#658: CEO Coach Matt Mochary — Live Coaching with Tim, Why Fear and Anger Give Bad Advice, How to Perform Personal Energy Audits, The Power of Accountability Partners, Delegation Tips, Strategies for Hiring the Right People, and More

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So Hello, boys and girls, ladies and gyms. This is Tim Ferris. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show, where it is my job to interview world class performers from all different disciplines to tease out the lessons, habits, routines, favorite books, and so on that you can apply to your own lives. My guest today I would say is not only a world class performer. but also one who studies world class performers, advises world class performers, Matt Moshari. You can find him on Twitter at Matt MosharieM-O-C H A R Y, coaches the heads of top Silicon Valley tech investment firms and companies on how to be the best leaders and build the best organizations possible. There are some names you might recognize, including my friend Naval Ravakant, as well as Brian Armstrong of Coinbase Sam Altman, perhaps best associated or most associated with open AI these days. Well done, Sam, and many, many others. His philosophy and method are captured in both the Moshari coaching methodology.

which is available as a free Google Doc, and in his book, The Great CEO Within, which is available on Amazon and also online as a free Google Doc. We will link to all of those in the show notes at Tim.blog slash podcast. And you can also find, I imagine, all of them, I believe, under the top right curriculum at MoshariMethod. As a former founder, CEO, and investor, Matt knows firsthand the challenges of those roles as well as solutions to the most commonly encountered problems. His coaching is not questions only, there is real guidance. Matt specializes in helping CEOs and their companies or investment firms transition from free-willing startups to dominant enterprises. Matt? Nice to see you. Thanks for making the time. Absolutely. It's fun to be here.

It is Fun to have you. And I should point out that with every guest We always ask my team or I that they send any exploratory bullets or topics that we might be able to expand upon. And you set a great list.

So we're going to dig into a number of those that you sent, as well as a few in my secret seven pages of my own notes. And I thought we would begin with Perhaps my emotional home basis. Fear and anger. So the headline here is Fear and Anger Give Bad Advice. So I will let you take this ball and run with it however you see fit, but I'll pass the mic. And uh let you get after it.

Sounds great. Fear and anger have good signal in that they warn, hey, there's something new here, pay attention. But usually the predictions that the brain then makes are far exaggerated. And are trying to get us to do something. To stay alive. But the reality is in this modern world

It's not a saber toothed tiger that's attacking us and might actually physically kill us. It's some threat to our ego. That will make us feel bad. And so That

It's unnecessary to Yell at someone. Because We might feel bad. Or it's unnecessary to not tell someone Hey, this performance that you have

It's actually not good enough. You need to do this in order to really perform well. But because of fear, we don't want the person to get hurt or rage quit or whatever. We don't give them the feedback at all. And then they continue to have their performance. So it's the predictions that are exaggerated. Not the warning flag.

And I think the most fun thing, Tim, if you're game for it. Is To see how this shows up in your life. Sure. Yeah, let's roll up the sleeves. I'm happy to be the guinea pig. We'll see if I hit the abort button, but I'm happy to play in the meantime. So how should we begin this grand experiment? Will we pick some place where you're feeling either fear or anger?

And We unpack it. And of course it's gonna be pretty easy for me and the audience to see too. It's gonna be pretty easy for them. Because they won't be feeling fear or anger about the subject. Only you will. So you're gonna be the only one that has blinders on. The rest of us will see it pretty clearly.

Yeah, monkey dance. Monkey dance. That's me right now. All right. So I would say the first thing that comes to mind right now for Anger. Is

I'll give two examples that are clear and present for me right now. So the first is when I find myself engaged with what I would consider administrative work. management work as opposed to making or creative work.

That could be And it'll sound funny to Hear me say this perhaps, given that I do delegate a lot and I'm the four hour workweek guy, but if for whatever reason I end up being the person who has to chase down a specific K1, for instance, some type of tax related document, because I'm the only one who has access or need to find a particular contact. Anything related to Logistics.

I end up feel angry. Towards myself. This is an anger towards myself for not having created a system that removes these things from my life or from my calendar at the very least. So that's one. I'll give you another example. Which is A piece came out that was sent to me this morning.

And it's a huge piece in a major magazine about stoicism. And somehow My friend Ryan Holiday and I get labeled tech bros in these pieces all the time, which drives me fucking crazy because Ryan especially, I mean he lives on a farm with donkeys and cows. He's not a tech bro. So I feel number one, some righteous indignation in defending or wanting to defend. Ryan. And then secondly

The charge is usually that we have Enabled mass throngs of Tech bros to read. Stoicism, in which case my thought is, well, would you rather have them reading Ayn Rand or Seneca or Marcus Aurelius? Probably better in the latter camp. But I get wound up.

I get wound up. And uh the irony of the topic stoicism and the fact that I'm getting angry about it is not lost on me. But nonetheless Yeah, this sometimes happens. So those are two That are immediately present for me. In terms of fear.

I would say and this may be getting too far afield. Maybe, maybe not. I mean, but I would say fear in any compartment of life. tends to affect the other compartments, right? So I just recently a handful of months ago

got out of a five year relationship and I'm forty five. And so the starting from blank slate And it was very amicable and she's amazing and we're still in touch and on good terms, but nonetheless the idea of starting from square one because we were so close to having kids is extremely daunting. So I have fear around that. I do have fear around that being kinda like the dad who has to like lean on one arm on his walker to throw the baseball to his kid or something is not super appealing to me. And I'm sort Hugely exaggerated. But Those would be a few examples of

Anger and fear. Respectively. Tim, the juiciest one there is your relationship and being on your own now. So if you don't mind, that's where I'm gonna go. I don't mind. Let's go go for the juice. Okay. And I always want to make sure I really understand what's going on. So I'm always gonna make sure that I acknowledge you and until you say yeah, that's it. Tim, what I'm hearing is you were in a five year relationship where you were

This was your best friend. And now that's over and recently ended and your thoughts How in the hell Can I recreate that in and the effort that I went to to find this person who really was, I thought my soulmate. I mean such huge amounts of

effort. I just don't want to go through that again, or can I even? Well people even. Find me. Attractive. Or whether they do or not, just the

Effort required. Oh. Is that close? Yeah, there is a lot of that. There's all of that, I would say.

I would say this is probably gonna sound egotistical. I'm I'm not so Concerned about the last part. Meaning like I have very good self care. I've done a lot of work and I owe my ex partner a lot of credit for

Encouraging me Or I'd say us to go to workshops with, say, gay and Katie Hendricks. I know you're familiar with their work and many others. So I think the toolkit that I have has improved dramatically in the last five years. So I'm less concerned about that. I wrote this piece some time ago, this is a handful of years ago, called Eleven Reasons Not to Become Famous, and outlines some of the issues that you would be very familiar with vis-a-vis, perhaps your own experience, but also the experience of many of your clients. And dating can be a real minefield. There's a lot of crazy out there.

And not just crazy, but there's a lot of premeditated Exploitation. Or looking to use I've had this experience personally a number of times where ulterior motives are not clear, but they exist nonetheless. And I would say

The foundation upon which The love and Vulnerability was based with my ex was extreme trust. I trusted her. I still trust her. She does not have a malicious bone in her body. And that made me feel safe enough to do all of the things that I described to go into all the work. Two.

Engage in the way that I engage with her. And That's the rarity for me. So finding a beautiful woman, not hard. Tons of beauty everywhere. finding a successful woman or someone who has established her own identity.

in some capacity and is not overly free floating, let's say, which is I think important to me. 'Cause I think there are side effects when either partner is overly kind of amorphous in their direction. Also something that you can nail down pretty quickly, I think. It's the trust piece. That is the bigger.

bigger component for me. That's a larger fear, and that is pretty ubiquitous in my life. I I trust very slowly. And there are a lot of reasons for that. But That would be what I would add. to your

summary, which is also accurate. Just the Oh my fucking God. Really starting from zero, all that work. Back to square one. There's a lot of just not wanting to deal with it. And frankly, because I met my ex in a very Serendipitous way. In person.

When I look at dating apps It is so To me at least, just demoralizing to think that I'm going to have to chip away at this ridiculous process by trying to be clever in text messages on some dating app, which I know is not the only option. But there's all of that wrapped into one, which equals

I would say. Fear and there's some anger wrapped into that as well. Why couldn't we figure it out? And I do think she was, probably is my soulmate, but I've come to realize that Just because someone feels Like or is your soulmate does not actually mean that you are compatible

In all ways long term. So I I don't think there's a singular soulmate per se. That type of match does not immediately imply that you are compatible co living in the same space, having a family, et cetera. That's a mouthful. I wasn't planning on going into this, but I'm ready to, so Your turn. I appreciate your vulnerability because you're trusting all of us by sharing this.

And so now what I'm hearing, Tim, is that Not really what it's about. And additionally about is that Get to the chase. I'm famous. And I'm recognizable.

People know who I am. And so when people come at me and and if I'm gonna be in a dating pool and women come at me, I'll never know, or how the hell will I know? Are they doing this on a calculated basis because they want the famous Tim Ferris? Or are they doing this because they actually like me for me? And how the hell will I ever know?

I haven't figured out a way of knowing up until now. And That's my fear. My fear is that I'll just We'll have no idea. Is that close?

Yeah, that's close. There's definitely that. And I would say other fears would be that there's some transaction in mind. So years, many, many years ago, I mean when I would go on dates, I had multiple Women I've been on dates with were On date four or five, they're like, Oh, by the way, I have a book coming out in three months. I'd love to get your advice on A B and C and I'm like ah

I see. That's where this was going. Okay. And there's that type of transaction and then there are just I mean, there are dangers in being potential sort of target of sorts. And then we don't have to get into all the specifics of that, but if you are public facing and have a decently high profile, it doesn't even need to be that large. you become a target for all sorts of bad behavior. So there's that as well.

But yes, everything that you said, and I would say more. Perfect. There's a certain point we're gonna dive in. Maybe we'll do that now. So Tim, now that I've understood where you are, there is more and I could ask you to keep going. In fact, let's go one layer deeper.

There is more. Okay. Please tell me more. I mean there is more. It's just a question of which species. What do you predict will happen? Yeah. You're now Going to at some point be back in the dating pool.

What do you predict will happen? But you're gonna be single. That we know. We're gonna be single. What do you predict will happen? What's the bad thing you predict will happen? Here's the bad thing I would predict would happen is that I am afraid of engaging in the dating pool in so many ways that I just sit on my hands, stay home, watch Netflix. Which is already on some level happening. So I think that would be the most obvious one.

And when you sit around and just watch Netflix, then what bad happens. Time passes. And I get older. And I am not increasing the likelihood of Finding someone I want to have a family with.

Or just have fun with. I mean, frankly, it doesn't all have to be super heavy. Some for a lifetime, some for a season, some for a weekend. I that's all fine, right? So I'm not Sort of. Placing all my bets on this binary Like a lifetime partner or nothing.

But I will not make any progress in beginning to try my chances at any of those things if I'm sitting at home watching Netflix. Perfect. So I'm I have uh fear is already working negatively on me and that is causing me to sit home. But the fear of if I get out there That's really wanna wanna hone in. What happens then? Because the fear is

Yeah. People will come at me for a transactional reason and I won't know that they like me for me. What happens then? What bad thing happens then?

Bad thing that happens then, I mean, there are any number of things. One would be That I just chase these false leads. I burn. A month here, a month there, two months here, four months there. And a year and a half, two years from now.

Good God. I'm still Exactly where I started, effectively. That would be one. Another, frankly, and this is not something a lot of people are going to say, but I'll say it because it is a conversation for a lot of men I know is getting accused of something they didn't do. Like if you go on a date with someone and you're by yourself with them and you don't even kiss them or do anything, you can still be accused of all sorts of

heinous things and That happens. That is a reality if someone thinks they can extract money from you. Absolutely. Perfect. Two predictions. One, Matt, I'm gonna get out there. I will

not have this filter for whether someone is really into me for me, and therefore I'll only find out later. It'll be disappointment after disappointment after disappointment. Two years later, I'll be right where we are right here, right now. I could have just watched Netflix for two years and been in the same place. Second prediction. Is that

Someone somewhere will accuse me of something that I didn't do. Is that right? Yep, and maybe in private to try to extort before the threat of X, Y, and Z. But like that stuff, I have dozen I know dozens of people who are founders of companies or otherwise well known who have these stories. So it's not that rare in occurrence, but I would push back. I'm just gonna push back a little bit.

On the term prediction. It's really thinking about likelihoods, and I can't place an exact percentage on it, but let's just say likelihood of ending up right where I am five months from now, I would say very high. I would say that's more than fifty percent likely. The latter case, you know the extortion type of case. is probably ten percent, but it's ten percent of a very

high downside potential, right? So The way I am And I recognize this as both a strength in some cases, but a super weakness in others. I orient to life in a very hyper vigilant way. So from

Childhood abuse and various things. My entire system is just optimized at this point. Still is. I've worked on it. Two Observe. everything with very high sensitivity. And if there is a risk

to try to risk mitigate. in every possible way. So I tend to minimize downside more than I optimize upside. If that makes sense. Yeah. I just thought that might be helpful to know. Which also, by the way, Tim is fear based. Oh, a hundred percent. Right. Hundred percent.

Where I'm driving towards them and I'll just give away what I'm doing, is I'm driving towards getting you to predict something that you think actually will happen. And the reason is is because I want to prove to you that your fear is making an exaggerated prediction. And the only way I know of to do that is to make a bet with you. So you're gonna say, I predict A. Okay. And then I'll say, You know what, Tim? I don't think that's gonna happen. I predict B, which is the exact opposite.

And I've made these bets hundreds of times. And I have never lost. And that's not because I'm a magician. It's because I'm not in fear. This is your life. The consequence is to you, not to me. Yeah. But once we make that bet.

And if I win. Then The reward is is that in the future, whenever you share something with me and I say, Hey Tim, you're in fear. You gotta outsource your thinking to my prediction, not your prediction. And this is the mechanism that helps people click.

And realize oh Shit. My fear really is giving me bad advice'cause they really do believe the prediction. So Tim, I'm gonna try to nail you down on something. Think well actually, but not likely hood.

It can be little I'm a slippery pig. Yeah, you can be like you know something as little as Matt and I predicted it's gonna be just like painful. To go through the dating process. Until I find Okay, great. Yeah. Do you think it's gonna be that's it? I would say my I'll use the word prediction, sure.

My prediction is On some level. Ugh most of this, not all of it. I don't expect all of it, but like most of this is just gonna be a hard slog. Of me doing things I don't want to do.

To try to increase The chance happenings that lead to meeting different people. And that it's gonna be more exhausting than fun. That would be my prediction.

Excellent. More exhausting than fun. That's a definitive. Yeah. Tim? Yeah.

I predict the exact opposite. I think you're gonna have more fun than exhaustion. You're gonna meet a ton of super fun people. And you're gonna have serendipitous Experiences.

That delight you. That's it. I say more fun than exhausting, and you say more exhausting than fun. And I'll trust you. Yeah, how does the bet work?

So we'll pick a time frame. And I'll just pin ya. And say Tim. More fun than exhausting. More exhausting than fun, and you'll come back with an answer. Yeah.

And if you win, then from now on Whenever I I can never give you You know, point out that you're in fear and in outsource your thing to me. You get you're in control. For the rest of your life. And so we'll see. Do you mind if I stray from the exercise a little bit? I'm just very curious. You work with a lot of high profile folks. Yeah.

And of course not to name names, but How have you seen people navigate this? An effective, efficient way. Because I am not, I know for a fact, I'm not the only person who has these concerns. Which is really common. Dating? No, this is a first for me.

In terms of feeling. Absolutely. I mean. Pretty much every single person I coach, this is where we start. And so All the people you mentioned.

This is where we start. Yeah. And they did have something they felt fear about, and I did make a bet with them. And they did the thing and Turns out my prediction was right, not theirs. And then boom, mind blown.

Then they started to be very perceptive when I said they were in fear, but then over time they started to catch themselves being in fear. And now they no longer even need me to point it out. Because they catch themselves and they see the pattern. And so they lean into the thing.

that they feel fear about and it's giving them such big gifts. But now the pattern is broken. Not for me to give up too easily. If dating is a first, yeah. Which is surprising to me, but I have to imagine your clients are Very transparent with you.

Some of them. In a holistic way. If they are running an organization and they just had a divorce, that is a material factor that affects their ability. So they end up talking to you about it. Yes. So I guess what I'm asking is

within the group of let's just say single, newly single fill in the blank folks who Would like to have a partner. What have you seen them do? That has

worked for them besides just using five different dating apps. This is where my coaching is revealed as being insanely simplistic. And nothing magical at all. And the audience will go. Duh, of course. And that is

Get out there. Get off the damn couch. Make a a list of three things you want to do. This week. Or one thing.

One thing that will advance the goal is to meet someone that you connect with on an insanely deep level eventually. What is one thing, Tim, you can do? Is that the goal? Tell me what the goal actually is. Three months from now. You will say.

Damn, I crushed it! As long as what happened. I think what you just described would fit the bill. Or frankly, if I went out and it was more energy giving than energy draining. It doesn't have to actually be finding the one because I think that's too much pressure and honestly three months. I have no idea if that's gonna work or not. But just going out and having it be more energy giving than energy draining. Perfect. So basically have it be that Matt won the bet. In three months. Correct.

Perfect. Yes. Okay, great. What's one action you can take What's the next action? you need to take towards getting there. Putting myself on a limited Netflix diet. And

Probably group activity of some type, whether that's Going to a dance class or Asking a friend to help organize a group dinner, something along those lines. I just don't do well in like going to bars is not my native environment. Dating apps not my native environment. So I'd probably asking friends for help to organize some type of group dinner or activity. That would be step one. Fantastic. How many friends would you like to ask?'Cause they're all gonna be super eager to jump in and Set up group dinners or

Invited it. dance classes or Yeah, making it specific. Let's let's You know, I like triangles three. Let's go with three. Perfect.

Excellent. By when will you have asked three friends? To help set something up that you can do. End of this week. I can do that. Fantastic. That being Friday or Sunday?

I would say Friday. Since I like to take the weekends off of Tasks when possible. Are you writing this down in a place that you'll see it and remember it? Yep.

Yeah, send you a note after I'm good. I'm good at that part. I'm very good at taking notes. Okay. Great. And I'll check in on you at the end of the week to make sure you've actually done it. Or Which you can do even better is once you've done it. Please ping me.

But either way. We'll check to make sure it gets that. And really, Tim, that's That's it. That's it, coaching right there.

I force you to write down in action because when else will you have the time to think about this in this Dedicated facts. Now it's never. Exactly. And then I'll just follow up and make sure you did it. And there's some amount of shame. in not doing something when you know someone out there, a real life human being knows you committed to it.

And so you will do it. Or you won't. Yes. And then I'll ask you why. And you'll come up with some, you know, BS excuse. By my public confession. Exactly. And then what I'll do is I'll say what happens. So if you don't do it.

I'll literally ask you why and you'll say, Oh I forgot. Or oh, I don't know, I just So Tension or I whatever it is. I'll say okay.

Do you still want to do it? And you'll say, Yes, I still want to do it. Great. What can you do? Do not forget it again. What can you do to not feel the tension? Whatever it is that blocked you, what can you do to not get blocked?

And then you'll declare that and you'll do that thing. And then you will actually go ahead and Do the action. And once you do that action one time.

Then it's done. Then the the dam is broken. And you're flying. So once you do this one action, Tim, the hardest action you're ever gonna do in this whole process Is the very first. Because once you do the first

All of a sudden It'll work. Your friends will organize things and they'll be fun. Yeah, like Oh my god.

This is great. I actually predict him That it's not gonna be three months before you're having more fun than exhausting. I believe it's the first Event

that you show up to, which will probably be next week. All right. I appreciate the Pep talk. I'm into it. I've taken my note.

And I have made my timeline commitment. So there you have it. And if I have a BS excuse, you will help me make the BS less defensible. And then I will have to choose between taking some first action or Extreme shame over my own. inability to execute on something I probably feel shameful. I'm just I know I know just using what they call in the trade some dramatic flourish. So I want to actually segue from this And I'm happy to come back to it. This is not not me uh No, that was great. That was it. That's the whole process. So founders you've worked with, including Steve Huffman, if is it Huffman? I don't think I'm pronouncing that correctly. I've actually never uh said that out loud, co founder of Reddit.

Yeah. Have said that you always turn conversations into action items. As you just saw. As I just saw, which is why I'm bringing this up. So are there other techniques that you use or approaches

that you use for this. Or is there anything you would like to say as to how this fits into the larger picture of just being a an effective high performing person or organization. Expand on that or we can move on. But I thought I'd bring it up since this was a question I was gonna ask you. I mean a lot of people ask me, Matt, what's unique about you? Why are you considered the best

CEO coach and I have a hard time answering the question because I think what I do is very simplistic. But one of the things I've noticed that I do different than others is this What I call bias to action. Like we're not gonna leave a conversation. Without you having at least one, two, or three

actions to take because I think this time spent together is so expensive. For you, for me, frankly. That if we're just gonna Think deeply about things. come to answers that are likely, very likely to work.

and then not turn them into actions and do them. And me not follow up? And specifically see if you did them. But then just go to another meeting two weeks from now and start all over of super expensive time and ideate. But not have done anything in between.

To me it's just like My stomach curls when I Think about that. My coaching is all about driving towards an action. And I have a system and the system is all about

Writing that down and checking. To make sure it got done. And that's it. And I find it works with individuals, it works with teams. It works with companies.

And It's called accountability. And it can be done in a micromanager shameful way. Or it can be done in a I'd like to help you succeed, Way.

And of course as a coach You can stop coaching with me any time. So it's much easier for me to make it feel like I'm trying to help you succeed way. If I'm your boss and giving you a paycheck and you're afraid to Let go of the paycheck. Then it can easily feel like I'm micromanaging you.

But There is no difference. When I coach someone, I become their manager. Period. End of story. And if by the third meeting they feel more successful, more engaged, more empowered Then they know the system works.

And it's all written out, so they can just copy Paste. Use with their team members. And then it works with our team members as well. Let's look a little bit

More closely at accountability because this is one of my favorite topics. And I mean the tools can be Rusty, they can be

even mediocre in a lot of cases, but if you use them routinely, it's a lot better than the person who has a pristine, perfectly sharpened tool that never gets used. And for me and I've thought and written about this a lot as it relates to behavioral modification, which is what we're talking about in many respects, whether that's diet, exercise, quitting smoking, starting a new behavior, whatever it might be, New Year's resolutions that Accountability beats. Elaborate planning most of the time.

I would say all the time. All the time. Great. So let me read something, and this is I believe this is either something written by you or your team. And I'd love to hear you elaborate on it. If we have to do something that isn't fun and we're alone, it is painful, but if we're in the presence of another human, then we're usually okay to do that thing which isn't fun. Who that other human is doesn't matter too much. It can be our child, our EA, or any other random person. Yeah. Could you give

an example of how this might work because I found this to pique my curiosity. I find that they're generally personality types that I encounter. When coaching and one Big bucket.

is introvert versus extrovert. And obviously it's a sliding scale. But people generally fall one side or the other. And extroverts I've noted, I'm an extrovert. Just feel more comfortable around humans.

And there are these solo tests. This goes back to in the beginning you talked about your anger, your frustration around having to do these administrative tasks that don't create any value, but only you can do them because you're the investor named investor individually. So only you can get the K one and your assistant can't get it because she's not you. And what a pain in the ass. And you've got to do it. And you're probably doing it alone. And you're probably going

Uh. And so I have things like that as well. And plenty of extroverts have th there's some amount of stuff you just gotta do. And so what I've noticed is in my own life, and I've recommended this to many people and they've done it like Oh my God, that's amazing, is just having another living, breathing human in the room. Creates a sense of Peace.

Enough of a sense of peace that these tasks No longer feel So annoying because our body is no longer so sensitized. We're sensitized. Extroverts are sensitized when they're in the alone position. But when they're not alone, their bodies just aren't as sensitized. And so these tasks become

Less onerous. And I've literally hired people To sit in my office with me on a couch reading a book. While I do administrative tasks. And it works.

And I've recommended this to dozens of people. And they now do it? And it worked for them. Do you find that to help for introverts? Like I I'm a Myers Briggs INT J. Not that I put too much stock in Myers Briggs, but nonetheless just as a as a footnote. Do you find that also translates to introverts? It may be

Most of the times the people who have really latched onto this. Are extroverts. Mm-hmm. Just because they're feeling even more pain. There's only one way to know, Tim.

Would you be open to trying it? And see if it works. Yeah, for sure. What I found is that it the the person really matters. So even though I'm introverted, I don't like being Physically isolated.

talking to people all the time, don't want to do it, which is why I figured out how to do a one on one podcast that gets listened to by a lot of people, but it's not actually having conversations with all the said people because from a battery perspective, it's just not my constitution to be able to handle that. I have found that if it's someone I know or have a direct connection with on some level, right? Maybe it's someone I could even just hire to read on the couch. Yeah. The emotional tenor and grounding of that is different from

Going to a coffee shop or a library. And sitting around strangers, which tends to make me feel Unemployed or like a crazy person. Because both of those demos are pretty well represented depending on where you go to your coffee shop and and library. So that that strikes me as something I would try.

For sure. Perfect. Is there someone you can think of that you'd want to invite to Same with you? But you feel comfortable that you I would say I'm actually already doing this on some level. I've taken this action. It's the friend that I excommunicated from this apartment while recording this podcast. So it'll be that friend. Okay. He's in the same boat. So we've been working together, which makes a big difference.

And has that been helping? Yeah. Absolutely. Excellent. Okay. Then you answer the question, thank you. Yeah. What is focus mate?

Foca Me is an online app costs five bucks a month, which just sets you up for this. They just pair people who are both have admin tasks to do and they're alone. And For fifty minutes you just sit. On a screen with someone. I mean it's freaking genius. Amazing.

That's amazing. Okay. I may just try that out of curiosity, sheer curiosity, to see what the what effect that has. Yeah. I would say it's online, so it's not quite as effective as the in person. It's just Yeah. Much easier to schedule.

Yeah. That makes sense. I Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by AG1 by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time

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One hundred percent satisfied. Learn more. Try it out. Athletic Greens.com slash Tim. I So let's If you're open to it.

And we can always round back to other things. But Move to decision making. So the the prompt that I have here is separate decision from implementation. What does this mean?

This was something I learned recently. One of the beautiful things about my coaching is that I feel like I'm the student. I have not invented anything. Everything that I do I learn from somebody else or read in a book, which is also learning from somebody else.

And I'm just packaging it in a way that's easy to understand. So this comes from We Dang, who is the CEO of Clipboard Health. Just She'm mind blowing. I've learned so much from her. And we were sitting around at a Sequoia CEO retreat that brought like ten CEOs to Kawaii to to see me. And the idea was I was gonna sit and coach them for three days. And so I did. And we're getting there, bringing up their issues and sort of we would but I didn't want me just to be sitting there, so I would

Have everybody sort of write in their thoughts and then Whoever the CEO is Answer there more. drawn to they would ask that person to expound. And

We dang. Ended up being the person that People want to hear from way more than from me and me too. I mean, her answers were insanely good. And she shared with us this rubric. Which is really Identifying fear.

That oftentimes when you're having a difficult time making a decision It's because you're conflating The decision itself with the implementation of the decision. So it's pretty damn clear what you need to do, what the right decision is, because

There's a constituency here that you're trying to optimize for. So in any organization. There's A human. that you are prioritizing. So if it's a company You're probably

Prioritizing the customer. If it's an investment firm, you're probably prioritizing Your LPs. If it's Your own personal life, you need to be prioritizing you.

And then there's implementation. There's someone who When you know that what's right for the customer and you implement it. Someone's gonna get hurt. Maybe it's that you have someone who's not performing well. If you're Making a decision just for the customer, clearly you would let go of this person.

But You know this person is in the middle of getting a divorce, Christmas is coming. and their children, you know, how the will the person pay for the private school tuition their kids are in, and you don't want to be the one Two Impose.

That pain. And suffering on that person. So you have a really hard time making this decision. But if you separate the two and think okay. Customer needs his personal echo.

This person will be Pain and I will be pained too. So I'm going to get Hurt by the implementation. Then think of well. What does this person who's gonna get hurt by the implementation

What is it that they really want? So the person is gonna be fired. What they really want is financial security. They want to find a place where they are valued, they are needed. And pays enough money to cover their life expenses.

You What do you really want? You Don't want to be the bad guy. You want to not

impose pain on someone. You actually want to Help someone. Find their place where they can have What they want, which is financial security.

So what do you do? You then think about how can I achieve that in the implementation. Well, you can achieve that. Bye. Becoming the person's career agent.

You say this is not working here, but I want to help you find the place. That's gonna work for you. So I know that you're passionate about A You right now we're having you do B.

And you're not great at it, but A, you're great at it. Let's find a place that needs A And I will wholeheartedly recommend you for A In fact, I'm not gonna just recommend you. I'm gonna go out and advocate for you. I'm gonna send out tweets, I'm gonna send out emails, I'm gonna send out texts to people saying This guy or woman is

Fantastic at this. Can you please consider them because as an agent. One hour of time spent will equal a hundred hours. Of time spent by the candidate themselves. Once you're able to separate the two, once you say

What's best for the customer? Clearly that's what's best. How do I minimize the damage on the person that gets hurt? Now you can actually go forward and you can make a good decision. That doesn't actually hurt people unnecessarily. That all makes sense. And I think this

is a place where it also makes sense to look at One of the other bullets which is firing Well, and I will just add to set the table that I'm sure there are cases where you can Dramatically help. an employee who is soon to be an ex employee by doing the advocacy you mentioned, but there are other cases where someone lies or there's some type of fraudulent behavior and you need to let them go and there would be extreme reputational risk.

in recommending that person. Now there there's a lot of law around what you can or can't do in all these cases, but it might complicate matters. So I'm just curious to know what your best practices are. For Firing well,

In addition to what you just mentioned, and maybe addressing the instance of problem employees. We're not just underperforming, but do something that Catalyzes. The firing. So let's take the one sort of just firing well generally. And you you basically heard it. It's recognizing that when someone gets let go, it's a major life trauma. There are sort of three pillars in your life. There's your

Home where you live. There's your Most significant relationship. And then there's your your job. And if any one of those collapses at any one time, it's a major trauma. If two collapse, or even god forbid, three, it's like oh mental game over and you sort of reboot.

And so recognizing that when someone's experiencing trauma, their brain just does not work well. So It's very difficult. For them to Do a job search.

And advocate for themselves. I mean, there's a corollary. You just lost your significant relationship. Now you're thinking about the effort. It's not a job search. It's a partner search and the pain That Uh how

It feels overwhelming, so you're just not even starting. Whereas the same thing people happens in a the job search. And of course what your friends can do to be helpful to you is help you begin, help you create the setting for that.

So you don't have to do it completely on your own. That's the corollary here. The manager Can Help.

Take The first few steps. For the person. So they don't have to take those steps entirely on their own. That's it. That's all we're talking about here. That's firing well. And the reason it's important to do because obviously

You think, well, this person isn't capable. And why should I be helping them and spending time with them? Shouldn't I be spending time with people who stay here, who wanna be here, who are performing? And the answer is that the people who stay Are watching. And they're watching how you treat this person. Because everybody at the company Think at some point.

I might be let go. And if that happens. What will happen to me? And if they see that you treat This person who got let go well and really helped them.

Then all of a sudden a collective sigh of relief. Goes through your coming. It's silent. You won't hear it. But it'll it'll eliminate Fear. And when people eliminate fear

then their brains work better and they'll perform better. For you. So You can actually look at this as a very self interested action. I think it is.

You don't need to be selfless. Two Help people when you let them go. You can be very selfish. And actually do this. Now the second part of your question was Well what about

Criminal behavior. Tim, I like your edge cases. Of the hundreds of Of companies I've coached. And the

Tens of thousands of employees, maybe even hundreds of thousands of employees within those companies. No one has ever brought to me, I need to let this person go for criminal behavior. No. I need to let this person go for What I've considered to be extreme incompetent.

I can't imagine they're good at anything. And in there I urge The CEO to get curious. Yeah, and just to be clear, I wasn't saying exclusively criminal behavior, but if someone is so bad Or

I mean that would be a case. Or someone you look at their accounts payable and you're like, wow, we are sixty days behind in paying our vendors. This should never happen, and this can't happen, therefore This person needs to be let go. Yes. Because maybe conversations have been had, et cetera. So it's not just criminal behavior. I will push back a little bit and say there is criminal behavior. I mean, I know a lot of CEOs like there's bad behavior. But I'm not limiting my hypothetical to that. Maybe the COS coach have just not brought that behavior to me'cause they don't want me to

Cause them to fire that person. Yeah, or that might be a question for the general counsel. Right. Exactly. Exactly. But when there is a situation because this definitely does happen where people say this person is so horrible. So egregiously irresponsible. I can't recommend them to anyone for anything. Well clearly and then I would encourage

That C or that manager to just Wait. Till time passes, wait till the anger dissipates. Until They can get curious.

Go to that person and find out. Say clearly the facts are this. You are not qualified to do this role. Or Clearly you don't seem to be passionate about this role. But What are you passionate about? What do you really enjoy? And they'll say something.

And then say well. Let's see if that can be translated. Into Some kind of Money making

Effort And almost always it can. And what I find is that many, many, many people and this is another issue with an energy audit we can get into. Are actually stuck in roles. That they don't like.

Some they're good at? And they get paid well for it, so they continue to do it. But over time, if you don't like Something that you're doing. In the end, you won't do it well.

You can't. Because you're competing against the person. There are people out there who do like it. And they will study it and learn more and give energy towards it. And even if they're less experienced over time

They will surpass you and far surpass you. So I find that generally humans Or not Incompetent. What they are is

They're uninterested. But if you can find a place where they're interested. Suddenly. they become very competent. And

If you can't find that place and you need to let them go. What does that conversation look like? Since you're not gonna want to go on Twitter and So on yeah. I mean if if if they don't want to play ball and if they won't share with you what their passions are, what they might be interested in, or where they might want to do that you agree with they'd be good at.

Then you can't help. It's like If I'm trying to coach someone and they don't want to be coached. It's nothing I can do. But you've tried.

That's all. You've made the offer. Got it. And this gets a follow up question from me, which is Related to

recruiting. And I know you and I chatted a little bit before we started recording, but I'd like to explore this for the following reason. In job interviews, oftentimes candidates. Almost always candidates will try to paint themselves in the most positive, enthusiastic light possible. And I've had the experience of hiring people where

the obligations and responsibilities are laid out, not always in the maybe the granularity that that you would suggest, and maybe we can talk about that, but There is an enthusiastic hell yes to all those said things and then six months later, lo and behold they are extremely unenthusiastic and uninterested in half of those things. And it's kind of this, oh fuck, goddammit situations. That

perhaps I'm hoping with a different approach could have been avoided, but I'm not the only person I'm I'm imagining who has had this experience. So what what are some of your Thoughts and recommendations for Effective and efficient. Recruiting. So there's two major categories in recruiting.

One is evaluating and two is selling. 'Cause of course when you find a great person. You're not the only person that found them. So you gotta make sure they Come on, elsewhere. Right.

And so Evaluating has a few parts, selling has a few parts. Selling part is one you need to Minimize the time you spend with people that you don't hire. So you can maximize the time you spend with a person you do wanna hire because selling it turns out Requires a lot of time.

Effective selling. So now let's go back though to evaluating. We'll come to the the selling afterwards. Evaluating. I find exactly what you find that there are some people out there who are just really good at interviewing. Especially. relationship people, salespeople, those types of people.

And it doesn't indicate at all. their ability to perform the job or their willingness to perform the job. Later on. I find the only Two things matter.

When it comes to Evaluating. One is How has the person performed in the past? We'll start with that.

The second is Can I scare them away? From the dirty realities. Of this job. So but we'll start with the first.

how they performed in the past. This is why people do Reference checks. But most people do indirect reference checks. Like we know everyone in Silicon Valley. So we see the places they've worked. So I'll just contact all the people I know that worked at the companies they worked at and see you know how this person is viewed. That's actually a terrible system.

The reason that's a terrible system is because Very rarely. Well you know. The manager of that person at that company.

Instead, you know some random person at that company who didn't really interact with this person, all they know about this person is their internal reputation. Which also is not at all indicative of the actual work they do. So instead what I do is when I interview and I I meet someone, I think, Oh my gosh, this person's amazing. I'll tell them immediately. I'd like to do

And I stole all this from The book Who WHO which I think is the best book on recruiting there is. And he simply says you do what's called the top grading interview where you go The job by job that they've had since college.

You ask them. Who do you work for? Who's your manager? So and so, great, can you please spell that for me? Write down the name. Next job. Who is your manager?

Next job. Who's your manager? And maybe Teammates as well. But manager for sure. Then I go through that whole list and at the end I've got to be a little bit more. Ten, twenty, thirty names?

And then I say to the person. I'd like to hire you. Pending Reference interviews. So can you please connect me with

And I choose. One, two, three up to However many? Seven people, but at least three. And I asked the candidate, Can you please connect me with that person? And then the interview I'm doing.

Because um They're former managers. And That's where I get. Insanely good information.

Okay, so you go through that process. And you've discovered that. This person actually really is good. They actually really perform. Right. Now I find that's not enough. It's what you described before.

We said. Six months into it. They're no longer interested. That's what I'm trying to prevent. So I then come back to the person and say, listen, your references were fantastic. I think you're amazing, but before you make this decision,

I want to try to scare you away from the reality. So I'm gonna tell you the worst things about this job. And I do. In fact, I'll do this. before I do even do the top grading or the reference interviews. Because I'm trying to disqualify the candidate as early as possible before I spend

Any time with that. So I'll tell them when I first meet them and I think they're great. Most people will turn to start selling. I go the opposite direction. I start anti selling. And I'll say it's long hours. We work in California time and we're remote. If you're in, you know, Russia or Ukraine or wherever you are, your day starts at

You know, ten PM it ends at six AM. If you are in Whatever the worst things about this role are. I'm gonna explain to you. And see if I can scare you away.

And then if the person still is interested and still want now they know. I find those people stay interested in the role because it's always better when they arrive. Than what I describe. Because I only describe the bad parts. So that's evaluating.

Next. So now we've got your candidate who has performed well in the past. If anti sold them and they still want to join. Great. They are going to perform. The problem is

They're superstars. And everybody else wants them too. And so I find selling is key. And selling requires Really getting to know the person and finding out about them. And

Taking the time to understand Their dreams. Their fears. Their angers And also they're they probably have a partner.

And the partner isn't excited to join. Your company? But it's feeling fear around let's say you're a tech startup. So there's lower Cash pay but more equity. And that person doesn't give a crap about the equity and just sees less cash pay.

And so they're feeling fear. So I won. Asked to speak to the spouse. So that I can understand his or her concerns and address them directly.

And two. I use speed. So from the moment That I meet someone. Until the moment. That I'm able to say, I love you and I want you to work here and I want to make you an offer.

I endeavor to have that be very few days. So that the person feels like, Whoa, Matt has so much conviction about me. Like from the minute he met me, he loved me and just Boom boom boom. And the way to do that again is to minimize the time I spend with people I don't want to hire.

So my first interview with someone is never more than fifteen minutes. Because within the first five minutes, I know whether I'm energetically pulled to someone or not. And If you look back on the Great people you hired.

Tim, I would guess that You also knew within the first five minutes of meeting the person. That you love them. Or we're intrigued. Yeah, one of my I would say biggest handicaps right now is I veto

I tend to use analytics And kind of hard number crunching and references to override that first impression. That is something that I've deliberately taken to working on, but that is whenever there's been an issue, I usually spot it in the first thirty minutes. If I end up hiring somebody and those issues come up and I saw them in the first thirty minutes. And this is Where I just need to wait. My

First immediate reads. more heavily then kind of the textbook. recommendations, if that makes sense. Absolutely freaking Louis, because you're the one that has to work with them. So it's that chemical reaction that you're going to keep having over and over again with them. No matter whether they worked well with someone else or not. And so I only have again fifteen minutes, not even thirty, fifteen minutes because that's what I schedule.

Cause if I end up loving the person in those fifteen minutes I know they haven't scheduled anything else in the next fifteen minutes, and neither have I. Right. So then I can immediately start going into hey, let's keep this going. Now I'm really enjoying this. Let's find out if this is really a place you want to be. That's when the anti-selling begins. And we can continue the process.

That's it. Tim, those are the the things. And so I would say for you, don't let anyone else, when your intuition says no. End it right there. Because what you want to do is you want to

Preserve your time. for the moment. When your intuition says yes. Thank you Let go of a hundred people.

And don't say yes unless your intuition tells you. All of this. Doesn't work. If you don't have the ability to fire.

Because if you don't have the ability to fire. Then You will feel fear. You will feel like Oh my God, I've got to make sure this is the perfect hire because this person is gonna be with me forever. You won't say that consciously. But subconsciously you'll know you don't know how to fire. You're not able to do it.

If you're gonna have a world class team, every single person you hire has to be world class from the get go. That Is pressure. That is unrealistic. There is no system.

That is perfect. You will screw up. Or people's lives will change. suddenly they again they will go through a divorce and suddenly their work will no longer be their priority. Whatever it is. Things will change.

And there are going to be moments when you have to let people go. And if you have the ability, as we talked about before, to fire well. And not feel pain when doing so, it can do so Humanely and with empathy. Now you have a system

Basically that can clean itself. It's like a professional sports team. If you had a professional sports team that wasn't allowed to Like of any player they added to the team, that team would end up in last place every time. Companies are no different.

So I would say the most valuable thing about recruiting Is first. Learn how to fire well. And if you can do that Now you the pressure is off and you can take a little bit more chance. On people you have intuition about that you really like.

But maybe they're inexperienced. Maybe they're young. And I find those people. Are often insanely good performers. Yeah, that's been my experience, actually. And

I would encourage people to check out Derek Sivers and how he relates to hiring and firing, which I aspire to be more similar to. But that's a side note. Anything you want by Derek Sivers, I think is uh excellent book for folks out there. Short read. Yeah. Past performance and manager questions, and then we will get back to what came up perhaps ten minutes ago, the energy audit. In assessing past performance and Chatting with past managers.

What are some of the best questions that you have landed on. And the reason I ask is that in the US at least, this may be true other places, In my experience, it is very hard to get past employers to say bad things about an employee for fear of being sued or getting themselves into some type of legal hot water. And I've heard a number of various workarounds, like leaving a voicemail, you know, only call me back if they're from a scale of one to ten and eight or higher. That type of thing where they've there's some plausible deniability on the part of the recipient, but aside from perhaps that gambit, which I've never actually used, maybe I should.

Ways to Accurately. Sus. Past performance and weaknesses. when having conversations with these managers.

So the big filter is Do you get connected with a person? So I ask the the candidate to connect me and if they're not able to That's obviously fine. That's a disqualifier.

Once I'm connected with a former manager, I have never had the experience. But they're unwilling to share. Reality with me. And The most indicative question is, would you hire this person again?

And if they say yes, why? And they tell me. But they also tell me If they wouldn't. Why they wouldn't.

And I've had So many revealing conversations with former managers that while That fear may be out there. the dozens or even hundreds of former managers I've talked to I've never experienced that fear.

And the information they've given me has matched. The person who I hired. Almost. One to one So I can't speak to that, Tim.

And I know that there is that fear out there, but it's not. I haven't encountered it personally. That's wild. Okay. Yeah, I don't know what to say to that. So I guess I guess we could move on. And I think it's because I'm being a I'm asking the candidate to connect me. Okay.

Energy audit. Let's talk about that. What is an energy audit? Before We start shouting.

I pulled Yet again, go back into the game. We could also do that, but maybe we could start with just broadly speaking. What an energy odd it is. So I have to give credit to Diana Chapman, who I think was a guest on your show a while back. That's where I learned this from. Yeah, she was. And she obviously Katie Hendricks were her teachers and we all have many teachers.

But the Concept here is that We all feel like we have limited time. But it's actually really not the case. What we have is limited energy.

And if we Start doing things more. That raise our energy. We can actually start doing more and more things. But it's hard.

Two add more energy inducing things, it's actually much easier to eliminate Energy reducing activities. So instead of going to your calendar and looking at what you do and seeing where you spend your what time on it, where you see where you spend your time and see where you wish you spent your time. This is going and looking at your calendar hour by hour, day by day, for one week, two weeks.

And marking Each Hour. Whatever you did. Whether it was scheduled or not scheduled, just remembering what it is you did.

And marking it. Green I ended that hour with more energy than I started. Or red. I did not end that hour with more energy than I started.

And if you do this, you'll start to find trends. And One example may be One on ones. With

people that I don't find competent or I'm no longer even their manager. Informational interviews with people Who are friends of friends. internal Manage at meetings that are just not well run. These are very common examples of things that are energy.

Neutral or reducing. And what you want to do then is once you identify these things. You want to eliminate them. From your calendar. And

There are a few ways to eliminate them. One, you ask yourself Does this actually even need to happen. If the answer is no. And just stop it.

Two, if it needs to happen, do I need to be the one to do it? So Going back to your K one example. Do you really have to be the one to get the K1s? If not, if you could delegate it, would you likely have delegated all the delegated ones already?

Then you delegate it. But then there's a third category. Yes, it needs to happen. Yes, I need to be the one to do it. Uh

K1s, going out and getting the K1s, dang it! Only I can do it. Okay. What would make it exquisite? Ask yourself that question, what would make this actually energy raising?

And you might say. Let me actually ask you that in reality, Tim. What would make it energy raising for you? When you go and get your K ones. Yeah. I mean

I would also like to hear some sort of answers from the crowd or things that you've seen just like you have these common neutral or depleting categories. I'd be curious to know how other people answer this. I mean, look, I'll give a I don't mean it to sound flippant, but like like if I were sitting in a hot tub drinking a bottle of wine and doing this email, like batching all that shit together.

Maybe that would make it. Less repulsive. Right. That would be an example. I'm just pulling that. out of the air. Yeah. But I would be very curious to know how other people

Answer this. Those are the kinds of things they come up come up with. And of course. Accountability partner. was the one that I came up with and shared with people in that usually resonates with people, or turning on music that's really fun or Again, people or some kind of

create changing the environment to make the environment fun. But let's come back to ones that are more I'll give examples of each category. So what things that don't need to happen? You know what? Informational interviews for friends of friends. Don't need to happen.

Has uh Nice. who's just graduating from college and looking for a job. And she's really interested in doing podcasts. Tim, would you please talk to her for thirty minutes.

And just Help her with some direction. Yeah. Turns out that doesn't need to happen. And

You can just learn to say no. And then of course you want to say no in a very kind way. And you want to have Lists of answers that you keep so you don't have to keep inventing them each time. You keep them in a Google Doc and you copy paste them. And then no would go something like You know.

Sam. I love you to death and I would love to help you. But I realize that I need to focus my time on my priorities. Which are The podcast.

My family. Et cetera. And my schedule is is insanely full because I filled it with focusing on those priorities. And I would go against my own philosophy if I deviated from that. So I have to Politely declined.

That's an example. Just learn how to say now. And by the way, there will be blowback. People go, Oh, are you too famous now? Are you too Yeah. So you're just gonna get that.

You just have to live with that. Yeah. The second delegation you've already done. And then the exquisite. I'll give you real examples of the exquisite. Most people Hate. Internal meetings.

Why? Because a lot of talking Nothing ever really gets done. It's super inefficient. And most people say, You know what would make it exquisite? If

We had a pre written agenda. That we all agreed on. that they're a meeting owner. Who response for curating the topics? Making sure we stayed time box, like this is worth ten minutes, so we only give it ten minutes.

And three. That everybody Pre-read And pre wrote their comments. So that

Once we started the meeting It has already advanced significantly. We're not starting from scratch. on understanding what the issue is and what people's thoughts are around it. We can just like Just go to decision. and like the last few minutes of verbal conversation that are needed.

And I go great. Cause You know, share this with your team. See if

They would be energized by the same thing. You know, they write it down and share it with the team. And so people do, they share it with the team and turns out everyone on the team goes, Yeah, that would be amazing. Let's do that. So then they appoint a meeting owner and then they Have a written agenda and then they

Pre write and pre-read and All of a sudden it goes incredibly well. Things like that. I know I'm shoehorning this in. to this example in the broader

conversation of energy audit, but nonetheless, are there any Shorthand tips. Or longhand. Slot format, after all. You'd like to give four running good meetings. Is there anything that you would like to add to that?'Cause we were going to

eventually wind our way to Running. Effective meetings. We can certainly go there, Tim. But that means we'll have skipped the gameplay.

Of looking at your calendar. We can skip it if you want. I'm not meaning to skip it. I just thought if it made sense to mention those things here, then great. But if we want to just bookmark it and come back to meetings, we can do that. No, let me mention here and then let's go back to the the your calendar. This is one which is First of all, I believe

that good communication Is not verbal only. And good communication is not written only. Really good communication is both written and verbal. What I mean by that is most people

are very good at collecting their thoughts and organizing their thoughts in a written fashion. But Writing only misses the nuance. So the real nuance comes out. When people speak. But if people just speak.

If I don't catch every single word, I missed what they said. I certainly can't go back and try to remember. What they said'cause it's not. Anywhere. I can't find it. So I find that if someone writes up

their thoughts and then shares them verbally. The combination gives me the full picture or as full of the picture as I can possibly get. And to make it even fuller. I then repeated back. And say is that right?

And then once I do, that's really the fullest picture. Cause often when I repeat it back, like uh Almost like when I did with you in the beginning. And you're like, Yeah, kinda, but there's actually this other thing about fame and trust and So I didn't catch that the first time, but I did once you You said it the second time.

So I have written this all up. The reason I'm saying this is because I've written this all up. So I'm gonna share it verbally now. But there's a document on how to have Effective and efficient meetings. And so

Also read that document. Because Paired with this, it'll be the full picture. And we'll link to that in in the show notes so everybody will be able to find it. Okay, great. And pretty much everything we talked about here.

I've written up at some point. Because I also believe That once I say something once And it comes up again. I need to write it down. So that in the future I will have this both written and verbal.

I wanna mention one thing for folks. If you have a blog If you are consistently giving polite declines I've actually written blog posts explaining all the rationale for a handful of different Plight declines. So there's an entire blog post called Why I'm Not Reading Any New Books. And it just explains it.'Cause I get a hundred of those a week. And it's like if you're gonna say it more than once.

Put it down somewhere people can read it. So just wanted to reinforce that. Awesome. I love it. So Then in terms of running effective and efficient meetings. I believe there are three types of meetings.

Meeting one. Yeah. And Ninety nine percent of meetings are like this. And they're usually

Really inefficient. And Everyone sort of gets frustrated and the only people that get to speak are the people who are bolder and the people who are quieter and more introverted. don't even speak. And so we think they don't have anything to say, but it turns out they have a lot To share.

And I also don't feel bought in because I don't feel included in the conversations. Second type of meeting. People Pre-write This is where Amazon goes.

This is saying if you want to bring something up in this meeting, you've got to write it out. And in the beginning of the meeting we'll all read it. And then we'll give our opinions and we'll make a decision. Those are much more effective meetings. Because now we have real content.

That can be shared. And so the conversation is not superficial. The conversation Two. Render decision is on a much deeper level. And then

The most effective meetings. is the type three, which is very difficult to get to. And that is People submit in advance their Issues.

Topics in writing. But twenty four hours in advance. Then in that last twenty four hours. All the meeting participants read And comment.

On all of that material. So that when the meeting starts, we've now gone one level Two levels down. And the verbal portion is at the third and much deeper level. I now already know what everybody thinks, including the people that are introverted and don't like to

speak up during a meeting'cause they don't think it you know they're just not that bold. Now I know everybody's thoughts and now everybody It actually bought in to whatever the decision is because they participated in it. That's level three.

The company that does this best is Brex. That I know of. And it requires a lot of Holding people accountable. And if someone does not enter their issue by, you know

twenty four hours before the executive meeting. They don't get to enter it. And if people have not commented. On the issue by the time the meeting starts? They don't get to comment.

It's an extreme version of accountability that drives One time people will miss, but once they miss one time. They're Absolutely prepared the next time and from then on. That to me is the quick and dirty version.

Yeah, I love quick and dirty. But wh how what percentage I'm just curious of meetings get canceled once a document is created and people add all of their comments. Like a precise percentage not needed, but do they still tend to proceed with the meeting and verbal portion of that, or are there a lot of cases where, you know what, we didn't actually need a meeting. This is resolved what we needed to resolve. There's always a little bit of synchronous time that's required.

Because Again. The writing. Doesn't fulfy the communication.

And so At least Pedro, I don't think Pedro at Brex is canceling exec team meetings because The issues and the comments are so thorough. He's like got got it. Got everything I need. Like I don't need to see you guys anymore. That that's not happening. It's let's do the final I've seen your comments. Now I'd like to hear verbally

You and you and you, please share your verbal aid. Okay, now I get it. Now I have my decision. Here's my decision. Let me share it with you. Or I'm gonna appoint someone else to be the decision maker. But yeah, the synchronous portion is needed to sort of finalize the decision to really make people feel heard. And then there's another portion which cannot be done asynchronously. And that is feedback.

Because It's so dangerous. To give feedback. Asynchronously because if I give you What I think is constructive feedback.

And you get insulted or feel defensive. And I don't see that or I don't hear that. Then I can't say, Oh, Tim, wait a second. I didn't I meant that with love. I didn't mean the to to make you feel Anger? So if I'm not there to catch it.

You'll feel anger. Towards me. And it doesn't get resolved. Exactly. And With a few days, because of confirmation bias.

You have already Amassed enough evidence. To prove that I'm the devil. that our relationship will be destroyed forever. And so feedback must be done, I believe.

In person. And I also think that's a critical component. Of successful meetings. Give me feedback as manager. Let me give

give each other feedback as peers. I mean that doesn't it doesn't even exist. In most companies. Rarely do people give feedback to the CEO. But almost never. Do people give feedback to each other at that very team level? So I introduced that.

Certainly Brex does. And almost all the companies I coach do. And that again must be done separately. I'm thinking out loud here based on some of the reading and prep I did for this conversation. It also seems and this is not too

negate anything you just said that Pedro self admittedly Does not like to focus on uh the reading and writing. That's not his superpower, if I'm remembering correctly. So it would maybe also make it more valuable to have the voice component. Or am I misremembering? That was the fast game profile.

Enrique. All right, there we go. Corrected. I stand corrected. Pedro. Never mind. Okay, good. Well I'm glad I I just checked that because I I think the nature of how people on the team and how the CEO prefer to consume information often. Informs.

how these things take shape. So I just wanted to to double check. So thank you for that. All right. Look at some examples from my calendar. Let's take a representative day, Tim.

And let's start first thing in the morning. Representative Day is gonna be harder than what I have in front of me. Let me tell you what I have, and I'm happy to try to Improv jazz. The Day in the life. What I have is I went through this I did this

Typically every year around New Year's, which is a past year review. So I I looked at every week for the last two years actually and made a positive and negative column. Looking at broader categories. So I have that. But we could look at a day or we could look at a week because I tend to schedule things. In a

more predictable way on a weekly basis than on some days, which can get squirrely, if that makes any sense. So for instance Podcast recordings on Mondays and Fridays. Depending on where I am, if it's central time in Austin, then it's usually ten AM and three PM. That's sort of the bracketing. Tuesdays.

such as today also today's a bit of an exception. Where things had to move around because of some uh unexpected stuff this week. Also team call day, so I'll have one on one calls. and a group team call, which is shorter. That's usually about twenty minutes long. And then later in the week there are there are other things.

But we can approach this in any way that you like. I've got the list from the last one to two years, categorically speaking, and then we could dive into A week or a day, however you would like. If you already have the list, we don't need to do any more. I'd like you to pick something that is de energizing, that's you know, stumping you. That's like, Man, I don't I don't know how to get this off my calendar. I don't know how to get this out of my My work day. Hmm.

Well, let me just read the list and then I'll come back to that question because there might be Something juicy to chew on that doesn't necessarily fit the answer to the question, but let me give this give this a shot. So Actually I probably have the answer to your question. So negatives. And this is not a slight to any of my friends in the legal profession, but lawyer time. I spend a lot of time

in email and on phone calls with lawyers of different types. It is remarkable to me, although not that dissimilar from a lot of my friends, just in terms of how Complex. your life can become from a from a legal perspective. professionally and personally.

as time moves on doing the kinds of things that I'm doing. So I would say lawyer time generally I do not find energy additive. It is important. Very often they're decisions that only I can make within my very small team. That would be one. Another would be

traveling alone. For instance, I took a trip this past year to the Azores, which are off of Portugal. Beautiful place, but Having enjoyed traveling to dozens of different countries on my own when I was younger, I find that I I experience it as more lonely now than I did then. I think in part. Because I've had

five years of sharing these experiences with my significant other. I'm gonna mention a couple of things and then we can revert probably back to the lawyers, but Next was a very loud, loud event. Or events. My senses are very sensitive.

and loud environments I just find incredibly depleting. Even if the event otherwise has many redeeming qualities. If it's allowed, it just negates Everything else. Next one would be all three of those to Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Noise in Austin.

Honestly. Austin is like the Shanghai of the United States. The construction is never ending. Being surrounded by noise is very problematic for my system. For my dog too, who's kinda my external nervous system, she's grown less Tolerant of all of that. Handling admin stuff. decisions related to what I perceive as logistics or admin stuff would be net negative.

Investing generally, I find Net negative. Not always, but predominantly funds, I would say. I find that negative with if capital calls are unpredictable, which makes it challenging at times if you have a lot of commitments to budget for various

capital needs and so on. So the investing, which could also fall into the kind of informational interview. category on some levels. Just lots of email and phone calls. Which is why I took a break completely from Startup investing. In two thousand fifteen, I guess, and I wrote a blog post so I wouldn't have to repeat myself on why I'm taking a long startup vacation.

The last one, Net Negative, and this is Actually related to the traveling alone and Other things. And This might not be the conversation.

within which to unpack this, but it it it's something I know I'm not alone in experiencing, which is I've made so many decisions. and optimized for a degree of freedom in my life, say on a Wednesday afternoon to be able to spend a half day skiing or whatever it might be. But I find that That has freed me to do these things.

But it can be a lonely experience because so few other people actually have Engineered. Or simply had the good luck. the good fortune to be in circumstances in which they can create that freedom. So it you can end up feeling very, very lonely. In

The Pursuit or experience of this this freedom that you've worked so hard to create. That's a meta issue. You basically created the experience of retirement.

Before you retire. Yeah. Yeah, but all my cohort none of my cohorts retired. Right. And I'm still doing the podcast. I'm doing art stuff and I'm doing things I enjoy that are actually Energy. Positive, right? That's the only reason I've done the podcast this long.

Those are some of the energy negatives and Lawyer time would fit into almost every week. I would say. Let's just go through them chronologically until we're like we've done it enough. So let's start employer time and let's just put it through the framework.

One Does it actually need to happen? Could you just say, You know what? I'm not doing the layers. We're not getting legal advice.

I'm just doing these things. I'm making decisions without legal advice. No. T. I mean I could do it, it would be very it would be a very bad idea. So I would say yeah.

Okay. We can also look at the activities. that are leading to requiring legal advice. Yeah. Sure.

The precursors, yeah. Are there any of those activities? Which you don't need to do. Like you stopped investing personally. I stopped investing personally a long time ago. Yep. That would remove that category of law, right? Because I have lawyers for

investments I have lawyers for liability reasons, exposure, I have IP lawyers. There are many different categories, right? So even removing some of those categories would be valuable. So if I if I stopped all investing that required document review and deal structure review, then that would remove That entire component. That is uh however the the deal review

Stuff is probably the least time consuming. of the categories that I have. Okay. But that doesn't then require Capital Calls. As well.

Only if they're funds. So if funds require a lot more than one off deals because you have subscription documents, you have capital calls, you have sort of ongoing obligations. and a degree of unpredictability, which of course you sometimes get rewarded for. So I I wanna make it clear, like That's a cash management issue. So let's come back to law. So we we we've scammed through the activities and the ones that are really onerous

Are actually Not the ones. That you would Be willing to stop. So the ones that you'd be willing to stop is investing, but that's ordeal.

Structure, but that's actually not Honerous for you. You don't mind that legal time. That's not the most time consuming. Yeah. Yeah it's it's the other stuff. Let's get specific here, which is of the legal work.

Which is the most time consuming and energy reducing? I would say dealing with liability, state, corporate structuring stuff. That would be very high on the list of things that are Necessary I think largely necessary, but not

Energy. Energy giving. Related to what activity the podcast or something else? No, that's just life in general. I mean that's if there's a new book, it's within a new company for limited liability and so on. It's like

Imagine being a film producer. It's like every film is a new thing. It's a new L C or limited partnership or whatever they happen to use in film. So it's that And complexity that that entails. Although maybe a better example to work with just because the former could get really complicated. is intellectual property.

and management of intellectual property. So all of the books The podcast. That type of stuff. I would say. And

That may be a more fruitful place. Perfect. To focus'cause'cause that's ongoing and there are also elective things that I do that I definitely don't have to do to survive that create more of this work. Got it. So it's elective that you write the books, it's elective that you create the podcast. But it's also elective that you file the trademarks and that you File the copyright.

Okay. Yeah. So this is really about trademarks. Filing trademarks. I mean some of it's trademarks and enforcement of trademarks. Some of it is that. Then if somebody, for instance, and I'm glad I did this, there's a great documentary called The Alpinist or Alpinist, I think it's Alpinist. Which I actually highly recommend to folks. They did an amazing job. And they wanted to use some audio from The podcast.

for the movie. I didn't know it would be in the opening sequence, which was quite cool. And there's a lot of back and forth on the release and the verbiage and indemnity and A, B, C, D, E, F and G for that. And I'll take the blame for that. I mean, I think they sent something, which probably many other people simply signed, but there was a lot of review on my side. Very happy I did it, but that took up a good amount of time. Okay, that's a great example, Tim. So in your mind it has to happen. And in your mind.

Like you have to have that back and forth. I think there's part of me that has that, and this was gonna be An upcoming question for you related to Naval and the I Have to Be a CEO and the testing of assumptions. So I don't want to interrupt, but yes. I would say there are many things that I almost certainly erroneously believe I have to do. And this would be one where

Coming back to the hypervigilance piece, right? The fear of Downside risk. Leads me to feel like in order to protect my self. We do need to have this back and forth.

Okay, great. But I'm gonna challenge that assumption right there. I've written a book. Great. I've actually made a movie shortlisted for an Academy Award. I get requests for clips. I get requests for

translate my book into this, you know, language in this country. And Tim. I just say yes. There's no back and forth. Yeah. There's no legal document. Let's go great. Go for it.

Yeah. more widely distributed and your podcast much more so you may want some interaction therefore, but there actually is an option for you to simply Not do the legal work around this. So let me challenge you.

Would you be open to no longer doing legal work around this? If someone wanted a clip for the open of a documentary, you just say yes. So I don't wanna speak for these guys. I believe that is actually what I started with. And then the response was, in order to use it, we need you to sign this document. I think that is how it came about. I might be misremembering that, but I believe I said, Look, I don't want to deal with any legal stuff, but like if you want to use it, go ahead and use it. I believe that's actually where I started. And then would you be willing to just sign whatever they send over? If I'm being honest right now. I think the answer's probably no. I'm maybe I just need more

More therapy. I'm not gonna push you there. And you can also do listen, if I have to sign something, then The answer is no, I'm not gonna spend it. You can take it, you can use it. Or or not. So that's one possibility. Yep.

The other possibility is Could someone else do this for you and simply when it's all done say Tim I've looked at this It's worth signing. Sight.

Yeah, there certainly is the The possibility for that. I do that with a lot of stuff currently. So I have people sent some PDF and the process is it's sent to whichever legal team is responsible for that stuff. And then once it gets into shape Where my

legal folks have vetted it. It's converted into HelloSign or whatever it's called now. I think it's owned by Dropbox. And then I go in and I sign it. So there's a chance also That I am exaggerating how much of this I do. The perception that I have. is that I spend a lot of time on this.

But Maybe it's just because I see these emails and I'm just like ah fucking logistics to deal with. And I blow it out of proportion, and maybe I'm handling it a lot better than I perceive myself to be handling it. There's that distinct possibility too. There's certainly that because It annoys you.

To see it and then it goes on, and therefore your perception, of course, you are sensitized. So pain. We notice much more. Intensely then. Joy or pleasure. Time flies when you're having fun is literally like disappears.

But you When you're not having fun. So the we're not gonna stop just because it's Time wise it's short.

We're gonna get rid of the fact that it's not fun. And I w I feel obligated to say the lawyers I work with now I really, really like. They do excellent work. I tend to feel Energy negative. When I am not

creating something that is harnessing My combination of abilities. that I think I most have to offer of highest value. Right. So if I'm not working on writing Or the podcast. Or

some creative project. I'm like, I'm not the best at reviewing legal documents. I'm not the best at emailing about legal processes. Therefore I get angsty. Yes. Yes. And you also mentioned all these admin things that you uniquely can do. And one of the reasons is because you uniquely have a way of making decisions.

And that You need to decide whether you're comfortable. With a risk. in this legal document. And only you can decide that because only you know how you think.

But it's actually not true. You actually can train someone. To think like you think. And it's actually not that hard. The way you do it is

So we're gonna skip into it. Assuming you can't get rid of the stuff. Only you can do it. What would make it exquisite? I'm gonna Give you A thought. What might make it exquisite

Is if you could train someone to think like you think And then they could Interact with the lawyers. And they could assess the risk and they could make a decision. And they could even you could give them authority to sign, they could even sign on your behalf.

Would that Make this exquisite if you could have something like that. Someone like that. Sure. It would. Yes.

It's actually quite easy. It turns out that Very effective learning. Happens the following way. I watch you do something.

Over and over and over. Until I think, you know what? I think I could do that. Then I say, Tim, hey, let me try that the next time. Then I do it.

And you watch me do it. And you give me feedback. Until and I do it over and over with you to give me feedback until I'm doing it. Just right. And now you have full trust.

that I actually do it right. And then the third thing is I then teach it to somebody else. 'Cause in the act of teaching it help helps me to clarify what I'm really doing. That is the most effective learning model that I know.

And it turns out you can do that. With an assistant. You can have someone. To sit and simply watch you. Yeah, they're gonna need access to your email.

They're gonna need to sit in on all your meetings, they can be off to the side. I have someone sitting to my side right now this entire time. And They will simply watch everything that you do, and it usually takes about three months of just watching.

before they really start to make correlations of the information coming in. And your decision's going out, and they start to make correlations between the two. After about three months, They'll start to say hey. Let me do these low level tasks.

And you let'em and then you Give them feedback on it. And they're never perfect the first time they do'em, but they're At eighty percent. And then they get to ninety and finally a hundred.

And it gets to the point where they can do the tasks as well as you can. And a really good test is you'll Write down a question. And both of you write down your answers. And then you Copy and paste.

And then you read each other's answers. And when your answers are almost identical. Then you know this person thinks like you. And at that point They can start doing these actions for you. By the way, this is also a very good technique I found.

When I Have a disagreement with somebody. And we're just not Seeing each other. I then do this thing.

Write down the question, we both write down the answer and and look at it. Do you mean disagreement with someone internally on your team? Or Okay, got it. Could you give an example just to Concretize that.

Could be anything. We should Hire more coaches. We should not hire more coaches. We should but that's an example. And when I then said, Okay, let's answer the question, what I find out in writing, and then both read it, what I find out is that Or similarities.

Or actually ninety eight percent. Our differences are two percent. But What we always in a conversation, unfortunately, each person focuses on the two percent. And so it looks like we don't agree. Where in reality we actually do agree mostly. Except for this very small thing. But that's a little side note.

So coming back to the Assistant. Basically the super assistant. I have required this of everybody that I coach. And the reason I require it is for a pragmatic reason is because

I'm teaching a system. And by the third meeting. The CEO has learned whether or not the system makes them perform better in life. And it almost always does. And then they want

to use that system with our team. But almost everyone I coach is a founder type. Meaning They're not a process person. They love to solve problems, but they don't love to follow checklists. And mine is a checklist.

So then they say this is great, I want to implement my team, but can you please teach someone else to do it because I don't want to have to be the one to do this. I go. No, you should have had that person here from the very beginning. And so now I have

People observing. in all of my coaching meetings so that they do learn the process and they can implement it with the CEO's reports. I think

Almost all of my CEOs have what we call a chief of staff, and that may be a bad name because it's too big of a title. This is really A super assistant. Not a chief executive anything. And That's it. And it's worked insanely well.

So well in fact. That Many of these chief of staffs Have then gone on To run whole departments.

In these companies, they run people, they run marketing, whatever department is failing, and the success rate Of them running departments. has been close to a hundred percent. Whereas the success rate of new executives hired to run departments who are much more senior, much more experienced.

is about fifty percent. So now what we've done is we're saying what the only difference is you got this young chief of staff Who spent six months shadowing the CEO and now is performing perfectly As it Chief people officer.

Or you've got this much more experienced cheap people officer who comes in and half the time doesn't work out. What's the difference? The difference is the shadowing. This Executive from the outside didn't shout out to the person Who is running people beforehand.

And so they were forced to make decisions way before they knew the lay of the land of this new company. So now what we're doing is we're having new executives come in. Shadowing For thirty days, sixty days. The CEO

Shadowing the person they're replacing in their head of department role. And the success rates have now shot through the roof. To also close to a hundred percent. So the shadowing concept.

Is insanely effective. And that's what I would offer to you. You already have an assistant. If you'd be willing. To have Yeah, she's great. F

Actually shadow you. Physically. I believe that within three months. You would have and certainly within six months. You would have someone that could do this that you would trust.

to do this for you and make the same decisions you would make. Related to the shadowing, are there any other fine tuning notes or format notes related to the shadowing. So is there a discussion after For instance. So what shadows you in a meeting.

Is there some type of note taking on the part of the super assistant? Are there any other Details that you think are very helpful. When one is considering Doing something like this. There's the EA considering or you considering?

There's a whole list of best practices for the EA for the chief of staff, which I'll share with you so you include in the podcast notes and people can read through those. Those are all written by My former chief of staff and Regina? Regina, yes, she's amazing.

But the biggest thing is what I found. Is Biggest danger is that People take on this role. As a stepping stone.

And they really want to do something bigger. So I found actually EAs. are actually kind of the best people for this role because they will continue on in this role. If you grand get some like Yeah, the ex McKinsey consultant. Who comes in. They'll do it for

Six months. But within six months they now want to go Run something. Something big. Yeah. And so they tend to want to leave. Whereas the EA will do this for year after year after year after year.

And because And EA wants the support. And so I think you've already Crack the first most important.

Peace advice. The next is Yes. EA will want your feedback constantly.

So She can perform better. But the whole point of this is to make this Costless. For you. At no cost.

And it's no cost. If you don't have to Constantly answer questions. So right. Yes, it'll take them a little longer.

to get the information if they observe only. Right. With the shadowing. That's right. There'll be zero cost for you. So therefore I recommend that you focus on What's good for you?

Not what's good for the assistant. Now, I have to imagine that you have many clients. Well to pre rec of course, all your clients or close to all of your clients have a super assistant or chief of staff. And Some are better at making things costless for themselves. Some are better. Uh.

really making good use, for instance. Of a super assistant. What are some of the best practices you have observed Or common mistakes on the opposite end of the spectrum. The best practices I think are giving full

And total access. Saying you are gonna spend twelve hours per day with me in person Because in person just frankly does work better than remote. And'cause with remote, you've got a screen share and then it's just a lot of stuff that gets It's seventy percent bandwidth, not a hundred percent bandwidth.

And another thing is you gotta really like this person. So if you're gonna spend twelve hours a day in person with them, that's the number one criteria. This does not require extreme experience or competence. This requires you like the person. Period.

There really isn't much that you need to do in terms of having people Making sure they understand. Because If they see the same information that you see That's all they need.

And if they see the decisions you make and the actions you take. That's all they need. Eventually When You want to make sure you don't skip the step of reverse shadowing so

They shadow you for a while. Eventually they're gonna be like Tim, I can do that. But you don't have to assign them anything. After a while, they're gonna get so freaking bored. Just watching you.

All day long. Dying to do stuff. So they'll start taking things off your plate. And then As they do.

Check out what they do. This is the reverse shadow. And give them a little bit of feedback on how it could be done. Even better. Until It's being done perfectly.

And that's it. So don't skip the reverse shadow spot, but don't worry about assigning them things. They'll assign themselves. So this is gonna be a hard left, but I'm gonna ask anyway,'cause I'm super curious. So the documentary film that you referred to earlier. I believe is Favela rising, if I'm getting that right. And then there's a line in this profile.

He made one more documentary and he was done. Why'd you stop making documentaries? It was a lot of work. And Yes, it was fun, uh, but I'd already had so much fun.

And I Told myself, I'll make another film. When my kids want to make a movie? And I'll help them make that movie. But for me.

It had become more work. And at that point also In my life. I had had so much fun. That

I didn't want to have any more fun. It became kind of empty for me. Now what type of fun? What do you mean by that? Uh, you name it. Any type of fun you can imagine I've had.

And a lot of. Okay. Because that was my job, frankly. I my first job in life was to make money, and then I did. And then I made enough money that I never had to make money again. And then I thought, okay, well now I'm just gonna go have fun. And it was my job.

It was my job for one, two, three, four Five years. And I had so much I mean, that's my sole focus. I had so much fun. It was just like All right, enough. And then I thought well gosh, what do I do now?

And then the only thing I could come up with was well I guess Do good? I don't know. There are people who do that and they seem to Mm. And then I thought to myself, Well Yeah, but if I do good, I don't want to just like write a check to charity. That doesn't feel right. I want to do something that's

other people are afraid to do. I want to do the hard stuff. And I don't know why I thought that thought, but I did. And so I thought well the Thing that people are really afraid of is

Freedom. Violent criminals. 'Cause I thought, I'm afraid of them too. And my guess is Nobody's helping them.

And so I mean plenty of people are helping kids with disabilities or Poor people in Africa, but no one's having violent criminals in the United States. And so I said Uh, doesn't sound like fun, but if I really want to get my hands dirty and be in a place that other people aren't and help where other people aren't. That's a place to look. So I went there.

And also in the making of these two movies. Favela Rising was about the drug war in the slums of Rio. So it put me in The poorest slums. Franklin South America. in Rio de Janeiro.

And I realized that There are no schools there. So If you want to eat. You want to get a job?

You basically the best job you can get is to join a drug gang. So it wasn't the worst kids that were joining the drug gang. It was the best kids that were joining the drug gang. And then I went. Came back to the United States in the second film I made. Was a movie called The Gloves. It was about

Amateur heavyweight boxing. And the best amateur heavyweights in the world. And they collect in the South Bronx to compete against each other. And so I spent time in the South Bronx, which arguably one of the worst Ghettos in the United States. And I went there and realized, there are schools here.

But they're so bad. They might as well not exist. So once again, the same dynamic is going on. You want to get a job and eat? You join the drug gang. And as again, the best kids who are joining, not the worst.

And I realized, Oh my God, is it possible? That criminal behavior in the United States is actually rational? Like this is rational behavior. to the circumstance that I'm

Find myself in. And I thought, Whoa, I've got to find out. Take someone. who is already incarcerated, who's getting out of jail or prison.

And say can I you know, like a little Eliza do little My fair lady. Experiment. Have this person get them to get and keep a legitimate job. and no longer revert back to that behavior.

So I thought oh this is not gonna be fun, but I'm gonna try. And so I went to Rikers. And I asked them, there's a like a halfway house in Manhattan for folks who've gotten out of Rikers. And I ask them for like for their hardest case.

And they just laughed and they just said They're all hard. And then Got a sign a guy. And this guy was a known killer.

Six foot. To prison tattoos Black guy. And I would meet him at the halfway house.

But he didn't have a cell phone and he was homeless. And so after I met him one time there, I got there and I didn't know if he was gonna show up or not. And I realized, wait a second, I can be here for hours and hours and hours and I'll never know. Like that doesn't work.

So I said from now on you're coming to my place and I had this Floor of it. building in Manhattan, half of it was my residence, half of it was my office. So I had him come there the next time and he showed up. And as soon as he showed up, I realized, Oh my God, what have I done?

I've just brought in a known killer. Into Thirty feet away. From where my My wife is.

What the hell have I done? But at the end of the first day. Hmm. Went back out and not a penny was missing and I had like hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment. And I felt completely safe with this guy because what I realized is

There are plenty people that he can steal from. But I'm the only person. Let's reach out to help him. So why the hell would he do anything negative to me? He didn't. He never did.

And it was pretty damn easy to help him. Because what I realized pretty quickly, and he would come each day. Yeah. I realized it were Three things that made Me not want to hire him.

One, he looked like a thug. Two, he talked like a thug. And three, he acted like a thug. So I figured if I can get him to look like a not thug. Talk like a not thug and act like a not thug. Then he would be employable.

And so to look like a Natsa, we went to I'm making this a little bit long, I apologize, but uh I took him to uh Goodwill and for like Eighty bucks. We bought him a complete week's worth of Collard shirts and khaki pants and belt and socks and shoes.

And he looked like a preppy guy. And then For talking, it turns out there were basically five or six phrases. That We're

non grammatical, like I done did this. I'd be chilling. Can I ask you a question? And I said him Do you want to speak like me? And he said, Yes. So. So each time he said one of those phrases, I would just j write down what he said, then I'd write down what the grammatically correct phrase is. It turns out he's a native English speaker.

So it's super easy for him to learn it. And within three days he was speaking like this, like I'm speaking. Guys I've known African Americans I know that speak like This tone.

Or my two roommates at Yale. So I have this Reverse bias. That if an African American guy speaks like this I think he went to an Ivy League school.

And I'm not the only one who thinks that. And so then. Third thing was act. Like an on top. And I just Sheridan had to say excuse me, please, and thank you. And

Hold doors open for people and Walking on the sidewalk and when someone's you know Coming in the same path, just step to the side. So we started doing that. And Remember we went to it.

To practice it. We went to a delay. And he ordered a sandwich. And he said, Excuse me, can I please have a roast beef sandwich? The guy made it. Gave a sandwich. And my

Yeah, I'm working with said thank you. And Afterwards we went up. Eight or lunch as we're eating, you said Matt. And the guy behind the deli counter was super nice and super friendly.

He said Matt. That's the first time. In Manhattan. Anyone. Has ever smiled at me?

He didn't have that experience because people were afraid of him. They looked at him and they saw a thug. So they were afraid and now hit away. Of making them not afraid. Anyways,

And so with all that. We sent him out to get a job. And first interview, boom, gets the job. Super happy. Amazing.

Again, the people he's competing against It was at like a overnight stockboy at a warehouse or something. They're not dressed like he is, talking like he is, acting like he is. They're kinda like They're not? Polish. And he's

Acting polished. And so he gets the job. Two weeks later he got calls me back and says, Matt I like go. Like, whoa, why? So well, the background check came back and they saw my criminal activity. Oh okay. Let's start again.

So we did another Interview he got and got the next job. Boom. Like that. Same thing. Two weeks later. Background check came back, they let him go. It's happened seven times.

Then we realized, you know what, this isn't working. Everyone does a background check. It's always gonna show your History You're never gonna keep a job where they don't allow history.

So now we have to find jobs. Where a criminal history is okay. And doing research we found that there's Basically it requires that there be such desperation on the part of the employer that they'll hire anybody. Who's got the skill?

It turns out there's three categories we found like that. One is construction. The other is truck driving, and the third is farm work. Well We were in the city, so farm work didn't count.

Construction. is interesting, but it requires very physical hands on teaching. So it's not scalable. It's an apprentice. Thing.

So it's almost like you get hired by your uncle. And this guy didn't have an uncle. in the construction tray. So the last one was truck driving. It turns out truck driving, there's schools out there. And it costs about anywhere between two and four thousand dollars. And the hardest part is

Passing the written permit. Exam, but once you do that. And get behind the track is very physical and The guy is physical. And he was able to learn it. So we sent him to truck driving school.

And Sixty days later. Hmm. Had a job as a truck driver. And making

Sixty thousand a year. Now it's what? Fourteen years later. And he's married. Three kids.

And He's doing great. I now replicated that. With I used to do that with like three, four, five people a year. And it was really fun. I really enjoyed it. And one day, about four or five years ago, a friend of mine came along. He discovered what I was doing. He said, Oh my God, Matt, you've got to make this national. I said, No, I don't.

Said, Yeah, it's your obligation. This is like This is the most effective thing out there. So I said, I'll tell you what, I'll do it if you do it with me. Like you w we'll have board meet every two months and You show up to it and then I get to hang out with you. So he said okay.

So we hired a guy named Jason Wang, who'd himself been incarcerated for many years, amazing guy. And he now runs it. And I think This year Well probably.

Put a thousand? Fellows? And drug jobs and they've Of the hundreds that they put there so far that Jason's put there so far. I think the recidivism rate is like

One percent? It's it's insanely low. Because it turns out that Criminality is an economic problem. If you don't have enough money to buy food It turns out you still have to eat.

And you'll resort to illegitimate activity in order to eat. But if people get a legitimate job that turns out their problem of eating goes away. And they no longer have to resort to criminal activity. Not like they're committing crimes'cause they want to.

They're committing crimes because they feel they have to. That's it. The organization is called Free World. It's growing quickly. I think it's in Dozens of states now and Doing well.

I am really glad that you've opened up and shared all of that and I imagine a lot of people listening. We'll have had An emotional reaction to that. in some way or another. I imagine many of them were paying very, very close attention. And

I would love to ask you a follow up which is I'll do this by way of sharing a a story. about a friend of mine who's sort of a pr not a prototype, but an example of conversations I've had many times with founders. They start a company Maybe it does well, maybe it doesn't, but at some point along the line they have ceased to have the need to make more money, really. They'll figure out a way to spend more money if they have more money.

Plausibly, right? But they don't really need more money. And what I hear Often is Man, I am done with startups. No more startups. You know, I'm gonna make a boardworking shop and I'm gonna have a small group of people who help me with art projects and this, this and this and fuck startups. What a massive amount headache. I'm never doing that again. Now the reason I'm bringing this up

Is Looking at you Watching you tell this story. And there's so much deep emotion, and I have to imagine there's a lot of gratification. I must imagine that it's very rewarding.

And meaningful. To you. It seems like you are building another startup. And I just have to wonder, not to say that it's not something you should do, but I wonder I would love to hear why.

Given all the things that you could spend time on. You're right. It was a startup. But Remember I kept it small. I kept it. three or four or five guys a year, which I could do very easily.

Through like text and phone calls. And To make it big, I didn't want to take that off. So I hired someone to do it. And then I coach him. And we meet Once a month and he I coach him just like I coach anyone else.

Of a big Tech startup. I'm not running those startups. And I would say The reason I came back to coaching, frankly, was because I did say I'm not doing any more startups myself. I don't need the money. Like you said.

And it's just a lot of work. But I then realized there was some part of it that I actually did miss. I missed the conversations. I miss strategizing. I miss the

Feeling like Things I did. had a slightly wider impact. In the world. Then just

My home. And I thought to myself how can I get The good without the bad, the bad being having to do all the work. I realized wait a second, if I coach

That can be in all the conversations. But I don't actually have to do the work. And so that was actually an impetus for me starting coaching. And It turned out to be even better than I thought.

I literally get to feel like I'm Part of the creation chat GPT. And I didn't have to do any work. I just You know, coach Sam Alton back in the day at OpenAI.

So I think it is sort of having my cake and eating it too. But and also allows me to do This effort. with training truck drivers and there's an also an effort in Kawaii where We built a vocational school for

Construction skills, as I mentioned, that's one of the other categories. And for free to the students, and it's working. And it's for the local Hawaiians and it's working incredibly well. So but again, there, I'm not running it. I'm coaching the guy who is running it. And that to me allows me to

Feel like I've got my hands in many pieces without actually taking on the burden. And it reminds me of a time I once went To a friend's ranch in South Texas. It brings out a pawn, it brings out shotguns, there's

Doves that fly over head and were supposed to shoot the doves or the I don't even know what they were, birds. I didn't hit a damn thing. And It was getting pretty frustrating. And there was a guy on the other side I could see he was clearly the best shot. And so what I did was I just walked around the pond and I stood next to that guy. And then when the birds came over, we would both shoot at the same time. The bird will be hit.

And it would go down. It was unclear. Who actually hit the bird? So in my mind I can imagine that it might have been me, which of course we all know it wasn't. But then it became much more satisfying. And so that's what I feel like when I coach. Like

Obviously it's the CEO who's doing this. But I get to in some small way. Imagine that maybe I actually had some impact too. What rules were guide rails do you have for yourself?

In Your current business. And the reason I ask is that in profiles and so on They've mentioned annual recurring revenue and profit margins and growth rates and so on and so forth. And not to say that you fall into this category, but To quote, I think it's AA, you know, if you don't wanna slip, don't go where it's slippery. And people who have had a good track record of making money, sometimes when they get a hit of that dope again, they f fall back into old habits, get pulled back into operational roles, et cetera. So what rules or

Guide rails. have you said for yourself in terms of what you will do, what you won't do. I just I'd love to know How you think about that? So what I did was when I first started coaching, in the beginning I invested But when I look back over like the first twenty people I coached and I saw, you know, where is there any friction that's occurred here? And I noticed there were two people, there was friction, and both of it was around equity.

And One was hey Matt, you know. he wanted to do another round and the company frankly wasn't performing and he said Matt you gotta lead the round I was like no I don't said but if you don't lead it then no one else will because they know that It's a negative signal. Exactly. Oh no, I gotta stop this entirely. So then I just went with this policy like no cash, no equity, no investing, no nothing. I am doing this for free. That's it.

And what I quickly realized also was that would force me You only Interact with people that I love. And do things. That I love. Because it would be pure insanity.

for me to do anything that I didn't love when I was doing it for free. And I did that for many, many years until I knew exactly Who I loved and what I loved. And there was no more question about that. Now recently.

A bunch of the CEOs that I coach have said to me, Matt. Within the past two years, three years. Matt Your system is amazing. I'd like to use it with my entire company, but I don't want to have to play your role, Matt. I don't have to teach each person how to do it because all a Google Doc gotta teach people. Can you please make software

That just makes it plug and play. Brian Armstrong was the first person to ask me this and I was like, Brian, you're an engineer. And you've got at the time five hundred engineers on staff. Now he's probably got Two or three thousand. I was like, I'm not an engineer and I don't have any engineers on staff. Why don't you go build it?

He's like, no, man, I gotta stay doing crypto and I can't deviate and So I was like, Well I'm not doing it. And then Steve Hubman from Reddit asking the same thing. And then the next person, and the next person, and finally after about A while ago. This was about two years ago. I said, Okay, I'll do this. But

Then You're all gonna have to participate because I'm not gonna go into my pocket. To pay developers. To build software. So that you guys can have it. You know, you guys have to now pay your fair share of the developers. So now people pay.

And it all goes developers. I don't take a penny because I still want to maintain the I'm not getting any cash out of this. Because I wanna stay pure to what's really joyful and And that I love. That's how I do it.

That's how I not get sucked in again. Although you could argue that I've gotten sucked into the software company. Yeah. So if you got sucked in. And there was complexity creep and all of a sudden you woke up one day and you're like Fuck.

Ha. What would your extrication plan look like? It would be one of two things. Here with the B A Team. I'm shutting this down.

Or Hey team. I'm no longer doing this. Would one of you like to take over? That would be it.

I'd like to ask you just a few more questions. And then we can wind to any closing comments or requests of my audience you might have. We talked about fear and anger at the very beginning of this conversation.

And I've read that your trigger emotion or one of them is anger. So what role has anger played in your life and what have been effective tools or approaches. For Down regulating.

When need be. I think it could be very valuable to me to hear this and I'm sure to many Other people. And I've read, for instance I think this is from Regina, where she discusses times when she's

open she has the ability to say, Matt, I perceive you to be in anger and then you Stop talking, you sit there. But you don't say anything until you've shifted out of that anger. But the mechanism by which you shift out of anger. is so far invisible to me. So I'd love to hear anything you have to say about all that.

Yeah, the shifting out of anger. Often it's just time. Just as time goes by. I start to realize, Whoa I don't need to be this angry.

Two breathing, breath work. Seems to Um the nervous system. Exercise clearly does. Heat.

Like sauna or anything heating up the core. Frankly drinking hot tea Heats the core as well. Anything that chemically alters my brain state simply getting up and going to a different physical space, walking into another room. All these things.

Change. My perception Of the world. And so having someone outside of me Who says hey, you're in anger.

That's fantastic and a good Fuck. But it's not a hundred percent. And it's not foolproof. And the problem with anger is that

The people Who experience. My anger the most? Are the people who are Around me the most.

They're the people who I love the most. They're my co workers and they're my family. And so What I found was is that And they would tell me this, my family tells me this too, and

And I'll catch myself but there's A moment in there. Where they may feel too much fear. They may go into Freeze themselves.

And then I've already acted in anger and then they feel extreme pain. And so Tim I'll be You've been transparent with me, I'll be transparent with you. I am also recently out of a relationship. But mine was a

eighteen year marriage with three children. And it ended Because Of my anger. And my wife had expressed me many, many times.

Zero anger. Matt, zero. You can't act in anger at me at all. And I got to the point where I could mute myself and catch myself or have her catch me. And shift out of it quite quickly. But there was a moment.

Something gonna happen and I acted in anger and she said. That's it. And For many years she'd been trying to share with me that that it's

It's zero, they can't even start. But Didn't think that was possible. I didn't think that you could not go to anger. Ever. That seemed unrealistic to me. So I didn't

Try to find out about that,'cause it seemed like a a myth. And the Day after She shared this with me. I'm surrounded by coaches. I happen to be

Talking to a coach, world class. And He shared with me, he said, Matt. Anger is not a base emotion. Anger's a cover.

For pain. Because it it's so painful that the brain doesn't want to experience it. So it takes it and Shoves it outward is anger. But all you're doing is taking your own pain and shoving it on the people around you. So he said I want you right now to think of

What is causing you pain? What about that situation you got angry about? is causing you pain. And just share it with me. So I started to think about it and started to share and all of a sudden words came out. All of a sudden tears started to come out. And it was so painful. And I realized, Oh my God.

I've never felt this before. I've never actually felt pain before until now. And immediately I didn't feel anger. No, it sucked. I hated feeling the pain, but I stayed in it. And that was

Six, seven months ago. And I have purposely not numbed myself in any way. No drugs, no alcohol, no comfort foods even. I've lost Fifths in the last six months. Because I'm eating so cleanly. And the result has been I've sat in that pain

And Tim? I have not experienced anger. I don't think it's not. In that whole time. So you want the real answer?

Allow yourself to feel pain. This is important for me to hear. S how do you do that? I mean, this might sound like a dumb question, but I don't think it's gonna sound dumb to you because it sounds like you and I have Perhaps a very similar experience. So if someone had said just allow yourself to feel the pain, I wouldn't even know what that means. Like physical pain, sure. But To make that shift.

How do you do that? Well let's go back. Let's pick a real example. So We can even pick an example. Well I'll let you pick the example. Where's a place recently?

That you felt anger. I mean it's a dumb example, but the just seeing that piece this morning. Honestly. That media piece.

I've developed generally pretty thick skin with that stuff. Well, one of the aspects that bothered me and then we can Keep going is that. The piece was actually very well written. So it's it's like I was like, this is laziness.

It's an unfair Because this person has the chops. They actually know how to write. And Whereas if it's just a shitty Peace from start to finish. I'm like uh Whatever. Take the bad with the good. So it goes. So I think that example

Is the most Present for me. Right now. Just the easiest one. So now, you know, we experience things that

At three different levels. Physical sensations. As emotions. In his thoughts. So when you think about

What Hurt you about this. Because there is pain here. That you're experiencing. Where

In your physical body. Do you experience a sensation? I would say that I experience it in my throat, which is very common.

Sort of uh s lower half of my throat and then a bit in the chest and probably also like prefrontal. Skull. I want you to imagine yourself breathing into those areas. So pick one and breathe into that air. So it's just Causing.

on that physical area and that physical sensation. And I want you to then think of The pain That this experience causes you And I want you to share with me The thoughts that occur.

As you focus on that physical sensation, And think about the pain and the hurt. This unfairness. This injustice. This exposing of you

In a way that isn't even true. In your mind. How does that hurt? Why does that hurt? Yeah, I would say it hurts because

You know, in some respects stoicism is I think saved my life. literally in combination with other tools. And so it it became a very valuable Lifeboat of sorts.

at times of feeling lost. Or finding myself in dark places. And so I made a very deliberate decision to try to share stoicism, Seneca Marker, Surrealist, et cetera. Starting in the early two thousands and Then

bought the audio rights to the obstacle is the way by Ryan Holiday, which was sort of his biggest hit that also put stoicism on the map for a lot of people, including high performers, which then sort of created this Self propagating. Cycle which then I think helped open.

Stoicism up to the mainstream. So he deserves, of course, a huge amount of credit to make this Ancient philosophy. unsexy of things in the modern world. Take a toe hold in a way that I think has helped

Not to take full credit, but maybe partial credit in driving that. Relentlessly for years. Where it's helped so many people. And save lives. I mean legitimately people who are suicidal.

have emailed me. I feel very attached to that. I feel very proud of that. I think Ryan should as well. So when someone is clearly smart. But lazy or maybe just deliberately. Misrepresenting.

How things happened. It's very hurtful. It's very upsetting to me, I think in part because it's such an important tool. that if someone casually minimizes it as something for tech bros who have too much money and are looking for some excuse to enjoy their excess, I'm just like, No, that's completely wrong. Not only is it wrong, but I know you know it's wrong. I take it very personally, and I'm not proud of taking it personally, and I'm, you know, once again, aware of the irony of talking about stoicism while talking about feeling feeling hurt by words on a screen.

Which is you know also I hope reassuring to people on some level because like stoicism is a practice. It is not a Ever present. non-fluctuating state. This is a set of practices. So this is an opportunity to practice, but I would say Unpacking.

That's the Partially, at least to the extent that I can put words to it, explain the The pain. Right? The hurt. So here's what I'm hearing.

Yeah. Stoicism literally saved my life. And I wanted to share with others because I figure that I wasn't alone. And you know what? I have shared it.

And I've heard from people from many others. It's also massively improved, if not saved their lives. And there are thousands and thousands more. that as this expands out we'll continue to experience this and it will likely save their lives or at least improve their lives.

And this article Made light of all that. And made it sound like you shouldn't try this. Shouldn't even try it. And that's what hurts is that I can see I can now imagine many people who would benefit from stoicism that won't even try it.

Because they've read this article. And that just makes me sad. But then also It makes it look Like I'm done this thing and I just did it to help people.

And it makes me look Like I'm a bad person for doing that. And that makes me sad that I get painted in this negative light. Is that even close? Yeah, I would say a lot of that lands.

And the piece, interestingly Was not Totally anti stoicism. In fact, the writer claimed to be this long term stoic, but wanted to point out some of the downside risks of stoism, which I found interesting. I thought that's that's an article worth writing, right? What are the shadow elements if perhaps taken to an extreme? Or followed too literally.

For example. But I would say the other which which I think is partially what made it sting so much,'cause I was like, this person thinks. They're capable of thinking, but either they didn't do enough homework or they're just looking for a sensational paragraph so that they can paint themselves on the thoughtful positive side while putting someone as a straw man On the opposite side.

Which was upsetting, right? Because it's all been done for free, gave away Three compilations of Seneca's writing called the Tau of Seneca's free PDFs. Anybody can find them. Like huge project, really time consuming. In any case, but yes. I would say a lot of that lands. So as long as you can keep sitting with that pain. If you focus on the pain, you won't go to anger likely.

But you'll notice As you described it, a boundary was crossed. And this is where anger is valuable. Anger points out. A red flag Someone just crossed.

a boundary that I have. And your boundary As Making stoicism appear to be not valuable so people don't even try it. And making you appear to be

Have bad intent. When you know you only have good intent. Those are two boundaries that just got crossed by this article. And if you then can stay Feeling your pain.

Not feeling the anger. And if you want to Open up conversation with this person. Say, hey, I'd just like to chat. And share only Here's a boundary that I have.

You crossed it. Here's how it impacted me. I don't know if you care or not. But if you do Then I'd love to see you do something different.

And what's interesting is, Tim. That when you share your pain and a boundary that got crossed You're never Accusing. You're just saying this is what's going on with me.

And people are actually open to hearing that. But anger is Yo And instantly people's brains will shut down and they won't hear a goddamn you say. So in terms of being effective.

And influential. And changing behavior. Anger is a zero. And expressing your pain and the boundary that got crossed. Is larger than a zero.

has a chance of being effective. So you just did it. Now you'd have to keep that practice going and keep each time this happens, thanks. How does this hurt? And really Say it out. to yourself, say it out to someone, write it down on a piece of paper.

Write a poem about it. That's actually insanely effective. I don't know why. And it will prevent you from even going to anger. And it'll be make you much more effective.

In your relationships. Now I'm yet to start a new relationship, like I'm not the expert here. And clearly I failed in mine. But I'm hoping.

That I I won't be able to test out. In a new relationship, how Not going to anger. makes it a much more harmonious relationship. Yeah. Thank you, Matt.

I mean just talking about it honestly. is helpful and I think it's notable for me also because And I must give credit where credit is due. My ex was such a spectacular communicator and so emotionally intelligent. And

effective at persuading me to Take workshops that never in a million years would twenty five year old Tim considered for a a nanosecond that Whether it's the work of the Hendricks or nonviolent communication. The anger shows up much

Much less. For me. No. Could just be plummeting testosterone levels as I get older. Who knows? I'll take whatever I can get in that department, frankly. And

I think For that reason. This morning was notable. I was like, wow, I'm getting really I'm To use more active language. I am allowing this to trigger me.

Where I am triggering myself. by reading this article. What the fuck is going on here? Like why is my response so Noticable. And I appreciate you taking me through The practice because I do think this is something that'll be valuable to me. Matt.

We've covered a lot of ground today. And I I really appreciate you taking All of the time that you have to do it. People can find you. online at the Musharimethod.com M O C H A R Y on Twitter at

Matt Mushari. Is there anything else that you would like to add? Any requests of the audience? Anything you'd like to point people to? Any Thing at all that you would like to say or ask before we No super fun, Tim. We're gonna post the link to the entire curriculum on which is all free, as you point out before. I I'm completely full in terms of my coaching, but I actually have hired other coaches who I think are frankly better than I am, so people want

The Michary method applied. We have coaches that they can help them do it. And that's it. All right, man. Well, I appreciate the time once again. And to everybody listening, as per usual, we will link to everything in the show notes at Tim.blog slash podcast. You can just search Matt and he will No doubt be one of the first.

Result and until next time, just be a bit kinder than is necessary. That includes to yourself. If you're feeling anger. See if you can find the pan. And as always. Thanks for tuning in. Till next time. Thanks, Tim.

Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading. albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmas, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests, and these strange esoteric things end up in my field, and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short. a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to Tim.blog slash Friday. Type that into your browser, Tim dot blog slash. Friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one.

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