#628: Q&A with Tim — Revisiting 15+ Years of PR and Marketing Lessons, Time Dilation for Deep Relaxation, The Art of Setting Ultra-High Prices, The Low-Information Diet, Studying Animal Communication, My 3-Day Fasting Protocol, Tools for Handling Adversity, Selling to the Affluent, My Current Coffee

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I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal and those galaxy. Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs, this is Tim Ferris. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show, where it is usually my job to sit down with world class performers of all different types to tease out the habits. routines, favorite books, and so on that you can apply and test in your own life. This time we have a slightly different format, which Is back by popular request. And I am the guest. If you would like an interview, you can choose any other episode just about that I've put out and you will find an interview. Now this time around, we're revisiting a few things. As some of you know, I tested a fan supported model in 2019 where people could pay and avoid advertisements on the podcast, but I ended up returning to ads.

To sponsors by request. That is a long story, and you can read all about it at Tim.blog slash. Podcast experiment. I recently sat down, metaphorically speaking, with the original supporter group for a fun and live QA on YouTube. And the recording you're gonna hear. is comprised of questions that were submitted in advance as well as questions I took from the live chat. In this episode I answer questions on marketing and product launches, premium pricing, user feedback, fasting routines, podcast advertising, my recent gardening adventures,

Tools for releasing tension in the iliacus. Of all things, very specific. My current coffee and alcohol rules, adventures with the SOAS. related to One of the bullets that came earlier. Advice for artisans or artists, animal communication experiments, or at least approaches. Tools for handling adverse moments in life

and much more. We cover a lot of ground. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. And thanks for listening. Alright, guys. Thanks for joining today. This is gonna be another private live

QA and I'll do my best to answer questions in two different forms. We will alternate between questions that were submitted ahead of time. and questions in the live feed. And I'm gonna start with some of the questions that were submitted beforehand and then people can Add questions to the chat, the more specific the better.

The broader they are. the harder it will be for me to answer. If they're really long, I will probably also skip them, so try to keep things very concise. And let me just take a look at a few of the questions here that are marketing and PR Slash

launch focused and It'll be fun for me to stretch these muscles, since I haven't done anything specific to these type of topics in quite a long time. So here it goes. The first question that I have in front of me is from John. I'm gonna keep last names out of it, but J O N. If you're going to launch a new fast casual restaurant, how would you gather the crowd before building the restaurant? I.e., making sure people would come when it opens. Well The theme that I think is going to recur in many of my answers is one of risk mitigation.

Perhaps I'm known. by some or thought of by some as a risk taker because I do things like invest in early stage startups, which tend to go to zero. I would say very high percentage, maybe fifty to seventy percent of my investments go to zero. But You have to keep in mind a number of other factors and this relates to poker and other games. Of skill that are blended with a high degree of chance.

And part of that is say bankroll. Bet sizing. Knowing your maximum downside. Compared to your maximum upside. So That's just a frame.

perspective that I would like to present as one I look through for evaluating almost any type of question like this, any type of opportunity, any type of Risk. So Coming back to fast casual restaurant, what would I do? How would I gather the crowd before building the restaurant? I would look at

Low risk Capped downside. Ways of experimenting. with this concept. So for instance, in Austin, Texas, where my home base is, you see many successful restaurants begin as food trucks.

Why because The build out, of course, is much less. The Regulations surrounding food trucks in some respects far Less onerous than those of restaurants.

And You could Potentially prototype. Taking that type of approach. A even lower cost approach. could be having a pop-up in another restaurant. And when I lived in San Francisco, there were a number of restaurants that were later successful.

That began as pop ups, so say Thursday nights. Or probably an off night, so maybe a Monday or a Tuesday night. In a given retail location where they are effectively renting the infrastructure of a pre existing restaurant. Now I'll leave it to you and your lawyers to determine the legality of that, but

Nonetheless, many successful restaurants I'm aware of in San Francisco began that way, and And it was important they began that way because they'd never got it right immediately out of the gate. So I think it would be a big mistake. to Just YOLO. all of your chips in at once and try this concept.

Hoping that the crowds will get there or assuming the crowds will congregate if you haven't really kicked the tires. So another option would be a pop up in another restaurant. And there's a book, it's out of date It is out of print, probably called Guerilla Financing, that may also give you some ideas for how to bootstrap in different capacities. I found that book very helpful when I was bootstrapping one of my first companies. But the The point here is really to

Identify the risk factors and this relates to an exercise that I do at least once a quarter. Many of you have heard of it called fear setting. That was the topic of my last TED talk, which has, I think, 10 million views or so now. Identifying the risk factors and going down the list risk by risk. and trying to identify how you can either eliminate those or mitigate the likelihood of them occurring. So for instance If you had a pop up And you wanted to try to draw some type of crowd.

And really your goal is iteration and improvement of your concept, of your menu, of the experience, you could partner potentially with say organizations or groups. who would stand to benefit from a Rev share. So I'm making this up. I don't know exactly what fast casual refers to here. Let's say it's fast healthy. You could approach Local CrossFit gyms. Or gyms of some type and say, Hey, for every

person you send to this restaurant, I will give you What do you care? You know, a hundred percent of the profit. You don't have to give them ten percent. You don't actually need to make a profit as long as you break even. So beyond covering costs, you could just say, I will give you all of the revenue that comes from any of your members you sent to this restaurant because again what you're trying to gather is feedback first and foremost so that you can improve before you have More sunk cost in some type of say food truck or retail location.

All right, let me take one more here. And then I'll jump in to the questions in the chat. And We'll see where it goes. Here we go.

Here's a question from Matt. What would be your approach if you wanted to raise awareness of a new productivity tool? It's genuinely different from any of the approaches taken so far and helps people apply the great advice they know but don't follow. Easy to pick up and use, just minutes a day. There's free versions, but I have no list or platform to gain initial traction. Share to bloggers, podcasts, et cetera, in the space. Any advice, welcome and thanks for the council and company over the years. So I have a few recommendations here. And the first is really

Observing people ideally. Not just asking people. And I'll just draw contrast here. If you think you have a great idea for a business, could be a product based business or service based business, and you ask your friends, would you buy this? Would you pay X amount for such and such a thing? In most cases we will have some friends. Maybe most of our friends will say yes, I would absolutely do that. However, their behavior changes a bit when you then put out your hand and say, fantastic, I'm taking pre-orders. I'll give you a 20% discount. Could I take that payment now?

The point is asking for opinions and getting people to take action are two very, very different things. And likewise observing people using a tool is very different from asking them. how they might use the tool. So what I would suggest in this case is before you even think about launching Make sure you're solving a problem that people want solved. If something has never been done before, I find this very important to put under scrutiny and really pay attention to. So One of my first steps might be paying twenty people to use it. That might sound funny. If if there are free options available, why would I pay someone? You're paying someone for their time and feedback. So this will sound very similar to my first answer. And you could pay twenty people to use it.

and observe exactly the flow through the product. exactly their feedback, encourage them to speak out loud. There are services that provide for this. User testing.com would be one example. I haven't used it personally, but I know startups who have maybe beyond your price range, but you could also take lower tech options or off the shelf options. you could have people record themselves using something like Loom, which is a tool I use a lot for screen capture, for training employees and contractors, feedback on various designs. So you could have them simply capture their experience on, say, laptop. with something like Loom and then share those with you and you could find these people to Test your product.

on Craigslist or really just about anywhere. Or you could do this in person, and I know a number of well-known CEOs who began their companies that now have a thousand, two thousand, five thousand employees. by recording user testing sessions in person with video. So you could simply have them in front of you at their laptop, encourage them to speak out loud. And you have an iPhone or something and you're simply recording the screen as they walk through it so that you can correlate things properly. But I would say begin with more intelligence gathering. That's where I would start.

And then in terms of how to get the word out, sending free software to bloggers, podcasts, et cetera, in the space. Can't hurt, but you're going to need to have A good pitch and I get sent Or I should say people attend to send me. Thousands of different

pitches per day. Literally thousands. So the vast majority I I simply deflect because I I don't have the bandwidth, nor does my team have the bandwidth to even digest or read these pitches. So I would think of other approaches. The way that I have tackled this with each book launch as an example. is looking for the neglected but powerful channel. And then also the nascent up and coming channel that is ramping in influence.

And for The First book for our work week, that was Bloggers, for instance. Most people are like, blogs? What the hell is a blog in two thousand five, but at the time I knew that they were pulling more weight for book sales in some respects than the darlings of network television and syndicated radio at the time. So I paid a lot of attention to that for the four hour chef.

It was podcasts. This was in two thousand twelve. after which I launched my own podcast in twenty fourteen. So I would also look at the landscape of tools and another question I would ask is which of these tools or platforms are you actually going to engage in for the long term? You don't have to decide that up front, but where do your natural skills and enthusiasm overlap such that you will have staying power. If you're not gonna have staying power Chances are beyond a flash in a pan, it's not going to be helpful. You can still use one time only.

PR approaches, much like I really targeted dig.com, D I G G dot com, founded by my friend Kevin Rose, way back in the day to try to get on the homepage for launching the four hour body because I understood the power of Dig at that time for acting as a front page. Shopping list. A taste making service of sorts.

Much like landing. at the top of hacker news or something like that today. So Those are a few thoughts. And I will Come back.

to some related themes in the next question and then I'm gonna go to some in the live QA, so don't worry, guys. So here's the third one. This is from Josh, and I'm just going down in order that I have them in front of me. This is a question related to advising tech companies. When you are advising tech companies What were your most successful marketing campaigns slash contribution to the companies? Any notable misses you're willing to share. For those who have not seen the range of companies that I've worked with, you can go to angel.co/slash Tim. You can see quite a handful there. In terms of most successful marketing campaigns slash contributions, uh contributions I'm going to focus on because Oftentimes where I have aimed to help has been

unrelated to anything immediately public facing. So for instance, for Task Rabbit, way in the early days I helped Leah raise her first round of financing. when the the company was to actually Completely

named differently based, uh believe just in Cambridge or in the Boston area. And we met in the Bay Area. So I helped her to syndicator financing. So I introduced her to to lead investors who ended up helping her raise money. And then much later That company was sold to Ikea.

In other cases, it could be related to helping companies apply needed leverage or user pressure. Four. Say regulatory purposes and I

was very active in this capacity with Uber, particularly with some precedent scenting examples. where situations were very, very high stakes in places like Washington, DC. So with my platform and the uh other types of back channel work. That's a separate category of help that I sometimes provide. In terms of marketing, I think the most notable example. is probably and there are many, many, many examples, but

the most notable, well known example is probably the Build a Business competition that I helped to design with Toby and Harley of Shopify. And if you want to read more about that, there's there's a fair amount out there. There is a piece in Fortune magazine called The Invisible Selling Machine about Shopify. This is a f a huge piece in the magazine some time ago, and it goes into quite a bit of detail about my involvement In the build a business competition and then overall what that looked like.

That was very, very, very high ROI, high leverage. Four. Shopify. And if you don't have a fortune Subscription, you can go to the web archive. I think it's just web.archive.org. Otherwise known as the Wayback Machine, and you can grab a snapshot and take a look at that article. All right, let's hop into the live feed and see what we got here.

Alright, we got a lot of questions. I'm gonna do my best to get to some of them. Got a lot of good questions. All right. I'll take a self interested one first. This is from Jo Chen. What is your biggest project slash challenge at the moment and how can we support you? I do have a very Absurd. And I think

hilarious and fun. Art project. coming out in the not too distant future. So keep an eye out for that. At the very least. Just Taking a break to laugh at the whole thing.

When it comes out. That's how you could support. But I'll keep moving here. All right. Uh this one is from Scott. What's a takeaway or lesson you wish more of us listeners paid attention to slash followed through with?

I would say in this day and age, probably the low information diet as described in the four hour work week. I mean, here's my phone here. I have not had any social apps on this phone in two years. And that's not because I broadcast that for sitting on my moral high horse, it's because I understand that

It is playing a dangerous game. To assume that you can use Will power and self control. At the very least it is exhausting and you can save your mental calories for something More important.

to have this type of addictive technology embedded into your phone with notifications. That you're subject to twenty four seven. Through which algorithms are being wielded against you.

that have billions of dollars and teams of data scientists And UI experts. behind them. I think it's unnecessarily challenging to subject yourself to that and to expect to be able to Overtake that. And single task.

Effectively. And some people say like, Well, you just need I have better self control. You can just use self control. That may be true, but I could also have junk food. littered all over my house. And I can make the same argument. I could say, Well, if I have enough

self control I won't eat the junk food. But it's a hell of a lot easier just to remove all the junk food from your house. So I do think the low information diet this applies not just to social media, but certainly Any type of Push news. Which Could just be

reactively picking up. The newspaper every day when you go to grab a cup of coffee at a gas station or something like that. It doesn't need to be digital, but the low information diet, I think, is very much underestimated in its power. And

If you can single task. for a few hours a day. Without any interruption. which is why I use Do Not Disturb and so on on my laptop as well as frequently as I do. And my phone is almost always on airplane mode. You will have a huge competitive advantage over the majority of people who are let's just call them knowledge workers. Anyone who works on a computer. If you have the ability to single task for let's just call it

Three hours a day in a single block of time. You have to do it. An unbelievable competitive advantage. So I would say the low information diet. Alright.

Let's see what else we have here. Okay, this is a question from Renelin. What are your thoughts on Substack as more of a poll way to get information? Yeah. I think that opting into highly curated sources of information. that are either relevant to you in the near term or actionable to you in the near term. is far superior

Two Being lost. in the waves and shop. Uh online assault that is uncontrolled if we're talking about information. So I think newsletters certainly are

far superior, you can still use them to procrastinate in the same way that you can use reading books as a socially acceptable way to procrastinate. So just be aware of that. And as Kathy Sierra once phrased it to me, focus on just in time. information, not just in case information. If you think you might need to act on, say, the contents of a book six to twelve months from now, it doesn't really do you a lot of good to read it now, is my general feeling. I would read it closer to the point at which you need to actually implement it. Uh but I would say that something like Substack or newsletters in general, I think

Are superior in so much as they force you to Make decisions. About high priority, low priority information.

ahead of time so that you're not making all those decisions on the fly because Look. We're all simple creatures. And the algorithms will beat you, right? Whether it's just showing like a picture of Kim Kardashian's ass or some celebrity or like who the hell knows, it's gonna pull you off task. I don't care who you are. So just keep the junk food out of your house. Metaphorically speaking. Let's see comment on uh

Cal Newport and great books on deep Deep learning, deep work. I I agree with that. Ila question, one of the most enjoyable parts of your show is listening to your personal journey and your interviewee's journeys of transcendence, any recent spiritual shifts that you would not mind sharing. I don't mind sharing. I was actually recently in the mountains of New Mexico. And Experienced some of the most

most profound and extreme time dilation I have I've ever felt, certainly in a sober state. with a friend of mine and so we were hiking at altitude on and off for several days. And by say day three, thinking back to the morning of even day two or day one, felt like looking back

to three weeks or four weeks prior. So being in nature. I think partially contributing to that was the fact that we changed location so many times and that the topography of the land changed so many times. So it could as well have been four or five different countries we visited, given how different the landscapes were and the wildlife and so on. But that time dilation. I think highlight something for me at least, which is There are different ways to extend, or better said, I think expand life, to live in an expansive state more often.

And many of the Let's just call them post economic, extremely wealthy. successful in financial terms founders and CEOs and so on, I know want to extend health span, which I think is a very worthwhile objective, looking at science and technology for extending.

Healthy years. However, you can live a long time, but almost never be present. I'm not saying that's true for these people, but I I know people who live a long time, but they're so preoccupied about the past or the future or the news. or the politician on TV or whatever that They have A lot of time contraction time passes very quickly for them.

So what if you could design a life and pre schedule experiences such that you have the type of time dilation I'm talking about, where let's just say even twice a year, you have Two trips each week long and each of those one week trips actually feels like three months. Well.

Have you then in that case effectively Added. Let's just say each one feels like three months. Have you added six months to each year by doing that in terms of your experiential lifespan? If so, that's very interesting.

So now you're you're living let's just call it fifty percent longer in your remaining years. So does that have the net net positive or even a greater benefit. than simply extending your biological lifespan by that period of time. I don't know. I do think that's a

I I don't think. I know that's a question that's been on my mind. And we can certainly pursue both. But one is available here and now and the others are More So a scientific roadmap with possibilities, but I think this type of time dilation through Very deliberately.

Designed experience. And immersion. Is Very Seductive and rewarding.

All right. So I think it's a Kale, it might be Kale. I'm not I apologize, I don't know how to pronounce it. Love your work. Tim caught up with Derek Sivers in New Zealand a couple of weekends ago. Told me he missed you. Well, I miss Derek too. He's a great he's a great, great guy, and has been on the podcast several times. So if if people haven't heard Derek Sivers on the podcast, they should, and I do need to So let me come back to some of the questions. that were pre-submitted. I'll answer a handful of those and then I'll come back to questions in

the uh in the chat. So feel free To drop them in? And I will So let me uh get back to some of these. Pre submitted.

Questions. Here we go. This is from Ben. We have invented a way, patent pending, to add a second story to a house without the owners moving out. This product and process is revolutionary for so many people. However, we keep going back and forth about whether to create a franchise model or just to sell the proprietary system that allows you to do it. The catch is that it definitely requires training to use it properly. Love to get your feedback.

but how you would launch it. Very grateful for you and the value you have brought to my life. Well thank you, Ben. Here are my first thoughts. So construction, adding stories. Does not sound, at least immediately to me, as a liability free.

endeavor. So I assume there are some risks involved, as you mentioned and I think kind of implied. It definitely requires training to use it properly, and using it properly seems important. So looking at this again through the lens of minimizing or capping your downside risk, I would say a lot of folks think about business risk in terms of profit and loss.

How much does it cost me to make X, how much can I sell X for? What is my margin? Can I cover by various costs, maybe employees, et cetera. But there are other factors that are often neglected. So in in this particular case, there are questions around legal cost and legal liability. So I know that

Developing and rolling out. a franchise properly can be very capital intensive if you're the franchise or And I wouldn't underestimate that. So step number one, I think, in evaluating a number of these would be running some models and Putting together just basic mathematics.

based on conversations with competent legal counsel. And there are people who specialize, of course, in both of these. There is also a great book by Steven Key. Yeah. called One Simple Idea, turning your dreams into a licensing gold mine while letting others do the work. That's a great subtitle. I didn't realize that was a subtitle. But One Simple Idea by Stephen Key. He is an exceptionally successful Inventor.

who generally does not venture, meaning he doesn't generally manufacture and distribute and sell product himself. He's coming up with ideas, often with very inexpensive prototyping, and then licensing those ideas to other companies in most cases. So That book, I think, is worth a read, not because it is immediately comparable since he's mostly operating in the World of toys.

But I do think it will raise questions that are valuable for you. Another one to look at is Built to Sell. This is a book by John Warlow. So if you're ever considering the possibility of being able to sell this company. And uh that I think is worth looking at.

Even if you've never considered that possibility. because it will help you to identify where you as a proprietor, as a business owner Could end up being a bottleneck. whether it's for scaling the company or ultimately for not just scaling it, but selling the company. So take a look at that. And

On the legal cost and then liability side, I would just say One idea that immediately comes to mind, and this is not legal advice, please speak to your properly vetted attorney for this, but Potentially there may be the option of partnering with a larger company who can run pilot.

studies or experiments in implementing this technology. And You could have a licensing fee, you could have some other type of arrangement. They could take a potential equity stake in the company, although that seems potentially premature at this point. And uh the reason I I bring that up is if they were willing to test

This technology. You could and speak to your lawyer, but you could potentially be added as an additional insured. So named as an additional insured. on their insurance policies. it may be relevant to have you added to their errors and omissions policy.

But these are ways of being covered by their insurance policies and therefore the premiums that they pay. Which in the early stages, if you're bootstrapping, Could be Non trivial.

So those are just a couple of things that come to mind in terms of how to launch it. You know, one of the benefits again of possibly partnering with larger companies, they assume the financial risk. A lot of the legal risk. of implementing this and you can see if it actually catches. Do people want this? Can this company sell it? Can this company implement it without assuming all of those risks yourself?

Alright, let's hop back to The Live feed? And see what we got here. Alright.

Okay. Couple of people asking about the O two breathing device. that Boss Ruten and I had talked about. Yes, I have been using it and I've actually found it tremendously helpful. And I don't think that's purely placebo effect. I used the O two trainer to prepare for my extensive hiking at altitude in New Mexico, and I found it to be very, very helpful. and easy to use. And

Incredibly soreness inducing. Oh When you hear boss say with the back breathing as an example, don't start with thirty repetitions, start with fifteen. Take him at his word. If you do more than that, you will feel like Someone hit you with

A picax up and down all of your muscles around your rib cage and mid back the next day or two or three. So it is then seemingly very effective for stressing. and applying a workout to your inspiratory muscles. So I for one plan on continuing to use that device.

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This was a paid endorsement by Wealthfront. I So this is a question from Mead. I hope I'm getting your name. Correct?

Would you please share any current recommendations that provide hope or encouragement to a caregiver amid a chronic medical situation? Thank you so very much for sharing your experience. So first I'm very sorry that you were in that situation. or someone you know is in this situation. And uh the only advice I can really think of offhand is I guess it's twofold. The first is An interview I did with Doctor B J Miller quite a few years ago.

who is a hospice care physician, also a triple amputee. who has helped thousands of people. to transition. So that's Conversation

Which is On some levels deeply philosophical, but I still act on and revisit a lot from that conversation. I personally find a lot of it.

Incredibly. Actionable. and impactful. So I would suggest potentially Yeah. And

Secondly. I would recommend a book that has been recommended to me several times, including by friends who have lost parents unexpectedly, and that is On Grief and Grieving. And I'll find the author right now. Okay, On Grief and Grieving by David Kessler and Elizabeth Kubler Ross.

And All of the people who've recommended this book to me have said they wished they had read it prior to anyone passing away, then in fact it also acts as fantastic preparation. And consolation. if you may be on the verge of losing someone. And we're all on the verge of losing someone in the grand scheme of things, in the grand scheme of life. So that would be a second recommendation and apologies if those

aren't appropriate, but given the context I have, those are the best I can come up with. Alright, let me see if I can Pull up a few more here. So there's a question, this is a question from Carrie.

Can you speak at all about any current information you or any other of your previous guests have on ketamine and bladder damage? So for those who have not heard it, I would suggest listening to My recent episode with Dr. John Crystal, who's chairman of the psychiatry department at Yale, an incredible researcher, also in his own right. who, along with other colleagues Pioneered. Research.

that identified the antidepressant effects. of ketamine in humans speaking. In this case of intravenous administration. But in that episode we didn't specifically Discuss bladder damage. Or urinary tract.

Symptoms. And uh there is quite a bit of literature to Support. the assertion that th that these are potential side effects, especially of recreational use of of ketamine. And sometimes goes by the name ketamine bladder syndrome. And I would suggest going to PubMed, if you just search PubMed, P U B M E D, and you search

ketamine bladder or ketamine urinary tract, then Quite a few papers will come up. So In the abstract here, this is ketamine bladder syndrome, an important differential diagnosis when assessing a patient with persistent lower urinary tract symptoms. Abstract, the recreational use of ketamine is increasing in popularity due to its dissociative and paralytic effects, ease of availability, and low cost. This is from 2012, just to timestamp it. However, serious and frequently irreversible damage to the urinary tract is a recently recognized side effect of recreational ketamine use.

And this goes on to present a number of case studies. So my understanding is I'm not a doctor. I don't play one on the internet, but my understanding is that this is reasonably common in recreational use. But

I'm not aware of how frequently that pops up as an adverse event. in the clinical trials that have been done. And uh those would be documented in those studies. So you could certainly look for say John Crystal K R Y S T A L on PubMed and look at the studies. And if you get the complete study, not just the abstract, you can look at the frequency of adverse.

events and most certainly something like that would be included, I imagine. But you can find more in depth information on PubMed, uh, which is surprisingly easy to use and I find generally quite user friendly, even though you may need to look up some words now and again. Yeah. Okay. Well, here's one from Sabrina. I'm my own bottleneck in my business. Is that bad? It's not automatically bad. Depends on what you want to do with your business. If you are a

artisanal high end leather pantmaker. And I actually read a case study about such a person who makes super high end leather pants, or did at least for people like Cheryl Crow and McJagger, et cetera. Then you are an artist.

You are the business. You are the artisan. Who is producing? Your craft and If you choose that And you're accepting the good with the bad.

Then I think it's One hundred percent. Okay, of course it is. It just depends on what you're trying to do and there is no right answer. I know many business owners who have chosen not to scale. Very, very deliberately.

And I actually find those counter examples. To Today's gestalt and drive to scale.

and build, say, public companies or companies that get acquired to be very refreshing because it doesn't get as much Fanfair. But there is a book that I haven't read in a very long time, but I really enjoyed it when I did called Small Giants. The subtitle is Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big and it is a book by Bo Burlingham. B-U-R-L-I-N-G H A N, so small giants, but I very much enjoyed that book when I read it. And in fact, the example I just gave you could have come from that book.

There's a a decent chance that it did. Question from Al, What blogs and newsletters are you excited about reading or receiving every day? There's nothing that I receive every day. There are at most newsletters that I get. Once a week. And they're very few. I mean the microdose, which is from U C Berkeley and gives a synopsis of happenings and news events in the psychedelic space is of interest to me.

But very few newsletters. And in fact, even with other writers, I really, really Enjoy. So for instance Matt Levin Bloomberg, for instance. I think Matt Levin is one of the best

writers and by best, I mean not just prolific because because that is not the measure, volume is not the measure, word count is not the measure necessarily of a good writer, but his combination of volume and insight. Like the density of insight to words per page is staggering. None the less I know that I have three or four friends who read

Matt's work religiously and I depend on them. To forward me. Specific. Snippets or specific newsletters. that they know align with what I am focused on.

At the moment. But if I were to add Say one other newsletter. to my regular consumption rounds. It would probably be from Matt Levine. There are a handful of others I find interesting, but there's nothing that I get on a daily basis. And that is by design. Question from Megan. What are the first steps you're planning to take on the animal communication journey? Well

There are a number of them, and for those who don't know, this is something that came up in my recent Yeah. One of them is identifying one of the steps is identifying where animal communication can actually be Tested. If this makes sense.

So And this comes up in all sorts of fields. If you're trying to find an expert How can you identify, let's just take a different field. There are many folks in the US and elsewhere who claim to be animal tracking experts. But how can you

As a non expert in animal tracking assess if someone is full of shit or the real McCoy. The short answer is generally you can't. But If you Look for

The exception and the exception is Any type of system. or company or organization within which trackers are actually tracked themselves numerically. Then you can start to get somewhere.

And In my case I ended up looking at Safari outfits in Africa. that keep records on trackers because they could identify For instance, that the average

For Let's just call it leopard tracking. successful leopard tracking during these hours is Twenty three percent, but so and so has an average of seventy one percent. as a success rate.

and you get almost major leageball statistics. Animal by animal. time of day by time of day for these different trackers. And then you can start to assess on an objective level. Who is actually good. This is

even more difficult with something like animal communication, depending on how we interpret it. But I'm starting with I would say two things. The first is revisiting dog training and mammalian training, although a lot of such training is behavioral shaping. And using

non-verbal cues. I'm okay with that though. By communication, I'm not limiting that to to verbal. Qs. So it could be using a clicker. I'm gonna be revisiting Susan Garrett, who is a master dog trainer. I had on the podcast, How do you know a dog trainer is good? Well, for me, I looked for sports. She is a multiple time If I remembering correctly. national agility.

champion with her dogs. And these are objective measures. Which I like. I like to start there. And then secondly, I'm very interested in looking at different methods of hunting and how hunters interact. With animals.

The most obvious example that comes to mind for me being elk, where not only are bull calls being used as a way of drawing in bull, but also cow calls of different types and And there are actually Elk calling. Competitions. Where people get on stage and are asked by a panel of judges

to produce different types of calls. And it's mind boggling. I mean it's it's very, very, very impressive what some of these hunters can do. So I think those are two places where I'll start. There are other examples that are of interest to me that I've looked into and will probably spend more time on, equine therapy. is quite interesting. From a I suppose more of a physical kinesthetic interactive perspective. But those are some of the jumping off points that I expect I'll spend some more time on.

Question from Dan, and then I'm gonna come back to the PR marketing stuff with some of the questions I have here. Dan, what is your protocol prior to taking a three day fast to get your body ready? So when I fast, again, not medical advice, talk to your doctor before doing any fasting. Uh you can't even get approval to do extended fasting. Probably couldn't get IRB approval to do three day fasts in humans, depending on the circumstance. It'd be very hard. It's really hard to do scientific research. Mm. In any case.

What I typically do For a three day fast. Is Let's just say my fast is going to begin. after an early dinner on Thursday night. That is typically how

I will line things up. Don't do your first three day fast in the middle of the week. It's gonna fuck up your whole situation. And you're gonna send a lot of emails you're gonna have to do damage control on. So don't do that. So Leading up to then, if my last meal is let's just say Thursday at six PM.

What I will do in the two days prior is I will get on a A sub maintenance calorie. ketogenic diet. So I will be having smaller meals than usual.

that are going to be predominantly fat. So let's just say hamburger with some cheese. And maybe a side salad. But I will be consuming fewer calories than thought necessary. to maintain my

lean body mass and you can calculate resting metabolic rate and try to figure out what that is based on all sorts of factors. So lower calorie keto for maybe two days beforehand with a fair amount of exercise to deplete glycogen stores a bit. And then uh Last meal would be a smaller Keto meal. On Thursday.

Sleep as long as possible. That's part of the reason the timing is The way that I set it up. And then beginning on Friday, what I try to do is prior to that set up Friday for phone calls so that I could be moving. So I try to get away from my laptop and move. This will actually be very, very helpful. For a whole host of reasons.

But on Friday as soon as I get up. I get a huge bottle of water. I fill it full of electrolytes like Element, which is what I've been using for a couple of years. And maybe put in a little bit of lemon just for flavoring, non caloric. And then I will Walk and talk. So I'll briskly walk for three to five hours minimum.

and take my phone calls. This will help On a number of levels. you will still have some residual glycogen and you will break down some of that into glucose so that your brain can actually function on Friday. And you can have a bit of caffeine. Don't overdo the caffeine. One of the mistakes that novice fasters make is they feel a little sluggish, so they end up having way too much caffeine, and then that inhibits sleep. If you do not supplement with electrolytes, there's a good chance that you're going to experience. I won't get into the mechanisms.

responsible for that, but very often you'll have lower back pain, especially if you do more than a three day fast. And uh you'll have cholinergic response where your heart rate is really fast. So I always supplement with electrolytes these days.

And it's water only. Now if you want to have Say. Some black coffee with a little bit of Pure heavy cream, hundred percent fat, or a little bit of coconut oil. I don't think that Inhibits.

most of the beneficial effects that we're looking for. Okay, so then that's Friday. Then Saturday. Same deal. You don't have to walk as much, but it will still be somewhere. And in fact, a little bit of weight training can feel very good cognitively. And then Sunday you're gonna break

Fast. Right. Not at breakfast time, but that night. So then Sunday night around Let's just call it. six, seven, whatever, you would have your first meal leading out of the fast. And there are all sorts of superstition around this, like oh, you have to eat grated cabbage and you have to do this and you gotta start with some unpasturized fruit juice and this, that and the other thing.

My uninformed take or semi informed take is that that seems kind of nonsensical to me. If we were f starving in any circumstance, Would our body and evolutionary drives require us to start with shredded Cabbage. I mean, it just doesn't make any sense to me. So when I break fast, I'm generally breaking it with a another keto meal because I like to extend some of the effects. of the fast or at least the ketogenic diet for a day or two afterwards. You don't have to do that, but I will very often break the fast with something akin to the meals that I used for the preparation for the fast.

Those are some of the thoughts. That I have On At least how I personally prepare for three day fasts. And implement three day fasts, your mileage.

Will vary and please get professional medical advice. Let me take a look at some of the Questions that were sent in advance. This is a question from Dave. Are you seeing any trends in successful nonprofit launches? I'm kicking off an effort to generate and share coastal resilience data. All right. So the subject area, coastal resilience data, certainly of interest to me.

And what I would say is Study trends in the for profit world. Launching nonprofit ventures launching for profit ventures, the principles are exactly the same in my experience. I think some nonprofits have done a very good job. with promotional efforts. I think donors choose

and charity water are two that come to mind immediately that are very good. And have for a very long time been very good at this. So you might take a look at those, but I would really borrow from the private sector. The stakes are generally higher. the talent and competition more intense. in the for profit world, so a lot of the mediocre or B minus approaches will just get massacred before they ever see the light of day. They won't actually

overcome any degree of competition. So I suggest that you look at the for profit world. Now for fundraising purposes Fundraising is slightly different than selling a product, although I think there's more in common then there are differences, to be perfectly honest.

But I would look at Any number of older examples. We don't need to reinvent the world here. So What I would say is And I've mentioned this book before, but I will repeat it because it'll come up again in a second, just as a proof point. So I'll give you evidence that this actually does work. The twenty two immutable laws of marketing, get the older one, not the for the internet, which is horribly out of date. Get the older one that has the beer examples, the airline examples, the twenty two immutable laws of marketing.

And uh take a close look at that. Also read One Thousand True Fans by Kevin Kelly. That's on KK.org, 1000 True Fans. And uh Last but not least, read the eighty twenty principle. By Richard Coke, K O C H And

The first two of those One thousand true fans will take ten minutes to read. The twenty two immutable laws of marketing, some of which is not going to apply, but a lot of which will. will take you maybe an hour or two to read and then the eighty twenty principle will probably take you A day or two to read.

So you might sequence it in that way. But I would focus on those. And then I'll give you maybe an unorthodox recommendation. But In Fible at Friday, my newsletter, if you're if you're not on it, check it out. Tim.blog slash Friday uh about Two million people subscribe. Let me take a look. Uh

what I included recently that I found led to a series I was very interested in, and it is a YouTube series. Business Insider has a YouTube video series. About business collapses and One of them I found fascinating called How the Beanie Babies Frenzy Collapsed. That's an eleven minute video. And when you watch how the Beanie Babies Frenzy collapsed, which I recommend because it may relate to a lot of the implosions that we have seen and will continue to see.

with some of the activities and NFTs and so on. But These historical examples can not only teach you a lot about what doesn't work, but about what works. So embedded in These how fill in the blank.

Collapse. are certain principles that I think you can also borrow and apply. So that series by Business Insider, I think is exceptional. I looked at a few of the videos and found them all Very, very instructive. And each one had a number of takeaways for me personally. So I would encourage also Taking a look at that.

I'll do one more and then I'm gonna come back to the live chat. This is gonna serve as both a proof point. And a question. So this is from Joel.

Hoy Tim. It's gonna be a little long. But I'm gonna read it anyway. I love your Q and A's. I really appreciate the opportunity to hear curious questions from the gigantic diversity of people you've helped, so thank you for this. My question relates to the Twenty Two Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Reese and Jack Trout. Also, thank you for introducing me to this book in 2016. It has since helped me build a business with one point eight million lifetime sales from making porcelain coffee mugs. Okay. So this stuff works, guys. It does work and I can't take credit because I learned from the book. as well and have applied it. So I am simply passing along something that no doubt was introduced to me by any number of people.

All right, back to the the description and the question. The problem is that I handcraft each mug with my bare hands using porcelain clay and a pottery wheel. I'm living the dream, making a living as an artist. And I'm obsessed with the art of the pottery mug, but it's pretty damn hard and I'm still working on long term sustainable profits. I've thought about outsourcing to China, the porcelain capital of the world, but that's fraught with problems. So instead of trying to grow by selling billions of cheap mugs, I've decided to grow my business by handcrafting mugs worthy of a higher price. I agree with this approach. I think you do not want to be engaged in a race to the bottom. However, back to the text, that means creating a sort of luxury brand. Since this doesn't exist today, we're focusing on law. Number one, the law of leadership that says it's better to be first than it is to be better. These mugs are art, but they're not better than the world's best sculptures and paintings, with which often sell for millions of dollars each.

or fancy ass diamond encrusted purses that sell for tens of thousands of dollars each. But I believe it could be the first mug to inspire people globally as a piece of art that you can enjoy your morning coffee from every day. Law number four, the law of perception has been one factor that helped me sell mugs for five hundred to one thousand dollars per mug. They say don't. But the vast majority of customers want a cheaper mug. How would you evaluate whether or not a luxury mug business is worth pursuing? And if you determined it was worth pursuing, what would you do to grow? All right.

Let's hop into this. So There are a few books I would recommend checking out, Joel. As usual, I have many book recommendations. So the first, which I've not read in a very, very long time, but may be helpful.

is a book called Selling to the Affluent. That's by Thomas Stanley. And you may be able to find a summary and to determine if it is in any way relevant to you. One way that I assess books oftentimes is trying to find a Wikipedia page for the book, which will give you a synopsis of some type. So selling to the affluent by Thomas J. Stanley, I found certainly helpful at one point when I was considering many of the same questions for different businesses.

The other book may sound a little funny at first because it would seem to be anti advice, but It is called Deluxe.

Subtitle How Luxury Lost Its Luster. There's a lot of alliteration here. It's hard for my hard for my tongue to get out right now. But this book is by Dana Thomas. I hope I'm getting the pronunciation right. Deluxe is the name of the book. How luxury lost its luster. And it talks about different high end luxury brands and how some of them have compromised themselves. by outsourcing supply chains and making other

poor strategic decisions, but embedded through the whole story. And the various case studies. is the cocktail of ingredients. That have made some of the most durable luxury brands. the world has ever seen, at least in the last several centuries. So I really greatly enjoyed this book. It's got 3.9 out of five on Goodreads.

For your particular case, it's about four hundred pages long. I think that is worth reading for a whole host. Of Reasons. And then what I would say

Is To your last two questions. How would you evaluate whether or not a luxury mug businesses we're pursuing. I think that And I I have this predisposition too. It's very tempting to try to figure it out, right? To sit down with pen and paper.

look at a few databases and decide, is this worth doing? Is it not worth doing? That can be very time consuming. It can also be misleading. Maybe you have, or actually certainly you'll have partial information. The question I would reflect back to you is how could you test in the real world Whether or not this is worth pursuing. So if you had

Pick a budget that you're willing to lose. Five grand, ten grand. How could you use that? To determine. to test the waters to see if people are willing to buy whatever you have to sell. And so what does that mean, luxury mug business, right? If you're selling mugs for five hundred to a thousand per mug, I don't know What changes in order to make it a luxury mug business. Does that mean five thousand dollars per mug?

Okay, fine, ten thousand, whatever the number is. There are people out there who will buy such mugs. Another question I would just add to this is what story

Do these luxury mug buyers get to tell their friends? If you look at the contemporary art world. You will see. I'm not saying this is the same, but I think there are overlaps. Story fucking matters a lot, right? You can't just tape a banana to a wall at Art Basel with duct tape and have no story. There needs to be a story.

There are many documentaries. that you could consider Watching the price of everything. Is a documentary. About contemporary art.

And I found it Very, very engaging. There are many contrasting styles in here. So Check it out. Here's the description with unprecedented access to pivotal artists and the white hot markets surrounding them. The price of everything dives deep into the labyrinth of the contemporary art world. It examines the role of art and artistic passion in today's money-driven consumer-based society where everything can be bought and sold. I really enjoyed this.

I really, really enjoyed it. So This would be another recommendation because There's again no need to reinvent the wheel. I mean, these are not necessarily identically the people you're going to be selling to

But what does it take to sell? The highest priced X. Fill in the blank, whatever that is. And in fact, some of my answers are going to be Overlapping.

With Ecco. Question. From A listener in

Brazil. Carlos, I'd like to know your thoughts about how to market a product designed to high profile people. Consultancy for professional soccer players. Which channel would you recommend? Are there some case studies to which you'd refer? Thank you for everything. Big fan from Brazil. Okay. So all of the books, Carlos, this will apply to you too.

All of the books and the documentaries I recommended would apply. Another thing that you can do Is Study the luxury brands, figure out who their PR firms are. Go to the PR firm websites. And look at their campaign case studies, see what they do.

You can learn a lot by doing this. You can create in the old days what was called a swipe file where you find For many years, whenever an ad convinced me to spend money I shouldn't spend. So let's just say, you know. back when I was making like

thirty five, forty grand a year. If an ad came across that convinced me to buy something that was five hundred dollars. That was a lot of money to me. And if it actually convinced me to even Pick up the phone or get online to buy it.

whether or not I completed the purchase, I would keep that. I would tear it out of the magazine. Where I would take a photograph of it. Or I would otherwise try to record it in some fashion. Let's say it was a radio advertisement. I try to remember the text and type it out. And I would create a three ring binder of all the things that almost Or did convince me to spend.

An inordinate Let's just call it unreasonable. percentage of my after tax income. That is another thing that you can start to do now. You do not need to be a professional market analyst to do this, you just need to be aware of your own behavior.

and what drives you to purchase decisions or near purchase decisions. So just to reiterate something I just said. Brands you admire that do a good job. campaigns that are doing a good job or individuals who are doing a good job with selling into luxury markets. Study.

Figure out who their publicists are. Figure out who their PR firms are and then study those publicists and PR firms. Most of the time. Both of those categories are going to be providing campaign examples and so on. And you may even be able to get on the phone.

to have an exploratory conversation with these people. Those are a number of examples and the Other question that is worth reflecting back and this applies to Joel as well as Carlos. That I reverse engineer a lot for myself is set the price first and then make it worth it.

So For instance, when I had an event, and I never do events, I never produce events, so they're such a pain in the ass, but I pr I did produce one very high end event and I decided that I wanted to charge I think it was minimum ten thousand dollars a seat and then it went up from there. So the sooner somebody bought the the less expensive it was, and then it just went up in price. So the minimum was ten thousand dollars. And I started with that as a nice round number.

And it was a I think a two or three day event. And then I thought to myself, All right. I want to charge ten thousand dollars. How can I deliver that much value in the first two hours that people are there? So that I don't have to worry about it. Like how can I over deliver in such a way in the first hour or two. That everything else is gravy.

Everyone is thrilled they came. within the first two hours. And that's a creative exercise, and I was able to pull it off. That is because I decided on a ultra high Luxury price.

And then ask myself how on earth Can I make it worth it? What are the different ideas I have for making it worth it? And Ultimately it came down to sharing the actual book proposals that I used. for the four hour work week and the four hour body. entirety with a few things redacted just for sensitivity. And then also

acting as a matchmaker for everyone in the room for the period of about an hour to ninety minutes. And after that I mean, everybody was was set in s in some respect. And for those people who might want to borrow this format, each person got up. And The format was

Give a brag. You have to give a brag about yourself. So you have to brag in some way. Then you have an ask. And then you have a give. So everybody in the audience, I think there were a hundred or a hundred and twenty people, got up and said, This is who I am

Here's one thing I want to brag about. Or maybe I don't want to brag about, but since it's a directive I will brag about. Here's one thing. That is an ask. This is what I'm looking for. And then here's one thing that I can give.

that I'm really good at or relationships that I have. Expertise, whatever it might be. And I just encouraged everybody to take notes. If you can help somebody Who hasn't ask, go help them.

If you need something that they have on offer, because that's a give. Go find them. And The rest of the event took care of itself. But I would not have come up with those answers had I not asked the right question. It comes down to the right question. So start with the price that makes it work. Right, Joel.

Luxury mug business. What does that mean? How many mugs at what price? Right? Let's just say your goal is a hundred thousand dollars a year. Well, the answer could take many, many, many, many different Forms. A thousand well, let me let me step step back. We'll make it um we'll make it a million dollars.

Let's get ambitious. Million dollars a year. Yeah. That could be. A thousand mugs at a thousand dollars apiece. It could be.

One mug. At a million dollars. Or it could be somewhere in the middle. Right. And how can you mitigate risk in these experiments? Well, I mean look If you look

at different examples of collaborations, you have, for instance, CryptoPunk's now owned by Yuga Labs. partnering with Tiffany. to create, you know, be dazzled. Customized crypto punk jewelry. Alright.

How the fuck do these things happen? It's worth digging into trying to find out how those things happen. What are the mechanics? What are the agreements? What are the responsibilities of the various parties? And uh not to belabor that one. Example there are many such examples. So for instance How do you how or how could you potentially have one or ten or a hundred of these go into gift bags at the Oscars or at the Golden Globes or fill in the blank. This doesn't automatically work, by the way. I mean I have had my books put into such bags. Sometimes it has amazing effects, sometimes it doesn't, sometimes it has amazing effects you don't even know of until 10 years later. Right. So be prepared to play the long game if you're going to

Do anything like that. And you have to be prepared for your investment to go to zero. So if your material cost and your labor cost Is Ten grand, maybe it's worth rolling the dice. If it's a hundred grand, maybe not. Depending on your financial picture. Okay.

There we go. So that's uh that's that. I'm gonna come back To the live feed. Ooh! Who knew I had so much to say about PR and marketing? It's been a while. Hopefully this is helpful for folks.

All right, let's get into the live stuff. And I'm just gonna keep going, guys. I'm having fun. So if if you guys are having fun, I will keep going. We're about an an hour and thirteen minutes in. I'm happy to keep going. I've got my Got my iced tea. So let me know if you're having a good time and I will I will keep going. And this luxury mug Example Should not be dismissed if you are in a different business, even if you are in a SaaS business.

Software as a service. Enterprise SaaS. You might think this has nothing to do with me. It has everything to do with you, potentially. Depending on your pricing tiers. Depending on your funnel, depending on what stage your company is currently slogging through. If you've already reached escape velocity.

And you have all your pricing structures and you have your entire sales force, maybe not, but if you're trying to land the first SAP like customer. Maybe it has everything to do with you. So the principles Apply. Very, very widely.

Alright. Let's get in here. Go Timmy Go. Thank you, Ellie. I'm going. I'm going.

Uh Ryan, any new favorite travel spots to recommend? Honestly. I've been spending a lot of time in the US. The US has so much to offer. And as a young whipper snapper You know, in my early twenties. It's easy to fantasize about everything else in the world while neglecting all the treasures right in your backyard. So

Treasures could range from, you know, North Carolina And the smokies to getting to let's say British Columbia or the Pacific Northwest. in the the rainforests in the Pacific Northwest or going to the southwest going to places like Moab, but there's so much diversity and beauty in the United States. I've really been trying to pay

More attention. to what is in the US most recently. Nick, the hairband video is a great addition to that five five bullet Friday email. I'm glad you enjoyed that. That was a music video from the Bullet Boys, which I listened to when I was probably twelve years old, and I just thought I have to include this video. Money money money money Think that was related to the beanie babies.

uh bullet as well. All right. Ah, Satriani, yeah, Russell. Satriani's amazing. What a shredder. So is Steve I. Love to connect those guys sometime. All right, Josh, I'll keep this short, but if you want to displace out compete and establish a tech company with a similar product. How would you approach it from a marketing lens, assuming you had no influence on product? This is gonna sound funny. It's straight from the twenty two immutable laws of marketing, but I would study Avis

You know, we try harder versus Hertz way back in the day. And the strategy was more sophisticated than just that tagline. If you're truly similar and undifferentiated, I think you're gonna have a hard time and you you're probably going to have to compete on price. Which is a dangerous game because incumbents with much more money can say, you know what?

We have twelve product lines. We don't like this competitor. We don't want competition. So we are just going to sell below our cost for a period of time to bleed them of chips until they go out of business. And this is a very, very textbook. Common.

competitive approach that incumbents use to spectacular success against startups. It is a Risky gambit. to compete on price, but that may be necessary, at least for a period of time. But beyond that, in terms of out competing or out marketing.

I would say uh You could do that on a whole lot of different levels. I would study the Avis versus Hertz example. And you could also study, for instance, now this is gonna be a a price dominant example. But I read The

biography, it may have been the autobiography of the founder of Ryan Eyre at one point. And looked at even though I've no interest in participating in the airline businesses, looking at how low cost competitors and carriers Entered the scene. and became at least at points as dominant as they did. EasyJet is another very, very interesting example. Certainly Southwest, another fascinating example. And

I would encourage you to look at all of those, even though they may not seem immediately applicable. So those are a few approaches that t you might take, but The commonality here is looking for comparables. Not just within your industry, but outside of your industry.

So Which startups can you model that have taken on incumbents? With similar products, hopefully not entirely identical. But somewhat similar products.

You can also use I'm not saying you have to do this, but So humor. And SAS is generally gonna get neutralized and killed in any bureaucracy within a bigger company, which is why

Say you know Dollar Shave Club and others. had a Tremendous. Window of opportunity that they took.

Excellent advantage of. with their advertising campaigns. And I think even though one could consider certainly Branson, Richard Branson, a an incumbent in some respects, and he's certainly not having to bootstrap things with limited savings. If you look at how he competed

And it this is chronicled quite a bit in Losing My Virginity, which was one of the books that had a huge impact on me when I was in my early twenties, so Losing My Virginity by Richard Branson talks about competing in the music business and it also talks about competing against British Airways with Virgin. So it's just sort of happenstance, I suppose, that a lot of these examples are airlines, but in a sense, airlines are the perfect example of largely undifferentiated competition. So it might provide some variables and levers that you can pull and play with. Tea over coffee these days from Ryan. My rule is one, I get one coffee.

in the morning these days. Coffee really keeps me up late at night. Uh more so than It should given the caffeine content. I can have an equivalent amount of caffeine through other sources, whether it's even energy drinks or iced tea, and it will not keep me up in the way that coffee does. So As it stands right now, I'm having one cold brew.

From Starbucks. In the morning before ten AM. That's a rule. And then after that It's ice tea.

Am I cold, I'm being asked. Beanie and hoodie. Yeah, it's fucking freezing where I am. So yeah, I'm cold. And I'm bald. So The hence the beanie. Alright, from Jeff, Steve Vi would be an awesome interview. Vi is unbelievable and spiritual. I believe it. I've seen him interviewed. He's excellent. So maybe that'll happen at some point. All right. Justin asks any comments or observations on limiting alcohol intake?

I have been limiting alcohol intake. Quite a bit. I actually Have had my first drinks in a month. Beginning.

Three or Four days ago. In prep for the higher altitude and extensive hiking and so on. I did not want to compromise my sleep.

Getting ready for that. And I thought it would be a good Ascetic practice slash proof of non dependents to take a 30 day break from alcohol. So I took a 30 day break from alcohol. Felt great. And I know that alcohol, especially once it gets past two drinks.

obliterates sleep. So I have experimented with other options. Number one is simply not having alcohol, just having peppermint tea or whatever I might want to have for flavor at a dinner, which is perfectly fine most of the time. I'm also looking at other options. There are some ketone beverages which are non ethanol. Based. alcoholic beverages, if that makes any sense. where you can actually get a buzz from say

R butane diol or an R one three butane dial. See what uh Yeah, so one three beauty and dial. Also known as R one three butane diol. is not great in my experience for performance.

At all. But it can give you Please do not. This is not food consumption advice. One three butane doll is used mainly as a solvent for food flavors. So

FYI, right? So there are a number of brands that sell Arbutin. one three dial I'm I'm mixing up all of my by chemistry here. So there are some brands that sell hard ketone drinks. And I have been experimenting with those as an alternative to ethanol based drinks, right? Like a gentonic or something like that.

It does seem like the hard ketone drinks, if consumed close to bedtime, will still negatively affects sleep. So if I consume alcohol I try to do whether it's the the hard ketones or ethanol. I try to consume it. on the early side. So if I'm having an early dinner.

Say five thirty or six. Wanna give my body and my liver time to metabolize as much as possible before I lay down to bed. And That means I'll go out to dinner and if I'm gonna have a drink. As I did yesterday, for instance. Actually I had two glasses of wine.

Last night. And I sat at the Bar instead of at a table, so I wouldn't be rushed. And I had

Two drinks while writing. For about Thirty minutes. before getting my food. Because I what I didn't want to do Is have one drink.

With an appetizer, eat A huge. Entree. And have Two or three more drinks just to feel the buzz.

And ultimately all of that. lands on my system and needs to be dealt with. So those are a few of the thoughts I have, but I have dramatically cut back on my alcohol consumption. And that might change. I mean depending on where I go. If I'm going to Italy. And I'm gonna be eating pasta and drinking wine everywhere, then I'm gonna drink wine everywhere.

You know, it's not not a big deal to me. But as it stands right now, I have cut back very substantially. Right. Stephanie suggests Visiting Shaved Ice Island in South Austin, life changing Thai Tea Shaved Ice on the menu. I'm into it. I will check it out. Alright, Cherie, I think is the name here. I hope I'm getting that

Down properly with your various endeavors into hobbies. Have you ever tried archery? And if so, any directions as to books, teachers, et cetera, to check out. Specifically looking at traditional longbow. Yeah. Yes, I have to have a But quite closely at Archery, and I've been spending the last several months going deep down

quite a few rabbit holes related to archery. I have One two. Three, four, five. Five or six boat no more. Seven eight.

Probably eight bows. Within five hundred feet of where I'm sitting. So yes, I've been getting into it. That includes A traditional longbow. made by someone named Byron Ferguson, who has uh a lot of incredible video

Online. And Uh I believe Byron. As a book.

Become the Arrow, second edition by Byron Ferguson. He has some of the most incredible Longbow shots I've ever seen. He is the one, as far as I know, Who was first to develop the trick shot progression of Shooting.

A disc out of the air that is about the size of, say, a bread plate. And then shooting a golf ball out of the air. And then shooting. A lifesaver out of the air and then shooting an aspirin out of the air.

using field points. So He's he's quite incredible. Uh longbow, I think, is very, very interesting, very, very challenging also. I am quite interested in

both Olympic recurve and Bare bow competition. So I'm looking at both of those. And most of my experience From a precision. standpoint is with compound bows.

But Looking at a spectrum of say Aiming, let's just call it. Aiming on one end of the slider and then biomechanics on the far other end of the slider.

I would say that Compound bow. for me at least has the most in common with rifle or firearm marksmanship. So if I were going to train someone for compound, and I'm not a professional by any means, but just to to help someone get accustomed to breath control and aligning front and rear sights. I would actually have them start with prone rifle.

Shooting. And move from there to compound. And there are a million different types of releases, we won't get into that. But

If you have compound there. And then on the far other end of the spectrum with biomechanics, you have longbow. then I would put something like Olympic Recurve. close to the middle. I would say and then barebo would be somewhere between

The Olympic recurve and the longbow. But the further you get to the biomechanics side. the better your shot sequence. People are gonna disagree with me on this, but The more you get to the biomechanics side, the better your body awareness and kinesthetic control and sequencing of your shot sequence. Well need to be.

And I think that's Probably most easily illustrated by watching video of say Korean archers. in Olympic Recurve. They're just Unbelievably good.

So Take a look at that. But yes, I'm very interested in artery. Is the short answer.

Here's a question from Joel. You and Steven Pressfield talked about writing fiction on your podcast. Did that inspire your NFT, or have you tried other fiction writing? I have tried other fiction writing. So There are a number of pieces that are unpublished. short stories that I've not shared, which are fiction, mostly because they're not complete. These are longer short stories. And then the first fiction piece I ever published was put out as my first experimental NFT. with Kevin Rose. If people want to check that out, you can read it online. There's no issue with doing that. If you just go to Tim.blog slash NFT.

You can go on and just zoom in. And And read that story. And uh if holders of that NFT are open to it at some point I may just put you know three quarters.

of it or the entire piece. on the blog so that people can actually read it. I think that would draw more attention. To the piece. as well. But I have tried other fiction writing.

To answer your question. So this is a question from Cindy. When unexpected life or people challenges try to knock you down, What go to tools help you keep grounded. I think that's what you're asking.

Are there two to three podcast guests who brought those tools? Yes. I would say the people who come to mind. Or First. off the top of my head, and there are more.

One would be Tara Brock. B R A C H who wrote an incredible book called Radical Acceptance. So I'd say Tarabrok is definitely one. Another would be Jerry Colonna.

Who has a number of questions that I think are fantastic and worth keeping in mind constantly, including how am I complicit in creating the conditions I say I don't want. That would be one example of many. So we have Tar Brock, Jerry Colonna, and then I'll throw in Jack Cornfield.

all of his interviews, I think, are very, very powerful. And the reason I bring those three up is that when I feel I have been Hit unexpectedly with something. Or perhaps I have precipitated something happening that is undesirable. my default, and I think this is from a lot of family history as well. R

Anger, mostly anger directed at myself, but anger And self flagellation. Just incredible self criticism and Beating myself up. Mercilessly.

And for Those reasons I mention those guests. Because For me it's not the events.

that are the problem per se. It's my reflexive response to those events. being self abuse. Through Inner

Monologue or dialogue. And being able to Number one, create a greater awareness of that. Number two

developing or borrowing in these cases toolkits and questions that allow me to Calm that reactivity. And uh not to push it away necessarily, but certainly in the case of Tara Brock to befriend in a way, to have a conversation with it.

Or with those parts is very helpful. Another person I would add to that. Is Richard Schwartz. who is the founder of IFS. I had him on the podcast. So those are the first few names. Come to mind.

Andrew, proud holder. Cool. Let me know if you'd be if you think it would be a good idea. Think it could be interesting for me to share. the actual text from the fictional short story in the NFT. Let me know what you think. I'll I'll keep an eye on the On the chat. All right. Christopher.

Has a question, which mental model or helpful tool do you often go back to regarding prioritizing projects and things you want to pursue? I'll keep it at that. So I do have one question and I Th there's a very good chance that I adapted this From Gary Keller. So Gary

Is Legendary in the world of Real estate. He is the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Keller Williams, the world's largest real estate franchise by Agent Count.

Two thousand nineteen KW, which also ranks number one in units and sales volume in the US, was named by Fast Company as the most innovative company in real estate. So Gary is a fascinating, fascinating character. You can find him on Twitter at Gary Keller. And The name of this podcast episode is How to Focus on the One Important Thing. Gary Keller, How to Focus on the One Important Thing. I'd recommend folks listen to this. He also has a book called The One Thing, subtitled The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results.

And I believe the question that I ask myself is adapted from this, but I can't say that with a hundred percent certainty. And that question is this. In this list of things. Five or six or ten things, whatever your list of priorities

Might be or to do's. Which of these, if done Make Other things or all of these things. Either irrelevant

Or easier to do. Look at this list of ten things. Which of these, if done Make Other items on this list. Hopefully many or all of them.

Easier to do. Or irrelevant. And that is my sorting function. That's it.

Now on top of that, let's just say that doesn't yield. the clarity I'm hoping for. I could look at that list again and ask myself. Which of these If done.

Or brought to the next milestone would leave me feeling proudest at the end of the day. I know people who do this with workouts. I know CrossFit champions who do this with Certain types of workouts. Just asking yourself, which of these if done or pushed to the next milestone would leave me feeling proudest at the end of the day. That's another one.

And a third would be if you're trying to choose between, say, major projects. So you've got this branching tree and you have three different professional options. Let's just say. Different projects, different Endeavors, joint ventures, whatever.

Creative projects. I'll ask myself, which of these even if it fails can be the greatest success. And that's a success in terms of new skills. New relationships or deepened relationships? And also just energy.

Which of these will give me the most energy will I be most energized by? So I'll repeat that. Three options, having trouble choosing between them. Let's just say they're creative projects. Which of these can be a success for me, even if it fails? Let's say the launch doesn't work, people don't want to buy it, whatever it is. In terms of new skills.

Or resurrecting old skills in the case of me choosing my new absurd art project, right? So resurrecting old skills. Resurrecting old skills or new s developing new skills. Developing new relationships. or deepening current relationships and then providing life energy. Energizing it.

That is how I've decided to spend so much time over the last, say, six to twelve months on This hairbrand thing that'll come out in the next few months. Which Absolutely could be

A flop on every commercial slash financial level. So That's part of what makes it kind of exciting to me, honestly. So we'll see. We'll see how it goes. John said the lead domino. Exactly. Choosing the right domino to tip over the tips over many others.

Bill has a question, did the book Four Thousand Weeks change your approach to life and living in any way? I thought Four Thousand Weeks was an exceptional book, and I plan to go back and reread it. I have a lot of Kindle highlights and shared one chapter In particular from that book on the blog on Tim Dotblog called Cosmic Insignificance Therapy. So if you want to read that chapter, I encourage everybody to read it. Cosmic insignificance therapy. You can find that on Tim Dot blog. Gonna do since we're at an hour and forty minutes, I'm gonna do a handful of additional questions.

On The uh pre submitted. And See where it goes. Okay. This is a question from Al. If you had to build a launch strategy for the four hour work week in twenty twenty two versus twenty twenty oh seven otherwise known as two thousand seven. What strategies and channels would you employ? Which strategies would stay consistent from two thousand seven and why

I think the Crux decision, which was to engage with people in person at events. At the time those were predominantly bloggers. Now that might be Different. But uh not necessarily. Logs are still actually a thing, despite what people may think, but

That core approach to taking the uncrowded channel of engaging with people. in person at events in recreational settings over drinks. would remain consistent and You could remove every other

Prong. of the four hour workweek launch strategy. And if I simply Executed well. again on that type of in person engagement.

I think the book would Still be a success. Today. And to reiterate how I did that, or to give one example.

I would Go to the after party, after some conference event where people are on panels, and sometimes I would approach them Afterwards. Very often when I would approach a panel, I would not approach the panelists who are getting mobbed. I would approach the moderator who is undeservedly neglected a lot of times.

in cases like this and chat with the Moderator. usually asking a handful of follow up questions, which are sincere questions about the topics on the panel. They would at some point generally ask me. Well, what are you doing here? Why are you here? And I would say it's my first time at this event.

I've just finished writing my first book. It's this, this, and this based on guest lectures I gave at Princeton University from Two thousand X to two thousand Y. And

I'm trying to figure out how to launch a book since it's really on me of the publisher. effectively prints and ships books. I have to figure out how to market this. You know is there anyone you think I might Wanna meet? Is there anyone you think I might get along with?

And then they would make a referral and I would be on. to the next referral. And I would repeat something like that each time. Separately. If I came upon, say, a group of people Uh bloggers, let's just say I knew at least one blogger was in this group.

At a bar. They'd be talking and I would wander up. And I would say something like Hey guys, do you mind if I join in and just Listen in. And they'd be like, Uh, whatever, fine.

And so I'd hang out and if I finish my drink first, I'd be like, Hey, does anyone else need a drink? Like, don't be a fucking weirdo, just be a normal person. But anyway, like, hey, does anyone else need a drink? I'm gonna grab another one. Okay, great, get a couple of drinks. And eventually. Somebody in the group would be like so

What's your story? Who are you? Why are you here? And I would give some answer along the lines of what I just mentioned. And then I would just stop. I would not start pitching. I would not I would not immediately start humping their legs. To ask them if they wanted to read an advanced copy or something like that. But I would say that and then I would I was

sort of leave the window open to more questions. And then I would see if anyone took the bait. And if they did, that is an indicator of at least I took it as an indicator of interest. Let's say one of the people's like, well Okay. So you said your book is what's the book about? And then I would elaborate Then maybe they would ask some follow up questions. And

Then at some point I would offer, I would simply say, Look, it might not be of any interest to you. Totally understand if you're just too busy, but There are I think maybe one or two chapters that would be really interesting to you. If you'd like, I mean I have a ton of advanced copies, I could just send you a copy and put in some post it notes for the twenty pages or so that I think would be most interesting.

And I'll say I don't know. Sixty, seventy percent of the time that I went up to one of those groups. At least one person will be like, Yeah, that sounds cool. Yeah, totally. Yeah, please send it.

And That is a high labor approach. That also can have a very, very high ROI. And

I would replicate that. Still think in person is the least crowded. It just takes a set of skills that most people have neglected, I think. in a world where Everything is thought to be digital.

and text first via email. the interpersonal piece, I think, gets lost a bit in the the ability to navigate social dynamics in a way that is Interesting, but not overwhelming or irritating.

Takes practice. You gotta practice this stuff. And fortunately I got a lot of practice doing that on the phone and in person. In my first job. out of college, which was being an outside sales rep. for

fiber channel storage area networks. I had to learn how to navigate this stuff. So in person still works or it can work. Alright, let me check out some

Some more questions. In the live chat. See what we got here. Okay. So Andrew on the how to start a war. Why don't you just yeah, chat with the folks in Proof who are holders.

And see what they think. I I don't see the downside. I mean, I I really don't. I think it all it will do is draw attention. to it and increase interest in it. I don't I don't see the downside. And I certainly don't have to s I don't have to share all of it. It could be I don't know, seventy or eighty percent. So okay, here's a question.

What's your gut response to the metaverse and its potential use cases? Very conflicted. Very conflicted. I think. As much as people talk about The

Utopia and ideology of decentralization humans like centralized discovery. Or Some centralized service where they do not need to make decisions. Humans are fucking lazy.

So and I'll throw myself in there too, honestly, right? Discovery is hard. And Humans want to

Identify taste makers. or curators to help them with making choices. in areas of high complexity. Or in situations where there is a paradox of choice. Challenge, which is almost everywhere. And this will certainly be true.

In the metaverse. And or the metaverses although. Find that kind of thing. Oxymoronic, I guess, when we start looking at it that way. So I I do think that there will be a hand likely a handful. At most.

Uh virtual Spaces. Like the metaverse. In

Snow crash, let's say, where people interact through avatars, right? So Let's just call it. a in a second life on megasteroids with All sorts of technological innovations that have Started to crest.

in the last handful of years. I find it hard to believe that there are going to be dozens and dozens and dozens of these things. I just I find it hard to believe that that will be. Compelling to users.

If a few dominant players with massive amounts of capital. And Employee coordination.

creating the most addictive compelling versions of these spaces. I hope I'm wrong. But If noticed anything.

In the last year or two. It's that people claim to hate centralization, but man do they love it. It saves them a lot of time. And it saves them a lot of decisions. So we'll see where it goes. Uh yeah. Yeah.

Ulrike. How's your gardening going? Did you get this gardening season? If yes, what worked and what not? There's nothing like trying experimenting. So yes, the answer is the gardening has worked. So I'm holding up a huge basket. Of veggies. And uh this came right out of my garden.

Few hundred feet away, we've got these beautiful beans. They're purple in color, but You can eat them whole. They're absolutely delicious. We have

He's amazing. Huge beats. So check that out. Gonna be eating a bunch of those later today. Got the biggest.

Check out the size of these things. Like the biggest Swiss chard you can imagine. I mean that's switch charge. It's the size of my entire upper torso. So It did work.

This year. And I'd say the two main differences are relocating The raised beds so they have More consistent sun exposure, but above and beyond that two things. Setting up. A very, very simple

electric fence that can be turned off and on. It's solar powered and it's very, very thin mesh. It's just to keep out. The groundhog. You know, all this kind of stuff. And then

Second is an irrigation system, a timed watering system. So simple. Not that difficult to install. And the combination of all those factors. has led to

Just an incredible harvest. this year for the first time ever in my life. Tons and tons of stuff. For whatever reason the kale gets annihilated by pests. Everything else is fine and intact. The kale gets Completely killed. I'm not using any pesticides.

But for some reason The kill specifically is just the sacrificial lamb. It seems to get Absolutely. Naste by.

Everything. That wants to. Snack. on some domesticated veggies. So there you have it, but thanks for asking. I can feel my brain slowing down a little bit, guys, so I'm probably gonna do another ten to fifteen minutes.

All right. Ranjit, what is your workout routine these days? My workout routine's super civil. I go to the gym and I lift weights. Doing full body workouts, this is called twice a week. That's weight training. I have a sled.

A weighted that I push. I would say three to four times per week in the morning, usually after my first cold brew. And I am intermittent fasting at the moment where I will effectively not have anything to eat until Noon, I say effectively because sometimes it will have

few macadamia nuts or something like that, but generally no calories. Two Very, very low calories. So I'm intermittent fasting in the morning. And uh

I am doing kettlebell swings. Right now I think I'm using a seventy two pounder. For sets of Fifty. And really just doing one set of like fifty to a hundred reps.

Twice a week? And I jump rope. In the mornings, oftentimes before I do the sled pushing. Just as a way to wake up my nervous system and my

My cognition. Honestly, just jumping rope for two minutes, hopping around, having my dog bark her face off at me, which is hilarious. Is enough to change my mood to elevate mood. Sana probably four to five times. A week.

generally before dinner. So let's just say I'm eating at seven o'clock. I will finish up my day, my work day five or five thirty. Do this on a For half hour.

And then take a cold shower post. That's about it. It's about enemy, it's nothing crazy. If I go for a hike with my dog, which I do pretty regularly. If the weather permits, I will throw on a rucksack. I have a go rucksack.

For An hour hike. I'm not using crazy weight also because this rucksack does not have a waist strap, so I am supporting all the weight on my traps. And shoulders. Usually use thirty five pound weight.

But You'll notice None of this. takes more than I mean the the weight training at the gym is gonna take the most time because of the transit. There are weeks when I just skip that altogether and I'll do the other things I described.

But we're we're talking about At most Thirty minutes a day. Unless it's an activity that doesn't function for me exclusively as exercise, like an hour long hike with my dog. Then I'm just throwing on weights.

to get some additional stimulation, but that's what the work out looks like these days. I am using a a new device that I've enjoyed. So for decreasing lower back pain or alleviating lower back pain and also helping tremendously with sleep. There are two devices that I've been using for some time now. This one.

It's called the So Right. And you lay on top of this, and for those who can't see this, it is a piece of plastic That looks almost like a U. And uh the tops of either side of the U are these Rounded.

Plastic. Ridges. That you lay on top of And they apply pressure to your SOAS. So this is called a SORIT device, P S O hyphen R I T E dot com. And uh

This is a device that I used last night, for instance, prior to sleep. And I've been comparing and contrasting that with another option. Which is a lot easier to travel with. So I have traveled, for instance, when I was w hiking in the mountains and at altitude, I traveled with this. So if you look at this thing here. This is the

Hip hook. And it more effectively gets into And you can see how Aggressive this looks, right? You're laying on this. So this really gets into your psoas and can also get to the iliacus.

more effectively than the so right. So the Not an anatomist, but If you think of where your SOAS is. Let's just say And if

Few inches up. from your iliac crest, like those hip bones that stick out right under your Obliques or love handles depending on your condition. Those hip bones if you go Directly up your sides and then in

Towards the center. Say, I don't know, three or four inches. And then press. directly towards your spine. This is not a precise

Description, but you will be getting into your SOAS, the Iliop SOAS. The Iliacus is going to be lower down. Kind of inside. The cradle

of the hip architecture. Which is where the hip hook comes in and this really works well. I've been using it for the last several weeks on the road. And these two I have found to be tremendously helpful for improving sleep. Often what disrupts my sleep is lower back tightness and it end up having to flip flop like a recissory chicken from side to side to side to side, which Surprise, surprise does not improve your sleep architecture quality.

So these two devices I found very Uh let me do Another question here from Michael. So from Michael, what would be your suggested criteria for choosing podcasts to allocate advertising dollars towards? Product slash industry agnostic if possible.

This is a difficult question to answer. I would say'cause there are a number of articles that have been written about it. Athletic greens. Has the most methodical quantitative and strategic approach to podcast advertising that I have ever seen in any company.

So To the extent that you can study that. And there are articles that discuss their approach. to podcast advertising, I think it is worth looking at. It is not possible, I think, to make any answer product slash industry agnostic because

Athletic Greens has a high end Premium product. With a very high LTV, customer lifetime value. And you can time bound that. Let's just say their value over two years or three years, something like that. But it is a product that has a very low amount of churn. In other words, once someone subscribes to receive athletic greens.

They tend to remain a athletic Greens. User. And this is the type of product That I think is particularly well suited to certain types of podcasts.

especially long form interview podcasts Where ad reads are host read. Very specific. I know. But athletes is worth studying and then an additional factor

That is less discussed because on the buy side, if you were a podcast advertiser. Generally you don't wanna allocate you don't wanna discuss the implicit value. of what I'm going to describe because it lessens your bargaining position. If you're on the buy side For the podcast.

equation you want to say okay here is our URL with a code at the end And people are gonna go to this link. We're gonna track how much traffic goes to that link. Then they need to enter this really onerous code. It's Tim. Zero eight hashtag

for Three underscore seven. And based on how many people redeem that code, we will see what the ROI is on our podcasting. Advertisement. Now Anyone listening to the exaggerated example I just gave will realize there's gonna be a tremendous amount of slippage.

What does this mean? This means that the vast majority of people aren't gonna remember, nor even if they remember, Take the time. to input such a code if the savings is, for instance, say ten percent, which is why I almost always insist That if sponsors are going to give a discount. they make it compelling enough so that people will use an actual tracking code because if they are setting

The Measure of success. based on a code which most people will not put in. unless the discount is significant.

thirty to fifty percent. then I am being set up for failure because somebody who is, especially this is true with larger companies, if there is someone who's A middle manager VP of you know junior VP of marketing or associate Director of Marketing.

who is in charge of monitoring ROI. And they're basing everything on say the one out of ten people I refer who actually fill in a code. then th they are deliberately or unknowingly putting themselves in a position

to say the podcast ad didn't work. This fortunately doesn't happen very often with me, but I'm painting a picture that is something that applies all over the industry. So There are a couple of things here to keep in mind, right? There's slippage number one, you're not gonna track anything perfectly. unless it goes through something like a newsletter, in which case now I have access to the data as well. I can look at the click through rates and I can identify For instance.

Is it a copy issue? Is it a read issue? Or And this is very common. Is it a website conversion issue?

So my team spend quite a bit of time with podcast advertisers looking at their websites saying, Hey, look We can send a bunch of fish. Towards your net, but your net sucks. It's full of holes right now. Doesn't make any sense. It's upside down. And we're not gonna do it.

Unless your conversion Can be optimized. We're more polite about it than that, but it's critical that I think. For me at least, because I care about having long term sponsors.

For extended periods of time. It's a hassle. and very energy intensive for my team to deal with any type of churn. that I want all pieces of the chain to function optimally before I put forth the effort.

Two Test all these products and services and then vet them down to the top five percent that make the cut, and then to do a good read. I don't want to go through all that hassle if someone's not gonna. do the heavy lifting on their side to ensure optimal conversion. I know we're getting a little off topic, but the reason that I bring all of this up. is allocating advertising dollars. How should you allocate advertising dollars? There are different reasons you may advertise. So

I'll give an example. There was a billboard in the Bay Area. It was on two eighty. Which Takes people from the airport from SFO. to San Francisco and there's this big billboard.

And um it was a huge tech company. I'm not gonna mention the name'cause I don't know if they'd they'd like it. But The advertisement. didn't really make any sense. To anyone.

Except for one tiny sliver. Huge billboard, no doubt very expensive. And lots of people drove by it and they're like, That's the dumbest billboard ever. It doesn't even make any sense. And uh then someone in this group

conversation set, actually it makes perfect sense. You just have to realize who that billboard is for. It is for investment bankers. We're visiting the Bay Area. That's it. So if you're looking at that billboard. for conversion purposes and there's some unique

URL. the value is probably going to amount to zero. If you are looking at it from a customer acquisition perspective, and this was a gaming company. The value is probably zero. If you're viewing it, however, through the lens of courting.

The top operators in the rare festment banking. Okay. Now Perhaps you only need to be able to do it.

one person or two people or five people to pay attention to that. And suddenly that can be worth Many millions. upon millions of dollars for a given company. The reason I bring that up

Is You should ask yourself, Who do I want to know this brand? Who do I want to understand the marketing positioning of this brand. Is it? For instance.

the broadest population possible, say all readers of USA Today And all viewers of late night television, something like that. Or Is it most valuable for me?

To get in front of, say, the audience of Ted. Would I want just the two to three thousand people at Ted? To all be aware of this. And that can dictate Your choice of platform.

So if you want to say get in front of New York Times, Wall Street Journal. Policymakers, taste makers, directors, producers, et cetera. I know for a fact that that you can very easily do that. through the podcast or my podcast, that is.

Or through Five Over Friday through the newsletter. And that is highly, highly, highly targeted. The absolute numbers may not be large, even though the newsletter's got In the grand scheme of things in a country of Whatever the three hundred and fifty to four hundred million people.

That's not it. Gigantic. percentage, but you don't need a gigantic percentage if Similar to our earlier conversations, you choose the right lead dominoes. And this map perfectly to how I launched

the four hour work week also in choosing outlets. How did I choose outlets? I was looking at the first domino. as the very tightly defined demographic of say twenty to thirty five year old tech savvy males living in

New York. San Francisco. And Los Angeles. That was it. What that allowed me to do

As someone with Very little budget. Time. And capital I had.

four or five outlets. Let's just say at the time. Probably Gizmoto. Tech crunch. Life hacker, perhaps.

And a few others. Robert Scobel is a very, very influential blogger at the time. If I could get noticed. And some degree of coverage from these outlets. I would create the perception.

Of surround sound. In so much is I would appear with the four hour work week to be ubiquitous. Demographic.

Recognizing that the target, the initial target market is not the total market, and people get all caught up about this. Where they're like, Oh God, well, what if we know we need to be inclusive with everybody? If you try to make everyone your customer, no one is going to be your customer. You will fail. Ninety nine times out of a hundred. There is a time to broaden, but it is not in the early phases. In the beginning, you need the strongest foothold and handhold possible, so you need to choose your niche. And uh

This is true with so many products that end up being mainstream successes. They do not begin by trying to boil the ocean at once. They choose a Very Surgical. precise demographic. So I started with that and the expectation was

If I were able to establish a a critical mass of attention within that group. That It would then cascade. It would cascade from male to female. Now you have twenty to thirty five. Year old.

tech savvy females in the same cities looking at the same outlets. And that is exactly what happened. And then from there The age would start to bleed out. And creep. Both younger and older. That's exactly what happened. And then from there, from those cities with very high density and large populations.

Including a critical mass of People with broadcast capabilities, let's say bloggers, people using Twitter, et cetera, which launched publicly officially at the same South by Southwest. that the four hour work week did in March of two thousand seven.

That If you choose the right initial dominoes. you can allow cascades to take care of a lot of the heavy lifting later. But if you were imprecise in the beginning, you're fucked. It just will not work. Even if I had a million dollars to put into the four hour work week launch.

And I think I capped my total expenses at Ten or twenty grand, almost all of which went to Events. registration and travel and housing for those events. Just FYI. But

If in instead of that twenty grand I'd had a million dollars, number one I would have made Much worse decisions. I would have been much less precise, I would have been much less creative. And if I had made poor decisions in the beginning, chosen the wrong dominoes, and then tried to fix it, Say six months later, by

pouring money into it. It would have All then. Cash in a pile lit on fire. on the sidewalk. It wouldn't have done anything. So

How the hell do we get onto all this? Wow, I gotta. I got a preacher's fire in my belly. I don't know what happened there. Oh yes, we're talking about suggest a criteria for choosing podcasts to allocate advertising dollars towards. All right, so there you go. You got a long rambling sermon. Uh instead of a short answer, but hopefully that at least provides some of the Questions that might be helpful.

and a recognition of some of the invisible Risks and benefits. Uh choosing through one criterion alone. If you

run a direct to consum or direct response business you need At least some, if not most, of your advertising to return a positive ROI or a media efficiency ratio. But you don't need all of it to do that.

You don't need all of it to do that. There is some degree of brand advertising. Or creation of awareness, which unfortunately Or kind of smoke screen excuses that get used to justify a lot of shitty decision making, but you can be very surgical about how you might approach such things. And in the very beginning, for instance

sponsoring the UFC for my sports nutrition company was exactly that. I did not need the UFC to return. All of my sponsorship. Cost. It was a strategic decision on a whole bunch of different levels. And you can afford a couple of those experiments as long as you recognize

Or assume. that the trackable ROI will likely be zero dollars, at least in the intermediase. Okay.

So long answer. This is from Bradley. My wife is wonderful, but she has a bad relationship with herself. What advice do you have for people to increase self-love? Thanks, Tim. Read Radical Acceptance by Tara Brock. T A R A B R A C H And I believe she has an online course that also focuses on radical acceptance, so you can take a look at that. As well.

From Joel, would I ever appear on Joe Rogan's podcast again, or would that level of exposure bring too much unwanted fame at this point in your life? I think it'd be fun to be on Joe's podcast again. It was A lot of fun when I did it the first two times very long ago. This is before Joe Rogan was the undisputed king of all podcasts. So uh I know he has an overabundance of guest options, but At some point, if it ever made sense for him, I think it would be fun to be on again.

Have I ever tried backcountry skiing? This is from Ulrique. Could be something for you. I just got some good recommendations in Austria. Yes, I did my first Backcountry trekking. So with conversion skis that allow you to lift your heel, but then lock in for downhill. Last year in the Rockies.

And uh well, effectively the Rockies in the American West. And Thought it was absolutely spectacular. I anticipated it would be more like cross country skiing, which I find very awkward and slippery and feels unstable on the knees, but using the touring boots

That allow you to connect and disconnect or elevate the heel. I absolutely had a blast. So yes, I may want those recommendations in Austria at some point. I had a great time. All right. You know here, I'll I'll answer this one just as a teaser. So Alright, this is from Theron. I think that is It's a cool name. Hopefully I'm pronouncing it correctly.

Can you give us some alpha on your NFT project code name Project Five Five? Is KevKev helping you with it? When can we expect more about it? Can we the supporters group get first access So all I'll say

is I will I will confirm that project five five five is in fact me. So I will I will give you that. And there will be a lot more coming soon. I do have a lot of excitement and I get giddy just thinking about it.

Surrounding this, it's gonna be fucking ridiculous and completely absurd. I'm just gonna warn everyone in advance. It's gonna make a lot of people cover their eyes. With their hands. With a huge WTF Tim Ferris. Oh my God. I'm sure that some percentage will think to themselves, I'm so disappointed. No doubt they'll tell me that. The internet loves to tell people that. I'm so disappointed. I expected so much more. So key to happiness, low expectations, don't expect anything other than possibly letting out an oh my fucking god laugh when you see this whole thing.

So For the time being I'll just confirm that project five five. Is in fact. Yours truly. All right, guys. Thank you so much for all the time. Hopefully this was helpful. I had a good time. There are some great questions, both in the live feed and in those submitted. And uh I think we will

Come to a close. Right now. Uh I am On EST, so almost five fifty five EST, which I'll take is a good omen.

Alright, everybody. Thank you very much and have a wonderful evening. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up. in the uh the world of the esoteric as I do, it could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite.

of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out, just go to fourhourworkweek.com, that's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out, and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by Viore Clothing, spelled V-U-O-R-I. Viori, I've been wearing Fury. at least one item per day for the last few months and You can use it for everything. It's performance apparel.

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