. It is just as important to

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Speaker 3: address that as it is to address the goals to

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Speaker 3: identify those sort of sticking points. And I would also

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Speaker 3: say that I think of risk for people as often

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Speaker 3: ill defined, and there are many ways in different context

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Speaker 3: to define risk. But if we look at it as

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Speaker 3: the likelihood of a irreversible negative outcome, very few things

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Speaker 3: have a ten out of ten value in that category.

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Speaker 3: And then if you look at for instance, if you

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Speaker 3: look at the and I encourage peo able to do

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Speaker 3: this in fear setting, it's like from zero to ten transient,

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Speaker 3: recoverable or permanent, what is the potential upside of doing

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Speaker 3: this scary thing that you're considering doing? And then if

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Speaker 3: you stay doing what you're doing, like, what are the

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Speaker 3: zero to ten permanent transient risks or potential outcomes of

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Speaker 3: not doing the thing? When you then see, oh, if

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Speaker 3: I do this thing, there could be all of these

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Speaker 3: potentially semi permanent or permanent benefits. If I try it

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Speaker 3: and fail, the downsize are transient and like three out

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Speaker 3: of ten, it makes the decision much much easier and

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Speaker 3: the decision is the hardest part. Once you commit, then

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Speaker 3: it's just execution, risk and implementation, And it's the decision

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Speaker 3: that is the hardest part for most people.

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Speaker 2: It's amazing that everything you're saying is so applicable to

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Speaker 2: public markets investing, because when people are in that panic mode,

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Speaker 2: when they're fearful, oh my god, we're down fifteen percent,

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Speaker 2: the world is going to come to an end, it's

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Speaker 2: always no, this is transitory, this is temporary. How can

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Speaker 2: you avoid making those permanent losses? How can you avoid

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Speaker 2: those decisions that lead to really bad outcomes? And it's

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Speaker 2: really understanding, Hey, is this a ten or is this

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Speaker 2: more likely a two, three, four on scale?

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Speaker 3: And I can actually, I'll give something else in the

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Speaker 3: investing world if we're looking at when people neglect the

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Speaker 3: other side of a coin. And this is not going

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Speaker 3: to apply to like the super ultra pros, but a

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Speaker 3: lot of people who participate in the public markets, they

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Speaker 3: think about what to buy right, what's a good buy

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Speaker 3: at this moment. They don't think about whole period. They

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Speaker 3: don't think about selling strategy. What will be the cues,

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Speaker 3: what are the underlying sort of theses if invalidated that

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Speaker 3: would mean they should sell blah blah blah blah blah.

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Speaker 3: They don't have a structured way of thinking about selling.

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Speaker 3: And similarly, it's like if you just think about your goal,

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Speaker 3: but you don't have a structured way of thinking about

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Speaker 3: fear and ap comprehension and so on, you're equally handicapped.

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Speaker 3: So that would be an easy kind of copy paste comparison.

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Speaker 2: I would say, huh, really interesting. You come out of

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Speaker 2: college with Asian language studies and then you write a

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Speaker 2: book on productivity and personal efficiency. How did you then

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Speaker 2: pivot to angel investing and or advising.

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Speaker 3: So the pivot, I guess, was an overlap in a

434
00:25:29,480 --> 00:25:32,400
Speaker 3: sense because the Four Hour work Week. I was based

435
00:25:32,440 --> 00:25:35,960
Speaker 3: in Silicon Valley for seventeen years, and I seeded The

436
00:25:36,000 --> 00:25:38,720
Speaker 3: four Hour work Week at tech heavy events in part

437
00:25:38,760 --> 00:25:43,960
Speaker 3: because it talks about information low information diet, and selective

438
00:25:43,960 --> 00:25:47,719
Speaker 3: ignorance and basically overcoming digital overwhelm. That's a component of

439
00:25:47,760 --> 00:25:50,760
Speaker 3: the book, and that pain was most acutely felt by

440
00:25:50,760 --> 00:25:54,880
Speaker 3: people in tech at the time. So my early adopters,

441
00:25:55,520 --> 00:25:58,840
Speaker 3: plus the people I had access to were techies in

442
00:25:58,960 --> 00:26:01,639
Speaker 3: the very early state figuring out how I would launch

443
00:26:01,680 --> 00:26:05,960
Speaker 3: this book and what that had as a side effect

444
00:26:06,640 --> 00:26:11,800
Speaker 3: was developing relationships with various founders and there were a

445
00:26:11,840 --> 00:26:16,840
Speaker 3: lot of fans among CEOs and co founders of startups.

446
00:26:17,280 --> 00:26:20,320
Speaker 2: Let me interrupt you just to remind people, the book

447
00:26:20,359 --> 00:26:23,879
Speaker 2: comes out in seven yep. This is before half of

448
00:26:23,880 --> 00:26:26,480
Speaker 2: the companies that we think of as part of our

449
00:26:26,600 --> 00:26:30,119
Speaker 2: daily lives. Well before were you know, there was no

450
00:26:30,240 --> 00:26:34,399
Speaker 2: public Alibama. I think that's before Facebook, certainly long before

451
00:26:35,080 --> 00:26:39,160
Speaker 2: uber goes goes public and Shopify. A lot of these

452
00:26:39,160 --> 00:26:43,040
Speaker 2: companies were you know, barely a gleam in the creator's eyes.

453
00:26:43,119 --> 00:26:45,359
Speaker 3: Yeah, they didn't. A lot of them either didn't exist

454
00:26:45,520 --> 00:26:47,880
Speaker 3: or they were very very early stages. So I launched

455
00:26:47,880 --> 00:26:52,520
Speaker 3: the book. My main launch strategy was south By Southwest,

456
00:26:52,640 --> 00:26:55,040
Speaker 3: this festival in Austin, Texas in two thousand and seven,

457
00:26:55,400 --> 00:26:58,800
Speaker 3: which was also the same south By Southwest where Twitter

458
00:26:58,840 --> 00:27:04,479
Speaker 3: basically went live in public in full promotional mode. And

459
00:27:04,920 --> 00:27:08,280
Speaker 3: the other piece of the story of angel investing is

460
00:27:08,440 --> 00:27:12,000
Speaker 3: that I mentioned in the previous segment my professor in

461
00:27:12,000 --> 00:27:15,160
Speaker 3: school ed show his son in law at the time,

462
00:27:15,640 --> 00:27:19,680
Speaker 3: Mike Maples Junior, was a very well known angel investor

463
00:27:20,200 --> 00:27:23,440
Speaker 3: in Silicon Valley, had been an executive at various companies

464
00:27:23,960 --> 00:27:27,480
Speaker 3: and we became friendly. He wanted to lose some weight.

465
00:27:27,640 --> 00:27:29,560
Speaker 3: I wanted to learn more about what he did, so

466
00:27:29,600 --> 00:27:32,800
Speaker 3: we would have breakfast at this place called Hobi's and

467
00:27:33,040 --> 00:27:35,840
Speaker 3: I would help him with his strategy for training and

468
00:27:35,880 --> 00:27:38,240
Speaker 3: so on. At this point, also the for hour work

469
00:27:38,280 --> 00:27:40,840
Speaker 3: we could come out of nowhere and hit the New

470
00:27:40,880 --> 00:27:43,199
Speaker 3: York Time, hit the New York Times list, then went

471
00:27:43,240 --> 00:27:45,160
Speaker 3: to number one and stayed on the New York Times

472
00:27:45,200 --> 00:27:46,800
Speaker 3: list for four and a half years or five years

473
00:27:46,880 --> 00:27:47,200
Speaker 3: or something.

474
00:27:47,280 --> 00:27:50,080
Speaker 2: That's insane. And so are you aware just of how

475
00:27:50,880 --> 00:27:52,000
Speaker 2: lightning in a bottle that is?

476
00:27:52,040 --> 00:27:54,040
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's been as It's part of the reason I

477
00:27:54,040 --> 00:27:56,800
Speaker 3: haven't wanted to go back and revise any of the writing.

478
00:27:56,840 --> 00:27:59,560
Speaker 3: I'm like, I don't want to touch the butterfly and

479
00:27:59,680 --> 00:28:02,520
Speaker 3: risk screwing it up. So he wanted to know how

480
00:28:02,560 --> 00:28:05,320
Speaker 3: that happened, Like what did I do? And there were

481
00:28:05,400 --> 00:28:07,840
Speaker 3: things I did for marketing and PR and so on

482
00:28:07,920 --> 00:28:12,240
Speaker 3: to help catalyze that. And in exchange, I'd say, tell

483
00:28:12,240 --> 00:28:14,280
Speaker 3: me about your deals, what are you doing? I was

484
00:28:14,320 --> 00:28:17,959
Speaker 3: always interested in investing. Eventually, after a few months all

485
00:28:18,000 --> 00:28:20,879
Speaker 3: of these factors combined, I asked Mike and he was

486
00:28:21,000 --> 00:28:23,600
Speaker 3: very generous at this time if he might be open

487
00:28:23,640 --> 00:28:26,040
Speaker 3: to me co investing with him on some deals, very

488
00:28:26,080 --> 00:28:27,879
Speaker 3: small checks like I would put in ten K, so

489
00:28:27,920 --> 00:28:30,200
Speaker 3: I wouldn't eat up much of the cap table. I

490
00:28:30,240 --> 00:28:31,960
Speaker 3: would put in a lot of work to try to

491
00:28:32,000 --> 00:28:36,960
Speaker 3: help these companies, And that is how the whole adventure started.

492
00:28:37,080 --> 00:28:40,560
Speaker 3: I wanted to be the least expensive, most valuable person

493
00:28:41,160 --> 00:28:43,680
Speaker 3: in terms of ratio on the cap table, so that

494
00:28:43,720 --> 00:28:48,920
Speaker 3: those early founders would become my testimonials basically for future deals.

495
00:28:49,760 --> 00:28:53,840
Speaker 3: That's how the whole thing started. And I decided to

496
00:28:53,880 --> 00:28:56,640
Speaker 3: treat it like I would treat going to business school.

497
00:28:56,680 --> 00:28:58,720
Speaker 3: I looked at Stanford at the time because I'd fantasized

498
00:28:58,720 --> 00:29:00,479
Speaker 3: about going to Stanford Business School on like, Okay, it's

499
00:29:00,480 --> 00:29:04,320
Speaker 3: one hundred and twenty k over two years. I would

500
00:29:04,320 --> 00:29:06,320
Speaker 3: have had to pay that out of pocket. So let

501
00:29:06,320 --> 00:29:09,479
Speaker 3: me create the quote unquote Tim Ferriss fund for Angel Investing.

502
00:29:09,480 --> 00:29:11,960
Speaker 3: It's one hundred and twenty k over two years, and

503
00:29:12,240 --> 00:29:14,680
Speaker 3: I'm assuming that it's sunk cost tuition. It's going to

504
00:29:14,720 --> 00:29:16,280
Speaker 3: go to zero and none of the startups are going

505
00:29:16,320 --> 00:29:19,800
Speaker 3: to succeed. But if I can develop skills, learn a

506
00:29:19,840 --> 00:29:25,280
Speaker 3: lot end relationships that make it worthwhile, I will consider

507
00:29:25,520 --> 00:29:28,800
Speaker 3: it a success. And that was the approach I took

508
00:29:28,920 --> 00:29:32,880
Speaker 3: to doing it. And the timing was also great because

509
00:29:32,920 --> 00:29:34,920
Speaker 3: I started in two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight,

510
00:29:34,920 --> 00:29:37,720
Speaker 3: two thousand and eight. For a few years afterwards, was

511
00:29:37,760 --> 00:29:41,120
Speaker 3: effectively considered a dot com depression, right, But that's when

512
00:29:41,160 --> 00:29:46,480
Speaker 3: I met Toby they shopify when they had nine employees

513
00:29:46,560 --> 00:29:50,320
Speaker 3: or twelve employees, and became an advisor. That's when I

514
00:29:50,400 --> 00:29:54,000
Speaker 3: started becoming involved with lots of companies of these very

515
00:29:54,040 --> 00:29:58,720
Speaker 3: early stages which ended up just to become these behemoths.

516
00:29:59,120 --> 00:30:01,480
Speaker 2: I love your conce of this is a sun cost,

517
00:30:01,520 --> 00:30:04,640
Speaker 2: it's going to zero. I think that's the absolute right

518
00:30:04,720 --> 00:30:08,320
Speaker 2: approach with startups, and you hinted at something that I

519
00:30:08,400 --> 00:30:13,120
Speaker 2: have to explore a little bit. Anytime I throw money

520
00:30:13,160 --> 00:30:17,200
Speaker 2: at a small startup, it's essentially A this is going

521
00:30:17,280 --> 00:30:20,360
Speaker 2: to go to zero, but B I really just want

522
00:30:20,360 --> 00:30:22,800
Speaker 2: to invest in the jockey. I want to put money

523
00:30:22,840 --> 00:30:26,280
Speaker 2: into this person, who Hey, this is easier than bearing

524
00:30:26,280 --> 00:30:28,560
Speaker 2: a body like Those are the two things I would

525
00:30:28,600 --> 00:30:30,760
Speaker 2: do for this guy. Yeah, and a check. All right,

526
00:30:30,960 --> 00:30:33,440
Speaker 2: I'll put a check into that and maybe it works out.

527
00:30:34,200 --> 00:30:37,720
Speaker 2: I sense you have a similar belief in your betting

528
00:30:37,840 --> 00:30:40,880
Speaker 2: on not on the horse, but the jockey. One hundred

529
00:30:40,920 --> 00:30:44,440
Speaker 2: and twenty K is only twelve ten thousand dollars checks, yep,

530
00:30:44,760 --> 00:30:47,640
Speaker 2: and I have to imagine there were a lot more opportunities.

531
00:30:47,960 --> 00:30:51,160
Speaker 2: What criteriay you used to figure out who gets that check? Well.

532
00:30:51,200 --> 00:30:54,000
Speaker 3: Also, just as a side note, the reason I started

533
00:30:54,520 --> 00:30:57,000
Speaker 3: trying to figure out advising and doing those agreements is

534
00:30:57,000 --> 00:30:59,480
Speaker 3: that I ran out of money. I got over enthusiastic,

535
00:30:59,560 --> 00:31:01,760
Speaker 3: and I broke my own rules, and I think the

536
00:31:01,800 --> 00:31:04,080
Speaker 3: first check I wrote was for like forty K and

537
00:31:04,320 --> 00:31:07,560
Speaker 3: immediately imploded, and I was like, oh, this is going

538
00:31:07,600 --> 00:31:11,520
Speaker 3: to be a problem. But leaving that aside, all of

539
00:31:11,560 --> 00:31:16,880
Speaker 3: my best hits have been products that I would use personally,

540
00:31:16,880 --> 00:31:20,560
Speaker 3: that I could ideally be a power user of. And

541
00:31:21,040 --> 00:31:23,520
Speaker 3: there have been a few exceptions, but by and large

542
00:31:23,600 --> 00:31:27,920
Speaker 3: they are addressing problems that I feel acutely, or needs

543
00:31:27,960 --> 00:31:30,400
Speaker 3: that I feel, or wants that I feel very acutely. So,

544
00:31:30,440 --> 00:31:34,840
Speaker 3: for instance, clear how did clear happen? Back in the day,

545
00:31:34,840 --> 00:31:38,400
Speaker 3: it was called clear card, and it was it was

546
00:31:38,600 --> 00:31:42,640
Speaker 3: not widely distributed, it was very little known, And I

547
00:31:42,680 --> 00:31:45,240
Speaker 3: wrote a blog post back when blogs were a big deal,

548
00:31:45,800 --> 00:31:48,960
Speaker 3: and my blog at the time became very popular and

549
00:31:49,040 --> 00:31:52,120
Speaker 3: I wrote a huge piece on how to expedite travel

550
00:31:52,400 --> 00:31:55,760
Speaker 3: and a portion of that was about Clearcard. I linked

551
00:31:55,800 --> 00:31:58,480
Speaker 3: to their website and unbeknownst to me, I was one

552
00:31:58,520 --> 00:32:01,760
Speaker 3: of the largest drivers of traffic to their website. And

553
00:32:01,800 --> 00:32:04,600
Speaker 3: then at some point the leadership reached out to me

554
00:32:04,640 --> 00:32:05,959
Speaker 3: and they said, hey, do you want to do something,

555
00:32:06,040 --> 00:32:08,840
Speaker 3: And that's how that relationship started. And I think I

556
00:32:08,920 --> 00:32:10,760
Speaker 3: was the first advisor to clear. I mean it was

557
00:32:10,840 --> 00:32:12,360
Speaker 3: forever ago, so it must have been.

558
00:32:12,440 --> 00:32:16,000
Speaker 2: I wish they were in more airports. Just blown through JFK. Laguardi.

559
00:32:16,080 --> 00:32:17,080
Speaker 2: It's a blast with them.

560
00:32:17,200 --> 00:32:21,480
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, they've done From an execution perspective, they've been excellent. Also,

561
00:32:21,520 --> 00:32:25,040
Speaker 3: not based in Silicon Valley, and I don't think that

562
00:32:25,160 --> 00:32:26,960
Speaker 3: Silicon Valley is the only place to go hunting for

563
00:32:27,000 --> 00:32:29,720
Speaker 3: great companies. I mean, look at Shopify, Ottawa, Cannabis. I mean,

564
00:32:29,920 --> 00:32:34,200
Speaker 3: come on, that was neglected. So I also so there

565
00:32:34,200 --> 00:32:35,920
Speaker 3: are a few things, was like, is it a problem

566
00:32:36,000 --> 00:32:39,520
Speaker 3: or a need or a want that I feel and understand?

567
00:32:40,000 --> 00:32:42,120
Speaker 3: Is it something I can be a power user of? Therefore,

568
00:32:42,120 --> 00:32:44,400
Speaker 3: it makes it quite easy for me to promote to

569
00:32:44,440 --> 00:32:48,840
Speaker 3: my audience could they be users or customers? And then lastly,

570
00:32:49,400 --> 00:32:52,320
Speaker 3: for a while, until this wasn't viable, I looked for

571
00:32:52,360 --> 00:32:54,880
Speaker 3: geographies that were neglected. So I actually I went hunting

572
00:32:54,880 --> 00:32:59,480
Speaker 3: in Canada a lot. And it works for comedy yeah, yeah,

573
00:32:59,600 --> 00:33:02,280
Speaker 3: or for Canadians. I mean, you look at some of

574
00:33:02,320 --> 00:33:06,960
Speaker 3: the early experiences like stumble Upon. I became an advisor

575
00:33:06,960 --> 00:33:09,640
Speaker 3: to stumble Upon. And who was the founder of stumble Upon,

576
00:33:09,880 --> 00:33:12,800
Speaker 3: a guy named Garrett Camp stumble Upon. I put tons

577
00:33:12,840 --> 00:33:16,480
Speaker 3: of time into he and I became close. We worked

578
00:33:16,520 --> 00:33:19,800
Speaker 3: really well together, We enjoyed working together. Stumble Upon ended

579
00:33:19,840 --> 00:33:22,760
Speaker 3: up being a zero for me. But why is that? Okay?

580
00:33:23,280 --> 00:33:26,200
Speaker 3: Because I talked about the relationships and the skills, right, okay,

581
00:33:26,240 --> 00:33:28,960
Speaker 3: relationship with Garrett Camp? What does he end up doing next?

582
00:33:29,960 --> 00:33:30,920
Speaker 3: Co founder of Uber?

583
00:33:31,280 --> 00:33:32,000
Speaker 2: Not too shabby.

584
00:33:32,240 --> 00:33:34,959
Speaker 3: And then I was one of three people who had

585
00:33:34,960 --> 00:33:39,000
Speaker 3: helped him with stumble Upon who became advisors to Uber

586
00:33:39,080 --> 00:33:41,320
Speaker 3: cab LLC at the time, which was I think two

587
00:33:41,360 --> 00:33:44,720
Speaker 3: thousand and eight. Oh my god, by the way, everybody

588
00:33:44,760 --> 00:33:46,400
Speaker 3: said note Uber everybody.

589
00:33:46,800 --> 00:33:49,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's amazing to me because one of the things

590
00:33:49,680 --> 00:33:53,960
Speaker 2: I find fascinating about vcs is. They kind of put

591
00:33:54,040 --> 00:33:57,960
Speaker 2: their failures on their websites as a badge of honor. Yeah,

592
00:33:58,000 --> 00:34:00,520
Speaker 2: but it's mostly here are the companies we vested in

593
00:34:00,560 --> 00:34:04,000
Speaker 2: that went belly up. They very rarely say, oh, by

594
00:34:04,000 --> 00:34:06,200
Speaker 2: the way, we passed on Ober, we passed on this,

595
00:34:06,360 --> 00:34:07,160
Speaker 2: we passed on that.

596
00:34:07,560 --> 00:34:10,120
Speaker 3: You see less of that, you see less of it.

597
00:34:10,320 --> 00:34:14,520
Speaker 3: And for me, I would say, there's lots of luck.

598
00:34:14,600 --> 00:34:16,360
Speaker 3: But I was also trying to approach it in a

599
00:34:16,520 --> 00:34:21,680
Speaker 3: systematic way. If you're focused on effectively the way I

600
00:34:21,680 --> 00:34:23,600
Speaker 3: would think about, let's say I cut a twenty five

601
00:34:23,600 --> 00:34:25,720
Speaker 3: thousand dollars check. I'm like, okay, would I pay twenty

602
00:34:25,719 --> 00:34:31,400
Speaker 3: five thousand dollars just to develop these relationships and basically

603
00:34:31,480 --> 00:34:34,879
Speaker 3: earn a graduate degree in whatever this startup is doing.

604
00:34:35,320 --> 00:34:38,160
Speaker 3: If so, then great, go. If not, then think twice.

605
00:34:38,600 --> 00:34:42,160
Speaker 3: And taking that approach, all of the skills and the

606
00:34:42,200 --> 00:34:46,640
Speaker 3: new knowledge and the relationships snowball over time. So I

607
00:34:46,719 --> 00:34:51,240
Speaker 3: love highlighting failures that I would put in quotation marks

608
00:34:51,280 --> 00:34:56,239
Speaker 3: because they're actually just seeds and fertilizer for something that

609
00:34:56,440 --> 00:35:00,920
Speaker 3: was intimately connected with the people and the skills that

610
00:35:01,040 --> 00:35:04,000
Speaker 3: came right afterwards. This happens over and over and over again.

611
00:35:04,080 --> 00:35:08,120
Speaker 2: So I'm hearing relationship, I'm hearing tuition for skills. And

612
00:35:08,200 --> 00:35:11,879
Speaker 2: then even quote unquote failures, you don't know what act

613
00:35:11,880 --> 00:35:13,319
Speaker 2: TOO is going to be where it could go.

614
00:35:13,520 --> 00:35:15,560
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then lastly, I would say one thing I

615
00:35:15,600 --> 00:35:18,719
Speaker 3: did quite differently, and maybe more people do this now

616
00:35:18,800 --> 00:35:21,120
Speaker 3: but I had never heard of it is I treated

617
00:35:21,200 --> 00:35:25,320
Speaker 3: a portion of my total budget for that real world

618
00:35:25,400 --> 00:35:28,480
Speaker 3: MBA slash, you know, Tim Ferris fund quotation marks a

619
00:35:28,520 --> 00:35:30,759
Speaker 3: portion of that for marketing budget. What does that mean?

620
00:35:31,360 --> 00:35:35,880
Speaker 3: I invested in I bought secondary so I bought equity

621
00:35:35,920 --> 00:35:40,560
Speaker 3: from employees at Facebook and Twitter. Now it ended up

622
00:35:40,600 --> 00:35:43,200
Speaker 3: being very early, but to my mind at the time,

623
00:35:43,400 --> 00:35:48,320
Speaker 3: they were overpriced, super expensive, huh. But being in those

624
00:35:48,320 --> 00:35:53,360
Speaker 3: deals was coveted. So having a little bit of equity

625
00:35:53,600 --> 00:35:57,759
Speaker 3: in those two companies allowed me to say I'm in

626
00:35:57,800 --> 00:36:02,880
Speaker 3: these companies, which then helped bolster the reputation and assisted

627
00:36:02,920 --> 00:36:05,440
Speaker 3: in getting new deals. So I expected those to go

628
00:36:05,480 --> 00:36:09,640
Speaker 3: to zero. That's marketing budget, right. They ended up working

629
00:36:09,800 --> 00:36:14,279
Speaker 3: very unexpectedly, working out really well, but I expected those

630
00:36:14,320 --> 00:36:17,080
Speaker 3: to go to zero and it was pure marketing budget.

631
00:36:17,360 --> 00:36:21,600
Speaker 2: I've heard you mentioned a book by Sebastian Malaby The.

632
00:36:21,640 --> 00:36:23,000
Speaker 3: Power lawyeh, great book.

633
00:36:23,120 --> 00:36:26,839
Speaker 2: Tell us a little bit about what you learned from

634
00:36:26,880 --> 00:36:29,440
Speaker 2: that book about investing in startups.

635
00:36:31,200 --> 00:36:33,120
Speaker 3: That is a great book if you want to learn

636
00:36:33,120 --> 00:36:36,480
Speaker 3: about venture capital and angel investing. Most of the approaches

637
00:36:36,719 --> 00:36:41,719
Speaker 3: I had already learned just by being in the trenches

638
00:36:41,719 --> 00:36:44,040
Speaker 3: for whatever it was a decade before that book came out.

639
00:36:44,719 --> 00:36:48,040
Speaker 3: I was introduced to Sebastian through More Money than God,

640
00:36:48,080 --> 00:36:51,160
Speaker 3: which is this book about hedge funds. That is an

641
00:36:51,239 --> 00:36:54,680
Speaker 3: exceptional book. And if you want some colorful characters, Oh

642
00:36:54,760 --> 00:36:56,560
Speaker 3: my God, give that a read.

643
00:36:56,760 --> 00:37:01,000
Speaker 2: Plus he's British and his take on everything is it's fantastic.

644
00:37:01,000 --> 00:37:05,879
Speaker 2: It's so dry and so delightfully humorous in an unintentional way.

645
00:37:06,120 --> 00:37:09,200
Speaker 3: Oh, it's so good. He's a wonderful writer and very

646
00:37:09,280 --> 00:37:14,839
Speaker 3: skilled at explaining. So what I would say about that

647
00:37:14,920 --> 00:37:19,359
Speaker 3: book and what people might miss about startups is, yes,

648
00:37:19,440 --> 00:37:22,280
Speaker 3: it's a hits driven business. There's a power law distribution,

649
00:37:22,480 --> 00:37:26,759
Speaker 3: meaning it's preto principle on steroids. You're probably gonna have

650
00:37:27,719 --> 00:37:30,719
Speaker 3: one or two or three startups that give you the

651
00:37:30,840 --> 00:37:33,400
Speaker 3: vast majority of your lifetime runnings, at least as an

652
00:37:33,440 --> 00:37:37,120
Speaker 3: angel investor who's not taking management fees. Right, if you're

653
00:37:37,120 --> 00:37:40,799
Speaker 3: an asset accumulator and you have many, many, many overlapping

654
00:37:41,160 --> 00:37:43,640
Speaker 3: billion dollar plus funds, like sure, you're going to do

655
00:37:43,719 --> 00:37:44,440
Speaker 3: great on management.

656
00:37:44,480 --> 00:37:46,680
Speaker 2: PCs seem to do okay for themselves.

657
00:37:46,760 --> 00:37:49,160
Speaker 3: It's a pretty good business. You have to be smart

658
00:37:49,680 --> 00:37:51,840
Speaker 3: in how you approach it. But as an angel investor,

659
00:37:52,239 --> 00:37:54,440
Speaker 3: I would say, you need to have if you're going

660
00:37:54,520 --> 00:37:58,680
Speaker 3: to be effective in the long term, some coherent strategy

661
00:37:58,880 --> 00:38:01,600
Speaker 3: or philosophy around folio constructions so that you don't run

662
00:38:01,640 --> 00:38:04,640
Speaker 3: out of money. Right, It's like staking someone in poker.

663
00:38:04,680 --> 00:38:07,520
Speaker 3: It's like you have to be able to sustain a

664
00:38:07,560 --> 00:38:13,319
Speaker 3: string of bad luck. And I would say that what

665
00:38:13,640 --> 00:38:18,960
Speaker 3: Sebastian does so well is really detail how various MVPs

666
00:38:19,040 --> 00:38:21,719
Speaker 3: in the world of venture capital have done that over time.

667
00:38:22,280 --> 00:38:24,759
Speaker 3: And there are a few things I would point out

668
00:38:24,800 --> 00:38:27,840
Speaker 3: also with respect to Silicon Valley that a lot of

669
00:38:27,840 --> 00:38:30,840
Speaker 3: people miss because why did it happen in Silicon Valley.

670
00:38:30,840 --> 00:38:34,480
Speaker 3: It's like, sure, you can talk about like Fairchild Semiconductor,

671
00:38:34,600 --> 00:38:37,360
Speaker 3: and I think it was the traitorous aid or whoever

672
00:38:37,400 --> 00:38:39,880
Speaker 3: it was, and all of this, but why did that happen?

673
00:38:40,120 --> 00:38:42,759
Speaker 3: Like why why? Why? I'm always like ask why three

674
00:38:42,760 --> 00:38:45,200
Speaker 3: times and you get to something interesting. Part of it

675
00:38:45,239 --> 00:38:48,560
Speaker 3: is that non competes are incredibly hard, if not close

676
00:38:48,600 --> 00:38:51,560
Speaker 3: to impossible to enforce in California. What does that mean.

677
00:38:51,760 --> 00:38:57,360
Speaker 3: It means that knowledge travels very freely. Talent travels very freely.

678
00:38:57,440 --> 00:38:59,719
Speaker 3: So there's a lot of competition and a lot of

679
00:39:01,280 --> 00:39:04,600
Speaker 3: knowledge sharing, sometimes to the sugar in of former employers.

680
00:39:04,920 --> 00:39:06,920
Speaker 3: But that is part of the reason why Silicon Valley

681
00:39:07,080 --> 00:39:10,279
Speaker 3: is still to this day. Right now it would be

682
00:39:10,280 --> 00:39:12,280
Speaker 3: the era of AI. If you want to be an AI,

683
00:39:13,080 --> 00:39:16,839
Speaker 3: if you really want to increase the likelihood of succeeding,

684
00:39:17,120 --> 00:39:19,400
Speaker 3: and you can raise enough money to pay for top talent,

685
00:39:19,960 --> 00:39:21,879
Speaker 3: Silicon Valley is still the place to be. Yeah, it's

686
00:39:21,920 --> 00:39:24,720
Speaker 3: not true for everything, but like it still matters.

687
00:39:25,280 --> 00:39:28,280
Speaker 2: No doubt about it. So let's stay with the concept

688
00:39:28,320 --> 00:39:31,960
Speaker 2: of return on investments. I'm curious as to one of

689
00:39:31,960 --> 00:39:35,840
Speaker 2: the best or most worthwhile investments you've made, but not

690
00:39:36,000 --> 00:39:40,640
Speaker 2: in terms of monetary returns, in terms of and I'm

691
00:39:40,680 --> 00:39:46,839
Speaker 2: delving into your space, in terms of time, energy, productivity efficiency.

692
00:39:47,280 --> 00:39:50,160
Speaker 2: What do you find to be the most productive, useful

693
00:39:50,160 --> 00:39:51,520
Speaker 2: investments that you've made.

694
00:39:52,200 --> 00:39:54,960
Speaker 3: There are quite a few, I would say anything related

695
00:39:55,040 --> 00:40:00,279
Speaker 3: to mental health ranks very highly, and we could talk

696
00:40:00,280 --> 00:40:05,080
Speaker 3: about some of the things that have benefited me. So

697
00:40:05,120 --> 00:40:07,600
Speaker 3: I come from a family of people who have died

698
00:40:07,640 --> 00:40:13,120
Speaker 3: from various types of addiction, bipolar depression, major depressive disorder.

699
00:40:13,480 --> 00:40:17,040
Speaker 3: I struggled with probably I would say three to four

700
00:40:17,080 --> 00:40:19,840
Speaker 3: major depressive episodes a year for most of my life.

701
00:40:20,360 --> 00:40:23,080
Speaker 3: And that's that, in each episode ranging on the length

702
00:40:23,120 --> 00:40:25,560
Speaker 3: of a few weeks to a few months. I mean,

703
00:40:25,600 --> 00:40:30,120
Speaker 3: that is a lot of time in darkness. And now

704
00:40:30,160 --> 00:40:34,320
Speaker 3: I'm at a point where it's maybe one depressive episode

705
00:40:34,360 --> 00:40:36,520
Speaker 3: of a few weeks every two to three years. Those

706
00:40:36,520 --> 00:40:39,920
Speaker 3: are two completely different human experiences.

707
00:40:40,239 --> 00:40:44,680
Speaker 2: How did you manage to actually manage this? Because there

708
00:40:44,680 --> 00:40:48,680
Speaker 2: are people who suffer from depression and that's the word, suffer,

709
00:40:49,000 --> 00:40:51,120
Speaker 2: and never find a way to get on top of it.

710
00:40:51,480 --> 00:40:53,480
Speaker 3: I'll mention just a few things in the order I

711
00:40:53,560 --> 00:40:56,680
Speaker 3: might suggest investigating them. One would be, let's call it

712
00:40:56,800 --> 00:41:01,280
Speaker 3: metabolic psychiatry. So, looking at the word of Christopher Palmer,

713
00:41:01,360 --> 00:41:05,320
Speaker 3: most recently out of Harvard, I've interviewed him on using

714
00:41:05,520 --> 00:41:11,160
Speaker 3: diet to help mental health, and fundamentally it tends to

715
00:41:11,239 --> 00:41:14,040
Speaker 3: end up being some version of a keutogenic diet. You

716
00:41:14,080 --> 00:41:16,560
Speaker 3: can get a lot of those benefits by doing intermittent fasting.

717
00:41:16,760 --> 00:41:19,480
Speaker 3: So let's just say what I'm doing today and what

718
00:41:19,560 --> 00:41:21,720
Speaker 3: I do a lot of the time, which is only

719
00:41:21,760 --> 00:41:25,279
Speaker 3: eating between like two pm and ten pm. That's an

720
00:41:25,280 --> 00:41:27,759
Speaker 3: eight hour window, so you fast for sixteen hours every day,

721
00:41:28,160 --> 00:41:31,239
Speaker 3: and your body adapts to that incredibly quickly. I would

722
00:41:31,280 --> 00:41:33,239
Speaker 3: say within a week. You're pretty grumpy for a week

723
00:41:33,280 --> 00:41:36,960
Speaker 3: and then you're fine then the next So that was

724
00:41:36,960 --> 00:41:41,439
Speaker 3: the metabolic psychiatry piece. The second would be different types

725
00:41:41,480 --> 00:41:45,560
Speaker 3: of brain stimulation, specifically something called accelerated TMS, which we

726
00:41:45,600 --> 00:41:50,319
Speaker 3: could talk more about. People can investigate accelerated TMS and

727
00:41:50,640 --> 00:41:54,279
Speaker 3: a scientist named Nolan Williams out of Stanford, but this

728
00:41:55,120 --> 00:42:01,200
Speaker 3: can change people over the course of five days. It's remarkable.

729
00:42:01,400 --> 00:42:05,040
Speaker 3: TMS standing for transcranial magnetic stimulation, so it's a type

730
00:42:05,040 --> 00:42:07,640
Speaker 3: of brain stimulation and they take something that looks like

731
00:42:07,719 --> 00:42:11,719
Speaker 3: a large hockey puck and put it on your head.

732
00:42:11,760 --> 00:42:14,000
Speaker 3: It's non invasive and it feels like someone's kind of

733
00:42:14,000 --> 00:42:17,160
Speaker 3: tapping your skull. And depending on if you're trying to

734
00:42:17,160 --> 00:42:21,120
Speaker 3: address anxiety or depression or OCD, the target can be

735
00:42:21,160 --> 00:42:27,760
Speaker 3: different and if people investigate accelerated TMS. In some studies

736
00:42:27,800 --> 00:42:31,439
Speaker 3: with major depressive disorder, complete remission in seventy to eighty

737
00:42:31,440 --> 00:42:34,680
Speaker 3: percent of participants. Wow, and you might need a booster

738
00:42:34,920 --> 00:42:40,120
Speaker 3: once a year, But compared to taking maintenance drugs every

739
00:42:40,239 --> 00:42:46,719
Speaker 3: day with non trivial side effects, accelerated TMS is fascinating.

740
00:42:46,760 --> 00:42:48,560
Speaker 3: I encouraged to be able to check it out. There

741
00:42:48,560 --> 00:42:50,840
Speaker 3: are a couple of different devices, but look for accelerated

742
00:42:50,880 --> 00:42:53,840
Speaker 3: TMS and listen to someone like Nolan Williams. There's a

743
00:42:53,880 --> 00:42:56,239
Speaker 3: lot of nonsense floating around. The last one I would

744
00:42:56,239 --> 00:42:59,520
Speaker 3: say is psychedelic assisted therapies. And I say that last because.

745
00:42:59,280 --> 00:43:01,920
Speaker 2: It's like doing of psilocybin or what have.

746
00:43:01,920 --> 00:43:05,920
Speaker 3: You, microdosing or macrodosing, meaning most of the scientific literature.

747
00:43:06,120 --> 00:43:09,320
Speaker 3: And I've funded a lot of this science since twenty

748
00:43:09,400 --> 00:43:13,360
Speaker 3: fifteen with my foundation. I put like double digits of

749
00:43:13,400 --> 00:43:17,200
Speaker 3: my net worth into this philanthropically, which tells you how

750
00:43:17,280 --> 00:43:20,520
Speaker 3: much I believe in it. The intermittent use could be once,

751
00:43:20,800 --> 00:43:24,200
Speaker 3: it could be a few times. Various compounds could be,

752
00:43:24,320 --> 00:43:28,879
Speaker 3: say psilocybin in the case of major depressive disorder, or

753
00:43:29,480 --> 00:43:32,040
Speaker 3: different types of addiction like alcohol use disorder. NY us

754
00:43:32,120 --> 00:43:34,600
Speaker 3: doing a lot of great work on that front, or

755
00:43:34,960 --> 00:43:38,279
Speaker 3: MDMA assisted psychotherapy for PTSD. I mean the results are

756
00:43:39,000 --> 00:43:42,280
Speaker 3: very strong, mind blowing. Yeah. I mean, you have complex

757
00:43:42,320 --> 00:43:45,200
Speaker 3: PTST people who've had let's just say, an average length

758
00:43:45,200 --> 00:43:49,000
Speaker 3: of diagnosis of sixteen seventeen years, which means many many

759
00:43:49,040 --> 00:43:52,520
Speaker 3: interventions have failed, who do two or three sessions with

760
00:43:53,120 --> 00:43:57,880
Speaker 3: therapists for mdmac's psychotherapy and they have effectively complete remission

761
00:43:57,880 --> 00:44:03,040
Speaker 3: of symptoms. That's amazing and it is I believe. There's

762
00:44:03,080 --> 00:44:06,560
Speaker 3: a psychotherapist named Stanis Lefgroff, quite legendary in the space,

763
00:44:07,200 --> 00:44:10,440
Speaker 3: who says, you know, what the telescope was or is

764
00:44:10,560 --> 00:44:14,319
Speaker 3: for astronomy, what the microscope is for biology, psychedelics will

765
00:44:14,360 --> 00:44:17,960
Speaker 3: be for the mind. Really, and I believe that these

766
00:44:18,040 --> 00:44:20,239
Speaker 3: compounds and the study of these compounds, which has become

767
00:44:20,440 --> 00:44:27,520
Speaker 3: very very very popular and destigmatized, thankfully, will completely revolutionize

768
00:44:27,560 --> 00:44:32,040
Speaker 3: how we think of neurobiology and psychiatry in treating some

769
00:44:32,120 --> 00:44:36,279
Speaker 3: of these so called incurable or intractable conditions, including things

770
00:44:36,360 --> 00:44:39,560
Speaker 3: like anarexia and many of the things I already mentioned.

771
00:44:40,040 --> 00:44:42,400
Speaker 3: Those would be three that I'd say have had a

772
00:44:42,600 --> 00:44:46,520
Speaker 3: huge impact on me. And it seems boring We could

773
00:44:46,520 --> 00:44:48,640
Speaker 3: talk about it if you want. But exercise, I mean.

774
00:44:48,800 --> 00:44:50,600
Speaker 2: I was waiting for you to bring that up because

775
00:44:50,719 --> 00:44:54,080
Speaker 2: every study in the world says that's the miracle cure

776
00:44:54,200 --> 00:45:00,200
Speaker 2: for so much psychological challenges. And it's not like you

777
00:45:00,239 --> 00:45:02,080
Speaker 2: haven't written about exercise.

778
00:45:02,160 --> 00:45:04,279
Speaker 3: Yeah, it did a whole book on it. So yeah,

779
00:45:04,320 --> 00:45:08,320
Speaker 3: the exercise. I'll just mention two other things briefly, cold

780
00:45:08,320 --> 00:45:11,000
Speaker 3: exposure and by the way, people have been using this

781
00:45:11,080 --> 00:45:12,480
Speaker 3: for hundreds of years.

782
00:45:12,560 --> 00:45:18,280
Speaker 2: But certainly in the Nordish countries. Oh yeah, ye forever.

783
00:45:18,400 --> 00:45:22,160
Speaker 3: Yeah, cold baths used to be prescribed for melancholy aka depression,

784
00:45:22,320 --> 00:45:24,840
Speaker 3: and there is actually something to it. It could end

785
00:45:24,960 --> 00:45:27,239
Speaker 3: up being after a few minutes when you shift from

786
00:45:28,239 --> 00:45:31,719
Speaker 3: solely sympathetic nervous system activation fight or flight to parasympathetic.

787
00:45:31,840 --> 00:45:34,800
Speaker 3: Could be actually stimulation of the vegas nerve. Who knows.

788
00:45:34,880 --> 00:45:39,839
Speaker 3: It's unclear at this point, but cold exposure matters like that.

789
00:45:39,840 --> 00:45:42,880
Speaker 3: That is actually very reliable for mood elevation and seems

790
00:45:42,880 --> 00:45:46,600
Speaker 3: to have some durability, which is wild exercise. People think

791
00:45:46,680 --> 00:45:49,160
Speaker 3: of exercise and what you read about in the media

792
00:45:49,200 --> 00:45:51,400
Speaker 3: a lot is like endorphins and doorphins and doorphins, but

793
00:45:51,440 --> 00:45:54,080
Speaker 3: that is not the full picture. If you want to

794
00:45:54,120 --> 00:45:57,680
Speaker 3: stave off Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, et cetera. Or let me just

795
00:45:57,719 --> 00:46:01,719
Speaker 3: broadly say neurodegenerative disease, exercise provokes the release of something

796
00:46:01,760 --> 00:46:05,040
Speaker 3: called CLOTHO k l O t h O, which people

797
00:46:05,080 --> 00:46:10,520
Speaker 3: can investigate and it is critical in staving off or

798
00:46:11,480 --> 00:46:15,319
Speaker 3: or mitigating the onset and progression of these diseases. So

799
00:46:15,440 --> 00:46:19,160
Speaker 3: you have clotho endorphins. Surey of endorphins. You have endocannabinoids.

800
00:46:19,760 --> 00:46:25,720
Speaker 3: Cannabinoids sounds familiar like cannabis, right, So those can explain

801
00:46:25,719 --> 00:46:28,440
Speaker 3: a lot both in terms of anti inflammatory effects of

802
00:46:28,640 --> 00:46:32,480
Speaker 3: some types of exercise. The benefits are just insane. So

803
00:46:32,520 --> 00:46:36,960
Speaker 3: I would say follow Peter Attia's advice. He is credible

804
00:46:37,719 --> 00:46:41,120
Speaker 3: trained at Stanford Johns Hopkins. In terms of Zone two training.

805
00:46:41,480 --> 00:46:43,400
Speaker 3: People can just look him up. Zone two training a

806
00:46:43,400 --> 00:46:46,000
Speaker 3: few times a week and then Vio two max training

807
00:46:46,440 --> 00:46:50,080
Speaker 3: say once a week, and some weight training. But the

808
00:46:50,719 --> 00:46:53,399
Speaker 3: if you didn't do it for the physical benefits at all,

809
00:46:53,480 --> 00:46:56,759
Speaker 3: and just the cognitive benefits, including the release of things

810
00:46:56,760 --> 00:47:01,560
Speaker 3: like brain drive neurotrophic factor, that is also just a

811
00:47:01,600 --> 00:47:02,400
Speaker 3: non negotiable.

812
00:47:02,840 --> 00:47:07,640
Speaker 2: So you mentioned both Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

813
00:47:07,040 --> 00:47:08,520
Speaker 3: And I have both of my family.

814
00:47:08,600 --> 00:47:10,360
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's where I was going to the exact

815
00:47:10,440 --> 00:47:13,279
Speaker 2: question was going to ask, you were never diagnosed, you

816
00:47:13,400 --> 00:47:17,360
Speaker 2: just have a genetic predisposition, and you're trying to proactively

817
00:47:17,640 --> 00:47:18,640
Speaker 2: just get way out ahead.

818
00:47:18,719 --> 00:47:21,120
Speaker 3: I'm trying to get ahead of it. Yeah, and unfortunately,

819
00:47:21,640 --> 00:47:24,960
Speaker 3: you know, a lot of the Alzheimer's treatments, as just

820
00:47:24,960 --> 00:47:28,960
Speaker 3: to use that disease as an example, a lot of

821
00:47:29,000 --> 00:47:32,439
Speaker 3: the interventions fail. I think some scientists would agree with this,

822
00:47:32,680 --> 00:47:36,560
Speaker 3: not necessarily because the interventions themselves can't work, but because

823
00:47:36,560 --> 00:47:40,120
Speaker 3: the interventions are too late by the time people have

824
00:47:41,160 --> 00:47:45,960
Speaker 3: really elevated levels of amyloid plaques and tau protein and

825
00:47:46,000 --> 00:47:49,560
Speaker 3: so on, by the time they have moderate to severe symptoms,

826
00:47:49,760 --> 00:47:52,920
Speaker 3: it might just be too late, But there is an

827
00:47:53,080 --> 00:47:55,080
Speaker 3: argument to be made. I mean, it's very rare that

828
00:47:55,200 --> 00:47:57,200
Speaker 3: late intervention is better than early intervention.

829
00:47:57,440 --> 00:48:00,920
Speaker 2: So I just saw a piece in National Geograph yesterday

830
00:48:01,600 --> 00:48:03,880
Speaker 2: that was kind of fascinating. It may be possible to

831
00:48:03,920 --> 00:48:08,120
Speaker 2: detect Alzheimer's risk sooner, as earlier as your twenties. So

832
00:48:08,480 --> 00:48:11,880
Speaker 2: there is some sort of research going on in the

833
00:48:11,960 --> 00:48:16,839
Speaker 2: space that's productive. You're talking about something much more aggressive

834
00:48:16,880 --> 00:48:23,680
Speaker 2: and individualized to take care of your preventative maintenance in

835
00:48:23,760 --> 00:48:26,560
Speaker 2: advance of being diagnosed with this into your own hands.

836
00:48:27,160 --> 00:48:29,400
Speaker 3: Right. And by the way, all the stuff I just

837
00:48:29,480 --> 00:48:32,640
Speaker 3: mentioned that has helped me from a mental health perspective

838
00:48:33,840 --> 00:48:36,560
Speaker 3: and physical perspective with insulin sensitivity and so on. Like

839
00:48:36,600 --> 00:48:38,640
Speaker 3: I just didn't I'm about to turn forty eight, just

840
00:48:38,680 --> 00:48:41,200
Speaker 3: did my I do blood testing at least once a quarter,

841
00:48:41,320 --> 00:48:43,640
Speaker 3: and my most recent labs are my best. Yeah.

842
00:48:44,000 --> 00:48:46,200
Speaker 2: I just want to function health. Yeah, are you familiar

843
00:48:46,239 --> 00:48:46,839
Speaker 2: with function health?

844
00:48:46,920 --> 00:48:47,560
Speaker 3: I don't know. I function.

845
00:48:47,680 --> 00:48:50,840
Speaker 2: So Silicon Valley startup they have come up with the

846
00:48:50,880 --> 00:48:54,320
Speaker 2: way it's not a healthcare company, it's a technology company,

847
00:48:54,680 --> 00:48:58,080
Speaker 2: and they say, we want to take one hundred data

848
00:48:58,120 --> 00:49:01,480
Speaker 2: point screens of your blood and look at all these

849
00:49:01,480 --> 00:49:05,160
Speaker 2: different markers to create a baseline. We do this twice

850
00:49:05,160 --> 00:49:09,120
Speaker 2: a year. Your doctor looks at fifteen twenty things. Normally

851
00:49:09,680 --> 00:49:11,960
Speaker 2: they'll go one hundred plus. And by the way, depending

852
00:49:11,960 --> 00:49:15,440
Speaker 2: on your genetic predisposition, check all these additional boxes for

853
00:49:15,480 --> 00:49:19,719
Speaker 2: things like Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, dementia, etc. And so now you

854
00:49:19,719 --> 00:49:22,480
Speaker 2: could check one hundred and fifty data points and twice

855
00:49:22,520 --> 00:49:26,920
Speaker 2: a year especially if you're younger. All right, here's a benchmark,

856
00:49:27,000 --> 00:49:31,040
Speaker 2: and you're creating this ongoing, for lack of a better word,

857
00:49:31,120 --> 00:49:36,240
Speaker 2: horizontal set of data, and when something sort of spikes

858
00:49:36,320 --> 00:49:39,600
Speaker 2: or is out of the normal range, you have a

859
00:49:39,640 --> 00:49:42,920
Speaker 2: baseline that you could go back and work. I literally

860
00:49:42,960 --> 00:49:46,000
Speaker 2: did this Tuesday, and I was like, oh, that's a

861
00:49:46,000 --> 00:49:49,200
Speaker 2: lot of blood, Like, can you leave me a little?

862
00:49:49,239 --> 00:49:51,680
Speaker 2: I got stuff to do later, but that in order

863
00:49:51,719 --> 00:49:55,239
Speaker 2: to do one hundred different data series, they need a

864
00:49:55,280 --> 00:49:56,040
Speaker 2: lot of different blood.

865
00:49:56,120 --> 00:49:58,560
Speaker 3: Yeah, they need some blood. And I would say I

866
00:49:58,600 --> 00:50:02,960
Speaker 3: don't spend much money on stuff, but I do I deliberately.

867
00:50:03,200 --> 00:50:05,759
Speaker 3: Some might say overspend on health. But what I was

868
00:50:05,800 --> 00:50:09,319
Speaker 3: going to say is the metabolic psychiatry the less so

869
00:50:09,520 --> 00:50:13,840
Speaker 3: accelerated TMS. But actually I should pull that back. TMS

870
00:50:13,880 --> 00:50:17,480
Speaker 3: also can be applied to something like Alzheimer's and psychedelic

871
00:50:17,520 --> 00:50:21,640
Speaker 3: sisted therapies. The exercise, all of these and the cloth

872
00:50:21,640 --> 00:50:25,480
Speaker 3: that I mentioned specifically within exercise, all of those should

873
00:50:25,800 --> 00:50:31,520
Speaker 3: in theory help prevent or mitigate or delay the onset

874
00:50:31,640 --> 00:50:36,000
Speaker 3: of some of these neurodegenerative diseases. So I am trying

875
00:50:36,000 --> 00:50:38,759
Speaker 3: to get ahead of it. Fortunately, it doesn't have to

876
00:50:38,760 --> 00:50:43,080
Speaker 3: be hyper personalized, like these things have clinical data or

877
00:50:43,239 --> 00:50:46,440
Speaker 3: published literature behind them. There's still a lot of unknowns,

878
00:50:46,520 --> 00:50:48,880
Speaker 3: but you can do these things now.

879
00:50:49,400 --> 00:50:52,640
Speaker 2: So it's so funny you say hyper personalize them. I'm

880
00:50:52,680 --> 00:50:56,840
Speaker 2: speaking to a buddy who's a psychologist. Hey, who do

881
00:50:56,880 --> 00:50:59,319
Speaker 2: you have coming up on the show? Oh, this week,

882
00:50:59,320 --> 00:51:02,479
Speaker 2: I'm seeing Tim Ferris, And he says, oh, I love

883
00:51:02,600 --> 00:51:05,759
Speaker 2: Tim he is. I love this line. He is the

884
00:51:05,960 --> 00:51:10,719
Speaker 2: chief scientist of Tim Ferris the person. And I'm like,

885
00:51:10,960 --> 00:51:12,640
Speaker 2: that is such a great way.

886
00:51:12,440 --> 00:51:13,800
Speaker 3: To describe it.

887
00:51:14,800 --> 00:51:20,560
Speaker 2: You've basically created an entire business model around being the

888
00:51:20,640 --> 00:51:24,800
Speaker 2: chief scientist of your physical health, your mental health, even

889
00:51:24,840 --> 00:51:29,320
Speaker 2: your genetic health. Was this ever part of the original

890
00:51:29,360 --> 00:51:33,120
Speaker 2: game plan or did this just evolve over time.

891
00:51:33,320 --> 00:51:37,239
Speaker 3: I've almost always been that way, in part because I

892
00:51:37,280 --> 00:51:41,360
Speaker 3: was born premature at a ton of health issues. Still

893
00:51:41,360 --> 00:51:46,000
Speaker 3: have issues with thermal regulation, chronic sunny sitas, all these things.

894
00:51:45,800 --> 00:51:47,360
Speaker 2: That wait thermal regulation.

895
00:51:47,600 --> 00:51:52,040
Speaker 3: Being can't handle hot well. The way that my body

896
00:51:52,480 --> 00:51:55,920
Speaker 3: handles hot and cold is strange, so I can overheat

897
00:51:56,000 --> 00:51:58,520
Speaker 3: very easily. As an example, the reason that's relevant is

898
00:51:58,960 --> 00:52:01,880
Speaker 3: the one sport that my mom put me in that

899
00:52:02,520 --> 00:52:06,520
Speaker 3: thanks to her, that I could be somewhat successful at

900
00:52:06,560 --> 00:52:08,680
Speaker 3: when I was a little runt. I was very small

901
00:52:08,920 --> 00:52:11,440
Speaker 3: till about six grade. It wasn't swimming, it was wrestling

902
00:52:11,600 --> 00:52:13,520
Speaker 3: because the puny kid gets to go against the other

903
00:52:13,520 --> 00:52:17,160
Speaker 3: puny kid. But I would overheat really quickly, which meant

904
00:52:17,239 --> 00:52:20,239
Speaker 3: I needed to try to win quickly before I would

905
00:52:20,320 --> 00:52:25,480
Speaker 3: hit my red zone. And that just catalyzed all sorts

906
00:52:25,480 --> 00:52:29,040
Speaker 3: of bizarre self experimentation, interesting learning how to weight cut

907
00:52:29,160 --> 00:52:32,399
Speaker 3: to use like potassium sparing diuretic. The reason that I

908
00:52:32,480 --> 00:52:36,879
Speaker 3: wanted to make Tim Ferriss lab this end of one

909
00:52:37,400 --> 00:52:40,319
Speaker 3: set of experiments was to win at wrestling. That's how

910
00:52:40,360 --> 00:52:43,000
Speaker 3: it started. And then I realized, wait a second, you

911
00:52:43,080 --> 00:52:44,760
Speaker 3: might be able to apply this stuff to the brain.

912
00:52:45,120 --> 00:52:49,680
Speaker 3: And then in college I started experimenting with all sorts

913
00:52:49,680 --> 00:52:54,319
Speaker 3: of stuff, nothing illegal, but lots of weird stuff that

914
00:52:54,520 --> 00:52:57,320
Speaker 3: was I was using kind of off label like hydergen,

915
00:52:57,719 --> 00:53:01,040
Speaker 3: various note tropics and so on. And they did have

916
00:53:01,040 --> 00:53:03,760
Speaker 3: an effect, like they did have an effect on memory

917
00:53:03,760 --> 00:53:06,920
Speaker 3: and cognition, things like desma pressing for short term memory,

918
00:53:06,920 --> 00:53:10,640
Speaker 3: for memorizing Chinese characters. Like that stuff worked. There's no

919
00:53:10,680 --> 00:53:12,320
Speaker 3: biological free lunch with that.

920
00:53:12,200 --> 00:53:14,640
Speaker 2: Stuff so well, I know free lunch.

921
00:53:14,880 --> 00:53:16,680
Speaker 3: So you do you do pay a price. I would

922
00:53:16,719 --> 00:53:20,360
Speaker 3: just say a couple of quick tips for health tracking

923
00:53:20,600 --> 00:53:22,680
Speaker 3: and so on. And I'm not a doctor. I don't

924
00:53:22,719 --> 00:53:25,279
Speaker 3: play one on the internet. But number one, since you

925
00:53:25,280 --> 00:53:29,680
Speaker 3: mentioned it earlier, is I get blood tests done once

926
00:53:29,719 --> 00:53:34,120
Speaker 3: a quarter at the very least. Now why is that? Well,

927
00:53:34,440 --> 00:53:37,239
Speaker 3: I want more frame as high a frame rate as

928
00:53:37,280 --> 00:53:40,719
Speaker 3: possible to look at trends. But separately, I want to

929
00:53:40,719 --> 00:53:43,040
Speaker 3: catch things early if I need to catch things. But

930
00:53:43,080 --> 00:53:45,560
Speaker 3: I would say that if you do infrequent blood tests,

931
00:53:45,640 --> 00:53:48,240
Speaker 3: the risk is that you get one set of lab

932
00:53:48,360 --> 00:53:50,760
Speaker 3: results back and you make a ton of big decisions

933
00:53:50,800 --> 00:53:53,640
Speaker 3: based on those labs. Here's what I'll say. There are

934
00:53:53,760 --> 00:53:57,360
Speaker 3: lab errors all the time, and if you're going to

935
00:53:57,440 --> 00:54:02,640
Speaker 3: do consistent blood tests, consistent is the key. In other words,

936
00:54:03,000 --> 00:54:04,839
Speaker 3: do it on the same day of the week at

937
00:54:04,840 --> 00:54:05,520
Speaker 3: the same time.

938
00:54:05,600 --> 00:54:07,520
Speaker 2: Oh really, I would not have guessed that.

939
00:54:07,600 --> 00:54:11,720
Speaker 3: Because your testosterone has diurnal it has.

940
00:54:11,640 --> 00:54:15,680
Speaker 2: So the quest diagnostics as an example, don't eat, don't

941
00:54:15,680 --> 00:54:18,560
Speaker 2: take supplements, don't take any meds whatever is on your

942
00:54:18,680 --> 00:54:21,880
Speaker 2: your prescription list. Stop the night before unless your doctor

943
00:54:21,880 --> 00:54:22,680
Speaker 2: says don't stop.

944
00:54:22,960 --> 00:54:25,600
Speaker 3: Follow your doctor. But I'm saying if you're.

945
00:54:25,040 --> 00:54:29,600
Speaker 2: Saying is more important than just how significant.

946
00:54:29,719 --> 00:54:32,719
Speaker 3: Just be consistent because if you let's just say you

947
00:54:32,800 --> 00:54:34,520
Speaker 3: drink on the weekends and then you do your lap

948
00:54:34,560 --> 00:54:37,520
Speaker 3: test on Monday morning versus doing it on Wednesday morning,

949
00:54:38,080 --> 00:54:41,120
Speaker 3: some of your results might be different. I mean, but no,

950
00:54:41,160 --> 00:54:43,839
Speaker 3: that's it's not obvious to people because then they might

951
00:54:43,920 --> 00:54:47,440
Speaker 3: have after a weekend with birthday party with a friend

952
00:54:47,440 --> 00:54:50,560
Speaker 3: and drinking, they have elevated liver enzymes like altier ASD

953
00:54:50,960 --> 00:54:52,920
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, doctor only sees it once a year,

954
00:54:52,960 --> 00:54:54,280
Speaker 3: he has no idea of the context.

955
00:54:54,400 --> 00:54:54,879
Speaker 2: That's fair.

956
00:54:55,719 --> 00:54:59,839
Speaker 3: Testosterone, all these things can vary tremendously and there are

957
00:55:00,080 --> 00:55:02,840
Speaker 3: lab errors. So I would say before.

958
00:55:03,120 --> 00:55:06,840
Speaker 2: Plus you also just get the regular noise and range

959
00:55:07,120 --> 00:55:10,120
Speaker 2: and yeah, sometimes you're low normal, sometimes you're high normal.

960
00:55:10,440 --> 00:55:13,320
Speaker 2: But it's all nothing is flatlined over time.

961
00:55:13,800 --> 00:55:16,840
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's going to be normal variation. So I would

962
00:55:16,840 --> 00:55:20,840
Speaker 3: just say that I'll keep it to one piece for now. Like, really,

963
00:55:21,760 --> 00:55:23,720
Speaker 3: if you're about to get on a bunch of meds

964
00:55:23,760 --> 00:55:26,400
Speaker 3: and let's it's an emergency. Look, there are emergencies that

965
00:55:26,440 --> 00:55:28,400
Speaker 3: you need to deal with. But if it's like, okay,

966
00:55:28,440 --> 00:55:29,640
Speaker 3: you have this problem, We're going to put you on

967
00:55:29,640 --> 00:55:32,000
Speaker 3: this med for the next year. Before you do that,

968
00:55:32,360 --> 00:55:34,680
Speaker 3: do the test again. Just get another blood test two

969
00:55:34,719 --> 00:55:38,759
Speaker 3: days later. Second opinion, just confirm it and again not

970
00:55:38,800 --> 00:55:42,040
Speaker 3: a doctor, not medical advice, informational purposes only. Blah blah blah.

971
00:55:42,080 --> 00:55:45,399
Speaker 2: But there you go, dumb question. All the stuff you've

972
00:55:45,440 --> 00:55:51,719
Speaker 2: done game creation is not on your CV. Why did

973
00:55:51,760 --> 00:55:52,359
Speaker 2: you decide to.

974
00:55:52,320 --> 00:55:55,120
Speaker 3: Create a game? Yeah, it seems like a total non sequitor.

975
00:55:56,680 --> 00:56:01,240
Speaker 3: So a few reasons. Number one, I grew up feeling

976
00:56:01,360 --> 00:56:04,640
Speaker 3: like I was saved by games, specifically Dungeons and Dragons.

977
00:56:04,760 --> 00:56:07,719
Speaker 2: Well, I know a ton. I have a ton of friends,

978
00:56:08,080 --> 00:56:11,160
Speaker 2: many of whom were neuro divergent, and D and D.

979
00:56:11,520 --> 00:56:15,000
Speaker 3: Was a lifeline, absolutely lifeline. So I may be pretty

980
00:56:15,000 --> 00:56:16,760
Speaker 3: squarely in the neurodivergent camp.

981
00:56:16,920 --> 00:56:17,920
Speaker 2: Do you still play?

982
00:56:18,400 --> 00:56:19,879
Speaker 3: I don't, But here's why.

983
00:56:20,040 --> 00:56:23,200
Speaker 2: I know plenty of guys forty fifty Yeah, weekly game.

984
00:56:23,320 --> 00:56:24,080
Speaker 2: Forget poker.

985
00:56:24,320 --> 00:56:28,920
Speaker 3: It's it's it's too much of a commitment for me now. Initially, so,

986
00:56:28,960 --> 00:56:31,760
Speaker 3: I've always wanted to make a game that could help

987
00:56:31,840 --> 00:56:36,480
Speaker 3: produce the magic and joy and frankly I mean sort

988
00:56:36,520 --> 00:56:39,560
Speaker 3: of the like cognitive training of D and D. I

989
00:56:39,560 --> 00:56:42,520
Speaker 3: think D and D is just an incredible game. Kudos

990
00:56:42,560 --> 00:56:45,360
Speaker 3: to you know, TSR and Gary Gayax and everybody's who's

991
00:56:45,360 --> 00:56:48,120
Speaker 3: created that game. It's unreal. But if you're going to

992
00:56:48,160 --> 00:56:49,800
Speaker 3: be serious about D and D, it's like being serious

993
00:56:49,800 --> 00:56:51,879
Speaker 3: about World of Warcraft, like this is your new part

994
00:56:51,880 --> 00:56:55,040
Speaker 3: time job. I mean it's many, many, many hours. So

995
00:56:55,560 --> 00:56:59,239
Speaker 3: as someone now who's like everybody else, got a lot

996
00:56:59,239 --> 00:57:01,080
Speaker 3: going on, maybe I have a dinner with friends and

997
00:57:01,080 --> 00:57:03,400
Speaker 3: we have an hour afterwards. There's no way we're going

998
00:57:03,480 --> 00:57:05,359
Speaker 3: to play D and D. There's no way we're going

999
00:57:05,400 --> 00:57:08,200
Speaker 3: to play a complex board game. I was curious to see, though,

1000
00:57:08,239 --> 00:57:11,520
Speaker 3: if I could create something, and a lot of the

1001
00:57:11,640 --> 00:57:14,920
Speaker 3: podcast is interviewing people I might want to do something with,

1002
00:57:15,040 --> 00:57:18,280
Speaker 3: but that's unspoken. So I interviewed Alan Lee, who's the

1003
00:57:18,280 --> 00:57:21,800
Speaker 3: founder of Exploding Kittens, one of the most successful game

1004
00:57:21,840 --> 00:57:26,880
Speaker 3: development companies in the world, and I wanted to see

1005
00:57:26,880 --> 00:57:30,400
Speaker 3: if maybe, kind of pulling from my childhood experience, I

1006
00:57:30,400 --> 00:57:33,440
Speaker 3: could create a game with him that would be easy

1007
00:57:33,440 --> 00:57:38,040
Speaker 3: to learn, hard to master, very very fun for family's

1008
00:57:38,080 --> 00:57:41,360
Speaker 3: friends whoever kind of goofy, but also ideally, and this

1009
00:57:41,440 --> 00:57:43,560
Speaker 3: is yet to be proven, so just to be clear,

1010
00:57:44,080 --> 00:57:45,960
Speaker 3: I'm actually hoping to do a study on this, but

1011
00:57:46,160 --> 00:57:49,440
Speaker 3: that could also possibly be a type of brain training

1012
00:57:49,480 --> 00:57:50,360
Speaker 3: and cognitive training.

1013
00:57:50,600 --> 00:57:54,080
Speaker 2: So you set the bar really low, right, just easy

1014
00:57:54,120 --> 00:57:57,600
Speaker 2: to learn, hard to master, incredibly fun, oh with all

1015
00:57:57,640 --> 00:58:02,400
Speaker 2: sorts of cognitive benefites. Yeah, you know, low target with

1016
00:58:02,440 --> 00:58:02,960
Speaker 2: your first game.

1017
00:58:03,040 --> 00:58:06,040
Speaker 3: Well that's why it took two years to land on something.

1018
00:58:05,840 --> 00:58:08,840
Speaker 2: Really Oh yeah, that's a long time to build what's

1019
00:58:08,880 --> 00:58:11,360
Speaker 2: effectively as simple. I have a copy of this at home,

1020
00:58:11,840 --> 00:58:14,919
Speaker 2: and you guys also sent me a copy here, so

1021
00:58:15,000 --> 00:58:16,600
Speaker 2: I want to open this up and go over it

1022
00:58:16,680 --> 00:58:20,560
Speaker 2: with but give the listeners a quick explanation of exactly

1023
00:58:20,560 --> 00:58:22,000
Speaker 2: what this game is about. Yeah.

1024
00:58:22,040 --> 00:58:25,680
Speaker 3: So the game Coyote. It's called Coyote because of the

1025
00:58:26,440 --> 00:58:31,160
Speaker 3: trickster deity association and a lot of mythologies. Also uniquely

1026
00:58:31,200 --> 00:58:35,320
Speaker 3: American coyote or North American, I should say, it's very

1027
00:58:35,400 --> 00:58:39,240
Speaker 3: much a sort of New America's animal. But the trister

1028
00:58:39,320 --> 00:58:41,760
Speaker 3: piece is important. So Coyote is a game. You can

1029
00:58:41,800 --> 00:58:44,720
Speaker 3: think of it as rock paper scissors in a group

1030
00:58:45,280 --> 00:58:50,080
Speaker 3: on steroids, with many different hilarious movements and gestures, and

1031
00:58:50,120 --> 00:58:55,040
Speaker 3: basically you can play competitively where it's last person standing wins.

1032
00:58:55,160 --> 00:58:57,840
Speaker 3: Or you can play as a team collaboratively. There are

1033
00:58:57,840 --> 00:59:01,479
Speaker 3: reasons that we had both options, but the basic gist

1034
00:59:01,560 --> 00:59:05,280
Speaker 3: is it's a rhythmic game where you're going around in

1035
00:59:05,280 --> 00:59:08,480
Speaker 3: a circle and each players dealing out cards that make

1036
00:59:08,520 --> 00:59:13,040
Speaker 3: a sequence of gestures harder and more confusing and more hilarious,

1037
00:59:13,920 --> 00:59:18,280
Speaker 3: and you each get three lives, and last person standing

1038
00:59:18,360 --> 00:59:22,160
Speaker 3: in competitive mode wins. That's it. So you can play.

1039
00:59:22,240 --> 00:59:24,160
Speaker 3: I have friends who've played with their like six year

1040
00:59:24,200 --> 00:59:26,720
Speaker 3: old daughters. Even though the box says ten years old.

1041
00:59:27,480 --> 00:59:34,160
Speaker 3: It's very challenging. When it gets challenging, I guess it's

1042
00:59:34,360 --> 00:59:38,080
Speaker 3: ten minutes a game roughly, probably so pretty low lift.

1043
00:59:38,360 --> 00:59:41,000
Speaker 3: But if you want to get good at it, you

1044
00:59:41,000 --> 00:59:42,720
Speaker 3: can play it over and over and over and over again.

1045
00:59:42,720 --> 00:59:44,040
Speaker 3: Every game is going to be totally different.

1046
00:59:44,120 --> 00:59:46,000
Speaker 2: One of the things I was kind of fascinated by

1047
00:59:46,080 --> 00:59:50,440
Speaker 2: watching the game play was it's a combination of words

1048
00:59:50,560 --> 00:59:53,960
Speaker 2: and gestures that you have to recall and do in

1049
00:59:54,280 --> 00:59:58,200
Speaker 2: order while there's the rhythmic noise going on at the

1050
00:59:58,200 --> 01:00:01,240
Speaker 2: same time that you're creating. Tell us a little bit

1051
01:00:01,400 --> 01:00:04,840
Speaker 2: about how you guys came up with this and what

1052
01:00:04,920 --> 01:00:08,000
Speaker 2: was it like collaborating with Exploding Kittens.

1053
01:00:08,040 --> 01:00:12,520
Speaker 3: We tried dozens of different prototypes before getting to this one,

1054
01:00:12,960 --> 01:00:17,720
Speaker 3: and we were kind of stuck because the question that

1055
01:00:17,840 --> 01:00:20,160
Speaker 3: I was asking myself was the wrong question. The question

1056
01:00:20,200 --> 01:00:22,760
Speaker 3: I was asking myself is what types of board games

1057
01:00:22,800 --> 01:00:26,880
Speaker 3: or card games do I enjoy? And that didn't get

1058
01:00:26,920 --> 01:00:28,440
Speaker 3: I mean, your answers are only going to be as

1059
01:00:28,440 --> 01:00:32,520
Speaker 3: good as your questions, and that wasn't working. We had

1060
01:00:32,560 --> 01:00:37,000
Speaker 3: done various brainstorming sprints in like La, New York, Long Island,

1061
01:00:37,040 --> 01:00:40,360
Speaker 3: and then flew to Canada to spend time with the

1062
01:00:40,720 --> 01:00:43,440
Speaker 3: co founder of Exploiting Kittens, and we did our last sprint.

1063
01:00:43,520 --> 01:00:45,000
Speaker 3: I was like, Okay, look, we've been at this for

1064
01:00:45,040 --> 01:00:46,840
Speaker 3: a while. We're either going to land on something or

1065
01:00:46,920 --> 01:00:49,120
Speaker 3: let's call it quits and just call a space a space.

1066
01:00:49,160 --> 01:00:50,360
Speaker 2: So a little pressure on it.

1067
01:00:50,640 --> 01:00:52,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean deadlines, you know the magic of

1068
01:00:52,560 --> 01:00:56,920
Speaker 3: deadlines and expanded it to what games of any type

1069
01:00:57,680 --> 01:01:00,080
Speaker 3: have you enjoyed? And it might make me sound like

1070
01:01:00,120 --> 01:01:04,440
Speaker 3: a simpleton, but having drinks and playing rock paper scissors

1071
01:01:04,440 --> 01:01:09,480
Speaker 3: with your dumb friends is I think very entertaining. Side note,

1072
01:01:09,600 --> 01:01:11,200
Speaker 3: especially if you try to do it with water in

1073
01:01:11,200 --> 01:01:12,480
Speaker 3: your mouth. Try that with a friend.

1074
01:01:12,880 --> 01:01:15,880
Speaker 2: But what does water in your mouth affect.

1075
01:01:16,520 --> 01:01:20,000
Speaker 3: When people laugh, they spit water all over themselves, So

1076
01:01:20,480 --> 01:01:23,320
Speaker 3: it makes it increasingly challenging, especially if people have had

1077
01:01:23,400 --> 01:01:26,720
Speaker 3: a few drinks. Not recommending everybody drink. So we started

1078
01:01:26,760 --> 01:01:29,160
Speaker 3: with that as this building block. It's like, Okay, well,

1079
01:01:29,320 --> 01:01:32,760
Speaker 3: how can we make that group play? And then I

1080
01:01:32,880 --> 01:01:35,160
Speaker 3: was interested in the cognitive stuff as I mentioned, and

1081
01:01:35,200 --> 01:01:37,960
Speaker 3: this look. I haven't proven this, but I think it's

1082
01:01:38,360 --> 01:01:41,160
Speaker 3: it's quite similar. You're looking at like interference effects. There

1083
01:01:41,160 --> 01:01:45,080
Speaker 3: are things like the Wisconsin card sorting test blah blah blah,

1084
01:01:45,080 --> 01:01:48,200
Speaker 3: and Exploding Kittens. They have an amazing track record. The

1085
01:01:48,280 --> 01:01:51,000
Speaker 3: whole company started with this game, Exploding Kittens, which was

1086
01:01:51,000 --> 01:01:53,160
Speaker 3: I think the largest kickstarter of all time.

1087
01:01:53,440 --> 01:01:53,720
Speaker 2: Wow.

1088
01:01:53,840 --> 01:01:56,920
Speaker 3: At that point in time, the leaders of the company

1089
01:01:57,200 --> 01:02:00,840
Speaker 3: are still game designers, so it's not a huge bureaucratic

1090
01:02:01,040 --> 01:02:03,880
Speaker 3: thing run by no offense to middle managers. They're important,

1091
01:02:03,880 --> 01:02:07,560
Speaker 3: but it's like people who are managers versus makers. Like

1092
01:02:07,640 --> 01:02:11,080
Speaker 3: the people who run the company are still some of

1093
01:02:11,120 --> 01:02:13,920
Speaker 3: the best in the world at creating games right. Elon

1094
01:02:14,000 --> 01:02:17,960
Speaker 3: Lee was involved with developing Xbox. He's been involved with

1095
01:02:18,000 --> 01:02:23,160
Speaker 3: creating entirely new genres of games, just a genius at

1096
01:02:23,240 --> 01:02:26,440
Speaker 3: creating games. So it's been a blast. Their team is awesome.

1097
01:02:26,440 --> 01:02:29,520
Speaker 3: They're scrappy. You know, it's relatively small, like they really

1098
01:02:29,640 --> 01:02:30,480
Speaker 3: punch above their weight.

1099
01:02:30,520 --> 01:02:31,800
Speaker 2: Clouds still a startup.

1100
01:02:31,960 --> 01:02:35,240
Speaker 3: Nimbles feels like a startup. Like what they do with

1101
01:02:35,280 --> 01:02:38,240
Speaker 3: the number of people they have is just astonishing. It's

1102
01:02:38,280 --> 01:02:38,960
Speaker 3: been awesome.

1103
01:02:39,280 --> 01:02:42,880
Speaker 2: I get a sense that, because you're such a thoughtful person,

1104
01:02:43,520 --> 01:02:48,439
Speaker 2: anytime you enter a new sphere, part of you sort

1105
01:02:48,440 --> 01:02:50,680
Speaker 2: of floats above your body and says, what's going on

1106
01:02:50,720 --> 01:02:56,400
Speaker 2: in this space? Yeah, I've had that experience in publishing. Yeah, Like, wait,

1107
01:02:56,480 --> 01:02:59,200
Speaker 2: I don't understand the book industry. Why do they behave

1108
01:02:59,280 --> 01:03:02,400
Speaker 2: this way? So I have to ask you that question

1109
01:03:02,440 --> 01:03:06,760
Speaker 2: about the game industry. When you're looking at gaming generally,

1110
01:03:07,840 --> 01:03:11,200
Speaker 2: what was your experience like going into not only an

1111
01:03:11,360 --> 01:03:13,960
Speaker 2: entirely new space that you haven't worked in in the past,

1112
01:03:14,040 --> 01:03:18,320
Speaker 2: but like, did you kind of look at the game

1113
01:03:18,400 --> 01:03:22,680
Speaker 2: industry and say, Hey, this whole place is just wacky

1114
01:03:22,720 --> 01:03:24,480
Speaker 2: and so different from everything else.

1115
01:03:26,120 --> 01:03:28,920
Speaker 3: All of the above. And I treated doing something like

1116
01:03:28,920 --> 01:03:32,720
Speaker 3: the game as I treat the startups. So it's if

1117
01:03:32,800 --> 01:03:36,880
Speaker 3: I make no money on this, will the relationships developed

1118
01:03:36,920 --> 01:03:41,000
Speaker 3: and the skills and knowledge be something I would pay for? Right,

1119
01:03:41,080 --> 01:03:43,880
Speaker 3: would I actually tuition? Exactly? Would I pay tuition for

1120
01:03:43,920 --> 01:03:45,360
Speaker 3: what I'm going to learn? And the answer is c

1121
01:03:45,600 --> 01:03:48,440
Speaker 3: es right, a lot of late genius. The people Explainking

1122
01:03:48,520 --> 01:03:52,360
Speaker 3: is amazing. By the way, you want to scrappy creative team.

1123
01:03:52,360 --> 01:03:54,040
Speaker 3: If you're going to deal with things like tariffs.

1124
01:03:54,040 --> 01:03:58,080
Speaker 2: By the way, do tariffs I mean I'm sure assuming

1125
01:03:58,480 --> 01:04:01,480
Speaker 2: these are manufactured somewhere out of the United States. Yeah,

1126
01:04:01,680 --> 01:04:03,120
Speaker 2: do you have to pay tariffs on?

1127
01:04:03,360 --> 01:04:06,000
Speaker 3: Oh? Every every gaming company in the US. Pretty much

1128
01:04:06,040 --> 01:04:09,800
Speaker 3: tabletop game is getting really so you want people who

1129
01:04:09,840 --> 01:04:12,840
Speaker 3: are creative and can think outside the box for something

1130
01:04:12,880 --> 01:04:15,680
Speaker 3: like that. From the implications of something like that to

1131
01:04:16,720 --> 01:04:21,520
Speaker 3: contending with mass mass retail like Walmart and Target, for instance.

1132
01:04:21,320 --> 01:04:24,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're you're You're at Walmart, You're at Target, You're

1133
01:04:24,120 --> 01:04:29,160
Speaker 2: on Amazon. These are challenging retailers to get shelf space

1134
01:04:29,240 --> 01:04:31,280
Speaker 2: quote unquote from how did that happen?

1135
01:04:31,320 --> 01:04:32,240
Speaker 3: Next to impossible?

1136
01:04:32,880 --> 01:04:35,160
Speaker 2: And yet you hit. That's the whole you hit for

1137
01:04:35,200 --> 01:04:39,520
Speaker 2: the for the cycle, Walmart, Target, Amazon? Where else is

1138
01:04:39,560 --> 01:04:40,080
Speaker 2: what's left?

1139
01:04:40,080 --> 01:04:42,560
Speaker 3: I'm gonna do it? Mind? You know, mind? This is

1140
01:04:42,600 --> 01:04:44,640
Speaker 3: my maybe one and only game and if my name

1141
01:04:44,720 --> 01:04:45,960
Speaker 3: is going to be on it, I need to be

1142
01:04:46,240 --> 01:04:47,040
Speaker 3: very happy with it.

1143
01:04:47,080 --> 01:04:49,520
Speaker 2: And so how did you guys manage to penetrate that?

1144
01:04:49,640 --> 01:04:53,080
Speaker 3: Well, I'll say first that what's not going to work

1145
01:04:53,320 --> 01:04:55,160
Speaker 3: is if you are a sole inventor who comes up

1146
01:04:55,200 --> 01:04:58,280
Speaker 3: with the world's greatest game, a company like a Walmarter

1147
01:04:58,400 --> 01:05:02,720
Speaker 3: target is not equipped rightly so to deal with thousands

1148
01:05:02,760 --> 01:05:06,720
Speaker 3: of independent game designers who don't understand retail, don't understand margins,

1149
01:05:06,720 --> 01:05:10,720
Speaker 3: don't understand supply chain management, don't understand net payment terms

1150
01:05:10,840 --> 01:05:14,200
Speaker 3: and returns and all these things. So if you want

1151
01:05:14,200 --> 01:05:16,280
Speaker 3: to have a seat at the table, or even a

1152
01:05:16,360 --> 01:05:18,680
Speaker 3: chance to have a seat at the table, you need

1153
01:05:18,840 --> 01:05:21,800
Speaker 3: to I think this is fair to say, partner with

1154
01:05:21,840 --> 01:05:25,800
Speaker 3: someone who already has shelf space and multiple skws so

1155
01:05:25,960 --> 01:05:29,280
Speaker 3: you can be added to the lineup. And that was

1156
01:05:29,320 --> 01:05:32,760
Speaker 3: another reason to partner with someone like and exploiting Kittens.

1157
01:05:32,760 --> 01:05:35,920
Speaker 3: And yes, you can do a lot online and the

1158
01:05:35,920 --> 01:05:38,480
Speaker 3: game is on Amazon. It's been exclusive at Walmart for

1159
01:05:38,520 --> 01:05:41,920
Speaker 3: the first few months, and then the social video plays

1160
01:05:41,960 --> 01:05:44,200
Speaker 3: like you mentioned, went completely nuts, and it's actually now

1161
01:05:44,240 --> 01:05:46,800
Speaker 3: past three hundred million, so it just keeps going and

1162
01:05:46,840 --> 01:05:49,400
Speaker 3: going and going. The videos of people playing this game.

1163
01:05:50,200 --> 01:05:53,520
Speaker 3: But you can do a lot that is, say a

1164
01:05:53,560 --> 01:05:57,160
Speaker 3: direct to consumer via an Amazon or just your website

1165
01:05:57,240 --> 01:06:01,640
Speaker 3: or Kickstarter. But it's very easy for techies to underestimate

1166
01:06:02,000 --> 01:06:05,920
Speaker 3: just how incredibly powerful and widely distributed the Walmarts and

1167
01:06:05,920 --> 01:06:06,880
Speaker 3: targets of the world are.

1168
01:06:07,120 --> 01:06:07,400
Speaker 2: Sure.

1169
01:06:07,560 --> 01:06:09,600
Speaker 3: I mean, ninety percent of the US is within ten

1170
01:06:09,640 --> 01:06:13,080
Speaker 3: miles of one of those or fifteen minutes. It's I mean,

1171
01:06:13,160 --> 01:06:15,360
Speaker 3: even the food security of the United States depends on

1172
01:06:15,440 --> 01:06:16,400
Speaker 3: these companies.

1173
01:06:16,560 --> 01:06:20,160
Speaker 2: And you price this at nine ninety nine less than

1174
01:06:20,200 --> 01:06:24,960
Speaker 2: ten bucks. Very reasonable. I'm going to assume at if

1175
01:06:25,000 --> 01:06:27,680
Speaker 2: this game is as successful as you hope it will be,

1176
01:06:27,720 --> 01:06:32,120
Speaker 2: and early indications are that it can be, you can

1177
01:06:32,160 --> 01:06:35,280
Speaker 2: come up with a second pack a different focus.

1178
01:06:34,920 --> 01:06:38,920
Speaker 3: So expansion packs, something completely different. Maybe I try a

1179
01:06:39,000 --> 01:06:42,880
Speaker 3: more complicated role playing game, something like that. Who knows,

1180
01:06:42,920 --> 01:06:45,520
Speaker 3: But in my case, right with something like this, I'm

1181
01:06:45,600 --> 01:06:48,640
Speaker 3: used to kind of tiptoeing into things and testing the waters,

1182
01:06:48,680 --> 01:06:51,400
Speaker 3: and no, no, you're jumping in this each jumping. I mean,

1183
01:06:51,440 --> 01:06:53,280
Speaker 3: even with say the four hour workweek, It's like, had

1184
01:06:53,320 --> 01:06:55,800
Speaker 3: I land on that title? I split tested all of

1185
01:06:55,840 --> 01:06:59,640
Speaker 3: the titles and subtitles on Google AdWords, and then looked

1186
01:06:59,640 --> 01:07:03,560
Speaker 3: at the outlier that was many standard deviations away from

1187
01:07:03,560 --> 01:07:04,880
Speaker 3: the rest, and that was the four hour work weeks.

1188
01:07:04,880 --> 01:07:08,040
Speaker 3: So like, that's how I don't like taking risks. I

1189
01:07:08,080 --> 01:07:09,840
Speaker 3: actually think of myself as a risk mitigator.

1190
01:07:10,240 --> 01:07:13,080
Speaker 2: But in this case, I'm fascinated by that because you

1191
01:07:13,320 --> 01:07:16,160
Speaker 2: very much strike me as someone who has embraced risk

1192
01:07:16,720 --> 01:07:21,920
Speaker 2: his whole career while rationalizing the potential downside. I don't

1193
01:07:21,960 --> 01:07:25,840
Speaker 2: want to play pop psychologists, but but you are not somebody.

1194
01:07:25,840 --> 01:07:30,400
Speaker 2: It's like, all right, I'm starting out as a studying biology. No, no,

1195
01:07:30,440 --> 01:07:34,840
Speaker 2: I'm pivoting to Asian studies. I'm living in Japan. I'm

1196
01:07:34,880 --> 01:07:37,240
Speaker 2: stopping what I'm doing to write a book. Oh now

1197
01:07:37,280 --> 01:07:41,360
Speaker 2: I'm going to pivot to startups. That is not the

1198
01:07:41,720 --> 01:07:44,560
Speaker 2: life experience of someone who's risk averse.

1199
01:07:45,960 --> 01:07:48,400
Speaker 3: Well, I would, on one hand, agree with you. On

1200
01:07:48,440 --> 01:07:51,520
Speaker 3: the other hand, I would say I think that most

1201
01:07:51,680 --> 01:07:55,720
Speaker 3: risks are incredibly overblown. I would put I would put

1202
01:07:55,800 --> 01:07:59,240
Speaker 3: risks in quotation marks and not to beat a dead horse,

1203
01:07:59,280 --> 01:08:01,320
Speaker 3: but if you're too using what you do based on

1204
01:08:01,680 --> 01:08:03,360
Speaker 3: what you're going to learn, the skills you're going to develop,

1205
01:08:03,400 --> 01:08:07,479
Speaker 3: the relationships you're going to develop, or deepen. It's very

1206
01:08:07,520 --> 01:08:11,120
Speaker 3: hard to fail over time. So if you're able to

1207
01:08:11,160 --> 01:08:14,160
Speaker 3: be and this applies to investing obviously, but like long

1208
01:08:14,240 --> 01:08:19,360
Speaker 3: term greedy, not short term greedy, it's very hard to

1209
01:08:19,439 --> 01:08:22,559
Speaker 3: lose over time if you're choosing let me be very clear,

1210
01:08:23,479 --> 01:08:27,920
Speaker 3: ideally areas where you would pay tuition, projects where you

1211
01:08:27,920 --> 01:08:31,320
Speaker 3: would pay tuition for those things with relationships or skills

1212
01:08:31,360 --> 01:08:34,559
Speaker 3: that can transfer outside of that one project, which I'm

1213
01:08:34,600 --> 01:08:37,719
Speaker 3: always doing. And if you do that, like with Coyote. Okay,

1214
01:08:37,760 --> 01:08:40,280
Speaker 3: let's say, let's just say hypothetically that I don't think

1215
01:08:40,320 --> 01:08:42,559
Speaker 3: this is going to happen, because I think the tariffs

1216
01:08:42,560 --> 01:08:45,639
Speaker 3: are just a bargaining chip for mineral access right and

1217
01:08:46,000 --> 01:08:47,439
Speaker 3: other things that'll be traded with.

1218
01:08:47,560 --> 01:08:49,800
Speaker 2: That's my wishful thinking. I'm on the same page as you.

1219
01:08:49,880 --> 01:08:52,679
Speaker 2: Let's hope that this is just a negotiating tack.

1220
01:08:53,120 --> 01:08:56,320
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, otherwise we're also like cutting off our

1221
01:08:56,320 --> 01:08:58,440
Speaker 3: nose to spite our face, and I'm just so interdependent,

1222
01:08:58,520 --> 01:09:01,320
Speaker 3: so it's it's a bargaining. I don't expect that to continue.

1223
01:09:01,320 --> 01:09:06,920
Speaker 3: But let's just say that tariffs put every game company

1224
01:09:06,920 --> 01:09:10,000
Speaker 3: in the US out of business except for one or two.

1225
01:09:10,720 --> 01:09:14,720
Speaker 3: Then will this still have been worth my time, absolutely,

1226
01:09:15,600 --> 01:09:17,720
Speaker 3: because I have no I'm not getting in advance for this.

1227
01:09:17,840 --> 01:09:20,439
Speaker 3: I'm doing a profit share. I want incentives to be

1228
01:09:20,520 --> 01:09:21,479
Speaker 3: fully fully aligned.

1229
01:09:21,640 --> 01:09:23,200
Speaker 2: I did the same thing with my book. I don't

1230
01:09:23,240 --> 01:09:25,320
Speaker 2: want to advance. I want to see whatever upside there is.

1231
01:09:26,040 --> 01:09:28,559
Speaker 2: By the way, I really have to push back.

1232
01:09:29,960 --> 01:09:30,680
Speaker 3: This is just me.

1233
01:09:30,920 --> 01:09:33,400
Speaker 2: Maybe this's a little question. I maybe there's a little projection.

1234
01:09:34,080 --> 01:09:37,960
Speaker 2: You are not risk averse. You really aren't. And I

1235
01:09:38,080 --> 01:09:43,040
Speaker 2: love the way you've rationalized or it's not an excuse,

1236
01:09:43,080 --> 01:09:44,519
Speaker 2: it's an explanations.

1237
01:09:44,760 --> 01:09:45,880
Speaker 3: Were reframing it.

1238
01:09:46,120 --> 01:09:49,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, you've framed this into well, I'm going to take

1239
01:09:49,120 --> 01:09:53,800
Speaker 2: this risk, but I'm hedged because my downside is I

1240
01:09:53,840 --> 01:09:57,640
Speaker 2: get skills, I get knowledge, I get people and relationships.

1241
01:09:57,960 --> 01:10:00,519
Speaker 2: So the worst case scenario is all these good things happen.

1242
01:10:01,200 --> 01:10:03,120
Speaker 2: You are very much a risk embracer.

1243
01:10:03,479 --> 01:10:06,959
Speaker 3: Yeah. And also, if you look at my projects, it's

1244
01:10:07,000 --> 01:10:10,880
Speaker 3: it's not a sequence of start finished, start finished, start finished.

1245
01:10:10,880 --> 01:10:13,200
Speaker 3: It's more like a gant chart where things are overlapping.

1246
01:10:13,720 --> 01:10:16,120
Speaker 3: So you look at this game, it's like, yeah, I

1247
01:10:16,160 --> 01:10:19,439
Speaker 3: put a ton I've been involved with every single possible

1248
01:10:19,479 --> 01:10:21,559
Speaker 3: aspect of this game. We play tested it with one

1249
01:10:21,600 --> 01:10:25,960
Speaker 3: hundred plus families, blah blah blah. But podcast is still going,

1250
01:10:26,439 --> 01:10:30,040
Speaker 3: the books are still producing royalties. I still have angel investments,

1251
01:10:30,720 --> 01:10:34,479
Speaker 3: and therefore I very rarely have all of my eggs

1252
01:10:34,479 --> 01:10:35,240
Speaker 3: in one basket.

1253
01:10:35,920 --> 01:10:38,960
Speaker 2: So two last questions on the game before we'll get

1254
01:10:38,960 --> 01:10:39,960
Speaker 2: to our speed round.

1255
01:10:40,080 --> 01:10:40,200
Speaker 3: Ye.

1256
01:10:41,000 --> 01:10:47,160
Speaker 2: First, this is obviously a low tech card game. Was

1257
01:10:47,200 --> 01:10:51,439
Speaker 2: this a purposeful decision to avoid screens, to not create

1258
01:10:51,479 --> 01:10:52,200
Speaker 2: more screen time?

1259
01:10:52,240 --> 01:10:54,920
Speaker 3: Yeah, one hundred percent. I would say if I look

1260
01:10:54,920 --> 01:10:56,760
Speaker 3: at the mental health of my audience, let's just call

1261
01:10:56,800 --> 01:10:59,800
Speaker 3: it twenty million people a month or something over the

1262
01:11:00,040 --> 01:11:05,960
Speaker 3: last ten years, the degree of depression, anxiety, nihilism is

1263
01:11:06,040 --> 01:11:09,200
Speaker 3: shocking to see, especially in my audience, which is typically

1264
01:11:09,240 --> 01:11:13,760
Speaker 3: antithetical to those things. Right, maybe not depression, but very optimistic.

1265
01:11:14,040 --> 01:11:16,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a little self selection there. Hey, I have

1266
01:11:16,280 --> 01:11:18,640
Speaker 2: this issue. Tim seems to figure this out. Yeah, let

1267
01:11:18,720 --> 01:11:19,679
Speaker 2: me work my way there.

1268
01:11:19,720 --> 01:11:21,320
Speaker 3: There's a little bit of that. But if you look

1269
01:11:21,360 --> 01:11:24,000
Speaker 3: at let's just say, the writing of you know, Derek

1270
01:11:24,040 --> 01:11:26,720
Speaker 3: Thompson made it amazing writer at the Atlantic who does

1271
01:11:26,720 --> 01:11:27,200
Speaker 3: a lot more.

1272
01:11:27,240 --> 01:11:29,479
Speaker 2: No longer at the Atlantic, now he has his own substack.

1273
01:11:29,600 --> 01:11:31,720
Speaker 3: Yeah right, that's right. He went full in on Substack

1274
01:11:31,960 --> 01:11:34,720
Speaker 3: and actually this piece I think is from Substack, but

1275
01:11:35,320 --> 01:11:38,559
Speaker 3: it was effectively, I think it's simply Americans need to

1276
01:11:38,560 --> 01:11:39,719
Speaker 3: have more fun, but it's.

1277
01:11:39,600 --> 01:11:41,400
Speaker 2: A decline of partying in America.

1278
01:11:41,439 --> 01:11:45,480
Speaker 3: That's right. Yeah, that effectively, I think it's something atrocious

1279
01:11:45,520 --> 01:11:50,040
Speaker 3: like one in twenty five families or people have social

1280
01:11:50,080 --> 01:11:53,679
Speaker 3: plans in person for any given weekend, and it's down

1281
01:11:53,880 --> 01:11:57,000
Speaker 3: for is that right? That's amazing, And it's down for

1282
01:11:57,120 --> 01:12:00,519
Speaker 3: certain age brackets seventy percent in the last time ten years.

1283
01:12:01,320 --> 01:12:07,040
Speaker 3: And I really feel like digital isn't inherently bad, but

1284
01:12:07,080 --> 01:12:10,080
Speaker 3: the dose makes the poison. Yes, And I think that

1285
01:12:10,800 --> 01:12:15,240
Speaker 3: if digital excess is the problem, then analog is the antidote.

1286
01:12:15,280 --> 01:12:18,639
Speaker 3: I really feel like people need to interact with other humans.

1287
01:12:18,680 --> 01:12:21,400
Speaker 3: We're not evolved for pure screen time, we are not.

1288
01:12:21,439 --> 01:12:26,120
Speaker 2: One hundred percent. So last question on the game, what

1289
01:12:26,160 --> 01:12:29,160
Speaker 2: are your expectations for this? How do you define success?

1290
01:12:29,680 --> 01:12:32,240
Speaker 2: And I'm going to prevent you from saying I've already

1291
01:12:32,280 --> 01:12:36,080
Speaker 2: succeeded due to my collaboration all the experience. Hold that aside.

1292
01:12:36,680 --> 01:12:39,560
Speaker 2: What's your minimum expectations and what would surprise.

1293
01:12:39,160 --> 01:12:43,599
Speaker 3: You to the upside? Minimum expectation is that this finds

1294
01:12:43,640 --> 01:12:49,759
Speaker 3: a small band of diehard lovers of the game. Everybody

1295
01:12:49,760 --> 01:12:52,120
Speaker 3: should read one thousand True Fans by Kevin Kelly just

1296
01:12:52,120 --> 01:12:55,439
Speaker 3: got a kk dot org it's free read that. That

1297
01:12:55,520 --> 01:13:01,120
Speaker 3: would be super gratifying. But also I always is aim high.

1298
01:13:01,200 --> 01:13:02,960
Speaker 3: So I mean, I want this to be the best

1299
01:13:02,960 --> 01:13:06,880
Speaker 3: selling game at all of the major retailers. That's incredibly

1300
01:13:06,920 --> 01:13:07,240
Speaker 3: hard to.

1301
01:13:07,160 --> 01:13:09,040
Speaker 2: Do a BYuT that's that's millions of units.

1302
01:13:09,120 --> 01:13:12,120
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean you're dealing with tens of the Unos

1303
01:13:12,160 --> 01:13:14,559
Speaker 3: and the behemoths of the space right, so to do

1304
01:13:14,600 --> 01:13:18,760
Speaker 3: that is incredibly hard. That's what I'm aiming for. I

1305
01:13:18,840 --> 01:13:21,320
Speaker 3: think that the products, you know, the game can stand

1306
01:13:21,360 --> 01:13:23,599
Speaker 3: on its own two feet, like people do love this game.

1307
01:13:24,560 --> 01:13:26,519
Speaker 3: And the reason I like to do that is not

1308
01:13:26,560 --> 01:13:28,720
Speaker 3: because I want to set myself up for disappointment, but

1309
01:13:28,800 --> 01:13:30,920
Speaker 3: as I think it's Larry Page of Google has said

1310
01:13:31,200 --> 01:13:36,559
Speaker 3: what people misses, it's very hard to fail completely. If

1311
01:13:36,600 --> 01:13:40,120
Speaker 3: I aim for that and I'm fifty percent short, I'm

1312
01:13:40,360 --> 01:13:45,320
Speaker 3: still having had the excitement and the motivation and potential

1313
01:13:45,360 --> 01:13:48,920
Speaker 3: payoff of that huge a goal. It's still gonna exceed

1314
01:13:49,479 --> 01:13:51,160
Speaker 3: oh my expectations that I would have had.

1315
01:13:51,400 --> 01:13:54,040
Speaker 2: Agre and just moving into a different space is its

1316
01:13:54,080 --> 01:13:58,400
Speaker 2: own rewards because it's so you know, it really exercises

1317
01:13:58,520 --> 01:14:00,760
Speaker 2: different parts of the brain than you normally get to

1318
01:14:00,800 --> 01:14:01,080
Speaker 2: play with.

1319
01:14:01,200 --> 01:14:04,920
Speaker 3: It's also easy to pigeonhole yourself or get pigeonholed, which

1320
01:14:04,920 --> 01:14:07,479
Speaker 3: is why after the success of the Four Hour work

1321
01:14:07,520 --> 01:14:09,880
Speaker 3: Week bought me permission to write more books. I didn't

1322
01:14:09,920 --> 01:14:11,760
Speaker 3: do the three hour work Week. I didn't do the

1323
01:14:11,800 --> 01:14:15,759
Speaker 3: four hour work Week, Force, you know, the Single Mother's

1324
01:14:15,760 --> 01:14:18,360
Speaker 3: Soul or whatever. I didn't do these line extensions because

1325
01:14:18,400 --> 01:14:20,679
Speaker 3: I didn't want to get pigeonholed as a business author.

1326
01:14:21,040 --> 01:14:22,840
Speaker 3: That's why I did the four Hour Body and everything

1327
01:14:22,840 --> 01:14:25,880
Speaker 3: on athletic performance, because I wanted to be in a

1328
01:14:25,920 --> 01:14:28,400
Speaker 3: different category in the bookstore to see if my readers

1329
01:14:28,400 --> 01:14:30,280
Speaker 3: would follow me. And as soon as I proved to

1330
01:14:30,320 --> 01:14:33,600
Speaker 3: myself that was the case and to publishers, you know,

1331
01:14:33,640 --> 01:14:36,479
Speaker 3: when I hit number one year times and blah blah blah,

1332
01:14:36,640 --> 01:14:38,920
Speaker 3: then I could write about whatever I wanted. And so

1333
01:14:39,080 --> 01:14:42,559
Speaker 3: this is another way of testing that, you know, could

1334
01:14:42,600 --> 01:14:44,400
Speaker 3: I play in a completely different sandbox.

1335
01:14:45,040 --> 01:14:47,840
Speaker 2: So before we get to our five favorite questions, I've

1336
01:14:47,840 --> 01:14:51,519
Speaker 2: pulled a few of your questions that either you asked

1337
01:14:51,560 --> 01:14:54,240
Speaker 2: on your pod or other people have asked you, and

1338
01:14:54,680 --> 01:14:58,360
Speaker 2: let's do this as a speed round in still right,

1339
01:14:58,720 --> 01:15:02,400
Speaker 2: tell us about one hundred or less purchase that has

1340
01:15:02,680 --> 01:15:04,559
Speaker 2: positively impact your life.

1341
01:15:04,720 --> 01:15:07,320
Speaker 3: Be specific, Yeah, I will be specific. Now I'm going

1342
01:15:07,360 --> 01:15:09,240
Speaker 3: to put in one shameless plug, which is if people

1343
01:15:09,240 --> 01:15:11,639
Speaker 3: want to figure out this game, just go to Coyote

1344
01:15:11,640 --> 01:15:15,160
Speaker 3: game dot com. Okay, back to our regular programming. Two

1345
01:15:15,280 --> 01:15:17,680
Speaker 3: things I would say that have impacted me in the

1346
01:15:17,760 --> 01:15:22,160
Speaker 3: last year would be there's something called the Alpha Ball,

1347
01:15:22,840 --> 01:15:26,800
Speaker 3: which is from Tune Up Fitness, and this is something

1348
01:15:26,840 --> 01:15:29,679
Speaker 3: you can use for soft tissue work, for a sore back,

1349
01:15:30,320 --> 01:15:34,519
Speaker 3: for dealing with your IT bands, anything, and it's much

1350
01:15:34,560 --> 01:15:37,840
Speaker 3: better than a phone roller because you can really get

1351
01:15:37,880 --> 01:15:40,120
Speaker 3: into specific spots. It's very easy to use. You can

1352
01:15:40,160 --> 01:15:42,120
Speaker 3: use it against a wall instead of laying on the floor,

1353
01:15:42,640 --> 01:15:45,360
Speaker 3: and it's small enough to travel with. So I'd say

1354
01:15:45,400 --> 01:15:48,000
Speaker 3: the Alpha Ball is one. Have that my luggage right

1355
01:15:48,000 --> 01:15:51,320
Speaker 3: now because I'm traveling. And then the other one is

1356
01:15:51,560 --> 01:15:55,360
Speaker 3: actually a meditation app called The Way and it's taught

1357
01:15:55,400 --> 01:15:59,320
Speaker 3: by someone named Henry Shukman, and it's more or less

1358
01:15:59,720 --> 01:16:03,040
Speaker 3: a zen type of meditation. Full disclosure. I ended up

1359
01:16:03,080 --> 01:16:05,519
Speaker 3: becoming an advisor to these guys because I ended up

1360
01:16:05,560 --> 01:16:09,360
Speaker 3: loving the app so much. But I use that once

1361
01:16:09,439 --> 01:16:13,519
Speaker 3: or twice a day, ten minutes each session, and it's

1362
01:16:13,560 --> 01:16:14,639
Speaker 3: teaching you sort.

1363
01:16:14,479 --> 01:16:16,040
Speaker 2: Of a guided meditation.

1364
01:16:16,200 --> 01:16:20,280
Speaker 3: Is that Right's they're guided meditations, but it's a sequence

1365
01:16:20,439 --> 01:16:23,599
Speaker 3: of practical skills that you're developing that you can apply

1366
01:16:23,680 --> 01:16:25,960
Speaker 3: outside of meditation, which is why like it so much.

1367
01:16:26,040 --> 01:16:29,599
Speaker 3: Let's say those are two that immediately come to mind.

1368
01:16:29,800 --> 01:16:33,000
Speaker 2: So you've spent your whole career delving into new areas,

1369
01:16:33,080 --> 01:16:36,879
Speaker 2: learning new skills, and learning them quickly. What's your favorite

1370
01:16:37,000 --> 01:16:38,120
Speaker 2: cheek code for That.

1371
01:16:39,000 --> 01:16:42,200
Speaker 3: Favorite cheat code is probably picking the skills in the

1372
01:16:42,240 --> 01:16:46,320
Speaker 3: first place. So what I mean by that is, if

1373
01:16:46,479 --> 01:16:51,960
Speaker 3: you want to get the best golf coach in the world,

1374
01:16:53,000 --> 01:16:54,559
Speaker 3: you might not be able to afford it. You probably

1375
01:16:54,600 --> 01:16:56,840
Speaker 3: can't afford it. It's going to be it's a very

1376
01:16:56,880 --> 01:16:59,599
Speaker 3: common sport. There are a lot of wealthy people involved.

1377
01:16:59,600 --> 01:17:02,760
Speaker 3: It's going to be hard to get direct instruction from

1378
01:17:02,800 --> 01:17:04,879
Speaker 3: somebody who's top of the field. But if you choose

1379
01:17:05,520 --> 01:17:11,320
Speaker 3: say almost anything, swimming, archery, whatever it might be, and

1380
01:17:11,400 --> 01:17:14,839
Speaker 3: you look for, say not gold medalists, but silver medalists

1381
01:17:15,400 --> 01:17:17,600
Speaker 3: who are, by the way, frequently just as good. They

1382
01:17:18,439 --> 01:17:22,280
Speaker 3: say they yea, they just exactly, They just got ten

1383
01:17:22,320 --> 01:17:25,160
Speaker 3: minutes less sleep than the other person that day. You

1384
01:17:25,240 --> 01:17:28,160
Speaker 3: can get some of the people who are best in

1385
01:17:28,200 --> 01:17:30,720
Speaker 3: the world to teach you at a cost that is

1386
01:17:30,760 --> 01:17:33,200
Speaker 3: next to nothing. So I would say that number one

1387
01:17:33,240 --> 01:17:35,519
Speaker 3: is picking, coming back to that definition that we talked

1388
01:17:35,560 --> 01:17:38,160
Speaker 3: about with the four hour workweek with business and entrepreneurship,

1389
01:17:38,200 --> 01:17:42,600
Speaker 3: like picking the goal first. The second is looking at

1390
01:17:43,040 --> 01:17:45,519
Speaker 3: frequency of use. So for languages, for instance, a lot

1391
01:17:45,560 --> 01:17:48,679
Speaker 3: of people just dive into learning languages. Well, I think

1392
01:17:48,760 --> 01:17:51,479
Speaker 3: that material beats method. In other words, like picking what

1393
01:17:51,560 --> 01:17:55,200
Speaker 3: you're going to learn very carefully is more important, at

1394
01:17:55,280 --> 01:17:58,240
Speaker 3: least in sequence than choosing how you're going to do it.

1395
01:17:58,280 --> 01:17:59,800
Speaker 3: A lot of people ask like, what's the best way

1396
01:18:00,160 --> 01:18:02,040
Speaker 3: to learn X? And I'm like, first of all, you

1397
01:18:02,040 --> 01:18:04,320
Speaker 3: should ask what should I learn? And you can look

1398
01:18:04,320 --> 01:18:07,360
Speaker 3: at word frequency lists and things like that, and for

1399
01:18:07,400 --> 01:18:11,919
Speaker 3: a language like Spanish, Japanese, whatever, find the one thousand

1400
01:18:11,960 --> 01:18:14,360
Speaker 3: or fifteen hundred most frequently used words. You can learn

1401
01:18:14,400 --> 01:18:19,280
Speaker 3: that in a few weeks. Lingo Duel Lingo is outstanding.

1402
01:18:19,280 --> 01:18:21,120
Speaker 3: I mean, of course I'm biased because I invested in

1403
01:18:21,120 --> 01:18:22,479
Speaker 3: their first round we just.

1404
01:18:22,520 --> 01:18:26,160
Speaker 2: Were in Paris three years ago, and Slim two years ago,

1405
01:18:26,400 --> 01:18:29,839
Speaker 2: Rome last year, and dual Lingo just for those basic

1406
01:18:29,880 --> 01:18:31,040
Speaker 2: phrases is amazing.

1407
01:18:31,200 --> 01:18:33,599
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's great. I mean I've used it for Korean

1408
01:18:33,720 --> 01:18:36,120
Speaker 3: as well to refresh my Korean, which I studied in school.

1409
01:18:36,640 --> 01:18:40,320
Speaker 3: And that's a tough language, right, it's tough. The grammar's

1410
01:18:40,320 --> 01:18:42,640
Speaker 3: almost identical Japanese. I have a leg up there. But

1411
01:18:42,680 --> 01:18:44,840
Speaker 3: by the way, like people, if there's a cartoon, I

1412
01:18:44,840 --> 01:18:47,800
Speaker 3: think it's like learning how to read Korean fifteen minutes.

1413
01:18:47,840 --> 01:18:50,240
Speaker 3: There's a comic book that literally will teach you how

1414
01:18:50,240 --> 01:18:52,479
Speaker 3: to read Korean. You won't understand what the hell you're reading,

1415
01:18:52,880 --> 01:18:55,360
Speaker 3: but you'll be able to sound out phonetically Korean. And

1416
01:18:55,479 --> 01:18:58,080
Speaker 3: like it's a bit of an exaggeration, I'd say probably

1417
01:18:58,080 --> 01:19:01,960
Speaker 3: takes an hour. But do u a Lingo is very

1418
01:19:02,000 --> 01:19:05,879
Speaker 3: well designed, and I have seen every possible language startup.

1419
01:19:06,160 --> 01:19:08,240
Speaker 3: My fans sent me that one. By the way, my

1420
01:19:08,280 --> 01:19:10,640
Speaker 3: fans also recommended that I connect with Shopify because they

1421
01:19:10,680 --> 01:19:14,360
Speaker 3: knew I was interested in e commerce. So a lot

1422
01:19:14,400 --> 01:19:17,240
Speaker 3: of my best deals have come from my my readers

1423
01:19:17,280 --> 01:19:21,960
Speaker 3: and my listeners. But the duelingo came about because they

1424
01:19:22,000 --> 01:19:24,920
Speaker 3: were enclosed beta, and a number of my fans reached

1425
01:19:24,920 --> 01:19:27,160
Speaker 3: out and said, you have to try this really, and

1426
01:19:27,240 --> 01:19:28,800
Speaker 3: so I got access and I looked at it and

1427
01:19:28,800 --> 01:19:30,760
Speaker 3: I was like, oh, yeah, this is fundamentally different from

1428
01:19:30,800 --> 01:19:31,639
Speaker 3: everything else I've seen.

1429
01:19:31,880 --> 01:19:34,720
Speaker 2: Give us an example of an unusual habit or just

1430
01:19:34,800 --> 01:19:36,599
Speaker 2: absurd thing that you love.

1431
01:19:37,240 --> 01:19:40,519
Speaker 3: I like repeating numbers. Could be the OCD go ahead,

1432
01:19:40,640 --> 01:19:43,880
Speaker 3: So I take a screenshot whenever I see five point

1433
01:19:43,880 --> 01:19:46,280
Speaker 3: fifty five on my phone, So I have hundreds of

1434
01:19:46,360 --> 01:19:50,200
Speaker 3: screenshots of typically five point fifty five PM. I just

1435
01:19:50,280 --> 01:19:54,120
Speaker 3: love repeating those specific repeating numbers. A lot of folks

1436
01:19:54,160 --> 01:19:56,679
Speaker 3: like eleven eleven, nothing against eleven eleven. I think that's

1437
01:19:56,760 --> 01:19:58,800
Speaker 3: that's perfectly fine. I'm just more of a five to

1438
01:19:58,880 --> 01:19:59,639
Speaker 3: five to five guy.

1439
01:19:59,600 --> 01:20:02,439
Speaker 2: Those eleven eleven people, so they don't know what's up.

1440
01:20:02,600 --> 01:20:07,360
Speaker 2: It's all about. Have you seen the old style analog

1441
01:20:08,040 --> 01:20:10,080
Speaker 2: almost neon tubes that are clocks?

1442
01:20:10,320 --> 01:20:12,600
Speaker 3: Yes, Like what happens.

1443
01:20:12,240 --> 01:20:14,719
Speaker 2: When that rolls over to eleven eleven? Do you see

1444
01:20:14,720 --> 01:20:17,400
Speaker 2: something like that and just shrug and like, I.

1445
01:20:17,360 --> 01:20:20,719
Speaker 3: Still find it pleasant. I like symmetry, So eleven eleven

1446
01:20:20,760 --> 01:20:25,320
Speaker 3: has the advantage over five five five that it is

1447
01:20:26,080 --> 01:20:30,200
Speaker 3: pleasingly symmetrical, like this old friend I used to have,

1448
01:20:30,520 --> 01:20:32,080
Speaker 3: Mike Kim, his name is a palindrome.

1449
01:20:32,080 --> 01:20:34,040
Speaker 2: It's right. I was gonna say five to five is

1450
01:20:34,080 --> 01:20:39,519
Speaker 2: a palind drome, but it's not truly symmetrical visual, so

1451
01:20:39,640 --> 01:20:43,320
Speaker 2: there is We were talking there divergent earlier. One of

1452
01:20:43,360 --> 01:20:46,559
Speaker 2: the things I kind of was shocked to learn in

1453
01:20:46,600 --> 01:20:50,519
Speaker 2: the ADHD world is why people will play a song

1454
01:20:50,760 --> 01:20:54,080
Speaker 2: over and over and over again because it tickles a

1455
01:20:54,200 --> 01:20:59,360
Speaker 2: part of their brain that is relevant to certain emotional

1456
01:20:59,439 --> 01:21:03,080
Speaker 2: expressions that tend to be more difficult or absence, and

1457
01:21:03,720 --> 01:21:07,280
Speaker 2: it makes that like, oh, you're getting that feedback that

1458
01:21:07,360 --> 01:21:10,240
Speaker 2: you haven't been able to get in the real world.

1459
01:21:10,880 --> 01:21:12,760
Speaker 2: It sounds like the five five to five and the

1460
01:21:12,760 --> 01:21:16,040
Speaker 2: eleven eleven tickles a similar part of the brain.

1461
01:21:16,400 --> 01:21:19,120
Speaker 3: Yeah, it could be. I think for me, there's just

1462
01:21:19,160 --> 01:21:21,720
Speaker 3: something soothing about repetition. I don't know what it is.

1463
01:21:21,800 --> 01:21:24,639
Speaker 3: I mean is why I mentioned archery, like I love archery,

1464
01:21:24,720 --> 01:21:27,840
Speaker 3: and for most people archery, yeah, I love archery and

1465
01:21:27,920 --> 01:21:30,840
Speaker 3: also language learnning. For most for a lot of there's

1466
01:21:30,840 --> 01:21:34,280
Speaker 3: a lot of repetition involved and for many people, and

1467
01:21:34,320 --> 01:21:38,160
Speaker 3: I think this is fair, they cannot imagine something more

1468
01:21:38,200 --> 01:21:44,400
Speaker 3: boring than going through conjugations or doing archery, which, by

1469
01:21:44,439 --> 01:21:46,799
Speaker 3: the way, if you're doing it at a high level,

1470
01:21:47,200 --> 01:21:50,240
Speaker 3: you are effectively trying to do exactly the same thing

1471
01:21:50,360 --> 01:21:51,160
Speaker 3: over and over a year.

1472
01:21:51,240 --> 01:21:55,400
Speaker 2: Isn't that true for any particular athletic skill. I mean

1473
01:21:55,439 --> 01:21:59,439
Speaker 2: the variations multiply. You have basketball, you have five people

1474
01:21:59,479 --> 01:22:04,400
Speaker 2: on five people, and so just extrapolate that out exponentially.

1475
01:22:04,800 --> 01:22:07,160
Speaker 2: There are a million variations. The same with chess, whatever,

1476
01:22:07,600 --> 01:22:13,680
Speaker 2: But it really doesn't matter each particular play move step is.

1477
01:22:13,760 --> 01:22:17,360
Speaker 2: You're trying to optimize that and do precisely what you need.

1478
01:22:17,640 --> 01:22:21,080
Speaker 2: Even something like darts, but there are so many variations

1479
01:22:21,080 --> 01:22:25,080
Speaker 2: to your muscula shore, your your thought process. Is any

1480
01:22:25,479 --> 01:22:29,200
Speaker 2: sport boring Hitting a tennis ballah? I mean, it's the

1481
01:22:29,200 --> 01:22:32,680
Speaker 2: same stroke over and over again, but there's a bajillion

1482
01:22:32,800 --> 01:22:34,280
Speaker 2: variations of what can happen.

1483
01:22:34,479 --> 01:22:37,400
Speaker 3: That's true, which makes it interesting. With archery, you're standing

1484
01:22:37,479 --> 01:22:42,120
Speaker 3: in one place shooting at the same thing thousands of times.

1485
01:22:41,840 --> 01:22:47,040
Speaker 2: Right any sharp shooting darts.

1486
01:22:46,000 --> 01:22:49,080
Speaker 3: Repetitive right now? I like the other sports too, like tennis.

1487
01:22:49,320 --> 01:22:53,920
Speaker 3: I would say that also confusingly, if people are interested

1488
01:22:53,920 --> 01:22:58,280
Speaker 3: in the accelerated learning stuff My third book, The Four

1489
01:22:58,320 --> 01:23:01,599
Speaker 3: Hour Chef, is basically a book unaccelerated learning disguised as

1490
01:23:01,600 --> 01:23:03,599
Speaker 3: a cookbook, so it gets into like how to learn,

1491
01:23:03,640 --> 01:23:06,799
Speaker 3: how to shoot three pointers, language learning, all this stuff.

1492
01:23:07,439 --> 01:23:09,920
Speaker 3: You can get a lot further. For instance, I think

1493
01:23:10,040 --> 01:23:13,080
Speaker 3: number one, adults can learn languages faster than children. Actually

1494
01:23:13,680 --> 01:23:14,200
Speaker 3: really with it.

1495
01:23:14,560 --> 01:23:17,880
Speaker 2: If that is very inn opposite to accepted wisdom.

1496
01:23:18,000 --> 01:23:22,080
Speaker 3: Yeah, I absolutely believe adults can learn languages more quickly

1497
01:23:22,200 --> 01:23:26,000
Speaker 3: than kids with a few constraints applied, just a couple

1498
01:23:26,000 --> 01:23:29,840
Speaker 3: of systems. I mean, I really think for a native

1499
01:23:29,880 --> 01:23:33,360
Speaker 3: English speakers, for say a Romance language or something that

1500
01:23:33,439 --> 01:23:36,080
Speaker 3: isn't too far flung like Chinese is going to be different.

1501
01:23:36,600 --> 01:23:41,880
Speaker 3: But eight weeks you can be conversationally pretty fluent, like

1502
01:23:41,960 --> 01:23:46,000
Speaker 3: pretty functional, if you were to carve out not three

1503
01:23:46,040 --> 01:23:48,640
Speaker 3: hours a week. That's where kids have the advantage is

1504
01:23:48,680 --> 01:23:50,560
Speaker 3: that they're forced to do it all the time and

1505
01:23:50,600 --> 01:23:53,080
Speaker 3: they have no choice. They have no mortgage, they have

1506
01:23:53,120 --> 01:23:56,080
Speaker 3: no job. But if you were to put in say

1507
01:23:56,640 --> 01:23:59,360
Speaker 3: ten hours a week and take it really seriously eight

1508
01:23:59,400 --> 01:24:01,040
Speaker 3: to twelve weeks, you could be.

1509
01:24:01,120 --> 01:24:02,759
Speaker 2: Very functional, very fluent.

1510
01:24:03,400 --> 01:24:06,240
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like you could get around and have like a

1511
01:24:06,320 --> 01:24:08,400
Speaker 3: conversation for ten to fifteen minutes with someone.

1512
01:24:08,560 --> 01:24:12,280
Speaker 2: Wow. Let's jump to our favorite five questions we ask

1513
01:24:12,400 --> 01:24:15,600
Speaker 2: all of our guests, starting really simple, what are you

1514
01:24:15,600 --> 01:24:19,479
Speaker 2: streaming these days? Give us your favorite Netflix, Amazon Prime

1515
01:24:19,600 --> 01:24:22,080
Speaker 2: or podcast. What's keeping you entertained? Well?

1516
01:24:22,120 --> 01:24:25,040
Speaker 3: I just finished The Last of Us, which I thought

1517
01:24:25,080 --> 01:24:29,040
Speaker 3: was spectacularly well done, especially as an adaptation from a

1518
01:24:29,120 --> 01:24:34,920
Speaker 3: video game. I am very interested in Korean animation because

1519
01:24:34,960 --> 01:24:37,919
Speaker 3: I saw a film on Netflix called Lost in Starlight

1520
01:24:38,000 --> 01:24:39,599
Speaker 3: which absolutely blew my mind.

1521
01:24:39,720 --> 01:24:41,280
Speaker 2: Just the Lost in Starlight.

1522
01:24:41,400 --> 01:24:46,080
Speaker 3: Yeah, the quality and the visual beauty of this animation

1523
01:24:47,120 --> 01:24:49,400
Speaker 3: made my head spin. Because you don't, well, I think

1524
01:24:49,439 --> 01:24:53,040
Speaker 3: most people do not associate South Korea with animation.

1525
01:24:53,240 --> 01:24:55,679
Speaker 2: You might think of it most of our low cost

1526
01:24:55,760 --> 01:24:58,920
Speaker 2: animation is coming from all the past. Well that's not CGI.

1527
01:24:59,439 --> 01:25:03,320
Speaker 3: There's there's a lot of lower cost animation, yes, but

1528
01:25:03,400 --> 01:25:07,839
Speaker 3: when you think of say, Cinematic Animation and Studio Ghibli

1529
01:25:07,840 --> 01:25:10,120
Speaker 3: out of Japan, let's just say people tend to think

1530
01:25:10,120 --> 01:25:15,600
Speaker 3: of Disney, Pixar, Studio Ghibli, and I think Korea is

1531
01:25:15,600 --> 01:25:18,879
Speaker 3: going to be a powerhouse for high quality feature length animation.

1532
01:25:19,280 --> 01:25:21,680
Speaker 3: We'll see, we shall say we Lost in Starlight is

1533
01:25:21,760 --> 01:25:24,760
Speaker 3: a recent phave, and then I've got some weird ones,

1534
01:25:24,800 --> 01:25:29,240
Speaker 3: like there's a German language documentary on fasting that I

1535
01:25:29,360 --> 01:25:31,519
Speaker 3: found on YouTube. You can't watch it in the US,

1536
01:25:31,560 --> 01:25:32,960
Speaker 3: but you can use a VPN to.

1537
01:25:33,160 --> 01:25:35,080
Speaker 2: Pretend to say you could watch anything anyway.

1538
01:25:35,120 --> 01:25:37,240
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can use a VPN to pretend like you're

1539
01:25:37,280 --> 01:25:40,000
Speaker 3: in Germany. Then you can watch it and just use

1540
01:25:40,040 --> 01:25:43,439
Speaker 3: the automatic subtops. What's the name of that one, some

1541
01:25:43,640 --> 01:25:46,000
Speaker 3: long German name. I'm just getting started with it, so

1542
01:25:46,120 --> 01:25:50,040
Speaker 3: unfortunately I can't remember, but it's it's looking at specifically

1543
01:25:50,120 --> 01:25:52,120
Speaker 3: someone who did I want to say, a two to

1544
01:25:52,240 --> 01:25:57,760
Speaker 3: three week supervised fast at the Wilhelmina Institute who has

1545
01:25:58,040 --> 01:26:01,519
Speaker 3: fasted many, many, many thousands of people. I have some

1546
01:26:01,600 --> 01:26:04,599
Speaker 3: bones to pick with their approach, but I nonetheless find

1547
01:26:04,600 --> 01:26:07,800
Speaker 3: that they have such a huge data set really fascinating.

1548
01:26:08,240 --> 01:26:12,240
Speaker 3: So I'm looking at that one. And then podcasts. I

1549
01:26:12,280 --> 01:26:16,559
Speaker 3: found a new podcast recently called stem Talk, which features

1550
01:26:16,600 --> 01:26:21,879
Speaker 3: interviews with scientists mostly and I've listened to an interview

1551
01:26:21,880 --> 01:26:27,000
Speaker 3: with someone named Kevin Tracy tracee Y, who is a

1552
01:26:27,280 --> 01:26:35,120
Speaker 3: very widely cited scientist who's arguably the most credible researcher

1553
01:26:36,200 --> 01:26:39,639
Speaker 3: who has established a lot related to the vegas nerve

1554
01:26:39,800 --> 01:26:42,519
Speaker 3: and vegas nerve stimulation. There's a lot of bs and

1555
01:26:42,520 --> 01:26:45,879
Speaker 3: pseudoscience and nonsense floating around. He is a real signal

1556
01:26:46,320 --> 01:26:49,000
Speaker 3: amongst the noise. So I'm listening to a bunch of

1557
01:26:49,000 --> 01:26:52,480
Speaker 3: stem talk, different scientists on stem talk, and the interviewers

1558
01:26:52,479 --> 01:26:53,280
Speaker 3: are outstanding.

1559
01:26:53,720 --> 01:26:58,880
Speaker 2: It's interesting you referenced YouTube because mostly starting in the pandemic,

1560
01:26:59,040 --> 01:27:02,920
Speaker 2: but just ramping up since then. I want to say,

1561
01:27:02,920 --> 01:27:06,479
Speaker 2: it's become fifty sixty percent of my television viewing. It's

1562
01:27:06,520 --> 01:27:07,560
Speaker 2: amazing how.

1563
01:27:07,439 --> 01:27:10,880
Speaker 3: It's also great for finding documentaries that you can't find

1564
01:27:10,920 --> 01:27:15,639
Speaker 3: anywhere else. So I think there's a documentary. The name

1565
01:27:15,720 --> 01:27:20,040
Speaker 3: is something like Learning how to See or the Art

1566
01:27:20,080 --> 01:27:23,800
Speaker 3: of Seeing, and it's about David Hockney. Oh okay, and

1567
01:27:24,000 --> 01:27:27,960
Speaker 3: big spectacular documentary. It's grainy, but you can find it

1568
01:27:28,040 --> 01:27:30,240
Speaker 3: on YouTube, and I was not able to find it

1569
01:27:30,280 --> 01:27:30,840
Speaker 3: anywhere else.

1570
01:27:31,120 --> 01:27:34,800
Speaker 2: Huh. Amazing. You mentioned one of your mentors earlier. Tell

1571
01:27:34,880 --> 01:27:38,160
Speaker 2: us about who your mentors were and how they helped

1572
01:27:38,200 --> 01:27:39,000
Speaker 2: shape your career.

1573
01:27:39,680 --> 01:27:45,439
Speaker 3: Early mentors Stephen Gorik. He was a martial arts instructor

1574
01:27:45,479 --> 01:27:48,160
Speaker 3: when I was probably twelve thirteen. Just from the perspective

1575
01:27:48,160 --> 01:27:50,320
Speaker 3: of physical and mental toughness. Because the class was all

1576
01:27:50,360 --> 01:27:53,960
Speaker 3: adults and then it was me. They did not take

1577
01:27:54,000 --> 01:27:56,200
Speaker 3: it easily on me, and I was very grateful for that.

1578
01:27:56,240 --> 01:27:58,759
Speaker 3: They weren't abusive, but they treated me like an adult

1579
01:27:58,760 --> 01:28:01,920
Speaker 3: who was training for for real, and I think from

1580
01:28:01,960 --> 01:28:06,760
Speaker 3: a toughness perspective, he always reiterated that I could do

1581
01:28:06,840 --> 01:28:09,880
Speaker 3: more than I thought I could do, much like my

1582
01:28:10,200 --> 01:28:14,439
Speaker 3: wrestling coach in high school, John Buxton, who even to

1583
01:28:14,520 --> 01:28:16,680
Speaker 3: this day, many of his wrestlers have gone on to

1584
01:28:16,720 --> 01:28:19,639
Speaker 3: do amazing things and they all reference back to him.

1585
01:28:20,280 --> 01:28:23,559
Speaker 3: Then Ed Shall who was that professor in high tech

1586
01:28:23,640 --> 01:28:28,479
Speaker 3: entrepreneurship in Princeton. There are other people who indirectly or

1587
01:28:28,520 --> 01:28:32,840
Speaker 3: pretty directly, although they wouldn't have expected it, informed later

1588
01:28:32,920 --> 01:28:37,400
Speaker 3: what I did. For instance, John McPhee, amazing, amazing non

1589
01:28:37,400 --> 01:28:40,880
Speaker 3: fiction writer who staff writer for the New Yorker. He's

1590
01:28:40,960 --> 01:28:44,960
Speaker 3: got least one Pulitzer Prize for coming into the country,

1591
01:28:44,960 --> 01:28:48,679
Speaker 3: I think, And he taught a class at Princeton's seminar

1592
01:28:48,880 --> 01:28:52,040
Speaker 3: called the Literature Effect, which was on nonfiction writing and I.

1593
01:28:52,040 --> 01:28:54,160
Speaker 2: To literature of fact name.

1594
01:28:54,120 --> 01:28:58,120
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that class in terms of thinking about structure,

1595
01:28:58,240 --> 01:29:01,519
Speaker 3: how to structure writ which by the way helps you

1596
01:29:01,520 --> 01:29:03,640
Speaker 3: structure your thinking. So all of my grades and my

1597
01:29:03,680 --> 01:29:05,400
Speaker 3: other classes went up when I took that class. It

1598
01:29:05,439 --> 01:29:10,400
Speaker 3: was no kidd wild to see. And I'm sure there

1599
01:29:10,439 --> 01:29:13,880
Speaker 3: are many more. I mean right after graduation, Mike Mables Junior,

1600
01:29:13,880 --> 01:29:16,320
Speaker 3: in terms of teaching me the ropes of angel investing.

1601
01:29:16,479 --> 01:29:18,400
Speaker 2: That's a good starter list.

1602
01:29:18,280 --> 01:29:20,719
Speaker 3: For Yeah, it's a pretty good roster. I'm very lucky.

1603
01:29:20,920 --> 01:29:23,360
Speaker 2: Let's talk about books. What are some of your favorites?

1604
01:29:23,360 --> 01:29:24,439
Speaker 2: What are you reading right now?

1605
01:29:25,640 --> 01:29:29,839
Speaker 3: Some of my favorites would be Letters from a Stoic,

1606
01:29:31,000 --> 01:29:35,360
Speaker 3: which is by Marcus Seneca. In this case, meditations by

1607
01:29:35,360 --> 01:29:38,080
Speaker 3: Marcus are released as well, so Letters from a Stoic

1608
01:29:38,120 --> 01:29:44,960
Speaker 3: by Seneca for thriving in a high stress, high conflict world.

1609
01:29:45,000 --> 01:29:52,360
Speaker 3: I think that Stoicism, particularly as communicated by Seneca, is very,

1610
01:29:52,479 --> 01:29:57,080
Speaker 3: very very present and applicable and frankly fun to read too,

1611
01:29:58,040 --> 01:30:01,439
Speaker 3: although that might sound odd applied to Stoicism, So Letters

1612
01:30:01,479 --> 01:30:05,280
Speaker 3: from a Stoic I would say. Vagabonding a book by

1613
01:30:05,360 --> 01:30:09,639
Speaker 3: Ralph Potts. I think the subtitle is the Uncommon Art

1614
01:30:09,720 --> 01:30:12,439
Speaker 3: of Long Term World Travel, which is really it's a

1615
01:30:12,439 --> 01:30:14,200
Speaker 3: book on long term travel, but it's a book on

1616
01:30:14,400 --> 01:30:19,320
Speaker 3: it's a philosophical treatise too. That's a great fun read.

1617
01:30:19,760 --> 01:30:22,160
Speaker 3: Those are those are two phaves that come to mind.

1618
01:30:22,680 --> 01:30:27,400
Speaker 3: One More Awareness by Anthony Demello. I believe the subtitle

1619
01:30:27,479 --> 01:30:31,040
Speaker 3: is the Promises and Perils of Reality. It's just about

1620
01:30:31,080 --> 01:30:35,679
Speaker 3: becoming more aware, so taking yourself out of the automatic

1621
01:30:35,680 --> 01:30:37,600
Speaker 3: loops that we all have and adopt from parents and

1622
01:30:37,640 --> 01:30:40,120
Speaker 3: so on. Really good book. It's like one hundred and

1623
01:30:40,120 --> 01:30:42,360
Speaker 3: twenty pages. And then in terms of what I'm reading

1624
01:30:42,400 --> 01:30:46,799
Speaker 3: right now, I just started a book called The Great Nerve,

1625
01:30:46,960 --> 01:30:51,320
Speaker 3: which is by Kevin Tracy, that scientist I mentioned and

1626
01:30:51,520 --> 01:30:54,360
Speaker 3: about it's all about the Vegas nerve research related to

1627
01:30:54,439 --> 01:30:55,599
Speaker 3: vegas nerve stimulation, etc.

1628
01:30:56,080 --> 01:30:58,920
Speaker 2: What's the book that you've given most as a gift

1629
01:30:59,040 --> 01:31:00,800
Speaker 2: and why the.

1630
01:31:00,800 --> 01:31:04,400
Speaker 3: Books I've given most is a gift includes some of

1631
01:31:04,400 --> 01:31:06,519
Speaker 3: the books that I mentioned. And if you, if someone

1632
01:31:06,560 --> 01:31:08,639
Speaker 3: were to stay at my guest bedroom in my house,

1633
01:31:08,800 --> 01:31:12,960
Speaker 3: I have shelves. Each shelf just has fifteen copies of

1634
01:31:13,000 --> 01:31:14,080
Speaker 3: these books and.

1635
01:31:14,240 --> 01:31:15,000
Speaker 2: Take one with you.

1636
01:31:15,160 --> 01:31:17,400
Speaker 3: Yeah, take, take, take whatever you like. So I would

1637
01:31:17,400 --> 01:31:20,519
Speaker 3: say that's idea. It's fun. It's also very visually pleasing

1638
01:31:20,560 --> 01:31:25,240
Speaker 3: for someone like me, so the same yeah, yeah, it's very,

1639
01:31:25,360 --> 01:31:29,280
Speaker 3: very very esthetically pleasing. So Awareness by Anthony de Mello.

1640
01:31:29,520 --> 01:31:32,200
Speaker 3: For sure, I've gifted hundreds of copies of this book

1641
01:31:32,520 --> 01:31:35,479
Speaker 3: Letters from a Stoic, hundreds of copies of that book

1642
01:31:36,479 --> 01:31:38,720
Speaker 3: back in the day. Now there are a million copies,

1643
01:31:39,080 --> 01:31:40,920
Speaker 3: or I shouldn't say a million copies. Now there are a

1644
01:31:40,920 --> 01:31:44,519
Speaker 3: million different books on the subjective psychedelics and psychedelic history,

1645
01:31:44,520 --> 01:31:47,920
Speaker 3: psychedelic science. But How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollin.

1646
01:31:48,160 --> 01:31:51,880
Speaker 3: For a while, I had that in my room because

1647
01:31:51,920 --> 01:31:54,400
Speaker 3: I got early galleys of that book and have since

1648
01:31:54,439 --> 01:31:56,839
Speaker 3: ended up doing a bunch of collaborations with with Michael,

1649
01:31:57,400 --> 01:32:02,640
Speaker 3: who's amazing. But uh. Other Wise, I also gift my

1650
01:32:02,720 --> 01:32:06,040
Speaker 3: friends who are nonfiction purists, who are too busy to meditate,

1651
01:32:06,120 --> 01:32:08,680
Speaker 3: too busy to read fiction. I tend to give them

1652
01:32:08,680 --> 01:32:12,479
Speaker 3: books of poetry because I'm like, you need to slow down,

1653
01:32:13,520 --> 01:32:15,880
Speaker 3: and if you feel like you can't meditate for ten

1654
01:32:15,880 --> 01:32:17,519
Speaker 3: minutes a day, you need to meditate for an hour

1655
01:32:17,520 --> 01:32:21,880
Speaker 3: a day. That type of that type of logic leads

1656
01:32:21,880 --> 01:32:26,080
Speaker 3: me to give them a very short collection of For instance,

1657
01:32:27,320 --> 01:32:31,160
Speaker 3: there's a new translation of roomy Poetry, relatively new, called

1658
01:32:31,360 --> 01:32:38,240
Speaker 3: Gold by Halle Eliza Gavori is her name. Who's incredible.

1659
01:32:38,280 --> 01:32:42,880
Speaker 3: She's based in New York City and native speaker. Also,

1660
01:32:42,920 --> 01:32:45,200
Speaker 3: who's able to go to the source material? So Gold,

1661
01:32:45,439 --> 01:32:49,920
Speaker 3: which is a new compilation of short, roomy poetry that

1662
01:32:50,040 --> 01:32:53,240
Speaker 3: is well translated. Unlike a lot of versions you might find.

1663
01:32:53,760 --> 01:32:55,360
Speaker 3: It's like one hundred pages. And I'd just say to my friend,

1664
01:32:55,400 --> 01:32:58,280
Speaker 3: I'm like, look, don't read this a dizy. Just read

1665
01:32:58,439 --> 01:33:03,320
Speaker 3: one before you go to bed every night. And those

1666
01:33:03,360 --> 01:33:06,000
Speaker 3: are probably the most gifted in the last handful of years.

1667
01:33:06,080 --> 01:33:10,040
Speaker 2: That sounds really interesting. Our final two questions, what sort

1668
01:33:10,080 --> 01:33:13,160
Speaker 2: of advice would you give to a recent college grad

1669
01:33:13,840 --> 01:33:19,040
Speaker 2: interested in a career in fill in the blank writing, podcasting,

1670
01:33:19,840 --> 01:33:24,559
Speaker 2: seed investing, game design. What would you tell them?

1671
01:33:25,200 --> 01:33:29,559
Speaker 3: If it's nonfiction book writing, I would say, number one,

1672
01:33:29,600 --> 01:33:32,160
Speaker 3: are you really sure you want to do that? It's

1673
01:33:32,640 --> 01:33:35,040
Speaker 3: not don't assume it's a good way to make money,

1674
01:33:35,040 --> 01:33:39,160
Speaker 3: because generally it's not. But I would say, also if

1675
01:33:39,160 --> 01:33:41,759
Speaker 3: it's a recent grad out, so if you're gonna write nonfiction,

1676
01:33:42,479 --> 01:33:45,040
Speaker 3: probably go do something interesting before you try to write

1677
01:33:45,080 --> 01:33:48,599
Speaker 3: something interesting. That would be my advice. That's what very fair,

1678
01:33:48,680 --> 01:33:53,519
Speaker 3: That's what John McFee does. That's what many folks have done.

1679
01:33:53,520 --> 01:33:56,559
Speaker 3: It is like I get some life experience doing something

1680
01:33:56,640 --> 01:33:59,559
Speaker 3: first and then write about it. Would probably be my

1681
01:33:59,600 --> 01:34:06,960
Speaker 3: recommend in the realm of investing finance, I would say

1682
01:34:07,240 --> 01:34:16,400
Speaker 3: that probably ensure you have an informational, behavioral or network

1683
01:34:16,600 --> 01:34:21,479
Speaker 3: meaning relationship advantage with whatever you choose to do, unless

1684
01:34:21,479 --> 01:34:24,040
Speaker 3: you're going to do something like low cost index funds,

1685
01:34:24,040 --> 01:34:26,200
Speaker 3: which I think actually are a great idea for a

1686
01:34:26,200 --> 01:34:29,320
Speaker 3: lot of people, and I myself also invest in very

1687
01:34:29,360 --> 01:34:30,639
Speaker 3: very low cost index funds.

1688
01:34:31,439 --> 01:34:33,719
Speaker 2: That's your core you could build, you know, that's your tree.

1689
01:34:33,800 --> 01:34:35,400
Speaker 2: You could throw some ornaments around it.

1690
01:34:35,640 --> 01:34:39,160
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. I want to like keep your risk capital

1691
01:34:39,479 --> 01:34:41,960
Speaker 3: and your retirement capital separate.

1692
01:34:42,479 --> 01:34:44,479
Speaker 2: What do you know about the world today that would

1693
01:34:44,479 --> 01:34:48,280
Speaker 2: have been useful to know twenty five years or so

1694
01:34:48,320 --> 01:34:49,560
Speaker 2: ago when you graduated.

1695
01:34:50,880 --> 01:34:52,840
Speaker 3: Yeah, threw out a few. So the first would be

1696
01:34:53,000 --> 01:34:57,160
Speaker 3: from an investing perspective, you don't need to compete in

1697
01:34:57,160 --> 01:34:59,559
Speaker 3: the public markets. You can learn a ton through being

1698
01:34:59,600 --> 01:35:04,320
Speaker 3: around startups or even very on sexy private sector stuff,

1699
01:35:04,400 --> 01:35:07,160
Speaker 3: and you can get very, very wealthy doing that. So

1700
01:35:07,200 --> 01:35:10,960
Speaker 3: you don't have to compete against the citadels in the world,

1701
01:35:11,040 --> 01:35:13,160
Speaker 3: Like I don't want to do that, or the rentex

1702
01:35:13,280 --> 01:35:16,400
Speaker 3: or whatever like like that's bringing a knife to a gunfight.

1703
01:35:16,400 --> 01:35:17,160
Speaker 3: I don't want to deal with that.

1704
01:35:17,880 --> 01:35:22,360
Speaker 4: So I would say, also look for white space that

1705
01:35:22,479 --> 01:35:27,240
Speaker 4: you're you can create your own area where you're a pioneer,

1706
01:35:27,520 --> 01:35:30,200
Speaker 4: not going into well trod space. Yeah.

1707
01:35:30,200 --> 01:35:32,519
Speaker 3: I would also say invest in what you know. And

1708
01:35:32,560 --> 01:35:35,719
Speaker 3: that sounds so trite, but the first the first stock

1709
01:35:35,800 --> 01:35:38,559
Speaker 3: I ever bought was when I was in my teens,

1710
01:35:38,600 --> 01:35:40,160
Speaker 3: and it was I think it was in my teens.

1711
01:35:40,160 --> 01:35:41,760
Speaker 3: It might have been a little bit later, but it

1712
01:35:41,800 --> 01:35:44,760
Speaker 3: was Pixar. Because I knew the world of animation. I

1713
01:35:44,800 --> 01:35:46,760
Speaker 3: was like, Oh, this is so fundamentally different, Like this

1714
01:35:46,800 --> 01:35:49,120
Speaker 3: is going to change everything. That's it. That's all I knew.

1715
01:35:52,920 --> 01:35:56,640
Speaker 3: So I would say that sort of investing from the

1716
01:35:56,680 --> 01:36:01,200
Speaker 3: perspective of watching main behavior on mainstream more than Wall

1717
01:36:01,200 --> 01:36:06,320
Speaker 3: Street is actually can be a really viable approach in

1718
01:36:06,400 --> 01:36:09,120
Speaker 3: the world at large. I would say for me personally,

1719
01:36:09,280 --> 01:36:12,920
Speaker 3: thirty years ago, I would have said, like, your current

1720
01:36:13,040 --> 01:36:16,760
Speaker 3: experience of mental health and the buggy code that you

1721
01:36:16,800 --> 01:36:19,640
Speaker 3: inherited from your parents, God bless them, but like you know,

1722
01:36:19,680 --> 01:36:23,519
Speaker 3: there are some bugs in the code, is not a

1723
01:36:24,680 --> 01:36:28,240
Speaker 3: sort of psychological death sentence, like you can actually change

1724
01:36:28,240 --> 01:36:33,639
Speaker 3: those things, because you can, you really can impact those things,

1725
01:36:33,800 --> 01:36:38,240
Speaker 3: and your living proof. I am living proof, and I

1726
01:36:38,280 --> 01:36:42,559
Speaker 3: would say that, you know, science, science is such an

1727
01:36:42,600 --> 01:36:46,840
Speaker 3: amazing tool, like the framework of science so necessary for

1728
01:36:46,920 --> 01:36:50,519
Speaker 3: not fooling ourselves. And within the world of medicine, especially

1729
01:36:50,520 --> 01:36:52,960
Speaker 3: psychiatg I don't want to throw psychiatry into the bus,

1730
01:36:52,960 --> 01:36:57,000
Speaker 3: but within the realm of medicine, I mean, anyone who's

1731
01:36:57,000 --> 01:36:59,280
Speaker 3: worth their salt will say something along the lines of like,

1732
01:36:59,280 --> 01:37:01,000
Speaker 3: fifty percent of way we know is wrong, we just

1733
01:37:01,000 --> 01:37:04,160
Speaker 3: don't know which fifty percent. And when I was growing up,

1734
01:37:04,200 --> 01:37:07,160
Speaker 3: I mean, there were so many definitive statements about like

1735
01:37:07,880 --> 01:37:09,760
Speaker 3: all right, you're born with this number of neurons and

1736
01:37:09,760 --> 01:37:11,559
Speaker 3: when they die, they die, and that's it. You can

1737
01:37:11,560 --> 01:37:16,320
Speaker 3: ever regenerate. These types of things totally false. And I

1738
01:37:16,400 --> 01:37:22,960
Speaker 3: feel like many of our assumptions about psychiatry, psychology, emotional

1739
01:37:23,680 --> 01:37:26,439
Speaker 3: health will be overturned in the next five years. It's

1740
01:37:26,479 --> 01:37:27,320
Speaker 3: going to happen fast.

1741
01:37:27,840 --> 01:37:30,320
Speaker 2: Thank you, Tim for being so generous with your time.

1742
01:37:30,479 --> 01:37:36,480
Speaker 2: We have been speaking with Tim Ferris, author, podcaster, angel investor.

1743
01:37:37,560 --> 01:37:40,280
Speaker 2: If you enjoy this conversation, be sure and check out

1744
01:37:40,320 --> 01:37:43,439
Speaker 2: any of the previous five hundred and sixty we've done

1745
01:37:43,880 --> 01:37:50,520
Speaker 2: over the past eleven years. You can find those at Spotify, YouTube, iTunes, Bloomberg,

1746
01:37:50,680 --> 01:37:54,800
Speaker 2: wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Be sure and check

1747
01:37:54,840 --> 01:37:58,400
Speaker 2: out my new book How Not to Invest The Bad Ideas,

1748
01:37:58,520 --> 01:38:02,759
Speaker 2: numbers and behaviors that Destroy well How Not to Invest

1749
01:38:02,840 --> 01:38:05,920
Speaker 2: at your favorite bookseller. I would be remiss if I

1750
01:38:05,960 --> 01:38:08,000
Speaker 2: did not thank the Cracked team that helps us put

1751
01:38:08,040 --> 01:38:12,880
Speaker 2: these conversations together each week. My audio engineer is Meredith Frank.

1752
01:38:13,240 --> 01:38:17,040
Speaker 2: Jean Russo is my researcher. Anna Luke is my producer.

1753
01:38:17,840 --> 01:38:21,320
Speaker 2: Sage Bauman is the head of podcasts at Bloomberg. I'm

1754
01:38:21,400 --> 01:38:25,560
Speaker 2: Barry Ritolts. You've been listening to Masters in Business on

1755
01:38:25,760 --> 01:38:29,040
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Radio.