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ChooseFI | Financial Independence Podcast
Designing an Intentional Life | Tim Ferriss | Ep 558
01:35:41
Tim Ferriss focusing on financial independence, the importance of mentorship, and the role of playful experimentation in living a fulfilling life. Discover insights on designing an intentional life and the values behind Tim's new game,...
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- [00:00]
A
Hello and welcome to Choose a Fi. Today on the show, Tim Ferriss is my guest, and this episode exceeded even my lofty expectations. For those of you who aren't familiar with Tim, he's the author of multiple bestselling books, including the Four Hour Workweek, Four Hour Body and Tools of Titans. His podcast, the Tim Ferriss show, has been downloaded over 1 billion times. He's an angel investor with an incredible track record, and he's now a board game creator. His card game Coyote just launched everywhere at the end of July, and I've played it and it's honestly fantastic, Genuinely fantastic. And you know what a card and board game connoisseur I am. It isn't hyperbole to say that my life has been profoundly impacted by following Tim. Going all the way back to 2007, when I read the Four Hour Workweek, I took action and it was the start of my entrepreneurial journey. Tim, as you'll see, is intimately familiar with the FI community and. And that showed through in this episode. He was so generous with his time and his energy, and this was truly an incredible conversation. To say that you're going to get a lot out of this is an understatement. So sit back and enjoy. And with that. Welcome to Choose Tim. Welcome to Choose a Phi. I'm so excited you're here.
- [01:19]
B
Thanks for having me, man. Nice to finally meet.
- [01:21]
A
Yeah, indeed. Indeed. This is, yeah, something I've been really looking forward to. I was just telling you a minute ago, I'm going to take the obligatory minute here and just say just a huge thank you to you. I think one of the things that we've talked about here on Choose A Vibe for so long is you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And for a lot of people, interestingly, who listen to this podcast, I'm that person for them. And a lot of what I've learned, frankly, is through listening to probably 900 episodes of the Tim Ferriss show.
- [01:49]
B
Wow. Thank you for listening. Yeah, that's a lot of episodes.
- [01:53]
A
It's a hell of a lot of episodes. I think I'm probably at 98% of your episodes. Maybe, Maybe higher. But, yeah, it's incredible. I mean, I read the Four Hour Workweek pretty shortly after it was released. I look back at some of my financial statements from my llc, and it started in the beginning of. I think it was 2008 was the very first one.
- [02:13]
B
Early days, the bronze edition before the update with the color change.
- [02:17]
A
Yeah, right. Isn't that Wild. So yeah, did the whole thing. Did a drop shipping site, did content sites. You know, it's been a circuitous journey.
- [02:26]
B
But that was the exception in my experience. Very rarely is it a straight line. Very, very rarely.
- [02:32]
A
Seriously. And obviously your life is a testament to that, right? Starting with get out of school, start a brain, quicken and move on from there. Was there ever a plan or was it just a series of steps?
- [02:43]
B
I would say there's at different points felt like there might be a very long term plan. But I gave up on that reasonably early in the sense that when I first got to college I thought I was going to be actually a neuroscientist of all things, because I have Alzheimer's and Parkinson's on both sides of my family. And changed that plan shortly thereafter because I just couldn't do the animal testing required to be in the lab that I wanted to be a part of. And it wasn't, wasn't torture or anything like that, but I simply couldn't do the work at the time. So I switched majors to more East Asian languages and linguistic focus. But since that point I would say that I've more or less defaulted to six month projects. Six to twelve month projects, sometimes they end up being faster, more often they end up being a little longer. And within those six to 12 months, two week experiments of one type or another, like two to four week experiments. And I really view it that way. We could, and I suspect we will talk about choosing, I would probably have to say art instead of science, of choice and choosing because there is something to it, at least in how I've learned to approach it through a lot of hard knocks and a lot of mistakes and a lot of dead ends. But never could have imagined sitting here right now having this conversation, the podcast, all of these other things that were really emergent from oftentimes mistakes. So in my plan would never be screw this up, screw that up, burnout, have this implosion. Those would never be part of the plan. And yet in retrospect it seems like they were critical to ultimately some of the biggest breakthroughs that I had. So the breakdown preceding breakthrough seems to be part of at least my accidental recipe. But never would have thought I would end up here. I did suspect and had this intrinsic want to be a teacher since around, let's call it 8th, 9th grade, had a number of mentors. I got very, very lucky. I'd say too mentors is too strong a word. But teachers, let's just say who steered me in a good direction and A lot of my friends ended up going in a bad direction and ended up in jail or overdosing or fill in the blank. So had it not been for those influences when I was, let's just call it in ninth grade, I shudder to think where I would be, because where I grew up, a lot of people, at least when I was growing up, just would go off the rails. So I thought, you know what? Someday I'm going to be like a 9th or 10th grade teacher, because that window is so important, and I'm not a woman. I can't speak to the female experience. But certainly for boys who are just, like, brimming with testosterone. And it's really important to channel that sort of aggressive energy somewhere. So I thought I would be a teacher. I just never thought it would be behind a microphone.
- [05:55]
A
Yeah. Oh, I hear you. Yeah, I know you've talked about, I suspect wrestling coach is one of those two mentors.
- [06:02]
B
Wrestling coach, for sure. One of them, absolutely. John Buxton. And a lot of my friends who I'm still friends with, just saw one of them a few days ago, actually. I've known him since I was 15. And we all of that cohort from that team look back, and if any of us are interviewed, for instance, another friend, Charles Best, he started something called donorschoose.org, it turned into this huge nonprofit still around. He's just no longer operational. But Stephen Colbert's darling, I think Oprah and all these people involved with this nonprofit and did a lot of good for public school classrooms, in effect. And when he was interviewed on Oprah, he pulled up John Buxton on the screen to be like, that guy, really helped steer the ship. Remarkable how much impact Mr. Buxton had. And he was a lot more than a wrestling coach. I mean, he taught other classes. I think it was English. He ended up being the dean of Culver Academy in Indiana later. So amazing, amazing guy. Yeah. You just never know what the ripple effects are going to be.
- [07:05]
A
Yeah, no, truly. Truly did not. And I'm curious. So I listen to Scott Galloway, Prophet G, a lot, and he talks about the need to mentor young men. And it sounds like Coach Buxton, was that for you? What stands out to you in terms of lessons? Was it particular things that he said? Was it a presence? Could you give us a sense of what it was about this man that stuck out to so many of you?
- [07:28]
B
I'd say there are a few things. I mean, he was at the time. Who knows how old he was at the time? I mean, to a 15 year old, he seemed pretty old. Everyone's ancient, but he had been a tri varsity athlete. He'd been incredibly successful in every sport he had played up to collegiate level and he still wrestled. So part of it was he wasn't just a teacher, he was still a participant and an operator and super technical. And even though a number of the kids on that team went on to nationals, he could still handily beat everybody on the team. And you might think, well, who cares, like, if he's dealing with like 15 to 18 year olds. And I would say actually like, go look at competitive wrestling, go look at competitive, say, jiu jitsu, just to keep it within grappling. Those youngsters can be very, very good and very, very strong, very fast. So he would still pop in a mouth guard and wrestle. And to that extent, we knew that he could walk the walk even at that age, which was mind blowing to us. And he was very, very tough. I have to say, it might be out of fashion, but he wouldn't sit there and sugarcoat things. He wouldn't sit down and want to talk to you about how you feel. And did what he say offend you? No, there was just none of that. And at the same time, he would push and effectively say, you think this is your limit. I know this isn't your limit. I know that you can actually do much more, so I'm going to push you. And then he would push you and lo and behold, you would exceed these previously conceived limits and your confidence would grow as a result in proportion to that. And he was also a very technical, very good coach. What he recommended worked and there was a lot more to it. I would say he was a holistic coach also, like, there were some kids who were having trouble with keeping up in school. And he would say, all right, you're showing up at my house five to seven before dinner and you're going to do this, this and this. And if you have trouble with this subject, I'm going to sit down, I'm going to help you. And so he was also supporting the whole human, which might sound at odds with what I was saying earlier. Right, because he wasn't sugarcoating. But even with the schoolwork, he's like, look, this is doable, this is how we're going to do it. And I'll see you at five o', clock, period, end of story. And I think that on top of that, as I'm talking through this, he was incredibly consistent, like consistent and reliable. So those are the elements that come to mind. I'M sure there is a lot more to it. He was also incredibly respected by other people in the school and had a lot of responsibilities within the school. I think he ended up running or raising a lot of the endowment, went on and on and on. So he was a multifaceted character who was effective in a lot of different fields. So even as young kids, kids aren't stupid. They can perceive and see a lot. We knew that he was in the world, operating at a high level and had done that for decades.
- [10:38]
A
Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. It's funny, I have a parallel person in my life. So I went to the University of Richmond for undergrad and we had an accounting professor. So I guess in a former life, I was a cpa. I guess, technically, still, I'm nominally a cpa. And we had arguably the best accounting professor in the country. It was because precisely what you described. He expected the best of you. He taught through the Socratic method. And frankly, he made people cry every single class. And it wasn't malicious. It was that he tested your limits and he had high expectations, and it was wonderful. And I literally walked out of that class. I took his advanced accounting class. I got an A minus in the class, which doesn't sound that great. There were only two of us that got A's, period. And I was like, this is the best thing that ever happened to me. I just. I was so thrilled with that, Tim, because I worked my butt off.
- [11:25]
B
And if I look back at the people, the professors, coaches, et cetera, which, by the way, is not all male. Right. It includes females, but they have that similarity of being very aware of how hard it is to do what they're asking you to do, and still being unrelenting and insisting that there are high levels, high standards of excellence and that you can achieve it, and that the path they're recommending works. And they're unapologetic about that. That was true, for instance, of the Chinese program at Princeton, which was absolutely brutal. Six classes a week. Very, very. At least six classes, because we had language lab time where we had to record all this stuff as well. But so thorough, so effective compared to pretty much any other program in the country at that time. I don't have to spend too much of our airtime on it. But it was a really good program. But it was brutal. It was brutal. And they were just like, well, this is what learning this language well requires. On some level, at least with the time that we had allocated, maybe you could do it in a slightly more leisurely way, if you had a lot more time as a child with no responsibilities, but at that point with a heavy course load, it's like, all right, if you want to do this within the time we have, it's going to be hard. And I remember we started with something like 32, 36 students. And this was before Chinese was really popular as a second language within universities. Much more popular now. But that 32, let's just call it, got whittled down to like 12 or 15 people within a few weeks. The dropout rate was high. But if I look back, John McPhee for nonfiction writing in the seminar. Super challenging. Super challenging. He's a very sweet man. So his touch was a bit softer, but still very. I shouldn't say softer, like more delicate, but it was still very firm in explaining what he knew had worked for him and worked for prior students. So I think that firm resolve, that strength of teaching and that pushing is maybe, as I mentioned, out of fashion. But if I look back at all of the most impactful mentors, there was an element of that. And maybe that's just my personality, maybe that's just something that I respond well to, but I do think it's underestimated.
- [13:49]
A
Yeah, I agree. I think there's something about testing your limits and exceeding them. And like I said, in my case, it was walking into that classroom, being prepared as I possibly could be and withstanding this onslaught of Socratic method style questioning. And it was. You felt fantastic about yourself. I knew I could walk into any room anywhere in the world and talk. This accounting subject, whatever it may have been, it was largely irrelevant, but it was just the preparation that was required. And you felt fantastic about yourself. Right. It's doing hard things. It's coming through the other side.
- [14:22]
B
Yeah. And I'm sure I'm going to misquote this. I think it's Neil Donald Walsh. Maybe I could be screwing it up, but why not? Instead of Oscar Wilde or Abraham Lincoln or Groucho Marx. The apocryphal, yeah, I'll give it to Neil Donald Walsh. But life begins just outside your comfort zone. I do think there's something to that. And frequently the self imposed limitations seem like absolute, insurmountable limitations. So you can benefit from someone pushing you. And I still benefit from that, which is why I seek people who are going to be willing to push. If I'm looking for mentors, which I'm always looking for mentors in one way or another. So it's definitely something you can practice, but it's like if you're inside the fishbowl, often you don't realize you're in a fishbowl. You need someone to point it out and to grab you and throw you out of the fishbowl.
- [15:17]
A
Oh, yeah. And it's funny because I had planned on talking about. So ultimately designing intentional life, I think that's our community. Are people either on the path to financial independence or who've already reached this point of financial independence where they have time freedom, they have to a large degree, resource freedom. And we have four, five, six decades to do what we want with. But there is a paradox of choice, obviously, right? And you think about a book like the Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter and talking about misogi and these different things that we can undertake. And it reminds me of many of these experiments you do. And you talked about six month experiments. I'm curious even just to start this. Designing an intentional life. Like, you have the world at your fingertips, right? You have resources and you have time, you have connections. You could do anything you want. How do you call that list of 10 billion different options? Like, how do you even. What does the top of the funnel look like?
- [16:15]
B
Yeah, this is in some ways the question, right? So let me back out and just say with any life, it's a big way to open. So I'm sure there might be exceptions, but the question is not how do I win the game. The question is what games am I playing? And then game selection. So game selection matters more than winning the game because you can win the wrong game. All right? So just to step back, because even after you achieve financial independence, whatever that means to you, that sort of fundamental decision still remains. And I would say it especially remains since you've checked off all of the fundamental rungs of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And the most underestimated, underread chapter in the Four Hour Workweek is called Filling the Void. And it's about this eggsactly. So when I have been tempted and it's not frequent, but when I've been tempted to go back to the four Hour Workweek, to update something, it's usually to expand on that chapter and to emphasize it and say, look, you think this is a chapter that, oh, wouldn't it be nice if I had to worry about this? But you want to think about it before you face an empty calendar with in the wording of Four Hour Workweek, like liberation, in other words. So what I would say is top of the funnel for me actually comes back to a lot of the experimentation and one of the examples that I still remember from the book is if you fantasize about retiring and then sailing around the world or the Mediterranean for months or years at a time, maybe you should take a weekend class in sailing, try that out beforehand. Maybe you should take a weekend, could be on a cruise ship. I mean, that's not what you're going to be personally steering around the ocean. Get on a catamaran somehow for a week. And these things can be done remarkably cheaply if you know how to go about it. So that you can see is this actually something that I want? And I think it was. I'll just keep throwing out quotes I don't know the attribution to, but I want to make it clear that it's not something I came up with. I think it's Rumi who has a quote that is incredible. Mystic Sufi poet. We should be very suspicious of what we want. Like be very suspicious of what you want. Very, very suspicious. And this comes back to Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert, that we are very bad at predicting what will give us happiness or any type of durable contentment, which is very different from sugar high of experience. And I think there's a place for both. But to I suppose answer your question really directly for the last almost 20 years. So after the four hour workweek, and I want to address that in a second, I have actually I'll address it now. So people might think, well, after the four hour workweek, you have access to everything. You have access to so many people, especially after the podcast, even more access. That's not my situation. But what I would say is actually it is your situation. It's just a very exaggerated version of your situation. Right? If you have financial freedom, you have a million options, you have a billion options. It just might not be obvious what the range of those options is yet. Whereas when you have the amount of exposure that I've had, all of those things come into your inbox so you get barraged with the options. So the extent of the paradox of choice is just more obvious. But in fact, you're in the same position with a few differences. And furthermore, I would say that a lot of people listening, if they're on their way to financial independence or if they're almost there or there actually share 99% overlap with me because my life, there are a few places where I spend money and I choose to overspend. We could talk about that. But by and large, I don't actually acquire lots of stuff. It's like I drive a Used Subaru, Right. And choose to spend on and invest in experiences. And we can come back to that, but that's actually further down, not top of the funnel. So top of the funnel is if we're looking at projects. Because by the way, if you have the diligence and you have the sort of systematic ability to get to financial independence, you're probably like a working dog on some level. You're more like a border collie than you are like a Saint Bernard. That's actually Saint Bernard could be a working dog too. Not the best example, like a great Dan that's going to sleep all day. What that means is you're going to need something to keep your mind engaged. And for me, I choose projects based on, again, coming back to that like 6 to 12 month thing based on what I'm going to learn and who I'm going to develop relationships with. Those could be deepening older relationships and I could give some examples of that. It could be new relationships that I think can last. That's really key. Really, really key, right? Relationships that I think can last years upon years upon years. And the assumption there is that if you approach your projects that way, even if the project quote unquote fails, if those skills and the relationships are durable so they extend past the failure, you have this snowball effect over time and it's very hard to lose. It's really hard to fully lose if you do that. And so I really first started systematizing this for myself when I began. I would say angel investing after the four hour work week. And I effectively said, well, I asked myself a version of Seth Godin's question. So everybody's heard, you know, what would you do if you knew you could not fail? Right. It's a good question. But Seth's turn on that, which is fun to play with, is what would you do if you knew you would fail?
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A
Right. What would you do?
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B
Anyway, I like that. So if you look at a lot of the various things that I've done, but to pull it to the angel investing, I was like, okay, if I treated my first two years of angel investing like business school, so I assumed that all my investments would go to zero. Just like the sunk cost of tuition, but also just like business school, the things I would learn, the networks I would develop, that's the payoff, would I still do it? And I was like, well, I can just choose the startups based on how much I'm going to learn and the people I'm going to develop relationships with. And it worked. So, well, over time, I had a lot of failures, but over time, again, over time, it worked. So I advised StumbleUpon back in the day, delivered a lot of web traffic to a lot of websites, didn't ultimately work out for me. I was an advisor, put in a ton of time, ended up being a zero. But what happened? I became much closer friends with a guy named Garrett Camp. What did Garrett Camp do? A couple years later, he was the founder, slash co founder of Uber. And then I became one of the first advisors to Uber. Right? And that's a very big example. But it's not the only example. I could give you dozens of these where it's like, okay, the thing that we wanted to work, didn't work. But because I learned something like the Four Hour Chef, by my standards, because it was boycotted and other reasons by, you know, it's boycotted by a lot of retailers because it was the first major book out of Amazon publishing. And so it was, for me, my biggest publishing failure. I would say even though I'm super proud of the book, I still think it's a great book. But through the process of promoting that book, I decided, as I do with every new launch, including the game that I'm launching now, which we could talk about at some point, I try to pick new experimental ways of promotion to see if I can learn more about something that is very early. And in 2012, that was podcasts, right? So I was on Joe Rogan, I was on Nerdist, I was on Marc Maron, I was on all these different shows, Adam Carolla. And I thought, oh, wow, this is really interesting because I can be myself. It's long form. I can curse. I'm from Long island, it happens. And I know that well.
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A
I know that well, too.
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B
And it's not the two to three minutes maximum on some morning TV show where you actually can't have a conversation of any type. And if I had not done that, you remember the two to whatever it is, two to four week kind of experiments within six to 12 month projects. Okay, well, the 12 month project was the book. Then the two to four week experiment was really investing in podcasts as an experimental promotional medium. The book project didn't work out the way I wanted it to work out at all and was super punishing. Totally burned out. And yet the relationships with podcasters, the learning how that medium functions, is what led to me starting my podcast in 2014. So that's, I would say these days for me, generally top of the funnel. And then there's just stuff that I do for fun. Right. And what does fun mean? And this is where I think it's really useful. You don't always have to do this, but just to interrogate the terms that you use. So if someone says, for instance, after financial independence or after a big psychedelic experience, like I need more fun in my life, it's like, okay, what does that look like? And what are actual next steps? And what kind of experiments are you going to do? What does it look like? Otherwise? It's something that sounds good. People are going to tell you it sounds good. People might tell you that's what you need. But what do you do? What do you do with that? And to give you an example of something, well, I guess it does actually conform to the relationship side. Every year for my birthday, I have anywhere from 5 to 10 of my closest oldest friends. These are people in some cases I've known 30 plus years come and gather together. And it's not really about my birthday, it's about the reunion. And it is so nourishing. And we just get to be idiots. It's all boys. Because I do think at least in modern America on the coasts could be different in other places where you have more, let's just say density of hunting or other types of rituals that are kind of an annual thing or more than annual thing. Male only time has become a forbotan, very just in some ways discouraged or criticized thing. And I think women do a much better job socially. It's also reinforced like yeah, girl time, girl night, whatever. And so for some guys you might have like poker night, which I don't. I think that's actually fantastic for me it's like every year those friends know this is a reliable meeting. We always have and have never missed a year. Did have like a very minimally attended one during COVID where one friend came and we did 30 tests on ourselves before it happened or in a handful of weeks. And I reserved this months ago. I paid for outdoor wilderness survival training with this amazing guy in the mountains of the west. And that's going to be three to seven guys. And that's about a week long. And blocking out that time is one of the best investments that I make every year because almost by default everything else is co ed, which is great. So it's the thing that's not going to happen by itself that I try to budget for and I book in advance. So this would be an example of over investing in a sense. I booked the wilderness survival training and the guy who's Running it's like, look, I don't care if it's one person or eight people, same price, same okay. And it's, it's not cheap, but it's not, you know, a hundred thousand dollars either. And for somebody who's achieved financial independence, if you prioritized it, a lot of people listening to this could pretty easily do what I'm describing. And I don't want to dox the guy who's involved and blow his pricing. Suffice to say though, it's not actually that expensive and I'm covering it for my friends because some of them may not be in a position to do that. But if you had a bunch of guys splitting it or a bunch of gals, right? This is like for people listening, bunch of friends splitting it, it'd be totally achievable, totally affordable. But I'm trying to make it easy for my friends to say yes, who have two or three or four kids. And you need to give those people enough lead time that they can have conversations with their partners and so on. But those would be a couple of examples. And each year I do something called a past year review, where I look back at the last year and people can just search that online. You'll find descriptions of how I do it. But in brief, I'm going through my whole calendar week by week from the last year and identifying the people and activities and so on that produced the most memorable peak positive experiences. And then I'm also looking at the peak negative experiences and I'm creating a do more of list and a do less of list. And then keep in mind this is typically the first week of January, but you can do it anytime. You could do it. Right now I block out those do more of, I book them and pay for them and get them in the calendar. Like use sunk cost to your advantage. I've thought about writing a blog post about this, but it's like you can use sunk cost to your advantage in a situation like this. And loss aversion, meaning you've prepaid, it's non refundable. So that's a mouthful. I know I just spewed out a lot, but those are a few ways that I think about things. And just to be very clear on the relationship side, also at this point in my life, I will also look back during that past year review and basically say, all right, who are the people in my top 10 most important relationships could be healthiest relationships could be just most uplifting relationships. Choose your adjective. And did I spend as much Time as I would like with those people last year, for a lot of people, the answer is going to be no. And so I try to invest in those. Before I start investing in new things, like going to a conference to meet new people, I want to invest in the 10. I make that number up. It could be five, could be whatever you choose.
- [31:10]
A
Yeah, whatever works for you.
- [31:11]
B
I wouldn't do more than 10. And book things, invite those people, and then only when that box is checked do I then look at potentially meeting more people. I'm also quite introverted, so that suits my personality.
- [31:28]
A
Yeah, I hear you. I think about an energy audit. I think this might have been something, frankly, that you mentioned way back when. But looking at that calendar and as you're describing it, like, peak experiences, I think about, hey, who lights me up in my life?
- [31:41]
B
Yeah, it's super simple. Yeah. Energy and energy out, right? So the energy out doesn't have to be, you know, someone who does something horrible to you. It could just. You could just look at your calendar and say, oh, my God, that week when I was. Was on phone calls with. No offense to accountants, but it's like accountants and lawyers all week, right?
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A
Damn it, Tim.
- [32:02]
B
Come on. But I'm just saying, I love my accounts, I love my lawyers, But I get really fidgety if the density of that is too high and I'm doing too much managing and not enough making, not enough creating stuff. I just get very uncomfortable and fidgety and annoyed, which is not fair to them at all. But it teaches you, just, all right, like, let's either spread this stuff out. Let's only do it on Mondays. Pick some way to do it such that you can deal with it. And then you might find certain instances where you're just like, okay, yeah, that company that I'm dealing with, that one customer I deal with that always wants to do, like, zoom calls, and they just drag on and they don't have a good agenda. And it's always awful or not even awful. It's just always a waste of time. It's like, okay, like, maybe I either fire that client or send them an email or have a phone call about, like, hey, guys, moving forward, just realized that I need to change a few things just for sanity. Or X, Y, and Z. And if they're, like, great and they play ball, then fantastic. Otherwise, you know, like, just scrapping, that kind of activity can make a huge difference.
- [33:07]
A
Yeah. It's interesting thinking about some of the parallels to some of the guests we've had. We had a Guy named Chad Carson on talking about the small and mighty real estate investor. And essentially for him, he has, let's say 40 properties and he thinks about on a yearly basis, what's the one that costs me the most time, energy and stress. And he calls that one. And then it's what are the top five? How do I replicate that?
- [33:29]
B
Right, yeah, it's exactly the same process, right? Like you're doing an 80, 20 analysis of peak lows, peak highs, energy drain, energy recharge. So that's how I approach a lot of it these days. I think as one gets older, you also start to pay more and more attention to energy because it's not money by itself, right? Money is necessary but not sufficient. Then you have time. Okay, time, yes, time is important. But if you don't have attention, when you're using that time, you don't actually have that time, right? Like if you're quote unquote playing with your kids, but you're on your phone, that is not playing with your kids, right? If you are, who knows, working on a project, but actually you're getting interrupted every five seconds by notifications or jumping on social yourself and self interrupting, that's not actually working on your project. So time is also not enough. You need attention. And then I would say below that, at the base of the pyramid is energy. If you don't have energy, you can't have attention, which means you don't have time, which means your money doesn't have much value. So I would say the rate limiter, the rate enabler or disabler is that energetic layer. So I pay a ton of attention to that. And I should say, look, even. And I'm not Elon Musk, I'm not, maybe not the best example to use, but it's like I am not the Brad Pitts of the world. However, I'm in a very fortunate advantaged position for a lot of stuff. Even now you have to deal with stuff that you don't want to do. There are going to be times. It's not all free. And the way I look at that is it's like, okay, all the other stuff is what you get to do for free. And the tax, there's always going to be a tax. The tax that you pay for this newfound freedom is occasionally you have to do X, Y or Z, but it doesn't have to be all the time. But yeah, there are going to be things that happen. So it's like if your dream is the small but mighty real estate, right? It's like, okay, if a raccoon dies in the H vac of one of your units, do you want to get that phone call? No, you don't want to get that phone call. That's not fun to deal with. But yeah, you're going to have to deal with it. Right. There's going to be some equivalent that you have to deal with. Especially if you buy a lot of stuff. I will say, especially if you have like the psychological and financial carrying costs of a bunch of stuff, which is part of the reason why I don't have a lot of stuff. And I've just been selling or giving away a lot of my stuff, which wasn't that much to begin with, but helps me to feel uncluttered.
- [36:14]
A
Yeah, I'm definitely in a big minimalism phase right now. I just had a going through some life circumstances and I just moved recently. And it's interesting when you call down everything you own and I mean, at this point in my life, I can pretty much recreate everything I own in 30 minutes on Amazon. I can fit everything I want or need in one carry on suitcase. And it's really liberating. It's wonderful.
- [36:41]
B
Yeah, it's amazing. And I would also just perhaps for this audience, because I think it's important to mention, underscore one thing which is very often what got you to your goal is not going to allow you to fully enjoy having achieved that goal. And that's true for people who. I've seen a lot of people become financially independent in different ways. Right. I've seen of course, like the mega super billionaire types. I've seen multiple friends go from like 100k a year to deca billionaire, which is crazy. But I've also seen friends of mine who I grew up with on Long island sort of do it methodically in more of an fi way. Right? Yeah, I think everybody gets what I'm talking about. So I've seen both. And the problem or the challenge, the challenge still exists, that since you were able to systematically do what it took to get to the finish line, you're accustomed to racing or operating in some gear and it doesn't magically change when you cross the finish line, you are still going to use that gear as your default. And my impression of my friends who reach financial independence by cutting costs in the right places, saving in the right way, investing in whatever sort of low cost passive way makes the most sense, typically. Right. They don't all do it that way. But if they invest, as I also do in like low cost index funds, let's just say low fee, low cost index funds. When they cross the finish line, they're like, we looked at the numbers, I'm.
- [38:30]
A
There, we did it.
- [38:32]
B
They still end up being frugal to a point that is self defeating and joy robbing. Now, if it is your sport and you love doing it, like our mutual friend Chris Hutchins, right. If you love price shopping for raspberries by driving around, I'm kind of screwed.
- [38:53]
A
I can picture Hutchins doing that too, Tim.
- [38:56]
B
But what brings him joy is the deal hunting and the deal finding and the arbitrage opportunities and figuring out how to make money like buying gold at Costco and flipping things. And he's so good at it and that's his sport. He's like a major league baseball player. But what he does is find hacks and deals. Then fine, okay. But I'm going to venture to say that's less than 10% at least at face value. The reason that people have done it, if you were to ask them along the way, is because of A, B or C not I want to spend my freedom looking for the best.
- [39:32]
A
Deal means to an end, on everything.
- [39:34]
B
Means to an end. And step number one is just to be aware of that. Step number two is, even if you're not at financial independence yet, I would encourage to ask yourself what are the smallest experiments that I can run to start testing the waters on things that I think I want to do after financial independence? There are lots of ways to do it. There are lots and lots and lots of ways to figure out clever workarounds, to taste test a lot of different things. I would suggest trying that. So you start to develop some of the other gears. And for almost everybody listening, whether you're on your way or you're past the finish line, financially speaking, you've developed one or two gears by necessity, you have over developed or significantly developed those. And to actually fully enjoy and take advantage of this freedom that you've achieved, you will need other gears. And it's achievable. But like everything else requires practice. Just like developing the skillset and the habits and the tracking of getting to FI in the first place took what practice?
- [40:47]
A
Yeah, it's amazing. You truly are speaking the language of the FI community of Choose a Phi. And I mean we've talked about this for the last couple years where at the beginning of the five movement, so circa 2013, let's say it was truly about running.
- [41:00]
B
I'm also realizing that I've read it more often than not. So I keep saying fi. I can say five too.
- [41:04]
A
No, it's either which. It's funny, people use them interchangeably. So whatever, whatever floats your boat. But yeah, it was about running away from something. So, so many people were running away from a job they hated and then they got to this mythical number on a spreadsheet and they woke up the next day and life wasn't unicorns and rainbows. And they had to grapple with that. And I think one of the things that we've tried to do here at this podcast is make people understand, like, this is a journey. And actually the financial part is the easiest. Once you get that set on autopilot, you don't think about that. I think about my finances. 10 minutes a month at most. But it's about this experimentation. It's about. We had a woman named Jess from the pioneers on, and she coined the phrase Coast Phi and Slow fi recently. And they've become really essential aspects of the FI community. But what she talked about was the cure for the boring middle. So it was, it was these quote unquote, boring middle years where you have to experiment.
- [42:01]
B
Yeah.
- [42:02]
A
And there's an experimentation loop very similar to what you're describing with these six month journeys to two week experiments and just, just try. Right. It's funny because I suspect I've actually, unbeknownst to me, copied you on the, the sailing around the world. So many people, I use that example all the time. Like people say, I want to do X, Y and Z. I want to drive around the country in an RV when I retire and they've never even rented an RV for five days. And it's like, are you kidding? How do you know? And then they get to the point where they'll do it and then it's, oh, this feels like a failure. Or oh, five didn't work. This was all for naught. As opposed to. If they had been failing forward all throughout those years, it would have just been part and parcel of the process. Right. Like experimentation, to your point, is not about winning all the time. Right. It's about truly learning more about yourself. And to me, that is the essence of this. It's. I understand that I'm testing things and there are things that I'm going to, like in this season of my life. There are things that, that might change. To assume that anyone is locked at a point and they're going to be that way for the rest of their lives. Like, it just is a fundamental misunderstanding of humanity. Right. Like, you have to continually test. It's Not a failure. If you decide, hey, I want to travel around the world and then you realize, oh, you know what? I really liked my community. I really liked going to my gym four times a week at 6am I really like playing board games with my friends and family. Like, I really like these things. That's not a failure. You experimented, you tried something.
- [43:33]
B
Yeah, well said, well said. And I would also say binary is easy. What do I mean by that? Being an absolutist is easy and there's something to be said for easy. But just to come back to what you said, which is the financial piece is the easy piece, right? Thinking in terms of dichotomies, it's like it's either X or it's Y, right? I'm either, this is going to be an exaggeration, but like I'm either saving or I'm wasting money. These types of black and white dichotomies make implementation easy, but they can have psychological costs coming back to that development of one gear. So I would say, for instance, what is harder but I think worthwhile to at least journal on, maybe play around with for a weekend or a week, it doesn't need to be permanent. That's why they're called experiments is how could for instance, some of the many retirement options in the four hour work week be integrated into any type of phi journey? What would that look like? If you had a gun against the head and you had to incorporate that, what would it look like? What might it look like? And as a thought exercise, importantly not asking, could I do this? But no, I have to do this. Somebody kidnapped your Labrador retriever hostage. To get that dog back, you must take a mini retirement of three to four weeks or two weeks. But I try to push people to three or four. Psychologically it's a different animal. But distributing some of these experiences throughout life, not postponing them all for post finishing line. And I'm not saying go blow a bunch of money on anything that you want. I'm just saying as a thought exercise, what does it look like to look at something that is a mixed model as opposed to an absolute model? And just to play around with it, just to play around with it I think is worthwhile. And I try to catch myself, I catch myself all the time where it's like it's either X or it's Y and it's like, yeah, maybe, maybe. But if you had to find a third option, what might it look like? Okay, well can you test that for two days? Can you test that for a Week. Yeah. See what that looks like. See how you feel afterwards, look at your finances, do a post game analysis. So I want to throw that out there because I do think that financial independence is amazing. It is definitely worthwhile and it can be easy to slip into self denial and masochism that is really unnecessary and unhelpful and unpleasant past a certain point. So I just wanted to throw that out there because I have seen that as a symptom in some folks who are striving towards financial independence, at least within the context of, I guess, how most people listening will maybe consider it.
- [46:35]
A
Yeah, agreed. I see it as keeping up with the Joneses in a different type of way, which is the right. It's like, hey, my savings rate is 72.7% and yours is only 69%. Like, luckily I don't. I think a lot of that is lessening now because we've been, I mean, we've been hammering at this for years. Yeah, I mean, literally years. But I mean we are susceptible to it. Right. But I think to your point, mini retirements, that's been an interesting one. I know that's impacted me. We have a great friend named Jillian Johnsrud in the community and she's, she's actually writing and publishing a book on many retirements later this year. Yeah, she's wonderful. And she compelled me to take one a year ago and it was transformative for me. And not only it's interesting because not only was it, hey, I took this amazing trip to Bali and Singapore and Doha, but it was the second order effects that I couldn't have foreseen, which was, hey, I was working, working. And I say that quote unquote so much on Choose a Phi, but how much was I actually getting out of those hours? And I was crushing myself over things that didn't matter. But when you build systems, I mean, this is music to your ears going back to 2007. Right? Like when you build systems and you get yourself out of your business. My life has been dramatically better since I've come back from that retirement than I could have ever foreseen for sure.
- [47:52]
B
This is the key reason why I recommend people at least envision. And as a thought exercise, look at three to four weeks, ideally four weeks as opposed to two. Because if you run your own business or if you're within a company, two weeks is just short enough that you can let a bunch of fires pop up, you can let the house kind of burn down halfway, come back and then try to repair it three to four weeks Generally speaking, you're going to have to really look at your policies, your rules, your systems, your delegation or lack thereof, communication within the company, whether it's your company or someone else's company, and improve a lot, streamline a lot, question a lot, and revise a lot before you take your mini retirement. And the benefits of that far outlive the duration of the mini retirement. That's the very deliberate Trojan horse effect of doing something like this. So, yes, I want to reiterate what you were saying.
- [48:58]
A
Yeah, no, I appreciate that. And I think something else you touched on in there was, I guess, a roundabout way that I think about it in terms of the book Die with Zero by Bill Perkins. And I've talked about that a lot here on the podcast, and there are certainly aspects of it that I could take or leave. But I think for me, the biggest thing is seasons of life and understanding that time is finite. Right. We talk about Weep a why and looking at, hey, I have two daughters and they, I have literally a countdown to the number of days until they go to college. And when that countdown ends, I've spent probably 90 to 95% of my time with them. And for instance last year, so this was outside of my comfort zone. But I took them both to London to go see Taylor Swift, which is amazing, absolutely amazing. And I memorized all 42 songs and we had just a blast at Wembley and we realized, oh, wow, their other favorite singer was in Barcelona three days before. So let's add that, too. And I mean, Tim, that was one of these trips of a lifetime. You know, I'm never going to look back on those X number of thousands of dollars and regret that. I mean, I wouldn't even think about it. It's not even a rounding error. Right. But like, before reading that and realizing the finite nature, I'm not sure that I would have taken that trip.
- [50:08]
B
Yeah, Die with Zero is a good. It's a good reminder. And just like you, I mean, there are elements that I think resonated more with me than others, but recognizing also that your ability to use your money for a lot of things decreases over time depending on your physical wellness, your physical fitness, your mobility, et cetera. So a dollar now is not worth the same as a dollar on your deathbed versus a dollar in between. Those things all change, which is not even factoring in anything like inflation or whatever. Right? So it's like a dollar is a dollar is a dollar is not the case. So I think that for me, one of the biggest takeaways From Die with Zero was really just thinking about the value of doing certain things in different phases of physical wellness and mobility and fitness. Which applies to your kids too, right? I mean it applies to family, meaning your ability to do certain things with your kids, with your partner, with. Fill in the blank, your grandkids. Maybe you take your grandkids on a trip while you can still pick them up and carry them from the car. That's not going to be forever. There will be a last time that you're able to do that.
- [51:24]
A
Yeah, absolutely. Right. He talks about wakeboarding with his friends and I know Atiya talks about the Centurion decathlon. Hey, you have your great grandkid running towards you. Can you pick them up? And what does that look like? That looks like a gauntlet squat. And if you can't do a 60 pound goblet squat when you're 40, you sure as heck aren't going to be able to do a 20 pound goblet squat when you're 70 or 80. And that great grandkids running towards you. Right. And yeah, I know you've mentioned movement is medicine. Right. And I think that's something that really deeply resonates with me and I think it's just, you know, so many people live in these hermetically sealed boxes, right. At 72 degrees, 365 days a year. And I think it's just we need to get out, we need to move, we need to. To do hard things. And I think, you know, that's something that a lot of people in the fight community have adopted again as part of this holistic life. But yeah, I'm curious like how you think about, you know, you're famous for physical experiments over the years and I know, yeah, I even still go back to your four hour body, Tim. It's hilarious. I'm still doing the, the myotetic crunch and the cat's vomit. I even did. What was it? Oh, is there testosterone increasing cod liver oil with fermented butter. I think about. So yeah, all that stuff. It's amazing. I mean frankly, like, it's astonishing to see how many of the things hold on.
- [52:40]
B
Become mainstream really. Like, I mean even the air squats for. I was just gonna say for glucose transporters and so on, but before during meals, it's like that's in the news right now. And that book came out in 2010. Yeah, yeah. I stand by almost everything in that book. I can think of maybe one possible revision but outside, literally on the ingredients in supplement stack. But aside from that I still stand by everything in that book. Yeah, so I, I have done a lot of physical experiments and I continue to do that. Not quite at the ridiculous cadence that I did during the four Our Body, but I still do all that.
- [53:20]
A
Thanks for listening to Choose a Vi and for all your support of our mission here. The absolute best way to support Choose a VI is when you sign up for your next rewards credit card to use our Cards page@chooseay.com cards or I keep this page constantly updated so it should always be the top resource for you. Thanks for being part of our community and for your support. So we're both in our mid to late 40s. How do you think about about movement? How do you think about exercise differently now than you did, let's say in your 20s and early 30s?
- [53:51]
B
Well, a few things. Let me also just broadly say that I don't want to create the illusion for anyone that look, I've got everything figured out. Here are my rules. They work all the time. Fantastic. I have solved life or fill in the blank business relationships. That is not the case. Right. Which is why I do continually all these various experiments. What I would say underlies that is just an eagerness to stress test whatever I think I know whatever. I end up treating in a very binary way the beliefs which to quote Byron Katie or thoughts that I take to be true, just really stress testing those not so that I can feel lost in the world and there's no more. Nothing is certain. Not for that. But it's just like okay, if a certain belief is causing me stress or producing a stressful state or creating strife in a relationship, it's like okay, well let me look at that very closely and I would just quick plug Byron Katie's the work for turnarounds and these types of PDFs which you can find online for free. Great investment of time. On the physical side for me, I would say lifting very heavy weight for me, right? Like I used to do squats with 400 plus pounds and deadlifts with 400 plus pounds and all that kind of stuff. Less and less important just because the downside risk of injury and the recovery time, if it comes at all is so much longer. I've just become more careful around that. So for instance, looking at blood flow restriction training, people can take a look at that. Pretty fascinating bfr. But just using that for muscle growth because you do want to preserve and have as much muscle mass as possible effectively. I mean that's an exaggeration. You want to have plenty of muscle Mass again, coming back to the, like picking the grandkid up. Age related muscle loss is a real thing. Sarcopenia. So to counteract that, like really doing proper weight training or resistance training is important. One of the ways to do that with less risk to your joints and so on is blood flow restriction training. You could also just do something like super slow, which is very slow cadence, so you're not using much velocity or momentum. It's like 5 seconds up, 5 seconds down, 10 seconds up, 10 seconds down. Something very slow, slow. I would also say that there are certain sports that I will avoid or types of. I used to do heli skiing once a year. That's a place where I would spend money and I really enjoyed it. But just avalanche risk. I've seen people have some horrifying accidents. I had one very bad accident. Not worth it, right? It's like I really don't want to because my, my enjoyment of that given the fear is not a worthwhile equation compared to simply doing say cat skiing versus heli skiing on slightly milder terrain with less avalanche risk. That's a much better idea for me. So that would be an example. And then I would encourage people to check out Insima IYANG So N S I m a last name I n Y a N G for movement through multiple planes. In other words, when someone lifts, you see people in the gym. Generally it's just kind of an up and down, forward and backward motion. Nothing diagonal, certainly nothing rounded. And very often it's just two feet in one place instead of staggered. So really working through multiple planes of motion, starting conservative has become very important to me, particularly as some of these congenital defects, these genetic defects that I have in my low back, my brother has the same thing, have started to in certain circumstances be very painful and restrict some of my movement. And look, I can still do all sorts of stuff and move around, but when I flash forward to like, okay, what's this going to look like when I'm 60, 70, 80, I think, as Insima would say, like microdosing movement, figuring out ways to put in certain types of movement. Like today, after this interview, it's like I'm going to go swim. It's not going to be a workout. It's going to be like 5 to 10 minutes of swimming in a pool just to get some decompression in the spine, some unloading, and also a little bit of very gentle rotation with freestyle stroke. That's it. And it's like, okay, 10 minutes there. I have cold plunge here. So I'LL do a cold plunge for a bunch of reasons. And then I'm going to do a walk with my friend rucking. So I'll have a backpack with in my case he took the heavy one, so I'll have one with £20 in it. He's got one that has 35, which doesn't sound like that much, but if you do it for long enough, it's something you'll feel, especially when there's no hip belt. And then I'll have my first meal, which my first meal will be at 2pm today. So I've also come to believe that more and more. So I've always I shouldn't say always. For the last probably 10 years I've done regular fasting, whether that's three days, meaning water fast or black coffee, black tea, but nothing caloric, three days a quarter. For a long time I was doing one seven day fast a year, which is, I do still think very, very helpful for a number of things, including possibly purging precancerous cells before they become a problem. But not a doctor, don't play one on the Internet, so take that with a grain of salt. But there's actually some literature to support it. But I have found, I think something that is more helpful on a continual basis to be some form of intermittent fasting, particularly since when I look at my family and cardiovascular disease, so whether that's heart attacks, stroke or neurodegenerative disease that's associated with metabolic dysfunction. So Alzheimer's, sometimes called type 3 diabetes, I want my insulin sensitivity to be very high. I want my glucose metabolism, lipid metabolism, ketone production to be as dialed as possible and, and eating from 2 to 10 or 12 to 8, like 8 hour feeding window each day, given the blood work that I have seen in myself, seems to be a pretty straightforward way to do that. And the first week you're going to be pissy and grumpy. And don't send too many fast emails to people because you'll probably regret it. But your body, at least my body and a lot of folks have their bodies adapt quite quickly within the first week. Like first week's going to be a little unpleasant, you're going to be grumpy, it's fine, you'll survive. But those are a few things that I pay a lot of attention to. And Insima has a lot of tools along the lines of things like rope flow for instance, which looks ridiculous, but after I did my podcast with him, the testimonials that I have seen from people with chronic pain who have just done ropeflow for a few weeks are pretty remarkable. In my case because of some of my low back structural issues, like the term microdosing. Movement is really important. It's literally for me two to three minutes. If I do 10 minutes, I'm going to be really sore. So just pain free movement. Microdosing has become more important, which to me I would have laughed at 20 years ago. I'd be like, that's not a workout. You're not doing a workout. That's BS recreation. Sure, if you think it's fun, do it. But that's a waste of time. I don't agree with that anymore. I think this microdosing to preserve or redevelop certain types of movement patterns have a real place in my life. And I'm still doing the harder workouts. I am also doing the weight training. I am also doing VO2 max training, which I find incredibly unpleasant. But Peter Tia is a very close friend. I've known him since 2008. I work with his medical practice and the data seem very unambiguous. It's like if you want to be functional into old age and live a long time, it seems like a very good idea to increase your VO2 max. Yeah.
- [62:07]
A
Atiya talks about zone two training increasing the base of your pyramid.
- [62:12]
B
Yeah. And VO2 increasing the height. So it's the surface area. And if you're just doing one, it's not great. So the good news is the VO2 Max, at least for me right now, is once a week. So you're only going to have the pukey.
- [62:24]
A
Are you doing the four by four?
- [62:25]
B
Yeah, four by four. It's pretty gross.
- [62:27]
A
Yeah, it's horrible.
- [62:28]
B
But it's once a week and you're going to feel proud of yourself afterwards. So look, I've done enough. Pretty much all the sports I've played are pretty gross, meaning they make you feel ill from a metabolic conditioning perspective. Wrestling, judo, all that stuff is kind of similar. So at least I have some familiarity with the suck, like embracing the suck. But the zone two training I've actually come to enjoy, I found it so boring. So, so boring. But it's like just set up a little stand with Netflix on or something. It's fine.
- [62:58]
A
Okay. Do you do. I've been trying to do treadmill at an incline for zone two. It's hard to get my heart rate up enough.
- [63:06]
B
I've done incline on the treadmill and it is hard to get the heart rate up also without tweaking my low Back if the incline gets too high, if the speed gets too fast, my low back gets really pissy. So just add weight. So what I do in the treadmill case is I have a plate loading backpack from, I think it's outdoor athlete or wilderness athlete. They have a plate loading like an Olympic bar that is mounted, it's about 12 inches long to the back of a frame backpack. And you just throw plates on, which I do find more convenient than a lot of rucksacks. So I'll just throw that on then it's a different story. When you load it up with enough weight like your, your heart will have to work. Okay. But I also use stationary bike. But having traveled so much and continuing to travel so much, stationary bike's too hard because fit really matters and you do not want to script your knees. So the treadmill is, is going to be a bit easier in that case. In which case rucksack is kind of the way to go.
- [64:05]
A
Okay, that makes sense. Yeah. My only comment, Tim, is really ultimately the inputs over a long period of time. Right. So I would have always considered myself pretty inflexible growing up, lifelong soccer player. So it's very athletic, but it just wasn't flexible. But I just sat on the floor for years when we would have family TV time at night, I would just literally sit on the floor with a lacrosse ball or whatever and just stretch or do some type of mobility, Kelly Starrett style mobility. And it just worked to the point where now, I mean, I think by any measure for a guy my age, I'm probably top 5% flexibility. And it just, it was just inputs over. Yeah, thanks, man. Just over a long period of time. And that is music to the ears of five people. That is literally. This is get rich in a medium term, right. This is not get rich quick. And I think that's what life is about is you put in the inputs over a period of time, you're going to be blown away by the results.
- [65:00]
B
Yeah. And you can also batch things together. So for instance, I've got a barrel sauna, I don't know, a few hundred feet from where I'm sitting. And by the way, those don't need to be expensive. You can buy them at Costco. But I've got a barrel sauna and I just leave some of the mobility tools outside of the sauna and it's like, okay, I do a sauna for half hour, let's say, each day. I've actually recently, based on some advice from Rhonda Patrick, revised what I'D been doing. I'd been doing 194 degrees. Seems like lower is actually better based on some Finnish studies. So I'm doing 180 for 30 minutes, 20 to 30 minutes. And I might do one or two rounds. But I'll do the soft tissue work as soon as I start to sweat and there's a nice glide. Then I'll just use these self massaging tools again. Check out Kelly Starett. He's got tons of great options. And Seema also has some great options. And I'll just, I'll do it in the sauna. So it's not yet another thing I'm adding. It's at the same time as something else. Similarly, if I'm doing cold plunge, which I'll probably do within an hour or two by the way, don't do that right after your workout. It'll inhibit some of the adaptations. So wait at least an hour after your workout to do the any cold exposure. So I'll typically do it in the morning and then work out later. But when I'm doing that, that's when I do my breath work, right? I'll just do a little bit of breath work. Nothing crazy. It's just like sharp inhale through the nose and then exhale through pursed lips. Nothing crazy. That's it. Don't need to get lightheaded. And I'll do that in the cold plunge. And then it's like, all right, if I'm listening to an audiobook, I'll give people a trick. Here's a trick. This is harkening back to the old school Tim Ferriss days, but I'll ruck and walk my dog to this nearby market. That's like half hour each way or something like that. I'll be rucking walking my dog and listening to an audiobook. And I think you can still do this. I haven't done it in a little bit, but as most people listening, you probably listen to audiobooks on Audible. Well, if you buy the book, I always buy both formats, Kindle and audiobook. And I believe I may have to eat crow on this. But I believe you can still do this is you can actually open the Kindle app and listen to your audiobook through the Kindle app. Why would you want to do this? At least I want to do this with nonfiction. Because as you're listening, if you're like, oh man, I really want to highlight that part. You just go to the Kindle app, pause, and it's tracking the text automatically as you listen through the Kindle version, you make your highlight and then you just hit play again and so you can get your highlights. Maybe that's just my ocd, but I suspect there are other people who want to highlight and doing clips and all that stuff. With Audiobook, nobody ever goes back and actually listens to that stuff. So having the ability to highlight is made possible by listening to your Audible books through the Kindle app. But the point of all of this that I'm saying is that if you look at them all sequentially, you're like, oh God, I know people have had this feeling about, you name it, right? They're like, if I did every morning routine that all these people recommend, like my morning routine would be four hours long. And it's like, yeah, that's true. The good News is typically 80, 20 analysis are really only a few things that most apply to you right now. And you can batch a lot of these things together.
- [68:21]
A
Yeah, I think that batching habit stacking as James Clear would call it. Right. Just putting these things together and yeah, you don't need an infinite amount of time. You can do multiple things at once. I love it. So Tim, we've really spent the hour here talking about designing an intentional life, right? And you've talked about these six month experiments and ultimately paradox of choice. You have so many things you can choose to spend your time on. And interestingly, and this is near and dear to the heart of the FI community because we are massive, massive board gaming fans. So you call it tabletop gaming, which I actually like better as a term. You have created a card game with WTFO schmark. Yeah, I mean it's wild. So it's called Coyote you created with Elon Lee and his team at Exploding Kittens. And I actually played it last night with my daughters. And the game is fantastic. I mean legitimately fantastic.
- [69:18]
B
Thanks man. Yeah, it's been a really fun, awesome, fascinating journey. And this is an example of a 6 to 12 month project that turned into a 2 year project, which is fine because sometimes that happens. So a few things I'll mention. So yeah, Coyote is the name of the game. It's 9.99 at Target, Walmart, Amazon, you can find it everywhere. And it's got 300 million plus viral video views of gameplay online right now, which is wild. So it's gone completely ballistic. And why did I choose to do this? So there are a few things that I think might be fun or interesting for folks to here in your audience. So the first is that every handful of years I try to do something that opens the door to a personal reinvention with a lot of unknowns around it. So let me explain what I mean by that. I generally feel like if you perform really well executing your 6 to 12 month project, if you do it just to the absolute best of your ability, that the doors that open as a result will be more interesting than anything you could imagine. Therefore, you don't want to trap yourself in long term planning too early. There are exceptions to that, right? I mean, there are certain things I have on autopilot, like the movement, microdosing, my exercise, my finances, like all that stuff is on some type of systematic autopilot. But when it comes to professional direction, projects, career, et cetera, I've never wanted to lock myself in too much. So that's why I did the four Hour Body after the four hour work week instead of the three hour workweek or a four hour workweek for fill in the blank demographic. Right? I could have milked that forever or for a long time, but I would have been pigeonholed and I would have pigeonholed myself into business author and I would have been trapped. And you see this happen to the vast majority of authors. They are X type of author. And since I knew I could always go back to the business genre, I was like, I want to do something completely outside of that to prove to, or at least test whether or not my audience will follow me to an entirely new genre. And if I do that, even partially successfully, then I have permission, the publishers will give me permission to do whatever I want. So that's why I did the four Hour Body similarly podcast. I'm like, I don't know where this is going to go. Told my audience I was going to do six to 10 episodes. I can't remember what number I gave them and if I didn't like it, I would jump ship. Tried it out, Boom. Then we have that. And in between those two, angel investing, I was like, I don't want to just be the self help author guy. Even though if we go back, there's a pretty good tradition. Even before modern self help, like Ben Franklin self help, almost all books are self help if you dig deeply enough and ask why, why, why? Even fiction. But putting all that aside, I was like, I don't always want to be the self help guy. How can I diversify my identity? Which gives you a lot of psychological insurance. So I was like, how do I diversify my identity? Okay, I want to try this angel investing stuff. I'm also in the Perfect place for it, living in San Francisco. And then that became a thing. And those are all still running, by the way. They're not mutually exclusive. And with the podcasting over the last 10 plus years, I guess 11 years now, I have felt like I'm still having fun. I love doing the conversations, but it's crowded, right? What was once a blue ocean has become a red ocean. And I was like, well, what else could I try? I grew up loving games. I still have all of my D and D modules and everything from when I was a kid. And I felt like a game was in a sense a natural progression for me. Right. So like four hour work week is business and financial time, freedom for our body, physical. Then you have four hour chef, which is learning, even though confusingly it's disguised as a cookbook. And then Tools of Titan's Tribe of Mentors is sort of healthy, wealthy, wise. It's got the full spectrum of those three. But what are we missing here? We're missing play, we're missing joy. We're also missing social interaction and relationships. And I think about, for instance, my birthday reunion, just how meaningful that is to everybody who comes. They fly in from around the world. And these are people who also taking international flights is very expensive for some of these guys. And I've just seen this kind of digital malaise set in over the last 10 years with my audience and many other people where the more screen time you have, the less real world social interaction you have, the more you see anxiety, depression. And that's not just in adults, that's in kids. Jonathan Haidt, Anxious Generation it seems to be a real problem in need of a solution. And in the last few years also, I was already developing Coyote by this point. But game nights in New York City, these huge game nights have exploded in popularity. And I think it's something people need. So what I wanted to try to do, and this came about also after I interviewed Alon Lee and I was like, okay, I really like this guy. And we had a couple of follow up conversations and I was like, this is somebody I could be a very long term friend with. He's also a genius at what he does and so good at game design. And so we just called him up and I was like, hey man, any chance you'd be interested in collaborating on something? And he was like, yeah, let's do it. So that's how it started. And ultimately, if I could provide people with something that's half the cost of a single movie ticket as a foot in the door to add micro doses of joy and social interaction into their family or group of friends or something like that. I was like, that seems very, very worthwhile to me, especially with everything that's going on. And that is what we got up to for two years. And I'm happy to dive into any aspect of it, but I just wanted to give a little bit of the backstory now.
- [75:23]
A
That's incredible. Yeah, I know that episode was February of 23, so, yeah, two and a half years almost to the day. And yeah, it's remarkable. And like I said, the FI community especially, you know, my family for years I've played board games. And any FI event you go to, almost invariably at night, there's going to be five different tables of. Five different.
- [75:42]
B
That's so fun. I had no idea.
- [75:43]
A
It's really. It's just. There's something about the FI community. We actually had an episode 4 29. It was five frugal hobbies with Chris Terrell. And it was essentially like his ode to tabletop gaming. And it was, it was really cool. You'd enjoy that episode. It was, it was quite good.
- [75:59]
B
That's super cool.
- [76:00]
A
Yeah. And I love, to me what jumps out about this. So we like games. Obviously, it depends on the time commitment. Right. So we've always loved Monopoly Deal because it's a great game. Wonderful. Cover your assets is another one that's just like these short little fun games. So Monopoly Deal is perfect in that it's simple on the face of it. And it's not like the. Obviously, to anyone listening, this is not the boring old Monopoly. This is actually like a really fast paced, infinitely variable and complex game in that like, no two games of Monopoly Deal are ever going to be the same. They just aren't. But they take what, 10 to 20 minutes at most. And it's just, it's wonderful. You sit there and you play eight to ten games and, you know, two hours went by. And interestingly, when, when I played Coyote last night, it reminded me of that aspect of Monopoly Deal where it was like, I just want to play again.
- [76:46]
B
Yeah. And it's fast. Like you said, it's about 10 minutes to play a game. And these were constraints that we applied in the beginning, which is why it took so long to find the right kernel of an idea to develop. Because as you know, to make. What I've come to appreciate for myself also is like, all right, making a fascinating, awesome, complex tabletop game is super hard. Making a very, very simple, fast to learn, fast to play game that is difficult to master is also incredibly, incredibly hard. That's why it took so long.
- [77:22]
A
I believe it. And that's the funny thing, Tim. So we were sitting there playing, and obviously the first run through, it's as. You know, they're just action cards, and you're just. To anybody playing it, I would describe it almost as a party game in the sense that it's like a raucous, fun time. But then you very quickly realize, oh, wow, this is legitimately difficult. Like, I consider myself pretty good at gaming, and I mean, Tim, I got crushed by this game.
- [77:47]
B
Like, crushed.
- [77:48]
A
I wasn't up to it mentally. It was unbelievable. I'm like, well, kids also have.
- [77:52]
B
Have a neuronal cognitive advantage. Kids tend to be very fast, which is fun because you could have. It says age 10 or up. But I've seen much younger kids play, and they have a chance to beat their parents, right? They definitely have a chance to beat their parents. If you're playing kind of competitive mode. And I would say for folks who are just looking for an idea of what this looks like, I'd be curious to hear. I like your description, too. It's basically like rock, paper, scissors with 20 different gestures instead of three. Where you play as a group. You can either play as a team, like, collaboratively against the game to win or lose together, or you can play competitively, which is my favorite way to play, because you can smack talk, and you can sabotage other players with various cards. And in the beginning, you're like, well, this is really easy, doing these various gestures as you go around the table with a rhythm that you have to keep. And then when you start playing Coyote cards, it's called Coyote because of the trickster mythologies associated with coyotes. Then you're like, oh, oh, wait a second. Oh, okay, now this is getting a lot harder. And depending on who you're playing with, if they want to escalate because you kind of control how hard it gets. I'll put it this way. If you're looking for a brain workout that will help you go to sleep, this is a. This is a good one to play.
- [79:15]
A
No doubt about it. It almost reminded me in a funny sense. You remember that thing called Simon? It was like the. The little disc where you'd have to, like, press different colors. It reminded me of that in the sense that, like, you had to constantly be on your mental game. So the. The thing that got me was when the. I. I think it was an attack card. But the coyote and the attack cards, to me are almost synonymous in the Sense that like, yeah, they're both trying to make it more difficult. And we had to clap before and after one of the action cards. And then it was a duplicate of that action card. It was like, Tim, my brain just freaking exploded. It was ridiculous.
- [79:48]
B
Yeah, the clapping is hard. This is going to be a little bit of inside baseball. If you have, I would say so you really want to have at least three players. And if you get to like four or five is when it particularly gets kind of nuts. But you can very easily play with three. And when you have a skip player card. So the coyote and attack cards. Attack cards. Let me explain. Attack. So just to give people a peek behind the hood, why are there attack cards? These are cards that you can play against another player to make everything they do harder. So maybe they have to say everything because as you have your gesture to do, you have to say a word at the same time as you're keeping rhythm. They might have to say everything with their like lips covering their teeth like an old gomer. Or they might have to whisper or they might have to do all the gestures with like tyrannosaurus, squirrel arms. There are different ways that you can handicap someone. The reason that was important is that I always wanted weaker players to have a chance of winning. Right. So more like a backgammon than chess. Because in chess, like, what fun is it if one person's winning all the time? It's not fun. Similarly with Coyote in the very early versions, because we play tested the hell out of this game with a hundred plus families. But in the early versions, we noticed that certain types of people, if they were really mathematicians, are really good at math, really good at music. They would smoke people. So one person would just win over and over and over again. It's like, well, that's not fun. So we developed the attack cards so that you could handicap that person, make it harder and harder for them to win. And that completely changed the game when we added those in, which came directly from playtesting. And yeah, it's fun. And the game from Exploding Kittens that actually led me to interview Elon Lee was Poetry for Neanderthals, which is an outstanding game. So if you're looking for multiple games to get Poetry for Neanderthals is outstanding. And that was another game where it's like, okay, this makes. And the ethos, the mantra of Exploding Kittens is we don't make. Probably going to screw this up a little bit. But basically we don't make entertaining games. We make games that make the other Players entertaining. And when you think about that, it's actually pretty deep and very. It's a guiding light in what they do. So Poetry for Neanderthals. People can check it out. It's a great game. But I played that game and I was like, okay, I have. Because I was thinking about possibly making a game well before I chatted with Elon Lee. So I was play testing, like 10 games a week, which, by the way, eventually turns into a pretty expensive habit if you're getting fancy tabletop games.
- [82:31]
A
Oh, I believe.
- [82:32]
B
Especially if you play them twice and you're like, yeah, I'm never going to play this again, but libraries will take the donation and hit on Poetry for Neanderthals. And I was like, okay, whoever designed this was very, very clever. And this is very elegant. Every time you play, it's different, like Monopoly Deal or Coyote. And there's something called Bushnell's Law, which is Nolan Bushnell, who created Atari or founded Atari. He aimed to make games that were easy to learn and hard to master. And at some point, I've already talked to some neuroscientists about this. I do want to actually run a study on Coyote to see what effects it has on, hopefully, like improving cognition. We haven't done that yet. It's going to take a bunch of money and take a long time to do, but it is one hell of a workout for your brain.
- [83:19]
A
It certainly is. And you see yourself, even intra session, you see yourself getting better. Like, I mean, frankly, I was not up to the mental task. The first run through. Like, I was out almost instantly. It was pathetic. I mean, genuinely pathetic. And then game two and three got a little bit better. We all got better. And it was really fun. And yeah, I mean, it's interesting because Elon said in his episode with you, he said, when you finish playing the game, do you want to play again?
- [83:44]
B
Yeah.
- [83:45]
A
And that was another. Another bit of the ethos that I thought was really interesting.
- [83:49]
B
Yeah, that's the big question for all the playtesters is. Well, first of all, for people who are interested in just the development side of things with playtesting, they always have to videotape their gameplay start to finish, so that you're not taking anyone's word for anything because you will also observe things in the gameplay that really affect how you develop the game. So they have to record the whole thing. And this goes for developing tech products, by the way. It's like you have them record a screen flow and go through the whole signup process, not just Give you a summary and an email afterwards so you can see like what took too long, what was confusing, but they eventually figured out in the instructions, things like that. In any case, the would you play again? Is kind of the big question at the end. Like, would you want to play again? Or if they don't want to send it back, that's another one. Which by the way, is also how they figured out how Viagra worked. It was not intended for its current use at all. And then of the sample patients, it's like all the older male patients wouldn't send their medication back and they're like, what's going on here? And lo and behold, so.
- [84:54]
A
That'S. I didn't see that one coming, Tim. I definitely did not see that one coming. But yeah, it certainly, if that is the barometer of do you want to play again? I mean, it definitely. It passed with flying colors for our family. It was really, really cool, man. I'm just, I'm so impressed. And like I said, I mean, we play a ton of games. We, you know, everything my kids have been playing. Like my, my younger daughter, we got her into games like Tickets Ride and Catan Splendor Seven Wonders before she could even read. I mean, she has known strategy board gaming since she was a little kid and it, it's just really cool to see them grow up on it. So we're pretty discerning when it comes to games and this passed the test.
- [85:32]
B
Awesome. That makes me super happy to hear and I would say broadly, just anybody listening, just play more games because if you don't have that social stress release valve, you're going to burn out before the truly serious stuff ever gets done. And I've just come to realize more and more it's like, yes, this is fun. Yes, it is recreation, but that doesn't mean it isn't an essential vitamin. On some level, I really think that it's important, particularly if you can make it bite sized. There are a lot of games that we've been talking about, of course, launching Coyote. So I would love people to buy Coyote. And that's of course what you would expect me to say. But it's also, it might be the first and last game that ever has my name on it. And so there's a reason that I don't just slap my name on every possible product you can imagine. It's like, I take it super seriously. Which is why I also tell people, if you're going to write a book, make sure it's your. It can be your top priority, top, top priority for a year. If not, don't put it out because you're going to have to live with that thing forever if you go through a traditional publisher, at least. So make sure you are very happy with it. And I felt the same way with games, right, because there were plenty of decent games that were reasonably fun that we figured out that we could have put out. And it was just like, no, wait, wait, wait. Figure out what the fat pitch is when there is one. Instead of feeling like, yeah, we could make it work. Same thing. When I was buying my first house, I was like, nah, no, I want to wait for that visceral feeling where within a few minutes you walk around, you're like, oh, yeah, this is the place. Similarly with the game, it wasn't until we did the fourth or fifth in person sprint for two or three days where we did one in la, one in New York, one in Toronto. Ultimately, we're walking around drinking tons of coffee. Alon and this guy named Ken Gruel, who's amazing, amazing as a game designer, just brainstorming, brainstorming, brainstorming. And then the way it came about is I was like, maybe we need to broaden the question. Not just. And maybe Alon had said this. It's hard to remember who said what, but basically, instead of what board games or card games do you like? What games, period, have really resonated. And I was like, look, it's going to make me sound stupid and primitive, but I love rock, Paper, scissors. I think it's hilarious to play with some friends, especially maybe if you've had a few drinks. And with my particular idiot friends, it's quite hilarious. And so it just became a thought experiment. It's like, look, okay, maybe this is dumb, but let's just run with it for a while. What might it look like to play this in a group? What would you have to do? How would you play this with five people? And we just drank more coffee, drank more coffee, kept talking and talking and talking, and then immediately went back to a table and we had blank decks of cards and just got markers and started mocking it up. Literally, we were attempting to play within 30 minutes, didn't work. And then we're like, okay, well how about we just cross these out on these cards and get rid of these cards, add a couple new ones. I go, let's play again. And literally every, I don't know, 10 minutes, we were playing a different version of the game until we had a kernel, like a core of something. And I trust Alain and Ken and Alon has been at this for decades and he's got such a good read. And he was like, okay, there's something here. There is actually something very interesting here. It's like, okay, let's quadruple down. But like, all the decisions, like, there are 66 cards in the deck. Why 66 versus 80 versus 50 versus 100. Right. Like, these are all very deliberate decisions for deck balance and statistically how often things should show up. Oh, you know what? I left out a really important piece, which is there are 10 blank cards.
- [89:23]
A
In the deck of the 66th.
- [89:25]
B
Yes. Because you can create your own gestures or attack cards or coyote cards. So another goal that I had with people is like, okay, I want you to actually become a game designer. And you can do it so easily. By the way, there are other ways you can make the game super fun and hilarious. I probably won't mention any not suitable for work stuff, but it's like you could take any gesture, right? Whether it's like ballet, moose or whatever. There are tons of these different gestures. And just pick a different word that people have to say that you think is hilarious. It could be a different word. It could be random animal noise. Right. It could be where people can't use the same. Like once it's used in the game, if someone barks, somebody has to use something else. And people make the weirdest sounds when you do that one, like at speed, you're like, what animal is that? So there are very easy ways to modify this game for house rules. So, like, the version of Coyote that you'll play at home will be like your family's version. And at some point, I'm hoping to do a competition where it's like, okay, let's see if we can come up with the best new card and that'll be put into the next print run of the game. We'll see. We'll see. That's something that I want to do. I'm getting a little ahead of myself because there are all these things I want to do. It's just like, Tim, focus.
- [90:40]
A
Yeah. Paradox of choice. Tim, come on.
- [90:42]
B
You got, you got to launch for two weeks. Just focus on the current version of the game. Because we had to get rid of. You have to make some really tough decisions. Right. We had a spreadsheet with multiple tabs with probably 150 different cards, 200 cards at least, with different names for every single one.
- [90:59]
A
Interesting. I'm thinking about the game. I didn't mention this earlier. Dominion was our family's Favorite game and Dominion expansion packs and such.
- [91:07]
B
Oh, yeah, There's a lot of potential for expansion packs for sure. Tim. Director's cut, not suitable for work.
- [91:15]
A
I love it, man. That's cool. Yeah. So I described it as a of part party game, but, you know, you mentioned a couple of drinks. I would advise no one to consume any alcohol when you're playing this game. It is difficult enough mentally, like, honestly, like. And I couldn't even fathom if I had like a drink or two.
- [91:32]
B
Yeah.
- [91:32]
A
But I mean, I'm sure that an extra little bit of spice to it.
- [91:35]
B
If you're all equally handicapped, then it could be pretty funny. I will say. Also, you can edit this out if you want, but not me, of course. But some of my friends are fond of taking a toke then. And again, it does not help your performance, but it makes it hilarious to watch. I will say that.
- [91:54]
A
Oh, that's amazing. That is absolutely amazing. Oh, goodness. Tim, this has been fantastic. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for the incredible conversation.
- [92:01]
B
Yeah, thanks for taking the time. And you've really, obviously done your homework and you're very, very good at leading the dance. So. Yeah, thanks very much. I really appreciate it. People can find Coyote anywhere. I mean, just search wherever you like to search and you'll find it. But it's been fun to particularly talk about an extension because you have so much color and exposure to your audience and the broader FI community about this, like, the most neglected chapter in the four hour workweek, which is the Filling the void chapter. Right. And it's another one of those things. People are like, ah, I'll deal with that later. Yeah, nice problem to have. It's like, no, that's not optional. This is another essential vitamin. You gotta pay attention to this first. Don't wait to have the car accident and then put your seatbelt on. That's not a great approach. It's like, figure it out. Or at least figure it out is too strong. Start dabbling, tinkering, experimenting.
- [92:59]
A
Yeah. It's an integral part of the process. It truly is. And yeah, I'm so glad you slowed down on that. We've slowed down on that for years now. And it's really, really important. Everyone, you need to hear this. This is a journey of experimentation. That's what life is. That's what fires. And it's okay to not know now what you want. I don't know what I want to be when I grow up. Right. Like, I'm still trying to figure this out. And that's not a bad thing. That's the spice of life. This is what makes it fun.
- [93:26]
B
Yeah, totally.
- [93:27]
A
So to everyone listening, Coyote is the game. You can find it anywhere. Like Tim said, It's $10. This is, it's just fun. It really is fun. And as I've mentioned so many times, the Tim Ferriss podcast is my favorite podcast of all time. I think what I say, yeah, it's wonderful. I say to people and obviously there's a little self serving, but. And obviously I've hired many people. If I could have someone who's listened to every episode of Choose Fi and the Tim Ferriss show, I would take that person over just about anybody. I think they are just essentially set for just the right outlook on life and they have the ability to learn. And I think that's the hallmark of someone who can be successful. It's not about what you know today, it's about can you vet information, can you learn things, are you willing to put in the time, the effort, the work? And obviously you're listening to the show. Just subscribe to Tim Ferriss. Come on. And Tim, your, your five Bullet Friday newsletter. It's funny, I buy essentially nothing and I have probably bought more things. Like I bought the Berkey water filter, the no Yoyo acupressure mat, the Dash egg cooker. I mean I got the whole, the whole thing.
- [94:33]
B
Well, by the way, like all three of those are in this house, right?
- [94:36]
A
It's like I use all of it.
- [94:37]
B
And sometimes I'll be with a friend and it'll be like Friday morning and I'm like, I really need to get this newsletter done. And they're like, wait, you write those yourself? I'm like, of course I write those myself. I don't put my name on anything I don't write. So that has been a really fun sort of diary also for myself because I'm not going to have a diary otherwise to write down. Like, here are the five coolest things that I found this week that are useful, interesting, whatever. I mean, I don't want to spoil the surprise, but like my desk is full of stuff right now, several of which are going to make it into either like this week or future weeks on five below Friday. And also just yesterday actually launched my first website redesign in like 10 years or something like that. So people can check out Tim Blog for everything. But finally looks like it's not a website made in geocities or something.
- [95:31]
A
So, yeah, circa 2004.
- [95:33]
B
Yeah. Excited to have an updated look for the website.
- [95:38]
A
That is awesome. That is absolutely awesome. All right, Tim, thank you again. And to everyone out there, check out the game, check out everything Tim puts out. You're not going to regret it. This is just an incredible, incredible resource. So like I said, it's been life changing for me going way back to 2007. So Tim, thank you for everything you do.
- [95:58]
B
Yeah, thanks Brad. And thanks for listening to everybody.
- [96:01]
A
Till next time, thank you for listening to today's show and for being part of the choose to Fight community. If you haven't already, the best ways to get involved are first subscribe to the podcast. So you're listening to this on a podcast player. Just hit subscribe and then subscribe to my weekly newsletter. I actually sit down every Monday and write this by hand and I send it out Tuesday morning. So just head over to choosefi.com subscribe and it's really, really easy to get on the the newsletter list right there and I would greatly appreciate it. It's the best way to get in touch with me. You can actually just hit reply to any of those emails and it comes directly to my inbox. So that's the way that I keep a pulse of the community and how we keep this the ultimate crowdsourced personal finance show. And finally, if you're looking to join an in real life community, we have choose a vilocal groups in 300 plus cities all around the world. So head to choose a vi.com local and you'll find a list of all of Those cities in 20 plus countries all across the world. And if you're just getting started with FI or you have a family member or friend who you think would be interested, two easy ways choose a VI episode 100 is kind of our welcome to the FI community and even though it's a couple years old at this point, it still stands up and it's a really great just starting point to get an understanding of what is financial independence. What are we doing here? Why are we looking to live a more intentional life where we save money and use it as a springboard to live a better life? And then choose if I created a Financial Independence 101 course that's entirely free. Just head to choosefi.comfi101 and again, thanks for listening SA.