Hello boys and girls, ladies and germs, this is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers from all different disciplines. My guest today is Guy Roz at guy Roz Raz. He is the Creator and host of the popular podcasts how I built this wisdom from the top and the rewind on Spotify. He's also the co-creator of the Acclaim podcasts TED Radio Hour and the Children's Program. Wow in the world. He is in a sense.
Since the Michael Phelps of podcasters at least according to New York Times profile not long ago. He is the only person to ever have three shows in the top 20 rankings worldwide simultaneously. He's also received the Edward r-- Murrow award the Daniel schorr journalism prize the national headliner award and the nabj award that is among many others and was a Nieman journalism fellow at Harvard. He lives in the Bay Area his new book how I built this
Subtitle the unexpected paths to success from the world's most inspiring entrepreneurs is out. Now. You should check it out. It is an absolutely incredible compilation of stories and tactics past podcast guest Adam grit describes it as quote. This is an incredible quote quote the mother of all entrepreneurship Memoirs. It is a must read for anyone who wants to start a business grow a business or be inspired by those who do that checks pretty much all the boxes you
Can find him online at Gyros.com g uy r AZ.com on Twitter at Gyros Instagram at guy dot Roz.
This episode is brought to you by Peak T. That's Pi Q UE. I have had so much tea in my life. I've been to China. I've lived in China and Japan I've done ttours. I drink a lot of tea and 10 years plus a physical experimentation and tracking has shown me many things Chief among them that gut health is critical to just about everything and you'll see where T is going to tie into this. It affects immune function Weight Management Mental performance emotional health. You name it? I've been drinking fermented puer.
He specifically pretty much every day for years. Now who are T delivers more polyphenols and probiotics than you can shake a stick at it's like providing the optimal fertilizer to your microbiome. The problem with good power is that it's hard to Source. It's hard to find real poo error that hasn't been exposed to pesticides and other nasties, which is super common. That's why Peaks fermented Puerta crystals have become my daily go to it's so simple. They have so many benefits that I'm going to get into and I
I first learned about them through my friends. Dr. Peter Atiya and Kevin rose pink crystals are cold extracted using only wild harvested leaves from 250 year old tea trees. I often kick start my mornings with their poo are green tea their poor black tea and I alternate between the two the rich earthy flavor of the black specifically is amazing. It's very very it's like a delicious Barnyard very PD if you like whiskey and stuff like that, they triple toxin screen all of their products for heavy metals pesticides.
Sides and toxic mold contaminants commonly found in tea. There's also 0 prep or bring required as the crystals dissolve in seconds. So you can just drop it into your hot tea or I also make iced tea and that saves a ton of time and hassle. So Peak is offering 15% off their priorities for the very first time exclusive to you my listeners. This is a sweet offer. Simply visit Peak t.com Tim. That's Pi Q UE T EA.com for Tim this promotion is
Is only available to listeners of this podcast that speak t.com Port slash Tim. The discount is automatically applied when you use that URL you also have a 30 day satisfaction guarantee. So your purchase is risk-free one more time. Check it out Peak t-that's PIQ, ete. A.com slash Tim.
This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn jobs small businesses have unique needs a lot of you know this I know this and even with the uncertainty these days one thing stands unchanged and that is the importance of having the right people on your team, but hiring can be hard. It can be really expensive if you make mistakes very painful to get it wrong. I've certainly had that experience that I'm not eager to repeat it. So I try to do as much upfront screening as possible when your business is ready to make the next higher LinkedIn jobs can help you screen candidates with the hard and soft skills that you're looking.
They'll match your position with qualified members so that you can find the right person quickly using linkedin's active community of more than six hundred and ninety million professionals worldwide LinkedIn jobs can help you find and hire the right person faster. So when your business is ready to make that next higher find the right person with LinkedIn jobs, you can pay what you want and get the first $50 off just visit linkedin.com, / Tim again. That's linkedin.com Tim to get $50 off your first job post terms and
Is apply this altitude I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking the millions with living tissue over metal endoskeleton.
Guy welcome to the show.
Thanks so much for having
me and I have so many questions so many questions for you. I've been really looking forward to this and I thought I would start with a very important question and that is are you willing to come to this interview and surrender hundred percent? Yes,
I've surrendered. Yes,
and that might seem to my long-term listeners an odd place for me to start but as I understand it you
When we asked your guests that question and it seems like you are a master of creating safe spaces and I've read you describe how I built. This is not a show about business but in a sense a show about vulnerability, so what are some of the things that you've found helpful the things that you do to help put interviewees at ease.
I think the first the first thing I do to him is I have a conversation with everybody before they come on the show months before they come on the show.
And the reason why I do that is because
You know my show is not Meet the Press. We're not interrogating politicians about public policy. It's a show about someone's journey and they don't have to come on the show. It's voluntary. We don't want anybody to feel forced that they're coming on the show, but I want everybody to understand how we operate. And so the first thing I do when I when we reach out to somebody is we set up a time for us to talk and I basically say that I'm look,
This is going to be really different from most of the interviews you do because a it's going to be long and be there's no preconditions. I'm going to know as much about you as I can possibly know because we will have done a really deep dive research profile on you and you have to be willing to talk about everything and unless it's you know something that was very personal like a divorce or something like that that
Not really relevant, but in general what I say is that, you know, everything's on the table because a human story is a 360-degree story and if we're just talking about the Facebook highlight reel of your life. It's not going to be an honest conversation and in our audience is not going to connect to you and you will be doing yourself a disservice and that that's really kind of how how I start the process and then you know when we have the conversation several weeks later we've already
She had that kind of interaction and encounter. So that's kind of the first thing that I do before I sit down with somebody
and if we double click on the research profile and more broadly speaking just prep for a given episode if you can reflect back and maybe it's somewhat standardized I would imagine you have some some processes that have been refined to best practices over time. But what is the prep look like how do you build a research profile? There's so many
Ways to approach this I'd be very curious to hear you expand on that.
I mean I have been in journalism my whole life. I started out as a reporter when I was 22 and
Basically the job, you know, the job of a reporter is to become an instant expert reporters really are dilettantes. Right? We don't have a you know, we don't have a PhD in a very narrow subject. But but good reporters learn a lot about a subject very quickly you have to be able to do that. You know, when I was a reporter, I would be sent to Macedonia because there was a flare-up in a conflict and I would have 24 hours to get there and I would rush to a bookstore and buy everything I could about.
Ms. Dhoni in the Balkans and start to read it's similar with interviewing the people who come on the show. Obviously. I have a team that helps me gather all that information. But depending on on who the person is if they've written a book I will have read the book if they have been around a long time. There's usually a lot of material
We do a really extensive background search and check on the person for both public information and even non-public information and its really designed to make sure that we can contextualize any you know, someone's story. We want to know everything about them and everything about their business and their lives because lives are complex. So sometimes we come across things that you know that are not public that maybe might be a little bit embarrassing and will you know, we'll talk about it.
On the phone first and and kind of talk through how we're going to tackle that thing. Could you give an
example of what non-public might be and how you find it? I assume it's not a Dick Tracy trench coat wearing character following somebody around. Yeah, you give an example of non-public
so there wasn't an entrepreneur who I really wanted to interview is a wonderful story and had phone call with this entrepreneur.
A really interesting category brand and it was you know, we had this call and it was a good conversation. And then once we started to do some research we discovered that this entrepreneur actually had spent some time in jail for Securities fraud in the 1980s. Okay. This was not in any of the public profiles or articles that we read about this person.
so we called this person back up and I'm being obviously deliberately vague we call this person back up and I said look, you know, we came across this this story that clearly when you were younger person you committed Securities fraud or were convicted of it and spent some time in jail, you know, we're going to have to talk about this and you know, hopefully you can kind of address it and say, you know, I was stupid and young and greedy or whatever it might be but you know in in context I think it'll be really interesting for people to hear about about it and about
Your life and about the decisions you made and what you learned from that and this person said I will not talk about that. I refuse to discuss that and that was that's fine. I said I completely respect that when you're ready to talk about it. Let me know and we'll do the episode with you. So we did not in the end have that person on the show, but then you know, you've got people like, you know, like Steve Madden who went to jail for you know, the Shoemaker who went to jail for two years also for Securities fraud and was really open to talk about it and what
he learned about it and how that changed his life and shaped who he is because as he told me on the show, you know, he was greedy. He got really greedy at a certain point in his life. He was in a bad place. He was high on coke and he committed fraud, you know went to jail for two years, but really kind of turned his life around and actually has become a prison reform activists. So I think that that I'm Not Looking for Angels or Mother Teresa's no no one is
Like that, I'm not like that but I'm looking for people to put their life stories in context. So so that's when we you know, that's that happens sometimes because we really do spend a lot of time diving into the stories of the people who come on the show. And by the way what I I sometimes joke with people coming to show Tim what which is I say, you know, when I interview you there's a good chance. I will know more about your life then then you even know.
At that moment because it's so fresh in my mind, you know because people will talk about their stories and in the in the process of being interviewed, they'll sometimes it was 1996 and you know, as a first time I made a sale and I know that it happened in 1995 and I will stop them they'll say hey just to interrupt you actually have to 95. Can you hear me say that and I'll say really and because you know, we want this we want the show to it is a single person's narrative and a single narrative oral history.
Always going to be problematic, you know, we we don't have multiple voice on documentary. There are multiple voices who can weigh in so we try to play the role me and my team we try to play the role of making sure that it is factually correct and fair to all the people whose voices are not represented in the episode.
Thank you. That makes sense. I want to ask a question and I'm sure there will be more about how I built this and I'm going to frame this maybe in an unusual way in the reading that I've
done you seem to be a very self-effacing guy. So I'm going to comment this obliquely. How would your wife explain why or how how I built this became as popular as it has
become I'll take a crack at it on her behalf. Probably probably my perspective will come into it.
I think it became here's here's what I would say. I had a show called The TED Radio Hour, which is still around. It's a terrific show and you were on it. Actually. I've interviewed I had you on it. And that was really just an amazing experience to be able to develop that show. I got very lucky Tim. I rode the podcast wave very early. So TED Radio Hour was launched in 2013 and podcasting really started to take off with cereal with that shows.
Cereal, you know your podcast probably even even saw a rise, right all the all podcast that were around. So I Rise and so, you know, all of a sudden TED Radio Hour, you know with the combination of the Ted brand the NPR brand and then just podcasting rising and and look I think we made a really high-quality show. It's still a terrific show. We got a big audience, you know, we all of a sudden had millions of people listening to the show every month and sort of on the strength of that how I built this
Side project it was it was never intended to be what it became really? It was let me put this out into the world and see if there's interest I and I should say I should add to the caveat that I'm not you know, I am an entrepreneur I've started businesses, but I'm not Richard Branson. I'm not Tim Ferriss. You know, I'm for most of my
life God what does need two of those?
I mean you're you know, you've you are kind of a model for a lot of entrepreneurs and I for most of my career as a
Journalist, and there's an entrepreneurial things you have to be and do to be journalists. But that was what I did for most of my career and for me how I built. This was really an extension of what I was doing which was telling stories and to me the idea of like a great story like great film has just a clear arkwright. You've probably read Joey Pride Joseph Campbell's work when you were in college and know about who you know, the hero's journey, right and
Just listen to the power of
myth interview series with Bill Moyers the wires the last few weeks.
Okay, so you write and and have George Lucas use this to make Star Wars and it's an amazing concept that every story has a roughly the same narrative Arc. It's whether it's Gilgamesh or the Odyssey or Harry Potter and Joseph Campbell kind of codifies us and I felt like in with business and brands in the building of
Something big you can kind of Trace elements of that Journey, you know, there's the abyss the trough of Sorrow, whatever people call it. You know the slant you slay the dragon you almost died you find a mentor. I mean you return to the Village it's all bits of those archetypes are found in in stories about business. And so I really wanted to figure out a way to tell hero's journey stories. And by the way, I could do that. I think you could do that with athletes, you know, you could do
that.
With other in other categories, but I just thought business would be interesting but I didn't you know, we didn't like when you start to your show probably like we didn't test marketed we didn't do a bunch of advanced research. We just put it out there and kind of
You know just said, let's see what happens and I think like a lot of things that become successful. Our great success was Word of Mouth, you know, I mean, obviously there's some built-in advantages which is the show is distributed by NPR which is a huge podcast company in platform, but I think it's a you know as a combination of
Hearing really deep dramatic stories and hearing them told in a cinematic way, you know the the show really we designed the show to be very visual that it's a journey and I think people just started to connect with those stories even people who are not into business people who were just just kind of needed a shot in the arm, you know that day or that week and that's really how it started to get popular and here we are today. So, I mean, I'm not trying to sound
Found falsely modest here. But I really I was very surprised at how successful and popular became I really was I want
to add a few observations that may or may not be true. But there is speculation. I think the show also benefits from a in a sense a singular Focus that is well conveyed in a tightly curated format with a prescriptive title, right?
it has focus in a an ocean of floats and Jetsam and the sense that there are many podcasts one might even say my podcast included that can really Meander all over the place and I think that with how I built this people are able to ascertain immediately whether or not they are interested just by looking at the thumbnail and that is I think a rarity in the
World of podcasting. I do think that there's the end it's not just the the face of the podcast that is the book cover. But the way that you as you described take a story and create something that is emotionally compelling with the touch points. The archetypes these stages in the hero's journey that are immediately subconsciously recognizable and strike a chord with people who are listening. It's so reliable.
Yeah, I think
People hear those stories and I think that's me. I'm just like that person like right like like Jamie siminoff who founded a ring. You know, he he was the kid who used to take apart radios and televisions and build his own radio controlled cars and had a frog like remember the frog that radio-controlled car when you do yeah. He like, you know, he was that kid who's go into the to the like hobby shop and building his own kits and I think people hear these stories and they
ink or they hear Stacy Brown of Chicken Salad Chick who started a restaurant Empire of chicken salad, you know selling chicken salad or they hear these stories and I think they're not superheroes, you know, they're not any different at a certain point in their life. Nobody would take their call Evernote take Stuart Butterfield's call today, but not at the beginning, you know, even Howard Schultz not at the beginning and that's what I'm trying to convey and I think that's also how people connect with this idea. And by the way the
How I built this originally I've actually never talked about this not to keep the secret but I've no one's asked me about it. I never I just you just reminded me of it. But originally I was gonna call the show The Hustle.
Okay,
because I thought in 2015 when I started working on this that that was more propulsive, you know, I wanted how I built this to be kind of like the anti NPR, you know, NP.
ER has this reputation right this kind of almost ASMR kind of way way of sounding right, you know, like people say, oh the dulcet tones of NPR, you know, like this is NPR and the reality is there is some of that right and but but the reality is a lot of NPR that doesn't sound like that, you know
that you have to pause for a second if people don't know the acronym that you referred to
Google it we're going to move on but please continue.
You know, it's like this is NPR. But the thing is is that a lot of NPR programs don't sound like that and you might not hear them because it might just be podcast, you know, like code switch or Planet Money or more or the shows that I do and I wanted this to be like almost
The counter to what NPR sounds like I wanted the theme song to be like I wanted the theme song of the show. In fact run. Tina are blue who wrote the theme song and was my first producer now has his own show on NPR who wonderful show called through line. He was a DJ I had met him and I was looking for freelance producer to help me launch the show he knew nothing about radio and I just loved him. He was just the nicest person I've ever met. So anyway, he came in and did a temp gig with me and that's how we launched the show and then he became my first producer but
I said he's also composers I said I want the theme song to sound like this song by Beck. It's the first song off the album. I'm blinking now have to look it up, but it's a song by Becca and I said I want I want this set this propulsive sound Inspire what you write and so he wrote this song and its various like god, dammit doing it and dananananana tan tan tan and a ton. So, you know, it was really like very very different than
The Morning Edition theme right like very kind of propulsive and almost in your face. And so I thought the hustle, you know, it's the hustle and I just thought it was a great title. I thought I was going to be so, you know, that's the that was really how I just it was so want a title so bad and then we did some legal check and determine that it was not a good idea that we would run into some challenges with other shows this hustle that hustle. So back to the drawing board. I said right how I built this which actually
Was one of the names I thought of but I thought it was kind of a boring name. But I mean it turned out to be the right name because imagine if me who is like, you know had the show called The Hustle, you know, it just is so not me and so not what the show is and and how I built this really kind of like the boring sort of okay, we'll do that one, but it turned out to be the right decision and so sometimes things happen for a reason. So how I built this simple. You know, what the show is about.
Although in the beginning some people did wonder whether it was a show about like a Home Depot show like building things. So we've managed to overcome that the
literalism and the internet are frequent bed fellows. He I thought our to avoid a little bit of that and I have an embarrassing confession to make which is my initial title for the four hour work week, which one could very compellingly argue still sounds like an infomercial product you'd see it to in the morning, but the title of the book
In the book proposal that was that was shopped around was lifestyle hustling also vetoed if we did for non trademark reason. Yes. Yeah. So you your you and we have been talking about how I built this you often cover pivots of different types critical decisions that are made to change direction in the context of an entrepreneur's life or a company and I want to ask you about
What seems to be a pivot in your own life and it seems like this happened around 2012 and this is a leading question. So, please feel free to rewrite the question.
But I'll Rita little bit here from and this is on a site that I did not expect to have as a source. But why La I not state.gov just full interview with Kyra's but it begins with this little excerpt news reporters by training and tradition. I think identify problems without talking about Solutions and in general the profession frowns on Solutions based reporting and it goes on and then it talks about where I should say quote you a saying I think for me the real
the turning point was in 2012 is an election year. There's a lot of division within the u.s. Hosting a news magazine on NPR and then you're culminated with the Newtown shootings. And for me that was it. I was done with the news at that point. Can you talk about my understanding is then that's when you really shift it into focusing on TED Radio Hour. This seems at least based on the research to potentially be really important this period could you speak to
that I'll talk about Newtown First is the hardest thing for me to talk about and then I'll come back to the other.
Part, I'm a parent and an 11 year old and a 9 year old and that the day that shooting happened. I was asked to host our national live coverage and it was one of the hardest things I've done in my life. Now. I've covered five Wars I've seen human beings dead. I saw humans die before my eyes. I never got near Newtown. I never went there. I never saw it.
But it was so difficult for me. It was this intense feeling of sadness and despair. I remember reading an interview with President Obama after he left office and he said that was actually the hardest day of his presidency and I still think about that day. I it's hard. It's just hard, you know, because because I've got kids and I just think about those parents and that was sort
Exactly and for me, I mean it was really building up for a while. I was getting tired of how news organizations do news. I'm still tired of it. I think most news organizations forever and ever thought that there was something called objectivity and that they determined what that was and it was usually older white men. Nothing wrong with older white men. I'm you know, I'm just saying it was just that determine what objectivity
He was and that we were basically we need to think of ourselves as robots as automatons who had no feelings or views or thoughts about the world. We were just there to deliver the news and if you asked most reporters and even to this day, if you ask a lot of reporters in Washington, they will say look. All I do is call balls and Strikes that's my job, but I never thought that that was my job. That's not what why I wanted to be a journalist. I wanted to be a journalist because I probably naively
Leaved and still believe that the more knowledge people have about other people the more people know about other people's stories.
It's more likely that that will make that person more empathetic and I always thought if I went overseas and I lived overseas and it was Rose a reporter for many years. If I went overseas and told those stories about people who were living in war zones or conflict zones or who had no control over the process or the conflict happening around them. If I could tell those stories then I could make a contribution.
To better human understanding I was not going to do that on my own. Obviously. I was not personally going to change the world but I think many people want to do something that will have an impact on the world in a small way. And for me my small way was to be a reporter and to tell stories and when I was the host of all things considered by the time I became the host of that show in 2009, you know, I had a hard time.
Delivering the news in a way that needed to be delivered because there were just so many stories that on the face of it just seemed totally absurd and wrong and false. I mean and the way and even the way news organizations covered, you know the rise of the tea party for example, as if it was, you know, this Grassroots populist anti-government movement of people who wanted, you know,
No deficits and no debt. I mean that was nonsense. We know that today we know that so much of that was propped up and influenced by huge multi-billionaire mega donors to these organizations with names like freedomworks and you know, whatever and they very methodically kind of organized this so-called movement that eventually resulted in the election that we had in 2016. But you know, it's just a small example of how
How we me and my colleagues in the news media really just bent over backwards to be be so objective that you don't call things out when they need to be called out and I think that there are long-term consequences for doing that. So in my view, I felt like if I was going to make a difference if I really got into this profession to make a difference in the world. It wasn't going to be through telling the news. You know II had spent at that point.
By the time I left in 2012 15 years as a reporter and I didn't feel like the world was getting any better. I felt like especially in our country is getting more polarized. You know, I felt like people were angry and angrier. It's even worse today that was 2012. And so, you know, it was a kind of a culmination of things in my mind where I thought I need to figure out how to do what I originally wanted to do with my life and my career but in a different way and
that's really what kind of led me to to leap at the chance to collaborate with Ted to produce the TED Radio Hour and create that show which which is how I kind of left the news World.
I'd love to explore some of your influences. What are the factors that have perhaps helped shape you in a way or what are the things that might indicate the convictions and principles that guide you and I'm probably going to butcher the pronunciation of this also.
A book that popped up. There is one you have read repeatedly is omage to Catalonia my getting that
pronunciation Homage to Catalonia. Yeah.
Yeah homage. There we go on putting a faux French spin on it, but homage know how much am I getting this? Right? Well, I'm dumb
really out. Jerry exact different just different pronunciations. I always say Homage to Catalonia. Yeah,
very very forgiving by George Orwell. Could you describe for people who don't know this book?
What it is and why it has made an impact on you.
I mean George Orwell is a really complicated figure I should say at the outset, you know, there are writings of his at are certainly racist and anti-semitic and are another problematic. But by the time he died, he was sort of seen as a champion for, you know against imperialism and you know anti-racism and so on and so forth.
Putting that to one side for a moment George Orwell who I think in some ways is some some things about him are overrated and I think sometimes he tends to be over venerated in part because the late great incredible Christopher Hitchens wrote so much about George Orwell and Hitchens is was such an important public intellectual in the United States and really around the world and people had so much respect and admiration for him that you know that he has really elevated.
George Orwell, but George Orwell was a was a leftist. He was a committed, you know leftist who went to fight in Spain with the Republicans to fight against the fascists and the the rough outline of the story is that you know, the Republicans were basically social socialists right like social Democrats who wanted a who had this utopian vision for Spain that was free and fair and equitable.
And Progressive a light unto the world, right? But they were facing this very powerful foe in the fascist led by Franco backed by the Nazis in the mid-30s and the Republicans were backed by the Communists by the Soviet communist. And what what happened very rapidly was a split between the Communists and the Republicans split is not exactly the right way to describe it but essentially or will got
there and he discovered that there was an internecine war between these two left-wing movements, you know, which was that one left-wing movement wasn't pure and left enough for the extreme left movement the communist movement and he came there with his idealism to fight against Fascism and to unite all of these, you know groups on the left to defeat this, you know, this incredibly evil force.
And became so disillusioned at the cynicism that he saw on his own side not to turn him into a right winger. He was he was a leftist his whole life, but it was it's just a story about purity and the false promises of Purity and that the world is full of nuance and it's full of contradictions. And to me that is what it means to be human. I mean, I admire
Meyer people and respect people who have strong held views that you remember George Bush used to talk about, you know his certitude and and I have respect for George Bush as a human being not a super supportive of his politics, but I don't believe in certitude. I actually really believe that at least for me that I'm open to having my the My Views changed, you know, I welcome that I'm constantly interrogating.
how I feel about the world and the things I think about the world, you know, I was reading about like Bayesian analysis, you know that this idea that you know, the last thing you think that you've read or you know about, you know becomes sort of in your mind and actually becomes like the thing that you believe or was the most present and Beijing and analysts are constantly interrogating what they believe to come to a fuller understanding of a subject, you know epidemiologist talked about this a lot and
I love that idea. I love the idea that I can talk to somebody who may know a lot about a topic or subject or an issue and can really convince me that the way I think about it is wrong or that maybe I should rethink it and that's that to me is what that book speaks to the there's another version of that book, which I recently reread and really recommend that people recall Darkness at noon by Arthur Kessler also written in
Around that time were in 1941, I believe and it was about the Soviet trials the stalinist trials of the 1930s and you know, you read that book and you realize that the Soviet Union really was a never very for just a very brief period of time was it truly a socialist country in the ideals of what socialism were meant to be. It was a dictatorship. It was I mean, they were very few differences between, you know, stalinism the
Chism of stalinism and the fascism of any other fascist State I mean it was a police state it was filled with Terror. It was filled with paranoia. So, you know, unfortunately it gets kind of conflated with socialism. But it you know, you read that book and you realize that you know that when humans pursue Purity when they pursue, you know, these ideals of Purity it can really lead to disaster.
That's why I love those books because as a reporter as an interviewer as a person, you know, I'm always looking to have my views changed. I'm always open to it. I want to learn from people. That's why do it's why you do what you do, you know, we do this because for free we get to learn from other people and what a gift that is, you know to know that a on any given day might whole world can be blown apart, you know, and how exciting is that?
Talk about a specific
Cific it is exciting and I agree that the in some way the I'm not going to call it a Fool's errand but it's maybe Faustian bargain is better way to look at it. The the search for pristine truth is not just sometimes but usually leads to disaster in one form or another right because it would create these incredible blind spots. Yeah and Freedom Fighters can become tyrants very quickly when they begin to look at things in a binary.
Yeah. I mean look at
material flexibility excellent example
just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by wealthfront. Did you know if you missed 10 of the best performing days after the 2008 crisis you would have missed out on 50% five zero percent of your returns. Don't miss out on the best days in the market stay invested in a long-term automated Investment Portfolio wealthfront pioneered the automated investing movement. Sometimes referred to as Robo advising and they currently oversee 20 billion dollars of assets for their clients.
Front can help you diversify your portfolio minimize fees and lower your taxes takes about three minutes to sign up and then wealthfront will build you a globally Diversified portfolio of ETFs based on your risk appetite and manage it for you at an incredibly low cost wealthfront software constantly monitors your portfolio day in and day out so you don't have to they look for opportunities to rebalance and tax-loss harvesting to lower the amount of taxes you pay on your investment gains. Their newest service is called autopilot, and it can monitor any checking account for excess cash.
To move into savings or an investment account. They've really thought of a ton they've checked a lot of boxes smart investing should not feel like a roller coaster ride. Let the professionals do the work for you go to wealthtrack.com Tim and open a wealthfront investment account today and you'll get your first $5,000 manage for free for life. That's wealthfront.com. Tim wealthfront will automate your Investments for the long term and you can get started today at wealthfront.com / Tim.
Let's talk about how you are views have changed as it relates to your own experience of depression. You've been quite public about this seems like you related to it differently when you were younger at least compared to perhaps how you speak about it. Now. Could you tell us more about your experience with depression and relating to
depression? Well, first thing I would say about it Tim is that I know you've talked about it too. Is that it?
It's not for me. It doesn't feel courageous to talk about it now because I have
you know, I'm I'm in a privileged position. I have these shows and I have a platform. So I don't think that talking about depression for my perspective is courageous I talk about it because I want younger people and even people who aren't you under to understand that it is not strange. You are not broken. You're not you know, they're all these things that I think people who are under experiencing depression think about and go through
You know and I remember feeling selfish like how could you feel this way? You know, how could you be so self-absorbed? I would say things to myself that that I remembered just feeling horrible about feeling horrible, you know, and totally and I remember when I was when I was in my early 20s, I was sort of
I think like a lot of young people wasn't quite sure how to navigate my life. I think it's much much more acute today even I mean, I'm 45. I think it's much more acute today among young people than even when we were in our 20s when I think about it. Now what I realize is that throughout our lives most of us have a safety net, you know for lucky enough to have that we we have school elementary school and middle school.
And high school and if you know and then we go on to college and their people cheering us on and there's always a safety that you always know what's going to happen the next year. You're going to go to grade 11 or become a sophomore junior and people are cheering you on and and you're you know, you're in college and you're doing some interesting things you might be on the student newspaper or you might organize a club or you might have belonged to a an activist group and you have an identity, you know, people know you oh, there's Tim he's
He's the social justice activist or there's guy. He's the newspaper writer and then you finish and you're expected to be an adult. You're 22 in a lot of cases and your whole life is already is kind of been mapped out, but then that's safety nets gone. And I think when you combine that with all of the changes that are probably happening not probably that are happening in our brains between the
As of 18 and 29. It's a recipe for depression anxiety, you know the when we were in our 20s, we didn't know as much about how the human brain develops as we do now. We now know that the human brain the executive functions of the human brain continue to develop until our late 20s early 30s that the brain is not fully formed. There's a lot sloshing around in there and you combine that with
if you know the circumstances of entering life without a net all of a sudden and it's not surprising that a lot of young people experience anxiety depression and in my case, it hit me like a train, you know, I was outwardly, you know, things seemed. Okay. I was starting my career at NPR and just pounding the pavement and writing for the Washington City paper and trying to you know, get my articles published and
but inside I was a mess, you know and
And I couldn't explain it to myself. I couldn't understand what was happening and I couldn't talk about it with anybody because I grew up in a house where that was mental health was not seen as a real thing that it was lunacy that you know, that didn't there was no such thing as mental illness. I think a lot of people can relate to that. You know, now of course, we we talked about it a bit more but you know back then you know, and when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s
What mental health issues were seen as crazy and you just didn't talk about it and for me, you know, it really began to culminate in just not getting out of bed and not coming to work and calling in sick and making excuses for not going in and you know, my around age 24. I was in really really just bad desperate shape. I didn't know what to do. I felt trapped in my body and also in
mobilized and I couldn't talk to anybody about it because I was embarrassed. Also, I was really embarrassed and ashamed and just really wanted to just die. You know, I really I remember feeling that's so acutely that it would just be so great. If I didn't wake up, you know, and I was very fortunate at that time to have a very important Mentor who
This day is my closest friend and she had experienced her own mental health issues. And so she she came to check in on me and my apartment in Washington DC and she knew something was wrong and she made an appointment for me with a doctor to go see a doctor a psychologist psychiatrist. Forgive me and I began to
Talk to him for several sessions and spent about five years on antidepressants. So and now I will I will say this. I don't know if the antidepressants.
More effective. I hope I don't sound like Tom Cruise but the jury is out on whether ssris are actually effective and right. This is a real legitimate debate in in Psychiatry, but I will say that knowing that I was actually I think that the knowledge that I was trying to regain control over myself helped a lot and you know, the five years that I used antidepressants helped me immensely because it whether they
it was a prophylactic effector or not that it helped and it enabled me to kind of live a relatively normal life. And what I think is really been remarkable is for me is that it doesn't leave, you know, if
you've given a depression it definitely it dark dog the black
dog gonna come back, but I find that as I've gotten older it becomes immensely more manageable.
And that's the difference is that you learn to accept that it will happen. It will pop up and as I have gotten older and have been able to reflect on it more. I've also learned how to manage and cope and kind of self heal, you know, and that's been I think that's really an important thing that I try and talk to younger people because I'm I try to make myself a
available to interns at NPR or younger people that I come across who are scared to talk about it or embarrassed and I'm just like I've been there you know, and but I want you to know that as you get older it will become more manageable and you will get it it will happen again, but it's not going to be quite as Intense or quite as difficult if you start to work through it now. Thank
you so much for sharing as you know, this is a subject that's near and dear to me in a sense.
And I'd love to ask you a few follow-up questions the first I suppose actually just a comment first which is to add to your your point of management becoming easier as you get older. I've been reading a fair amount of the writing of Anthony De Mello who was a he's since passed but he was a Jesuit priest and also a psychotherapist and his number of books awareness. Another is rediscovering life so fairly generic
Yes, but the content some of the content I find to be very very helpful. And one of the anecdotes that stuck with me from the ladder, which is a very fast read the big the beginning of rediscovering Life is quite lukewarm, but the anecdote was a description of this enlightened being let's call it a monk and the monk says before Enlightenment. I was depressed after Enlightenment. I'm still depressed but the way that I relate to the
Oppression is different and that makes all the difference and for me that really touches on the Crux of things, but I want to just because I've had a lot of experience with this and you know, you mentioned Ted. I mean that was my my TED Talk was on management of this but you said that you got off of antidepressants or you were on them for 5 years. How did you make the decision to come off of them and and why
it wasn't really a
notice decision. It wasn't like a you know a moment where I shan't I smashed a champagne bottle against the side of a ship, you know, it was it was very it was just sort of like, you know, I think I'm going to try this and you know, I wasn't seeing a therapist. I mean at the time, you know this five-year period when I was taking antidepressants, I mean this was when I covered the Iraq War I covered the war in Afghanistan I became
The CNN correspondent covering Palestine and Israel. I was you know in and out of Iraq and bedding with the military
goat slaughtered in your honor.
Yeah, right. I mean I was I was constantly on the move which I think also probably had a huge impact on on my ability to cope because I was racing and racing and racing around a lot, you know, and it was really just a kind.
of
Let me try this out and it was fine. I will say that when that ended when I stopped being a foreign correspondent. I came back to the United States and I came back to NPR because I left NPR went to CNN and then I went back to NPR.
I I went right back into a depression very quickly. I mean, it was sometimes more intense sometimes less intense and part of that was because I think I wasn't racing around. I wasn't hopping on planes all the time. I was back in Washington DC.
Kind of fig trying to figure out what I was going to do with NPR and then I started to cover the Pentagon for a while and it was really hard and dull and challenging personally and you know, there was a moment in that time period where it was about 2007 where I really thought. Okay. I'm kind of done with this profession. You know that this is really not I don't really have
a future here in part because I really wanted to transition from being a reporter which I wasn't happy doing and I didn't think I was very good at it. I was fine. I was perfectly fine. I just I
wasn't you want a hell of a lot of awards. Somebody wasn't very good at it. Yeah, but you know this thing
about Awards awards or nonsense. I mean I'm being totally I mean awards are people who get Awards of people who submit their work, right? So that's the first thing you guys submit your work. The second thing is, you know, very few words are really
You know awarded in a you know, I mean the pulitzer's have committees and some of these bigger rewards have you know, lots of committees where the people really do carefully read or most awards are kind of handed out. So yes, I have those Awards and I'm thank you for the people giving them to me, but take them with a grain of salt. So that being said, I really wanted to I felt like I wanted to have bigger conversations like this.
One, you know I wanted to be able to talk to a wide range of people and I really wanted to to host programs. And at the time I was told that I was not I did not have the right personality to be a radio host.
How is that presented to you? What does that mean? Yeah. I mean, I'm not so I'm not questioning it the statement. I'm just wondering how that was expressed to you what was lacking or wrong with your personality for radio?
I was too.
much of a military war correspondent if you can believe that nobody who here's how I built this today would even knows that I did that but that was how I was perceived and I think this is very common in a lot of you know for a lot of people that they are they work somewhere and there's a perception that's developed around them or about them and it's hard to shake that you know, sometimes the only way to shake that is to leave and in my case for true I that was my reputation, you know, and I was seeing
Has like a very serious and you know an NPR host had to be you know, like a vaudevillian actor and and I didn't happen whatever it
was whatever the given dulcet tones. You didn't have the dulcet tones.
But but I was told that I just didn't have the right personality for that and and I don't think that was an unfair assessment at the time. I think that I wish that the person who told me that he was pretty important. The time would have given me a shot to prove.
Self but I don't think it was an unfair assessment based on the work. I was doing you know, so really at that time, I began to think about what else could I do with my life, you know, I was married still em, we did not yet have a child, but we knew we wanted one and and I started to just kind of flail and look around and that that was also a very tough period what kind of Saved Me was and what has
has saved me throughout my career was always trying to reconfigure out how to regain control, you know of the situation and in that case it was applying for the Neiman Fellowship. I applied for a bunch of different fellowships and I got the Neiman Fellowship. It's a journalism fellowship at Harvard where they bring in go there for a year and they give you free tuition and get a stipend for housing and you can do whatever you want. And that was a transformational year. You know, that's really
That's when I first was exposed to the case study method which inspired I built no
kidding. Yeah, I didn't know that how that makes perfect
sense. That's when I you know, that's when I first took a class at the business school and we got the case studies and I was just fast as that. This is how they teach business school through stories. This is incredible. I mean that planted the seed in my mind for how I built this I started to host shows on WBUR in Boston that year and that really was a
Formational year so then when I finish that year, I came out of the niemen fellowship with a child. We had a child who was born my oldest son now and pay for the trip commercial here and and I became the host of all things considered on the weekend. And so that really, you know, that was a real turning point for me, but in the time before that I really did kind of return to that dark place trying to kind of figure out my life and trying to wrestle with the Demons of
Head and you know, eventually it passed again.
You seemed also have a very well a a combination of prolific output and a solid seemingly from the outside sort of identity as the sort of Heir Apparent podcast King in many respects at least in the minds of a lot of people and I'd love to somewhat along those lines ask just a little bit more about the the fellowships and the Nieman journalism fellowship at Harvard.
Formational year how much of that was seeing the case studies and so on which are fantastic and people can for those people listening who are interested find I believe Harvard Business School HBS case studies as well as Stanford Business School case studies online. You can't you can actually access some of these a lot of them the outstanding how much of it was the content versus the break versus the ability to breathe with a concrete answer to
What are you or what do you do? I'm a Nieman journalism fellow at Harvard versus something else. I'm just I'd love to hear you speak a little bit more about why that was so
transformational. It was transformational because I had been in the news world my whole professional life and anyone who has been in one industry or one place knows what it's like to develop tunnel vision, you know, you are around people who think like you in general and who
Similar interest now journalists are fascinating wonderful people. I love journalists are some of the most interesting funniest smartest people around but you know the news business and news organizations, especially NPR are extremely conservative culturally and very slow to change, you know things that that are radical at news organizations in the business world people would be like what why
A radical like what do you what do you mean? Like that's what we do every day. You're telling that's a big deal, you know, because news organizations operate with their own set of standards and guidelines and values that sometimes make a lot of sense and sometimes don't and that year just tore those blinders off all of a sudden. I'm I'm out of my environment and I recommend this to so many people I say when you're stuck in life figure out a way to just get out.
for a month or a year or six months and just as a digression, I did an episode on lock column coffee, right you have you had a lot column coffee before I have I have I did I didn't have sort of how I built this on these guys and you know, one of the co-founders he basically like he was going through a depression when they were trying to form the company Todd Carmichael and
He wanted to just drop out and leave and his co-founder said just take some time to just go and Todd like flew to a remote island in the South Pacific with no electricity
and in for a penny in for a pound. Yeah and
lived there for three months. He basically did he basically did what you do what you used to do for your books but like to actually experiment on yourself, but he did this, you know, because he had to to survive and he went out there and he lived there for three months.
It's he fished and he had no communication the outside world, but it completely transformed his mind, you know, and I for me that was the kind of a much more comfortable version of that going to Cambridge, Massachusetts and going to take classes at the Harvard Business School and the law school and the collagen but it it just it really awakened me, you know, you know how and it was that plus, you know becoming a father for the first time and I think what that really
Help me also to become strangely enough was less cynical, you know, there is a natural skepticism that you develop as a journalist, which I think is important. But often times that develops in to cynicism that many journalists are just cynical and I had some of that and I needed to get away to lose that I would never have, you know, if I was a journalist and I heard about the Harvard Business School case studies, I would have been like
Yeah bunch of you know business people making more money or something. I would have I don't know if that's what I would have said but it would have been something closer to that but getting away from that world, you know, 12 13 years ago and seeing it a completely different world for a year kind of just reawakened me. It was like I was just able to chip away and then really start to push away that cynicism just really push it away and start to kind of its like
Able to relax like dance, you know didn't I mean I say dance but you know, I was one of those kids in high school who would sit on the on the sides, you know on the sidelines and the walls during the dances because I thought the people were dancing weren't cool. You know, even though I wasn't cool. I just I didn't you know what I mean, but that year really kind of made me see the world in a different way because I was outside of my own environment and that was so important for me and that's really how
you know how I was able to to see things and just to complete two completely different lenses. Let's
talk about the patterns that you've spotted. I really am dying to ask first though about I'm still I'm still envisioning this island in the middle of the ocean with no outside communication, which could be the greatest blessing of your life or I mean, I'm getting anxiety sort of pangs of anxiety. Just thinking about it. What effect did that have on this entrepreneur
on Todd? Yeah. I mean it
He spent three months three months is a long time. Yeah in a very remote place with no electricity. No cell service. This is in the 1990s, you know, he wrote a novel which is never been published. He says it was cathartic. He says it terrible novel, but he he wrote it. He got a lot out, you know, he wrote a lot of his head out onto paper and I know you do this a lot. I know you do your journaling and
Writing things down can be incredibly incredibly important, especially when you're experiencing anxiety and just as an aside about six months ago knows maybe nine months ago. I was going through just had a lot of anxiety. I was working on this book and I was like, I had all these deadlines and live shows and I've got my kids show out in the world and how I built this and I was you know leaving TED Radio Hour and that transition.
It was happening and it's a lot of anxiety and I couldn't sleep and it was like one of the morning and my wife was up and she's like look she grabs a journal from the side of the bed. She says just start telling me what's on your mind and she wrote everything down. She just bullet-pointed everything single.
So she she did it for me you dictated. I just amazed it and good luck to
you gotta I'm going to close this up. Okay now go to sleep and we looked at that three months later and not a single thing on that list mattered.
Not a dumb rule nothing on that list mattered. It was you know things that just seemed insurmountable. None of them mattered. They were all irrelevant by that point.
That's a great intervention on her part. Did you look at it afterwards or was it just enough just enough catharsis to Simply get it out of your head and into some recorded format.
Well at that moment in time it was enough to get me back to sleep. But when we looked at it three months later it was
Shocking it was incredible. I was like, how is it that in our minds? We amplify things. We think that that these challenges in front of our eyes these anxieties we have are so big and so often they're not so often they pass with time or they are resolved or they, you know, they're less important than you think they
are. This is a good point to ask you about. I think optimism there's as I understand
It this is a trait maybe trade isn't the right label but it is a characteristic that you've identified as one of the meta characteristics of many successful entrepreneurs. And please feel free to fact-check this incorrect what I'm saying, could you expand on that? I'm just so curious because you've interviewed so many mega successful entrepreneurs how consistent is this? What type of optimism is it if that makes any sense? And how much of it is do you think is nature versus nurture?
Straining. Yeah, I am a big first of all, I'm a big believer in training. This is why I'm a fan of the work you do because you have trained yourself to develop expertise in a variety of things to prove that anybody can do this. Now. I you know, I do think that there are some people who are just born with more Charisma. That's a fact some people just have it but I wouldn't say most of the entrepreneurs on the show are born with that kind of Charisma and I wouldn't even say
That they are any different than the rest of us, but I do think that they were able to convince themselves that their idea was going to work. I'll give you an example Tristan Walker. He founded this company called bevel they make it's now owned by Procter & Gamble, they make razors and other products for men and women of color. And the reason why is because particularly, you know, African-American men when they shave oftentimes they develop
Razor bumps which are painful and scarring and really very challenging and there were almost no products that served black men and Tristan wanted to create something that was beautifully packaged that was high quality. It was designed for, you know, men who have curly hair when they're so when their hair grows back out of their beards, it wouldn't curl back into their skin. He wanted to create a razor that would solve that problem. He could not find funding for this he could
Not you know eventually found some funding but he really couldn't find the kind of funding that like Dollar Shave Club God or you know, some of these other brands Harry's and I asked him I said, why did you when this wasn't working when you weren't, you know able to Market this properly or get the sales you wanted. How did you know not like how did you know to keep going? How did you have the Optimus? He said because I knew with my heart and soul every single man that I have known my whole life.
Every black and brown man that I've known who has this problem needs it to be solved and if I can do it nobody's going to do it if this isn't going to work with me. It's not going to work with anyone and this problem is never going to be solved. He said so what kept me going was I knew this was a problem that had to be solved and I was convinced of it and that's what kept Him going today. The brand is owned by Procter & Gamble is incredibly successful. It's you know, Target and Walmart and everywhere.
Around the country and Tristan Walker is just a phenomenal inspiring guy. And that's the thing. You know, I think that it's not this blind optimism, but it is an unshakable belief that the idea they have has to be put out has to be out in the world in some form or fashion. It has to I mean, you know, Jamie semenov with ring with this doorbell company and it was he was close to bankrupt eight years ago his wife.
Almost took it almost took out a line of credit on their on their house to save this business what eventually saved him was going on Shark Tank. He got really lucky and went on Shark Tank and got this exposure. But you know, he really believed that that people would want a video doorbell. You know, he just he just in his heart and it's got he knew it and I and so I think that it is, you know, it is a learned behavior, I think.
Really believing in something is a learned behavior. I think most most of the skill most of the traits what we call traits of entrepreneurs are not actually traits. I think they are skills that are learned. I think some people are naturally more inclined to assimilate these ideas faster, but I think for the most part most of us have the capacity to learn these behaviors and skills that enable us all
Behave entrepreneurially,
I want to ask you about any of these traits that I do these types of previews of upcoming questions quite a lot. Hope it's not overly irritating. Yeah, but it's a way for me to bookmark for myself. I'm going to ask you about what traits or behaviors you have developed maybe through osmosis by doing these interviews or that you've actually copy and paste it into into practice for yourself from these these many interviews that you've done with how I
both this I just have to say I've never shared this before but since you've mentioned his name twice so Jamie and I met randomly the first time and I ended up becoming sort of a indirect investor in ring because we met I want to say around 2007 early days because he was staying at a hotel in Palo Alto. I went to the same Hotel restaurant to have a lunch meeting and I screwed up the day. I was there on the wrong day and we're the only two guys sitting in this restaurant.
Durant and he's like, hey, what are you doing here? Somehow struck up a conversation. You know Jamie's he's he's very proactive with introducing himself super Charming guy really great guy and I said, well I showed up and I showed up on the wrong day. My did my date isn't here and he's like, well do I have breakfast and so having breakfast wow, and it's it just goes to show like the little tiny bits of initiative add up over time, right you're just is
The case of Jamie he's increasing the likelihood. I don't really attribution but with someone referred to as the surface area of luck just the the open area upon which some Serendipity can stick and so we became friends and end up doing all this stuff at the time. He had a company called Simon's scribe and he's he is to your point. Certainly he's born with with certain predispositions, but he has practiced he is learned and practiced a lot of these things. So
can I Outlook and I add a story on it because yeah because he is the
Perfect example of this idea that you just put out there right which is to increase the surface area of luck. He was it sort of the low point for his business doorbot. It was called door before it was rang a friend of his called them up and said hey, I know this guy he's wants to start a social media Network. He doesn't really know much about entrepreneurship and you know, he asked me if I know any entrepreneurs and I know you you start a bunch of businesses because at that point Jamie had start a bunch of businesses and hadn't really
started a successful business yet. And so he calls up Jamie and he says hey will you be my friend and have lunch with them and Jamie's like all right, fine. I'll do it. So the day of the launch comes and it's a just a horrible day for Jamie like his business is like tanking. He's feeling really low. He's not feeling confident. He really doesn't want to go to this lunch. He knows that this guy he's having lunch with his actually comes from a family of with a lot of money and he's like, why am I going and giving him advice? What advice can I can I give this guy and it's all the way in like, Hollywood.
He's going to drive from the other side of LA and he gets to this lunch and he's hearing the guys idea and it's it's not a great idea to select a social media Network for for Hollywood agents and he asked Jamie first feedback and Jamie gives him, you know Ernest honest feedback and the guy was like, I really appreciate that and it Go by the way, what are you working on in Jamie's? Like it's nothing. It's just this say that tell me he's like, oh, well, it's he's doorbells called doorbot. It's like a video doorbell and it's you know,
we're trying to see if it'll work and he's like no ways like dude. You should go on Shark Tank and Jamie is a Glock and Jamie's like well, I'd love to go on Shark Tank. But so would 30,000 other people. He's like no. No, he's like I have a friend who's a producer on Shark Tank. He's like he's like, let me get you in touch with them that one lunch transform Jamie's life, you know, it's this idea taking opportunities when they come and understanding that luck really does.
Pass all of us by sometimes multiple times and it's really what we end up doing with it.
Definitely. I love that those stories are so similar. I mean they got so to practice so to come back to the question. I promised are there any particular habits practices characteristics that you have developed or tried to develop as a result of all of these interviews that you've done?
Yeah, I mean a lot of them I think about I think about change a lot I think about pivoting a lot and I think about interrogating what we do all of the time. I mean, this is something that you know Howard Schultz would do with Starbucks constantly interrogate what they're doing and really never allowing the company to become comfortable, you know to to always kind of stay off balance a little bit Starbucks is
Example because it's just so it's such a behemoth. I remember herb Kelleher the late herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines who you know, he didn't live in Austin, but he lived in not too far from you and Texas, I guess Pharr Texas pretty big but herb Kelleher just a wonderful man started Southwest Airlines and his motto was think small act small and that's how you get big and I wrote a chapter about this in the book because what are you saying was essentially was don't get caught.
Comfortable, you know, he saw the collapse of the big Airlines TWA and and Aloha and a bunch of other big Airlines Pan Am and he said they collapse because they got too comfortable and cocky and they they were on top of the world. And so they stopped paying attention to the things that matter like efficiencies and and and Innovation and so, you know, he was his argument. Let's think small. What sacks Mobile today Southwest Airlines is what the third biggest airline in the world. Right? And so that to me is a really inspiring way to think about
What we do to you know, I do I do try to think small and XML. I don't ever take for granted our the success of our show and our listeners. In fact, you know after the pandemic it we had a moment where our audience really just briefly collaborated not collapse it dramatically dropped and you know, I was really concerned about that and I think that's
true for a lot of people and we had this we had
this really true for me as well. Just a dramatic Decline and it was
Scary and so I started to interrogate what we were doing and whether we could do it better and we triple down. I mean we launched a new offshoot show called The how I built this resilience series, which I now do twice a week in addition to the main episode on Mondays. So domain episode Monday and then Wednesday and Friday do a live conversation with a Founder talking about resilience. And we you know miraculously we doubled our audience. We really worked and continue to work really hard on.
The other thing that you know, I've been really influenced of around is the idea of a rejection. I think that this to me is the most important skill that an entrepreneur has to develop the ability to withstand rejection which actions really hard it really sucks. Like I don't know if you ever experience this Tim when you were younger, but you know asking somebody out on a date was very hard for me to do when I was younger. I would never have done it because I was always
He's scared of somebody saying no, I wasn't like, you know, some of these people that I remember they would say. Well you asked a hundred people out of maybe one will go out with you. I wasn't like that. I've never been good with rejection. I've learned to get much better with it and why this is important is because when you are building any idea whether it's in your company, like if your intrapreneurial or you're trying to create something disruptive out in the world, you will always find people who will push back against it, right? They're always going to be people who will
Checked your idea and it's why I think a lot of successful entrepreneurs started out as sales people like Mark Cuban or Sara Blakely, you know, she was selling fax machines door-to-door Mark Cuban was selling computer software for you know CompuServe and we eventually sold the copy sir, but he was he was going door-to-door selling selling software and you know over time you get used to people saying no soliciting. No, thank you. Please leave my premises or hanging up the phone and becoming resilient to
To that and and and just knowing that you've got to keep grinding away because that is essentially what a business is about and if you can learn that if you can kind of expose yourself to rejection again and again and develop a thicker skin and ability to withstand that in my experience interviewing now, you know deep-dive interviews with more than 300 very influential entrepreneurs. I've discovered that that is really something that almost all of them have in common.
And I could not agree more. I think that the the fact that that is a not just a learnable but a condition abby'll skill if that makes sense is it's really really important. It's like developing a tan or developing strength in the gym is a progressive resistance to it. And as you get stronger, the weights will feel lighter. You can add resistance you can go for bigger targets and what if done
really infrequently might have a large impact on you gets to the point where it has no impact or negligible impact on your momentum if that makes sense. It's really really important. What do you think the podcast landscape or world will look like in two or three years? What do you think will change if you had to put on your your forecasting / prediction hat? What do you think is going to change? What do you think is going to look
like? I think it's going to be much closer to the premium television model.
I think that we are going to see more and more.
Large networks like Spotify Amazon Apple Etc platforms. I should say kind of creating walled Gardens. They may be free Wild Gardens, but walled Gardens where you can only hear, you know, Joe Rogan on Spotify or you can only hear guy Roz on Spotify or Tim Ferriss I over on Amazon, whatever might be I think that is inevitable if I'd be perfectly honest. I don't know if that's going to be great.
For consumers and I don't know if it's going to be great for podcast kind of ecosystem. You know podcasting right now is a little bit like Community radio and in the 70s, it's wide open. Anybody can start one. There are a million podcasts in the English language only a tiny tiny, you know top of a pinhead number of those podcasts have over fifty thousand listeners a week. Just a teeny tiny number and even a smaller atomic.
You know molecule fraction of that have a million or more listeners a week. It doesn't mean that it's impossible to gain that audience. I mean, the beauty of podcasting is the barrier to entry is very low anybody can start recording themselves and upload it to to these platforms. But I think that the reality is that it is also an advertising platform and where there's money to be made there are going to be you know all
The folks looking for opportunities and there's nothing wrong with that. My hope is that it's not only market-driven, you know, because I think if podcasting is entirely market-driven you're going to see a lot of content that is polarizing you're going to see a lot of politically polarizing content and also a lot of like True Crime content and I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. I enjoy some of that stuff but I don't want that to be the only thing that is rising to the top.
You know, I think that there needs to be a world in podcasting where you've got shows that are just magical and Brilliant but also expensive I mean Radiolab is an expensive show to make invisible Leah NPR's program is an expensive show to make but they're so beautiful and so brilliant and so important and so, you know, my hope is that you know, there will still be a world where that content can be created without the necessity.
E to to profit necessarily but I do think that the industry is moving in that direction. I think what's going to look more like HBO and Hulu and Netflix and you know Disney plus and etcetera Etc where you're going to probably have to subscribe or pay to these different channels to hear your favorite programs.
You mentioned in visibility in these some of these incredible shows that are expensive to produce and to Second your observation or hope that it's not just things that are projected.
Rejected to have Market appeal right that get produced in three years time. It's also a notoriously difficult to predict what there is or is not a market for it. Unless you're just going with the lazy layup, you know kind of CopyCat stuff in a given genre because if we take an example like Dan Carlin's Hardcore History amazing show, but if one were to go in prior to the success of that show and say, you know, what we're going to do we're going to do super
Great podcasts that are extremely long in some cases multi parts. So it'll take 12 15 hours about for instance. You know. Jenga's Khan and we think that that's going to have tremendous appeal.
It wouldn't get a don't get bought. No right would not get bad, which is unbelievable. Right you think about it because that shows so incredible, but if he tried to pitch that today as an unknown person. Yeah, it wouldn't get bad.
And it's so good. I mean, it's so good. So certainly
I really hope it doesn't end up in a place like you said where the stranger out-of-the-box stuff doesn't have at least a chance right a chance to prove them wrong. Yeah, and so fingers crossed certainly on my side as well. What surprised you so you have this new book how I built this easy to remember, of course the unexpected paths to success from the world's most inspiring entrepreneurs a few years from now. What from the
Book any particular stories are lessons that we haven't talked about that you think are really going to still stick with
you. I mean, there are a lot of them right but I want one that I think about a lot. You know, I live in the Bay Area and I used to live in the Bay Area and it's a very complex place because on the one hand you have incredible weather and beautiful just beautiful nature on the other hand. You know, the city of San Francisco is one of the most troubling cities in the world, you know you
That just immense wealth the highest number of billionaires in the world and you've got parts of the city that looked like Gotham City, you know where human beings are living in the most deprived conditions unimaginable conditions. And so with that backdrop, you know, I think a lot about San Francisco and I think a lot about what the tech world has wrought some incredible things right amazing.
Transformational things but things that have also been so disruptive that we don't quite we haven't fully realized how disruptive they are in a negative way. One of the things that I that struck me when I first moved here because I moved to the Bay Area two years ago from Washington DC was I took I took the ferry from Jack London Square in Oakland to San Francisco to the ferry terminal and you get out and you know, there's the Salesforce Tower.
And I think on Market Street, you've got like Twitter and Zynga and I'll all these huge tech companies, you know, and then like you're looking down Market Street and there's you know, the headquarters of Wells Fargo the world headquarters of Wells Fargo and then to the right, there's like Levi Strauss square and then further down there's a Ghirardelli Square and I just I remember coming to San Francisco as a kid and that was that was the city. It was like Levi's and ghiradelli and Wells Fargo
Ergo and the TransAmerica Tower, you know and what's amazing is if you think about San Francisco and you think about those enduring names Levi's Wells Fargo Henry Wells William Fargo. Ghiradelli Domingo. Ghiradelli. I started to look at into those stories all of those people made their money.
From servicing the gold rush. They didn't make their money from the gold rush. They all ended up in California because in one summer in 18-49 or 1850 30,000 people came to California from across the country in the world. It was an invasion of human beings searching for gold and as we know almost nobody made anything even Sutter ended up, I believe he ended up impoverished when he died, you know, it was Sutter's Mill.
Look where the gold was discovered, but the people who actually made the money were the people like Levi Strauss Who Sold tense canvas tents and then jeans Henry Wells and William Fargo who went to Stockton and some of these cities in central California to deliver help deliver packages and boxes. And that was what Wells Fargo was it was a courier service, you know, they originally had started American Express and they come out to California. Ghiradelli. He
Out to be gold prospector to but that doesn't work out so he starts making chocolates and pastries and and there you go, you know, so I'm really interested in this idea of servicing big Industries. One of the people I interviewed on how I built this in I talk about in the book is Chet Pipkin Chad Pipkin started a company called Belkin and I will bet you any amount of money that you have one of his products in your house and people listening do they've got a peripheral or a cable or some Belkin.
Thing in their house. Okay some wire to plug in your iPhone and Chet Pipkin really wanted to start a PC company in the early 80s, but he couldn't compete with Compaq and Texas Instruments and you know IBM and then all these PC clones that were coming at he didn't have the capital to do it. All he had was a soldering iron and he knew because he was a young guy and he used to hang out a Radio Shack that if you bought an IBM PC and an Epson printer, you could not connect them because
Or no peripherals that were sold to connect them people initially had to have RadioShack sell them the different plugs and then they would have to solder them themselves.
I mean, it's nuts.
He literally started building creating peripherals You by cables and solder them and then sell them to first. He got his first order he sold it to Carnegie Mellon and it enabled them to connect their IBM PCS to Epson.
Ders, well, that's that became a billion dollar business today. I mean Belkin makes all kinds of peripherals and accessories for devices and computers. So he wasn't going for the gold mine. He was selling canvas tents and jeans to the gold rushers, you know, and today that company is still here and you know, and you can't say the same thing about most of those PC clones, so I'm really fascinated in looking at a big industry.
See that especially when I talk to you in the Orange Groves. I don't don't try to replicate what boobers doing. Try and figure out how you can service Uber. You know, don't try to build the next Airbnb build a company that actually Services things around Airbnb that is really where the that's where the opportunities are. That is
a fascinating lens to use and you think about say Amazon and AWS Amazon web services right upon which so many businesses depend or the invisible.
Customer service chat companies that white label their services to these gigantic tech companies. No one would recognize right and it's the plumbing and the infrastructure and the foundation upon which these name brand companies rely, but their names themselves, like Belkin are not nearly as recognizable know they're invisible to most that is a really great way to look at it. Do you have any plans or any fantasies of
Hurting businesses outside of the outside of the podcast realm maybe already have that. I don't know.
Yeah, I mean, obviously I've got I've got a production company like to so one that does how I built this and my program was done from the top and other you know, projects around media, and I've got another production company that makes children's content. It's called Tinker cast and we make while in the world and we've got a live event series 1-1 when there is whether our Live Events and and other
Checks that we do so that's really been my main focus when it comes to to businesses, you know, they're both small businesses, but I always say to people, you know, a small business can be much more successful than a big business, you know a corner grocery store that's profitable is doing better than Uber. Let's be a legit which is not yet profitable, you know, but it's for me. I mean, I often think about I mean, I think like anybody listening to how I built this I have a million ideas of things that I would love to do and
Maybe I mean, I love food. I love you know, I've learned a lot about cosmetics and skincare products from how I built this in hair care products and I've always made things. I've never especially in the kitchen. I've never be I don't buy mayonnaise. I haven't haven't bought yogurt and 20 years. I always make it I make all my own milk nut milks, you know, kombucha. It's just things I love doing it. It's not it sounds very NPR like oh my God.
This shows and PR person who makes his own kombucha and almond milk, but I love doing it. It's just it's like my kids when I scream. I make it. My mom used to be like that. She's like I can make it because I love doing it, you know and I started to get with my wife. I started to get into like making skin creams and and you know, like just even during the pandemic, you know, because like a lot of people I get like eczema, you know, a little bit of eczema will come up and my skin will be dry and we just start experimenting and I swear.
Where do you we have made this awesome skin cream that I'm using all the time, you know, we ever going to sell it unlikely, but who knows who knows
maybe the hustle skincare for for every man and woman
if you were
to give and I know where we're probably at a point where we want to close this round of conversation sometime soon, so I won't chew up much more of your time. But if you
To give since you know Ted so well if you were to give a Ted Talk on something unrelated or let me let me rephrase that a Ted Talk on something you are not already known for what would it be you mentioned cooking cast iron pots. What it what is the subject matter that you would pick for your Ted Talk if it had to be something that would surprise most people to hear you
deliver. I know a lot about the Washington Nationals baseball team. I don't know if I'd give my TED talk about that people would not would probably would be
To find out that I'm really interested in baseball. I love baseball. I'm a big baseball fan so it could be about that. I could probably give a TED talk about get you mean usually TED Talks are about you know, a big idea, right? So I guess my big idea. I tend to talk about them on the show, you know, kindness and things like that that I always aspire to as well, you know that I'm sort of giving myself advice and looking to
as for advice to because in some ways my show and what I do is a form of therapy, you know, it's being able to talk to people and hear their their challenges and dilemmas is very therapeutic when you kind of talked through it with somebody and I guess my talk would be about for me. I mean, I think it's it's a hard one because I know that it doesn't apply to everyone and I think it can be maybe traumatic isn't the right word but challenging for a lot of people to hear but it's the one that I
I know a lot about and means a lot to me and it's fatherhood. I mean, that's the single most important part of my life. You know, I've got two boys 11 and 9. That is my identity first and foremost to me. I'm a dad, you know, I love everything about it. I live for my time with my kids and getting to take a hike with them and getting to swim with them or jump on the trampoline or I mean I even I even
Sit and watch their video games and I hate video games because I just love being around them, you know, and and they're so interesting and sometimes they drive me crazy too. But you know, like my 11 year old this this album from juice world just came out and he's just obsessively listening to it because he was so sad when juice World died and he's deconstructing the lyrics and he's like Dad. It's like he almost predicted his own death, you know, and it's just so I just love developing those connections. So for me
It's been the most fulfilling part of my life and I think that anybody who's lucky enough to experience having a child in their life will really kind of ReDiscover themselves as well. And I think that's what my talk would be
about. I got to get started on this procreation and lost my hair. You're fine. Something's don't age. Well, I gotta I gotta get moving. I
think you I think
Going to have you got you're gonna have plenty of opportunities. I think there'd be lots of people who are interested.
I mean, imagine
all the things you could teach a child him like, you know how to, you know, how to Ballroom tango dance and swim and you know across oceans and so there you go
and I promise people I will not put my child in a Skinner box. Any more than was absolutely necessary.
And guy I appreciate you you're exceptionally good at what you do take your craft very seriously and you keep yourself off balance in the sense of continual refinement and asking good questions. Not just of your guests, but of what you're doing and I certainly found that to be very clear in doing the homework for this conversation, and I'm thrilled that you have taken many of these lessons.
And learnings and stories from how I built this into how about this the book itself? I mean II really find there's a power to text power to storytelling through text and lest people forget. I mean you have a lot of history and practice with storytelling through text. So I'm thrilled that you took the time to concentrate on the new book how I built this sub totally unexpected paths to success.
Us from the world's most inspiring entrepreneurs. I imagine that it can be found wherever books are sold during these pandemic times and where are the best places for people to find you? Otherwise your pre your preferred
Outlets the best place to find me the best way to find a book is you can go to garage.com and all the information is there but to find me I'm on Instagram. I like Instagram. I might guide that Roz. I'm on Twitter at gyro.
I'm all my mom on Facebook too, but don't love that one as much so even though Instagram is Facebook. But yeah, I fun on Instagram, you know, I put personal stuff on there my kids and but also like stuff from the show and and it's kind of a mixture so that I try to just put myself out there and
Yeah, so you can find me there.
Oh you're doing you're doing a good job of it. I don't know how with two kids and everything you have going on you managed to produce as much as you do at the Quality that you do. It's mind-boggling to me. So that some point would love to have a meal or a drink and try to stare into your soul and absorb some of that that stamina and focus. It's really
I would read the formula.
Our work week. That's
what I did is to but figured it
out. No, I mean, you know, it is a little bit Rich for you to be saying that because you're insanely productive and produce insanely good stuff. So, I mean this book again. It's like it's like tribe of mentors, you know, it's designed to be a designed to be a reference. This is I need to be a guide it's designed to be the the person that Whispers In Your Ear you're going to be ok, It's Gonna Be OK keep going, you know, and that's that's that's why I wrote the book.
Ooh,
I love that. I encourage people to check it out. We'll have links to everything we've discussed in the show notes. Let me ask one more question and sometimes it's a bad question, but I'm going to risk it and that is if you could put anything on a billboard metaphorically speaking could be an image a word quote something from one of the interviews. You've done anything non-commercial and image doesn't matter to convey something to billions of people what might you put on that billboard
mean. It's it's the most simple
Aang it's the become one of the most cliched things to but it is so important. It's what President Obama talked about in his outgoing address the last address he gave before his presidency ended and it's two words. It's be kind. It's be kind. I mean we are all going to be unkind multiple times in our lives in a day, but if you can make that your North Star and just try and see
Sear that into your your memory or tattooed on your arm or put on a billboard.
It's be kind. It's going to it's going to make a whole world. Just a little bit
better.
Yeah, here here be kind great answer be kind or than you have to be and it not only makes the world better. It makes you better and it will make you feel better and certainly in these polarizing times where I think it's become very fashionable and is incentivized in some way to be unkind that is a real differentiator and fantastic answer. So let's close up there anything that you would like to add.
Any closing comments anything you'd like to to say before we bring this round one to an end.
I guess. I really just want to say that I don't believe entrepreneurs are any different than us. I think that we are all Clark Kent's and the only difference is that they went into the phone booth and put on the cape and and I am a big believer in entrepreneurship. I think.
It's exciting. I think it gives people control over their lives. I think it is good for the economy. I think it's Spurs Innovation. I think it allows people to live more independent lives and
You know, we actually are not living at a time when entrepreneurship is at its height, you know, they were more entrepreneurs in the 70s and 80s in America than there are today even though we talk about a more today. There are fewer today than there were then and I want to see a Resurgence. I want to see and it's and you don't have to build the next earth-shattering app or you know, huge tech company. It can be an HVAC company, you know, you can be a small business but to me the idea of creating something that
Allows you to employ other people and give them work and meaning and a good life that allows them to support other people and send people to college that means a lot. I'm a really big believer in small businesses and entrepreneurs and I really think that people who want to do it the only obstacle to getting there is the inability to think of oneself as an entrepreneur and what I'm saying is that that shouldn't be an obstacle because everybody has the capacity to do it.
Indeed and on a second that entrepreneur if you think about the the route or even the Spanish equivalent or the related word and put in there to undertake one who undertakes and how I built this. I mean it really speaks to what it seems like you provide through a lot of the work that you do in that is your offering the tools of self determinism, right you're offering the tools and the stories of those who have self authored and I
I think in times of uncertainty and certainly we are as you mentioned baseball, I think in the first or second inning of lots of uncertainty and lots of turbulence to come in the next year or two. This is the type of collection of stories and tools and reassurance has that can help people to self author. So I'm thrilled that that you took the time to focus and get this out to the world. So thank you guys for taking the time to
Have this conversation today.
Thank you so much for having me really appreciate it
and to everybody listening will have show notes for everything that was discussed. You can find links to everything Tim dialogue forward slash podcast and until next time thanks for tuning in.
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? And what do you enjoy getting a short email for me every Friday and that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend and five. Bullet. Friday's 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 have discovered it could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've
How dug up in the 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 four hour workweek.com. That's 4-Hour workweek.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
Oi, this episode is brought to you by LinkedIn jobs small businesses have unique needs a lot of you know, this I know this and even with the uncertainty these days one thing stands unchanged and that is the importance of having the right people on your team. The hiring can be hard. It can be really expensive if you make mistakes very painful to get it wrong. I've certainly had that experience. I'm not eager to repeat it. So I try to do as much upfront screening as possible when your business is ready to make the next higher LinkedIn jobs can help screen candidates with the hard and soft.
That you're looking for don't match your position with qualified members. You can find the right person quickly using linkedin's active community of more than six hundred and ninety million professionals worldwide LinkedIn jobs can help you find and hire the right person faster. So when your business is ready to make that next higher find the right person with LinkedIn jobs, you can pay what you want and get the first $50 off just visit linkedin.com, / Tim again. That's linkedin.com Tim to get $50 off your first job post.
Terms and conditions apply this episode is brought to you by Peak T. That's Pi Q UE. I have had so much tea in my life. I've been to China I've lived in China and Japan I've done ttours. I drink a lot of tea and 10 years plus a physical experimentation tracking is showed me many things Chief among them gut health is critical to just about everything and you'll see where T is going to tie into this. It affects immune function Weight Management Mental performance emotional health. You name it?
I've been drinking fermented puer tea specifically pretty much every day for years. Now who are T livers more polyphenols and probiotics than you can shake a stick at it's like providing the optimal fertilizer to your microbiome. The problem with good. Where is that? It's hard to Source hard to find real poo error that hasn't been exposed to pesticides and other nasties, which is super common. That's why Peaks fermented queerty crystals have become my daily go to it's so simple. They
they have so many benefits that I'm going to get into and I first learned about them through my friends. Dr. Peter Atiya and Kevin Rose Peak crystals are cold extracted using only wild harvested leaves from 250 year old tea trees. I often kick start my mornings with their poo are green tea their poor black tea and I alternate between the two the rich birth you flavor of the black specifically is amazing. It's very very it's like a delicious Barnyard very PD you like whiskey and stuff like that. They triple toxin screen.
All of their products for heavy metals pesticides and toxic molds contaminants commonly found in tea. There's also 0 prep for bring required as the crystals dissolve in seconds. So you can just drop it into your hot tea or I also make iced tea and that saves a ton of time and hassle. So Peak is offering 15% off their prayer to use for the very first time exclusive to you my listeners. This is a sweet offer simply visit Peak t.com Tim. That's Pi Q UE T, EA
Come forward slash Tim. This promotion is only available to listeners of this podcast that speak t.com Port slash Tim. The discount is automatically applied when you use that URL you also have a 30 day satisfaction guarantee. So your purchase is risk-free one more time. Check it out Peak T. That's Pi qet a.com slash tip.
